SSL 17

<Take a look at this.>

As soon as Doyoon entered, Jaehyun immediately pointed to one side of the wall. The slender black storage cabinet was filled with music albums.

Jaehyun pulled out eight CDs from among them in order and explained as he showed them. They were all the same in that the words ‘Goldberg Variations’ were written on the cover in the alphabet, but underneath, different names were imprinted, and the pictures on each CD were different as well. This one has a different performer, this one was recorded in a different year, this one is a live recording while this one is a studio recording, and so on and so forth.

<It’s a piece I really like, so I’ve collected quite a few. On my PC too……. There’s a place where you can listen to stuff with expired copyrights for free. I have some saved from there too.>

Doyoon nodded. To be honest, he had not understood everything. He just thought that this boy must really like and know a lot about the piano. He must really like that piece by Bach, too. The piece I like the most, he knows it and likes it much more deeply than I do.

So, on his way home that day, Doyoon ended up making an impulsive decision. He changed his plan and decided to play the piano during the music practical instead of the recorder.

<I’m curious how you’d play it. Are you going to play the piano for the practical?>

<Can’t you just play it once for me? I like number 4 and number 8.>

Of course, Jaehyun had asked with his own mouth. But Doyoon had not been able to fully grasp the intention behind the request.

It could have just been what is called a ‘polite remark,’ or he could have brought it up because he wanted to see him play terribly and laugh at him. Believing that Doyoon would not be able to play well. There was no way to know the true purpose hidden in someone else’s words. So, Doyoon had simply made the decision of his own accord, regardless of Jaehyun’s request.

That night, Doyoon took out the dusty 61-key keyboard. After that, he practiced whenever he had time every day, and finally, on Tuesday during the third period, he sat down at the piano in the music room and somehow managed to form the notes at his fingertips. Even though he was trembling from a strange level of nervousness, perhaps because of the experience of being jeered at in middle school.

He had done it because he wanted to let him hear.

He wanted to let Cha Jaehyun hear. Because he had held onto the hope that he might listen. To what? He did not know. In any case, he wanted to try. So he had played.

<That performance was interesting. It was like a pointillist painting. ……I enjoyed listening. Thank you.>

That is what Cha Jaehyun had said a few days later.

During the weekend study session, Cha Jaehyun had looked him straight in the eye and said that to him. Maybe he had let his guard down from that moment on. His defenses had been lowered. To the point where he had hemmed and hawed before allowing him to stop by his house, and even let him into the room where the plain black notebook was hidden.

Why had he been so stupid? As Doyoon was ruminating while staring only at the floor, the door opened.

Jaehyun came in, carrying four books. Each had a different thickness and size, but two of them were so large and thick that he had to hold them with both hands. Books with various pictures and photos intermingled on the covers and titles written in English. Jaehyun placed them neatly on the floor, then smiled and gestured.

“Why are you standing? Have a seat. You can sit on the bed or over here, on the floor.”

“……Okay.”

“Sit and wait just a little longer. I’ll bring some tea and cake. Just a moment.”

“Can’t you just tell me now?”

Doyoon was surprised by his own voice.

The inside of his palm throbbed. It was because his nails had dug in deep. Doyoon realized he had been clenching his fists too tightly, and only as he slowly relaxed his grip did he realize. I am really scared right now, he thought. Jaehyun, who had been about to leave, turned back and asked again.

“Hmm?”

“……”

“Kang Doyoon, I didn’t catch what you said. What do you want me to tell you now?”

“……What you’re going to make me do.”

He must have been too scared to wait any longer. So, he had preemptively asked instead. Doyoon swallowed his dry saliva and spat out the rest of his words.

“I’d rather you just tell me now.”

“Uh……. What do you think I’m going to make you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“I brought the books, and now I’m bringing snacks. What do you think we’re going to do?”

“……”

Books, snacks. Then, isn’t he going to use the spine or the corner of the book to hit my head? And pour the tea on my head. In middle school, Doyoon had been hit on the forehead with the corner of a textbook hard enough to tear the skin, and hot soup had been poured on his lap at the cafeteria.

