Chapter 13
Perhaps because he had just finished telling me all about the Golden Alpha CEO’s outstanding pheromone control abilities, Juhan glanced at me, seemingly embarrassed by the lameness of his excuses.
“What I’m trying to say is, the CEO is just naturally a jerk, it’s not that he particularly dislikes Yeehyeon. That’s the point. It’s not like the CEO is being sarcastic because he hates someone. He treats everyone like that before he starts to like them.”
Hmm. I don’t know if this is supposed to be comforting, but it does seem like he’s not just tormenting ‘me in particular.’
As he and I lifted the folded-up table from both sides and moved it towards the railing, Juhan added,
“And someone like the CEO could probably shoot pheromones and force-feed them to a Beta if he really wanted to?”
Yuni frowned, leaning against the partition that divided the sections.
“Is pheromone some kind of superhero ultimate move? ‘Shoot and force-feed’?”
“If he’s determined to use it, it could be an ultimate move, you know. Hey, and you know what’s stronger than pheromones?”
As he said that, Juhan looked back and forth between Yuni and me. Neither of us had an answer. Juhan tilted his chin slightly and adopted a somewhat arrogant attitude.
“Taste, taste. There’s taste above pheromones. At first, I was a little out of it because of the Golden Alpha pheromones, but once I came to my senses, it wasn’t to my taste. My taste is…”
Juhan’s passionate lecture on his taste – a man in his late 30s whose facial features were starting to sag slightly, a man caught in the inertia between youth and middle age – continued.
I could guess to some extent from their conversation so far, but it seemed that Juhan’s romantic interests were definitely men. And he didn’t seem to be particularly trying to hide that inclination in front of me, who wasn’t even that close to him. I, too, had no intention of pushing him beyond a certain line in my mind for that reason.
Yuni shook her head, as if she had heard this story dozens of times. And as if there was no need to listen, she grabbed my wrist and went down the stairs.
When I thought about it, there was no reason to hate or dislike someone I had only seen twice. Like Ms. Han said, like Juhan and Yuni said, it was just that man’s consistent attitude towards strangers.
I wondered. What would it feel like to be ‘particularly’ hated by him?
I had a feeling that among the people who had come to the exhibition earlier, there were probably many who wanted to be ‘special’ to him, even if it meant being hated.
○
Kwon Juhan. 22 years old at the time.
He was enrolled in the Western Painting department of a pretty decent art school, though not one of the top ones, but after belatedly falling for the ‘Sex Pistols,he neglected his school life and devoted himself to the guitar for a year. Eventually, he joined an underground punk band and was living and sleeping in the band’s practice room after leaving home.
The reason he left home wasn’t because his parents, who had changed their course early on, starting in middle school, to send Juhan, who had no interest in studying, to a four-year university in Seoul at all costs, by registering him in a famous art academy and finding a talented instructor to give him lessons, opposed his band activities after achieving their goal.
It wasn’t that there was no opposition to his band activities, with his father smashing two guitars and his mother cutting off his allowance, but that wasn’t the decisive reason why Juhan, who had grown up relatively carefree, ended up sleeping on the practice room sofa.
As long as he got a university degree, his parents would have been reasonably satisfied, whether he played the guitar or did something else. But even his parents, who had almost given up on their son who wouldn’t do as they wanted, couldn’t accept that their son was engaging in perverted homo stuff.
An instructor he had dated for about a year during his art academy days had been stalking Juhan for several years (even during his military service), and when his proposals to get back together were repeatedly rejected, the other party retaliated by destroying Juhan’s life.
He sent the results of his stalking, which he had been accumulating all along, to Juhan’s parents.
From Juhan’s point of view, it was evidence of stalking, but from Juhan’s parents’ point of view, it was evidence that their son was a homo, and a homo with perverted sexual tastes that most people would find hard to accept.
It included photos they had taken together when they were dating, photos of him having intimate skinship with a one-night stand at a club, and even screenshots of extremely private dirty talk they had exchanged via messages when they were dating.
“Your son is a perverted homo who likes to insert into the anus of middle-aged men almost twice his age and make them cry with obscene words. I am someone whose life has been ruined by your son. Please make an effort to guide him at home so that no further victims are created.”
Along with a note that wasn’t even funny.
It was true that Juhan liked listless and timid men in their late thirties, and that he felt excited by touching their sexual shame in bed and seeing them cry uncontrollably at the pleasure that exceeded the bounds of common sense for the first time in their lives, but who had ruined whose life?
