“Do you, like… go to university or something?”
After deliberating for a long time, Nunbi finally managed to ask. Woonjeong seemed to think something of it — he gave a faint smirk and turned a page.
“Why? Do I not look like the type?”
“I was just asking.”
“You sure do ‘just ask’ a lot.”
Woonjeong said it without even lifting his eyes from the book, and Nunbi read it as a signal to drop it and shut his mouth. You can ask things, can’t you. Every single time, just say yes or no — why is that so hard. Nunbi felt mildly sulky. And look at what the precious young master is doing. It was genuinely not easy to picture Go Woonjeong as a university student. The idea of that man sitting somewhere and quietly attending a lecture — how was anyone supposed to believe that? Just going by the insufferable behavior he’d shown up until now, you’d be lucky if he didn’t sit down in a university cafeteria and declare the food offensive. In Nunbi’s mind, a university student was supposed to come across as at least a little more composed and intellectual than this.
“So… where do you go? Is it a university in Seoul?”
That was why Nunbi asked again.
“Graduated from that. I’m in the States now.”
The answer that came back made the boy blink and quietly look away.
“The — the States? That States?”
“You look like you don’t believe me. Want to see my student ID?”
Woonjeong lifted his head and turned a sharp look on him, and Nunbi nearly choked.
“No — no, it’s fine.”
I now have another reason to study hard.
He’d assumed Woonjeong was just a high-handed troublemaker, and now it turned out he was a highly educated study-abroad type. That did explain why he was reading such an impossibly dense English text….
“Wait, but….”
At that point, Nunbi turned the words graduated from that and in the States now over in his mind, and suddenly remembered that he’d been addressing Go Woonjeong this entire time without so much as a second thought — just hey, you.
“How old are you?”
His throat felt a little tight all of a sudden.
“Twenty-six.”
“What?”
Woonjeong answered with the same unhurried ease, turning pages with those elegant hands. But this was not the direction Nunbi had been expecting things to go. He’d assumed Woonjeong was twenty-one or twenty-two at most! As it turned out, Go Woonjeong was a full six years older than him. What do I do now? The boy pulled back entirely and started sneaking glances at Woonjeong’s profile.
“Suddenly all cautious. Doesn’t suit you.”
Perhaps sensing those glances, Woonjeong closed his book. Then he stared at Nunbi straight on and asked,
“What. Don’t tell me you’re still in high school.”
Nunbi was twenty. Though, to be fair, he was still attending high school. Due to circumstances, he’d started a year late all the way back in elementary school, and that had trickled down from there — but regardless, he was technically a high schooler, so the boy nodded with his usual mild expression.
“Nineteen? Or what, eighteen?”
Woonjeong’s face went serious as he asked. Nunbi’s nose twitched in mild indignation. He did get that kind of misunderstanding sometimes.
“No, twenty. Actually.”
When Nunbi answered, Woonjeong’s expression shifted almost immediately into something that looked, for some reason, like relief. This time it was Nunbi’s turn to tilt his head.
“Then don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“That. The ‘actually’ thing. You don’t have to talk formally to me.”
“Oh, really?”
Not like it cost him anything.
“Alright then.”
Nunbi agreed without delay, and Woonjeong gave a small smirk.
“On record — you’re the one who said you didn’t have to.”
Well, since things had come to this, Nunbi decided there was no point resisting — he’d just quietly keep dropping the formality. And if Woonjeong ever tried to backpedal later and demand to be called hyung, he was welcome to try and see how far that got him.
Whether it was Nunbi’s interference — or not quite interference — that made him give up on reading, Woonjeong eventually ended up perched on the edge of the rear veranda with a cigarette. Nunbi tried to stop him, invoking decorum, the general old-world sanctity of the temple, and eventually even invoking Buddha himself, but Woonjeong just said so what? and lit it anyway — and Nunbi gave up trying to say another word. The devotees and the monks were probably looking the other way regardless.
“Good grief….”
Unbelievable. Watching the cigarette smoke puff and curl upward, a sigh just came out on its own. And, by the way — the time. He’d thought he’d been there maybe thirty minutes at most, but somehow nearly two hours had slipped by, and it was already close to lunchtime. No wonder he was starting to feel hungry. Still, he couldn’t very well demand to be fed, so Nunbi sat where he was and said nothing, just stuck there. Pouring himself another cup of the tea that had long since gone cold did nothing to ease the hunger. If he’d gone to the cave by the valley, he’d have caught several willow gudgeons by now and grilled them crisp over a fire. He was thinking that, feeling the loss, when he heard a knock at the door.
“Young master, I’ve brought your meal.”
By the voice, it was the devotee. Nunbi looked over at Woonjeong in surprise. The precious gold-leaf guest showed absolutely no sign of putting out the cigarette. The nerve of this one, shameless and then some. It looked like Woonjeong was about to get up from the veranda and go out to receive the tray from the devotee, cigarette still in hand, and Nunbi nearly leaped out of his skin.
“Hey! You — you’re going out there with a cigarette in your mouth?”
Even with Nunbi staring at him wide-eyed, Woonjeong was completely unfazed. He tilted his head with a look that said what’s the problem? — and Nunbi shot up from his spot on the spot. He made a grab for the cigarette lodged between those insufferable lips, but Woonjeong, hands in his pockets, slipped out of reach without any effort at all.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you think, spit that thing out.”
“Young master? Are you inside?”
Perhaps because there was no answer, or perhaps because she’d heard the commotion from within, the devotee sounded flustered. Nunbi didn’t know what else to do — he just shoved Woonjeong aside on impulse.
“Are you insane? I — I’ll go.”
Woonjeong raised an eyebrow at an angle. Nunbi pretended not to see that face and hurried forward, carefully opening the door.
“Oh my.”
The devotee seemed inwardly startled to find Nunbi’s face in the gap of the doorway.
“Nunbi, you were here too?”
“I came to get something, I’ll be out of the way soon….”
Nunbi managed to smile and quickly added that. He didn’t open the door all the way — he was worried about cigarette smoke drifting out. He’d half-expected to catch some disapproving comment, but mercifully, nothing came — no what are you doing snooping around here, no why are you in the annex.
“You still need to eat, though. Let me go get another bowl and chopsticks — wait just a moment.”
The devotee said this quietly as she handed Nunbi the low tray, and the boy waved his hands in a hurried refusal.
“No, please — I don’t need to eat, this is an offering meant for the devotees.”
Indeed — the tray was covered in side dishes that gleamed with a beautiful sheen. An extraordinary number of them, too, and — lotus leaf gujeolpan, of all things. Nunbi had been lazing around for the past several days using his fall as an excuse, and he absolutely could not accept something like this without a second thought.
“Don’t be like that over food, dear. Just wait a moment.”
His sincerity apparently didn’t quite come through, because the devotee left anyway to get the chopsticks. Nunbi watched her warm, retreating figure disappear into the distance and had no idea what to do with himself, so he turned back around, leaving the door slightly ajar. By the time he’d limped his way back to the rear veranda carrying a tray fit for a royal table, Woonjeong had finished his cigarette and was washing his hands in the inner bathroom.
“Hey — young master. She says come eat.”
Funny how ‘young master’ rolls off the tongue so naturally for a first try. Nunbi set the tray down carefully so that the side with the chopsticks would be at Woonjeong’s spot, then rose to his feet.
“And where do you think you’re going?”
That was when it happened. Woonjeong came out from washing his hands, saw Nunbi hovering uncertainly in the doorway, and his expression went flat.
