Yoonkyung smiled broadly as if she understood his feelings completely and cheerfully greeted him.
“It’s okay. Lee Jeong-ssi, go home and sleep quickly, and I’ll see you this evening? Dokyung, have a good time at daycare!”
“Yeth! Unnie baba!”
“Baba!”
She smiled brightly and started the car. She always offered to drive them all the way home, but Lee Jeong always firmly shook his head, saying that much was fine. It wasn’t for some shallow reason like trying to preserve his pride after starting a relationship where he’d shown everything down to the bottom.
He just knew his place. If you only keep receiving the kindness people offer endlessly, you lose your sense of shame. And people without shame are eventually abandoned.
He was already receiving plenty from her even now. Her kindness was the most necessary thing to Lee Jeong. To the extent that without the hand she extended, he’d be immediately at a loss for how to live with Dokyung.
He didn’t know how long that kindness would continue… but for now, he decided to be relieved that he’d survived today safely. With those thoughts, Lee Jeong took the child’s hand.
Lee Jeong held Dokyung’s tiny hand and walked toward the bus stop.
It was about one bus stop away by bus. It was a distance he could easily walk on his own, so considering the bus fare he wanted to walk, but he couldn’t walk with a barely three-year-old child, so he always took the bus when going to and from Yoonkyung’s house.
With a hiss, the bus door stopped in front of the two and opened. It was always crowded during commuting hours, but Lee Jeong bravely lifted the baby and entered the bus. Luckily, someone gave up their seat upon seeing the child. Lee Jeong bowed deeply and seated Dokyung. It was only one stop, but it would be dangerous if he couldn’t seat such a small child in this packed bus.
With another hiss, the bus spat the two of them out at the next stop. There were one or two people getting on, but no one getting off at this place at this time. It was a bit far from the apartments that stretched up refreshingly, visible until just now. The place Lee Jeong got off was an alley where small houses, low enough that the eaves seemed to touch his forehead, were packed tightly together.
Fortunately, home wasn’t far from the bus stop. Walking a bit along the row of walls and turning into the alley, a blue gate with an old rusty mailbox attached could be seen in the distance. That house was where Lee Jeong and Dokyung lived together. With a creak, Lee Jeong held the child’s hand and entered the yard.
Lee Jeong’s house with two attached rooms was tiny. In the narrow yard was a small space serving as both vegetable garden and flower bed, but in that empty space where nothing was cultivated, only broken flowerpots and glass shards were left messily abandoned. It seemed the previous occupants had left without cleaning up. Only a few stalks of weeds grew vigorously with each rainy season.
The wall, the gate, and everything inside the house were so old they could never be called decent. However, considering the process of obtaining this house, and as a result, having a space where he and the child could stretch their legs comfortably, he couldn’t help but be grateful to have even a house like this.
Lee Jeong looked at the clock and moved diligently. At nine o’clock, the daycare vehicle would come near the bus stop where they’d just gotten off. Since it was difficult in many ways for him to take the child to daycare himself, he had to go out precisely on time for the vehicle.
Fortunately, thanks to Yoonkyung preparing breakfast (though he kept refusing, Yoonkyung actually tried to prepare it almost every day), he only needed to wash his face and dress him. With practiced hand movements, he packed the pre-washed food tray, utensils, and water cup into the bag. Soothing the child who kept running up to be held in between, Lee Jeong turned on the television. The television was as old as this house, so it crackled a bit, but there was no major problem watching the cartoon with the goggle-wearing penguin that Dokyung liked.
While the child watched the cartoon, Lee Jeong changed the child’s clothes and finished preparations for daycare. Dragged back outside the gate in the middle of enjoying the cartoon, Dokyung whined a bit and refused to put on his shoes, but somehow he managed to soothe the child and get to the place where the daycare vehicle came right on time.
Soon after, a yellow daycare vehicle with its turn signal on approached from over there and stopped in front of Lee Jeong and Dokyung. Children who had already been riding from the previous course were sitting obediently in the car with their belts fastened. The teacher smiled cheerfully and greeted Lee Jeong and the child.
“Hello, Father! Hello Dokyung! Shall we go with teacher?”
“Appa baba!”
“Yeah.”
Fortunately, the child didn’t throw a tantrum saying he wouldn’t go and obediently got in the car. Whenever he occasionally threw tantrums saying he wouldn’t go, his heart felt like it would break, but today he cooperated well, so it was really fortunate and he was grateful.
‘Dokyung, have a good time. I love you.’ The feelings he couldn’t convey in words were replaced by raising both arms and making a heart above his head. Dokyung raised his short arms above his head just like his dad and made a heart. Seeing the other children in the car also making hearts together, Lee Jeong smiled broadly.
“Then we’ll be going!”
Lee Jeong bowed deeply until the door closed and the vehicle departed. The vehicle carrying the child moved away with a vroom.
