If there was one good thing about weekends for Lee Heewoo, who worked every day without rest, it was that he only had one part-time job. After diligently cleaning buildings from dawn until 5 PM, freedom finally came to Heewoo.
Originally, he’d worked at least two part-time jobs even on weekends. After the cleaning job ended, he’d immediately head to the distribution center, but that had become difficult when the distribution center’s commuter bus schedule changed recently. He needed to find a new part-time job soon, but he hadn’t yet found one that fit his schedule.
“Sleepy…”
Heewoo, who had just gotten off work, let out a long yawn as he exited the building.
He couldn’t stop the yawns that kept bursting out. Since he was getting by on only four hours of sleep every day, drowsiness would hit him whenever he had even a brief moment of leisure like this. He’d wake up if he were hungry, but today his stomach was full from the lunch box Heichi had brought, making him even sleepier.
“Right, the lunch box.”
Heewoo glanced down into the paper bag he was holding awkwardly. Only one lunch box remained inside.
Having learned that all three lunch boxes Heichi had bought were for him, Heewoo no longer had to pathetically divide one lunch box across multiple meals. He could have affluent meals, eating one whole lunch box per meal. The lunch boxes Heichi had bought yesterday that still remained in his home refrigerator also played a part.
“I should at least… thank him…”
Heewoo took out his flip phone and wiggled his fingers. Then he suddenly realized. The fact that he didn’t have Heichi’s contact information.
Heewoo rubbed his lips. He was the one who had unilaterally left his contact information, and there had been no particular contact from Heichi since then. That meant Heewoo couldn’t contact him first.
Realizing he had no way to contact Heichi, Heewoo barely let go of his heavy heart. Since he couldn’t contact him anyway, he shouldn’t keep it in mind. The broken hand he’d seen this morning still remained eerily in his head.
“I’ll go home and eat the lunch box.”
Heewoo’s steps heading home were light. It took about two hours to walk from the building he’d cleaned today to home, but he didn’t mind. He didn’t have much bus fare left, so he had to save money this way.
Thanks to Heichi, Heewoo, who had been able to save on food expenses for a few days, was in quite a good mood. Until he saw the shadow loitering in front of his house.
“Our Heewoo, just getting off work?”
Heewoo stopped short when he encountered the woman standing in front of his house.
The woman’s appearance had become much more haggard since he’d last seen her. The beautiful woman who in her youth had stirred men’s hearts with her fair, fine skin had aged and become shabby. Her once-lush black hair had fallen out in clumps and lost its vitality, and her large, dark double eyelids had become so prominent with age that they settled in like wrinkles.
The woman who had once sold herself expensively at an expensive bar somewhere in Gangnam had become so shabby. And only after her sales value had dropped like that did she come looking for Heewoo.
“…”
Though Heewoo had spotted her from afar, he silently ignored her like someone who had seen something he shouldn’t have. The closer Heewoo approached, the more the woman’s complexion brightened rapidly.
The woman rushed up to Heewoo and checked the letters on the paper bag draped over his wrist. Confirming that a delicious smell was rising from inside even though it had cooled down, she swallowed and said,
“Ah, son. Is that food? A lunch box? Mom is so hungry.”
“…”
“Mom really has only been drinking water for three days. I’m so hungry. Huh? If you’re not going to eat that, can you give it to Mom…”
The woman habitually used the word “Mom” as she reached her hand toward Heewoo’s wrist. To steal the paper bag. And then Heewoo, who had been responding with silence until then, smacked that hand away.
Heewoo had first met the woman, his mother, only a year ago. When even his paternal grandmother who had cared for him had passed away and he was struggling with the remaining debt. At that time, Heewoo had already graduated middle school and gotten a job at a kimchi factory instead of going to high school.
The woman, who knew no way to make money other than selling herself, became an ignoramus who could do nothing once she could no longer sell herself. So she came looking for Heewoo. Though she had never played the role of a mother until now, she tried to snatch away even Heewoo’s shabby rice bowl because she was his mother.
“Hee, Heewoo… Mom is really hungry… Huh?”
