FBF chapter 10 part 2

The rain was intensifying. Water droplets repeatedly slipped down my outstretched arm. Downwards, even further down. The rain probably wouldn’t stop until I got home. I let out a deep sigh. It was the moment I had to acknowledge that the sultry and hot monsoon was creeping up to my chin.

“So.”

-What? Oh, what’s Dad doing? I don’t know. He’s probably drinking somewhere again.

“No. Not that.”

-…..

“Are you okay, you?”

Choi Hyuk-jun’s flustered breathing created a damp atmosphere in my ears. After a brief silence, he let out an awkward laugh. It started to shrink as if he had realized it, and eventually, it was almost inaudible. Choi Hyuk-jun quietly muttered.

-Of course, I should be fine. It’s not the first time.

“……”

-Things were like this when my mom was around too. Back then, it was worse than now.

I pulled my outstretched hand back in. Shaking my damp arm in the air, I glanced at my phone screen. There were no new messages. My grandfather was probably still working, and Lee Ji-hoon and Kang Young-soo should be at their academy. Everyone must have umbrellas, anyway. They shouldn’t be caught in the rain. With thoughts I couldn’t really place, I pressed my phone back to my ear. Choi Hyuk-jun broke the silence.

-The kids left their MP3 players and gaming consoles behind. It’s newer than yours. Want it?

“……”

-I’m asking because I’m going to throw them away anyway. By tomorrow, the house will be completely cleaned out, so even if I want to give it to you, I can’t.

Choi Hyuk-jun made it sound like he really didn’t want to be alone. I turned around without taking the phone away from my ear. I saw myself making an unknown expression in the mirror. I didn’t take my eyes off the lonely face in the reflection and muttered.

“Where’s home?”

Why do lonely voices all sound the same? They become impossible to ignore.

“Didn’t you have an umbrella?”

He asked bluntly, leaning the umbrella towards the door, while his own hair was also getting wet. I recalled the black car I saw right after stepping out in front of the school. It was the car that Choi Hyuk-jun had sent to pick me up, insisting I come to his place. Even though it was the first time seeing me open the back door, the square head in front didn’t turn to look back at all until I got dropped off at home. Watching those massive, angular shoulders that didn’t move even while turning the steering wheel, I finally understood why Choi Hyuk-jun always referred to himself as a gangster. If someone could live buried among such people and forget that fact, that would be a real problem.

When I asked where home was, I expected to hear he would just cut me off by saying I would never be able to find it anyway, but Choi Hyuk-jun’s house was strangely hidden. It almost looked like a villa built in a secluded location on purpose. It began with the fact that I could only reach the house after passing through a nicely paved path amid the forest, which couldn’t possibly be privately owned. The pond and the three-tier fountain in the yard didn’t resemble an ordinary home. The house was filled with things that didn’t exude any sense of liveliness, and the exterior looked polished even though there were no neighbors around. It seemed like a house that was suddenly built where no house was supposed to be.

Perhaps because of the hastily constructed house, Choi Hyuk-jun didn’t seem to have any real affection for it either. Just watching him kick open the white house’s front gate was enough to illustrate that. There was no one at home. The fact that it was a deliberate absence was evident even from a glance at the living room. Choi Hyuk-jun’s complaints weren’t exaggerated. The living room looked as if a thief had broken in and wreaked havoc. The chaos was marked by an obvious malice. While I froze at the threshold, uncertain whether to step inside, Choi Hyuk-jun walked through the mess as if he knew it well. He lightly jumped over the shattered TV and the toppled glass display cases, disappearing into a room attached to the stairs.

“Hey. Over here.”

Not long after, he returned, throwing a mix of shapes that barely distinguished between wire and the main body at me. In an instant, I was holding an almost new game console, a phone, and an MP3 player that looked like they had barely been used. After briefly setting them down to lift my head, I spoke.

“Why? Is it not good?”

Choi Hyuk-jun’s eyes were fixed on the things I had just set down. Since that was probably why I had come all the way here, he seemed anxious that I might not like them. I recalled the times Kang Young-soo and Lee Ji-hoon would sigh each time they tried to pay me back when they bought me something, back when I had just arrived in Taean. Unlike them, I hadn’t the willingness to explain such things, so I didn’t answer and instead asked something else.

“Is there any ramen? I’m hungry.”

I caught sight of a broken clock behind him. I wondered what kind of force would be needed to smash such a large pendulum clock. I collected my gaze from the shards scattered across the floor and moved toward what appeared to be the kitchen.

Ultimately, there was no ramen in Choi Hyuk-jun’s house. While I opened every cabinet in the kitchen, Choi Hyuk-jun, who was standing awkwardly behind me, muttered that his stepmother hated instant food. By the time I found a flyer for a Chinese restaurant wedged between newspapers and made the call, it was already night.

