19.
The chronic illness that followed me like stalking quieted down after mixing bodies with Cheon Jaerim. Was this fighting fire with fire? Thanks to that, I could liquidate my owl lifestyle and shake off the existence of the egg ghost that came every day like a handful of ashes.
I picked up the almonds right in front of me. Putting the apple jam cookies next to them in the basket, I sank into thought again. When bodies aligned with Cheon Jaerim, I burned hot like an aluminum pot and became dazed. Then when reason returned, the flesh cooled coldly. I fell into the well of wondering if I wasn’t like a flesh toilet to him. When his hand touched me, I splattered semen like a premature ejaculator and suffered from belated self-reproach.
I put down the purple basket on the counter. The round pupils looking at me while working on a laptop were bright like a puppy’s. Last week, after the part-timer said cryptic words, the frequency of visiting the convenience store increased. I circled the convenience store and wandered in front of it. It was a desire for him to pay attention to me.
“Want to drink together? Don’t always drink alone.”
The part-timer scanning barcodes said in passing.
At such a natural proposal, I almost immediately answered ‘Yeah!’
“I’m getting off shift in an hour. Let’s drink beer. I’m younger than you, right, hyung?”
Hyung will give you life advice too. I couldn’t refuse the part-timer who called me hyung and treated me warmly. Didn’t I say I felt something like sticky affection toward the part-timer? I might have been waiting for these words. I nodded slightly and quickly headed to the parasol. I fanned my face. Eating jelly and watching passersby, 60 minutes passed in a flash.
Ding-a-ling. The door opened. The part-timer who took off the convenience store vest looked much younger. In his hands were two cans of beer. Here. A long beer can was pushed forward. I ran my hand over the beer can with water droplets and pulled the tab. It made a cheerful sound with a chwiik. We clinked beer cans and moistened our throats at the same time. It’s not even midsummer, but one sip of beer feels like the heat is dissipating. I laid out the snacks I’d bought on the table.
The part-timer said he was 23 this year.
“What do you do for work, hyung? Freelance?”
“…”
What should I say? My face slightly stiffened. Perhaps sensing he’d made a mistake, the part-timer closed his mouth and chewed beef jerky. It was natural for him to think I worked from home, buying snacks every day at times when others would be going to work. I’m twenty-seven. I could have been a new employee or doing internship work at a company. Of course that would have been the case if there’d been no unexpected events.
Right now I’m…
The part-timer cleared away all the trash and lifted me up.
“Wh, where are we going?”
When I stammered in confusion, the part-timer said ‘Let’s go eat something delicious’ and took me somewhere.
The place the part-timer and I arrived at was a restaurant famous for delicious french fries. Even though it was a little past afternoon, the tables were full. A record of being featured on television hung large at the entrance. People were eating cool draft beer and fried food. When a person sitting on the balcony bit into a cheese stick, I could see white cheese stretching long. I followed the back entering familiarly. The part-timer who sat at a round table located in the middle of the interior said ‘Should we order that?’ and pointed at the long cheese stick I’d been staring at.
Cool draft beer arrived first, and 10 minutes later, golden-brown fried potatoes and cheese sticks came out.
“I got my part-time pay today, so I’ll treat you.”
The part-timer showed me his phone screen with the account transfer, shaking it. I waved my hands and searched my pockets. But there was no way I’d have cash. Only going to the convenience store with the card Cheon Jaerim gave me, there was no need for cash. The hand I’d rummaged with became awkward.
The beer glasses made several trips to the counter, and the alcohol decreased more than the french fries. Alcohol was the best muscle relaxant. Ah, come to think of it, I don’t know his name. What’s your name? I’m Jueon. Jueon? Yes. Jueon and I conversed like inseparable brothers. Whenever we found something in common, we jumped up and down with joy.
“Get a grip.”
“Ah…”
My head hurt.
It was just draft beer.
“The machine here must be rotten. My head hurts too much.”
“Ahaha, what’s that supposed to be?”
I sincerely said that mold might have grown inside the draft beer machine and they should do a hygiene inspection. Jueon took my words as humor.
“Are you drunk?”
“No?”
“Have you ever seen a drunk person admit they’re drunk?”
To a drunk person, those words are like provocation. Originally, I had a competitive spirit that hated losing to others. Jueon had lit that fuse. I was first in the whole school in studies! I was bad at sports! But I practiced so much that I always got perfect scores on performance evaluations! Spouting all kinds of strange things, I loudly declared we should go to a second round and compete fair and square.
We moved locations.
Jueon had considerable alcohol tolerance. The complexion of Jueon sitting across from me was unchanged.
“You’re pale right now… shouldn’t you go home?”
“I can drink more.”
I thought it might be better to just go home, make some honey water and sleep, but a strange stubbornness arose that I had to see that face get drunk. Whenever we clinked glasses saying ‘cheers,’ I had to drink that amount again. Only I alone was being soaked in the alcohol buzz. With a ‘thud!’ sound, my forehead hit the table.
***
What’s Cheon Jaerim been up to lately? It’s harder to see his face than when he was in England.
When someone opened the floodgates, ownerless talk began to float around like a bursting dam. For Jueon, who was sitting in a corner just sipping beer, hearing it was a piece of cake. When one of those chattering among themselves glanced at where Jueon was, only then did the unclear newsletters about Cheon Jaerim stop.
