#027
“Don’t play with that kid. He has no parents, lives only with his grandmother!”
Lee Yeonwoo. Seven years old. Fighting cock.
“Waaahhh-! Teacher!”
“Yeonwoo! I told you violence is bad!”
A gentle-looking harmless face, and a personality that was anything but. Yeonwoo had been hitting someone at the slightest provocation since he was little.
It’s not that he was good at hitting. But there was always a good reason for it.
“Always throwing punches!? Yeonseok! Who taught you that!”
“Grandma.”
“…Do you hate living with this old lady?”
“I like living with grandma. So so much. But he keeps teasing me for not having parents.”
“…Still, you can’t hit people!”
He lost his parents before he could even speak and lived with his grandmother. Grandma fulfilled the role of his parents, and he grew up receiving plenty of love.
Yeonwoo rummaged through his bright yellow backpack with his small hands and pulled out something. He unfolded a crumpled piece of paper and proudly showed it to his grandmother.
“I drew this today. I drew it well, right?”
There was a tiger drawn with wobbly, crude lines.
“A tiger?”
“Yeah, because I’m a scary tiger!”
“You’re born in the year of the ox.”
At grandma’s words, Yeonwoo’s small steps froze like stone.
Unlike his friends who all drew oxen when the teacher told them to draw their zodiac animal, he had considered it a source of pride to draw a tiger with sharp teeth and claws.
Yeonwoo calculated the zodiac animals he learned in class today, folding his small fingers one by one.
“Ja-chuk-i-mo…”
“Ja-chuk-in-myo!”
“Ja… ja-chuk-in-mo…”
Chuk is ox, in is tiger.
Yeonwoo looked up at his grandmother with his eyebrows drooping, feeling wronged.
“I’m a tiger.”
“Do you know what lunar and solar calendars are?”
“…I’ll ask the teacher tomorrow.”
Earlier, when he drew the tiger, the teacher had approached and asked a similar question while explaining, but when he tilted his head in confusion, she said she’d explain the details in tomorrow’s class.
His pride had been extraordinary since childhood. Yeonwoo never answered that he didn’t know something. However, there was one thing he was curious about.
“Grandma, grandma.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what a conception dream is?”
“At my age, there’s nothing I don’t know.”
“Tell me, tell me about my conception dream. I’m curious.”
Looking at Yeonwoo’s black eyes sparkling with curiosity, grandma said gruffly.
“Act cute.”
“Act cute!”
He quickly raised his hands to poke his cheeks, and since only one eye wouldn’t close properly, he tried his best to scrunch up his face somehow.
“Oh my, how cute. Whose grandson is this?”
“Kim Oksun grandma’s grandson. So what was the conception dream?”
He earnestly answered even her exclamation and pestered her to tell him about his conception dream. Grandma rolled her eyes to avoid his gaze.
“Don’t know, I forgot.”
“Why?”
“Just say it was a tiger.”
“…Okay!”
Though he didn’t know why she forgot, he was secretly pleased that she said it was a tiger and nodded with flushed cheeks.
It would have been good if he had realized it then.
The symptoms only kept getting worse.
* * *
Lee Yeonwoo. Seventeen years old. Nothing.
In those days, he really had nothing.
“Why are you so late? I told you I have an appointment!”
“School just ended, what can I do about it.”
“Mom! Mom! Where are you going!”
From inside the living room came grandma’s whining.
“Are you leaving? She keeps looking for you, why don’t you stay a little longer.”
“I told you I have an appointment!?”
His aunt glared at Yeonwoo spitefully and left, grabbing her handbag.
Grandma, who had been a haenyeo diver, could no longer swim freely in the ocean and now needed a guardian to accompany her even when going outside.
He was now old enough to know both lunar and solar calendars and understand that he was born in the year of the ox. And since he was born early in the year, he had entered school early. He felt fortunate that he could present his high school diploma to grandma even a little sooner.
“Where did mom go! Bring mom back! Mom!”
Grandma called his aunt “mom” and cried and wailed, then approached Yeonwoo and grabbed the hem of his school uniform.
“Tiger mister, mom… have you seen our mom?”
Whether ox or tiger, it didn’t matter at all. He was just endlessly pleased that she remembered the word “tiger” that he used to shout day and night when he was little and said it to him.
He rubbed his cheek against grandma’s rough hand.
“She’ll come back after sleeping one night.”
“Mom! Call mom for me. Wahhh! I want to see her now!”
It was a series of confusing days, all too much to handle when he was still too young.
* * *
Lee Yeonwoo. Eighteen years old. Tiger.
Even amid the sleepless, confusing days, day and night flowed on, and Yeonwoo learned how to draw a quiet moon in his chaotic heart.
The moon in his heart was always there and never easily flustered. But that day must have been a lunar eclipse.
“Yeonwoo.”
Grandma, who always called him “tiger mister,” called Yeonwoo quietly in the late night.
“Grandma congratulates you on your graduation in advance.”
From then on, he hated the night. He hated the dark, shabby night that he had sent away without any preparation. The moon didn’t rise. There were many times he stayed up all night with his eyes open.
On a bitterly cold December night, while others prepared to welcome the new January, he felt like he alone was facing a non-existent thirteenth month.
He completely cut ties with relatives who had barely maintained contact only because of grandma’s existence.
