I held my head while alternately looking at the ball that went into the goal and our team. As expected, my hyung and Gangjin hyung shook their heads, accepting defeat, and everyone was shaking out coins from their pockets.
I stroked my forehead area that hit the goalpost with my hand and looked at the hyungs, but whether I bumped into the goalpost or not, no one cared.
“It hurts though…”
My head hurt, but my ignored heart hurt too. I want to do well too, but what can I do when Seongheon hyung is too good… Even if another 4th grader hyung had been standing here, they absolutely wouldn’t have been able to block it.
I was gloomily rubbing the painful area with my palm when Seongheon hyung approached, dusted off the dirt on my clothes, and removed the hand on my forehead.
“You bumped your head earlier, right? Let me see if you got a bruise.”
“It’s fine.”
“Did it hurt a lot?”
“I don’t know.”
I stuck out my lips and just looked at the dusty playground.
But I don’t know why I felt so wronged. Even though I’m kkakdugi, I didn’t want to be treated like I’m disposable—there or not there, it doesn’t matter.
Even my own hyung had no interest in whether I was hurt, and only Seongheon hyung approached and held out a towel dampened with water from the faucet.
“Fortunately, you didn’t get a bump.”
“Hyung, this.”
“Hm?”
“I should pay the penalty too. Ice cream money.”
“It’s fine. Those guys will pay your share too. You’re kkakdugi.”
Without denying Seongheon hyung’s words, I timidly put the 500 won back in my pocket.
Everyone was standing near the faucet, wetting their heads and having a water fight, too busy to notice. Whether the winning team or losing team, everyone was excited, but only I sat alone on a landscaping rock, watching them.
After some time passed, I made eye contact with my hyung who came carrying a bag of ice cream, but he looked away.
“Hey, one per person.”
Coldly, ice cream only went to the people who won, and the people who lost shared one bottle of water while talking about the next game. Of course, I was completely left out.
“Daeyoung-ah. Here.”
“Huh?”
I was meaninglessly rubbing my forehead with the towel that had become lukewarm when someone suddenly held out an ice cream. It was one side of a Twin Bar, and the part handed to me was much larger, enough to make a ‘ㄱ’ shape.
The person who gave it was none other than Seongheon hyung.
“…Hyuuung.”
“You bumped your head because of me. So eat the bigger side.”
As I picked up the ice cream, the hurt feelings disappeared without a trace and only gratitude remained. Right, Seongheon hyung was really a kind hyung. Just because he tricked me for a moment doesn’t mean it was sincere.
Even now, Seongheon hyung went ‘whoo─’ and blew on my forehead area, then went to wet the towel with cold water again and held it to me. During that time, I couldn’t eat the ice cream out of guilt toward our team and just held it.
“What are you doing, eat it. It’s melting.”
“I’m wondering if I should eat it.”
“I’m giving it to you, so you can eat it.”
Seongheon hyung personally wrapped my hand and brought the ice cream to my lips.
Pretending I couldn’t resist, I tried to bite the protruding part, but someone from the right grabbed and pulled my forearm. When I looked to see who it was, it was Gangjin hyung, and hyung immediately lowered his head and took a big bite of the protruding part.
“Just one bite.”
“Where do you ask while eating!”
“Right here.”
This time, Daesu hyung who approached from the left grabbed my wrist and took another bite of the ice cream. He bit so deeply that half was cut off cleanly.
“Ha…”
Watching the ice cream disappear before my eyes, I was so devastated I wished this wasn’t reality. The large ice cream was now only left the size of a thumb. Even that was starting to melt, wetting the back of my hand.
I was frozen in shock holding the ice cream when, instead of me, Seongheon hyung ran up to the two hyungs and hit their arms and backs. Just kick them with your soccer cleats…
“You have nothing to steal so you steal and eat Daeyoung’s?”
“You don’t give us any and only give to Daeyoung? How petty.”
“Right. Are you even a friend?”
Gangjin hyung said something back while dodging Seongheon’s punches. Daesu hyung was also busy refuting while shaking off Seongheon hyung’s hand gripping his clothes.
As if he couldn’t deal with those brats, Seongheon hyung stopped scolding them and took me to the faucet.
“Here, ah─.”
“Ah.”
The remaining ice cream went right into my mouth. It had melted so much that it disappeared the moment I put it in my mouth.
After confirming I finished eating, Seongheon hyung held my hand under the faucet with cold water running and personally washed it for me. My hand as a 1st grader looked twice as small as hyung’s hand as a 4th grader. So maybe that’s why, even though we’re clearly both children, hyung seemed like an adult.
“Next time hyung will buy you a bigger ice cream. The scooped kind.”
“Yeah. When you buy that, let’s eat it together.”
“Okay.”
Seongheon hyung turned off the faucet, pulled my hand, and dried the moisture on his own t-shirt. As my sticky hand became clean, the hurt feelings were also washed away together.
“There, done. If your head hurts, you must tell your mom.”
“Okay.”
“But why do you keep scratching your leg?”
“I don’t know, I think a mosquito bit me.”
“I’ll make it not itchy.”
