Chapter 66
Unlike them, I had to go straight to my part-time job after school, so I didn’t have time to imagine putting it into someone all day long.
The hierarchy battles in all-boys high schools were more intense than in middle schools.
If you let your guard down even for a moment, you could fall to the very bottom of the pecking order.
I had started growing taller since my second year of middle school, and by my first year of high school, I was well over 180 centimeters tall, so I rarely got into trouble. However, given the nature of all-boys high schools where rankings changed daily, conflicts were inevitable.
Of course, being a high school student myself, there were times when I couldn’t control my temper and picked fights.
“Ah, I jerked off three times watching porn yesterday.”
“Share the ID, man.”
“Get lost, you broke ass.”
“What did you say, you loser?”
“Dude, you’re triggered. Having a fit?”
“You’re bragging about spending a few bucks on jerk-off material? You’ve got nothing.”
“Jealous? Just be honest if you are.”
“Ah, piss off!”
I raised my head from the desk where I had been lying down, frowning at the argument that was hurting my ears.
“Hey. Shut up, I’m trying to sleep.”
The two guys who had been fighting over a useless topic turned their heads to me simultaneously.
“What? Then sleep quietly.”
“I can’t sleep because you idiots are chirping away.”
“…Do you, fucking Joo Kwon-oh, own this classroom?”
“It’s for everyone to use, so shut up.”
“Do we have to say ‘yes’ just because you say so? This bastard, just because we’ve been letting you off…”
The pig who had been laughing disgustingly while talking dirty approached me and raised his fist. I stood up obediently, looked down at the pig, and said,
“Hit me, quickly.”
“What?”
“But you hit first.”
“……”
There was no response. The pig flinched and then slowly lowered his fist.
The surroundings had suddenly gone quiet. Now I felt like I could live.
Lee Dong-ho, who had just entered the classroom, saw the atmosphere and approached me.
“Hey, Joo Kwon-oh. Why are you scaring them like that? It’s not like the kids haven’t been noisy before.”
Lee Dong-ho separated me and the pig. The pig, who had been mumbling inaudibly, looked around and then left the classroom with his friend.
“You… shit, do you know who I am…! Huh?”
Summer of my first year in high school. I was working part-time at a karaoke on weekend nights. Dealing with these drunk bastards was my job.
The so-called troublemaker handling. It was also the reason why the boss hired me without even checking my age as soon as he saw my build.
“Hey. Are you not letting go of this? You… young, bastard, how dare you…?”
I dragged the guy who was causing a ruckus in the karaoke room and threw him into the trash collection area. Blood was trickling from my cheekbone where the bottle he had swung had grazed me.
“Leave while I’m still asking nicely.”
I was too irritated to control my annoyance as there were too many idiots today. I kicked the troublemaker who was face down on the ground once as a warning, and he grabbed my clothes.
“Such… a disrespectful bastard… Call the girl. Huh? Quickly.”
The feeling of his nails scratching my ankle was disgusting. I bent down and grabbed the collar of the drunk bastard sprawled out.
Even though I knew nothing good would come from using violence, there was nothing better to suppress the nausea.
Just as I was about to plant my fist in the troublemaker’s face, I made eye contact with a customer at the meat restaurant across the street.
“…Ugh. Let… go of this… you bastard…”
I stopped all action with my fist raised. The woman sitting at the window table of the meat restaurant, grilling meat, looked familiar.
It was my mom.
Although it had been almost ten years since she left home, I recognized her at a glance.
“Mom.”
I muttered without realizing it. But there was no way my voice could reach her. My mom, who had made eye contact with me, acted as if she hadn’t seen anything and put meat on the plate of a young girl sitting across from her.
I blankly stared at her smiling face.
I dropped the troublemaker to the ground as if tossing him aside and wiped the blood flowing down my face with the back of my hand.
“Ugh.”
Leaving the rolling troublemaker as he was, I continued to watch my mom. I recognized her, but she didn’t recognize me.
And for good reason – would she have imagined that the thug fighting with a drunk guy in a back alley was the clingy son she had before her divorce?
It was a shock as if I had been hit hard on the head. The fact that my mom, who always had a blank look in her eyes, was smiling. The fact that there was another child beside her.
I wanted to go and at least talk to her, but I knew better than anyone what I looked like right now.
Covered in the smell of garbage and alcohol, beating up drunk customers in a dirty alley, with blood streaming down my face. A gangster disguised as a high school student. That was me.
“……”
The transparent glass window between my mom and me felt like a very solid wall.
I looked at her for a few more minutes, then turned around and went back to the underground karaoke. That was where I needed to be right now.
