Hyedam quietly closed his parted lips when he saw Ondal’s gaze, his previously messy bangs now neatly brushed back, wearing a heavy watch that could only be used to tell time and date.
“Ugly” coming from Ondal’s mouth, of all people, was something Hyedam had no choice but to accept. With such a handsome face, it would be strange if other people didn’t look like octopuses or squids to him.
“Why are you still ugly no matter how much I look at you? It’s troublesome.”
Is that what you say to someone who just washed up and looks clean? Besides, if I’m the ugly one, why are you the one troubled?
Why are you smiling while calling me ugly? And considering what we did yesterday, this comment doesn’t connect to that at all.
Hyedam vigorously wiped his face with a towel and flung open the closet door. Without bothering to choose carefully, he put on jeans and a white t-shirt before taking the lead.
After leaving the narrow road that could barely fit one car, Hyedam reached a two-lane road and sat on a bench at a small bus stop to wait for one of the two buses that came each day.
“When does it come?”
“Nine. A bus to town at 9 AM. You have to catch the bus coming back from town at 5 PM.”
“Only twice a day?”
“Yes. We should be grateful that buses come at all to a village with only four residents.”
They boarded an old, rattling bus, with Ondal standing rather than sitting beside him, looking around. Hyedam smiled slightly at the sight of Ondal awkwardly holding onto the handrail with his head tilted due to his height, then led him to sit in the very back.
The bumpy bus that guaranteed neither comfort nor safety seemed filled with his presence. Whenever the bus shook violently, Hyedam kept his eyes fixed outside the window as Ondal’s hand lightly steadied him. Most people taking this slow bus were elderly, and every single one of them had something to say to Ondal.
“My goodness, why is this young man so handsome? Are you a movie actor?”
“Can’t he understand our language? You, student next to him. Is this young man a model?”
The gazes of the elderly, directed at Ondal who remained expressionless pretending not to understand, eventually shifted to Hyedam. Each time, Hyedam could only respond with an awkward smile and a “No.”
It was only a matter of time before the eye-catching Ondal became the star of the small rural town where few people passed through.
“Want to buy shoes first?”
Hyedam stopped in front of a small store with shoes hanging and stacked everywhere.
“Who has feet that big? This is the largest size we have in our store.”
A moment later, Hyedam was holding a black plastic bag. The shoes weren’t a perfect fit for Ondal, but they were much bigger than the slippers at home.
In the next store, they found white t-shirts size 115 that had circulated through various channels before arriving here, priced at 10,000 won for 3 shirts. They could also buy shabby training pants in neither black nor navy but some strange faded color for 5,500 won each.
Though they called it size 115, it seemed even larger, and the reason they could buy these clothes so cheaply was due to the unique situation in the town. Brought in but with no one to fit them, these clothes merely took up space in the store, and the shop owner’s personal desire to get rid of them quickly was evident.
“I’m hungry. Want to eat?”
“Is there anything here?”
Hyedam smiled slightly at Ondal, who stood in the middle of the road looking around with disbelief.
He’s like a fantasy protagonist who’s fallen into another world.
“This is still a place where people live, do you think there wouldn’t be a single restaurant? In our country, there’s always at least one type of restaurant you can find anywhere.”
Leading the way, Hyedam ordered loudly while Ondal followed but hesitated to enter.
“Boss! One extra large jjajangmyeon, one extra large jjamppong, and one large sweet and sour pork!”
When the food arrived, Hyedam smiled at him but then froze his expression. Sitting on an old chair in the small Chinese restaurant in town, Ondal skillfully began mixing the black bean sauce with the noodles, looking at the food with more confidence than confusion.
“Dip or mix?”
Upon hearing these words after mixing the jjajangmyeon and looking at the sweet and sour sauce, Hyedam’s head tilted to the side.
“I prefer dipping… Ondal, what exactly is your identity?”
What came back to Hyedam’s serious inquiry was a well-mixed jjajangmyeon. Then the jjamppong that had been in front of Hyedam was taken by Ondal, and the mussel shells inside began to pile up separately as they were expertly separated from the meat.