I was touching my calf that had swollen like dalgona when Seongheon hyung made me move my hand away. After that, hyung raised his fingernails as much as possible and pressed firmly on the swollen area, crossing to make a cross shape.
“Like this, it won’t itch at all.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
Hmm… It stung a little so the itchiness was less for a moment, but as time passed, the itchiness crept up again.
So I scratched lightly with my fingertips and asked back.
“But it’s still itchy though…”
When I looked at him with a dubious expression, Seongheon hyung stroked his own chin and asked seriously.
“Daeyoung-ah. Your family is Buddhist, right?”
“Huh? How did you know?”
“Then the cross has no effect. That’s why it’s itchy.”
“Ah, I see.”
As expected, there’s nothing Seongheon hyung doesn’t know, and he’s really sweet. When playing dodgeball, he told me to stand behind him and got hit by the ball instead of me, his arm swelling up red, and when we ran into each other in the cafeteria, he gave me his chocolate pie.
As that happened, being with Seongheon hyung became more enjoyable than with friends, and when hyung smiled, a smile spread on my lips without me knowing. I wanted to become the person closest to hyung more than anyone.
So I thought that if I tried hard, I could continue staying close to Seongheon hyung… But even Seongheon hyung, who had been endlessly sweet, couldn’t escape the turbulent period like the other hyungs.
Would it have been better if I had been 2 years apart? From middle school, I could barely hang out with the hyungs. When the hyungs graduated middle school, only then did I enter middle school.
Sometimes the hyungs came to play at our house, but the timing didn’t match, and there were more days when Daesu hyung went to play at those hyungs’ houses. Why don’t they come to our house? I could understand that question after seeing Seongheon hyung and Gangjin hyung’s houses.
The hyungs’ dads and our dad are hometown friends, they say, but those uncles were all tremendously rich. I heard that Gam Seongheon hyung’s family has been a land-rich family doing well for generations. So if I pointed at any land while passing by and asked, “Dad, is that also Seongheon hyung’s family’s land?” Dad would mostly answer “Yes.”
I also occasionally went to Seongheon hyung’s house in Dad’s truck, and it was incredibly far from the gate to the entrance, plus the house was like a huge yangban house in a folk village, so I wondered if this was really a place where people lived.
The outside was a hanok but when you went inside, everything was modern. When I saw the lattice door open automatically, I was a bit confused. It was outside my common sense, like laser beams coming out of the eyes of a doll wearing hanbok.
And So Gangjin hyung’s family owned a 300,000-pyeong ranch and was famous for having the best stud horses in the country. Gangjin hyung’s house was a 4-story house and I was surprised to see there was an elevator inside.
The hyungs look down on each other as ‘country bumpkins,’ but I know well that’s not actually the case. Compared to that, our house was just an ordinary two-story house with a backyard where lettuce was planted, a small orchard and a bit of land that Grandfather left us.
On the second floor were only hyung’s room, my room, and a storage room, and my room and hyung’s room were at opposite ends, so maybe that’s why when the hyungs came to play, they didn’t bother coming all the way to my room.
When I was in 1st year of middle school, the hyungs wearing high school uniforms came to our house. Even when we were young there was quite a height difference, but the difference in build between a middle schooler and high schooler was tremendous. Don’t most people grow the most in 2nd and 3rd year of middle school? So maybe that’s why I still couldn’t shake off my elementary school appearance, but the hyungs’ heights all easily exceeded 180cm.
“How have you been, our kkakdugi?”
Gangjin hyung stroked my head as I opened the front door for him and strode inside. Following behind, Seongheon hyung also looked down at me and smiled contentedly.
“Daeyoung-ah, did you miss hyung?”
“Well. A little?”
“That’s disappointing. Come here, let me hug you.”
I twisted my body trying to shake off Seongheon hyung’s long arms, but hyung stubbornly wrapped me in his arms warmly. I just liked this sweet hug and skinship from Seongheon hyung. Because my own hyung was fucking annoying.
“Yaaah!!!”
As soon as I thought that, I heard my real hyung’s voice as sharp as a cold wind from behind Seongheon hyung.
“You touched my computer, didn’t you?”
“No.”
I used Seongheon hyung as a shield and just stuck my face out to the side from behind to answer.
I actually did touch Daesu hyung’s computer. Mom said she’d buy me a state-of-the-art computer when I entered middle school, but there’s still been no news at all, so I touched it slightly when hyung went to play at another hyung’s house.
‘How did he know?’
He must have set up some kind of device on the computer. Maybe in the city, but from our house you had to take a bus to get to a PC room. So I had no choice but to touch it, but who knew I’d get caught.
When my hyung reached out to grab me, Seongheon hyung blocked him and restrained Daesu hyung’s reaching arm like tying both hands together.
“Run! Daeyoung-ah!”
“Thanks, hyung!”
I quickly ran up the stairs and went right into my room.
Notes:
- Twin Bar (쌍둥이바) – a type of ice cream bar that can be split in two
- Dalgona (달고나) – Korean honeycomb toffee candy
- Hanok (한옥) – traditional Korean house
- Yangban (양반) – Korean upper class/nobility
- Pyeong (평) – Korean unit of area measurement (approximately 3.3 square meters)
