21.
For about a week, I was anxious that Cheon Jaerim might appear in the moonlight. But it was a needless worry. There was no contact whatsoever from Cheon Jaerim. It seemed he was trying to completely sever the relationship. (Of course, I don’t have a phone since it broke back then.) The home phone installed in the house had also been relegated to a simple decoration.
I needed some time to adapt to the new house. Before coming down to the countryside, the things I’d bought and brought with me in bundles were enough to hide away for an entire month. There was even more than enough. When I opened the cupboard, it was full of canned goods and instant foods that Cheon Jaerim had stocked up. It seemed like he’d filled it just in case. I, who failed every time I cooked rice with the pot lid, ate almost all my meals with instant rice. Rice aside, the side dishes were the problem. The food I’d bought like a refugee fleeing through war, I didn’t even want to look at anymore. It made my tongue revolt.
Just in time, the period for visiting the hospital was approaching. Has a month already passed? The house was also far removed from the city center, so there was no interaction with people at all. The radius of my wandering was narrow, and my amount of exercise was small. I wanted to eat healthy food. I took out the opaque medicine packet labeled “lunch” and took the medicine. Since I take it faithfully three times a day, my unstable state seems to be improving like my ankle. The time was approaching when I would need to meet people and find work.
***
I wore comfortable clothes since I needed simple physical therapy. In weather that’s no longer cold even when dressed lightly, I find myself humming. Before leaving the house, I checked the refrigerator. There was nothing to rummage through to see what was needed. I tore off the back of the calendar and made a note of the necessary ingredients.
Cold gel is slowly rubbed on my ankle. A round device is attached and a weak electric current passes through with a tingling sensation. Once this treatment is over, everything is finished. Looking at the time, I’d received treatment for just under an hour. When I briefly fell asleep and woke up while feeling the tingling sensation, the curtain attached to the ring was pulled aside. Having just finished treatment, the feeling in my ankle is strange.
“Your payment has already been completed.”
The sound I heard at the payment counter I approached after pulling a number and waiting for my turn was unexpected. It meant I didn’t have to pay the hospital bill.
“Why?”
“Payment has been made for the total number of treatments.”
“……”
Obviously, this is also Cheon Jaerim’s doing. The old card wallet I brought to pay the hospital bill becomes shabby in my pocket. Cheon Jaerim had an exceptional ability to make me into a completely useless person. I left the hospital feeling dazed. I folded the number ticket I was holding four times and threw it in the trash.
Tents formed lines from outside the market. It was market day, which opened occasionally. The streets were packed with people, leaving no room to walk. Some people were just opening their stalls, and others had arrived early to display accessories and other ornaments and were sitting there. Even at my tutoring student’s apartment before, markets like this would open quarterly, but this one had far more people and more variety. Young little kids were engaged in fierce battles trying to catch fish with paper scoops as thin as Korean paper, and on one side, a mini Viking ride was moving left and right.
“Fascinating……”
I was amazed that so many people were hiding in this quiet village. If I tried, I felt like I could blend in here too. However, as I headed toward the center of the market, my chest felt stuffy. I clenched my fist and tapped my chest area. Should I have taken my medicine before coming? Looking at my watch, it was approaching early evening. As the sky darkened, the market’s light bulbs burned brighter and brighter. The boisterous noise stimulated my nerves. I entered a vegetable shop and selected mushrooms, green onions, and onions piled layer by layer on styrofoam plates.
“Sorry. How much was it?”
“Nine thousand five hundred won!”
“Okay.”
I asked the man three times. The surroundings were so noisy that even when I heard it, I immediately forgot. The man wearing green arm sleeves on his arms held out a black bag with green onion tops sticking out. I pulled out a crumpled ten thousand won bill and placed it on his calloused palm.
“Take care.”
“Young man! Aren’t you taking your change?”
“What?”
The man called out to me loudly and stopped me.
He took out a single coin from the bag around his waist and held it out.
“Why this……”
“You bought nine thousand five hundred won worth, so I have to give you five hundred won in change.”
The man looks at me strangely. A five hundred won coin lands in my hand. The strange behavior wasn’t just limited to now. I felt unsettled like someone who lost a precious ring. I felt like I was forgetting something important. My chest becomes anxious. What was I forgetting? I had a premonition that I shouldn’t carelessly pass over what just happened. This wasn’t something like forgetfulness that could be overlooked. Forgetfulness?
I remember what happened three days ago. I was boiling in water the jajang sauce that only needed to be heated for 5 minutes because I’d frozen it. I scooped instant rice into a round shape onto a flat dish and tore open new jajang sauce and poured it on. Then I went into the room and put it in the microwave. I only noticed the existence of the jajang sauce in the pot when I brought the finished dish to the sink. The gray packaging was cooking in the boiling water until it became mushy.
Besides this, I kept forgetting things frequently like a goldfish with a 3-second memory. While holding the remote control, I looked for the remote control. Unable to do simple mental arithmetic, I manually calculated addition and subtraction on scrap paper. I remembered how I had passed over all these things as if they were nothing.