Two jja-jangmyeon and tangsuyuk. Even with the jja-jangmyeon in front of him, Choi Hyuk-jun hesitated. Don’t you want to eat? The moment I asked, he pretended to open his chopsticks. This was something I said thinking of him, who hadn’t eaten in all this chaos, but faced with the jja-jangmyeon, I was actually hungry, so I picked up the chopsticks. I noticed the delivery person who was annoyed, wondering why the house was in such a mess, but the jja-jangmyeon was all soggy. Still, as I casually stirred with the chopsticks, it was edible enough. After about three bites, Choi Hyuk-jun spoke. His eyes were still glued to the jja-jangmyeon, not on me.

“Were you like that with him too?”

I paused mid-reach for the pickled radish at his sudden question. Choi Hyuk-jun’s gaze returned to me.

“So that guy is pretending to be nice in front of you, huh?”

That guy. That “fellow.” There weren’t many subjects Choi Hyuk-jun and I could discuss together. It was clear he was talking about Lee Ji-hoon. I broke off eye contact and responded bluntly.

“He doesn’t pretend in front of me.”

“……”

“It’s not a pretense; he’s changed. While you weren’t watching.”

It was only when I finished speaking that I noticed the strange expression on Choi Hyuk-jun’s face. But one thing was clear: he disagreed with me. I put down my chopsticks. The words Choi Hyuk-jun had just said brought back memories of Lee Ji-hoon from middle school. Lee Ji-hoon’s hurried hand that had pushed me away in the alley. Me, who barely held on instead of getting pushed away. The moment I sensed that if I didn’t do that, I would never see Lee Ji-hoon again.

Funny that in looking back at that moment, I realized this situation facing Choi Hyuk-jun was similar yet entirely different. That memory pained my heart just by including Lee Ji-hoon’s crying face, but even standing in this chaos now, I felt sorry for Choi Hyuk-jun and didn’t feel anything more than that.

Having no intention of hiding that fact from Choi Hyuk-jun, I spoke honestly.

“To be honest, I don’t think of you as my friend.”

I expected that, but Choi Hyuk-jun didn’t even flinch at my words. He must have thought similarly. I could disclose family matters that I had never spoken openly to anyone about, but the nature of our relationship remained strange, especially since we hadn’t even exchanged phone numbers. The fact that Choi Hyuk-jun knew my number felt unexpectedly strange. I met his gaze. Although we had locked eyes many times before, I realized it was the first time I truly spoke sincerely.

Perhaps it was because it was raining, and once again, Choi Hyuk-jun felt abandoned.

I had probably been in a similar situation before.

“I still think you can change. You can change your environment or the people around you. Anything. I believe you can become different from how you are now.”

“……”

“Don’t live like your dad.”

“……”

“To avoid resembling someone you hate, you have to put in twice the effort. If you look at it coldly, the wandering you’ve been doing isn’t much different from showing that you’re just as bad as that person.”

Before the jja-jangmyeon arrived, Choi Hyuk-jun suddenly piped up, claiming he would show me his room upstairs. He pointed, asking, “Hey. Do you see that?” When I looked at the place he was motioning to, I saw a small door. Aside from being in a corner, it seemed like an ordinary door with no peculiarities. Upon confirming my puzzled look, Choi Hyuk-jun asked, “If you open that door, there’s a staircase leading down to the basement.” He inquired once more, “Do you want to go down?” Choi Hyuk-jun had a knowing look in his eyes, as if he already knew what lay beyond. The strange sense of déjà vu I had felt upon entering this house rode up my spine. With everything I had seen—the drugs, the gangsters, the structure of the house and the furniture—there was nothing particularly odd about the wealthy family’s appearance. Was it really hiding what it tried to mimic in that hidden space? Choi Hyuk-jun stubbornly waited for my response. Standing two steps above me, looking down at me, I slowly shook my head. “No.” For a moment, I thought Choi Hyuk-jun appeared relieved at my response. However, he didn’t give me the chance to confirm that fact and turned away. I called out to his back. “Don’t open it either.” For a moment he hesitated, but then, as if he hadn’t heard anything, he climbed the stairs. I remembered he neither acted like he hadn’t heard me nor answered me at all.

“There’s no need for the method of living differently to be studying, so give it a try. Be a bit more proactive than now.”

At that moment and now, Choi Hyuk-jun didn’t respond. He snorted and averted his gaze.

“To me, you’re more suited to being a teacher than a doctor. You seem to want to teach people whenever there’s a chance.”

