Anyway, it took such a long time. By the time I finished paying and came out, my back hurt.
The claim that it came out pretty wasn’t a lie—I even got a big discount on the condition that a video would be uploaded to the salon’s official SNS.
Hyung-nim. I have something I want to discuss today. Do you have time?
Yoo Jeongwoo hyung-nim
What discussion?
Where’s the kid?
I was planning to go home early today, so should we have dinner together then?
I came home but the kid isn’t here and there’s no contact.
Hajin-ah, has the colt period already returned?
“Huh? This is bad.”
Messages that arrived at regular time intervals continued in succession. The last message was from 30 minutes ago.
Come to think of it, I was planning to go home today and talk about the MT.
I’d gone to the salon with my phone still on silent mode from class time, and I’d been dozing off the whole time so I’d lost track of time. Before I knew it, it was dinnertime.
It wasn’t late, but since there’d been no reply for quite a while, it was understandable that hyung-nim would worry. It was right when I was about to hurriedly send a response.
“Wait a minute.”
And suddenly, I remembered the bucket list I’d left on my desk in my room. I think I left in such a hurry this morning that I didn’t even close my room door.
I’m going crazy. As I went out to catch a taxi, I immediately called hyung-nim.
“Hyung-nim!”
Fortunately, hyung-nim answered my call right away.
– Yeah, Hajin-ah. Are you going to the MT next week?
Unlike what I’d worried about, his calm voice made me feel somewhat relieved.
“Yes! But hyung-nim, where are you?”
– I came home early today. Has the kid eaten dinner?
“No, I’m on my way home now! Let’s have dinner together.”
– Okay, then I’ll wait at home.
“Yes! If you watch TV in the living room, I’ll come quickly!”
I was a little out of breath from running to the road. A taxi happened to stop in front of me, and after hanging up the phone, I quickly got in.
And at that moment, I realized I hadn’t told hyung-nim about the MT yet.
***
Does the world change overnight when you become an adult? No.
Of course, I too had been filled with such dreams when I was young. But even though I’ve been living as a twenty-year-old for four months, it’s not particularly like that.
Going from high school student to college student and leaving my parents’ house to live with Jeongwoo hyung-nim was a very big change. But it seemed my mindset played a bigger role in what changed about me.
The desire to focus on the present since I don’t know when or how my life might turn out was helping me come out into the world, even if just a little.
Within a week of living with hyung-nim, I mustn’t let my feelings be discovered. If that happened, we couldn’t go back, and I had so many things left that I wanted to try in this cohabitation life with Jeongwoo hyung-nim.
So I rewrote <Bucket List of Things I Must Do Before I Die> after it almost caught hyung-nim’s eye at the cafe last time. And the contents were as follows:
- Try kissing (completed)
- Go to an amusement park
- Travel alone
- Eat at a PC bang
- Go to karaoke and sing ten songs straight
- Go to MT (next week!)
- Drink alcohol to my heart’s content until I black out
- Try part-time work
- Try dyeing my hair
Most of it was rewritten content focusing on things that could be realized in a short period.
I took out all the absurd things like marrying hyung-nim, registering our marriage, or going on a honeymoon.
Since I thought my heart would burst when I almost got caught last time, I just wrote it like this for now. Even though I wrote everything referring to hyung-nim as J there, my guts were too small to leave it like that.
Nevertheless, there was one reason why I was this anxious that hyung-nim might see the bucket list.
‘Hajin-ah, are you going to the MT next week?’
‘Yes, that’s right. I was actually going to tell you…’
‘Writing even these trivial things on a bucket list, that’s suspicious, isn’t it? It’s like it was written by someone who’s about to die.’
It was precisely because of the phrase ‘before I die.’
‘And “before I die”? Hajin-ah, something’s going on with you, isn’t it?’
Because such a scenario unfolded in my head, I couldn’t help but hurry.
I didn’t want to create any situation where perceptive hyung-nim might suspect anything.
I arrived at the officetel in an instant and caught the elevator going up.
“Hyung-nim…!”
