The curly-haired kid sitting in front of Dooyoung was talking to the person beside him. Dooyoung glanced at them with uneasy eyes. They weren’t even at their own seats — talking here of all places felt deliberate, like it was meant for him to hear.
“Totally Jeju Black Pig stir-fry, right. But isn’t his dad a pastor? Are pastors allowed to hit people? If it was with a bat, that’s basically abuse.”
The kid with the deep double eyelids argued it was abuse.
“He must’ve done something to deserve it, that’s not abuse. And a pastor, please. Back in the day they worked people to the bone for some church expansion and then paid no one a single cent and kept their mouths shut about it. Didn’t you see the banner hanging out front when you walked by? And meanwhile Lee Juhak was driving a German car around all summer break the second he got his ID. That’s my dream car, that is……”
“How do you know all that in so much detail? You like Lee Juhak, don’t you.”
“Watch your mouth. My mom used to go to that church, that’s how I know. She’s since converted to Buddhism.”
“That’s hilarious. Guess your auntie has a thing for curly-haired guys over long-haired ones.”
“How’d you know? My dad has curly hair.”
“……”
Dooyoung listened to their ongoing chatter and picked at the skin on his hand where it rested on the desk. Lee Juhak was afraid of his father. From a young age, every test score had come with a different kind of beating, and when he caused trouble, that father of his had assaulted his own son like a man capable of murder.
And yet Lee Juhak, as if in defiance of parents like that, bought things further and further beyond his means with each passing day. The source of that money was what should have gone back to the people who had suffered through the church expansion — offerings gathered in the name of God’s grace.
Dooyoung pulled up the image of Lee Juhak from the back of his memory — Lee Juhak showing up with bruises on his face. He had assumed it was just fights with kids from other schools. He’d never once imagined it was his father’s doing. Looking back on it now, he finally understood that those hollow, desolate eyes he’d sometimes caught on Lee Juhak were the eyes of someone subjected to violence they had no way to fight back against.
It was strange. Even Lee Juhak, who walked through school like a king, had something he feared.
I’m scared of my father too. A baseball bat must have hurt so much……
Dooyoung felt more than a little — quite a lot, actually — unsettled by the realization that he and Lee Juhak had something in common. That son’s father used violence at home, and that father’s son took out what was done to him at school.
Dooyoung was Lee Juhak’s emotional trash can. But unlike Lee Juhak, he had no dream car, no designer shoes. The shoes he had on now were the ones he’d bought with his very first paycheck, back in third year of middle school. They were so different from each other in every way — and yet there was something in Lee Juhak, and in himself, that he absolutely never wanted to resemble.
The homeroom teacher came in and closing announcements began. The two kids who had been chatting in the front found their way back to their seats.
“Anyone been in contact with Lee Juhak?”
“He’s not picking up. Leaving messages on read too.”
Kim Jinho answered, eyes fixed on his phone. Lee Juhak hadn’t been coming to school since his meltdown. The community service had acted as a catalyst, but from the very beginning, everything had started with Lee Juhak.
“His attendance is already hanging by a thread and he pulls this with graduation right around the corner. And you kids who already got your early admissions — don’t let your guard down, keep coming to school until the end. If you understand, class rep, wrap it up.”
Dooyoung sat in his seat long after announcements ended, spacing out without even realizing it was over. Then he got up, moving slow and aimless, and transferred his books to his locker. He made a deliberate effort to move with energy to chase Lee Juhak out of his head — but it only made him more tired.
After snapping his padlock shut, Dooyoung looked back and forth between the praise onion and the criticism onion sitting on top of his locker. He debated whether he should change their water, deliberated, then decided he was too lazy and put it off for later.
He turned to leave the classroom. And there, just one step away, Hong Seungpyo was standing. Dooyoung nearly jumped high enough to clear the lockers.
Hong Seungpyo smiled with narrowed eyes.
“What are you doing there?”
He moved to Dooyoung’s side and asked.
“Why are you still here instead of going home?”
