Episode 22
22.
A cafe near the Haran Market bus stop.
There, Sihu and the man sitting across from him each ordered drinks and faced one another.
Sihu offered the man his drink.
“The ice is melting. You should drink it while it’s cold.”
Sihu smiled brightly at the man.
The man looked at Sihu, at a loss.
Sihu leisurely sipped the iced cafe latte in front of him.
“So… Have you been doing well?”
The man finally opened his mouth and asked Sihu.
“Yeah, thanks to you, I guess you could say that?”
Slurp—
Sihu took another sip of his coffee.
He quietly stared at Hwijun in front of him.
And recalled the moment they had met a short while ago.
“Long time no see?”
“…Ga-, Gang Sihu?”
“Yeah, do you know how much I’ve wanted to meet you?”
“Why me?”
“’Cause I wanted to beat you as much as I got hit, why else? At the time, I thought I was just putting up with it, but once I got to high school, I realized I was an idiot for enduring it through middle school.”
Sihu had wanted to meet Hwijun, the perpetrator, and beat him to his heart’s content.
Because even after entering high school, the pain of that time had made things so difficult.
Sihu had dreamed of and longed for that day.
If only he could meet him, he had wanted to meet him.
To meet Hwijun, the perpetrator.
Even while working part-time, Sihu had gone around asking the middle school kids for news of Hwijun.
The middle schoolers didn’t know where he had gone for high school.
How long had he anticipated this moment?
If they met, he wanted to hit him back as cleanly as he had been hit.
And he wanted to see his face.
Sihu had thought that if Hwijun showed even the slightest remorse, he would beat him up thoroughly and then shake it off.
*‘But, the fact that you backed away and ran away outright the moment you recognized me surprised me even more.’*
Sihu ran after him like catching fleeing prey and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck.
“Hey! If you have even the slightest guilty conscience, follow me.”
At Sihu’s words, Hwijun ended up coming into the nearby cafe with him.
They had been classmates in elementary school. Sihu looked at the perpetrator of school violence who had beaten him so brazenly during middle school and opened his mouth.
“Thanks to someone working so hard to bully me for three years of middle school, I sort of found my calling. So should I thank you for that, Hwijun?”
Hwijun couldn’t say a word.
Yu Hwijun.
He had been a misaligned button with Sihu since elementary school.
At first, he had been a classmate.
He had looked at Sihu and thought he was a rather quiet friend.
When his parents divorced, Hwijun had craved their attention.
Wanting to receive his mother’s attention, he secretly stole a classmate’s wallet.
Sihu had caught him committing that secret theft.
Hwijun had pressed Sihu, asking if he had proof.
In the end,
what came back to him was cold treatment.
Eventually, Hwijun came to live with his father, and he directed that resentment toward Sihu.
And so, in middle school, after getting in with the school bullies, he ostracized Sihu.
At the time, watching Sihu being bullied, he had been inwardly pleased at first.
As time passed, a sense of debt piled up in his heart.
On top of that, Sihu grew quieter and quieter.
*‘Nobody knew he was a lone wolf.’*
Sihu was a ‘lone wolf’ incarnate.
Even when hit, he never showed it.
*‘It was a bit creepy because you couldn’t tell what he was thinking.’*
Moreover, by second year of middle school, the school violence had escalated to an irreversible degree.
*‘And with even the seniors joining in…’*
Hwijun could never forget Sihu staring at him with gleaming eyes at graduation.
*‘I did think we’d meet again someday.’*
Hwijun swept his face with his bare hand.
Then he heard Sihu’s question.
“Hwijun, what are you doing these days? From what I saw earlier, are you doing some kind of broadcast?”
To Sihu’s leisurely question, Hwijun explained what he did for a living.
“Huh? Oh. Restaurant reviews.”
Hearing that, Sihu raised one corner of his mouth.
“Hwijun. Do you happen to know ‘Woodpecker’?”
“Huh? Oh. The fact-checking YouTuber channel, right?”
“Is he famous?”
At Sihu’s question, Hwijun nodded.
If his own channel was approaching 100,000, that one was a massive channel that had surpassed 1,000,000.
“?!”
Seeing Sihu’s expression, Hwijun felt a bead of sweat trickle down his spine.
*‘N-, no way.’*
He met eyes with Sihu, who was staring at him silently.
*‘Those were the eyes I saw when I stole the wallet.’*
After seeing those eyes, Hwijun had been called to the homeroom teacher. With Sihu.
The moment he saw Sihu’s eyes, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
He had to prostrate himself.
In Hwijun’s head, a red warning light spun around, blaring a loud siren.