Lee Jeong, who had been watching until the yellow vehicle disappeared from sight, quietly turned around and returned to his own house with the blue gate. As soon as the child disappeared from sight, his legs began to tremble, and his steps rapidly lost strength. It felt like the last bit of energy he’d been forcing out had evaporated without a trace at the same time the daycare vehicle disappeared.
When he finally entered the room, spread out the bedding, and lay down, he had no energy left to even move a finger. Sunlight poured terribly into the room without even a curtain, but Lee Jeong fell straight into sleep as dark as an abyss.
*
Wookyung’s new insomnia medication faithfully decreased by one compartment each day for a week.
He was fortunate the medication worked well. He could sleep three or four hours a day when he hadn’t been able to sleep at all for days on end. That alone felt like he could breathe. It was woefully insufficient sleep to relieve the fatigue accumulated bit by bit over several years, but thanks to getting some rest anyway, he could work with a much clearer head than before even when conducting business.
“These days, our Executive Director Choi’s face has really brightened up? Did you get a lover or something?”
Under the softly adjusted lighting, beyond the liquor glass, the face of President Lim Moojin smiling impishly could be seen. Wookyung chuckled and raised the corners of his mouth. In his downcast vision, his own thick fingers holding the liquor glass caught his eye.
“How could that be, President.”
“Then why is your skin so shiny? Are you eating something good? Let’s eat it together.”
“If there were such a thing, wouldn’t I have already recommended it to you, President?”
He smiled leisurely, raised his glass, turned his head, and threw it back in one go. The hard liquor slowly went down, burning his esophagus. President Lim didn’t hide his face that found this interesting. He raised his masculine eyebrows cheerfully.
“Look at this. Even buttering me up when you normally don’t?”
“It’s nothing special, I just got some sleep these past few days.”
“Oh, such a thing to celebrate. I clearly know our Executive Director Choi, whom I cherish, has been suffering from insomnia for years.”
President Lim spoke in an excited tone and picked up a piece of freshly caught, lively sashimi with his chopsticks and put it in his mouth. This young, magnanimous president, as he said himself, cherished Wookyung tremendously.
President Lim Moojin, who was around his mid to late forties, was a central figure in causing the internal division of the organization ‘Daneum’ that Wookyung had belonged to. Wookyung clearly remembered that Daneum from a few years ago operated in a quite different manner from now.
At that time, Wookyung was the team leader of Daneum’s Security Team 1, a bodyguard who closely protected President Park Youngchul, who was then the president. However, despite that, Lim Moojin, who was Daneum’s vice president, constantly sent love calls to Wookyung, avoiding President Park’s eyes. Asking him to strike down President Park and join hands with him. To completely overhaul the rotten interior of the organization and try establishing a proper business.
Wookyung didn’t refuse the hand the impetuous Lim Moojin extended. Though sticking a knife in the neck of the boss he served could ordinarily be treated as subhuman within the organization, it didn’t matter. At that time, Wookyung was suffering from the impulse to kill President Park, whom he was supposed to protect. With Lim Moojin’s support behind him, Wookyung killed President Park with his own hands.
Thus Wookyung overturned the organization, and with President Lim’s full support and backing, he became the executive director of Daneum, which had only kept its name while becoming a completely new organization. In fact, executive director sounded nice, but Wookyung wasn’t the materialistic type to stupidly brag about and flaunt the title “Executive Director-nim” that gangster bastards called him outside in the world.
However, Lim Moojin’s thoughts were different. In President Lim’s eyes, Choi Wookyung had clean skills without excess, was clever and agile, and seemed to have infinite potential. President Lim, who greatly trusted Wookyung, was preparing to pull Wookyung up to the vice president position soon. He believed that if the day came when he stepped down from the position of organization head, the next owner of Daneum would be Choi Wookyung.
The storm that had blown in at that time had settled down perfectly so that not even a trace could be seen in the newly organized structure three years later. However, Wookyung’s life, which had sunk together into deep water at that time, was still submerged beneath the black water.
Since nothing showed above the surface, he seemed fine on the outside. Rather, with his flawless work handling, his masculine and handsomely chiseled appearance, excellent phenotype, and gentle disposition, he gave others the impression of being excessively perfect. However, in reality, his life was in a state of slowly dying without being able to breathe while submerged in water for a long time. Only a few acquaintances very close to him knew this fact.
President Lim Moojin, who was drinking heavily with him, was also one of the people who knew this fact.
“Executive Director Choi.”
“Yes, President.”
“This kind of talk… I know it’s delicate to bring up.”
A hand with a long scar drawn across it approached and wrapped around the liquor bottle. Wookyung silently raised his glass with both hands to receive the liquor. Watching the yellow liquid falling with a glug glug sound, he was already anticipating what he would say. His head, which hadn’t reacted particularly to the pouring hard liquor, suddenly ached.
“How about… meeting someone else once.”
“President.”