Choi Hyuk-jun, who stuck his chopsticks into the jja-jangmyeon, didn’t lift his head until none of the noodles remained. I could see rain tapering off through the small window in the kitchen. As if we had made a pact, we didn’t say a word until the meal was finished.

I didn’t stay long at Choi Hyuk-jun’s house. The square uncle who had dropped me off earlier at Choi Hyuk-jun’s place picked me up again and dropped me off in front of the study room. The clock on the dashboard indicated 10 PM as I confirmed the time before going in. It was a somewhat awkward hour to text Lee Ji-hoon, asking if he had eaten dinner. However, it seemed the rain had stopped falling. He would’ve come home, I thought. Since I would see him on the way home anyway, I stuffed my phone into the front pocket of my bag.

There was quite a distance between the village and the study room. The kind study room uncle provided a service where he would take studying students home in his van until he closed the study room. Originally, this service was only for the nearby apartment complexes, but since he happened to know my grandfather, he included me and Lee Ji-hoon. It seemed that his fondness for my grandfather was stronger than I realized when he mentioned I resembled him upon seeing me. After Lee Ji-hoon and I became second-years, it was a beneficial arrangement because our return times had gotten significantly later. Naturally, we blended into the group that returned the latest. Eventually, I even recognized the faces of the students sharing the van with us.

Today, the faces in the van were familiar. I halted, noticing that I couldn’t see Lee Ji-hoon, who must have already sat beside me in what had become our designated seats. Being someone who always got off before me and was below the English vocabulary book, it puzzled me even more. I thought he would arrive soon and repeatedly craned my neck to look up at the study room. I checked my phone again but didn’t receive any messages.

Before I knew it, the clock in the van signaled it was 12:05 AM. All the senior students had boarded. The situation was one where we could leave as soon as Lee Ji-hoon got on. When the uncle who finished tidying up the study room climbed aboard, I felt an unnecessary tension rise within me.

“Are we almost there?”

He inquired through the rearview mirror, clearly confident that everyone was on board. I leaned toward the passenger seat, speaking urgently.

“Um… one person hasn’t shown up yet.”

“Huh? Who?”

“My friend. Just a moment, I’ll try to contact him.”

I pulled out my phone and began typing a message to Lee Ji-hoon.

No. Should I just call? What if he’s sleeping? I brought the phone to my ear but then paused, locking eyes with a senior who was sitting across from me. It was a third-year student I had seen several times in the study room hallway. He lowered his gaze back to his SAT vocabulary study guide, then murmured with a blank expression.

“That kid didn’t come to the study room today.”

“…What?”

He looked up to confirm me. Adding information, he said in a neutral-tone voice, “His seat was empty the whole time. It was like that when we left.”

“Ah….”

“……”

“…Thank you.”

It was only when I unintentionally blurted a foolish answer that I realized why he seemed familiar. He was the senior in the same class as Lee Ji-hoon. The uncle, who finally gathered the situation, announced that he was about to depart and then turned off all the lights in the van. The seniors and sister, who were flipping through their vocabulary books, either closed their eyes or crossed their arms, trying to seize the opportunity to doze off for a moment.

Unlike them, I kept my gaze down. The van continued its route toward our village, but Lee Ji-hoon was still not responding. It was the first time since we started going to the same study room that this had happened.

Since I began returning home after midnight from the study room, my grandfather has been staying up later than usual. Leaving the bathroom, I approached the open door slightly more. My grandfather’s body, lying toward the living room, was rising and falling irregularly. I pulled the fan from the living room closer to my grandfather. As I slowly blinked, his eyes slowly focused on me just as I softly muttered.

“I’ve washed up. You should sleep soon.”

My grandfather turned his body slowly. With a sound that was hard to distinguish between a sigh or a moan, a blunt greeting followed.

“…I see.”

From when we first met, my grandfather’s hair had been white, but strangely, it felt like it turned whiter each year. I briefly looked at his hair, swaying in the gently blowing fan, feeling a gentle breeze, then tiptoed back to my room.

After hanging the towel I had draped over my head on the wall, I sat in a chair. On my desk was a bag filled with bread. It seemed likely that my grandfather had bought it. He would prepare snacks for me even if he didn’t know how late I would study, waiting until I washed up to go to bed. Red bean bread, soboro bread, and so on. Staring longingly at the black bag filled with bread I had never bought myself, I picked out a red bean bread.

I could brush my teeth again anyway.

Having done nothing but wash up since I got home, it was already nearing 1 AM. I blinked my dry eyes and turned on the desk lamp. I had to finish the study amount that I couldn’t fill, arriving late at the study room just because I was going to Choi Hyuk-jun’s house. Fortunately, tomorrow was Saturday, so it would be fine to study late.

