Jong-hwa stubbed out his cigarette and stood up with a grin.
“You fucking never listen.”
He playfully pulled my shoulder into his arms and tried to take me outside the entrance.
“I just had some circumstances. If you stay somewhere else for a bit, I’ll clean everything up.”
Then Jung Hyun-wook picked up a piece of paper from in front of the sink. The expression reading it was unusual.
“Jung Hyun-wook, what’s that?”
At my words, Jung Hyun-wook and Jong-hwa’s gazes tangled. Jong-hwa sighed.
“You’re not much either. You can’t handle one kid. I told you not to let him come.”
“Don’t hide it, just tell him.”
Jung Hyun-wook responded coldly. Jong-hwa, his pride hurt, left me and went in front of Jung Hyun-wook. The two large men confronted each other in the narrow room.
But among the three, the person most incapable of rational thinking was me. The Jong-hwa I knew was no longer a person who would be involved in this kind of trouble. It had been a long time since he cut ties after fistfighting. Before graduation, when he was hospitalized after getting into a gang fight, I showed all my cards and threatened him.
If he threw punches one more time, he’d never see me again. And Jong-hwa knew that threat wasn’t just words.
Around that time, I was a ruthless kid who could do anything if I set my mind to it.
So, this might be trouble related to me. But of course, there’s no reason for me to be involved in incidents or accidents. Everything stopped after that man, my father, entered prison.
“Stay out of this. Your role was just to keep him from coming here.”
“Hyo-kyung-ah. Who is Yang Hwa-suk?”
“This fucking bastard…!”
Jong-hwa grabbed Jung Hyun-wook by the collar. At my mother’s name that I was hearing for the first time in 5 years, my legs gave out and I collapsed on the spot.
“Hyo-kyung isn’t a child anymore. Let him know his own business!”
Jung Hyun-wook roughly removed Jong-hwa’s hand.
“From what I see, it seems you’re trying to solve this by withdrawing the deposit on this house and somehow handle the rest on your own. Have you been acting as a guardian all this time by hiding everything from Hyo-kyung like this? If so, don’t do it that way anymore.”
Jung Hyun-wook spoke as if spitting while looking at Jong-hwa’s eyes.
“Funny. You sleep with him for a few days and think you’re something.”
Jong-hwa deliberately sneered vulgarly. His face was welling up with something. He looked ready to expose our 5 years in front of Jung Hyun-wook right now and make him realize.
“I’ll answer the question you asked me that day now.”
“What?”
That day… the question Ahn Jong-hwa asked Jung Hyun-wook.
“That’s right. I like Hyo-kyung.”
My heart sank.
“Ha. This is a funny bastard. You’re saying that here? Why, go ahead and answer the second question too.”
Jong-hwa’s collar, who had dismissed what Jung Hyun-wook blurted out while acting cocky as nothing but trivial words, was grabbed and twisted.
“Because you’re making such a fuss! I’m warning you to stop now.”
Their gazes clashed right in front of each other’s noses. Jung Hyun-wook, who had been confronting him tensely without an inch of retreat, finally came to me.
“Just pack what you need right away.”
Jung Hyun-wook put clothes in the bag. I first snatched the piece of paper from his hand.
It was an inherited debt certificate. It was a complaint from the court to repay the inherited debt for the money my mother borrowed. The guarantor of the debt was my father.
He even made my living mother take on loan shark debts. What on earth did they use as collateral to lend money to a woman who had nothing? What did that bastard called my father offer them as collateral? Suddenly, nausea surged up.
They waited until I became an adult.
I’d seen it often during my orphanage days. Lives that started by shouldering the debts left by parents they’d never seen, as soon as they became adults. They were robbed of even the chance to stand at a proper starting line, using up all their meager independence funds to pay off debts.
“How…”
My hand clutching the paper trembled violently.
“How can that bastard be like this until the very end.”
Jung Hyun-wook grabbed my arm and pulled me up.
“Hyo-kyung-ah. It’s okay. We can solve this.”
