“Do you want to know?”
“Ah, no. Oh my, but still, how could you do that to your father…”
The fact that he could only wave his hands in refusal even after hearing words that should make him angry meant that such desire existed in Han Yunseong’s heart as well.
Jaeha smiled brightly while looking at Han Yunseong, who sat back down in his seat and only fidgeted with his empty water cup. Right. Han Yunseong’s only fault was getting beaten by Taesung as the price for running his mouth wrong—just that much.
Punishment should be received directly by the person who committed the crime.
“Emperor Yang of Sui and Aurangzeb killed their fathers and became emperors. But do you know who couldn’t kill his father because of affection?”
Instead of answering, Han Yunseong only raised his gaze to look at Jaeha.
“Crown Prince Sado.”
Jaeha took Han Yunseong’s phone that had been lying face down on the table and entered his own phone number into the emergency contacts screen.
“I don’t have ahjussi’s number. So contact me if you need help, and if living inside a rice chest is comfortable, just delete the number now and forget all of today’s conversation.”
Then he finished paying and left the soup restaurant.
Han Yunseong was staring blankly at his phone screen like someone who’d lost their soul.
He knew Han Yunseong wouldn’t be able to delete the number.
The reason Han Yongwoo—an old man trapped in old-fashioned thinking that obsessed over bloodlines and didn’t make sense, who went around doing trashy fucking around—had value to Han Yunseong as a ‘father’ was purely because of his wealth.
But now Han Yongwoo was old and sick, with more money to spend than he earned, and the company was becoming obsolete. Although he was obediently preparing to inherit the ‘family business’ since he had to receive the inheritance, Han Yunseong also knew this. If the stubborn old man didn’t die quickly, and therefore if he couldn’t sell off Yeonggang Steel while it still had even a speck of value remaining, Han Yunseong would end up broke without even receiving compensation for enduring this humiliation.
If he hesitated despite having this much overflowing motivation, he’d be an idiot who couldn’t execute even if he made a plan.
Soon a profile picture appeared in Jaeha’s messenger recommended contacts—an ID photo that came out especially bright-eyed.
It was Han Yunseong.
Trends in the world go round and round, so if you hold out in one place for 50 years, you’re bound to meet several periods of revival.
When the retro craze blew through a few years ago, this ‘Rose Dabang’ was like that too. The tea room where the bent-backed old owner leaned on a cane and served ssanghwa tea to old people who struggled up the stairs of the dilapidated building became packed with young people carrying camera bags, and on weekends lines stretched down the stairs with waits of up to two hours.
But soon the whirlwind of trends passed, and while reviews had been full of praise for the ‘real retro style,’ complaints about the old owner’s slow response and doubts about hygiene began to rise, and the customers who had flooded in like a tsunami all disappeared before anyone knew it.
They had entered another long period of peace until the next trend came around.
The person who first brought Jaeha to this place was Chairman Hyun Hongwon.
He enjoyed taking Jaeha around to each of his ‘long-time regular shops’ and bragging about his grandson. His first words were always ‘How’s my kid? He’s the spitting image of me when I was young,’ but there had never once been a positive response. The Rose Dabang owner also retorted, ‘When you hold your wife’s memorial service next month, bow three more times in gratitude.’
While Hyun Hongwon sipped his ssanghwa tea, Jaeha ate a parfait that was layered with strawberry syrup, cheap ice cream, and fruit cocktail on top of cereal, generously drizzled with chocolate syrup on top, and stuck with two wafers. But the reason Jaeha liked this place more than other regular shops Hyun Hongwon took him to wasn’t because of the parfait.
The innermost part of the tea room, a four-person seat where space was divided by an old display cabinet instead of a partition separating the seats.
The cabinet was filled with cheap antiques like film cameras of questionable functionality and pipe tobacco that Sherlock Holmes might smoke in each compartment. And in the very bottom compartment was a worn wooden metronome.
Whenever Jaeha came to the tea room, he took out the metronome, wound it up, and placed it side by side next to his towering parfait.
Tick tock tick tock.
The long pendulum moved, making a regular sound that struck his ears. Jaeha propped his chin and rolled his eyes following the metronome’s pendulum.
His father, Hyun Sejun, had apparently started studying music with piano from a very young age.
‘Your grandfather wanted me to continue with music, so I went to university for cello, but honestly I wasn’t very good. By the time I went to college, I was getting tired of it too.’
