상자

📦 상자

Minji keeps all the cardboard boxes.

They crowd her small Yeonnam studio—flaps folded, labels half torn, Coupang barcodes still visible. She stacks them between the mini fridge and the rice cooker, under her desk, behind the shoe rack near the door. Her mother once offered to throw them out, thinking they were trash. Minji said no, too quickly.

“I might move again,” she said. “You never know.”

It’s been fourteen months since the last move. The landlord hasn't raised the rent yet, and the subway commute is tolerable. She’s even hung two framed prints near the window. But still: the boxes stay.

Every time she unpacks something—a book from college, a pair of socks her ex left, a dried bouquet from her last gallery show—she wonders if she’s making a mistake. Each item unwrapped feels like a declaration she can’t quite afford: I live here. I belong here. I will stay.

She draws quietly at her desk, commissions half-finished on the tablet screen. Beside her, a flattened iMac box waits like an escape hatch.

When the wind rattles the windowpanes, the boxes shift, almost imperceptibly. Not quite ready to settle. Not quite ready to go.