Closely trimmed hair, black mask, body scent full of heat from running around in the sweltering weather. Something touched Yeon Cheonguk’s nose as he blanked out recognizing his existence.
White particles spread fully before his eyes like chalk dust exploding.
Pop! This time a chalkboard eraser hit his forehead.
When he came to his senses, what had tapped his nose and forehead wasn’t a chalkboard eraser but a handkerchief, and the flying powder was dirt from the farm road.
Between the faces meeting upside down, their tangled breaths touched each other’s lips.
“……”
“……”
His mouth wouldn’t move as if he’d become a plaster statue. Yeon Cheonguk barely broke the silence and spat out one response.
“……What were you doing for a year not answering your phone, you gangster bastard?”
Though it wasn’t clearly visible hidden by the mask, judging by how the corners of his eyes curved gently, he seemed to be grinning. He slowly raised his body and spread his feet wide. Then, lifting Yeon Cheonguk up, he put his hands under his armpits and raised him high. In one breath, whoosh, his height shot up high.
“This kid is calling me a gangster bastard!”
His voice rang out loudly from behind his head. Yeon Cheonguk looked at the road while suspended in midair. Detective Lee Pilho was leaning against the police car that had just arrived. He was holding steamed corn in one hand, eagerly chomp chomp chewing away.
“Does that kid have multiple lives or something?”
At the same time as answering, the detective ahjussi threw handcuffs. The handcuffs flew high across the sky above the field. Hwang Jegu put Yeon Cheonguk down on the ground and caught them.
He turned around and said.
“I’ll finish cleaning up and go, so get some sleep.”
***
Yeon Cheonguk rode in a car with Detective Lee to Ansan Police Station. It was because they had to hand over the suspect to the place where the case was filed.
When he asked just what had happened, the detective ahjussi explained instead.
Hwang Jegu wanted to completely disappear from Yeon Cheonguk’s world. No one knew the exact reason. It was presumed to be because he probably wanted to cleanly cut off all ties from his high school days except for a few trustworthy subordinates.
Gakseori, Lee Donggu who had been a part-timer at the manga bookstore, and the detective all agreed. From that day on, people connected to both of them disappeared from Yeon Cheonguk’s movements and didn’t respond to contact.
Yesterday was the same. He received word that someone named Yeon Cheonguk was urgently looking for him, but Detective Lee ignored that contact as usual. But that dawn, a call came from Hwang Jegu. Asking him to please check if something had happened to Yeon Cheonguk.
He wondered what the sudden fuss was about, but the contact he’d received bothered him. Detective Lee looked up Yeon Cheonguk’s identity right away and learned about the case. The agency contract termination lawsuit case filed with Ansan Police Station. He immediately called to ask about the case’s progress. A report came back that the suspect couldn’t be contacted even by close acquaintances, and there was no response even when knocking on his home door.
As soon as he heard that news, Hwang Jegu immediately started tracking, he said. He probably departed with a car around 3 AM.
“He said he’d catch him alone, so I attached team members. I received a lot of help too.”
That’s why the plainclothes detectives had split up into two cars and stormed in. Detective Lee bit into a corncob and muttered to himself.
“Wow… Hwang-je was really angry. I couldn’t talk to him all morning.”
“……”
“That agency manager ahjussi or whatever who tried to backstab you, he’s in big trouble now.”
In the meantime, he’d been spending busy days in a world without Yeon Cheonguk.
He obtained a special martial arts certification in a remote town where internet culture spread relatively slowly, and after passing the qualification exam, while waiting for the police exam, he secretly helped Detective Lee and dealt with violent criminals at rough sites. Because he had to support his grandfather suffering from dementia, he was exempt from the military.
Not far from where his friend’s butcher shop had been, he opened a new butcher shop and set up a front president to run it. Since it was a meat distribution network he’d already pacified once, he could find the previous cycle without much noise.
According to Detective Lee, it was a time of ‘reformation.’
His entire daily life was far removed from Yeon Cheonguk’s world.
The reason why he’d completely ignored Yeon Cheonguk for so long remained an uncomfortable question.
He laid his face down on the break room desk. He muttered with lips protruding like a goldfish.
