“If you try to sell anything else, they’d probably ask you to pay them instead, but hmm… the ashtray is quite expensive.”
“What?”
“It should be worth about… thirty thousand won?”
“Ah. I see…”
“Want to sell it?”
“No! Absolutely not!”
He couldn’t stop the mischievous jokes that kept coming out. Finding the guy’s serious exclamations funny, the man chuckled through his nose and walked past him still standing near the entrance. While putting back on the sneakers he had just taken off, he pointed to the keys he had tossed on the table.
“If you want to go somewhere, just lock the door and put the keys back like before.”
Not being foolish enough to fall for the same pattern three times, Geun-yeong hesitated to answer. If he replied, the man would probably ask if he was going to sell the ashtray. But if he didn’t answer, he might get scolded.
The man, who had bent down to pull out the crushed heel of his sneaker and stood up, looked the clearly confused guy up and down.
“You could reach it on tiptoes, right?”
He seemed to be referring to the emergency exit hole. Thinking that was probably true, Geun-yeong nodded, saying, “Yes.” The man snorted again and said:
“Going to sell the ashtray?”
“No! Absolutely not! I’m not selling it!”
Geun-yeong once again waved his hands with a serious expression.
As the man turned around with a lingering smile and grabbed the doorknob, Geun-yeong, who had been slowly waving his hands like a fan that had been turned off, stopped and lowered them and asked to his back:
“Will you be back… tonight?”
The man released the doorknob and turned around.
“Would you like me to come back, or would you rather I didn’t?”
“I’d like you to…”
“Really? Then I’ll come back.”
After turning back to grab the doorknob, the man suddenly whirled around again, and spoke to the guy who was startled with his hand on his chest as if he’d done something suspicious.
“I’ll come back, but I might be late. Don’t wait for me and eat dinner on time. If you look around, you should find rice and eggs. If you don’t want to cook, just buy something. Got money? If not, sell the ashtray.”
“No! I won’t sell it! I have money!”
Geun-yeong once again vigorously waved the hands he had raised in front of his chest, and Kyung Jiho imitated him. He waved both hands in front of his own chest, a little higher than the guy’s hands.
“Okay, I’ll be back.”
He had only said he absolutely wouldn’t sell the ashtray, not bidding farewell. But somehow it had turned into a goodbye, so the confused Geun-yeong hurriedly lowered his hands that had been waving in front of his chest and stood at attention.
Bursting into laughter again, the man left the house with his face full of amusement.
* * *
Ji Seokhun retrieved Geun-yeong’s cell phone and continuous glucose monitor from Jung Manbok of Sesang Medical Supplies. He glared intensely at the man who said the CGM was something he paid for and demanded money if Seokhun wanted to take it. Not because he minded the money, but because he was angry at the cute little trick Geun-yeong had pulled, so he glared at the man in front of him instead.
After paying and receiving the items, Seokhun, who had been glaring at the man for a while longer, took out his wallet again. As the man craned his neck to look inside the wallet, thinking he might give extra money, Seokhun handed him not cash but a business card.
“If by chance that kid comes back to get his things, please contact me.”
“Ah… yes… what… huh? Professor… Ji Seokhun?”
One hundred percent of his customers came from the general hospital towering behind the commercial building, and fifty percent of those customers were diabetes patients. Thirty percent of those patients were patients of the man right in front of him, Professor Ji Seokhun. He had heard the name constantly and had seen photos on the internet so he knew the face, but he hadn’t expected to see him in person so suddenly and didn’t recognize him immediately. Jung Manbok of Sesang Medical Supplies was quite embarrassed. His face turned red with the awkwardness of not recognizing what was, so to speak, his biggest customer.
“Oh my, Professor, I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. I apologize for my rudeness on the phone as well. Oh dear, this is embarrassing.”
“It’s fine. If that kid who left those items comes back, please detain him.”
“Ah. Of course, of course, certainly!”
Thinking that the professor must be annoyed by a patient neglecting their management, and that the student from earlier must be a patient personally managed by Professor Ji Seokhun, Jung Manbok suddenly remembered something.
“Ah! That student was sitting at the bus stop in front, and instead of taking a bus, he got into a car, and the license plate should be recorded on our store’s CCTV. Would you like to see it?”
Seokhun, who had stopped in the middle of putting away his wallet, nodded, being careful not to look like a man desperately trying to catch a runaway lover.
