Thunk!
He’d only shopped at the night market, but the plastic bag was bulging like it would burst. A bright yellow banana was visible through the slightly opened gap. Jjokko stuck her short hand in.
“Ba…”
She picked the ripest, most solid one. Pluck, she pulled one off and handed it to the baby, then firmly put on the helmet.
“Eat slowly, slowly.”
The baby hurriedly chomped down on the white flesh, munch munch. She tapped the greatly puffed cheeks with her finger. It was exactly the face of a starving abandoned dog. This must be what they mean by “wouldn’t hurt even if you put them in your eye.”
How poorly must she have eaten that a Filipino baby would eat a banana so hurriedly like that…
In the past, he’d fish to catch fish or climb trees to pick fruit, but now there was no need for that. The money was rotting away, you could say.
“Give more?”
Oh my, this little piglet, you’ll get full before dinner. Woonghee muttered softly while peeling a new banana. Just as he was about to stuff the helmet on his head and set off.
“Those dog-like bastards are starting again, fuck.”
Everyone around was staring at him. Bang, two guys riding a motorcycle couldn’t take their eyes off him. They kept their heads fixed on Woonghee while riding the motorcycle and crashed straight into a telephone pole.
“What the hell…”
Even then, they couldn’t get themselves together as they hurriedly got up from their fallen position and pulled out their phones. They even shoved the camera at him. They were blatantly trying to take pictures.
Woonghee pulled out a new banana from the bag. Then peeled it and ate it all up. He flung the yellow peel like a boomerang. Leaving behind the guys who fell with a thud, Woonghee stepped hard on the gear with his smooth leather boots.
Quick-witted Jjokko admirably hugged Woonghee’s waist tightly. When Woonghee smoothly pulled the throttle, the bike escaped the market like a shot.
Vroooom, the illegally tuned black bike gleamed smoothly like a black panther as it sped through the Philippines’ main street.
The wind blew. It blew away the sweat pooled on his hotly heated nape. A refreshing sense of openness flowed through his whole body. Colorful neon signs rippled on Woonghee’s cheeks. A forest of huge buildings spread out, and among them, an electronic billboard hanging on the most prominent building came into view.
Woonghee’s eyebrows crinkled.
“Fuck, now wherever I go, that movie is the problem.”
It was that damn Fabulous again. Those damn people around kept glancing at him. Did they really recognize him after seeing that? It was fucking useless even if he wrapped up to his ankles.
“That dick-like movie…”
Gulp, he swallowed the curse, but his throat still stung.
The aftereffects remained like a burn scar. His throat was still raw and stinging. Every time he breathed in, it felt like the flesh inside his throat was flipping over. The aftereffects still hadn’t cooled inside him.
The humans were suffering from PTSD like this.
Lee Ijun acted like a baby mole that had been buried in dirt and then popped out. He didn’t come out even one step into the outside world.
Only recently did he say he was shooting some diet program commercial. Juves, was it?
And that bastard Director Hwang was a real spectacle. After finally escaping the island, what he did was a group sex party. And he also snorted some alpha drug?
‘Fuck, this is slander, slander! They’re all bastards I’ve never seen before, I’ve never touched drugs!’
He struggled frantically saying he was innocent, but there were hundreds of exposed photos as evidence. Someone said it. Even a fall is still a fall. But the fall Director Hwang had fallen into was so hellish that a comeback seemed completely impossible. It was an end that perfectly suited his rotten personality.
And Tula…
He’d gone to visit that bastard.
His head was shaved to a buzz cut, revealing his blue scalp. The guy who’d been tall had lost weight around his waist, leaving his orange prisoner uniform hanging loose. The guy’s pupils slowly licked Woonghee’s face.
‘Can’t you understand human speech? I told you not to come.’
At those coldly spat words, Woonghee slowly faced him while sitting in the chair.
‘You came?’
He gently waved a doll’s hand at him. The guy’s large pupils shook with a different emotion. Woonghee pressed it right up against the glass. It was the doll that Jjokko loved dearly. The one she hugged tightly when scared or sad.
‘When you were wandering the back alleys making excuses about Jjokko, this is the doll Jjokko hugged instead because she missed you.’
So he’d named it Tula too. The guy slowly reddened his eyes looking at it. His handcuffed wrists trembled.
