Though they said contact would be immediate since it was urgent translation work, though they said estimates would be given like clockwork once the manuscript was confirmed, there’d been no contact since yesterday morning’s text reply. Just in case, he’d checked the account many times but no money had come in either. He didn’t want to rush them in case it would offend them, but now wasn’t that situation. The day they’d agreed to buy plane tickets was tomorrow. The guys with money prepared had waited a whopping 2 weeks during peak travel season. If they passed tomorrow, Friday, another week would slip by. Holding the phone that wouldn’t connect, again, he alternately called the company number and the staff member’s number. Lee Euishin’s face clearly hardening before his eyes amplified the rippling anxiety.
When he pressed the button to call once more, Lee Euishin reached out his hand.
“Do it tomorrow.”
And ending the seemingly useless call, he returned the phone.
“It’s almost quitting time but seeing they haven’t answered all this time, it’s useless. Let’s take the exam tomorrow and go see the office.”
“We agreed to reserve plane tickets after the exam ends tomorrow.”
The moment he spat out those words, his liver went cold. Really, could they finish the reservation safely tomorrow? How much money was in the bank account?
“……”
It was unfair that such anxiety suddenly arose. When he’d worked so hard. Really worked himself to death. He’d thought he could immediately grasp the results of his efforts in his hands….
“You have some free time during the day tomorrow, right? Where is it?”
“Seocho-dong.”
“Let’s go together.”
You don’t need to. It doesn’t matter to you…. Those words absolutely wouldn’t come out. Lee Euishin’s voice firmly drawing a conclusion was truly helpful right now.
Tomorrow was the exam for the most difficult required liberal arts course of the semester that also directly connected to his major. Since the preparation period was already short, he needed to study with his wits about him today. Kwon Yunsu tried hard to steady his heart. In the evening too, his hand went to his phone several times, but Lee Euishin, who’d been sitting across the table studying, faithfully stopped him each time.
“Let’s go tomorrow.”
“Yeah.”
“Study.”
“Yeah….”
Until they broke up, he could manage to hold onto his wits. Sitting alone with Lee Euishin to study was such a familiar thing, and the guy’s commanding tone had firm power.
It was 2 AM when they cleaned up, saying it was the minimum line for not ruining tomorrow’s condition—Kwon Yunsu went to bed with a troubled heart. Though he usually slept soundly no matter how much his head ached, that day he couldn’t. Because right before barely falling asleep, wondering why he only thought of it now, he looked up the business registration number and obtained nothing.
The next day Kwon Yunsu ruined the exam. Meaning he couldn’t write down what he knew as much as he knew it. Leaving behind those who’d be holding onto the exam paper until the bell rang, Kwon Yunsu was the first to leave the exam room. And immediately caught a taxi to Seocho-dong. He wanted to confirm with his own two eyes what on earth had happened, what had happened to him. As soon as he got in the taxi he called, but it was still dead, and the email he sent writing anything just in case was returned.
And the place he arrived at was an officetel. Entering a building that clearly seemed to be residential, not commercial or business use, Kwon Yunsu barely held back a hollow laugh. Standing in front of Unit 1102, he pressed the doorbell. He pressed the bell, and pressed, and pressed again. Finally someone opened the door.
“This is Ireum Translation Company’s office, right? I came to see Kim Seonhyeok-ssi.”
Having practiced that line many times in the taxi, the person who heard it was a middle-aged man wearing a tank top with a long chest area and boxer trunks.
“What the fuck did you say?”
“Here, Ireum Translation…”
“Fuck! Hey, you fucker, does this look like a company? Some worthless bastard knocking on someone’s house door and making a scene, a scene. Kim Seonhyeok or Kim-fuck-whoever, won’t you get lost?!”
Hearing the threatening words hammering into his ear, Kwon Yunsu scanned the interior beyond the man’s back. Packing boxes scattered everywhere and office desks, an unplugged telephone. Partitions and files and half-drunk beverages…
“This is the right place. Where is Kim Seonhyeok-ssi?”
He looked straight into the man’s eyes. It felt like his heart would burst. The foul alcohol smell from the man and bulging eyes with burst blood vessels, the aura of violence clearly revealed in his speech and expression. With his jaw trembling, he spoke again.
