To put it bluntly — even if the guest made Nunbi suffer for peeping last night, there wasn’t a single person around to help him, let alone come check on him. Reaching that thought belatedly, Nunbi sank into a cold knot of worry. What do I do? Swallowing nervously, the boy paced for a moment before finally setting a careful foot onto the stone landing. His rubber shoes kept slipping on the rain-soaked, uneven steps, but Nunbi trod on the flat of each stone as quietly as he could manage. Then he slipped behind the corner of the building and peeked out toward the wooden veranda in front of the room.
If the shoes were still on the stepping stone, the guest was inside. If not, the room was empty. Either way, he only had to hand over the food and leave — just set the tray down in front of the veranda, knock once, and run….
“God, this is going to kill me….”
But as it turned out, however hard he’d tried to think his way through it, Nunbi couldn’t tell at all whether the guest was in or out. Because shoes were overflowing in front of that room. There were three pairs of expensive-brand running shoes Nunbi had never seen before, a pair of blue sneakers with white laces, and even something like dress shoes that would only suit a business suit — what on earth those were doing out here in the mountains, he had no idea.
There were so many shoes that the stepping stone couldn’t hold them all, and several pairs had spilled over to roll around under the veranda — Nunbi stared in bewilderment. Shameless. He’s practically moved in. But a few too many shoes aside, the conditions hadn’t changed. There was nowhere to go out here anyway, so the guest was almost certainly inside sleeping.
Nunbi decided to stick with the original plan and leave the tray in front of the door. At the very least the man would have to use the outhouse at some point. When he came out, the meal tray would be right there — if he was hungry he’d eat, if not he’d leave it. Nunbi had brought the food. What the guest chose to do with it from there was none of his concern. With that settled in his mind, Nunbi carefully stepped up onto the veranda, sidestepping the scattered shoes. He didn’t even need to put down the umbrella the Bosal devotee had given him. Just this tray — set it down quickly and —
“….”
Right then. Nunbi froze. He heard someone snicker softly behind him. He spun around. Someone was lounging against the stone wall on the other side. That face, turned toward him. The air nearby was thick with freshly exhaled pale smoke. Long legs hanging loose, leaning at an angle, a corner of a mouth around a cigarette. A narrow, sharp gaze fixed intently on Nunbi’s flustered face — as though he’d been watching him this whole time.
The guest was there. The moment Nunbi realized it and widened his eyes without thinking, those bruised, split lips pulled into a slow, easy curve.
“You bring that for me?”
The guest spoke to Nunbi as if it were nothing at all.
“I don’t like temple food. Bad luck.”
Nunbi was too startled to say a word. The young man ground the nearly-finished cigarette butt hard against the stone wall. The boy watched blankly as the bent cigarette dropped to the ground. Temple food is bad luck — what a strange thing to say. But —
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
After tossing the butt away carelessly, he smiled. Nunbi flinched and drew into himself without realizing it. It was the guest’s gaze. That gaze — which seemed to carry weight, to carry something like touch — moved slowly over the back of Nunbi’s neck and down across the inside of his thin white shirt. The moment the guest swept his eyes over Nunbi’s bony frame as if sizing something up, Nunbi felt the exact same thing he had felt the night before.
“The one who was spying on me last night.”
A chill running through him. His gaze was like a snake’s. The guest pushed himself lightly off the stone wall he’d been leaning against and began walking toward Nunbi at a slow, unhurried pace. Each time the distance shrank, Nunbi stepped back — back — without even knowing he was doing it. Then the back of his calves hit the veranda of the annex. There was nowhere left to retreat.
“….”
“….”
Nunbi kept his mouth shut and looked up at the guest. He was far taller than Nunbi had expected. He had to be more than a full head and a half taller. Despite wearing nothing but a loose t-shirt over his lean frame, despite that slack smile — there was something about him that struck Nunbi as strangely feral. Which meant…
A sense of wrongness.
What Nunbi felt in that moment was a sense of wrongness. The guest’s face was worse than it had been last night. From beneath a patchwork of bruises and cuts, only his eyes gleamed with a peculiar light. And that smile. Strange, like something in him was twisted.
“Must’ve been hard getting all the way up here.”
The guest spoke right then.
“With legs like yours.”
