“Your friend is here.”
The pa-voiced ajumma knocked on the door twice and spoke to it. From inside, the sound of hurried footsteps quickly approached. The door flung open.
“Oh, Donghwa…”
Seeing his friend rushing out with an utterly disbelieving face, Donghwa felt a stinging sensation in his nose.
“Damn, your house is ridiculously nice. Irritating.”
And then Donghwa started to cry.
* * *
When one guy started sobbing, the helper ajumma, completely unmoved, said, “I’ll bring some refreshments,” and left them alone.
Donghwa sat on a two-person sofa in one corner of Geun-yeong’s room, muttering, “Damn, you even have a sofa in your room.”
After worrying, feeling nervous, being overwhelmed by the atmosphere, and then seeing his friend who had rushed out when told his friend had arrived, he couldn’t help but burst into tears. Embarrassed, Donghwa stopped crying as quickly as possible, wiped his nose with a sheepish expression, and looked around the room.
“Nice room.”
Geun-yeong, who had pulled up a desk chair to sit across from Donghwa with a small table between them, only showed a slight smile without saying anything. Donghwa saw a face that seemed to smile but quickly clouded over. It was a familiar face. And now he felt sorry for only just realizing that his friend’s smile wasn’t a genuine one. As the silence grew awkward, he asked:
“Is something wrong?”
“What would be wrong? Nothing.”
Geun-yeong leaned forward and stretched his fingers across the table. He began writing letters. Confused at first, Donghwa followed his finger, then concentrated on reading what Geun-yeong was writing on the table.
C… C… T… V…
The moment he understood the meaning of the written letters, Donghwa’s eyes widened, and he looked around using only his eyeballs. Geun-yeong pointed with his finger to the left side near his neck. Donghwa followed the direction of his finger. In the corner of the ceiling was a black device shaped like an upside-down rice bowl. It was a dome-shaped camera with no blind spots.
What, what the hell is this!
Donghwa couldn’t believe there was a surveillance camera directly in front of him, but he had to accept it. And he realized that Geun-yeong had deliberately sat with his back to that camera.
W-why surveillance? Why do this? Is it Professor Ji’s doing, or Ms. Yeom Eunyeong’s? Or is it that ajumma from earlier?
“After the semester break, all the stress I’ve been under from studying hit me at once,” Geun-yeong said in a louder voice than usual, clearly speaking for whoever had installed the surveillance camera.
“Oh? Yeah, uh, same here. Yeah. Right. That’s true.”
Having grasped the situation, Donghwa responded with an equally loud voice. And he worried that the sound of his heart, beating as loudly as his raised voice, might be audible outside.
‘There’s a bigger problem than him running away. I can’t tell you now, but you’ll find out soon.’
He remembered what the detective had said. His words were true. Someone was monitoring them with a camera. Whoever in this house was doing it, it was a serious problem.
‘You need to help Geun-yeong.’
Then he remembered the phone the detective had asked him to deliver. The phone was in his right pants pocket. He became intensely aware of it. His leg on the side with the pocket containing the phone began to tingle with tension. He started sweating with worry about how to take it out and hand it over. Looking around to think of a solution, he asked something he wasn’t actually curious about.
“Are you really not going to do the volunteer work?”
“No. I’m planning to go on a two-week training program at the end of February.”
Donghwa moved his eyes to indicate the surveillance camera and asked:
“With the professor?”
Are you asking if the professor installed that?
“…Yeah.”
It was shocking. It would have been shocking if it was Ms. Yeom Eunyeong or the helper ajumma, but to think that the respected professor had done such a thing was simply unbelievable. Whether Geun-yeong had been under constant surveillance or if it started after he ran away, it was a shocking fact either way.
Donghwa found it difficult to control his expression. But he had to. Especially since he was facing that camera head-on. While managing his expression, he kept thinking. How on earth should he hand over this phone?
He thought he might be able to avoid the camera by going beside the bed or under the desk, but the very act of going there and coming back would look unnatural. If he crouched down beside the bed or under the desk, they would surely become suspicious, wondering what he was doing there or what they had exchanged.
After pondering, Donghwa moved closer to the table. He moved close enough for the table top to cover his pants pocket and said:
“By the way, are Lee Sebin and Choi Daehan dating?”
He took out the phone, attached it to the underside of the table, and pushed it. With his eyes, he quickly indicated downward twice. Catching on, Geun-yeong, with anxious eyes darting around, said:
“Ah… really? They don’t seem like a good match.”