However, Doyoon was not sure. The books Jaehyun had brought looked expensive, with their unusual paper and large size, so he really did not know if they would be good for that purpose. Because Park Kanghyuk had hit Doyoon with his own textbook and then gotten annoyed that the book was ruined. Jaehyun said with a small laugh.

“Let’s look at books and hang out together, you dummy. I came to my house because I have books I want to show you. The snacks were because my noonas said they’d give us some, so I was thinking we could eat while we look.”

“……?”

“Well……. We might spill the tea on the books by mistake if I bring it. So let’s look at the books first.”

Jaehyun turned his body and plopped down on the floor. Right in front of where Doyoon was sitting. Then, he picked up the largest book among them with both hands, flipped through the pages, and then opened one section wide and placed it on the floor.

It was a photo book, Doyoon belatedly realized. Black and white photos were printed on the opened pages. They did not seem to be Korean people. They were all Westerners. Judging by their clothes, they did not seem to be from modern times either, but he was not sure of the era.

Anyway, there were many people in the pictures. People with their eyes closed, mostly young children. But there were adults too.

Some were pictures of just one person, and some had two or so together. There were pictures of them lying down asleep, but also some sitting up, and some standing side by side with several other people. Pictures of parents or siblings surrounding and holding a young child also caught his eye.

Doyoon noticed that some people’s hands were a slightly different color. Their eyes also looked a little strange. A feeling of being out of focus by themselves. As Doyoon was frowning and looking down, Jaehyun pointed to a few of them and explained right away.

“These people, they’re not alive.”

“……Huh?”

“These are all corpses.”

Jaehyun said, tapping the corner of the page.

“They’re pictures of dead people. I thought of this right away when I saw your notebook.”

Doyoon fell and curled up between the cement floor and the wall of the alley, covering his head. He tried to shield his face and neck with his hands.

It was an attempt not to get hit in any visible places. Fortunately, the kicks only landed on his thighs, stomach, or waist anyway. Park Kanghyuk’s group now tried not to leave any wounds that could become a problem, for the most part. It was because they were being careful after having been called to the teachers’ office with their parents for another incident recently. Amidst the flashing lights in front of his eyes from the pain, voices could be heard intermittently.

“Why are you even alive, really?”

The sound of laughter, then pain again.

“You have no money at home, you’re a psycho, you’re not smart either……. How are you going to live in the future? Just die now.”

A blow to the solar plexus. Doyoon held his position and endured. As he endured, letting the curses pass over him like small stones falling on his head, the presence of people disappeared at some point. When he opened his eyes, the kids were gone, and only cigarette ash, cigarette butts, and phlegm-like marks remained on the ground and on Doyoon’s own school uniform.

Doyoon got up shakily, brushing off his clothes. After the closing homeroom, Park Kanghyuk had grabbed Doyoon’s shoulder, saying, ‘Let’s walk home together.’ He had taken him to a suitable alley with a few friends and demanded money, and when he said he did not have any, he had laughed and pushed him down. After pushing him down, he had kicked him.

It was a common occurrence. Still, Doyoon never gave him money. Eunwoo hyung had said so. He said not to give him money. That it would never end once he started. So Doyoon just did not give him money. He only paid compensation when he broke Park Kanghyuk’s group’s things, or did errands for them, or gave them other things he had instead.

Park Kanghyuk usually made Doyoon do embarrassing things. Last year, he had made him confess his feelings a few times. He had told him to confess to a younger girl at school, and the girl had cried. Perhaps finding that amusing, he had then told him to confess to a male sunbae in the middle of the auditorium during gym class.

<You fucking bastard……>

The sunbae’s face had turned beet red, and Doyoon had almost been punched. Thanks to other kids around him holding him back and even a teacher running over, it had ended with just a barrage of curses. Pervert, disgusting, filthy, die, and so on.

