“……”
“How much do you earn working at that juice shop?”
“Minimum wage, and I earn a bit more if I hand out flyers in Hongdae or Myeongdong on weekdays.”
“You hand out flyers? In front of subway stations?”
Hwang Jegu looked seemingly surprised. As if he couldn’t imagine it, he muttered while scanning Yeon Cheonguk from top to bottom.
“So that’s why you were always lying down like a sloth… How pathetic.”
“……”
“I’ll find your father and bring him back, so you stay stuck here.”
It took quite a while to understand what he meant. Could it be that Hwang Jegu was saying he’d go to Kangwon Land? Why?
“I’ll pay you that hourly wage, so act as my agent and puppet until I come back. Three times a day, morning, lunch, and evening, call me to give greetings.”
“……”
No matter how much Yeon Cheonguk racked his brain, he could only ask a question he couldn’t understand.
“Why? Hwang Jegu isn’t some errand center problem solver, so why would you handle our family matter?”
There was no reason for that. They were complete strangers, weren’t they? There’s no such thing as free in this world. If someone extended kindness, there was definitely something they wanted to receive in return. Sure enough, demands flowed from his mouth.
“There’s one thing you’ll do for me.”
“…?”
“When I find your father and return in triumph, as compensation for using this high-class trash called Hwang Jegu. You’ll become a slave who does what I say and takes it off when I say. Just once.”
A slave… This bastard really was going to make Yeon Cheonguk and Kim Yuyoung do shitty and dirty things…
Hwang Jegu was Hwang Jegu. Trembling ran down from the nape of his neck to the back of his knees.
“Why isn’t an answer popping out right away. Is there something more important than your household problem right now?”
“Touching my girlfriend is out of the question. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear…”
Irritation briefly flashed in Hwang Jegu’s eyes.
“For a threesome party worth watching, I’d need to pair up ones worth doing or not doing with a woman, your acquaintances won’t be involved.”
“…How do I know you won’t throw me to your friends to be a punching bag?”
“That’s not it either. There won’t be any bloodshed.”
“Then what is it?”
“You idiot. Don’t you know who’s the party in power and who’s powerless right now?”
“…….”
“Shut up and leave it to me, or not. Just decide that.”
Yeon Cheonguk imagined the casino and finance office he’d never been to. When actually dropped into that place crawling with people like Kkakdugi he’d seen today, it was clear who would adapt better and produce better results. It was a foregone conclusion that seasoned Hwang Jegu would investigate better than Yeon Cheonguk hesitating like a nobody.
What could Yeon Cheonguk do for Hwang Jegu?
After all, the only conclusion was manga errand boy plus jukebox errand boy. To prevent violence in advance, he stated clearly.
“My specialty is voice, emotional expression, vocalization. I’m not good at anything except what I can do with my throat.”
After a moment, a fishy smile spread across Hwang Jegu’s mouth.
“Right, if your throat is your specialty, that’s even better.”
Yeon Cheonguk, who let the riddle-like answer pass, stood facing him.
Deal. The two men’s fists met.
Hwang Jegu took the ‘Daeseong Financial’ business card and the photo of Yeon Cheonguk taken with his father between two fingers. With the mission to find and bring back Yeon Cheonguk’s father from around Kangwon Land.
On the day when the existence in urban legend that not just anyone could meet, Seolyun High’s Hwang-je and Seolyun High’s Jo Seongmo, made an absurd contract, the Republic of Korea lost to Germany in the semifinals.
Although the World Cup championship march ended, their league was just beginning that summer.
***
‘Thirty Thousand Miles in Search of Someone Else’s Dad’ was a journey that took a full week from then.
The two performed their missions by switching into each other’s lives during summer vacation. They came to live a week with their positions switched like the fairy tale <The Prince and the Pauper>.
No matter how much of a big shot Hwang Jegu was, having entrusted such an important matter to someone else’s hands, he shouldn’t be able to sleep… but Yeon Cheonguk, sitting on the sofa at Kkaebi Video rental store, was dozing off.
That was understandable because each day acting as the Hwang-je’s proxy was a harder march than expected. How could it be more tiring than his daily life of finishing school, handing out flyers, and working part-time on weekends!
