Chapter 28
When they returned to the car, Taeju, who had been waiting, opened his eyes wide and asked.
“Are you finished already?”
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
Spitting out a brief answer, Jeonghyeok loosened his jacket buttons carelessly. He also undid a couple of shirt buttons that had been fastened all the way up to his neck.
It felt like blood was flowing again after throwing off what had been constricting his thick torso. Trying to do something he’d never done before had been suffocating beyond measure.
But he thought this much was necessary to dispel Yoon Misook’s suspicions. He had dressed neatly and composed his expression as much as possible. Thanks to that, Misook had readily agreed to his request as well.
‘I’d appreciate it if you could keep my visit here a secret from Yuwon.’
He said he didn’t want him to know about the donation. He didn’t want to make him feel unnecessarily burdened.
When he explained it comprehensibly, Misook smiled kindly and said not to worry as anonymity would be thoroughly guaranteed.
‘And if anything happens to Yuwon, please give me a heads up too.’
The last words were, in a way, a challenge. It was enough to seem suspicious, and if she asked why he was going this far, he had no proper answer to give.
But, whether it was unfortunate or fortunate.
‘Of course we should do that. Our Yuwon… please take good care of him. As you know, he’s a kind and tender child.’
Misook had trusted Jeonghyeok completely. Her overflowing affection for Yuwon seemed to have blinded her. To the point where she couldn’t suspect at all a man making boundary-crossing demands using donations as pretense.
She probably couldn’t even imagine that he was keeping a boy—not even a girl—for such reasons. Jeonghyeok self-deprecatingly acted as a benevolent donor to the end. It was the first time he’d been so grateful for the world’s prejudices.
Come to think of it, he too had initially pushed Yuwon away because of prejudice.
The guy who had spilled side dishes on his coat and didn’t know what to do, the guy who stubbornly wouldn’t leave the table insisting he’d grill the meat—he had been busy just pushing him away.
Looking back, the first time he accepted Yuwon was the day they went to the Chinese restaurant. That day when he thought he wanted to feed jjajangmyeon and sweet and sour pork to that skinny guy. Even while firmly asserting that would never happen, he seemed to have given a piece of his heart to that foolish guy.
Jeonghyeok said to Taeju, who was just turning the steering wheel.
“Let’s go eat jjajangmyeon after a long time.”
“Sounds good. I was craving it anyway.”
The car rolled slowly down the slope.
Through the car window, he could see a stationery store and supermarket with their doors closed. Since several convenience stores had opened in this area recently, it was perhaps natural.
Due to the slow speed, the neighborhood scenery continued to enter his vision in detail after that. A barbershop run by a white-haired old man, a pharmacy with a half-fallen sign, a hardware store, a small home-style restaurant. Passing through alleys full of traces of time, Jeonghyeok thought that Yuwon’s memories might be buried in this place.
Since this neighborhood hadn’t changed at all even after decades, young Yuwon probably ran around these alleys. He could imagine a scene of Yuwon with an even more youthful face than now, bouncing his small body around playing with friends.
Suddenly he remembered the photo he had stolen earlier. Taking out the photo he had put in his inner pocket, Jeonghyeok gazed intently at Yuwon smiling brightly.
Lately, he’d often been curious about the guy’s past. How he had lived when he was this young, what his school life was like, whether he had any special memories.
But what he was really curious about was something else.
‘There is one person… but I haven’t seen them in a long time.’
‘They got adopted. Once they leave, you usually don’t see them again. It’s no different from being reborn as a new person.’
Who exactly was that person he had particularly relied on? The destination of his chain of thoughts inevitably led there.
He still couldn’t forget Yuwon’s melancholic expression. No matter how hard he tried to think positively about it, the more he dwelled on it, the worse he felt.
Just who was he thinking of to make such a face, and what was the reason? He wanted to question and interrogate him, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. After all, it was just the past.
Yuwon had even said he couldn’t remember that person’s name. Honestly, he didn’t believe it, but not believing it didn’t mean there was any particular way to deal with it. Annoyingly, that was reality.
Jeonghyeok put the photo back deep into his inner pocket.
He wanted to possess Yuwon’s childhood that he didn’t know about, even if it was just like this. Even knowing that nothing would change by keeping just one photo, Jeonghyeok stubbornly clutched the photo in his pocket.
