Chapter 38

“Hello!”

It was the sound of Cha Gyuhan stepping through the doorway.

“Pardon the intrusion!”

There was nowhere left to run.

Had it been anyone else, Gong Jio wouldn’t have acted like this. He would have dragged them up the endless stairs without a single break until they were wheezing in agony, then flaunted every sordid corner of the house in their face. Afterward, he would have watched coldly as they made up an excuse to flee or sat there with a tearful grimace. He would have known that anyone asking to visit didn’t want to be his friend, but simply wanted a freak show to gawk at the infamous rumors. But Cha Gyuhan… Cha Gyuhan was different…

Gyuhan cast a glance around the interior. Did he really just look around? What was that expression just now? Jio hadn’t checked Gong Seongju’s room yet—what if he was inside?

The one cast as the protagonist in a horror movie was Gong Jio. Standing rigid, unable even to turn his head, he tried to gauge Gong Seongju’s bedroom door using only the corner of his eye and his heightened senses.

“Hey. You…” And as if cornering Jio against the wall, Gyuhan took a step forward… marching closer with a stern, solemn expression… “You got plenty of ramyeon? I’m seriously starving to death… Should we put the water on first?”

He pleaded with a pathetic, whining face.

Jio took ramyeon out of the cupboard. Were there plenty? Of course there were. Ramyeon was probably the single most abundant item in this entire house. They even had an assortment of varieties.

Gong Jio picked the most standard, popular brand. Even as he filled a large pot with water and set it on the stove, his nerves remained attuned to Gyuhan. He had expected Gyuhan to snoop around, but the boy had plopped down by the doorway, utterly engrossed in his comic book. He was so focused that not even his breathing could be heard.

Jio glanced toward Gong Seongju’s room. Beyond the tacky bead curtain—strung with jade-green and red beads, hung without permission by one of the people his uncle had brought home who claimed to have made it herself—he could see the bedroom door sitting half-open. Fortunately, no one was inside. What was more, the bedding was folded neatly. Whenever Seongju tidied up his blankets before leaving, he usually didn’t return for three days to a week, which made it an immense relief.

Somewhat relieved, Jio opened the refrigerator door, only to scowl. A pack of cigarettes sat inside—Gong Seongju’s. Shoving it aside, he grabbed some eggs and a wilted green onion. As he gathered a container of red pepper flakes tucked deep inside the fridge, a sudden wave of warmth approached from behind.

“Whoa! Do you smoke?! What kind of delinquent middle schooler are you?!”

It was Cha Gyuhan.

At the booming voice, Jio squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed a heavy sigh. “It’s not mine.” Shutting the fridge door with an abrasive thud, Jio retorted curtly, “I don’t smoke.”

“Really? Then whose is it?”

“An adult’s, obviously. What kind of insane middle schooler puts cigarettes in the fridge for everyone to see? Use your brain, Gyuhan-ah.”

“Oh, well that’s a relief. I thought you’d lost your mind. If you were already smoking at our age, I was gonna beat some sense into you.”

Scratching his head sheepishly, Gyuhan laughed without a care in the world.

Jio assumed he would go back to his spot, but Gyuhan stuck right beside him instead, peering over his shoulder. Jio tore open the powder packet and dumped it into the rolling boil.

“You put the powder in first?”

Calling it ‘powder’ instead of ‘soup base’ was so quintessentially Cha Gyuhan that Jio briefly forgot the tension of hosting a friend for the first time and let out a snort. The grin faded quickly, but he answered diligently nonetheless, “I just throw it all in.”

Normally, ramyeon tasted the same no matter what and he was sick of eating it anyway, so he would usually chuck everything in before the water even boiled and go do something else. But say what you will, Gyuhan was… a guest… the very first guest who had ever come over to his house. Gong Jio cynically reasoned to himself that he couldn’t treat his guest like shit or offer him his body like Gong Seongju would.

“You eat eggs, right?”

“Hell yeah, love ’em.”

“Ah… but these eggs are pretty old. Can’t remember when they were bought. You okay with that?”

Even Jio could feel his voice trailing off with hesitant uncertainty. In a way, he almost wished Gyuhan would throw a fit, demanding how anyone could possibly eat such a thing. But just as he had stepped into the house and acted as if he had been visiting for years, Gyuhan answered casually, “Yeah, totally. I don’t get sick even if I eat expired food.”

“Don’t regret it later, then…” Jio hesitated, while Gyuhan nodded vigorously.

Gong Jio had made his own efforts in the past. Before he had grown sick to death of ramyeon, he used to experiment in various ways to make it diverse and, pathetic as it was, somewhat nutritious. Beating in an egg, chopping in green onions… mixing in cold leftover rice, putting in effort in whatever way he could.