I roughly shook off his arm. I rushed to Jong-hwa, grabbed his shoulders and shook him.
“Tell me. Did you really take out the deposit for this place and give it to them?”
I grabbed and shook Jong-hwa’s arm when he couldn’t answer. I struck his shoulders wildly.
“Why did you do it! Why! You should have told me!”
Jung Hyun-wook grabbed me firmly as I shook in complete disarray.
“Fuck! What if I told you! Do you have money? Would telling you solve it?!”
Jong-hwa shouted while shaking off my arm.
“Can’t you just not make a fuss and do what I tell you? It’s not that much. Pay it back with the deposit I took out, and pay back the rest little by little by working! Stop making such a scene as if someone died. My head hurts more because of you!”
It was a full 30 million won. My breath was completely blocked. I felt distant, as if my entire future was being crushed by just one piece of paper.
“Even now I barely make ends meet working without missing a single day… How? How…!”
Jung Hyun-wook’s hand holding me like that gripped me even tighter. As if asking me to look at him. But I didn’t turn around.
“And why should you pay it back? If anyone pays, I’ll pay.”
This time Jong-hwa truly looked angry. His large hand gripped my jaw firmly.
“You just run your mouth. Your brain works so well that you clearly know how to solve it. You knew I was extorting money from kids to send you to academy and buy you workbooks but pretended not to know. The deposit for this place too, fuck! You knew it wasn’t an advance from the boss! But why now!! Are you saying you can’t accept help from me!”
He roughly released my chin. He gasped with such rough breaths that his body heaved, then said.
“Why. Because there’s some bastard next to you now, you suddenly want to have pride?”
At his gaze piercing through me, it hurt as if my entire body had been penetrated. He intended to draw my tears again this time, but this time I absolutely won’t cry. My temples trembled to the point of numbness trying to hold back tears.
Jong-hwa, who had been cursing briefly while watching me like that, lit a cigarette. He exhaled smoke drawn in until his cheeks hollowed and said.
“You know what? You can’t handle him. Both he and I are rotten from the inside. If you think you can handle it, take him away. I’ll roughly pack the necessary luggage and send it.”
Thin cigarette smoke passed like a boundary between Jung Hyun-wook holding onto my shoulder as if it were his only lifeline and Ahn Jong-hwa.
I couldn’t bear the silence. I just grabbed my bag and left the semi-basement room. Jung Hyun-wook immediately followed me out. After walking silently for a long time, he opened his mouth as we turned a corner.
“It’s okay. Don’t worry. I’ll solve it.”
At Jung Hyun-wook’s words, something I’d been holding back exploded.
“Who are you.”
At my cold voice, his face contorted as if in pain.
“Jung Hyun-wook. Is this easy for you? Why. Will you go to your father and beg?”
I spoke harshly and venomously. It was the only way for me, who had nothing, to protect myself.
“A while ago, that man who sued you came looking for me.”
Jung Hyun-wook’s expression changed instantly. He properly understood that one ambiguous sentence.
“He begged me to save him. He said he got fired from his job, and forget about changing jobs, he couldn’t even get a foothold in that industry at all. Turns out that person worked at Taegang Securities.”
Jong-hwa was right. He wouldn’t be able to handle me. The rotten well inside me stank. It would be impossible to hide it forever.
“It was you.”
Jong-hwa and I were alike. Just as Jong-hwa could most painfully stab me, the one he cherished most. I was the same. The arrow of criticism directed at myself always easily changed direction.
“Did you have to destroy him like that? Did you have to go that far? Did you have to crush him with power just like the people you hate most?!”
He neither affirmed nor denied, just remained silent. Facts didn’t matter. Once an arrow left the bowstring, it couldn’t be retrieved. The arrowhead had already aimed at his heart.
“You chose the easiest method. In the way you most despised. If that’s the case, my debt would be nothing to you. Is that why you said so confidently that you’d solve it?”
He grabbed both my shoulders and made me look at him.
“It’s not like that. I like you! I do it because I like you.”
