Chapter 41

The next day, Cha Gyuhan arrived early as usual, among the top five students to get to school. Gong Jio came in around thirteenth, and Kwon Ingyu was nearly dead last.

Cha Gyuhan grabbed every kid who walked in to brag about how cute his little sibling was, how big the baby was, and how fast it was growing. The name Gyuwon became so famous that a third of the first-year class already knew it before Kwon Ingyu even crossed the school gates—all because Cha Gyuhan sat right by the hallway door, grabbing every familiar face that passed by.

Then Kwon Ingyu walked in.

Wearing a subdued, sullen expression, he looked at Gong Jio, glanced at Cha Gyuhan, quietly set his bag down at his desk, and then spun around to call out to Cha Gyuhan.

“Hey. Gyuhan.”

“Long time no see, Ingyu.”

With an apple juice pouch clamped between his teeth, Cha Gyuhan waved. Kwon Ingyu twisted his mouth into a smirk and asked, “How was hanging out at Jio’s place? I never got to hear about that. Did you see rats? Word is they’ve got rats and even raise cockroaches. Rumor says it rivals Fabre’s Insect Park. Or was it a pest theme park?”

Dumbass. Practiced that at home, didn’t you?

Gong Jio returned his gaze to the comic book with an impassive attitude. It was one Cha Gyuhan had brought over.

Yet the lines Kwon Ingyu had clearly rehearsed all night kept lingering in his head. Not because the words offended or bothered him, but because watching him try so desperately was starting to get irritating.

What should he take away next after the perfect attendance award to stop him from straining so pitifully? Since the guy had an overinflated ego, would beating the crap out of him in front of the kids do the trick? It was the tail end of morning arrival, so the classroom was full of students, the atmosphere was suitably lively, and rumors would spread fast. If the entire school watched him get humiliated, would he finally shut his mouth?

Just as Gong Jio was pressing his knuckles with his thumb, contemplating the matter, Cha Gyuhan spoke up, “I don’t know about that, but he cooks damn good ramyeon.”

His voice was bright and sunny.

“What?” Kwon Ingyu asked back in bewilderment.

“Gong Jio cooks insane ramyeon. Pretty sure it’s the best I’ve ever had.”

Before Kwon Ingyu could recover from his stupefaction and ask if cockroaches floated in the soup, Cha Gyuhan was already smacking his lips and raving that he wanted to eat it again, launching into a rich, flavorful description of the glossy sheen of the noodles, how it tasted, and the savory aroma that filled the room.

Cha Gyuhan had a terrible imagination, but when it came to things he had personally experienced, he knew how to describe them properly. Not because he possessed a flashy vocabulary or eloquent rhetoric, but because people were drawn in by the infectious energy of someone talking about something he genuinely loved.

Even Gong Jio was pulled in. Despite being the one who cooked it, he wondered, Was it really that good? before finally concluding that yes, it really seemed that way.

It felt like it truly had tasted that good.

Something he was so sick and tired of that it served only to fill an empty stomach suddenly felt like a magnificent, proper dish.

As Gyuhan’s description transitioned to the Chapagetti, Gong Jio burst out laughing.

At his Ahaha, the classroom fell dead silent. Everyone stared at him. Gong Jio tilted his chair back on two legs, head thrown back with his mouth wide open. Though it didn’t last long, it was a laugh that completely defied his indifferent musings from last night—when he had wondered if his face would look like his uncle’s if he ever laughed out loud.

And it looked nothing like Gong Seongju.

The brief moment passed, and Cha Gyuhan grinned. A few boys who were close to Cha Gyuhan and harbored neither good nor bad feelings toward Gong Jio scolded Gyuhan teasingly.

“This bastard is full of shit. Look at Gong Jio laughing. That’s a total lie. Pure cap.”

“No, I really ate it! Hey, Gong Jio! Am I lying? We really ate it, right? Didn’t we?!”

Instead of answering, Gong Jio rested his chin in his hand and gazed steadily at Cha Gyuhan sitting by the hallway door.

Then he spoke in a flat, even voice, “Did you?”

“…”

“If Cha Gyuhan says so, then that’s what happened.”

“See, you punk! You’ve never even been to Gong Jio’s house, have you?”

“Hey! Gong Jio, how could you do this to me?!”

Cha Gyuhan came stomping over, huffing and shaking Gong Jio by the shoulders. Through his swaying field of vision, Jio saw Kwon Ingyu, saw the open window, saw the dust-caked electric fan, and finally shut his eyes against the sunlight bouncing blindingly off the framed classroom motto.

“Hey, it’s blinding.”

Swaying back and forth, Gong Jio pressed his lips together and rolled them in, then released them, concealing the softened curve of his smile.

Swaying, he muttered, “I said I’m dizzy.”

Yet he never once told him to stop.

That line had been the beginning. Just that single sentence. “He cooks damn good ramyeon.”

