PEN Vol 2 Ch. 7

Time passed and December arrived, bringing with it the biting cold winds of early winter.

On Monday morning, Sejin woke up as usual, made his bed, and went out to the living room. He prepared the protein shake that Cheon Sejoo would drink instead of breakfast and set his own meal of rice and side dishes on the table.

Not long ago, they had bought a highchair, so instead of eating on the floor, they now sat at the island counter to eat. Sejin, still half-asleep, sat at the table, eating his breakfast. As he was doing so, Cheon Sejoo came back from his early morning workout, still warm from his exercise. The white T-shirt he wore was slightly damp on the front and back.

Sejin, noticing the man panting lightly, quietly pushed the protein shake across the table toward him.

Cheon Sejoo opened the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water, and drank it down before sitting down on the opposite side of Sejin.

“Did you memorize all the words?”

That was the first thing Cheon Sejoo spoke of.

Since checking in on his progress every morning had become a part of their daily routine, Sejin nodded without a word.

If it was the list of words given from two days ago, of course, he had memorized them. Though a few were a bit confusing, it didn’t take him long to memorize the 20 words.

In his defense, it wasn’t that he was dumb, just that he didn’t study. At least that’s how Sejin thought so himself, even if Cheon Sejoo probably thought otherwise.

As Sejin nodded, Sejoo reached out and tried to pat him on the head as if to praise him. Sejin quickly turned his head to the side to avoid his hand, glaring at Cheon Sejoo with a sullen expression.

“Stop touching my head.”

“I’m just curious about how much heavier it’s gotten. It felt pretty light yesterday. Did it gain 1 gram today?”

“…….”

He was basically saying Sejin’s head was empty, just in a roundabout way.

Sejin gritted his teeth, trying not to react to Cheon Sejoo’s constant comments that always get on his nerves, but he couldn’t stop himself from feeling annoyed.

Slurp, slurp.

He shoved the rice into his mouth and stuffed himself with the side dishes, then rinsed off his dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. On his way to his room, Cheon Sejoo playfully reached out to touch his head again as if to tease him so he immediately slapped his hand away, then went off to change into his school uniform.

By the time Sejin came out, wearing the padded jacket over his winter uniform, Cheon Sejoo was already sitting on the backrest of the sofa, dressed in a suit.

His appearance was not much different from the day they first met. However, now, with his sharply handsome face framed by a neatly pressed suit and a coat draped over his shoulders, Cheon Sejoo looked even more like a movie star. With just a passing glance, anyone could have mistaken him for one.

Sejin bit his lip as he watched the man standing there, unaware of his presence, staring blankly at the floor.

When Cheon Sejoo smiled and made those teasing remarks, he was someone Sejin found annoying just by looking at him, but there was something undeniably different about him when he was standing alone.

In moments like this, Cheon Sejoo didn’t seem real.

He looked as though he were wandering somewhere far away, detached from the world, like someone lost in the depths of memory.

Whenever Cheon Sejoo was by himself, that’s how he appeared.

It was as if everything around him had faded, and in the darkness, he was the only one glowing.

It was a surreal sight.

The man, Cheon Sejoo, was truly a strange person. At least, that’s how Sejin felt.

Sejin’s first impression of the man was that he was nothing more than a gangster—someone the world didn’t need. The way he looked down on other people with an air of superiority, the way he treated their resistance as something to laugh at. To Sejin, the man was nothing more than a rich, arrogant gangster.

However, after Sejin came to live in Cheon Sejoo’s house under what felt like a threat and coercion, Sejin often found himself questioning whether that was all there was to him.

Was this man really just a gangster who harassed others and extorted their money?

Because inside the house, his behavior was drastically different from how he acted outside.

At home, what Cheon Sejoo mostly did was to lay around.

Whether it was the weekend or a weekday, after he ate, he would always lounge lifelessly on the sofa as if someone with no desire to do anything at all. The only times he got up were to drink water, go to the bathroom, or teach Sejin his studies.

Once Sejin started working on his problems, the man would lie back down on the sofa once again, staring blankly into space, doing absolutely nothing. When he was at home, Cheon Sejoo embodied lethargy itself.

He was as handsome as a movie star. And, though hard to believe, when he taught Sejin, he seemed even more intelligent than most people.

He wasn’t crude or ignorant, as Sejin had initially assumed, nor did he easily look down on or belittle others. In fact, when they had gone to the department store together, Sejin had felt that Sejoo was surprisingly considerate of others.

The only time the man acted like a gangster was when Sejin refused to listen to him. When he wouldn’t eat, when he insisted on living as a homeless person rather than coming into his house, or when he refused to study.

So, it was only natural that Sejin started to wonder.

What exactly does this man do?

Is he really a gangster?

Sejin’s curiosity continued to grow.

Whenever the man left the house, he was mostly dressed in a suit without a tie, just like the gangsters Sejin had seen countless times while he was still sleeping in the Shinsa Capital building. All the gangsters there wore the same style of clothes as him.

Because of that, Sejin was sure that Cheon Sejoo was one of them. However, every time he saw the man standing alone, dressed in his suit and coat, those thoughts would vanish without a trace.

The man, standing blankly with a blank expression on his face, looked like a movie star pretending to be a gangster. It seemed like, as soon as someone clapped the slate, he would smile brightly and return to his true self as if it had all just been an act.

