FBF chapter 4 part 1

It was not long after the school vacation had begun. Even before dawn, the outside was strangely noisy. As soon as I opened the door, I locked eyes with my grandfather, who was coming out of the opposite room. His usually stoic face was unusually pale. If his tightly closed mouth hadn’t been there, I would have worried that something might have happened to him.

“Where are you going?”

My grandfather turned to look at me. He was dressed for going out, even though the cuckoo clock in the living room was indicating that it was barely 2 AM.

“Is something wrong…?”

I rubbed my eyes and sat up. With a slight delay, my gaze landed on the yard, where a few familiar townspeople were grouped together, people I had seen a few times passing by.

My grandfather silently stared at me for a while, as if contemplating whether to say something to me.

“Elder.”

At that moment, someone in the yard called for my grandfather, and he broke eye contact. He didn’t ponder any further.

“Stay at home.”

That was the end of what he said. As soon as my grandfather stepped down into the yard, people surrounded him. A woman who approached him was sobbing loudly with a handkerchief pressed to her mouth. An unknown man beside her had a sorrowful expression as well. Even in the dark, the townspeople’s faces were visibly flushed, as if they had either been crying or were about to cry. I sensed that something was wrong. All the townspeople standing in the yard, including my grandfather, were wearing black clothes, as if they were preparing to attend a funeral.

I heard the rusty front gate creaking open. I pushed away the desk where I’d been sitting, thinking my grandfather might be returning. After all, it was somewhat relieving since I had been unable to focus on studying due to the early morning scene.

“Grandfather?”

But when I stepped out into the yard, the scene I encountered was not what I expected. The person who timidly came through the gate was not my grandfather but a school friend I had seen for the first time since the break began.

“You… are crying?”

As soon as Kang Youngsoo heard this question, he burst into tears.

“My mom, sniff, said that since your grandfather is still at the funeral home, you also… sniff, must not have eaten, huh, so this….”

“…I understand. You don’t have to explain anymore.”

Only then did Kang Youngsoo stop talking. He looked exhausted and as if he couldn’t say more. I picked up my chopsticks, shifting my gaze from his face, which had turned a mottled red from crying, to the food he had spread on the table.

These side dishes were what Kang Youngsoo’s mother had prepared for him to eat alone at home. Feeling the need to show gratitude for her kindness, I diligently ate. While I was eating, Kang Youngsoo buried his face in his knees and said nothing. He was completely different from the usual Kang Youngsoo who would chatter endlessly during the 20-minute bus ride from school to this town. I thought of the people I had seen in the yard early that morning and the word “funeral home” that had just left Kang Youngsoo’s lips.

Someone had died overnight. It must have been a townsperson known to both my grandfather and Kang Youngsoo. Although I hadn’t been here for even a month, I felt solemn thinking it could have been someone I had crossed paths with in the town. After a while, I gathered my thoughts and made eye contact with Kang Youngsoo.

“…Why didn’t you go?”

Kang Youngsoo slowly lifted his head. Hesitating, I added softly, “To the funeral home.”

“……”

“It seemed like you knew that person….”

I didn’t know who that person was, so my grandfather must have deliberately kept me away from going to the funeral home, but seeing Kang Youngsoo, who was crying beside me instead of there, piqued my curiosity. Kang Youngsoo blinked as if he was processing my question. He did that just once, but tears brimmed in his eyes. My heart sank at that moment, and I hurriedly opened my mouth.

“If it’s hard to talk about, you don’t have to. I was just curious. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. Please don’t cry.”

Flustered, I waved my hands and handed him tissues, but Kang Youngsoo kept crying. It felt like he had received a cue that it was okay to cry, and that made me feel guilty. I felt like I had poked him with an insensitive question. Every tear that rolled down his round cheeks felt like a reprimand to me.

It wasn’t until about 10 minutes later that Kang Youngsoo managed to calm down. His eyes that had been pressed against the tissue were swollen to the point where you could barely see his pupils. Attempting to suppress his sobs, Kang Youngsoo spoke with great difficulty.

“My mom told me… that if I cried like this here, sniff, it would make Lee Jihoon feel worse. So, she said to calm down and come back….”

Lee Jihoon? The sudden mention of the name felt strangely out of place. Noticing that I had flinched, Kang Youngsoo burst into tears again.

“What am I going to do… I miss my aunt already….”