Examining the context before and after—like tossing in wilted scallions and expired eggs—sure, it might look slightly different, but that one sentence was the beginning nonetheless. If he had to pinpoint a distinct moment, and if he could push that timestamp as late as possible, he would want to name this very instant. Perhaps it was simply the moment when feelings that had budded without his knowledge grew too vast to ignore, forcing him to recognize them, but anything earlier would feel far too unfair. One might say adding a few more years to a wait this long wouldn’t make much difference, but to him, it did. It was petty pride, a desperate struggle to shave off even a few years to lessen his misery by just a fraction. And the petty heart of an unrequited crush trying to forcefully squeeze itself into Gyuhan’s “spark” theory.

Gong Jio looked back on his feelings.

Though vague and hard to name, something that made his chest ache with a suffocating heaviness had taken up residence inside him. He didn’t know whether it would fall out like a baby tooth and vanish or grow alongside him, but that thing—which had barged in of its own accord—rolled around on the narrow wooden floor, asked to play rock-paper-scissors on the stairway path, demanded ramyeon, and showed him its baby sibling. The day he went to see the baby, he also met the grandmother who owned the house with the green gate, as well as the mother of the baby who was indeed pretty yet enormous.

On the way back from seeing that baby take its first steps, Gong Jio pressed his hand repeatedly against his chest, burdened by this uninvited guest that seemed destined to grow with him rather than fall away. Had something he ate given him indigestion?

Then, standing before the dark, closed-up Oseong Supermarket, he thought, My feelings became something I had to hide before I could ever show them to you.

Sitting beneath the weathered parasol that showed its years, Gong Jio gazed quietly down the street bathed in the dim glow of the lamppost. It was a street he had, at some point, grown far more accustomed to walking with Cha Gyuhan.

A poem he had read somewhere came to mind. He thought it had been in Gong Seongju’s room. Absurdly enough, it was Gong Seongju who had scrawled random verses on scraps of paper, taped them to the wall, and left them to yellow and decay. Whenever he was left alone in that room with words whose origin, author, or meaning he did not know, young Gong Jio had learned Hangeul by tracing them line by line.

He had looked at them for so long that he could even recite them by heart.

Among them was a poet who wrote of standing their youth at every evening street corner and gazing quietly upon it. To the young Gong Jio, it had been difficult phrasing to grasp.

And now he understood its meaning. That he, too, was gazing quietly right now. Just as that poet had looked upon the youth they had stationed at each corner, marveling at the days they had lived, Gong Jio stood himself and Cha Gyuhan at every street corner, struck anew by the passage of time.

“I thought you were going back to your dad.”

“Huh? No? Who said that? I’m gonna go to high school here.”

“Why…? I thought you were going to Japan.”

“How’d you know? I was supposed to go along with Dad for his business in Japan, but since Gyuwon was born, I decided not to. Dad’s going alone and I’m staying. But it was just a trip anyway—I never planned on moving. Why? Did you want me to transfer ’cause I’m too stupid?”

“…”

“Tsk. But that’s why I didn’t wanna transfer. I can’t understand anything unless you’re the one explaining it to me, Jio-ya.”

“…God damn it.”

Throwing his head back, Gong Jio lifted an arm to cover his face. With his voice now deeply settled, having fully passed through the adolescent drop, he muttered into the dark, “I should’ve just kissed you right then and there when you had the wrong idea.”

I should’ve ruined you just like that. Or let you babble on with that ridiculous nonsense about taking responsibility in that stupid haze of yours. Even if it was only fleeting, even if it was a resolve that would change in no time and a lie bound to be exposed.

I should’ve just ruined everything.

If I’d ruined it back then, things wouldn’t have come this far.

Cha Gyuhan, whom he had hoped would fall out like a baby tooth, was on the verge of becoming a viciously impacted wisdom tooth—bone growing over him layer by layer, flesh sealing him in tight.

Second year. He was in a different class from Cha Gyuhan, and in the same class as Gwon Ingyu.

Throughout March, after class assignments and the start of the new school year, Gwon Ingyu clenched his fists the entire time like someone desperate for the bathroom, until finally, swaggering over as if he’d reached some grand resolution, he held out a hand.

“Let’s make up.”

Gong Jio happened to be listening to the MP3 player he’d borrowed from Cha Gyuhan. Chuckling to himself over Gyuhan’s taste in music, he pulled out an earbud and looked up at Gwon Ingyu.

“I said, let’s make up.”

“I heard you.”

“Then why aren’t you answering? You ignoring me?”

“No. Did we ever fight?”

Gong Jio had asked in genuine ignorance, but Gwon Ingyu huffed and wheezed, practically losing his mind with rage all on his own.

And during lunch that day, he threw a remark at Gong Jio.

“You know, sometimes the shit you and Cha Gyuhan pull is fucking identical.”

Gong Jio thought about it quietly and concluded that was impossible. To begin with, Cha Gyuhan’s actions ran on a program that bypassed the brain entirely, operating purely through the spinal cord. Unless someone was Cha Gyuhan himself, nobody could dare even imitate it. The guy was so completely uncreased that Jio often wondered if his brain was completely smooth too.