The woman often couldn’t break her old habits and acted cutely toward Heewoo too, drawing out her words as she had done with her past men. Naturally, to Heewoo, that appearance was neither coquettish nor pretty. She just seemed like a parasite coveting his food.
“…This isn’t mine. So I can’t give it to you.”
“Why, if it’s someone else’s, you can just eat it, can’t you? Huh? Give it to Mom.”
The woman subtly blocked the gate with her body and stood in the way. Heewoo intuited that this woman wouldn’t leave easily. It was something that had been repeated several times before, and before that too.
Because of the woman before him, Heewoo often had to be fired from his part-time jobs. Whether he ignored her or not, she’d follow him to the end, so he’d been fired from part-time jobs more than once or twice. Unless he put even a single penny in the woman’s hands, she clung to Heewoo like a water ghost.
Looking at the lunch box bag, Heewoo sighed and rummaged through his pocket. The woman’s eyes watching him gleamed. Even though she knew the money coming out of his pocket wouldn’t even amount to a fingernail’s worth compared to the money she’d made in her prime.
“…Here.”
Three crumpled one-thousand-won bills.
That was all Heewoo could give the woman. In reality, even that was extremely painful. Three thousand won was enough to buy a cup of ramen and even a triangle kimbap at a convenience store. And Heewoo could last two days working on that.
“What is this… Don’t play around with Mom, okay?”
“I really don’t have money… You know I go hungry every day too.”
“Lies. When you work like that every day, why wouldn’t you have money?”
“That all goes to pay Father’s gambling debts and Grandmother’s surgery debts, how many times have I told you?”
They’d already had the same argument several times. Nevertheless, the woman asked again as if she’d let everything Heewoo said go in one ear and out the other. Since she was a woman who couldn’t communicate at all, Heewoo had no choice but to repeat the same words.
“Oh, if Mom helps you just this once, I won’t come again. Okay?”
“I don’t have money to help you… Really…”
“Just once! Okay?”
The woman asked so cheerfully.
When Heewoo first met the existence called his mother, at her words to help her just once, Heewoo had unknowingly given all 1.46 million won he’d earned that month to the woman. Having tasted free money, the woman had been desperately clinging to Heewoo ever since. Even though she knew full well what would happen to Heewoo if she took his money.
“I can’t give you this lunch box, it’s not mine… So please leave now.”
Though he could give her the three thousand won that was everything to him, he didn’t want to give her the lunch box in his hand. With those final words, Heewoo subtly pushed the woman aside and tried to enter the gate.
He couldn’t, because the woman roughly grabbed the back of Heewoo’s head.
“You, you bad bastard…! Mom, Mom gave birth to you in pain! You ungrateful son of a bitch!”
Yank.
The woman didn’t hold back and pulled his hair down to the ground. Heewoo, who had no strength in his body, ended up rolling on the ground.
This wasn’t the first time she’d been violent like this. But Heewoo had never properly fought back. If it had been his father, he would have at least pushed back hard and run away.
She was his mother, a powerless old woman, and if he pushed her hard, it seemed like she’d just hit the wall and die.
“Let, let go, urk…!”
“You damn brat…, kyaak!”
Then at some point, the hand tearing at his hair disappeared. Heewoo, who had rolled on the asphalt floor in front of the gate, belatedly checked what had happened. One long shadow of an unfamiliar person was cast on the ground.
Slowly raising his head, he saw Heichi’s emotionless golden eyes. Heewoo unknowingly opened his mouth. Heichi, who had approached on one knee, asked,
“Are you alright?”
“Uh, um…”
Unable to answer properly, Heewoo turned his head to look at the woman. The withered woman, who seemed less than half the size compared to Heichi’s build, was rolling on the ground. Apparently, the thought that he should go easy on her because she was a woman didn’t exist in his dictionary.
While Heewoo blankly watched the scene before him, Heichi stood up again and approached the fallen woman. He grabbed the woman’s collar without hesitation and lifted her up. Flap. The woman, who was just as withered as Heewoo though not quite as much, shook like a piece of paper.
Soon he raised his opposite hand toward the woman. His eyes were emotionless.
