Part 1
Omelet
1.
When I first met him, I was back in school.
While my peers swiped their parents’ cards without worrying about their grades, I alone compared the prices of cup noodles. I skipped every social drinking session, using part-time jobs as an excuse. It wasn’t a lie. I was struggling 365 days a year. Having to cover both tuition and living expenses meant I had to spend twice as much time on part-time work as others.
I visited a pork cutlet restaurant with a junior I’d gotten somewhat close to through a group project. The day I shouldered my bag again as a returning student after discharge. I didn’t see any of my familiar classmates. Most had graduated or followed me into the military. If I had the chance, I would have wanted to take one more semester off. But I only had one leave of absence left to use, so I had to save it for emergencies. With no way left to avoid it, the proposal from my newly befriended junior was quite tempting.
“Sunbae, you do tutoring too, right?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“My mom has a wide network and knows about that kind of thing—there are a lot of lucrative students.”
“Lucrative students?”
“Kids from wealthy families who have no interest in studying. They just get tutored halfheartedly, trying to at least reach the middle.”
“Ah…”
I gently scraped the surface of the hardened soup with my spoon.
“But this kid is kind of on a blacklist…”
“There’s even such a thing as a blacklist?”
“Of course. Those kinds of kids cost more.”
“Why?”
I spooned some soup and started mixing the sauce-covered salad. I’d heard of part-time worker blacklists, but never a tutoring student blacklist. If you think about it, isn’t the tutoring student the ‘client’ and the teacher the ‘contractor’? I couldn’t quite grasp the concept of the receiving party filtering people when money was being exchanged.
“He’s a bit difficult to deal with, so many people avoid him. The brat says he won’t accept anyone unless they’re female.”
“Really? He must really like women.”
As soon as I heard he only accepted women, I practically tuned out. Being male, I couldn’t take on that kid.
“This kkakdugi is delicious.”
“Sunbae! Are you listening to me?”
“Yeah, go on.”
My junior squinted and glared at me.
“So that family is looking for a male tutor now. Because he’s been acting so badly.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Would you like to do it, sunbae?”
“I’d be grateful.”
“But… the conditions are a bit tricky.”
“What are they?”
I treated those conditions—which would shake my entire life—as trivial. Like the kkakdugi being chewed and swallowed carelessly.
What can’t I do for money? I’ll do anything except sell my body. I really had done everything except sell my body. I’d been fired from doing short-term work at a construction site, and I’d checked for defects in phone parts at a factory. These part-time jobs were tough and brutal, but unfortunately, physically demanding work like construction or factory labor didn’t suit my constitution. So I started looking for work that used my brain.
I saved my profile on a tutoring site right away. Only after starting my first middle school tutoring job did I realize—tutoring was much better than hourly wage part-time work. After that, I tutored on weekdays and worked night shifts at a convenience store on weekends. It was in a university area with many bars nearby. I was tempted by the doubled hourly wage. During vacations, I either increased my number of students or worked serving at a pub in the early morning hours on weekdays.
Even living this hard, there was barely any money actually coming into my pocket. I didn’t have parents who would give me money like an ATM with just a little whining. Even when I managed to save up some money, the situation was the same. Even buying a Hot6ix from the vending machine while pulling all-nighters at the library during exam periods was a luxury for me. I thoroughly avoided any unnecessary consumption.
The junior who arranged tutoring for me seemed to have connections everywhere. He occasionally bought lunch for friends or took me, his senior, to an all-you-can-eat raw meat restaurant and bought drinks. I envied my junior. A child born into a comfortable home and raised without lacking anything overflowed with generosity. I was ashamed of myself for shamelessly accepting treats, but I couldn’t refuse. My stomach was too starved to turn down good-looking meat.
Most recently, I was certain I’d poured out complaints I couldn’t even remember while drinking with my junior. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have introduced such a conditional tutoring job to a senior he was just casually friendly with. With only one leave of absence remaining, I had no choice. The only way to earn more money was to increase my part-time work. While young, smart guys were climbing up, I felt like I was becoming obsolete, as if riding a descending escalator. When I was frequently feeling this way, my junior’s absurd tutoring proposal was still a proposal “worth trying.”
I nodded in agreement while stuffing the last pork cutlet into my mouth in one bite, and casually remarked while watching my junior say he’d also get allowance from his mom as an introduction fee.