Still, it was better than paying money, so Doyoon did everything he was told. On days when there was nothing for him to do, he would usually just get beaten up like today. After checking to see if there were any torn parts on his clothes, Doyoon meticulously brushed his clothes and bag one more time and then stood up.

“Oh, oh, student.”

As he was walking along the path next to the wall of another apartment complex, someone called out to him. A middle-aged woman standing in front of a fruit truck.

“Are you okay? No, oh my.”

The woman approached and pointed below Doyoon’s nose.

“Student, you have a nosebleed. It’s bleeding a lot.”

“Ah, thank you. I’m okay.”

It was not an infrequent occurrence. When he was hit on the body, he did not get wounds on his face, but strangely, he would get a nosebleed afterwards. Doyoon took out a crumpled tissue from his school uniform jacket pocket. He always carried it, folded up after tearing a long piece from the school bathroom’s toilet paper roll, in preparation for times like this. Then, he flinched as the woman held something out to him.

“Wipe it with this. Your clothes are all covered in dirt too. Student, did something……. happen?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

Doyoon quickly bowed his head while pinching his nose. He was scared.

It gave him the creeps. I have to run away from this woman quickly. Doyoon straightened up, waved his hands, and took a step back.

“I’ll be going now. I’m sorry. Goodbye.”

Regardless of whether the nosebleed soaked through the tissue and flowed out, Doyoon turned and ran. Only after the woman was sufficiently far behind him did he stop, catch his breath, and tilt his head up, pinching and massaging the bridge of his nose. Scary. That person was nice to Doyoon. She acted affectionately, at least on the surface, to someone like Doyoon.

How hard must it have been for her to do that?

How much must she have hated it on the inside?

His heart pounded. Was it because she happened to be of a similar age and build to his mother? His mother had been good to Doyoon for over ten years. She had treated him too well. Not just with words, but by hugging and even kissing him every day. But in reality, she hated Doyoon. She found him grotesque and loathed him.

After learning that fact, Doyoon would become terrified whenever he met someone who acted even a little bit affectionate towards him. The kinder they appeared, the larger and darker their hidden inner thoughts seemed to bulge. A kind person was a bomb that could explode at any moment, with only a creepily smooth exterior.

After the nosebleed had more or less stopped, Doyoon headed home. Before opening the front door, he meticulously brushed off his pants and jacket, and as soon as he went in, he went to the kitchen. He had to prepare dinner.

“That was a good meal.”

His father said with a smile as he and his younger brother brought over the dishes. Doyoon finished the dishes, went into his room, sat down at his desk, and started studying. However, his stomach throbbed, making it difficult to concentrate.

He had barely eaten anything either. Perhaps because of being hit in the stomach every day, his appetite had decreased. During the three years of middle school, his height had grown slightly, but his weight had actually decreased. Thanks to that, the family’s food expenses were reduced by a tiny amount, which was a relief. As he was trying to solve a problem with his hand on his solar plexus and a frown on his face, there was a knock, and the door opened.

“Doyoon.”

It was his hyung. Since becoming a high school student, his hyung came home late because he did late-night self-study. Thanks to that, preparing dinner had become Doyoon’s responsibility. Although his hyung did help a little in the morning.

But his hyung would be leaving soon. His hyung was a third-year in high school now, and he said he would leave home once he got into college. The probability of getting into a college in the provinces was the highest, and then he would live in the dormitory there. His hyung looked Doyoon up and down and then asked in a low voice.

“Did you get hit again?”

“……”

“Did they take anything from you? Do you need money?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

His hyung nodded as if relieved, then let out a sigh.

“You can tell me. Money, I’ll help you as much as I can. But don’t ask Father for money or steal it. You know. That Father has a lot of worries already.”

“Yeah. I know.”

When he answered, his hyung stared at Doyoon for a moment and then went out. Soon, there was a presence beyond the wall to the left of his desk. His hyung had gone into his own room. His hyung and Doyoon were sharing one bedroom, divided by a partition wall.