“Ah. I need to get permission from Father first. Should I call him now?”
He answered diligently, but the conversation wasn’t getting through. Go Seok-jun also just poured out curses like “crazy bastard” and “what the hell.” This country bumpkin had put a dog collar around Go Seok-jun’s neck just because they’d kissed once.
When he got fiercely angry, the ends of Baek Sang-eun’s eyebrows drooped downward. His face, lips pressed tightly together, looked quite hurt. Should I comfort him? But Go Seok-jun chose to close his eyes instead.
The warm sunlight coming through the front windshield heated his knees. Perhaps a bit startled earlier, as his tension released, drowsiness crept in. Thinking he’d be woken up when they arrived at the terminal, he fell asleep.
‘Uncle, don’t go. Don’t leave Sang-eun and go to Seoul.’
In his dream, eleven-year-old Baek Sang-eun sat down clutching Go Seok-jun’s legs and wailed. It was not long after he’d been accepted to university. Even while packing delivery boxes with his belongings, he had to comfort Baek Sang-eun several times.
‘Why is the baby crying again? Should we put Sang-eun in the delivery box and send him along too?’
‘I don’t want to go in a box―!’
Having turned eleven and claiming to be a teenager too, Baek Sang-eun talked back to everything Go Seok-jun said. While the clinging Baek Sang-eun telling him not to go was annoying, he secretly liked it and kept playing tricks like “Uncle’s leaving, okay?” No matter how many times he played the trick, Baek Sang-eun unfailingly cried. Go Seok-jun stroked his back, feeling the warmth of the child sitting with his bottom pressed right against his side.
From one day on, Baek Sang-eun started hiding Go Seok-jun’s things one by one. First his cell phone, then after being caught too easily, he hid his shoes, comic books, and the bag he’d used in high school in turn. Except for the cell phone, they were things he didn’t particularly cherish and could honestly leave behind or throw away.
Whenever Go Seok-jun discovered the items, Baek Sang-eun would cry loud enough to shake the house. He’d become sullen and refuse to eat. Even as an elementary schooler, Baek Sang-eun had entered his teens and was somewhat gaunt, having grown tall while losing weight.
‘Waaaaaah!’
‘If baby Baeksang Shark eats lots of food and grows tall and strong, and plays with friends and has fun, then when you become adult Baeksang Shark, let’s play with Uncle again, okay?’
Ah. There was a time when he called Baek Sang-eun “Baeksang Shark.” Baeksang Shark No. 1, Baeksang, Shark…… Why did he only remember that now? In the hazy boundary between dream and reality, he recalled his own voice calling him Baeksang Shark.
‘Nobody plays with Sang-eun.’
He looked up at Go Seok-jun with eyes swollen from crying. He was a child who always smiled like “hehe,” so he’d thought he was just like a puppy. Having just entered high school and being busy adapting himself, he hadn’t paid attention to how Baek Sang-eun, who’d just become a student, was doing at school.
‘Why won’t they play with you?’
‘They said I can’t play with them because I don’t have a mom.’
The pure evil of children is sometimes more cruel than adult malice. Though he didn’t know how the rumor that Baek Sang-eun didn’t have a mother spread, Baek Sang-eun was bullied for not having a mother. These days single-parent families aren’t even a blemish, but back then “no mom,” “no dad”—that kind of thing was a reason for ostracism.
Go Seok-jun, who had neither mom nor dad, was a senior in that regard.
‘But Sang-eun has a grandmother and a father and two uncles and even an aunt who goes to Hanguk University, so they won’t play with you just because you don’t have a mom?’
‘Yeah. They said fake grandmother, fake uncle, fake aunt. Sob, waaaah―!’
Something like a warm, puffy steamed bun poured onto Go Seok-jun’s thigh. Feeling wronged, he hugged his leg and wailed.
It must have been the first time the world didn’t view him favorably. Of course, even though his birth mother abandoned him and his birth father was indifferent to the child, within Wolseon Guesthouse he was an abundantly loved child. The world outside the glass greenhouse called Wolseon Guesthouse was a bitter winter with cutting winds.
The violent world the child experienced for the first time. The pure and cruel world Go Seok-jun also knew well.
It was the same when Go Seok-jun entered first grade of elementary school. Things like “He’s a mute” or “His mom and dad died so he doesn’t talk.” Children said such things without knowing they were hurtful.
But he couldn’t come home and whine either. Go Seok-jun instinctively knew. That his grandmother’s grief, his older sister and brother’s grief were so enormous that he didn’t dare speak of his own sorrow.
Completely overwhelmed by the grief of people who had shared affection with their parents longer than he had, Go Seok-jun chose to close his mouth himself. Afraid that if he said he was sad, that he missed Mom and Dad, they would cry.
After Baek Sang-eun came to Wolseon Guesthouse, Go Seok-jun’s condition improved at a nearly miraculous speed. Hearing that you should talk a lot to babies, his mouth that had been shut for a year opened like a clam releasing sand.
Go Seok-jun didn’t have time to make friends. When school ended, he rushed home. Because the baby would be alone. His grandmother, who wasn’t particularly affectionate in nature, sat on the convenience store bench doing odd jobs people brought her and was indifferent even to the baby.
It would have been good if he’d at least attended daycare, but there was no way a daycare existed in Misong Port, an ultra-ultra-ultra-aging area. Whenever he got off the school bus, Baek Sang-eun always came out to meet him. Walking with those tiny feet from the convenience store to the squid statue. Holding chocolate or candy in one hand to give to Uncle.
Though Go Seok-jun knew many kids, he had no friends he was close with. Of course, since he didn’t go to PC rooms together after school or buy tteokbokki together.