When I opened the front door and rushed in, hyung-nim was fortunately in the living room.
“You came quickly?”
Huff, huff, I caught my breath blankly. Hyung-nim, leaning against the sofa, slowly turned his head to look at me.
“…Hajin-ah.”
But something was strange about hyung-nim’s expression. It seemed unnatural somehow, and also a little surprised. Why? I awkwardly raised the corners of my mouth.
“Hy-hyung-nim, what were you doing while I was coming?”
“I was sitting nicely on the living room sofa watching TV. But…”
I couldn’t suddenly ask a suspicious question like ‘Did you see it?’
“Th-that, earlier, on the phone, how did you… about the MT…”
“Oh, that. I talked to Jeongyeon earlier. He said everyone’s going, so yours probably isn’t far off either.”
“Ah, I see. You heard from Jeongyeon. Yes, I was actually going to tell you…”
It was a moment when everything suddenly made sense. The strangeness in hyung-nim’s expression must have been my imagination.
Right. Even if I couldn’t be reached for a while, there’s no way hyung-nim would go into my room and open my notebook without respecting my privacy. There’s no way hyung-nim would do that.
“Then I’ll just go put down my bag for a moment!”
With a lightened heart, I quickly ran to my room. Now I just needed to visually confirm with my own eyes that the notebook was safely in its place.
But unlike what I’d been unsure about earlier, my room door was firmly closed.
I guess I didn’t leave it wide open this morning. I must have worried for no reason. If the door was closed, hyung-nim was even less the type of person to enter my room.
I flung the door open, went in, and put down my bag. When I went to the desk, the notebook with the bucket list was exactly as I’d left it. I let out a sigh of relief and picked up the notebook.
And that was when.
“What’s this? A bucket list?”
“…”
I froze right there and squeezed my eyes shut. And hyung-nim snatched my notebook away in an instant. While hyung-nim’s eyes quickly read down the notebook, I stared at hyung-nim blankly.
I wanted to snatch the notebook and hide it behind my back, but my body wouldn’t move as I wanted. And hyung-nim’s first words after slowly reading the list were simple.
“So this was why. Why the kid became a colt.”
“What?”
“That’s why you did your hair too.”
“Huh? Right.”
I did my hair. Feeling somehow embarrassed, when I touched my hair with my hand, I felt the unfamiliar texture of the fluffy hair.
After alternately looking at my hair and the notebook for a long while, Jeongwoo hyung-nim let out a deep sigh.
“Now I understand. I was wondering what kind of wind suddenly blew…”
Hyung-nim’s eyes gazing at my hair were narrow. I didn’t know what it meant, and it was a bit ambiguous to be a reaction about my hair.
“Hyung-nim, how’s my hair…”
“Did you find the salon yourself and go?”
“The salon? Oh, my friend happened to be going today so I went along.”
“Which friend. Jihyeon?”
“Yes.”
Hyung-nim had already seen Choi Jihwan’s yellow hair a long time ago.
Whenever Choi Jihwan was mentioned from hyung-nim’s mouth, I could never get used to it. Of course, that makes sense—it’s not his real name. This time too I answered while slightly avoiding his gaze, and perhaps because of that, hyung-nim’s brow furrowed a little.
“So the hair now is an idea that came from this kid called Jihyeon? That yellow-haired guy told you to do this? That it would be cute? Idol style?”
“What? No, I chose this?”
“Ah.”
Hyung-nim suddenly closed his mouth. What is this reaction? I started getting a little anxious.
“Oh my, your hair came out so pretty. I designed it, but it suits the customer’s image much better than expected!”
“R-really?”
My new hair color was called ‘orange brown,’ and at the hairdresser’s recommendation, I even got a perm. Just changing my hair color already made me feel like an adult, but changing my straight hair would make me feel twice as mature.
Of course, the permed hair wouldn’t last long due to my hair having almost no curl. But I was completely persuaded by the words that there’s nothing better than a perm for an image transformation.
So when I left the salon, I imagined hyung-nim being surprised by my new appearance.
“Hyung-nim… is my hair weird…?”
But what is this reaction?
