“Fine. Let’s say that’s true. Let’s say we’re not family and gender isn’t an issue either. But the age difference is a problem. This applies to relationships between men and women too. Even if you were a woman, I would’ve said the same thing. Second love or whatever the hell—I shouldn’t be dating you at my age!”
“Ah. So younger guys aren’t your type?”
“Ha, younger? Do you even know how old I am?”
“Weren’t you twenty-seven? You look exactly that age to me?”
He was buttering him up by saying his age was even less than his own. Of course it’s nice when someone thinks you’re a year or two younger, but to instantly shave off ten years and treat him as younger than himself—rather than grateful, it was just absurd.
“I’ll make it fun for you.”
“How exactly.”
“I’ll do anything.”
With an indifferent voice, Baek Sang-eun continued speaking and resumed preparing the fish. Without a moment’s hesitation, he removed the gills and killed it. His knife work removing the scales and fins was bold enough to seem almost tedious. As if he felt not an ounce of tension.
“Eat.”
Raw fish dipped in bright red vinegar sauce was thrust right in front of his lips. Go Seok-jun opened his mouth without thinking and took the fish. Was it because they had just kissed? The squishy texture felt exactly like a tongue and made him want to vomit.
As he forced himself to chew the fish thoroughly, Baek Sang-eun’s thumb approached and swept across his lips. At the rough texture of the calloused finger, Go Seok-jun’s body jolted.
“Hey!”
At the sight of him making eye contact while sucking on his thumb covered in red vinegar sauce, Go Seok-jun buried his face in his knees. Go Seok-jun’s life was getting tangled like a poorly hauled net.
***
No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t understand. Go Seok-jun’s eyes were looking at the monitor, but his mind was completely elsewhere. After pointlessly clicking the mouse around, he let out a sigh loud enough for everyone at the police substation to hear.
“Sergeant-nim, the ground’s caving in.”
Lee Ji-yoon spoke up. Well, it was indeed a ground-caving matter for Go Seok-jun. Let’s say the kiss was fine. Actually, it was absolutely not fine at all.
Whatever Baek Sang-eun said, Go Seok-jun thought of that Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph. If a colleague was in mortal danger and the only way to save them was a kiss, of course Go Seok-jun would be more than willing to kiss a male colleague too.
The problem was that damn lover talk. It was something that made absolutely no sense logically.
Did Sang-eun become gay while working on the deep-sea fishing boat? After all, being on a ship swarming with men for a long time, maybe kissing other men didn’t seem all that strange. But he himself had also worked for over ten years in a workplace where, if you had to count the gender ratio, there were more men.
Another thing. They had only grown up together when they were young, but as adults they had never even met. When they met at Siru Rock, they were so unfamiliar that he didn’t even recognize him at first glance. If they had run into each other by chance on a Seoul street, they probably would have passed by like complete strangers.
‘We agreed to be lovers. You said you loved me too, Uncle.’
Go Seok-jun shuddered as he replayed Baek Sang-eun’s voice in his mind. Could the terms “lover” and “uncle” even coexist in the same sentence?
As he’d said on the boat, it would be the same even if Baek Sang-eun were a woman instead of a man. First of all, dating a child he’d watched since they were one month old was a crime, and even if they weren’t blood-related and were completely unrelated on the family tree, he’d never heard of family members dating each other. On top of that, Go Seok-jun was a whole nine years older than Baek Sang-eun.
In Go Seok-jun’s common sense, you dated people your own age. Taking care of an elder—wasn’t that nursing care? Go Seok-jun had no intention of dating a woman in her mid-forties, nine years older than him.
Of course, now that he was divorced, if a woman in her mid-forties asked him on a date, “Yes, thank you, noona. I’ll take good care of you”—those words would come tumbling out first.
But still. Wasn’t it different for a guy in his twenties? Or not. Maybe he just didn’t understand their world well because of the generation gap. Perhaps young people these days have a culture of dating freely regardless of age.
“Ji-yoon-ah.”
He called out to this officer he’d grown close enough with to call by name. She was miraculously the same age as Baek Sang-eun, so to understand Baek Sang-eun, Lee Ji-yoon would make a good reference. Lee Ji-yoon blinked, waiting for what would follow.
“What do you think about a guy nine years older?”
“Huh? I think of him as a guy nine years older?”
“No. What do you think about dating one?”
“……Fuck, Chief! Chief! Chief!”
After a moment of silence, Lee Ji-yoon kicked back her chair and stood up, approaching the chief. Despite not being particularly tall or large, her voice was that of a general. The chief, who had no idea what was going on, also jumped up from his seat.
“What? What’s going on all of a sudden? Oh my, I thought they were already calling me from the afterlife.”
“I think I’m being sexually harassed!”
“Huh? Sexual harassment? Which fucking bastard harassed our Ji-yoon? Confess!”
The chief shouted in a voice just as fiery as Lee Ji-yoon’s. Lee Ji-yoon pointed accusingly at Go Seok-jun, and Go Seok-jun poked his chest with his index finger and asked, “Me?”
“Hey, Go Seok-jun! How dare you do something to our precious Ji-yoon! You bastard, you should be under discipline and you’re doing what!”