Had there ever been a time when he coveted someone’s past this much? Had there ever been a time when he pathetically held onto something he couldn’t do anything about?
No, there hadn’t. Absolutely not.
Jeonghyeok could be certain. That his becoming like this was all because of Yuwon. That guy had definitely done something seriously wrong.
***
Yuwon tasted the kimchi stew he had finished cooking. The stew with plenty of pork belly left over from grilling the day before yesterday was properly spicy.
He had always been fairly good at cooking, but making food every day had improved his skills daily. Jeonghyeok had jokingly said he could even run a restaurant.
After closing the pot lid, Yuwon turned off the kitchen fire and sat on the living room sofa.
Checking his phone, the time was just past 8 o’clock. There had been a message from Jeonghyeok saying he wouldn’t arrive home until 9 o’clock, so he should eat dinner first, but he planned to wait and eat together. He already ate lunch alone every day, so he didn’t want to eat dinner lonely too.
Yuwon sprawled on the sofa and fiddled with his phone. While browsing around, he checked once more the money that had been deposited this morning in his bank app’s transaction history.
Five million won. It was the deposit from his previous house.
It was neither a large nor small amount. If he worked hard for a few months to save money and combined it, it would be enough for a small studio apartment deposit in this area. There were cheaper places if he went into the alleys away from the station area, but he didn’t want to get far from Jeonghyeok.
But considering the debt he owed to Jeonghyeok, it was a different story. Next week would be March. It was already almost a full month since he’d been staying at Jeonghyeok’s house.
For a month, every time he used Jeonghyeok’s card for personal matters, he had meticulously recorded those transactions. Thanks to using it as sparingly as possible, it wasn’t a large amount yet, but if it continued to accumulate like this, it would definitely become a large sum someday.
To gradually pay back what he owed, he had to start working part-time soon. That way he could pay back his debt to Jeonghyeok and save up for a deposit to find a monthly rental place.
He should bring up the topic while eating dinner when ajeossi returned. Yuwon made a resolution and solidified his determination.
As he lay on the sofa killing time, before he knew it, the time had passed 9 o’clock. Just as he was getting hungry, he heard the sound of the door lock being released.
Yuwon hurriedly went to the entrance and realized that something was strange about Jeonghyeok entering through the door.
Movements slower than usual, a slightly reddened face and eyes. Though it was a subtle difference, Yuwon noticed it immediately.
“…What. Ajeossi, did you drink?”
He asked with his brow deeply furrowed, but Jeonghyeok didn’t care and curtly spat out an answer.
“A little.”
“Then did you eat dinner?”
Jeonghyeok, who had tilted his head at an angle, slowly raised his eyebrows. His expression seemed to say, ‘Are you asking something obvious?’
Yuwon’s face instantly hardened. Jeonghyeok passed by such a Yuwon and went to the kitchen, dragging his heavy body. While getting water from the water purifier, he swept the kitchen with an indifferent gaze.
On the dining table, utensils and several empty bowls were set out. It wasn’t after finishing a meal and cleaning up. It looked like preparations made before setting the table. Above all, the entire kitchen was filled with the smell of kimchi stew.
Only then did Jeonghyeok’s expression change.
He had clearly said he would be late, so eat dinner first. It seemed like he had foolishly skipped his meal and waited for him to come home.
Jeonghyeok gulped down the cup full of water all at once. His head was already throbbing from the soju he’d drunk after a long time, and thinking that Yuwon had gone hungry until this hour made his blood boil.
When he turned his head, he saw Yuwon standing there dejectedly with a sullen face. A sigh escaped him naturally. Why was even the sight of him standing there so cute and infuriating?
Jeonghyeok, who had put the empty cup in the sink, strode forward until he was right in front of Yuwon. Even though he couldn’t possibly not notice his presence, the way he silently stared only at the ground looked quite stubborn.
“Are you sulking?”
“…No.”
“You are sulking.”
Hearing that completely deflated voice made him want to immediately grant whatever he wanted.
Jeonghyeok chuckled inaudibly. He had once cursed at parents who indulged their bratty children on the street, but now he looked exactly like that.
“Kim Yuwon.”
“……”
“Yuwon-ah.”
It was an unbelievably gentle voice, but it didn’t register in Yuwon’s ears right now. Jeonghyeok moved even closer to Yuwon, who still had his head deeply bowed. When he reached out and gently cupped his cheek, only then did that pale face turn toward him.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
