Chapter 17
On the bus ride back to Seoul, we held hands the entire time. It was kind of embarrassing for two teenage boys to be doing this, but I couldn’t bring myself to let go of his hand. However, this atmosphere that felt like it could last forever was cut brutally short by my father, who was waiting for us the moment we got home. Father looked thoroughly irritated by the fact that Hyunjae and I had stayed out overnight together. After staring at Hyunjae with ice-cold eyes, he told him to go to his room, then ordered me to follow him immediately.
Hyunjae’s anxious gaze found my face. Father was extremely hierarchical and harsh, and I’d recently talked back to him inappropriately. I had a bad feeling about this, but I didn’t want to worry Hyunjae, so I deliberately put on a calm front as I turned away from him and headed toward Father’s room.
Father’s room was as suffocatingly pristine as ever. Father left me standing there while he sat down in his chair and sighed.
“What’s the reason?”
“Pardon?”
“The reason you’ve been acting like this lately.”
I shrugged with an expression that said I didn’t understand what he meant.
“I already told you before.”
“You expect me to believe that insane nonsense is the real reason?”
Father stood up. Then he approached me with heavy steps. I instinctively backed away and hunched my shoulders. In every life, whenever Father approached me with that expression, things always ended in violence. Sure enough, Father raised his hand and struck my cheek with a dull thud. The heavy pain that landed cleared my mind instantly.
“Tell me what your real objective is.”
“There isn’t one.”
His hand flew again. This time I lost my balance from the force of the blow and collapsed sideways. The inside of my mouth split open, and instantly a metallic taste flooded my tongue. Since I couldn’t spit on the house floor, I had no choice but to swallow the blood. The unpleasant sensation felt like it was spreading all the way down my throat.
“No matter how much you hit me, you won’t get the answer you’re looking for.”
Father, looking absolutely enraged, kicked me hard while I was down. There really are so many garbage parents in this world. The thought struck me all over again. It was so absurd—a person who had no problem knocking down his own child and kicking him would go on to hate Hyunjae so viciously throughout his life, all because of that same child.
Only after enduring Father’s beating until his anger wore itself out was I allowed to leave the room. As I staggered up to the second floor, I found Hyunjae standing there like a ghost, still in the same clothes he’d been wearing. Hyunjae was glaring at the floor with bloodshot eyes. Since trying to act calm in this situation would look ridiculous anyway, I silently collapsed onto the sofa.
Hyunjae’s fists were clenched so tight his hands had turned white. I knew exactly what emotion that represented. Powerlessness. The despair of being unable to do anything. It was the emotion that formed the very foundation of my existence, one I carried as naturally as breathing.
I lay on the bed staring blankly at the ceiling. It had been two hours since I’d forced Hyunjae to go to his room, leaving me alone like this. The pain in my cheek got worse as time passed, and the aftermath of the pain made my neck and shoulders ache too.
In the original story, Hyunjae could never bring himself to confront our father because of guilt. There was no way he could stand up to Father. That would only add to his guilt about me. But I knew that Father would torment us even more brutally in the future. The more Hyunjae’s buried talent shone through, the more he came into his own, the more Father would despise Hyunjae’s very existence. Because Father only saw Hyunjae as serving one purpose, whether his existence burned bright or turned to ash.
So what about me? Me, who wasn’t the original Yu Chanhee, but an entirely different Yu Chanhee? Should I just watch this situation unfold and stand by? If Father hits me, should I just take the beating? If Hyunjae torments himself mentally, should I just let him be? Is that the direction of the hidden route I want? Is that the way to find happiness?
When my thoughts reached that point, my body moved on its own. The sudden movement sent a spike of pain through my neck, but it didn’t matter. I burst out the door and threw open Hyunjae’s door. Hyunjae, who’d been sitting on the bed, slowly lifted his head and looked at me in surprise.
“Do you want to run away?”
I asked. It was an incredibly impulsive suggestion.
Just a selfish statement thinking only of my own happiness.
But Hyunjae nodded without hesitation. Someone who could agree to my selfishness without any conditions. Someone who could run away without a second thought for my happiness. I believed in Hyunjae’s uncertain emotion.
How many places can broke teenagers with no plan actually go? No matter how strong your abilities were, they were useless when you were a minor. In a society where even adults’ use of abilities was strictly controlled under normal circumstances, there was no way they’d generously forgive a minor breaking the law. So how would we survive? I had such a childish, naive fantasy of building a home by the sea and living peacefully. That’s why we headed back to that same seaside town we’d visited just yesterday. Even knowing there was nothing there but sand.
The boarding house owner welcomed us back, but also wore a subtle expression that suggested suspicion. Since using a card would immediately reveal our location, we’d withdrawn as much cash as possible near our house, which only seemed to increase the owner’s wariness.
“How long are you planning to stay?”
“Um… we’d like to stay long-term if possible.”
I said with an awkward expression. As if she’d already played out an entire teenage runaway drama in her head, the owner’s face went pale.
“I can’t let minors stay long-term. I could get in serious legal trouble.”
The owner refused as politely as she could. I had no choice but to beg that we’d only stay for about a week, and finally got a room. It was the same room we’d stayed in yesterday. After we unpacked, a heavy silence fell. It was hard not to feel a little defeated after hitting an obstacle right from the start of finding a place to stay.
“Let’s start looking for a room tomorrow.”
Hyunjae said in a deliberately upbeat voice. I nodded, telling myself that this really was the path to finding happiness.
But even this precarious happiness didn’t last long. Because a few days later, while we were out looking for a room, people sent by Father turned the boarding house upside down. We had no choice but to leave the accommodation quickly before those people came back. Since it was a remote area where taxis were hard to find, we had no option but to keep walking through the cold. Walking along the dimly lit coastal road, I thought that the sea breeze had gotten much colder than it had been just a few days ago. That’s when Hyunjae, who was walking beside me, suddenly stopped.
He opened his bag and started pulling out earmuffs, a hat, gloves, and a scarf, and began putting them on me one by one.
“What’s this all of a sudden?”
I asked with my thoroughly frozen tongue. My voice was already weighed down heavy by the cold. After finally getting the earmuffs on me, Hyunjae looked down at me with satisfaction. Even with a face half-frozen from the cold, Hyunjae looked really good when he smiled. Actually, rather than just “really good,” it would be more accurate to say he was straight-up handsome. But I didn’t bother telling him that and instead buried my face in the scarf. It smelled like Hyunjae. A strange, pleasant scent that was fresh but not cold.
“Nothing. You’re just cold.”
Hyunjae held out his hand to me. With our hands clasped together, we began walking down that pitch-black road with no end in sight.