Exactly one year later. The factory my dad had set up started running well again. After a few months, our debts rapidly decreased.
And in the fall of my second year of high school, our family of three finally left the semi-basement. The reality that had been completely blocked suddenly rose to the ground level as if riding a rapid current. Every day brought good news for my dad’s business.
Several employees were hired at my dad’s factory and office, and my brother started helping my dad with furniture sales from a young age.
“Kwon-oh. Your dad and Kwon-young will both be home late today, so make sure you eat well. And study too. Understand?”
As a result, even though our situation had improved, I was still always alone at home. Whether eating or sleeping, it was just me.
Thanks to that, I had time to spare since I didn’t have to go to part-time jobs after school. I was sick of school, so I said I would help with my dad’s work as soon as I graduated high school.
But my dad and brother strongly opposed it. Having started a business without much education, they wanted me to study business management as they had encountered various obstacles in management.
Around that time, I heard through my dad that my mom had remarried and was raising a daughter.
I got her contact information from my dad and tried calling, but as soon as I said my name, the call was disconnected.
A few hours later, my mom sent this text message:
[I’m sorry, but I’d prefer if you didn’t contact me from now on..]
Seeing that message, I vividly remembered the scene I had seen through the meat restaurant window on that summer night in my first year of high school. My mom’s unfamiliar smiling face. The young, seemingly affectionate daughter in front of her.
If I hadn’t been irritable watching my mom draw a few days before she left home. If I hadn’t gotten angry, would my mom have stayed by my side?
I belatedly had such doubts.
The sadness soon turned into anger and a need for acknowledgment. I couldn’t accept being rejected by my mom.
So I wanted to show her someday. That the home she left without looking back had become so well-off. That not only had we escaped the moldy and damp semi-basement, but now we were living in a nice apartment, my dad and brother were driving foreign cars, and I had entered a prestigious university and was living better than anyone. That it was too late for my mom to regret now, I felt like I needed to show her how well we were doing to extinguish this anger.
Because of this, I only remember studying during the winter of my second year and throughout my third year of high school.
As a result of relentlessly focusing on the college entrance exam, I finally got accepted to Korea University.
My dad cried when he heard the news. And a few days after the acceptance, I received a message from my mom. It was a text asking to have a meal together.
Finally, the opportunity had come to vent the anger I had built up towards my mom. I vowed to coldly sneer at her during the meal. While asking how it felt to have abandoned us.
But when I actually faced my mom, no words came out.
“…Congratulations. I know I don’t have the right to say this, but.”
“……”
“Work hard in school…”
My mom said this while holding out an envelope containing pocket money. I just looked down at the envelope on the table without taking it.
Instead, I looked at my mom and said,
“I’m sorry for getting angry that day.”
As I said this, I realized something. I wanted to call her mom again.
But the word ‘mom’ wouldn’t come out until the end.
That was it. My mom quietly cried, and I silently ate my meal.
It felt empty, refreshing, and also sad, I think.
I had to accept that my mom wouldn’t come back now.
College life was the best. After living in all-boys middle and high schools filled with sweat smell and stale air, studying in a business department where half the students were women was truly heaven.
The girls didn’t spew disgusting talk every minute and second, blinded by sex, and they smelled nice with soft speech and voices.
For someone like me who had never even seen girls, college was a new world that made my head spin with new events every day.
I never missed a gathering. The fact that I could actually experience the dating stories that the primates in high school had exchanged like fantasies kept me constantly excited.
I enjoyed a free life, not rejecting any girl who came and not holding onto any girl who left. Like a compensation for the hard times of the past.
“Kwon-oh, you seem to like hanging out with other people more than me.”
“I always feel like I’m second place.”
“Joo Kwon-oh, what do I mean to you?”
The girls who left me all said similar things. I felt sorry for not treating them better, but not sorry enough to want to hold onto them. I let them all go. Because I could always meet someone new anyway.
I attended classes without missing, went shopping until I was sick of it, and actively participated in sports and club activities.
Unlike the guys from all-boys high school, most of the new friends I made in college were normal and comfortable people. When I hung out with them, there was nothing to get angry about, and no need to put others down to establish a hierarchy.
Everything went according to my intentions without any major obstacles. So I just had to enjoy the thrilling fantasy of college.
However, as nothing in the world lasts forever, at some point, this lifestyle pattern started to bore me too. Along with the tedium of the past year that had flown by in a blur, I suddenly became a sophomore.
And at the beginning of the semester, I met him in a liberal arts class. Ryu Jeong-ha.