“……”
“Not going to answer?”
It wasn’t particularly a reproachful tone, but Dooyoung’s nerves got ahead of him and he murmured back:
“You… didn’t you go home already?”
“Me?”
Hong Seungpyo pointed at himself with his index finger. Dooyoung gave a short nod.
“I was waiting for you at the main entrance but you never came out.”
“For me?”
This time it was Hong Seungpyo who nodded, slow and easy.
“You working today too?”
“Yeah……”
“You were asleep basically all day — do you work somewhere before the milk delivery too?”
“Oh — no.”
Dooyoung shook his head, a little stiffer than before.
Today I didn’t sleep as much as usual, though……
For the first time, he felt ashamed of himself for so easily giving up on school. Academics he had abandoned preemptively to avoid being hurt, and the garment of inferiority he’d woven from poverty and worn over himself. He had never once tried to take it off. Poverty was like the baby clothes he was born in and the Mongolian spot that never faded. It had been with him from the moment he came into the world.
“You take really good care of these.”
Hong Seungpyo said it half genuinely, half flatly. Dooyoung blinked and answered after a hesitant pause:
“Just… nobody else was doing it.”
“That’s sweet.”
Dooyoung’s eyes opened just slightly wider. He was being complimented for taking good care of an onion. It was the kind of thing he didn’t hear often, and Dooyoung reacted awkwardly to it. He tugged at his earlobe, scratched the back of his hand. Hong Seungpyo watched his fidgeting without expression, then said:
“Why do you keep hurting yourself?”
Dooyoung froze. Startled by his own behavior — something he hadn’t even been conscious of — he quickly hid his hands, scarred and marred, behind his back. Hong Seungpyo took that sequence of movements in, then shifted topics without making it a thing.
“Have you slept with a girl before?”
His brain wouldn’t run smoothly, like a video skipping frames. It took a long time to put the floating words together in his head and arrive at their meaning. Hong Seungpyo tapped the locker with his long fingers and waited for Dooyoung’s answer. Then, in a languid tone, he asked again:
“Sex. Have you done it.”
He had one elbow propped on the locker and leaned his upper body forward to look up into Dooyoung’s face. His expression was mischievous, but at odds with the question — almost guileless. He looked like a well-behaved kid who was one step away from doing something he shouldn’t.
Dooyoung instinctively put distance between them, but Hong Seungpyo matched it with a raise of his eyebrows and closed the gap right back. Their forearms were practically squished flat against each other.
Hong Seungpyo propped his chin on his palm and leveled his gaze with Dooyoung’s. Dooyoung thought his glittering eyes looked exactly like a snake’s.
“Come with me somewhere fun.”
“……”
“If it’s your first time, I’ll teach you.”
The explanation of where this fun place was and what exactly he was going to teach was vague. Given the context, it seemed to be about sex, so Dooyoung shook his head side to side. Even with his next birthday about to flip the first digit, this didn’t seem like the kind of conversation to be having in a place like this. But Hong Seungpyo kept framing it in the most wholesome terms, as if he were proposing a study session.
“We’re young, aren’t we. Shouldn’t we start putting in the work now so we don’t fall behind?”
He had nothing in particular to prove, but he was actually a year older than Hong Seungpyo. The one who was actually still a minor was Hong Seungpyo, and yet he talked like this came naturally to him. Dooyoung chewed his lip and answered slowly:
“…No.”
“Why? Scared because it’s your first time? Or are you embarrassed because you’re small?”
Hong Seungpyo subtly jabbed at his pride, but Dooyoung didn’t rise to it — just shook his head.
“Th-that’s not it……”
“If it’s not that, what — are you impotent?”
Dooyoung’s pressed lips twitched. His pride took a slight scratch, and he narrowed his eyes in a small show of defiance — and Hong Seungpyo’s lips curved in a seductive line. The pup’s completely ineffective attempt at a dominance stare made Hong Seungpyo’s shoulders shake.
“Then what is it?”
“I’m still… too young.”