And grandma had also been subtly playing the role of connecting the world and Yeonwoo. After graduation, he was living in a world completely detached from others.
He hadn’t planned what to do, and since he was left alone in the world anyway, after finishing various preparations, he boarded a deep-sea fishing vessel without regrets. It was with the determination to find something, anything, that he liked. Of course, he regretted it like crazy afterward.
Though he had graduated high school, because he was born early in the year, legally he couldn’t drink or smoke. He had no thoughts about those things anyway, but on the first day of January when he legally became an adult, he experienced his first drink as a commemoration at the crew members’ suggestion.
His insomnia had improved due to exhaustion from hard work, but the day after drinking alcohol was somehow different. It felt particularly refreshing and the day felt sweet.
‘So this is what alcohol is like!’
Lee Yeonwoo. Twenty years old. Discovered the taste of alcohol.
* * *
Lee Yeonwoo. Twenty-five years old. Drunkard.
‘I want… to drink.’
It was already the ninth night since he had quit drinking alcohol, which he used to consume almost daily. The issue with Han Taegu had been resolved, and the contract had been revised and rewritten.
Han Taegu seemed to have been severely scolded by his superiors. Except for the occasional death glares he gave him and Kang Dojun, it had been peaceful days.
And tomorrow he would leave. He had expected it, but now that the farewell was approaching, he felt a little lonely.
Yeonwoo carefully looked around the house. The only difference was that it was cleaner than nine days ago. Just that, but the difference was significant. Well, he had turned a pigsty into a place for humans to live.
The fact that he hadn’t drunk alcohol for nine whole days was also surprising for him. It was the first time he hadn’t thought about alcohol this much. However, soon it would be ten days, and the day of farewell was approaching.
“Hyung.”
Kang Dojun was also lost in melancholy thinking about tomorrow when he was startled like a deer facing a tiger at the sudden call.
“Yeah. Did you call me?”
“Since it’s the last day, shall we have some drinks?”
Now Kang Dojun was not just an actor connection for Yeonwoo, but a good person, a kind person as a human being. He would leave tomorrow and they might not be able to contact each other again, but one thing was certain – he didn’t like this kind of light farewell.
‘Indeed, alcohol is for farewells!’
It was a randomly attached reason.
Since cameras were installed inside the house, late at night after all the production staff had withdrawn, they came out to the yard, leaned against the stone wall, and opened canned beer. The few cans he had put in the basket while grocery shopping yesterday came in handy.
He gulped it down in one go and looked at Kang Dojun beside him. He was just tapping the opening of the beer can.
The momentary coolness that wrapped around his throat quickly faded at Kang Dojun’s dejected appearance.
He couldn’t know the reason, but his behavior kept getting on Yeonwoo’s nerves. On one hand, he was also relieved, thinking that he too disliked the farewell.
“Hyung.”
He roughly pulled his arm to direct his gaze from the air toward himself. In his startled eyes, Yeonwoo’s figure was clearly reflected, and the contents of the can swayed, the carbonation wetting both their hands.
“Are we not going to see each other anymore?”
“…Huh?”
“Should I really only contact you once a year?”
It was what he had said when they first exchanged numbers.
“Or should we just not contact each other at all?”
“What do you mean by that.”
Kang Dojun’s expression hardened slightly. Yeonwoo crumpled his empty can and set it down, then took his can and drank from it.
“Drink slowly.”
“I won’t get drunk from this much.”
He crumpled the second can and buried his head against Kang Dojun’s arm, mumbling his inner thoughts.
“It seems like hyung keeps acting like it’s the end.”
“…Me?”
“You’re being gloomy like someone you’ll never see again after leaving tomorrow.”
He was a very kind and warm person.
It was hard to dislike such a person. His favorability was already high and he wanted to become close. He thought they were in the process of becoming close, but the time of farewell came very quickly.
Sometimes when friends came to visit his countryside home and left, he hadn’t felt this lonely. Maybe it was because a large number of people came in at once and withdrew like low tide, making the empty space seem larger.
He could understand Kang Dojun’s melancholy heart. However, since he would be the one left behind, couldn’t they part with somewhat happy and bright faces?
“Should I pack some more honey for you? Would you smile then?”
Not knowing what to do, he muttered words that didn’t even work while bending his upper body to keep bumping his head against his arm.
Kang Dojun gently stroked Yeonwoo’s head.
‘Is he drunk?’
Yeonwoo was doing repetitive actions. He didn’t think he’d get drunk from two cans of beer, but just in case, he moved his hand from stroking Yeonwoo’s head down toward his nape.
His neck was a little warm, perhaps heated from the alcohol. Just as he was thinking that, Yeonwoo suddenly raised his upper body.
“…Why? Are you drunk?”
At Yeonwoo’s sudden reaction, Kang Dojun withdrew his lost hand.
Without answering, Yeonwoo stared at him in apparent bewilderment, then raised his hand to awkwardly touch his own nape. When the cool, firm touch reached his skin, goosebumps rose instantly.
“What’s wrong?”
Right. Really, why was that happening? Was it because he was drunk? But he knew best that there was no way he could get drunk from just two cans of beer.
Sometimes when he played around with friends and it led to close contact, he hadn’t minded. But his touch was somehow different.
Yeonwoo’s black pupils trembled finely.
‘What is it, what is it what is it what is it?’
It was a very strange and ticklish feeling.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