Until around sixth grade, when the old woman at Oseong Supermarket—who had taken in her daughter who came back to live with her—started telling him to just come eat with them while she cooked, Gong Jio had been quite the connoisseur of junk cooking for a fifth grader.

“Ah, that looks seriously good.”

Of course, to Cha Gyuhan, who was gulping down saliva behind him, this wasn’t junk food—it was a gourmet delicacy.

Jio pulled a pair of kitchen scissors from the utensil holder, only to grimace and dump everything inside straight into the sink. Shoving aside a startled Gyuhan, he swiftly rewashed the utensils at high speed, then snipped the green onions directly over the bubbling pot.

“Whoa. Man, you’re seriously a genius.”

“What are you talking about… Everyone does this.”

“At my house, we always have to use a cutting board and a knife. My dad really loves knives, so he has all kinds lined up. I’ll show you next time.”

“…”

What ‘next time’?

Either way, it seemed certain that Cha Gyuhan was reuniting with his father.

Instead of answering, Jio cracked in the egg, dusted in red pepper flakes along with a dash of black pepper, and carried the entire pot out to the living room. The kitchen floorboards had rotted somewhat lately, giving a squishy sensation beneath the linoleum that made it unfit for seating a guest. Gyuhan might have babbled some brainless nonsense about how fascinating the house was, but still…

“Set up that folding table over there.”

At Jio’s chin nod, Gyuhan quickly set up the folding aluminum table. Gyuhan was also the one who brought over two sets of freshly washed spoons and chopsticks. Kimchi wasn’t something Jio could eat unless it came from the Oseong Supermarket granny or school lunches, so there hadn’t been any in the fridge to begin with. What a relief that there had been some red pepper flakes left. Who knew which visitor had left it behind, but Jio had shaken out the very last dusting for this pot.

Looking down at the pot, Jio let out a faint, dry smirk.

Back when food still had flavor to him, this had been his absolute favorite combination. In those days, he couldn’t handle spicy food as well as he did now, so he would huff and puff, filling half his belly with water.

“Thanks for the food!”

“Yeah, eat up.”

“Man, this ramyeon looks like it has serious pedigree! Like royal pedigree ramyeon. Aristocrat ramyeon. True scholar food!”

Gyuhan spouted whatever nonsense crossed his mind as he picked up a hefty mouthful with his chopsticks. Jio, having spent all his energy stressing over Gyuhan, had no appetite; besides, he had eaten ramyeon to the point of utter revulsion, so there was nothing special about it, and he hesitated to start.

More honestly, he was curious about Gyuhan’s reaction.

Yet Gyuhan, who usually reacted instantly and candidly to everything, was unusually quiet this time. Quietly—literally keeping his mouth shut—he just shoveled in the noodles.

Ah, shit. Asking him feels so embarrassing. His pride held him back, and he didn’t want to seem needy or annoying, so Jio could only gnaw on his lower lip—unaware that his gaze fixed on Gyuhan was growing increasingly intense.

Suddenly, Gyuhan snapped his head up.

“Hey.”

Setting his chopsticks down, he turned fully around and grabbed Jio’s shoulders tight.

“Jio-ya.”

Seeing Gyuhan’s furrowed brow, Jio held his breath.

“Seriously… this is hands down the best ramyeon I have ever had in my entire life. It’s so damn good. Hurry up and eat some, or I’m gonna devour the whole pot! How did you make this?”

In that single heartbeat, all of Jio’s tension dissolved into nothing. The tightness in his shoulders drained away, and he muttered gruffly, “It’s just ramyeon, what do you mean ‘how’? You saw everything. Just green onions and red pepper flakes.”

And a bunch of extra green onions because I didn’t know how old the eggs were…

Gong Jio chose to believe Gyuhan’s claim that he never got sick from expired food. And to Jio’s own palate, the egg tasted no different from any other.

Once they finished eating, Cha Gyuhan volunteered to do the dishes. Though Jio hadn’t expected much, Gyuhan washed everything spotless without a single flaw. Jio felt immense relief that not a single cockroach had crawled out, while Gyuhan lingered long after the meal, resting his head right on Jio’s stomach as he read his comic book.

Of course, Gyuhan had used the bathroom in between. That had been the most nerve-wracking moment of all. Ever since Jio was young enough to start cleaning, the bathroom had been beyond salvation. It was a miracle if someone didn’t cut themselves on the cracked tiles. Gyuhan didn’t seem like the type to complain, but Jio couldn’t help walking on eggshells. Not because he was stewing in tearful self-pity—How’s my house? You don’t want to be my friend anymore, do you?—nothing pathetic like that. Just… this was the first person he’d ever invited over. And frankly, if he was being completely honest, because it would hurt.

“Hey! Gong Jio!”

Yet Cha Gyuhan existed entirely outside the boundaries of Jio’s worries.

