The look Hwang Jegu cast back was seemingly peaceful at a glance, but underneath lay a cold blade. Jeon Sangwon knew that wasn’t the look he had when joking around.
Did they fight…? Or did Yeon Cheonguk finally act up and get thoroughly beaten and knocked out…?
“He’s from a different world. A guy who’ll debut and go to another world.”
The sudden talk of debuting was not only out of nowhere but a perplexing answer. Sensing he shouldn’t run his mouth as he pleased, he carefully probed.
“…You knew he was weird, didn’t you? Why all of a sudden….”
“If he’s not, then he’s not. That’s all.”
Hwang Jegu’s eyes flashed hotly.
“From now on, he’s someone with no connection to me. He’s not mine.”
“…Got it.”
At the faintly glaring eyes, Jeon Sangwon closed his mouth. Just watching the back trudging away, he couldn’t tell what was inside.
***
The family restaurant on Friday evening was bustling with family customers. Their father, who had shaved for the first time in months and dressed neatly, had called the four of them together. The Yeon family sat around rib steak and pasta for the first time in a while.
Just what happened at Kangwon Land that made him return so changed, as if he’d repented? His curiosity grew even more.
“You don’t need to know the details.”
However, their father cut off everything after the runaway in one stroke. As cold and firm as the knife cutting meat.
Yeon Cheonguk had learned the helplessness that when his father closed his mouth or pushed through his will like this, things would go his way no matter what. But this time, he couldn’t just quietly stay tactful.
“We worried so much too. How anxious we were… If we don’t know anything….”
“Why are you being like this at such a pleasant occasion? Just eat your food quickly.”
His mother quickly stepped in to stop Yeon Cheonguk. Delicate yet quick-witted, his mother was a master at matching their father’s mood. His older sister chimed in too.
“Right, what’s the point of digging into unpleasant things? He’s been through so much.”
They had completely erased from memory their father’s behavior that had tormented the family since the business bankruptcy. Yeon Cheonguk didn’t want to dwell on the past either. But it felt eerie how they were now sitting here pretending to be a harmonious middle-class family, acting fine and refined, conversing as if those times had never existed at all.
All four of them were skilled with knives. Their father and mother had lived a life where they looked down on even family restaurants like this as too crowded, but that would change now. Now that father had shifted from being a small company president to a worker’s position, and mother from a well-off housewife to doing physical part-time work. The Yeon family was bizarrely refined.
Yeon Cheonguk felt suffocated in the lies and pretense meant to deny reality. He felt isolated among family members who told him to pretend not to see both the past and the reality before his eyes like a blind man with open eyes, to unconditionally be a happy family member in front of father, who completely shut down necessary conversations.
He desperately missed the feeling from yesterday’s recording studio when his breath had flowed to infinite places while singing. Yeon Cheonguk spat out an answer in a low voice.
“No matter how unpleasant something is, there are things you can just pass over and things you can’t. My acquaintance was involved.”
His expression must have been terrible. A face full of discomfort and disgust.
They weren’t people who wouldn’t notice that. His mother began to worry and his sister had an expression of suppressing anger, wondering why he was acting like this again. Their father quietly looked across at Yeon Cheonguk while chewing his food.
Since yesterday, Hwang Jegu had been completely unreachable.
It seemed he’d blocked even Yeon Cheonguk’s home phone and the public phone number he frequently used. Several attempts all connected to voicemail and there were no return calls.
It was a good thing for Yeon Cheonguk. Father had already returned safely, so if Hwang Jegu didn’t make any demands for compensation, he could celebrate and shut his mouth completely. At this rate, even after school started, he would clearly treat Yeon Cheonguk like an invisible person.
But Yeon Cheonguk wanted to meet Hwang Jegu and settle things. Why bother? Because his conscience pricked him about the one-sided gain? No, Yeon Cheonguk wasn’t that altruistic a conscience owner. He just wanted to. The desire to see his face one more time and settle things was strong.
Without question, he just wanted to meet. He felt he had to meet him. He had to return the lighter he’d dropped and left behind, and he had important words to convey.
To be careful of the storage room with the outdoor unit. That his grandfather keeps closing the window. He had to tell him that too.
“Right, your friend. That friend told Dad. That the president’s son is earning living expenses while getting nosebleeds.”
“……”
Their father, who had caught onto the words, began speaking.
“Of course, I didn’t get out of there just because of that kid’s one comment, but… What I don’t understand is why such a friend… how did you… with you… Hah….”
Yeon Cheonguk didn’t miss the anger and disappointment settling on his father’s face. But their father didn’t bring out criticism. Because there’s such a thing as final conscience after all. He couldn’t disparage at least Hwang Jegu, who had pulled him out of Kangwon Land.