“If you just tell me where he went, I’ll….”
Smack!
The next moment, fire burst from Kwon Yunsu’s cheek. The man who’d struck his cheek without mercy came barefoot into the hallway and this time struck the opposite cheek.
“Does this bastard walk around with his liver outside his belly, fuck? Where are you raising your voice? Where are you glaring, huh? Who are you giving orders to? Huh?!”
The man who’d grabbed his hair lightly as if joking, then increasingly roughly banged Kwon Yunsu’s head against the front door. And roughly turning his face, he struck his cheek again.
“Hey, say it again, huh? What is this place?”
“Tra, translation….”
“What?!”
Smack!
If you get your cheek hit wrong, you really do get a nosebleed…. At the trickle of blood flowing down his jaw, Kwon Yunsu thought blankly. The man who saw that state went inside and threw a tissue box.
“Wipe your face with that and get lost, huh? Where did you come with your eyes wrong and make a scene, fuck….”
The door slammed shut. Looking down at the blood droplets that had fallen on his sky blue shirt, Kwon Yunsu bent down and picked up the tissue. He immediately pulled out several tissues and plugged his nose. This is what Yunju bought as an entrance gift…. Belatedly his whole body trembled and tears poured down. Crying without even making a sound because he was embarrassed, his eyes, cheeks, ears, and nape instantly became hot and damp. Wiping his swollen eyes, he moved his steps. He looked toward the emergency exit wanting to hide anywhere, but he didn’t want to stay in the same building as that man for even one more second.
Barely escaping the building, he passed several buildings. Between buildings, discovering a narrow passage where office workers probably shared cigarettes in small groups, he entered there. The tension suddenly released, but nothing new burst out. Because he’d been crying so much he couldn’t see ahead all the way here. He reached out his damp hand and took out his phone. Opening the group chat room that had become filled with travel talk at some point,
「Reserve without me for now.」
It wasn’t ‘for now’ but he planned to just give up. But if he said it as it was, the kind soccer idiots would needlessly delay, and he couldn’t think of any other appropriate and ambiguous words beyond that……
「I’ll contact you again!」
Barely adding one more phrase, he turned off his phone.
He felt like the most pathetic idiot in the world. He finally realized what absurd defiance he’d been displaying. What a dim-witted human he must have been to fall for such a pathetic scam, ruin the exam, waste all the taxi fare, get beaten up by some stranger he didn’t even know…. He didn’t want to go on a trip making such a pathetic fuss and being indebted to this person and that person.
I should have listened to noona. I should have listened to Euishin. So many things that would upset mom if she knew….
“Hic… ugh…… huuk…!”
He bit his lips until they bled. Crying out loud was something you did when seeking comfort from someone. Only people qualified to cry loudly did that. He didn’t have that qualification. What’s pretty about a human who pathetically fell for a scam to deserve comfort?
“Aheuu……”
But being miserable was unavoidable.
Stuck in a corner of a busy downtown area in broad daylight crying messily, entering a nearby PC room and searching ‘translation part-time scam’ for two hours then crying when there was no answer, on the bus home reciting let’s go next year since Europe isn’t floating away somewhere then crying a little more. Europe isn’t floating away somewhere, but the fate of an engineering student who started their major might float away somewhere unknown.
He should prepare for next week’s exam right away, but today he absolutely didn’t have the energy for it. But it didn’t seem like he could fall asleep like this either, so he bought all the beer from the convenience store. The bus driver and passengers, the convenience store part-timer, the apartment residents each glanced at Kwon Yunsu. Kwon Yunsu, who had no interest in what he looked like, trudged home without any thoughts.
The misery he’d barely soothed revived when he came face to face with Lee Euishin standing firm in front of the front door.
The guy who swiftly reached out and examined Kwon Yunsu’s face asked with a demon-like face.
“Who did this?”
“……”
I’m the idiot, what else.
Kwon Yunsu smiled bitterly.
The country bumpkin who’d been out of contact for half a day finally came home in the evening.
It was a problem that he’d turned off his phone without permission, a problem that though the master had made the big decision to go together, he’d told them to proceed without him and changed course alone, a problem that he hadn’t returned home until the sun set, but the biggest problem was that face. Lee Euishin was so shocked he thought the apartment building was collapsing.