The fact that the strange phenomena occurring in the small house were manifesting even outside was like a kind of warning. This wasn’t something that commonly happened in life. I stood still on the roadside, recalling things from a few days ago, or a few weeks ago. People passing by on both sides pushed my body. My shoulders hurt from being bumped repeatedly. I need to check.
I moved my feet to the rice cake shop visible before my eyes. There happened to be a woman selecting rice cakes. She must have been about to pay, as she took out her wallet from her shopping basket. Next to the woman’s long skirt was a little girl with cheeks like glutinous rice cakes, holding a rabbit doll and wearing a princess bag with pink pearls dangling from it, crossed over her body.
The rice cakes laid out on the brown wooden board were arranged by type. In front of them, the names and prices of the rice cakes were written large with a board marker. The woman selecting rice cakes next to me picked up honey rice cakes in three colors and injeolmi. I quickly checked the prices. One was three thousand won, one was three thousand five hundred won. I hurriedly racked my brain. The total is… six thousand, five hundred… won. It took some time to calculate. Like children just learning numbers, I moved my fingers slightly. I let out a sigh of relief.
The problem arose out of the blue.
“I’ll knock off five hundred won.”
That’s what the rice cake shop owner said. The woman smiled and took out a bill from her wallet. My body froze like a huge boulder blocking the path of a marathon runner. The movement of my twitching fingers grew larger, and my eyes scanned the board marker’s numbers again. I broke into a cold sweat. This was four thousand won, no, three thousand won…… The total was six thousand five hundred won…… If five hundred won is subtracted from there and ten thousand won goes in, how much should she receive? I continued mental arithmetic without saying anything, squarely occupying the front of someone else’s shop. In the meantime, the woman had even received change from the owner and was closing her zipper. The little girl who didn’t even reach my thigh rolled a lollipop around and shook my clothes this way and that.
“Mister, why do you keep staring at my mom?”
“Yeji, you shouldn’t speak casually to adults.”
“This mister keeps staring at Mom’s wallet.”
“…What’s the matter?”
The eyes of the little girl, the little girl’s mother, and the shop owner who sold rice cakes to the little girl’s mother all turned toward me. When the daughter became wary of a stranger eyeing her mother’s wallet, the mother’s eyes also began to show wariness. When the black eyes like Go stones focused on me, I was flustered and couldn’t say anything. I kept my mouth tightly shut like a mute who ate honey. Saying I came here to do a simple calculation would sound crazy. Moreover, I was still in shock that I couldn’t quickly solve even one-dimensional calculations and couldn’t easily escape from it. The woman looked at me staring blankly at her and took a step back to the side.
“Hey, you!”
The face of the rice cake shop owner calling me was stern. The woman put the wallet she was holding into her shopping basket. I opened my mouth hearing the heart-shaped handle close with a click. It was almost instinctive.
“How much change did you receive?”
“What?”
The woman answered in an absurd voice.
“How much change did you receive……”
My voice was indescribably stiff. It was a mechanical tone. Inside, I mediated with myself to just turn around and go my way, but I didn’t listen. I took one more step toward the woman.
“Waaaaah!”
I hear crying from below.
“Don’t cry.”
I bent my legs, trying to make eye contact with the little girl. However, before I could face the little girl’s face, the woman embraced the child with an agitated voice saying, ‘What’s wrong with you!’ The noisy surroundings became quiet in a very short time. A man from another place appearing and causing a disturbance was sufficiently noteworthy. The child who dropped her lollipop on the ground hugged her mother’s neck tightly.
“Mom, let’s leave quickly. This mister is strange.”
“Did I give you the wrong change?”
“Ma’am, you should stop too.”
Look at his eyes, he looks a bit strange. The woman whispered to the rice cake shop owner. The voice, not small at all, reached my ears completely.
“Mom, what does it mean that his eyes are strange?”
The little child’s mouth was soon buried in her mother’s shoulder. The orange floral shopping basket dangles as it moves away. I hear whispering voices.
What did I do wrong……
People who were moving like a school of salmon stopped in their tracks and looked here in unison. They stare at me like I’m mentally ill. My eyes are strange? I looked at the transparent shop door. Except for my hair disheveled by the wind, there was no problem at all. It’s not that I’m strange, it’s that the people here are strange. I wanted to avoid the frosty gazes. It was an ordeal to push through the people who had taken the place where the woman had shouted and left. The people scanning me up and down were positioned so I couldn’t escape. Excuse me……
My voice was buried in the noise of the murmuring people.
Tsk tsk, such a shame for a young person.
An old grandfather who had been watching the entire scene from the beginning mutters toward me. My eyes snap open wide and my breathing becomes rapid. I barely escaped the market. The vegetable bag I’d been holding in my hand is nowhere to be seen. It must be rolling around somewhere on the market floor. I couldn’t go look for it. I felt like the villagers with their great solidarity would point their knives at me with one mind. My legs almost gave out several times on the way to the bus stop. While waiting for the bus, I muttered in a low voice like a possessed person. Two times two is four, four times four is sixteen, sixteen times sixteen is……
