“Our school’s third-year tried to approach guys from another school to screw over Hwang Jegu and got dumped. Dropping him in front of the school gate is as good as a declaration of war. Because the owner of our school is Hwang Jegu.”
Police came to the school to investigate the circumstances. They said the whereabouts of the technical high school perpetrators were unclear. Hwang Jegu’s location also couldn’t be determined. He wasn’t answering his cell phone, and hadn’t come home for several days to the house attached to the butcher shop his grandfather ran. While the police and teachers were in a flurry, Hwang Jegu was somewhere else.
The next day, Yeon Cheonguk learned. The fact that Hwang Jegu wasn’t an idle good-for-nothing.
***
Seolyun High School was entering its third day without Hwang Jegu. The third-year who had been beaten by the extremely vicious pack of males in a self-contradictory fistfight was still hospitalized. The school was peaceful like the calm before the storm.
Outside the window where curtains fluttered, Yeon Cheonguk was looking at the bright summer sky above the soccer goal, the same. The nightmare of being a comic book errand boy was also gradually fading. He had no interest in the war between outlaws outside the school system.
In the morning, for the first time in a really long while—was it two weeks or three weeks?—he masturbated. With an expressionless face. He relieved pent-up desire while imagining scenes of unity mixed with bodily fluids. The pleasure of ejaculation drawn out as if unable to resist was as bland as chewing undercooked rice. His penis hurt from the friction.
On the way to school, he received a business card from a man loitering in front of the school gate. 00 Records. It was a label agency that discovered ballad singers. The man wearing glasses said he came after hearing rumors that there was a Jo Seongmo at this school, and asked him to definitely contact him. He added that seeing him in person, he was even more handsome.
It was the casting he’d only heard about.
It wasn’t over just because he received a business card. He had to audition separately and it might be a scam. There were countless cases of debuts falling through, but this turned Seolyun High upside down.
Wooowww! The black-haired beasts made an even bigger fuss than Yeon Cheonguk. Though it wasn’t as enthusiastic as when he received 1,000 roses.
They jumped up and down asking why he wasn’t happy as he lay face down with a sleepy face. It was rather better that his classmates were happy for him. The reason he was indifferent even before something that should make him fly with joy was because of his household circumstances that were darkening day by day.
The day he received the business card, he gathered his courage to tell his parents. That he received an offer to be a singer. That the opportunity of a lifetime had come.
He finished his flyer distribution part-time job and received 30,000 won. He changed back into his school uniform as if he’d been at school and put on his backpack. He checked the business card he’d put in his wallet once more and opened the apartment door. His mother was crying next to a broken side dish container. His older sister, who had been comforting their mother, glared sharply at Yeon Cheonguk who came home late.
“You don’t even study, but you make excuses about evening study sessions and come home after playing around every single time? Don’t you know the situation at home?”
“Shut up, how do you know whether I study or not?”
The whole family struggled desperately. Father raised his voice and smashed household items at night, only falling asleep in the morning. In front of business bankruptcy and debt collection, a person becoming trash was overnight.
Mother clung to his sister and poured out lamentations about her circumstances. The face of his sister who had just become a college junior darkened day by day. A daughter from a wealthy family who had never experienced hardship was now in a position to worry about private university tuition, so life couldn’t be enjoyable.
He couldn’t take out the business card he received in front of the school gate.
Father’s downfall was transmitted to Mother in the form of violence, to his sister in the form of emotional sacrifice, and descended to Yeon Cheonguk in the form of overburdened responsibility.
When rotten grease stains appeared in the kitchen of a home that took a direct hit from the IMF, people outside waved Taegeukgi flags in anticipation of the World Cup quarterfinals.
At school, rumors circulated that Yeon Cheonguk would debut with the agency that Brown Eyes belonged to. He wasn’t interested in any of it. It was as good as someone else’s business. The Korean national soccer team’s miraculous performance, the singer offer, the war between school violence circles, admission to top four-year universities. It all became someone else’s business. Yeon Cheonguk’s adolescence was twisted into the form of indifference.
He just stayed blankly in the midst of his family’s desperate struggles and shitty reality. Eroded by numbness, he just moved as he should, like a wound-up doll.
He left the house with red foreclosure notices stuck everywhere and worked part-time to get even a monthly rental room. On weekends he worked at Canmoa, and after school on weekdays he distributed flyers with his cap pressed down.
Thanks to his tall height and neat, mature appearance, he looked like a college student when wearing plain clothes, so the manager sent Yeon Cheonguk to Myeongdong too. At busy intersections, he distributed flyers with nightclub performer lineups and massage parlor flyers.