Wasn’t Juhan the one who had given him liberation and salvation by satisfying the perverted sexual desire that he had lived suppressing without any way to resolve it?
Those were the last words he wanted to hear from the person who had been more passionately aroused than anyone else in that play.
Formally, Juhan walked out of the house on his own two feet, but in reality, it was the same as being disowned.
His mother vomited on the sofa as she sat, without even having the wherewithal to run to the bathroom, and his father, who had never laid a hand on him before, even though he had smashed the guitar twice, lost his temper and beat Juhan indiscriminately.
Juhan had tried to argue in the end, saying that there was nothing wrong with consensual sex between people with the same sexual preferences, and that even parents had no right to interfere in their children’s sex lives, but in fact, Juhan understood his parents’ shock.
It would have been shocking even if they had seen sex photos and dirty talk between their child and a heterosexual lover, but it was understandable that they would feel like the sky was falling when they saw a photo of their son being fellated by an older man.
Even if I said, “I’m still Kwon Juhan, the son you knew,” his parents’ eyes were filled with contempt and anger when they looked at Juhan. Just being in the same house was hell. It seemed better to keep a distance from each other until they had recovered somewhat and could see the situation again.
He was working three part-time jobs a day to earn money to live, but they were all jobs he had found in a hurry, so the hourly wage wasn’t great compared to the intensity of the labor.
While sleeping uncomfortably every day on the sofa with torn cushions that someone had picked up after someone else had thrown it away while moving, Juhan thought.
Yeah, it wouldn’t be easy to find a young guy who would go somewhere at that age and say things like, “Why are you so horny, mister? Can’t you even control your bladder at your age?” and put a cotton swab in his urethra. So his desires must have been building up, and he must have been very angry.
If he thought he would understand that, he had the wrong Kwon Juhan.
In the meantime, Juhan had changed his number several times to avoid being stalked. The last time he changed his number, the stalker had sent him a video of himself masturbating via messenger, congratulating him on getting a new phone. Even then, Juhan had just deleted the message and blocked the ID.
He had come to the band’s live performances every time, and he had waited in front of his house and begged him to get back together on his knees several times. It wasn’t because he loved him. From the beginning, they had just enjoyed each other, and the other party had just been unable to find a partner who satisfied him as much as Juhan did.
I thought he would stop eventually. It was a mistake to just leave him alone, thinking of him as a slightly annoying extreme fan. He was timid and introverted, so I didn’t think he would do anything big even if he made a big deal out of it, but Juhan miscalculated.
A timid person would never wield a knife in this way in someone else’s life. He was just a gloomy and cowardly bastard. I could forgive him for being gloomy, but I couldn’t stand him being cowardly.
For about a month, Juhan stared at the mold stains on the ceiling of the practice room and thought every night about how to get revenge and relieve his anger.
Yeah, I don’t need anything else. I had to relieve my anger. I felt like I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night until the anger inside me was completely burned up and I poured that passion out on that bastard. To do that, Juhan, who was once the son of a well-to-do family, was prepared to live with a criminal record for the rest of his life. That was the spirit of punk.
The day his first paycheck came into his account. Juhan went to his favorite vintage shop.
It was a store that sold punk-style items that weren’t common in Korea. He was finally able to pick up the combat boots he had been eyeing. Juhan was planning to wear those boots to carry out his revenge.
“Hyung, how can you do this? I was supposed to buy them!”
“I’m sorry… but as you know, we’re not exactly running a business with a lot of spare cash. You marked them and didn’t come for a month, and if I don’t sell them when someone who wants to buy them shows up, I don’t know when someone who wants to buy them will show up again… I couldn’t help it. Please understand.”
Juhan was frustrated when he heard that the boots he had asked them not to sell to anyone else because he would definitely buy them as soon as he got paid had been sold just 5 minutes ago. He was even anxious because it felt like his revenge was being put on hold.
“I really only thought about those while I was surviving on cup ramen and triangle kimbap for a month!”
“We have a lot of other pretty boots in stock. It doesn’t have to be those.”
“Those aren’t just shoes to me! Hyung, do you at least know the contact information of the person who bought them?”
“Uh… well…”
The owner scratched his sparse beard with his index finger and rolled his eyes. Juhan leaned forward as if he would climb over the counter.
“What is it, do you know? If you know, please tell me! I’ll find them even if I have to add a premium… no, even if I have to beg!”
At that moment, someone tapped him on the shoulder from behind. It was a gentle, playful, and soft touch, as if teasing him.
“How much of a premium will you give?”
Leave a Reply