* * *
After the man left, Geun-yeong spent a considerable amount of time calming his inexplicably pounding heart, and then knelt down next to the table where his bag had already been placed. Like his bag, he sat quietly, spending more time adapting to the unfamiliar space.
When his kneeling legs started to go numb, he slightly loosened his legs to sit more comfortably. He felt self-conscious even though no one was watching.
Anyway.
He had met the man at the hospital once, no, twice, no, three times, and once at the establishment the man managed. That’s all. They were practically strangers, so why would he let him stay in his home and even tell him where the house key was kept?
It seemed strange at first, but soon made sense. There really wasn’t anything in the man’s house worth selling. The statement that he would have to pay money to get rid of things was probably true. So much so that the most expensive thing was a thirty-thousand-won ashtray.
Gazing at that ashtray, Geun-yeong laughed silently. The man’s joke about selling the ashtray was funny to him now. Though it had seemed scary earlier.
Looking at the ashtray made him recall the man’s smiling face. Thinking that when he smiled, he really was handsome, Geun-yeong tried smiling a little himself, and felt his tension ease somewhat. As the tension eased, his pounding heart also calmed down. With his mind slightly more at ease, Geun-yeong looked around the space again, which felt quite different from when he had viewed it standing up.
It was truly modest, bordering on austere.
What a strange man. He had thought gangsters drove nice cars and lived in nice houses. He thought they lived extravagantly, saying “Let’s live life in style.” But both the car and living place were like this.
‘Put on your seatbelt.’
He had a law-abiding spirit, and above all,
‘You didn’t do anything wrong, so why are you getting beaten?’
He thought gangsters would beat people regardless of whether they did something wrong, just if they didn’t like them.
Hmm.
Pressing his index finger against his lower lip, Geun-yeong seriously reconsidered his prejudices and stereotypes about gangsters. Come to think of it, the gangsters in all those gangster movies weren’t very realistic. Of course, there must be gangsters like that, but there could also be gangsters like this.
Geun-yeong rolled his head around to look at the house, which was so simple it was almost empty. Among gangsters, there were those who drove old cars, lived modestly, let people in without suspicion, kept making jokes, and smelled sexy—while thinking this and turning his head, Geun-yeong’s gaze fixed on a black cloth piece placed on the drying rack, and the moment he realized what it was, he hurriedly turned his head away.
After turning away, a moment later, he slightly turned his head again and rolled his eyes.
The underwear was, um… boxer briefs.
After discovering the man’s underwear preference, he quickly turned his head away. Then, wondering if someone might have seen him, he pulled his bag over and opened it. It was a clumsy act, as if to say, “I didn’t see anything.”
After fumbling around awkwardly by himself, embarrassed even though no one was watching, he opened his bag without purpose, and through the opened bag, he saw a box that took up much space. It was a blood glucose meter.
Come to think of it, he now had neither a continuous glucose monitor nor a cell phone. He had to rely on a machine that could only tell him the level at the moment by pricking his finger with a needle and applying blood.
He was curious about his levels. After fiddling with the box for a moment, he put it down and closed the bag. The test strips were not cheap enough to use whenever he wanted. He decided to check once before dinner later.
‘Then I’ll come back. I’ll come back, but I might be late.’
Then he remembered the man’s words. And remembered what he needed to do.
* * *
Leaving behind a guy who would bow his head deeply and fidget with his fingers when looked at, and who laughed at even unfunny jokes, Kyung Jiho returned directly to the office. There, he interrogated the Ukrainian woman from whose lodging a disposable syringe had been found.
“I don’t know. Blood sugar, that’s why syringe. I don’t know anyone.”
Kyung Jiho snorted. The woman, who must have been ordered to keep quiet, kept insisting it was an insulin syringe. However, the forensics team that was analyzing the residue stuck to the piston took one look and smelled it twice before declaring it wasn’t insulin. They said insulin has a strong medicinal smell. Something odorless like this would be either saline solution or an amphetamine-type drug.
“Whether what was in the syringe was insulin or salt or meth, we’ll determine that ourselves, so just tell us who used it.”
“Shcho? Ya ne znayu koreis’koho.”
The woman who was grabbing and hitting him, saying she didn’t understand Korean well and asking what he had said, was the same woman who had clung to Kyung Jiho’s arm and rubbed her breasts against him. Though he knew perfectly well she could speak Korean, she was pretending not to understand when it was disadvantageous for her. He wanted to slap her, but he had to restrain himself. Despite having been through all sorts of hardships in his life, he had never hit a woman before.