Instead, thanks to his looks, he received confessions from girls to the point of being sick of it. Go Seok-jun was also a boy who normally went through puberty. When someone asked to date, he dated them all, but since he brought Baek Sang-eun along on every date, he got dumped quickly. That wasn’t love. Only when Baek Sang-eun clung to his legs going “Uncle―!”, only in that moment did he uniquely feel the form and warmth of love.
Having grown robustly fed by the love of a child half his size, Go Seok-jun intended to act as an adult for Baek Sang-eun.
After crying for a long while, they sat together on the wooden veranda eating shark-shaped popsicles. Baek Sang-eun, missing his two front teeth, licked the popsicle. Even while sniffling, the sight of him licking the popsicle with his tiny tongue was funny, so Go Seok-jun giggled inappropriately for the mood.
‘Sang-eun-ah, look at this popsicle. What shape is it?’
‘Shark shape.’
‘This is a secret, but Sang-eun is actually a shark too. A great white shark. That’s why your name is Baek Sang-eun, right?’
‘Huh? Really?’
‘Great white sharks are the scariest and strongest hunters in the ocean, you know? They can eat both people and fish. Nobody can beat a great white shark. So really, it’s the terrifying great white shark holding back.’
‘Then when Sang-eun becomes a shark, I’ll protect Uncle! Uncle just trust Sang-eun!’
At the words that he’d soon become a shark, Baek Sang-eun puffed out his chest and nodded as if making some resolution. Though he didn’t know what the tiny thing would protect, he wiped the tongue and lips colored blue from licking the popsicle with the back of his hand and answered that he would.
That’s how he comforted Baek Sang-eun and sent him to school. High schooler Go Seok-jun took Baek Sang-eun to school every day, making his mark on all the students. Don’t mess with this kid because he has a high school hyung (not actually hyung, but).
Thanks to that, he got hit with a rod for being late several days, but when he sold his sob story to the homeroom teacher about his elementary school nephew being bullied at school, having to take him to school, and so on and so forth, the soft-hearted teacher took pity and said just come before first period.
After struggling like a dog for a whole semester like that, Baek Sang-eun also adapted to the rough world of children. Whether he truly believed himself to be a Baeksang Shark, Go Seok-jun laughed for quite a while when he wrote “shark” on the paper where you write and decorate your future dream.
‘Leave quietly while the baby’s sleeping.’
Grandmother patted Go Seok-jun’s back. At dawn while Baek Sang-eun slept soundly, Go Seok-jun took a call taxi as if running away. The road to the terminal was honestly enjoyable to the point of feeling refreshing.
At one time the baby had been his entire world, but the more he grew, the wider Go Seok-jun’s world became. That there were more fun things in the world than watching the baby, that dating girls was more fun than playing with the baby—he gradually realized as he became an adult.
Separate from his love for Baek Sang-eun, he felt unburdened. The thought that he never wanted to come back squeezed its way out. Go Seok-jun was drenched in the liberation of no longer having to care for the baby, the liberation of escaping the sea.
He rode the taxi and sped down the coastal road. Go Seok-jun’s mouth twitched as he left his hometown. The moment he became aware of his facial muscles moving, his eyes snapped open. The taxi he’d seen in his dream had changed to a truck.
“Ah!”
“Did you sleep a bit?”
Baek Sang-eun’s presumed jumper was draped over his body. He couldn’t even tell what administrative district this was. What was certain was that he’d ridden this truck with its faint fishy smell too far.
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“How could I wake you when you were sleeping? You can sleep more. I’ll take you there.”
“Fuck, how am I supposed to get to Seoul in this! Turn back. We’re going to the terminal.”
As he tried to raise his thoroughly excited body, he got caught on the seatbelt. The jumper covering his body also fell to his feet. Without even thinking to pick it up again, he groaned “Ugh” and leaned his body back against the seat. The back of his neck was stiff.
On a weekday morning, not only Baek Sang-eun’s car but all kinds of trucks were heading up the highway. There’s no reason a live fish truck couldn’t go to Seoul. Snorting through his nose, Go Seok-jun glared at Baek Sang-eun until his eyes could pop out.
“Ah…… My head. I’m going to be hospitalized at an oriental medicine hospital and get treated with the premium course. I’ll scrape out every illness I don’t even have.”
“Yes. Please do.”
Though it was his fault, his voice answering back was slightly excited. What did he do well after causing an accident?
“You have to go to the hospital with me too. Got it?”
“A mental hospital?”
“You know well.”
“Wow. Then Uncle is my guardian?”
Baek Sang-eun, who had at some point lowered his sunglasses from his forehead to the bridge of his nose, turned his head toward the passenger seat. This time it was a face wearing a truly bright smile, not one whose meaning couldn’t be understood.
He kept going on about lovers, so he’d told him to go to a mental hospital, but maybe he really did need psychiatric treatment. The doctor would tell him the diagnosis.
“I’m so happy……”
Fuck. No matter how much he found Baek Sang-eun cute, he couldn’t tolerate it any longer. Go Seok-jun drove his fist into the forearm gripping the steering wheel. Even while making a pained sound saying “Ow,” his mouth was hanging on his ears.
“Are you crazy?”
“Honestly I think I’m normal, but if Uncle says so, I’ll go with that.”
“Ahhh!”
He flailed his feet from where he sat like a child throwing a tantrum. The well-reinforced shock absorber smoothly caught the shaking of the passenger seat. Go Seok-jun slammed his head against the passenger window.
“Didn’t you say your head hurt? Are you faking illness?”
“It’s a fucking tantrum disease, you bastard.”
“That’s great. Then we can be hospitalized together, Uncle. In a double room.”
He had to go helplessly to Seoul like this over four hours. The truck carrying crazy Baek Sang-eun and Go Seok-jun with his fucking tantrum disease leisurely drove down the highway.
To be continued in Volume 2.
