This thing had just come out of Hwang Jegu’s pocket, passed through Yeon Cheonguk’s throat, and was now sitting on the desk?
But there was something more important than that. He’d been caught reading <Berserk> Volume 3…
The thought had barely formed—that he might also get caught for pocketing that 600 won—when Hwang Jegu went “Oh” and rounded his mouth into a circle.
“The ass on this girl is fucking tight, right?”
…So in the end, it was all about appreciating her figure. Yeon Cheonguk, at a loss for words, pulled out Hwang Jegu’s share of manga from his bag.
Taking the manga, Hwang Jegu suddenly wrapped his arm around Yeon Cheonguk’s face. The gesture of tapping his cheek was so irritating that a curse nearly slipped out.
The era of suffering continued even during cleaning time.
He’d always taken on the job of managing the chalkboard erasers that everyone hated, but it seemed the time had come to quit. Hwang Jegu appeared out of nowhere at the eraser cleaner next to him. Stuffing the manga into the compartment and spinning the handle, he said,
“You know if you borrow money from Hwang-je, the interest multiplies by ten per day, right?”
He seemed to be talking about the 600 won he’d pocketed. Yeon Cheonguk replied curtly.
“This is my first time actually meeting a loan shark in real life.”
“Ah, so you are sensitive about money after all. You usually turn into a mute in front of me.”
“……”
That’s because he hated the title ‘Your Majesty’ so much that he desperately tried not to speak. And who wants to talk to someone they can’t stand?
He turned around, performing an unexpected vow of silence. A sneer came from behind him.
“How can you listen to music on such an ancient MP3 player? When you claim to be an aspiring singer, no less.”
I fucking hate him. Even looking at the crutch he was leaning on because of himself made him uncomfortable, and being next to him made him anxious and scared that he might strangle him at any moment. Just endure for two more days and it’s vacation, just bear it. He’ll get tired of bothering his errand boy soon enough.
“What’s your number?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“I need to read more manga during vacation.”
His vow of silence was about to be joined by chanting ‘I must endure’!
“I don’t have a phone.”
“Mm. What else?”
“No home phone.”
“Home address.”
“No home.”
“Really…? Well, whatever. I know where the restaurant you work at is anyway.”
“……”
The bastard was playing with Yeon Cheonguk. He couldn’t take it anymore. After exhaling a long breath and turning around, what he met was a chillingly expressionless face.
Hwang Jegu, leaning his arm on the windowsill, said with vacant eyes,
“Yeon Cheonguk, behave yourself. Even your girlfriend’s face has been exposed.”
“……”
The bastard shut Yeon Cheonguk’s mouth with a single sentence. He could immediately understand what important and chilling message was hidden in that short sentence.
Don’t cross me.
Unless you want both you and your girlfriend to be fucked over as a set.
If you fall out of favor with me, the new general manager of this place, the hyenas will insult you both and beat you to a pulp.
His heart sank heavily. At moments like this, he was forced to remember. That the man before him was none other than Hwang Jegu, the most dangerous person in the area.
He belatedly hurled a curse at the crutch receding into the glaring summer sunset.
“Fucking bastard…”
***
Tomorrow was vacation and the day after was the World Cup semifinal. The entire nation was half-crazed, and Yeon Cheonguk was also crazed for his own reasons.
It was an opportunity to do what he’d decided to do. After the shortened classes ended, he ran home like a shot.
It was a time when no one was home. Before his mother or noona came back, he called the company written on the business card.
“Yes. Yes, I’m a second-year student at Seolyun High. Yeon Cheonguk. Yes.”
After the phone rang a few times, an eager and friendly answer came back.
—You’re a student… you must be busy coming and going, so just sing one song you’re confident in right now. You can sing it a cappella.
It was the phone audition he’d only heard about. He shook his sweat-soaked uniform to cool his back and drank some water.
“Ahem, ahem…!”
After clearing his throat, he immediately started singing. If he hesitated, he felt he’d get more nervous. His song choice was <Can’t I>, a song many friends had begged him to sing.
The humming starts from the accompaniment. The intro is calm, but precisely because of that, you have to hit the notes accurately or the song loses its form.
*It’s so hard, that you’re beside someone else*
*From the day I first saw you, even long before that, it must have already been this way*
As he finished the first verse, a sad truth came to him. Why did he feel more deeply connected to this song than Park Kiyoung’s <The Beginning> that he’d recently sung for his girlfriend?