Hwijun, who had been silent for a moment, looked at Sihu and opened his mouth.
“So… Sihu. If this is an excuse, then it’s an excuse, but…”
Sihu snickered at Hwijun’s words.
“Yeah, go ahead. I’ll hear out that excuse.”
Sihu listened silently to everything Hwijun said.
Once all the talking was done, Sihu slowly opened his mouth.
“I listened well to your excuse. But, was I your emotional trash can?”
At Sihu’s words, Hwijun hung his head.
“……I have nothing to say.”
Recalling the difficult three years of middle school, Sihu closed his eyes.
Sihu suddenly recalled the time when he had lost his parents and had been frustrated for a while.
Hwijun in front of him had experienced his parents’ separation when he was even younger.
*‘But Hwijun’s parents are still alive.’*
Sihu inadvertently muttered what he was thinking.
“But your parents are still alive, aren’t they.”
At Sihu’s bitter muttering, Hwijun’s eyes widened.
“……Sorry.”
The debt of guilt toward Sihu weighed heavily on Hwijun’s heart.
Sihu looked at Hwijun in front of him, his heart complicated.
When he graduated middle school, he had wished never to see him again.
At the same time, he had wanted to slam his fist into that face.
Haa—
Sihu rubbed his face, then propped his chin on his hand and looked at Hwijun in front of him.
*‘Father said to hate the sin but not the sinner. And to give three chances. I didn’t understand what he meant back then, but…’*
The light in Sihu’s eyes as he looked at Hwijun settled.
*‘……’*
A cold voice flowed out as if he had made up his mind.
“Hey, let’s settle the past.”
At the words coming from Sihu’s mouth, Hwijun’s eyes widened like a startled flame.
***
Sihu brought Hwijun to his house.
He tossed him an egg from the refrigerator.
Sitting on the sofa, Hwijun rubbed his chin and around his eyes with the egg and cursed at Sihu.
“You crazy bastard, even a dog would bow down to you.”
Hwijun’s face had a deep bruise that had just formed around his lips.
Sihu was boiling tea in the kitchen.
He brought out the brewed tea and grumbled.
“Hey, that’s an insult to dogs. Where would you find a kid as nice as me?”
At Sihu’s words, Hwijun snorted and muttered.
“They say it’s scary when a quiet kid snaps. You’re exactly that type.”
Sihu looked at Hwijun and smiled brightly, as if feeling refreshed.
“The saying about meeting your enemy on a single-log bridge fit perfectly. And a gentleman’s revenge is never too late, even after ten years.”
“Oh really? So you got your revenge? You beat me up like this and now your indigestion is cleared up? You crazy bastard?”
Sihu’s expression really did look refreshed.
“Yeah! I feel great. Next, I’ll meet that senior who bullied me with you—”
Sihu stopped talking at the words he heard.
“That senior died.”
“What?!”
Sihu’s eyes shot open at the word death.
Hwijun told him the unknown story about that senior.
“I see, that’s unfortunate…”
“But, I heard there were strange words written in his suicide note.”
“What words?”
“Shadow, he wrote that a shadow kept chasing him.”
“……That senior wasn’t on drugs, was he?”
“I don’t know, I just heard it too.”
Hwijun rubbed his face with the egg and looked around the house.
“You live alone?”
“Yeah, my parents passed away in an accident when I was in my third year of high school.”
At Sihu’s words, Hwijun recalled what he had muttered when they met.
*‘Your parents are still alive.’*
Hwijun recalled Sihu’s bitter expression when he had muttered that.
Hwijun lifted the teacup on the table and mixed in some nonsense.
“What kind of tea is this? Don’t tell me you put in medicine to get revenge?”
At Hwijun’s words, Sihu’s gaze changed.
“You crazy bastard. As a chef, I don’t do that kind of thing. Are you crazy? Why would I drug it?”
At Sihu’s words, Hwijun felt like he had heard a peculiar word.
“Chef?”
“Yeah, I run a store.”
“A store?”
Seeing Hwijun’s surprised face, Sihu snickered and explained.
He said he was running a store called [SeeYou] and that he was entering his fourth month since taking it over.
Furthermore, he said that a visit from the [Fact Check] channel YouTuber was scheduled this time.
At that, Hwijun furrowed his brows.
“There’s nothing good about getting involved with that [Fact Check] channel…”
At Hwijun’s muttering, Sihu asked as if puzzled.
“Why isn’t it good? Aren’t they just eating food and evaluating the taste?”
Looking at Sihu, Hwijun began to talk about Woodpecker from the [Fact Check] channel that he knew.
Thank you for reading.
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