Hyun Sejun said jokingly while applying Vaseline to his cracked hands. Though he said with his mouth that he had neither talent nor interest in music and was satisfied with his current life, whenever familiar classical music flowed from the TV, he would habitually move his fingers. Then one day, Hyun Sejun picked up an old metronome from a junk shop.
‘Jaeha, do you know what this is? When Dad was young, I turned this on whenever my mind was complicated. If you stare at it for a while, your head becomes much clearer.’
Tick tock tick tock.
The long needle moved left and right, making a regular operating sound. He didn’t know how this simple machine cleared one’s head, but after the metronome came home, Jaeha could know one fact for certain.
Hyun Sejun wound the metronome whenever he felt depressed.
Almost every night.
Tick tock tick tock.
The operating sound, louder and clearer than a clock’s second hand, had pounded at Jaeha’s ears.
Jaeha stretched out his finger and forcibly stopped the needle’s movement. Before he knew it, the ice cream on top of the parfait had melted and was dripping messily onto the tray.
‘There are bastards born with shitty fates.’
Jang Hyeokjin approached Jaeha’s side on the day of Hyun Sejun’s funeral and muttered that kind of monologue.
Right, there are bastards born with shitty fates.
He thought Hyun Sejun was the only such person, but there’s another one.
Han Taesung.
Jaeha removed the hand that had been holding the metronome. The needle began to move left and right again.
What did he want to do with Taesung?
Sometimes Jaeha wanted to strangle Taesung’s neck and watch him struggle for his life, looking down steadily at him. Sometimes he imagined what it would feel like to throw a punch at his smooth face and turn him into a bloody mess. He’d have to whisper in his ear while he screamed and raged, ‘What are you doing, you fucking bastard?’ In detail, about what wrongs Taesung had committed all this time.
Would he cry then?
He liked seeing Taesung shed tears. It was fun to watch him hastily wipe his eyes and pretend nothing was wrong when Jaeha approached. When Jaeha stared intently at Taesung’s face at such times, he couldn’t avoid his gaze. As if afraid Jaeha would notice his weak state the moment he looked away, he faced Jaeha with his hackles fully raised like a praying mantis raising its forelegs and holding its head high before a natural enemy.
Thanks to that, Jaeha could observe Taesung’s face closely. The eyelashes wetly stuck together, the reddened eyelids, and the blood vessels bursting from the edge of the eyeball and extending toward the black pupils, the moisture thinly covering all of this.
He wished Taesung would keep crying. Because of Jaeha—being hit by Hyun Jaeha’s hands, trampled by Hyun Jaeha’s feet, stirred up by Hyun Jaeha’s cock. But every time, before he could really do anything, Taesung came back after suffering some shitty treatment from other fucking bastards somewhere and was already crying.
Unrefined emotion surged up from within. Jaeha clasped his hands together and closed both eyes tightly. Then he calmed his mind by breathing deeply in time with the metronome’s beat.
This was always the problem.
This impulsiveness.
This was also why Hyun Sejun had suddenly picked up the metronome and placed it on Jaeha’s desk. He had thought he’d hidden it well from him since he’d never shown it, but that was only his own thought. He only learned after Hyun Sejun died that he had been writing down his worries about Jaeha, pressing hard into his diary.
Jaeha ground his molars and habitually scratched the back of his hand with his thumbnail. He hadn’t even scratched a few times but blood appeared on his fingertips. Only then did Jaeha open one eye and look down at his hand. The wound Taesung had left the day before had been scratched open anew, and dark red drops of blood were seeping out.
Under this hand, Taesung had struggled, gasping. Under the thumb pressed down with all his strength, Taesung’s Adam’s apple squirmed. Like a gray mullet thrown out of water, flapping its whole body with its last strength. He clawed at Jaeha’s arms with his nails and writhed, clutching and tearing at the blanket, but it was no use. His airway blocked, his face turned red. Blood vessels burst in the eyes that had been trying hard to glare, and the pupils that had been directed at Jaeha rolled toward the ceiling.
The vitality that had been pulsing in the palm of his hand suddenly went out like a blown fuse. Only after his limbs went limp did Jaeha release the strength in his hand. He extended his index and middle fingers and gently pressed against his carotid artery. As soon as his airway opened, the blood vessel that had risen blue throbbed noisily.
