“I don’t think Chief Han will listen to me because he likes and trusts you so much, so I’m asking you directly.””
It took a bit of time by public transportation from Ms. Han’s house to my house, but it wasn’t that far by car. The road, slightly past the rush hour, was still congested, and the car stopped at a traffic light to go straight towards the War Memorial of Korea.
He held the top of the steering wheel with both hands, leaned his upper body slightly as if relying on it, and turned to look at me. He met my gaze without avoiding it. The cigarette in his left hand seemed like it would touch my thin hair.
“Safely. Peacefully. I hope you have a safe life. Okay? Seo Yeehyeon .”
He, who seemed like a symbol of a golden alpha in an elegant and noble world, who seemed like he had never even gotten dirt or dust on his hands, suddenly looked like a person from the underworld who wouldn’t hesitate to use threats and backroom deals to get what he wanted. He seemed more plausible than the head of the private investigation agency who had set up the burner phone and introduced us to the room.
I felt it on the first day too, but he was the type of person who wouldn’t care at all about the feelings of people outside his circle for the sake of the people precious to him. He wasn’t considering my feelings at all, nor was he considering that I might dislike or despise him because of these rude words and actions… Even if I did hate him, it wouldn’t matter.
With the green light, the car started moving again. While driving off the main road before entering the Namsan Tunnel and up the winding hill, I stared intently at his profile without trying to hide it.
It was a gaze he couldn’t possibly miss, but he didn’t seem uncomfortable or bothered at all.
What was I supposed to say? ‘Yes, I understand. I won’t do anything to Ms. Han’??
It was strange to make such a promise about something I had no intention of doing from the start. The promise itself felt like an admission that I might have been a dangerous person to Ms. Han, so I didn’t want to make it.
It was surprising that he knew my name in addition to my age. I never thought I would hear that name in this way.
Just as I was withdrawing my gaze from his profile as he calmly focused on driving, his phone rang. He looked down at the phone vibrating softly and clicked his tongue as if annoyed before answering the call.
“Uh… yeah, I stopped by… No, not now… I’m driving.”
My knowledge of his relationships was extremely limited, but judging from his insincere attitude, it seemed like a call from the man in the passenger seat or someone in a similar relationship with him.
After the other person said something, he paused for a moment and glanced at me.
“No one’s here, no one. I’ll be there on time, so hang up.”
“It’s a part-time job.”
“Am I the same as that guy?”
“No one’s here, no one.”
His words that pointed at me were connected in my head like a series. As expected, even after ending the call, there was no explanation or apology for making a person who clearly existed into a non-existent person.
The decent-sized church that didn’t fit in with this neighborhood was right in front of us now.
“You can drop me off there. In front of the stairs.”
I unbuckled my seatbelt as the car started to slow down. He stopped the car in a spot a little away from the bus stop.
“I have a question.”
“For me?”
“Did you really do this to Juhan hyung too?”
His brow furrowed and his eyebrows moved closer together. He had a look on his face that said he didn’t know what I was talking about. Maybe the one who hit forgets easily, even if the one who was hit can’t forget. Hyung even thought about scratching your car and running away.
I could now understand very well what Hyung had said about how he felt like you would chase him down and take revenge no matter what. Because I had received a warning close to a threat from him, who looked like a boss of the underworld.
“Don’t worry about Ms. Han… Chief Han’s affairs.”
He rested his left arm on the steering wheel, turned his upper body towards me, and looked at me with an expression as if he had been grabbed by a random person on the street and was listening to nonsense.
“I’m gay, by the way.”
I don’t know why I said that. Gay or whatever, I’ve never been in a relationship, and I’ve never liked anyone.
But the moment I saw his expression, not just his eyebrows but even the pupils below them twitching, I knew I had said the right thing. I just wanted to see him flustered.
“Well, thank you for the ride.”
I bowed my head and got out of the car, grabbing my bag. I wanted to look back several times while climbing the stairs, but each time I clenched the bag strap even tighter and resisted.
If I couldn’t hurt him, I wanted to at least shock him. He was a rock as hard as a diamond, and even if the shock I was throwing was only about the level of a raw egg.
