“Ah.”
Jung Yoonseo smiled and pretended to think.
“What should I call you?”
“Don’t you know my name?”
“I do. Though you never told me directly. I checked your messenger profile too.”
“Then call me by my name.”
At my words, Jung Yoonseo gave a mischievous smile and lowered his voice as he said:
“Hyun-ah?”
Jung Yoonseo deliberately deepened his voice and put on an act, making me get goosebumps for no reason. Rubbing my arms, I reprimanded Jung Yoonseo with a disgusted expression:
“That’s not how I meant for you to call me.”
“Why, did I make your heart flutter too much?”
“My heart almost jumped out…”
At my intense reaction, Jung Yoonseo smiled mischievously again. I was about to say more but just gave up and smiled back.
“Why don’t you just drop the honorifics altogether? It feels weird thinking you’ll use formal speech while calling me ‘Hyun-ah.'”
“You know I’m good at speaking casually since I used to do it.”
“Do whatever’s comfortable for you, hyung. I don’t mind either way.”
I noticed that Jung Yoonseo had barely touched his food. Jung Yoonseo was holding chopsticks but wasn’t picking up food to eat with them, just occasionally poking at the food. He didn’t eat much last time either, but can he maintain that physique eating so little? Or maybe Jung Yoonseo didn’t really like Korean food. Come to think of it, he spent his entire childhood in Germany, so German food might suit his palate better than Korean food.
“Next time, take me somewhere you like.”
“Somewhere I like?”
“Yeah. It seems like you haven’t been eating much since last time. Korean food doesn’t really suit your taste, does it?”
“You’re observant… Honestly, I’m not really one to enjoy Korean food. Though I’ve eaten it quite a bit since becoming an adult. I’m kind of picky.”
“I’ve lived my whole life in Korea, but I could eat ten plates of pasta.”
“Really?”
“It’s all about balance, you know. If there’s someone like me who eats everything well, there need to be moderately picky people to balance out the world, don’t you think?”
I said nonsense seriously. Seeing my serious face, Jung Yoonseo’s eyebrows twitched slightly. It seemed to be one of Jung Yoonseo’s habits.
“What if it doesn’t suit your taste then?”
“I have an undiscriminating palate, so I’ll probably say everything’s delicious anyway.”
“Maybe not.”
“Well… that could be. But then there’s nothing we can do about it. Then you’ll just get to see the rare sight of me eating something I find tasteless.”
“You’re not going to stop meeting me, are you? Saying I always take you to bad places.”
Jung Yoonseo spoke in a playful tone. Thinking about it, I did eat delicious food every time I met with Jung Yoonseo, but the purpose of meeting Jung Yoonseo wasn’t a food tour in the first place, so it was completely irrelevant. Jung Yoonseo and a food tour were really an ill-matched combination.
“If I wanted to eat something delicious, I would’ve just ordered chicken at home. Would I go out to meet you, hyung?”
“Ah, you prefer chicken?”
“I’m just saying.”
Jung Yoonseo laughed lightly and then smiled.
“But what are you planning to do while resting?”
“If I’m planning to do something, I shouldn’t call it resting.”
At my firm words, Jung Yoonseo was silent for a moment. I glanced at Jung Yoonseo and then put more food in my mouth and chewed. Jung Yoonseo emptied another glass of liquor.
“…Hyung, what’s the alcohol content of this?”
“30 degrees, I think?”
“Can we make a rule where you eat one thing every time you drink a glass from now on?”
“Why? Are you worried?”
“Yes.”
When I answered firmly, Jung Yoonseo chuckled and asked:
“Why are you being so kind?”
“Isn’t hyung’s standard for kindness too low?”
Jung Yoonseo was quiet for a moment as if lost in thought, then opened his mouth:
“Your parents must have been very kind. Why are you so kind?”
I silently picked up a side dish and ate it. I knew Jung Yoonseo’s family situation wasn’t good. Moreover, Jung Yoonseo was mixed-race and, at a young age, experienced racial discrimination while living in Germany with an appearance that was Eastern for a German, and during his school years, suffered subtle ostracism among peers with an appearance that was exotic for a Korean.