As Sejin was quietly lost in such thoughts, a feeling of discomfort suddenly crept in, and his lips curled in dissatisfaction. He brushed off the ridiculous imagination and recalled the men bowing 90 degrees to the man in front of the Shinsa Capital building.

If humanity were to be divided into good and bad people, the man in front of him would definitely belong to the latter. Feeling foolish of himself for constantly trying to glorify the man just because he had shown him some a little of kindness, Sejin called out sharply to him.

“Aren’t we going?”

His sharp voice shattered his stillness. The figure of the man, who had been standing alone, became clearer, and the faded scene returned to vivid colors. Now, he seemed like someone who belonged to this world once more.

Sejin brushed past the man, who was now standing clearly before him and headed for the front door first. He could sense Cheon Sejoo’s presence silently following behind him.

The drive to school was as always, quiet. Occasionally, Cheon Sejoo would ask Sejin questions about the things he’d taught him, and Sejin would answer only what he knew, staying silent on the rest that he didn’t know. Every time that happened, Sejoo would nod his head in acknowledgment as if he’d finally thought Sejin had become somewhat human, only to sigh again like he was looking at a chimpanzee.

It was just as they were pulling up in front of East Seoul Boys High School when Cheon Sejoo reached out his hand toward Sejin. As Sejin waited for the car door to unlock, he noticed the man, who had been staring at him intently, suddenly reach out with the hand that had been gripping the steering wheel.

Lately, Cheon Sejoo had been trying to touch Sejin’s head more often, and each time it made Sejin feel uncomfortable. It wasn’t an unpleasant touch, but every time the man patted his head as if showing affection, Sejin felt a swirl of emotions inside him.

Thinking Cheon Sejoo was about to do the same, Sejin raised his hand to slap his hand away, but this time, the man’s hand didn’t reach for his head. It went for his forehead instead.

“……”

The cool palm brushed aside Sejin’s hair and touched his forehead. Startled, Sejin looked up, only to find Cheon Sejoo’s large, long hand resting quietly on his head as if he was checking his temperature.

Sejin, at a loss for words due to the man’s sudden action, looked up at the man. He could see Cheon Sejoo’s sharply handsome face tilted slightly to one side.

“You seem to have a fever.”

After a moment, Cheon Sejoo lowered his hand, stating his conclusion.

Fever?

Sejin blinked in confusion, having felt nothing of the sort, but the man frowned slightly and reached out his hand again.

With a quick flick of his fingers, he lightly tapped Sejin’s earlobe.

It stung.

“Your ears are red too, but it’s not a high fever… about 37.6 degrees.”

“What? Are you a doctor or something?”

“I’m serious. Aren’t you coming down with another cold again?”

Cheon Sejoo’s tone was serious like he was making an actual diagnosis. Sejin, thinking there was no way that was true, shook his head. He couldn’t feel any symptoms, and the fact that the man was suddenly playing doctor was just laughable.

Seeing Sejin’s reaction, Cheon Sejoo clicked his tongue as if he had expected him not to believe him and finally unlocked the car door. As Sejin was about to get out of the car without saying another word, the man called out after him, nagging.

“Remember, Kwon Sejin. If you want to see your mom, make sure you’ve memorized all 30 words.”

“…Fine!”

Annoyed by Cheon Sejoo’s never-ending nagging, Sejin angrily shouted back and slammed the SUV door shut before stepping out.

Ignoring the stares of the students watching him, he slung his bag over his shoulder and walked into the school.

It had been two months since Sejin started living at Cheon Sejoo’s house, but in all that time, he had only been able to visit his mother three times. The reason was simple, it was because he hadn’t met the conditions Cheon Sejoo had demanded.

In truth, going to Ehwagak to see his mother was a hassle for Sejoo, so Sejin understood that being allowed to visit her once every two weeks, or even once a month, was still reasonable.

However, people are inherently selfish creatures. At first, the man had said Sejin could see his mother every week, but now he was using studying as an excuse not to take him, and that was incredibly frustrating.

What’s even the point of memorizing the 19 times table?

Sejin, who had no academic ambitions, didn’t believe that studying would make any significant difference in his life.

So, the thought of losing opportunities to see his mother over something as studying which held no importance to him only fueled his irritation. More precisely, he was mad at Cheon Sejoo, but he was also angry with himself for being too stupid to memorize the 19 times table.

“Hey, look who it is. The wh0re’s back.”

As Sejin walked into the noisy classroom, he narrowed his eyes slightly at the voice directed at him.

The one who called him a “wh0re” was none other than the school delinquent who seemed to come to school solely to torment him, Lee Haegyun.

Ever since the day Cheon Sejoo had driven his car onto the sidewalk and taken Sejin with him, Lee Haegyun who had witnessed such a scene, had been consumed with curiosity.

How on earth could someone like Kwon Sejin, who had been living in a semi-basement room and was even kicked out of there, know such a wealthy and good-looking man?

Eventually, like any delinquent his age, he came up with a predictable conclusion.

Kwon Sejin must have sold his body to that man.

From that day onward, Haegyun started calling Sejin a “whore,” and his lackey, Kim Byungjun, followed suit. Fortunately, Kwon Sejin wasn’t the type to be easily provoked by such shallow taunts, but that only made Haegyun’s name-calling grow worse day by day. The more Sejin remained indifferent to his insults, the more frequent Haegyun’s jeered about him.