After devouring the red bean bread in three bites, I leaned down toward the trash can to throw away the wrapper. As I did so, a glance fell on the phone plugged into the outlet beside it. The phone, which generally emitted only a red light while charging, was glowing a yellow hue. That was the color shown when there was an incoming call or text message.

How likely was it that the contact was from Lee Ji-hoon? Suddenly recalling how my phone had remained silent while I held onto it in the van, I let out a breath steeped in desolation. The feeling of being disappointed in something I hadn’t anticipated was strange. It made me think I didn’t want to experience that emotion again. I tried to consciously turn my attention away from my phone and grasped my mechanical pencil.

28. Drug addiction has been considered a complex and chronic…

I repeated in my mind as I pulled the workbook closer. The effort to break the sentence again did not last even a minute before I stopped. Each sentence that entered my sight bounced around in all directions.

“…Ha.”

In the end, I tossed my mechanical pencil. I had to admit that studying was out of the question until I checked my phone to see if I had a message from Lee Ji-hoon. With a resigned heart, I leaned down to grasp my phone. As I lightly pressed the hold button, the screen lit up. Indeed, there was a message.

The moment the number appeared instead of a saved name, my briefly inflated heart shrank. I knew right away that it was a message from Choi Hyuk-jun. After a moment of hesitation, I moved my hand and sent a simple reply of [ㅇㅇ]. I exited the messaging app. When I pressed on Choi Hyuk-jun’s message, a prompt popped up asking if I wanted to add a new contact. I registered the three letters of Choi Hyuk-jun’s name and turned off the screen.

There were only two people in this house, my grandfather asleep and me who hadn’t said a word, so the silence enveloped me. I leaned back in the chair, staring into space for a moment. I heard the sound of raindrops hitting the roof edge, whether it was the rain that had seemed to have paused earlier now starting up again.

“……”

In hindsight, Lee Ji-hoon wasn’t particularly good at checking messages. Last year, when we were freshmen, he didn’t even take his phone to school. He found it bothersome to bring his phone to school every day just to hand it in to the homeroom teacher, and if there were urgent matters, Kang Young-soo or his father would contact me instead, which is why he thought he didn’t need it. It was also feasible because he was mostly with me from the moment we left for school until we returned. A lot of things changed this year. We were no longer in the same class, and we didn’t go everywhere together like before. Since the new principal accepted proposals regarding cellphone usage this year, teachers no longer ordered students to hand over their phones, so it was only natural that Lee Ji-hoon began carrying his phone.

Still, I thought things hadn’t changed much since we always went home from the study room together. It wasn’t until facing this situation that I considered perhaps I was the only one who felt secure about that.

There would be more of these incidents in the future. Going to college, enlisting in the military, and finding jobs. Living arrangements would change, and daily routines would differ. Honestly, I couldn’t quite envision what we would look like continuing to be by each other’s side. Would I still be beside Lee Ji-hoon years later? While the people beside Lee Ji-hoon kept changing, would I be the only one standing still in that space? Watching someone else approach and stay by Lee Ji-hoon’s side. While wondering if, during the time Lee Ji-hoon didn’t contact me, he was with that person. Sometimes anxious about whether I would get a message, other times worrying that I might not hear from him.

“Are you happy?”

Could I, in fact, be happy?

“……”

I snapped back to reality when I felt something dribbling down my upper lip. I tossed my phone onto the desk and got up. After five minutes of wiping under my nose in front of the sink, the bleeding stopped. Just in case, I crumpled a tissue and stuck it in my nostrils, then returned to my desk. Even after finishing my studying and as I prepared to sleep, I didn’t check my phone again.

My upper lip felt itchy. Was it another nosebleed? Even without opening my eyes, I raised my hand to wipe it, but nothing came off on my hand. However, an unidentifiable itch still lingered all over my face. First, my cheek felt itchy, then my chin. The ongoing changes in points led me to suspect there might be a mosquito or fly hovering near my face. Speaking of which, had I lit a mosquito coil and slept last night? While pondering, I instinctively waved my hand in front of my face. Thankfully, perhaps due to my body twisting in defense, my cheek no longer felt itchy. Just as I decided to fall asleep again, my eyes suddenly shot open.

“Well, well, look at this.”

That voice certainly didn’t belong to a mosquito. In my line of view was Lee Ji-hoon. Is this a dream? I blinked a few times, still doubting, but I only witnessed Lee Ji-hoon’s expression growing more playful in real-time. In the midst of that, seeing the doggrass fluttering before my eyes as if teasing me made me realize what had been tickling my face moments earlier. I glanced around, still unsure if this was a dream, but hurriedly sat up. Rubbing my eyes, I noticed that Lee Ji-hoon, who had crouched next to my bedside, hadn’t disappeared. That was proof it wasn’t a dream.