My parents divorced when I was in middle school. I don’t think that was a tremendous misfortune in life. I’m at least someone who has memories of spending my childhood with my parents. Of course, thinking that people without such memories are unfortunate is also wrong.
I often saw my parents fight over my custody during middle school. It would have been nice if they were fighting because they wanted to take me, but unfortunately, it was the opposite. Both parents didn’t really want to take me. Well, they both had me at quite a young age, so having a grown son after divorce would probably be burdensome in many ways.
In the end, I got a small studio apartment near school starting from high school, putting forward the excuse that living alone had been my dream. In the very beginning, my parents alternated visiting the studio every week, but their visits stopped before even half a year passed. At some point, my mom became completely unreachable, and my dad told me when I was nineteen that he’d gone bankrupt and it would be difficult to send me child support.
Because I usually saved on living expenses, I managed to get through high school focusing only on studying without part-time work, but university was a different story. I applied to a university two tiers below what I could get into. It was because I was aiming for a full scholarship.
Even after entering university, life wasn’t easy. When I devoted all my time to part-time work to earn living expenses, it was hard to keep up with classes. Although I’d entered the school on the condition of a full scholarship, I didn’t meet the minimum GPA for scholarship eligibility in the first semester of the following year, and I had no choice but to take a leave of absence the next semester.
After that, I immediately enlisted and paid the next semester’s tuition with the money I saved in the military, but perhaps because I hadn’t touched a pen for roughly two years, my grades dropped even further. After paying tuition, the money I’d saved disappeared quickly, so I couldn’t devote time entirely to studying. Even if I used government support to cover tuition, it was clear I could no longer focus on school. I dropped out the following year. As my reason, I just repeatedly claimed that the major didn’t suit me.
When I remained silent for a while, Jung Yoonseo asked in a slightly flustered voice:
“…Did I make a mistake?”
I laughed lightly.
“It’s just my personality. I was born this way.”
Jung Yoonseo wasn’t oblivious. Jung Yoonseo said in a still flustered voice:
“…Um, I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
I picked up food and ate it nonchalantly. When Jung Yoonseo kept looking at me in silence, I sighed and confessed honestly:
“It’s nothing else, but my parents got divorced.”
“…Ah.”
“So I’ve been living alone since high school. It’s not some incredibly gloomy story though. There are just people like that.”
Jung Yoonseo listened to my words, thought for a moment, then opened his mouth:
“I’m similar. My parents got divorced… or did they? Anyway, my parents never lived together. In my childhood, I lived alone with my mother, and in my teens I came back to Korea alone and lived at the main house, but I wasn’t particularly close with my father. Even when I occasionally visited Germany, my mother didn’t seem very pleased, so at some point I just stopped going.”
After finishing speaking, Jung Yoonseo was silent for a moment, then poured himself a drink and downed it. I quietly watched Jung Yoonseo drink. Jung Yoonseo made eye contact with me briefly, then opened his mouth again:
“The thing about wanting to rest is in a similar context. Maybe because I wanted my father’s recognition, I’ve lived too hard since I was young. Well, no one forced me to… It’s a privileged complaint.”
“I don’t really know how you’ve lived, and I don’t really know how hard things are for you now, and specifically worrying about you seems like overkill, so I won’t add more to that.”
I pulled the liquor bottle that had been near Jung Yoonseo toward me.
“I’m just going to worry about you drinking 30-degree alcohol on an empty stomach.”
Jung Yoonseo looked at me for a long time with a complicated expression. I didn’t particularly avoid Jung Yoonseo’s eyes. Jung Yoonseo looked at me for quite a while, then laughed lightly and obediently turned his glass upside down.
***
“I tried to seduce you with alcohol today, but you didn’t drink much.”
“I’m not easily seduced by alcohol, so next time seduce me with food that costs less than 100,000 won for the two of us.”