Lee Ji-yoon and the chief denounced Go Seok-jun as if they were on the same team. Go Seok-jun scratched the back of his head as he sorted out the situation.
What do you think about a guy nine years older, could you date him…… No way.
“Ji-yoon-ah, even so, saying ‘fuck’ to your senior.”
Go Seok-jun wore a smile that didn’t match the atmosphere. At his sickeningly gentle voice asking softly, Lee Ji-yoon was horrified. The chief also pointed and went “Th-th-that!” but couldn’t continue his words.
“Sergeant-nim asked me first how I’d feel about dating him! Ugh.”
“Right? Dating someone nine years older is harassment and makes you want to throw up, doesn’t it?”
Go Seok-jun smiled brightly as he swept back his hair. At his departing figure casually waving his cigarette pack and pushing through the glass door, the chief and Lee Ji-yoon clicked their tongues.
“Ji-yoon-ah, are you sure it was harassment? The atmosphere seems kind of off?”
“Ah…… From what I saw. Since he said it makes him want to throw up, I think some noona nine years older confessed to Sergeant Go. Ah, I drank a whole bowl of kimchi juice without even knowing.”
“Seok-jun’s always been handsome since he was young. The Wolseon Guesthouse grandkids are all good-looking. Still, I didn’t know a noona nine years older would be fawning over our Seok-jun? Who is it? Who put their mark on our Seok-jun?”
Chief Kim Soon-gyu, who had lived his entire life only in Yongju County, could be called the Yongju human encyclopedia without exaggeration. Curious about the woman who had put her mark on Go Seok-jun, he counted on his fingers one by one, recalling people of that age group.
Unaware of what was being said inside the substation, Go Seok-jun was in a good mood. Based on Lee Ji-yoon’s reaction, he was completely normal and Baek Sang-eun was abnormal. Watching the cigarette smoke stretch out in a straight line, Go Seok-jun pulled up the corners of his mouth.
“We have a call, Sergeant-nim.”
He hadn’t even finished his cigarette when Officer Seong came out ready to go. Go Seok-jun hastily climbed into the passenger seat of the patrol car. He briefly heard the details of the call. He puffed out his cheeks, then forced himself to make a smiling face, thinking that a public servant shouldn’t be like this.
“I still feel so good every time I drive down this road.”
“Really? Then Officer Seong should respond to every call?”
“I’d like that. Sometimes sitting at the substation gets a bit boring. Don’t you think?”
“I’m perfectly fine with desk work.”
Go Seok-jun also opened the passenger window and felt the wind. It was pleasantly cool wind. Perfect weather for having a drink at the beach in broad daylight. However, the call details weren’t good. A report had come in about lewd acts being committed in a secluded restroom.
“Fuck, lewd acts in broad daylight.”
“Don’t even get me started. It gets worse during vacation season. That place must be a hot spot.”
“Hot spot my ass, ugh.”
It seemed like today was the day everyone at Misong Police Substation was dry heaving.
Yongju County didn’t suit the term “hot spot.” The waves were strong and the swells high, so it was gradually gaining word-of-mouth reputation as a surfing mecca, but it was still far from becoming a famous beach. It was a place only those in the know knew about, so these days surfers and campers mainly visited Yongju.
Still, Yongju Beach had quite a tourist destination feel unlike Misong Port. There was a convenience store right at the entrance, and though not many, large franchise cafes had also opened. It had everything it needed—large-scale private cafes, luxurious pensions, pubs and bars. Several large surfboards leaning against the front of the surf school suggested this was a surfer’s mecca.
After passing the somewhat tourist-like area for a while, they arrived at a restroom located in a place dense with pine trees. He wondered who would use it, but it turned out to be a hot spot for sexual deviants. Even as he got out of the car and ran quickly, his legs felt heavy as if weights were attached.
“Ah, I don’t want to go.”
It was even worse because it was a scene Go Seok-jun had seen to death. He’d caught people several times when he was in Jongno. The so-called glory hole—things done through those holes that were anything but glorious. He’d never imagined such things would happen in this rural area too.
Outside stood the reporter, fuming. He was a man who looked quite gentlemanly, perhaps because of his silver-framed glasses. Upon seeing the police, the man poured out words like a machine gun. The gist was that he’d come all the way here looking for a quiet restroom, but he heard male moaning sounds from the next stall and they kept banging on the wall. He had reported it out of law-abiding spirit and said quite solemnly that he didn’t want Yongju Beach to become a den of perverts.
“Are those people still inside?”
“Yes.”
Go Seok-jun and Officer Seong went inside. Go Seok-jun swallowed the nausea that kept rising several times, but Officer Seong was calm. He knocked on the locked stall, confirmed there were people inside, and shouted several times that a report had come in so they should come out.
Go Seok-jun gestured for Officer Seong to step aside and took out the equipment he’d brought. It was a long metal rod for unlocking the latch from below. Having used it countless times in Jongno, he opened doors well like a petty thief. Click. The door opened in no time. Officer Seong let out an exclamation of “Ooh” from beside him.
“Oh my…… They’re just kids.”
When the door opened, two young men, pale as ghosts, were trembling. They were young enough to be college students at best. Go Seok-jun let out a sigh deep enough to cave in the ground.