Whether someone took a flyer or just passed by, he moved blankly, mechanically, without any thought. There was only one thing in his head. He couldn’t get caught by someone he knew.
He attended school without fail. Because he had to go. After school, after filling his dinner with one line of kimbap, he distributed flyers until late at night. Weekdays passed like that and weekends he worked at Canmoa. It had been several weeks since he’d stopped practicing singing.
That Saturday, Yeon Cheonguk, who was serving at Canmoa, encountered a familiar face at the swing seat. It was the girl who had folded him 1,000 roses.
Wearing contacts and a short skirt, she said this.
“I came to see if you threw away the roses.”
“……If I threw them away, what were you going to do about it? How were you going to manage your expression?”
“Getting rejected also hurts one’s pride. There aren’t many guys who can receive something like that from me.”
Yeon Cheonguk may have needed an escape. It seems he wanted to hold onto even that hope that he could gain even a bit of escape in her lively, bubbly charm. Yeon Cheonguk accepted Kim Yuyoung’s confession.
“What changes if I didn’t throw them away?”
“Um…”
“Can I see you one more time?”
A reddening face. A date proposal. The beginning of heart-fluttering romance. Yeon Cheonguk held onto it like a lifeline.
The next day after his part-time job, on their first date, she asked him to sing. To sing Park Kiyoung’s <The Beginning> only for her.
Yeon Cheonguk accepted that request. They ate ice cream together and went to a noraebang.
When the song ended, the girl made an ambiguous expression. I don’t feel the emotion I wanted… While comforting the girl whose lips were pouting, Yeon Cheonguk couldn’t bring out his true feelings.
I’m having such a hard time lately.
Sorry.
I’m having such a hard time these days.
Those words he couldn’t tell anyone were buried deep. So deep he couldn’t even recognize them himself.
Though he didn’t recognize them, the emotions forcibly suppressed manifested as physical reactions. For instance, sleeping excessively. It was when he was dozing during the homeroom teacher’s class. Yeon Cheonguk had an avant-garde dream.
It was a dream of flames blazing like trumpet creepers. The flames were so close it seemed sparks would fly onto his body.
“……Huk!”
Flames blazing fiercely and soon flowing down like a downpour. It was ominous. Startled by the vivid heat, he woke up noisily. The chair rattled and he even dropped his mechanical pencil. It should have been something for the classmates and teacher to laugh loudly at, but for some reason there was no reaction.
Only then did Yeon Cheonguk detect the chaotic classroom atmosphere. The teacher who had been standing at the teacher’s desk was gone, and the class president was quieting the kids down.
He saw teachers noisily coming and going in the hallway. The homeroom teacher ran down the stairs in a rush with an umbrella in hand. The atmosphere was unusual. Soon shocking news was delivered through the students’ mouths.
“Earlier this morning, Hwang Jegu stormed into Myeongjin Technical High and stomped on their heads.”
“Crazy…! Don’t bullshit!”
“It’s true. There’s a witness who saw him crossing the schoolyard.”
If it was true, it was truly unimaginably bold. He personally stormed into enemy territory, the tiger’s den…? Even in the monsoon rain and humid air, the school was noisy all day.
During the three days that Yeon Cheonguk started dating his girlfriend, he had been sharpening his blade. Perhaps for the war of his lifetime.
The bastards who called themselves Hwang Jegu’s comrades-in-arms and friends all left early without permission. In the dangerous and violent incident, the boys’ school began to buzz with adrenaline. An event worthy of being called a seismic shift in the Dongdaemun, Jungnang, Seongdong, and Gwangjin areas was occurring.
Because the person named Hwang Jegu had become a high school sophomore, it was probably a war for supremacy that had to happen someday.
As the song that had become one life with Yeon Cheonguk was dying out, Hwang Jegu’s flames were blazing high. In an uncontrollable flow.
“Ugh, leave that punk Hwang Jegu alone! If he’s absent 15 more days, he’ll be expelled. Tell him to quit!”
That day, the confrontation between Hwang Jegu and the technical high school third-years was concluded with the intervention of police cars and teachers from both schools, but rumors were divided on whether an ambulance came or not. They said Hwang Jegu beat the opponent down in the classroom, or that he K.O.’d them in the hallway. It was a day when anxious news like hospital, police, rumors, and absences circulated.
He had neither an Anycall cell phone nor a Cyon cell phone. Yeon Cheonguk put a card in the public phone. His girlfriend subtly asked if he could meet her this evening.
Taegeukgi (태극기) – Korean flag