Geun-yeong also leaned forward. He lowered his right hand under the table and stretched his fingers as far as possible.
“Sebin isn’t interested, but I think Daehan keeps pursuing her.”
“I see…”
Afraid it might be noticed, both Donghwa and Geun-yeong had to stretch their arms without lowering them completely. Geun-yeong’s fingertips touched something. As he stretched further to grab it, there was a knock. Knock, knock.
Donghwa was so startled that his hair stood on end, and he accidentally let go of the phone he was barely holding with his fingertips. In a moment of crisis where a loud noise would have been made if the phone hit the floor, Donghwa hunched his shoulders, and Geun-yeong extended his foot to catch the phone. There was no loud sound.
But the problem was the person who had just opened the door and entered. The table was placed directly in the line of sight from the doorway. The person who stood looking at the feet of the two sitting across from each other at the table was the helper ajumma, carrying a tray with fruit and tea.
The camera might not see it, being blocked by Geun-yeong’s body, but from the ajumma’s diagonal position, she could clearly see the phone resting on Geun-yeong’s foot. Severely tense and flustered, Geun-yeong and Donghwa couldn’t move a finger.
The ajumma with the unreadable expression approached. She set the tray on the table. She picked up a fork and handed it to Donghwa. Donghwa silently took the fork and bowed his head at an odd angle. Then the helper picked up another fork and extended it toward Geun-yeong. Toward his chest.
As Geun-yeong, looking at the fork extended toward his chest, raised his hand from under the table to take it, the fork fell before his hand could reach it.
It was intentional. Both Geun-yeong and Donghwa saw that she deliberately dropped the fork.
She didn’t make a fuss with words like “oh no” or “what should I do.” The helper silently bent down, and while picking up the fork, she also picked up the phone that was barely hidden by Geun-yeong’s clasped legs. She placed the phone on his thigh, raising it along his leg so it wouldn’t be visible to the camera. Then she said:
“I will bring a new fork.”
The helper left with the fork, and the door closed again.
Geun-yeong took the phone from his thigh and slipped it under his clothes. He tucked it into the belt he wore to hold his insulin pump.
The two resumed talking about the ill-matched Sebin and Daehan. Tense and nervous, Donghwa cleared his trembling, cracking voice with fake coughs while chattering non-stop. He laughed loudly throughout his forced cheerful tone. He strained his eyes, which rippled as if they would burst if touched, and kept laughing.
Geun-yeong conveyed his gratitude through his eyes as he listened to Donghwa’s stories. He too tried not to cry as he nodded. With Donghwa making such an effort, he felt he shouldn’t cry.
When Woo Donghwa returned to the car where Kyung Jiho was waiting, he burst into tears. He sobbed that though he delivered the phone, there were surveillance cameras everywhere. There was even a camera in the bathroom, so he came out right after going in. Now he needed to pee badly, he cried, then began wailing, “That kid probably won’t be able to make a call! What should we do?”
While Donghwa wailed, Kyung Jiho, who had worn a bitter expression as if he had expected this, soon hardened his face. With only coldness remaining in his expression, he opened his phone, sent a text message, and said:
“He’s a smart kid. He’ll find a way to call.”
Hearing this, Donghwa stopped crying and asked:
“Can’t I report that he’s being held captive, and you go in and get him out?”
“We could do that.”
“But?”
But why aren’t you doing that?
“If he were the type who could get out that way, he would have walked out on his own.”
“Wha-at?”
Since it was completely incomprehensible, Woo Donghwa asked again with a face wrinkled and wet from crying, then hiccupped. And he asked again.
“Wha-at?”
Why didn’t he go in and bring him out? No, why didn’t that guy come out on his own?
Kyung Jiho, who couldn’t tell him everything right now, just laughed silently. It was a smile that couldn’t quite hide the bitterness. After severely messing up the hair of this guy who, contrary to his expectations, even knew how to cry for a friend, making him look even uglier, he said:
“Just go home for now. You did well today. Udong,”
“It’s Hwa.”
“Right, Udong.”
* * *
After Donghwa left, Geun-yeong sat at his desk. He took out the original English copy of “Internal Medicine” that the man had given him to read before going for training, and opened it. Then he took out his phone from his belt and positioned it as close to his body as possible. There was one text message. It was from Detective Kyung.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