A smooth voice. So flat in pitch it sounded as though not a single feeling lived inside it. Nunbi went still. Strictly speaking, that wasn’t a curse. It was just stating a visible fact. That gaze drawing near with an air of already knowing — it swept down Nunbi’s body and drilled into one particular spot. Where it landed was Nunbi’s left ankle, twisted into an ugly shape. The one that had long since curled in on itself and become useless — the left ankle Nunbi hated most of all. Looking at it, the young man smiled with that narrow-eyed look, just like the night before. As though he found it amusing.
“….”
Nunbi felt his throat seize. His face burned. And then came what followed — the familiar shame, and no matter how many times it arrived, it was always vile. He began to feel as though he’d been forcibly stripped bare. Nunbi shifted his trembling, weakened left ankle and hid it behind his right rubber shoe. He knew it was pointless, but he couldn’t help it. With both hands holding the tray, his balance was off. When the boy wobbled awkwardly and lurched, his badly-fitted rubber shoe let out a pathetic squelching sound beneath his feet.
“Careful, what are you going to do if you fall.”
The guest mocked him.
“Just put the tray down.”
So completely indifferent. He seemed like someone who found all of this nothing but a bother. Nunbi didn’t know what expression was on his own face. Only that he couldn’t breathe properly — the way you can’t when you’ve taken a blow to the solar plexus.
“Can’t hear me?”
The guest asked. Nunbi couldn’t answer.
“Deaf, are you.”
Then that languid voice, half-laughing. The corner of his mouth lifting. It felt awful. Cold sweat prickled. But this was the kind of shame he was supposed to only feel when crossing the school corridor. The whispers, the stares, the shoves — all of it brought on by the left ankle he hated most.
“No.”
The boy murmured. Not deaf. It sounded like he was talking to himself, barely loud enough to catch. He heard the guest above him let out a low snort of a laugh. But the other thing was true. Nunbi was lame. Had been since the day he was born. His throat clenched shut and he dropped his head. He was breathing in short pulls when the guest asked,
“What. Don’t tell me you’re crying?”
Said with an air of feigned surprise. No. Nunbi doesn’t cry. There was no reason to cry over something he’d lived with far too long. What does it matter if you call me lame.
“I’m not deaf. And the food —”
The boy managed to open his mouth. He raised his head straight and looked at the face in front of him.
“Come down and eat it or don’t. Don’t make people carry it all the way up here.”
He shouldn’t have come here. Regretting it now was useless. Nunbi drew in a breath and gripped the umbrella tightly.
“Move.”
He had nothing more to say, so Nunbi limped past the guest. With every unsteady step, the tray swayed, and the soup the Bosal devotee had filled to the brim was spilling and running across the tray. The t-shirt he was wearing soaked through with doenjang broth. His hands were trembling and the side dishes were flying out of their bowls. It was a spectacle. Nunbi bit down hard on his lip to keep from making any noise. He hated the sound of his own labored breathing. Right then, a large hand shot out from behind him and snatched the umbrella.
“Ah—!”
The tray Nunbi had been gripping crashed to the ground with a clatter. It happened in an instant. The carefully cooked rice and side dishes rolled across the muddy earth. Nunbi froze where he stood.
The guest was in front of him. A face mottled with bruises. A gaze looking down at Nunbi from the height of a full head above. The distance between them was close. Close enough to feel the other’s breath. The guest’s face — pale and clean-featured, carrying a clear, bright quality — his lips, those eyes that glinted with an inexplicable strange light even on an overcast day…. All those intimate details, visible in a single glance even to Nunbi, who knew nothing. That was how close they were. In that instant, Nunbi thought — without knowing why — that this face, beaten into ruin as it was, had somehow become luminous. Inexplicably, it had.
“….”
Nunbi couldn’t take his eyes off that face. The guest looked like an actor on television. Radiant. The word surfaced without his permission and startled him. And it was true. The guest was radiant — and at the same time, wrong. Because that brightness carried with it an atmosphere that was entirely unwholesome. It was the look of someone eyeing a baby bird fallen naked from its nest. The look of someone who had just found a dog worth putting on a leash and dragging around. That kind of look. Like he’d stumbled upon an interesting toy.
But it was a senseless instinct, and so Nunbi quickly forgot that cold flash of feeling entirely. Or rather — it was more accurate to say he had no room to dwell on it. The guest’s parted fringe was slightly damp, and as the distance between their bodies closed, the smell — of cigarettes or something else — grew stronger. It was a smell that clashed sharply with the clean, fine quality of the guest’s appearance. The lingering trace of it was stale and acrid, needle-sharp to the nose.