As I watched him open his mouth and start to cry again, my heart dropped. The information I had just heard spun around in my head. The person Kang Youngsoo called his aunt was related to Lee Jihoon. It didn’t take long for me to realize that this person was Lee Jihoon’s mother.

I couldn’t ask anything more and shut my mouth. Even though it was the death of someone I had never met, just knowing that this was the family of a boy I had talked to a few times felt like my heart was dropping into an unfathomable abyss.

* * *

As soon as the opening ceremony was over, I was called to the staff room. The third-grade homeroom teacher seemed to be much more concerned about students’ grades compared to the second-grade homeroom teacher. This was perhaps to be expected. The teachers at the school I attended in Seoul were even stricter. Since the second year, they had warned us repeatedly that we needed to establish a study habit like a high school student if we wanted to get into a good university. While the level of pressure might differ, it was safe to say that this place was not entirely free from such stress under Korea’s entrance exam environment.

The fact that I was automatically made class president and another girl the vice president, without any voting at all, showed that. I glanced at the girl standing beside me, who also had an awkward expression, before turning back to the homeroom teacher.

“Seon-uk, I heard you were number one in the entire school back in Seoul.”

It seemed to be the first time hearing that news, as I felt curious gazes from the side. I lowered my eyes and nodded vaguely.

“Since you’re so good, it looks like our class will have the first-ranked student.”

With a broad smile, my homeroom teacher patted my back.

“Let’s keep doing well, our class president and vice president. I have high hopes for you.”

After the awkward meeting ended, I returned to class. I placed the handout that the homeroom teacher had given me on the teacher’s desk and scanned the room. As expected, there were more unfamiliar faces than familiar ones. I thought it would have been nice if Kang Youngsoo had been in the same class as me. I swallowed that useless thought with a sigh.

However, the homeroom teacher’s arbitrary announcement in the morning that I would be the class president seemed to have made some effect, as I gathered a fair amount of attention just by standing at the front of the class. I slowly opened my mouth while glancing around the room.

“Please focus for a moment. The homeroom teacher has something to pass on.”

As soon as I started talking, the class quieted down. Any interest is likely to disappear quickly, so I recalled the lessons I had learned from countless times as class president and raised the handout I had brought so that everyone could see.

“This is a career counseling form, and you need to fill it out in consultation with your parents for your high school advancement. Please submit it by this Friday, and I think it would be best if one person from each group came to take it and pass it back.”

When I mentioned that it was related to high school advancement, the students who had been quiet for a moment soon became rowdy again. However, seeing that those sitting at the front of each section came up to collect the paper without any complaints made me think I didn’t need to be overly concerned. I nodded at Yoo Hye-eun, who was standing next to me, signaling that it seemed to be going well.

Creak—

I wasn’t the only one who turned my head at the sound of the door opening. The students who had been chatting about various things while looking at the paper became quiet in an instant.

The person who opened the front door was the only familiar face among the many unfamiliar ones in this class. However, I had to stare at him as if it were the first time I was seeing him. It was indeed my first time seeing him not in a baseball uniform.

“……”

This was also the first time I had seen him looking so delinquent. Although our eyes met, Lee Jihoon turned away as if he hadn’t seen anything. Even after arriving late to school, the nonchalance he exhibited while walking toward the back of the class was still there.

“Hey, Jihoon!”

The students crowded at the back greeted Lee Jihoon with loud voices. In contrast to most of the class having gathered their career counseling forms, several people among them had already folded theirs into paper airplanes. I turned my head away after seeing Lee Jihoon casually sit on a desk, casually nudging the shoulder of one of his friends.

Once I became somewhat familiar with the town’s layout, my grandfather often sent me on errands. Usually, these errands involved bringing something to the community center or delivering messages. That day, I was on an errand to bring two bottles of fish sauce to the women who were making kimchi at the community center.

“Is she alright? She was all worried about not going to the training camp, saying she wanted to be by your side, and then—”

“I heard the baseball training isn’t something they can just skip.”

“Well, when I saw the kids at the funeral home, my heart felt like it was a mess…”

“Is there anyone who isn’t like that? Those who are big enough still cry like kids when they see such things.”

“But what’s the point of saying that now, after it’s already happened? It’s not like they could have chosen to go. They fell sick and passed away.”

“I’m not saying that to bring them down. I still can’t believe it. I feel like Jihoon’s mom will walk into the yard at any moment calling for him.”