“Did he just really not fucking need me? He probably didn’t need me.”
The guestbook post about waiting for Yeon Cheonguk to succeed and then devouring him also came back vividly.
“Was he waiting for me to quickly blow up? He must have just been waiting for that.”
Every time he heard the busy footsteps of police officers outside the break room, he flinched in surprise. However, the people opening the door and entering were all unfamiliar personnel. Right now in the interrogation room, police were probably questioning the suspect who was sitting down. There was no news whether Hwang Jegu was also participating in the investigation together.
“Was he only thinking about when to recoup the money he put into me? He must have only thought about that.”
Around the time an answer had almost been reached, the doorknob turned with a clank.
He thought this time too it would be another police officer. Yeon Cheonguk turned his face flopped on the desk in the opposite direction without expectation.
“……”
The person who opened the door had a physique where you had to raise your eyes to the fullest to get their face in view. Yeon Cheonguk raised his sprawled body. A large beat struck his chest once.
“Even here you’re sprawled out sleeping, really.”
Hwang Jegu, who walked in leisurely, had removed all his gear unlike before. Wearing a black short-sleeved t-shirt with a thick wristwatch, he looked somewhat like a special forces operative.
“Who told you to get a cell phone?”
“What.”
“What was the condition I set last year? Not to do stupid shit with a cell phone—did that sound like a joke?”
Hand it over. Hwang Jegu, with a cigarette crookedly in his mouth, spat out the command. Without energy to argue back and forth, he took out his cell phone from his pants pocket and placed it down.
Yeon Cheonguk’s curiosity was all focused on his past year. He didn’t want to waste energy on other word games.
From Hwang Jegu’s lips as he looked over the cell phone, a hollow laugh leaked out along with smoke. At that sight, even inside Yeon Cheonguk’s head seemed to become hazy, enveloped in cigarette smoke.
Hwang Jegu’s gaze moved to the desk. Yeon Cheonguk belatedly looked at his own hand. He’d been rubbing the edge of a paper cup with his index finger for a while.
“……”
Hwang Jegu, who had been glancing at Yeon Cheonguk’s finger, shifted the cigarette to his left hand. A 20cm long scar drawn across his right forearm filled his view. The scar he was seeing after a long time still wasn’t something he could get used to.
A coolness that tingled down to his toes. The emotion he’d thought was only fear wrapped around his entire body again.
His face grew hot. Yeon Cheonguk decided not to say anything. He felt like if he didn’t keep silent until Hwang Jegu explained first, this confused emotion would be exposed. That ridiculous emotion he still hadn’t sorted out himself. He couldn’t let that thing he didn’t want to believe be exposed first.
It was ultimately him who broke the long silence first.
“If you could turn back time, what were you planning to do?”
“……”
Thinking that he’d read everything written on the manga book flap made an even more intense rebellious phase rise up. And yet, the thought that he still hadn’t contacted him touched his pride.
“What more did we have to do?”
Hwang Jegu asked one more question with black eyes whose inner thoughts couldn’t be read. Yeon Cheonguk stared at him intensely for a moment. After withdrawing his gaze, he spat out an answer.
“Fuck, I’m not talking if you’re just trying to joke around.”
“Who chases a scammer’s ass all night to have some fun? Stop that and move your mouth well, you’re the one who needs to answer properly.”
With slurred pronunciation and increased speech speed, he was dryly expressionless. Sharp gazes continued to pour down.
“Why did you call? I clearly said to wait and I’d come find you when the time came. You keep stirring things up without listening, just like an old lover with lingering feelings. Don’t tell me you got sentimental because we kissed once before?”
“……”
He didn’t beat around the bush. No, it was the complete opposite. He was only picking out words that struck where it hurt.
“Don’t tell me your thoughts changed? Did you get interested in dirty, lewd stuff?”
If he was doing this having figured out Yeon Cheonguk suppressing his confusion, it was chilling. If his purpose was to deliberately provoke Yeon Cheonguk to make him burst out his true feelings, it was a skill worthy of recognition.
“Great! Get up, I’ll book a room right now. I’ve been interested in the feel of your throat since way back.”
