Turning around, he saw a woman of slight build looking up at him. Her sharply cut, jet-black bob and the sunglasses she wore indoors in the dead of winter were striking. She wasn’t particularly tall, but the heels of her lace-up boots brought her lips to about the tip of Juhan’s nose.
It wasn’t a clumsy imitation. From head to toe, from the piercings through her eyebrows and cheeks to her tartan coat, she was pure punk.
“Great style.” Even in that situation, Juhan was impressed.
“Are you… the one who bought them?”
The woman nodded.
“What, they won’t even fit you! Let me have them, huh?”
“You don’t buy shoes just to wear them, do you? Don’t be such a rookie.”
The woman frowned at Juhan’s aggressive approach.
“Please, sis, bro. Please sell them to me. I’ve endured a month of hell just thinking about getting my hands on those shoes. To me, those shoes aren’t just shoes. They’re like a symbol of my resolve.”
He could feel her gaze scrutinizing him from behind her sunglasses, as if gauging the sincerity of Juhan’s desperation.
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Some son of a bitch has ruined my life. I promised myself that if I got those boots, I’d go and get revenge on that bastard.”
She slid her sunglasses down to the tip of her nose and looked at Juhan. Her large eyes, framed by heavy smoky makeup, were unusually clear, and despite her youthful appearance, she exuded an undeniable gravitas.
“I want to study aesthetics, go abroad, and become a curator in Europe, but my mom and dad want me to go to teachers college and become a teacher, like my obedient younger sibling who wears the clothes they tell her to wear, goes to the academies they tell her to go to, and hangs out with the friends they choose for her. But I secretly applied to the Department of Aesthetics at XX University and got in. Of course, I did. I studied four hours a day for a year. But my mom and dad say they won’t pay for tuition unless it’s teachers college? What can a penniless minor do? The chance to enroll just flew away. I can’t even go to the university I worked my ass off to get into, and I’m stuck living in a 1.5-pyeong studio apartment. Still, I wanted to gain experience in something I love, so I got a job at a gallery, but even working 15 hours a day, I only get passion pay. There’s a line of kids willing to work for that money, so I don’t even know when I’ll get fired.”
Unable to understand the intention behind her sudden confession, Juhan frowned this time. Was she trying to have a misery contest? And if he won, she’d give him the boots?
“Well? Is your life more screwed up than mine?”
As if he had been expecting her question, Juhan answered immediately.
“Outing.”
“……”
She stared at Juhan silently for a moment. Then, crossing her arms, she asked the next question.
“……Target?”
“My parents.”
“……Perpetrator?”
“My ex-boyfriend. An art academy instructor I dated in high school. He was 37 at the time. He’s 41 now.”
This time, she contorted her face using every muscle.
“What’s with your taste?”
“I know, I know, I have terrible taste. But he’s the bastard who revealed that taste to my parents.”
“He’s a real son of a bitch.”
“Right? That’s why I’m going to wear these and shove that bastard into the gutter this time. I’m going to make sure he can never shit out of his asshole again. I’m going to wear these, put on my favorite clothes, and even if I get dragged to the police station, so be it. I can’t stand being in debt to anyone. So please, let me have them.”
“Let’s go.”
The woman, having readjusted her sunglasses, walked past Juhan towards the entrance.
“Where? You’re not giving me the shoes? You said he’s a real son of a bitch, didn’t you?”
Juhan shouted as he followed her. As she opened the door, the cold winter air rushed in as if it had been waiting.
“Would that really be revenge? In some ways, isn’t that a reward for him? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Social ostracism should be repaid with social ostracism.”
○
Just because it’s located in Hongdae doesn’t guarantee good business; despite it being a Saturday evening, there were only two or three tables occupied in the bar. The table closest to the entrance seemed to be occupied by the owner’s acquaintances.
The interior wasn’t sophisticated, but it had a comfortable and unique atmosphere. The music was well-chosen and at a good volume, and the drinks were cheap. Despite these advantages, Juhan Hyung and Yuni Noona explained that the place didn’t get many customers because it wasn’t a good place to take pictures.
It had already been two weeks since he helped with the VIP opening of Phantom’s new exhibition.
For a few days, he felt like he had been to another world, but as he juggled his moving job and helping out at Ms. Han’s house, reality settled back into place.