The voices I overheard while standing in front of the community center lingered in my ears as I made my way home from my errand.

“I heard he quit.”

“Seriously? Baseball?”

“Yeah. No matter how much the class president tried to say something to him, he wouldn’t listen and just made it clear he was done.”

The vacation had ended. Lee Jihoon had quit baseball.

Even though I hadn’t even properly written anything down, the Lee Jihoon I knew had completely disappeared.

* * *

Lee Jihoon, they say… Lee Jihoon is…

Even though we were in the same class, I received more news about Lee Jihoon through hearsay than by seeing him myself. He often vanished during breaks and I couldn’t spot him on the way home, which kept the school buzzing.

Whether it was because he had quit baseball, started hanging out with delinquent types, or because he had grown his hair long and became even more rowdy, I couldn’t tell. It seemed as though various things, unable to be pinpointed to one, were creating a synergistic effect.

“Lee Jihoon is friends with some older guy, so he’s been getting into fights. He’s dating some girl too.” The different rumors, which I couldn’t identify the source of, coalesced into one direction. It was not a good one. Even though Lee Jihoon had stepped off the train of being a baseball player, he ignored trains at the station and traveled down the tracks alone. It was a deliberate derailment.

“Just leave him alone,” Kang Youngsoo frowned. I had only seen him smile, so it was the first time I realized he could make such a face. The irritation in his voice had a kind of a sting to it. It seemed like he was déjà vu to the point of being fed up with it all. Kang Youngsoo glanced at me and managed to regain his expression while flipping through a comic book.

“He’s not even in the mood to listen to anybody right now.”

“……”

“He’s just getting himself further into it because he doesn’t know what to do about it, according to my mom. My aunt…”

Kang Youngsoo paused and sniffled. It was as though he was subtly hinting that it was uncertain that even after three months, he could have completely forgotten someone, and Lee Jihoon would surely never forget.

“Regardless, quitting baseball and feeling mixed up must be tough for him. But it won’t take long. He has his uncle and all. He’ll come back soon if given a little time.”

Kang Youngsoo said that Lee Jihoon had been friends with him since birth. They both were born in this town and had grown up together. So, given that his answer came from someone who knew him the longest and the best, it was believable. It would mean he genuinely did his best, even with his overwhelming nosiness. I chose not to speak anymore; I was not in a position to say anything more. If anything, the only connection I had to Lee Jihoon was taking the same bus in the morning. Even that was recent and due to his increased tardiness, I couldn’t even remember when I last saw him.

Sometimes in class, I would look down at the playground and catch sight of Lee Jihoon among the tardy students. He would always be punished along with those boys who wore their T-shirts on the outside of their uniforms. I imagined he must be used to this since he had endured a lot of conditioning in the baseball club. However, he was running on the playground in silence, maintaining a steady pace among the kids who were rebellious towards the student affairs teacher and being a nuisance. He emitted a scent of planned derailment.

Maybe that’s why I found that scene irritating. It felt as if he wanted me to notice him.

“I heard you’re in danger of getting points deducted. They said that if you keep this up, it could affect your student affairs record.”

While waiting at the bus stop, I said that on purpose to Lee Jihoon, who showed up yawning. I had overheard that rumor while running an errand to the staff room. Teachers usually discussed this kind of thing only in the staff room, so it was a piece of information Lee Jihoon wouldn’t have known. As soon as Lee Jihoon heard what I said, he frowned deeply. In the midst of all this, he didn’t even look at me. His fingers typing away at his phone were quick—perhaps he was in the middle of a game or texting someone.

“So?”

His short reply felt careless. Yet, it carried enough tone to suggest, “What are you even meddling in this for?” I fell silent, and it was then that Lee Jihoon briefly lifted his gaze. Almost in an instant, he looked away with an expressionless face. The chilly vibe I could see made me want to say something but then go quiet again.

Lee Jihoon used to tell me the bus timetable, but now he felt like a completely different person. It took me a moment to process that realization.

As I watched the bus approach, my heart led me to believe that I had done all I could. It was time to switch off, just like he wanted.

That day, as always, Lee Jihoon was running on the playground. This time it was due to the violation of hair regulations. Was it because he was notably unattractive today or was it because he had dyed his hair yellow? The beret made him look exactly like a delinquent. I watched him running two laps around the playground and then withdrew my gaze from him to focus back on my math workbook.