○
“What are you drawing?”
Red, blue, and black. I stopped the hand that was scribbling various lines on the notebook that Morae had torn out with an economical ballpoint pen that had three colors in one, and raised my head. Morae was smiling and looking down at me.
“Just. My hands were bored.”
The background, which looked like waves, flames, or a whirlpool, was dizzying even to me.
“Drink. It’s my treat to celebrate my studying abroad.”
Morae, who pushed the large cup of fruit punch, which was the signature of ‘Something Happened in Bali’, towards me, came to the seat next to me and sat down next to me. I left the cup on the table as it was and looked up at Morae while drinking the drink through the straw. Studying abroad?
“In the neighborhood, it’s been said that I’m studying abroad now. To be exact, I’m in Seoul preparing to study abroad.”
My eyes narrowed as I felt my forehead and nose wrinkle from suddenly drinking a lot of the cold drink.
I heard that we were going to commission a private investigation agency last week to find out how the situation was going after we left, so I guess we got a call today.
“What about me and Hyung?”
“The situation has become funny, it’s not that Seo Yi-han and I disappeared, but all three of you disappeared, so the adults think that’s a good thing. I’m in Seoul preparing to study abroad, and you and Seo Yi-han got a good job and went to Yeongdeok to earn money urgently. That’s the situation right now. It’s like they did that on purpose to separate us from our house.”
It’s possible to put it that way. Well, even before we ran away, ‘Teacher Im’ was creating tension as if he was about to do something soon. In reality, Morae committed the act first.
“Who would believe that anyway? Even if it’s true, most people want to write a novel on their own and spread it around, believing that it’s the hidden truth. Even though they know that no one believes it, is their shallow face that important…?”
Muttering the last words as if letting them slip out, Morae leaned loosely against the back of the bench.
“It’s like they’re about to jump into the Han River if they try to find me… I made such a fuss in the letter that they can’t move rashly right now… But they’ll never give up like this.”
Morae took three or four refreshing sips of the peach punch, putting her lips to the edge of the cup without using a straw, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, adding one more word.
“We have to leave as soon as possible before that.”
I met Morae when she was a senior in high school, and she was having conflicts with her parents over going to college. Her parents wanted her to go to college, even if it was a third-rate college nearby, and she didn’t even pretend to listen while picking her ear with her pinky finger (that’s what it would look like if you visualized it), so it was a bit much to say that she was having conflicts.
I heard from Hyung that she had very good grades until she was in the first and second grades of middle school. But she knew too well what her parents expected of her, so she started postponing her delinquency to make it easier to secure her freedom later.
She deliberately ruined her grades and volunteered to become a troublemaker. Her curfew got later, she decorated her room with posters of B-grade movies that looked bad and bizarre to her parents, and her clothes became sloppy. It was also common for her to skip class and go surfing.
In that way, she had changed from a proud daughter who was expected to do everything above average in the future to a troublesome youngest child who was just fortunate to get by without causing any major problems.
Her parents knew that it was a rebellious act of adolescence caused by the confusion of being judged as an alpha, but that was all her choice from start to finish.
“I’ll be with the people I want to be with, and I’ll be in the place I want to be. I’m going to live my life the way I want in the end, so giving my parents false hope as a model student who studies well… I don’t think it’s right for each other. It’s better to get to know each other little by little from now on. That I have no intention of living the way you want me to.”
Morae said that, but her parents didn’t accept the situation until she was twenty-four years old. They were denying what she wanted and what kind of happiness she wanted, because you are still too young to make long-term right choices for life.
Morae was not interested in top-tier universities or so-called high-paying ‘good jobs’. She had no intention of taking a position in her father’s various businesses that generated billions of won in annual sales.
What she wanted was peace. A simple but fulfilling day filled with healthy laughter and gratitude, surrounded by the things she liked.
Waves, warm weather, and Seo Yeehan. A bottle of beer and a surfboard. A paperback copy of her favorite book. That’s all she wanted. She was capable because she didn’t need more than that to be happy.
“Uncle is living as usual.”
“Yeah… thanks.”
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