Hwang-je’s daily schedule was absurdly busy. It was a daily life that only worked when subordinates and comrades bustled around him serving him. He was, so to speak, a two-job CEO.
The daily schedule of the Hwang-je who conquered Dongdaemun and Jungnang first started at a butcher shop.
A.M. 6 o’clock.
‘Chingu Butcher Shop’, the only butcher shop inside the neighborhood market. It was said to be the market butcher shop run by his grandfather who’d belatedly taken Hwang Jegu from the orphanage.
When his grandfather became unable to work due to illness, Hwang Jegu took over and was maintaining it. He’d thought he maintained his livelihood by collecting money or extorting bribes, but he actually had a proper store.
Even recently, the sign and display had been replaced with clean new ones, so it had a more refined and youthful image compared to surrounding shops. Originally Hwang Jegu had done all the work himself, but now he had employees, and directly wielding a large butcher knife to cut meat was only done occasionally as showmanship.
Before putting a large chunk of meat into the cutting machine, he had to strike it down with a butcher knife to cut it into pieces, and that knife show apparently became a spectacle.
“It’s sexy when Hwang-je wields a knife like a butcher.”
“……?”
Gakseori made a loud show of wielding a knife. He couldn’t understand what part was supposed to be sexy. Gakseori, whose bright yellow bleached hair suited him, was full of lean muscles and had dark skin up close. Since he was wearing clothes today that looked like he’d cut up a net and put it on, he couldn’t help but ask.
“Where do you buy clothes like that?”
“Doota.”
“There were clothes like that in Dongdaemun…?”
“You’re like a commoner who knows nothing of fashion. Well, what would Jo Seongmo know. Park Jinyoung, Yang Donggeun, guys like these are the really cool ones.”
Gakseori’s name was Jeon Sangwon. Same age, and he’d dropped out of high school. He grew up in a single-father household, ran away unable to endure his father’s abuse, and after going from Chinese restaurant delivery to delivery, he saw Hwang Jegu beating down the bullies at his old school and decided to serve him as his hyung-nim for life.
Gakseori had something like a competitive spirit toward Yeon Cheonguk. It was a strange attitude. Since the proxy Hwang Jegu suddenly inserted wasn’t even someone who knew how to throw punches but a proper-looking aspiring singer who hesitantly attended school, he seemed to feel like a rolling stone.
“What makes you so special? You don’t call Hwang-je Your Majesty?”
Instead of aptitude for studying, one of Yeon Cheonguk’s abilities was social awareness. If he snapped back here with ‘are you crazy to call someone the same age Your Majesty in this society where everyone’s human rights are equally guaranteed,’ it would scratch the world order Hwang Jegu had established, so in his position of receiving help, he decided to make appropriate excuses.
“It’s just that there’s no occasion to call him that in front of you guys, but behind your backs I call him Your Majesty. Your Majesty, my lord, Your Highness, master, everything.”
“How ridiculous…!”
After being around for two or three days, it wasn’t just an ordinary market butcher shop. There were substantial business partners and big customers. Even Gakseori didn’t know the details, but Hwang Jegu had apparently ‘handled’ the distribution network in the vicinity once…
It was a realm Yeon Cheonguk couldn’t imagine how he’d reorganized the meat distribution network that must have had countless checks and territorial disputes. He surely didn’t do it like gangsters who threaten shop owners and extort money under the pretext of commercial district protection fees… he wondered as he touched the handle of the large butcher knife.
To Yeon Cheonguk’s hands, it felt a bit rough and hard.
A.M. 8 o’clock. Time to go to work at the manga rental shop and go to school.
He’d thought after going to school he’d just kill time clutching manga, but it was time to receive reports on various developments. Several friends collected news from information sources at each school then compiled and reported it.
It was mainly content like who did what and played where, who and who got into a fight, and was information to control order within the territory he managed.
So no matter how you looked at it, thug activities were practically Hwang Jegu’s important work. From afar, he hadn’t thought this much intelligence and effort would be needed. He’d only thought it was a position maintained by just goofing off a bit, then bothering whoever was annoying, and occasionally when discipline was needed, lining them up in a row and acting tough while dealing one blow each. Properly being a Hwang-je required tremendous effort too!
Why would he voluntarily take on such time and effort-consuming activities—Yeon Cheonguk, whose nature was a sloth, couldn’t understand.
