DS Ch 8

It had been raining since dawn. Pitter-patter, transparent liquid droplets tapped on the window one by one. Soon it started pouring heavily in all directions.

The gloomy weather, the dark sky, and the rain soaking the ground thoroughly.

Perhaps due to the superstition that you shouldn’t eat raw fish on rainy days, the number of customers stopped coming.

“Please come again next time.”

Aunt Jeong-hye handed back the card to the last customer after completing the payment.

“Come, Oppa, will come again!”

A man with a flushed face reeks of alcohol raised one hand. Bang! He closed the door loudly and left.

“Ugh, gross.”

Aunt Jeong-hye shuddered and clicked her tongue. She was disgusted to the core.

“I just wish he’d d1e already.”

He was truly the epitome of a creep. Eun-myeong, who had been surveying the situation from inside the kitchen, let out a relieved sigh.

From the moment he entered the restaurant and saw Eun-myeong, he had this lecherous look on his face. And afterward, he kept giving Eun-myeong this creepy gaze. As Eun-myeong was wiping the utensils one by one with a dry dishcloth, an unsettling feeling came over him. When he looked up, the man was staring right at him.

‘Hey, sweetie.’

His face was covered in pockmarks, and his bulbous nose made him look like a boulder. Moreover, that look in his eyes was unusually strange. For some reason, Eun-myeong felt uncomfortable and kept avoiding his gaze.

‘Bring me more peppers here.’

The man ordered, shaking the pepper plate. Eun-myeong didn’t want to get close. With reluctance, Eun-myeong scooped a few peppers coated in soybean paste onto the plate. As he set it down on the table, the man’s creepy insect-like gaze crawled down his nape.

“This one seems fresh, doesn’t it sweetie.”

He said as the smell of alcohol wafted from his mouth.

‘Let me have a taste of this fresh pepper you’re selling.’

He patted Eun-myeong’s buttocks while saying so. Eun-myeong flinched in shock and his spine stiffened. Flustered, he rolled his eyes to the side, only to see the man’s greasy, glaring eyes fixed on him.

‘Oh my gosh, customer, have you gone crazy! Why would you do that to the poor kid! He’s about my son’s age.’

Aunt Jeong-hye quickly came and hid Eun-myeong behind her back.

‘Oh my, what did I do? This place sure treats its customers rudely.’

The man blatantly fired back with an impudent tone. But Aunt Jeong-hye wasn’t one to back down either.

‘The audacity! May God punish you, may Buddha also wake from his slumber to punish you. Don’t you dare, don’t even look at the kid.’

Then she gestured frantically for Eun-myeong to quickly enter the kitchen area behind her back.

‘Go inside quickly.’

At the aunt’s insistence, Eun-myeong headed towards the kitchen. But he was worried about Aunt Jeong-hye, so he sat down near the door and started washing the dishes. He poured dish soap into the rubber basin and diluted it well with water. He placed the dishes inside and began scrubbing them with a scrubbing pad. The scraping sounds echoed in the small space.

After confirming that aunt Jeong-hye had skillfully appeased and sent off the obnoxious customer, he was relieved and diligently cleaned the dishes. After a while, Eun-myeong felt the strain in his arms and a dull ache in his lower back. His empty stomach growled like a hollow cave. Somehow, soap bubbles had gathered on the tip of his nose.

“Maybe it’s because of the bad weather, but even that owner who used to come by frequently didn’t show up today.”

Aunt Jeong-hye, who had returned to the kitchen, dragged a bath stool over and sat in front of the basin. She weakly tapped her shoulders with her fist. Her face, with sunken cheekbones, looked particularly tired.

“Business was really slow today, so slow… Ugh, I’m going to die.”

Eun-myeong’s movements gradually slowed. The soap bubble on his nose popped. Feeling sorry, he didn’t know how to face Aunt Jeong-hye. Although there were fewer customers than before, the main reason the work was tough was because they were short one pair of hands. Business was bad, but the workload remained the same.

“You barely even touched your food earlier.”