“If he cares enough to look after a pathetic classmate who’s singing songs in a professional karaoke even in this situation, you two must be pretty close.”
Instead, the arrow flew at Yeon Cheonguk. Their father was someone skilled at sarcasm. His mother asked with a gasp.
“Cheonguk, were you just singing songs that day?! When your dad was missing….”
“It wasn’t a karaoke, it was a recording studio.”
“Same difference!”
“Recording studios aren’t for just anyone, most people can’t go their whole lives.”
“Still…!”
After the family’s outcry poured onto Yeon Cheonguk for a while, their father continued speaking.
“When we arrived in Seoul and went to the recording studio together, that kid went down to the basement and deliberately listened up close. To Cheonguk singing.”
“……”
“Then his eyes completely changed. For a while he looked dazed like someone who’d lost their mind.”
Yeon Cheonguk was swept by shock as if he’d been slapped. Hwang Jegu was dazed? He couldn’t imagine it at all.
“He stayed like that without budging until the end. I wondered how close they must be for him to be like that… Hah….”
“……”
As he fumbled with his spoon in unresolved bewilderment, his sister reproached him.
“No, are you really thinking of becoming a singer? You know to be an entertainer you have to pay companies tons of money….”
“Hey! Jaehee, be quiet!”
Their father scolded his sister with a stern face.
“Words become seeds. Why bring up such nonsense?”
The table became as quiet as a dead mouse. Their father began wrapping up the conversation topic.
“This time I owe a big debt to that friend Hwang Jegu. Even so, repaying that is Dad’s job, so Cheonguk, you should keep your distance from now on.”
Yeon Cheonguk witnessed fear in his father’s eyes after he finished speaking. Yeon Jaehee, who had been sullen, suddenly stopped forking her food.
“Wait. What did you say his friend’s name was…? I’ve heard that name before…. Oh my god! The friend who went to Gangwon Province to find Dad is that person…? No, no…! Hwang Jegu… such a kid is close to you, Cheonguk? He must be crazy! It’s not just keeping distance, he’s a dangerous person you shouldn’t meet! Yeon Cheonguk, what on earth…!”
His sister was trembling like an aspen tree. Their mother’s face, not understanding, also hardened. Their father wiped his haggard lips with chapped skin on a napkin and prevented an argument from breaking out.
“Stop it. It’s true that kid saved Dad who almost died.”
“……”
“…He went into the drum barrel instead of me.”
“…!”
“If he wasn’t that kind of person, he couldn’t have done it, naturally.”
This time it was Yeon Cheonguk’s fork that stopped. Their father, who turned away from Yeon Cheonguk slowly raising his head with a pale face, made the first move.
“Eat quietly. This talk ends here. Everyone stop.”
His head was so empty he couldn’t even manage to pick up and eat anything. As Yeon Cheonguk sat lost in thought in a daze, his father’s criticism fell.
“When did you develop that habit? Fix it.”
Without realizing it, Yeon Cheonguk had been rubbing the rim of his water glass with his index finger.
***
Yesterday, after the meal out, the family who returned to the house with red stickers immediately began moving preparations. Pledging to overcome things while steadily paying off debts. Orders were given to leave items with stickers as they were and only pack personal belongings. They said they’d move to a two-room villa next Friday. His sister left to do short-term factory work during summer vacation.
Yeon Cheonguk left the house in the middle of the night while his collapsed family slept. He went all the way to a distant public phone booth he didn’t usually go to. Thinking maybe he’d answer a call made at that hour.
But Hwang Jegu’s phone didn’t answer until the end.
‘Shitty from start to finish, motherfucker.’
Yeon Cheonguk held back his boiling anger and went to work at the juice shop. The shop was peaceful as if the recent commotion had never happened.
Today too, the swing seats were crowded with groups of somewhat famous female and male students, and the hall sofa seats where the thug group and Hwang Jegu had faced off while eating parfait were harmonious.
‘Sweet Bunny Dance Club’. The lighter had a shop name written on it that gave no clue what kind of place it was. Yeon Cheonguk’s head, fiddling with the lighter, was filled with just one question.
Why on earth did Hwang Jegu go that far? Nearly falling into the East Sea after getting into an oil drum instead, making Yeon Cheonguk’s father come to his senses by showing him the danger of gambling. Why did he go that far?
And then for some reason he was coldly cutting Yeon Cheonguk off. As if he’d never existed.
‘Bastard.’
Really, a fucking graciously kind bastard.
I want to buy the chapters but I don’t know how to pay😢