“Must be quite a troublemaker…”
Once I made up my mind, the conditions weren’t much. I just had to pretend to be a woman, like a fox wearing a tiger’s skin. Judging by how many teachers had dropped out, he seemed to be notorious for being difficult. A cross-dressing male tutor as a last resort.
‘Sunbae, when you first entered, you even had the nickname “prettiest in our department.”‘
My junior grabbed his stomach laughing while loudly repeating something he’d picked up somewhere. I hastily looked around the restaurant, worried someone might have heard. Fortunately, there were no kids from our department.
‘You’d just need to wear a wig and stuff your chest. As for the Adam’s apple… well, lots of women have prominent Adam’s apples these days. With that voice, you could just pass it off as husky.’
I nodded along to the absurd advice. And on my way home, I bought a cheap wig at a beauty shop in the alley near my studio apartment. Twenty thousand won… Thinking about the two million won coming in per month, it was pocket change.
***
The date was set as quickly as you could blink. Normally, the process would be to consult with the guardian and discuss the teaching method. But this case skipped all that. The guardian of that household was too busy to even have time to talk with the tutor. I heard through my junior that I just needed to do well. There are often parents who believe everything will be solved automatically as long as there’s a teacher. From my perspective, it was much more comfortable than parents who interfered in every detail.
Looking at the text with the address, I entered the strictly secured apartment complex. I passed a delivery driver showing his package to what appeared to be a security guard. Even the management fees must be enormous. When will I ever live in a place like this? With such grumbling thoughts, I stepped into the luxurious elevator. It was dazzling, as if everything was plated in gold. I felt like I was moving to a completely different dimension from where I lived. I saw myself with long hair in the elevator mirror. Fiddling with the awkward hair with my fingers, I walked out through the open doors.
Standing on the plush mat, I pressed the doorbell and the door opened automatically. A woman greeted me warmly. I bowed and greeted her in return. I could see from the corner of my eye the brown hair falling smoothly below my shoulders. It felt like I’d really become a woman.
“You can go through that door over there. Would you like coffee, by any chance? Or green tea?”
“Either is fine.”
I answered unconsciously, then consciously thinned my voice, aware only of myself. Classical music was flowing softly from the audio system in one corner of the living room. To actually see someone who lives in a house like this. Sometimes they’d show top celebrities’ newlywed homes on TV, but this looked much better than those. When I entered where the woman had directed me, there was a long hallway. Thinking it was like an art gallery with artwork hanging on the walls, I opened the door right in front. A room as spacious as a playground came into view. Right in front was a long, large desk. Judging by the environment alone, this was first-in-the-school material. If I’d been given an environment like that, I would have even aimed for an American Ivy League.
I walked toward the desk and carefully set down the bag I’d brought. At least it was good that the room didn’t smell sour.
The hobbies of someone about four years younger than me were exactly like boys of that age. Inside the glass display cabinet attached to the wall were toys like aircraft carriers. I moved slowly along the opposite wall and noticed there was a sliding door. Beyond the tightly closed translucent glass was a bedroom. The blanket was raised up as if someone was lying on the bed. While I was wondering whether I should wake him or not, there was a knock-knock sound at the door.
“Oh my, he’s still sleeping.”
“……”
“I’ll wake him. Teacher, please have this while you wait.”
I reflexively accepted the tray the woman handed me. It was the hazelnut scent you could sometimes smell in cafes. The tension released as the always-fragrant aroma dominated my sense of smell. On the small tray next to the teacup was a yellow bread shaped like a shell. I was curious what flavor the yellow bread I’d never seen before would be, but it didn’t seem polite to eat alone, so I waited.
I sat quietly in the chair, and behind me I heard the sound of feet dragging. The guy with his hair sticking out in all directions pulled up a chair and sat down. The moment when my thought of a much younger brother—since he was four years younger than me—crumbled. His shoulders were much broader than mine. The fitted top’s shoulder area was stretched so tight the stitching seemed visible. He looked quite mature for 22. Sighing, he gulped down the water the woman had brought.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-six.”
“I’m twenty-two.”
When our eyes met, I felt my shoulders shrink slightly. I’d never been called ‘narrow-shouldered’ before, but sitting next to him made me feel that way about myself. I took a sip of the moderately cooled coffee. Pushing the dainty teacup aside, I held out the workbooks I’d brought. These were the workbooks I’d been progressing through when teaching other students.