‘Do you regret it?’
Woonghee asked like that. The guy in the orange prisoner uniform bit down hard on his teeth. He shook his head no. He said he wouldn’t regret it even if he died right now. Woonghee clicked his tongue. The young bastard, it’s not like pride feeds you.
Then he added through gritted teeth.
‘It’s the same. Even if I went back to that time, I’d make the same choice again.’
It was this kind of thing. Woong, I’d sell you to those bastards again and point a gun at your head again. The guy stubbornly blabbered.
‘Is that so.’
Woonghee nodded his head while standing up. Like that, he turned around to leave the visitation room but stopped abruptly in place. Then he pulled something out of his pocket and pushed it toward him.
‘Ah, right, this. Crack these open when you’re bored.’
The guy who’d frowned asking what this was soon let out a long sigh. Ha! He sighed then couldn’t hold back and buried his face in both palms.
The guy’s thin, large back heaved. The tears he’d been holding back burst out. What he’d offered him wasn’t anything special. Just watermelon seeds they’d cracked open together lying on the platform bed in their run-down monthly rental room.
It was a time when they were fucking poor, and the future was so dark they couldn’t see an inch ahead, but still, while cracking these open and looking up at the stars that seemed to pour down, their chests would somehow heat up warmly.
Tula, you said you fucking had nothing. But you didn’t know. That grasped in your hand was shining youth. Choice, was that really the only choice for that bastard driven to the cliff’s edge.
Just that.
Clank, Woonghee escaped from the prison. The bright sunlight stabbed his eyes like a knife. He was dazed and spaced out. Exactly like a prisoner who’d been locked up for a long time and was released.
He couldn’t figure out where to go, what to do from now on.
He felt completely lost.
Yeah, it was from that moment.
He couldn’t understand the reason. Why exactly did he feel so hopeless? How exactly would his life roll from now on?
The acrid smell of exhaust fumes, the nauseating smell of fried food, and even the ear-splitting sound of car horns.
The city’s night was heat itself.
Humans soliciting customers, tourists trying to haggle down even a few pesos, street vendors attempting to bargain by hanging bracelets on children’s arms, drunks reeking of alcohol sitting slumped on the roadside…
Woonghee stared blankly at that scene. Like someone who couldn’t escape from the middle of the sea. His body was running through this city, but his heart was still stuck somewhere on the island.
“……”
Next week he’d finally get the beta shot he’d longed for. But he still didn’t quite feel it was real. Really, could this one thing change his life?
Lee Woonghee who wasn’t an omega, then what exactly would he become? He didn’t know. Even though he’d left the island as if fleeing, Woonghee was still adrift.
He couldn’t grasp his thoughts floating here and there. And that’s when it happened. When he carelessly glanced at the side mirror, he discovered something.
“Mm…?”
He grimaced. A black sedan was visible in the mirror. Too close. It was stuck right behind as if it would ram into him.
Wait, hadn’t those cars been following him since earlier? Woonghee sharply leaned the bike. He made a very steep left turn, and those black cars all followed behind him in unison.
As expected, he was right. They were bastards tailing him.
“Those bastards are shitting blood trying to collect their shitmobiles.”
Woonghee twisted his lips in a strange smile. Only then did his brain, which had been stopped as if dead, jolt back to life. Thump, thump. His heart beat crazily, shooting blood in all directions. As the hot, vivid blood hit every corner of his body, Woonghee couldn’t hold back that momentum and increased his speed even more.
He pulled Jjokko even closer into his embrace and began racing dangerously down the road. Kyaaa! Jjokko delightfully wiggled her bottom.
Like a fish diving into water, he wove through the spaces between the complexly lined-up cars as if swimming.
He glanced at the side mirror. The black cars were busy chasing his tail. Soon Woonghee sharply changed the bike’s direction and stopped. Now he was facing the guys who’d been chasing from behind.
“Fucking slow.”
When Woonghee blocked the front, the door of the car that had been at the very back opened. Slowly, very slowly. The gleaming paint surface of the black Rolls-Royce flashed as it caught the streetlight.
And the person who got out from inside was a very large figure. As expected, it was Gi Junhyuk, that man.
“Hello, Sydney.”
Woonghee raised one hand and grinned.