* * *

Thanks to tagging along with my grandfather when fitting for the uniforms, I found the bookstore without difficulty as soon as I arrived at the entrance of the busy district. I needed to buy study guides.

“That’ll be 19,000 won for both.”

I hesitated when the bookstore employee said that, pulling out my wallet. I wasn’t sure if it was okay to use my parents’ card, which I had always used when buying study guides. Even though it had been nearly three months since I had come to my grandfather’s house, I had not received any contact from my parents. Thinking back, I recalled that we hadn’t seen each other in over a month while living in the same house; it felt like it was no big deal. Yet, living separately like this made the fact seem larger than life. While my grandfather had brought me here, sometimes it felt like I was abandoned. If I thought about my dad’s face which I had last seen, maybe he considered himself abandoned as well. Could I really use the card he had given me in this situation? In the end, I took out cash from my wallet instead of using the card.

On my way out, I stopped by the supermarket. I remembered my grandfather’s work gloves that he used to fix things around the house had worn out. I also bought some sponges and dish detergent. Even in March, it was still quite cold, and just wandering around the city made my nose feel chilly. I tightened the coat I was wearing over my uniform and walked towards the station. I needed to be home before my grandfather returned from work; he might come looking for me.

However, I had to stop just short of my destination.

“……”

“……”

It was just a brief moment when our eyes met. Among the people densely packed in the narrow alley between the buildings, Lee Jihoon stood out sharply. It might have been because he was the only one who had worn both a proper upper and lower part of the uniform, unlike others who had only worn a single article for appearances.

Perhaps it was also because he was brazenly smoking a cigarette while dressed in that uniform. A few days ago, I had come across Lee Jihoon while emptying the trash bins at the incineration site, and as he passed by, the smoke had hit my nose. This time, Lee Jihoon didn’t seem to show surprise when he brushed by me; instead, he avoided my gaze, as if he were trying not to be seen by someone who shouldn’t be caught. The moment the emotion that briefly brushed across Lee Jihoon’s face was embarrassment, I froze.

“……”

I turned my gaze away from Lee Jihoon and scanned the people filling the alley. As expected, I didn’t know any of their faces. Among the crowd, Lee Jihoon looked the youngest. The arms of those around him, casually hitting each other’s heads, were covered in tattoos. Lee Jihoon’s yellow hair, which I had seen running around the playground, was on a different level than this. Fear struck me.

Growing up between my lawyer father and prosecutor mother, it was easy for me to visit courtrooms. I remembered when we visited the juvenile protection court during a tour, I had seen an offender who had his hair dyed yellow, like Lee Jihoon. I suddenly recalled the repeated phrases in the apology letter he had been reading:

“I met some bad friends,” and “I did something wrong just to fit in with my friends…”

Now, Lee Jihoon was standing at the end of the alley, just a step away from reaching the main road. So, maybe chatting and smoking with others in the alley wasn’t wrong. But belonging there could only pull him in deeper. Eventually, he might find it hard to escape. Evil tends to hide away into deeper shadows.

“I heard Lee Jihoon has been hanging out with that group. With Park Cheol-seung and his crew.”

“Whoa, was the rumor true about them giving him a lighter sentence?”

“What a solid connection. But isn’t that crowd a bit too much? The rumors are filthy.”

The voices that had curled into my ear at the mere mention of Lee Jihoon mingled seamlessly with the scene before me. When I caught sight of a hulking man standing deep in the alley, I didn’t hesitate anymore and stepped forward.

“What are you doing here?”

Instead of heading toward the station I originally intended to go to, I stepped into the alley. I approached Lee Jihoon, who stood at the very edge of the alley, as if I were a buffer. Lee Jihoon froze upon spotting me. He seemed taken aback, perhaps because he had expected me to walk right by. For a moment, Lee Jihoon quickly changed his expression. The look was similar to the one he wore when I had seen him that morning; his brow furrowed as if he were to threaten me.

“Do you know me?”

After Lee Jihoon finished speaking, I noticed that he was casting quick glances down the alley. I realized that he had more people to worry about in this alley than I might have thought. The voices that had filled the alley became slightly quieter when I stepped in front of him. Even with my eyes fixed solely on Lee Jihoon, I could feel the gaze of others on us.

I deliberately didn’t look around the alley. Instead, I kept my focus solely on Lee Jihoon. After all, the only person I wanted to save from this alley was him. This focus seemed to only further perplex him.