Though not quite as relentless as in their early middle school days, Cha Gyuhan still came over to see Gong Jio whenever he had a spare moment. He popped his face in so constantly that Gong Jio’s homeroom teacher, in the middle of taking attendance, once accidentally blurted out, “Why isn’t that punk Cha Gyuhan in his seat?”

Gwon Ingyu naturally drifted away from the group, but even after being split into different classes, a few boys still hung around together. Compared to the exuberant Cha Gyuhan, there was an easygoing guy, a guy who seemed just as brainless as Cha Gyuhan, and a guy wearing glasses who read fantasy novels all day. That was generally how the pack moved. They went out to eat tabletop tteokbokki together and went for frozen pork belly. Eventually, at an all-you-can-eat meat buffet, they were hit with a warning that kids from their background would either be charged higher rates or have their refills restricted.

Regardless, those boys and Gong Jio got along without any trouble. Calling it “getting along” might have been a stretch, though. On days when Cha Gyuhan ran late, they had to wait together in front of the school gates, yet they never once exchanged an affectionate word.

“You here?”

“Yeah.”

“Why’s he late?”

“Got held back for being tardy…”

That was pretty much the extent of it.

Around that time, Gong Jio began working part-time.

It was too young an age to work, but not entirely unheard of. Gong Jio did odd jobs at a barbecue joint, such as swapping out grill grates. The pay was fairly decent, and above all, because he was tall, people didn’t suspect much. In an attempt to disguise his face, he got a spare pair of glasses from the kid who loved fantasy novels, popped the lenses out, and wore the frames around.

Of course, that didn’t mean he was completely disguised.

“You working part-time here?”

Because the quietest kid in the group recognized him the moment he walked through the door.

“Yeah. How many?”

“Four.”

“Family dinner?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t eat the pickled radish wraps.”

Saying so, Gong Jio led them to a table.

Waiting for his family to come in, the easygoing boy asked as Jio wiped down the table, “Does Cha Gyuhan know too?”

“No. Don’t go saying anything.”

“I won’t.”

“…”

“No wonder. I figured there was a reason he kept whining about how you keep telling him to go home.”

Did he?

Gong Jio let out a short, soundless laugh.

“Don’t hate him too much just because he talks childishly.”

Having finished wiping the table, Gong Jio stood up and replied, “I don’t hate him.”

In this neighborhood, that guy was the only one who wanted to come back to the Gong house not as Gong Seongju’s guest, but as Gong Jio’s, the only one who hated having to leave. So why would he hate him?

They stayed together straight through to high school.

On graduation day, Gong Jio met Cha Gyuhan’s parents. He had met his mother before, but it was his first time meeting his father.

“My favorite uncle came too!”

The uncle Cha Gyuhan proudly showed off looked anywhere between two and fifty-eight years old, and the only reason two years old was included in that range was because his head was so round, shiny, and smooth, completely devoid of even a single strand of downy hair…

“Are you Jio?”

Looking at the middle-aged man gripping both his shoulders tightly and shaking him, Gong Jio marveled inwardly. People usually said the firstborn son takes after the mother, but just as Jio closely resembled the paternal Gong Seongju face, Cha Gyuhan was the spitting image of his father.

“I’ve heard a lot about you! You’re as good-looking as they say. Smart, too, right? Keep playing nice with our Gyuhan. The boy doesn’t study, but he’s got a great temper. Healthy body, too. Bwahaha!”

Gong Jio felt like his soul was being shaken loose by that boisterous, booming laughter.

Soon, his mother approached with an embarrassed look.

“Jio-ya. We’ve met a few times, right? His voice is so loud it’s embarrassing, really. You’re so quiet and mature, Jio. But Gyuhan is…”

At that moment, Cha Gyuhan was taking delivery of the flour his uncle had brought for him. Today, several kids on the watch list had their bags searched separately, and Cha Gyuhan had been one of them. He had proudly turned his pockets inside out, and it turned out he had an ace up his sleeve all along.

Cha Gyuhan’s “uncle” stealthily handed over several small plastic bags packed with white powder.

“I packed ’em for maximum mobility.”

The way he even whispered made the scene look exceedingly illicit.

Sighing softly, Gyuhan’s mother muttered under her breath, the words piercing Jio’s ears, “Good grief. I don’t even know if he’ll manage to get a high school diploma.”

“He’ll probably get a perfect attendance award too.”

Gong Jio gave a smirk and answered, “He was grinding his teeth over missing the one in middle school.”

Seeing that fleeting smile, Cha Gyuhan’s mother blinked. She looked remarkably like Gyuwon, who was clinging to her leg.

“Jio-ya. Which school did you say you were going to?”

With Gong Jio’s grades, he could have gone anywhere. But the name that came out of his mouth was the school Cha Gyuhan was attending.

“You’re going there?”

Gong Jio looked away from Cha Gyuhan’s mother, who was staring at him intently. Naturally, he caught Gyuwon, who was reaching for his leg, and lifted him up into his arms.

“Yes. It’s close to home.”

As if that were the real reason.

He was going because Cha Gyuhan was there.

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