Bursting out with an excited face, he was clutching something in his hand.

“W-W-What is this?!”

It was a bottle illustrated with a man and a woman kissing. Gong Jio knew exactly what that was used for…

“That’s… my uncle’s.”

Unable to bring himself to explain what it actually was, Jio mumbled evasively.

“Then why are they kissing on the bottle?!”

Gyuhan asked relentlessly, eyes gleaming with sheer curiosity. Apparently, the printed text on the bottle had washed off from moisture. Jio averted his gaze.

“…It’s shaving gel.”

And told a blatant lie…

“Ahhh! Whoa, damn. Looks cool! I didn’t know they made pink shaving gel.”

The mutterings of a boy who hadn’t even grown facial hair yet struck a sharp pang into the conscience of another boy who had never grown whiskers either. So my conscience was still in there after all.

“But why put a picture of people kissing? Is it like, your chin gets so smooth that it’s great for kissing?”

“I guess so… Hey. Aren’t you going home? The sun’s setting.”

Still completely absorbed in examining the picture, Gyuhan mumbled half-heartedly, “Yeah, yeah. Gotta go. Ah, man, I wanna kiss someone too. Gotta do it someday.”

And contrary to his words about leaving, he rolled around on the floor a while longer, only hauling himself up once he had finished the entire comic book.

Coaxed by Gyuhan’s offer to buy him an ice cream at Oseong Supermarket, Jio stepped out of the house with him.

Ice cream served as a convenient excuse. Even without it, Jio would have walked down the pitch-black staircase with him, where not a single streetlight shone. But admitting that was far too embarrassing…

“When does your uncle get back?” Gyuhan asked, hopping down the steps as if stepping on DDR pads.

Jio kept his answer short, boiling down the fact that his uncle would randomly show up days later.

“Late.”

“Aha. Is it okay if I leave without saying hello to him?”

“Don’t worry about it. My uncle doesn’t care about stuff like that.”

He was a man whose only rule was for Jio to graduate without incident. In this context, ‘without incident’ simply meant not getting expelled like he had. Instead of explaining that middle school was compulsory education now and one wouldn’t get expelled unless they did something utterly catastrophic, Jio had simply asked his uncle for school lunch money.

That had been in the middle of last month, which meant they hadn’t had a proper conversation in nearly four weeks.

“You live with your uncle?”

“Yeah.”

Because it was common knowledge throughout the neighborhood, Gong Jio was slightly taken aback that anyone could be unaware of it. I thought you knew, too.

“You didn’t know…?”

At the probing question, Gyuhan readily nodded. “Is living with an uncle fun? I know some uncles too, and they’re a blast. But they look so terrifying that back in kindergarten, when they came to pick me up instead of my parents, my teacher called the police!” Gyuhan rambled on carelessly, chuckling to himself. “It almost turned into a disaster! My uncle was bowing and begging on his hands and knees, but when he blurted out that if he got locked up one more time he’d never get back out, the teacher nearly fainted!”

What kind of… ‘uncles’ are these?

Jio wondered about Gyuhan’s bizarre babbling for a second, then decided not to dwell on it. Right. Your uncles are weird too. That’s good enough for me. Thinking that way made him feel strangely lighter. On the staircase plunging into darkness without a single lamppost, a faint, barely perceptible smile graced Jio’s lips.

“Next time, I’ll introduce you to my uncles, too.”

“I’m not showing mine to you.”

“Fine. But I’m still showing you mine! He’s got awesome artwork all over his arms, I’ll tell him to show you.”

Next time? When is ‘next time’? Years from now in Seoul, if you suddenly remember me out of the blue? Jio’s smile soon shifted into a faint, bittersweet smirk far too mature for his age, but Gyuhan was too busy bouncing up and down the steps to notice, entirely unbothered by his own ragged breath.

before long, they had reached the bottom of the stairs.

The old granny at Oseong Supermarket grumbled gruffly, asking round-about why Jio hadn’t come by earlier today, before shoving kimchi, canned tuna, and roasted seaweed into his hands. Gyuhan and Jio, each biting into an ice cream bar, eyed the outdoor plastic tables on the terrace, but had to give up because some middle-aged men were already cracking open soju bottles there.

Then it was time to part ways.

Gong Jio accepted it in silence. The fact that this had been his first and final invitation; that just as Gyuhan had appeared out of nowhere mid-semester, he would vanish just as abruptly; and that to the bitter end, Gyuhan had never once said the words I’m leaving.

Jio tossed his wooden ice cream stick toward the trash bag. It went in on the first try. Gyuhan let out an admiring “Ooh!” and tried to follow suit, only to drop his stick, hurriedly dashing over to pick it up.

To that retreating back, Gong Jio bade his farewell.

“Take care.”

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