As if a storm had swept through and left the table briefly calm, someone touched the karaoke machine to try to change the mood. When the prelude leaked out, the psychedelic lighting attached to the ceiling automatically rotated. The area around the table began to get noisy. However, there were a few who couldn’t listen attentively to their friend’s passionate singing.
So he was gay?
Just bisexual, isn’t he?
Ugh… we saw him naked and everything.
As if Cheon Jaerim would get hard looking at you, idiot.
The two who were busy putting Cheon Jaerim’s name in their mouths threw corn at the song’s protagonist and poured out jeers when Lim Jaebeom’s ‘Confession’ played. Of course, there was also one who couldn’t fit in to the end.
Discovering Kim Sunjo’s existence was thanks to background investigation disguised as coincidence. The clues I could find out were three things: same school as Cheon Jaerim, different department, and Kim Jaei was sandwiched in between. The work I could do was log into Facebook. When I entered the page of the department Kim Jaei attended, information was exposed intact to an excessive degree. People wouldn’t know this could be poison, right? After that, I interrogated people. You fucker, are you trying to cause trouble again? No, I was too young then. I want to apologize.
The effort was commendable. If I’d used this effort for swimming, I probably would have beaten Phelps too. I’m pathetic for thinking of screwing him over again, but I can’t stand the injustice. I’m a bastard born from inferiority complex. Since it became this bad, living isn’t living—it’s so painful.
It was from the moment I first saw him. Some people don’t even have money to go abroad once, groveling on this shitty Korean land, but Cheon Jaerim visited Korea all the time with his white friends. I was a fucked-up bastard who couldn’t welcome Cheon Jaerim like the other guys. I was annoyed at Kim Jaei for bringing Cheon Jaerim. Naturally I drifted on the outskirts of that group. Cheon Jaerim didn’t try to befriend everyone either. We were just Kim Jaei’s friends, so we hung out together while we met—it seemed nothing more, nothing less.
It was the day the director humiliated me in front of juniors. As luck would have it, everyone had gathered because Cheon Jaerim was departing the next day, and my friends took me to the meeting place to cheer me up. If I’d refused and gone home, would the circumstances have been a bit different?
The reason kids that age fight is as light as blank paper scattering in the wind. At that time, the guys who were the starting point of the fight were excitedly playing games when something went wrong and they started raising their voices. Seeing Cheon Jaerim calmly watching them fight, I suddenly became furious. The sight of him giggling and watching with the white guys looked like people laughing at clowns performing tricks in a marketplace. Pathetic stubbornness arose.
So I threw the bowling ball I was holding. Since I had no grudge against the other guys, it was aimed at Cheon Jaerim’s shoulder. It might have been because Cheon Jaerim was the most easy-looking Asian among them. If a fight broke out with another race, it seemed like it would become a big deal.
It really made a ‘kwang!’ sound. Soon after, with a ‘kung!’ sound, the heavy ball fell rumbling to the floor. The wide bowling alley became quiet as a mouse. Everyone gathered around Cheon Jaerim who sat down clutching his shoulder. Cheon Jaerim’s figure was no longer visible, surrounded by the crowd. Everyone looked at me. Cheon Jaerim was biting his lips and enduring pain. Emergency calls were made on phones, and Cheon Jaerim’s departure date was postponed indefinitely.
Something worse was lurking. The incident I caused due to inferiority complex wanting him to feel defeated sent me to the gutter. The school I was supposed to enter was cancelled, and I was treated as human trash who ended an athlete’s career out of jealousy of a colleague’s swimming ability. It would be a lie to say I didn’t regret it, but still, directly experiencing Cheon Jaerim’s current situation of living well and smoothly with my eyes and ears, those feelings I felt back then freshly arose again.
So this time I changed targets.
Lip service, goodwill, and kindness were all the tricks I played.
***
It’s an unfamiliar room. I can see checkered white wallpaper and (presumably originally white) curtains with grime. When I drew back the curtains, outside the window was pitch black. Is this Jueon’s place? I got up from the bed and looked for my phone. The screen was cracked, perhaps dropped at some point. I have to return home quickly. I opened the window to survey the vicinity and turned around.
Jueon was standing there.
“Where is this?”
“Don’t you remember? We came here deciding to drink more.”
Naturally I couldn’t remember. Whatever I said, I have no memory of what I said after the pub selling french fries. In Jueon’s hand was a bag with a green bottle neck sticking out.
“Did you just go buy that?”
When I asked Jueon, he nodded and went to the sink to take out a glass. Unfortunately, I had no intention of continuing to stay here. The alcohol had finally worn off.
“Ah… but it’s quite late now.”
“What’s late, it’s seven.”
Jueon made a deflated expression and put down the bag he’d brought on a chair. Did I make him take a wasted trip because of me? He bought all the alcohol too…
Feeling sorry, when I said ‘Then I’ll drink just one more glass and go,’ color returned to his face. I sat down under the bed and waited for Jueon to prepare the glasses. What was supposed to be one more glass became two glasses, became three glasses. My vision started to sway again, and I could see Jueon’s face getting bigger and smaller.
“What are you doing?”
“How many do I look like to you?”
“Two… no, one?”
“You’re drunk again. Must be the type that takes well to medicine.”
“…Medicine?”
I looked around the narrow interior. I could see white paper crumpled near the sink. What’s that? I stood up abruptly. Staggering, I approached to examine the white paper’s identity. Around the sink, I could see white powder fallen like ramen soup powder. I touched and felt it. It’s like powdered cold medicine.
“You fed me this?”