While singing, Yeon Cheonguk felt sorrow on behalf of the cruel unrequited love he hadn’t yet experienced, that might come in the distant future, that someone in the world had surely suffered or was suffering.
*Even if I try to hope with difficulty that you might break up*
*I hate how happy you are, not once showing a struggling expression*
In this moment alone, he agonized over a love he couldn’t have. It was the timing to move into the main section. BANG! At the noise that rang out behind him, Yeon Cheonguk jumped in fright and spun around.
It was the sound of his noona kicking the door open. Yeon Cheonguk was so startled he was gripping the phone with both hands.
“What are you doing? Yeon Cheonguk, is now the time for you to be doing phone karaoke?”
“Ha… shit…”
Anger flooded into his heart that had been beating hard. It was the moment he almost screamed at her to get lost.
“Dad’s missing. He left home!”
His anger deflated completely. His noona approached and held out a piece of paper. The letter he received, or more precisely, the lined page on the back of a resume, had only two lines of notes written on it.
*I’m sorry for being an incompetent father.*
*I’ll earn money and come back.*
The song rapidly froze and retreated back into his body. The frozen crystals stuck thickly to his throat, becoming icicles, then shattered down as sharp ice.
It felt like his vocal cords and esophagus were being scraped by ice blades. Yeon Cheonguk put down the phone.
His noona shook Yeon Cheonguk’s shoulders while crying.
“Snap out of it! Just snap out of it…!”
Even knowing that his noona’s resentment was actually sadness, he felt the urge to smash the phone. But he held back. With a shadowed face, Yeon Cheonguk silently pulled out the phone connection cord. In case the company called back…
“No, it doesn’t work like that, ma’am. An investigation has to wait at least 48 hours of no contact before it can be filed as a missing person case. Besides, it’s not like kidnapping is suspected. How many people in this Seoul don’t answer their phone for one evening?”
The police treated it like someone else’s problem. Right, it is someone else’s problem. Still, it was upsetting.
His mother screamed at the top of her lungs that this wasn’t like him at all. Yeon Cheonguk also rushed forward saying not to dismiss it so easily as someone else’s problem, but the answer that came back was the same.
“Ha… honestly, we can’t even begin to tell you. Since the IMF, there’s been no shortage of heads of households disappearing one by one.”
“……”
“We don’t have the manpower to investigate all those missing persons cases, regulations are regulations, and those of us on the front lines are dying here!”
In the end, they had to wait at least another day. His noona took their mother home first, and Yeon Cheonguk stopped by the market to run grocery errands. He shopped with a checklist. On his way walking home, a dazzling advertisement appeared on the screen of a high-rise building along the street.
A famous actress advertised a kimchi refrigerator. In front of the department store, people carrying shopping bags crowded together. Inside nearby clothing stores and family restaurants, students flocked like clouds. The faces of those immersed in the romance of a summer night were full of happiness.
In the gap between everyone’s happiness, Yeon Cheonguk stood far away, all alone.
He envied how everyone could be so lucky, how everyone had avoided misfortune.
He took out the 180,000 won he’d put in the drawer and gave it to his mother. Of course, he’d wiped off the blood from Hwang Jegu that had gotten on it. After regretting all the irritation she’d shown Yeon Cheonguk until now, his noona ended up crying.
His mother cried and his noona cried, so Yeon Cheonguk just blinked his dry eyes in a daze.
“How can I use this money… I’m sorry, Cheonguk-ah. Mom is sorry…”
In the midst of it all, his mother sniffled and said this, which almost made him laugh.
“But why does the money smell kind of fishy…?”
That’s the smell of Hwang Jegu’s blood. He couldn’t say that, so he made up an excuse that something must have gotten on it when he was shopping at the market.
That night, the three family members left all the lights on in the house and spent the night with wide-open eyes in their respective rooms. Imagining where their father might be and what he might be doing made his heart race with uncontrollable anxiety.
It felt like he’d been dropped alone in some unknown place, rather than the reality where he lived with his classmates.
At dawn, he left his room and saw his mother asleep at the dining table. Under his mother’s face was the job listings page of a local newspaper. *Dishwashing auntie wanted. Cleaning auntie wanted.* Ballpoint pen blobs had smudged and bled in the places she’d circled.
His noona was also asleep, slumped over the phone book snoring, and his mother had also passed out. Yeon Cheonguk stood there and cried to his heart’s content. As he cried silently, his breath clumped up and he swallowed with a hiccup, but the crying didn’t stop.
After straining his throat like that for a while, dawn broke.