Golden Alpha, paintings worth ten million won apiece, champagne parties with pretty finger foods that were too good to eat… The feeling that such a world actually existed somewhere was fading.
He received a call from Yuni noona through Ms. Han on Wednesday. He was surprised but pleased to hear from her, inviting him to have a beer with Johan Hyung on Saturday.
After his moving job, he went home to shower and hurried to the meeting place, the weather having warmed up enough that a light sweat beaded on his forehead, as if heading towards early summer.
Noona and hyung were much more friendly when they met outside, and said, “The manager told us you’re twenty-two? We’re twenty-five. Let’s drop the formalities and just call each other hyung and noona.” And so, Yuni-ssi and Juhan-ssi became Yuni noona and Juhan hyung.
With a plate of french fries topped with melted cheddar cheese and a draft beer in front of him, Johan Hyung was going back three years to reminisce.
One of the two cats kept at the bar jumped onto the empty chair next to Johan Hyung. It was a long-haired Persian cat that was very friendly. Stroking the cat’s back, Hyung continued his story.
“I went to a nearby cafe and told her everything from my past with that bastard to the present. That alone took about two hours? Baek Yuni’s questions were so thorough and calm that I felt like I had come to a lawyer to sue that bastard. After hearing everything, she started planning the operation, and wow… she was a graduate of XX University, and she was very thorough. I’m not good at that kind of thing, even though she’s got a terrible temper and a tenacious streak.”
Because the two of them had similar styles and seemed so comfortable with each other, he had thought they had known each other before working together at Phantom, but that wasn’t the case at all. The unexpected first meeting was interesting, but he was curious about the outcome of Johan Hyung’s outing, which had been somewhat shocking to him, and how the revenge had played out.
“How did you get revenge?”
“Oh… Even Seo Yeehyeon, who seems so detached from the world, is interested in the ending of this homo-romantic revenge drama.”
Hoohan Hyung picked up the cat and put it on his lap, grinning mischievously.
“I’m just kidding, man. It’s natural to be curious about the ending of a story like this. Ah, I usually hate timid kids, but why is he so cute?”
“It’s because he’s not timid. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s more daring than you.”
Yuni noona said, resting her chin on the table and poking at the french fries with her fork. Juhan hyung looked at him with an expression that asked if that was true, but he didn’t know the criteria for timidity and daring, so it was difficult to answer.
“Well… I don’t know about that, but I’m not very sociable. I got in trouble a lot for that in the military.”
Yuni noona stopped poking at her fries, and hyung’s hand, which had been stroking the cat’s face, stopped.
“You were in the military?”
Noona put down her fork and asked, surprised, and he nodded.
“You’re quite the enigma. You don’t smell like you were ever in the military.”
Juhan hyung leaned over the table and pretended to sniff him, then examined his face with a serious expression and diagnosed, “I see. I think you’re not timid, but cautious. You’re not good at saying empty words, are you?”
“I… guess not.”
“You’re not the type to assert yourself, but once you’ve decided on something, you stick with it to the end?”
He wasn’t the type to assert himself, but that was probably because he wasn’t considerate, but because he didn’t have a desperate claim that he wanted to assert. He had even given up the brush, which was his means of seeing, feeling, and conveying the world. So he probably wasn’t the type to stick with things to the end either.
“Okay, that’s enough, you bastard. I’m going to give a quick-tempered guy a heart attack trying to get an answer out of you.”
Hyung took a refreshing sip of beer, gave up on getting an answer from him, and continued his story.
“First, we set up our band’s live schedule. That creepy bastard always came to see us when we had a live performance. He knew I had left home, and he was probably watching everything, so we used the situation of that bastard stalking me to our advantage.”
That day, Johan Hyung went into acting. His whole life became an act.
He started playing the role of a young master who had his relationship with his family ruined by outing, ran away from home in a fit of anger, but couldn’t stand the hardship of life and fell into depression.
Hyung frequented his favorite bar and complained to the bartender.
He was tired of everything, he was exhausted, if he had known it would turn out like this, he wouldn’t have been so cold to hyung, at first he wanted to kill hyung, but now he hated his parents more, his parents denied and despised him, hyung was on his side and accepted his true self, if he could turn everything back, he would do anything…
He steadily repeated those stories for nearly a month, pretending to be drunk, and it was clear that all those complaints would go straight to the stalker’s ears.
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