Tap tap.
Hyedam tapped the table with his fingertips, and when Ondal’s gaze met his, he spoke carefully with a deliberately serious expression.
“Is it that your memory has returned but you have nowhere to go, or you need to hide, or there’s some circumstance why you can’t reveal who you are?”
“No, I just can’t remember. When I try to think in that direction, as I said at first, my mind feels like it’s filled with white fog, and nothing comes up.”
Hyedam’s shoulders slumped at the prompt and firm reply. Having apparently removed all the mussels from the jjamppong, Ondal slightly pushed it toward him, and Hyedam pulled the jjajangmyeon bowl in front of himself.
“But yesterday, and consistently, you keep mentioning Co-mom and Daddy.”
“Those are reflexive responses to your questions.”
How could a mere human understand the phenomena occurring in the supposedly infinite brain? If Ondal said so, Hyedam had no choice but to believe it.
In a way, what he had just said was also understandable. For simple questions with predetermined answers, not requiring deep thought like difficult math problems or whether to choose jjamppong or jjajangmyeon if you could only eat one for the rest of your life, Hyedam too would respond immediately.
“Anyway, I’ve been thinking. At first, I thought you might be a lost foreign tourist. Even though this is a remote mountainous area, people who enjoy this atmosphere come and take pictures of cabbage and radish fields. But your Korean is too natural, and all your behaviors show absolutely no dissonance with being Korean.”
After slurping up some jjajangmyeon and chewing it thoroughly, Hyedam’s chopsticks awkwardly picked up two pieces of pickled radish, and Ondal’s chopsticks swiftly took one.
“See, this kind of thing, this kind of thing, really. Would you also separate perilla leaves for me?”
“That’s too bothersome. Before I can do anything, Daddy or Co-mom would move first.”
“…I’m guessing that Daddy and Co-mom are your parents?”
When Hyedam defined the Daddy and Co-mom that had been coming out of his mouth since yesterday, Ondal seemed to have no objections and nodded while eating his jjamppong.
“Your house is a huge mansion, and the garden is what’s it called, Baroque? Romantic era? Something like that. There’s a lake, hunting dogs, guns, horses, butlers, lots of staff working, and dozens of cars, right?”
“There are cats too.”
“Uh… sure. Your noodles are getting cold. Let’s eat.”
You need to say something that makes sense for a conversation to happen. After laying out words that would sound nonsensical to anyone, instead of refuting, he agreed and added that there were cats too? Come on. Just say you’re a protagonist from a fantasy novel who suddenly warped into this world. That would be more believable.
Realizing that talking more deeply with Ondal would only lead to more vague statements, Hyedam focused on eating. As he enthusiastically ate his jjajangmyeon, his gaze naturally turned to the spicy jjamppong. Though delicious, the distinctive oiliness and sweetness of jjajangmyeon could be resolved with a single spoonful of the hot jjamppong broth.
Among close friends or family, he would have unhesitatingly taken a spoonful, but his relationship with Ondal was, well, truly strange. One who gave help and one who received it. The part where they shared the same space and ate together felt like family, and the coffee scent that lingered around him since his appearance now felt familiar.
It was like feeling completely satisfied with coffee without actually drinking any. After sharing that narrow bed last night, they couldn’t exactly be called strangers. But they knew nothing about each other. Nothing at all.
While staring blankly at the jjamppong, Hyedam quickly looked up when the jjajangmyeon bowl in front of him disappeared and was replaced by the jjamppong.
At first, he thought he could read Ondal’s mind, but did Ondal know he wanted to drink the jjamppong broth? Seeing Ondal calmly eating the jjajangmyeon he had just been eating, Hyedam also picked up his spoon.
After filling their stomachs at the Chinese restaurant, the two explored every corner of the small town that had nothing much to see or visit. They stopped by the real estate office to confirm that the house was still on the market, and both were holding iced Americanos.
“There’s a lot of time until the bus, what should we do?”
They had already shopped, eaten, and were now drinking coffee. Hyedam’s gaze, asking for Ondal’s opinion, fell on a small supermarket across the street.