“I’m fine, I ate a lot in the morning…”

Eun-myeong brushed off the back of his neck. Feeling self-conscious from the attention, his cheeks flushed slightly.

“Aunt, please go in first. I’ll handle this…”

The least he could do was the dishes. The shop closed at 3 am. Though there was still an hour left, it didn’t seem like any more customers would come. It was safe to say business for the day was done.

“Huh?”

The aunt’s eyes widened, revealing teeth smeared with azalea-colored lipstick. She tried to hide her smile but ended up grinning widely.

“You have some more things to take care of anyway.”

Eun-myeong clumsily added a little white lie so the aunt wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. Though it wasn’t entirely untrue.

Moreover, Aunt Jeong-hye was the only one who helped him and Eun-joo when no one else cared.

“Then aunt will bring you some rice cake tomorrow.”

Aunt Jeong-hye reluctantly got up and straightened her knees. Eun-myeong supported her aunt and left the kitchen together.

Aunt Jeong-hye took out an old pink jumper that was hanging on a hanger and zipped it up to the end of her neck. She firmly pressed the flower-patterned hat onto her head.

“Oh dear, I should’ve brought an umbrella, this is bad.”

“… Aunt, I have one.”

Eun-myeong grabbed a plastic umbrella from the nearby umbrella stand and handed it to Aunt.

“What about you!”

“I have one more. I brought it before but didn’t use it…”

Aunt Jeong-hye was pleased, saying it was fortunate. Eun-myeong slightly lifted the corner of his lips. Though it quickly drooped again from exhaustion…

“Be careful on your way.”

“You too, dear.”

The sound of pouring rain could be heard through the small crack in the door. The aunt stopped, holding the door.

“The boss who comes every day.”

Then she lowered her voice.

“He asked me the other day where Eun-joo was.”

It felt like there was a pounding in the area around his belly button. Eun-myeong took a step back involuntarily.

“Where did Eun-joo go? Nothing serious has happened, right?”

“Yes, my sister went to visit relatives in Seoul.”

Eun-myeong nodded mechanically. His eyelashes trembled along his tears.

“To a relative’s house?”

The aunt stopped herself from saying more. Much was read in her expression. The kind of look that said, you’re orphans without a single blood relative, how could you have relatives to stay with after being in the orphanage.

“If you’re hungry, take something from the fridge and eat. No matter how worried you are about Eun-joo, if you keep skipping meals you won’t be able to work.”

Eun-myeong nodded slightly.

“You need to eat for your brain to function and have energy to work.”

“Yes…”

“Alright, see you when the day breaks. Don’t stay out too late either, dear.”

Eun-myeong forced a faint smile. Soon after, the door closed. The hazy smile lingering on Eun-myeong’s face like a dark cloud dissipated like fog.

Eun-myeong took a step closer to the glass window. He could see a small figure moving away through the transparent window.

This was the only opportunity. He quietly went out to the front of the raw fish restaurant with a fishing net. There were snow crabs in the tank. He lifted it up with a scoop and checked each crab shell one by one. There were some that had particularly swollen crab shells.

Eun-myeong took them all out and brought them to the kitchen sink.

He took one out and pressed it with his hand, but it felt limp and flimsy. Carefully making an incision with scissors, a tiny plastic pack emerged from inside. Its contents glistened like glass beads under the light.

The same powdery substance that had burst open in his hand when he was with that man.

“Uh, what should I do…”

Snow crab, hair crab, red crab… Now Eun-myeong understood why those were written in his sister’s notebook. When he got home, he’d have to burn that notebook.

Why would she do something like this… His sister had never coveted others’ belongings before, never committed even the slightest wrongdoing.

For his sister to resort to this,

“…”

It meant life must have become unbearable for her. A hollow feeling overcame Eun-myeong, causing him to space out momentarily.

Eun-myeong peeled the snow crab one by one. All the shells were collected and discarded as general waste, and the flesh was thrown into the food waste bin. Expensive snow crabs worth over a million won were being thrown away.

It would soon be noticed that this many were missing from the tank all at once. But Eun-myeong couldn’t leave a single one. If these ended up in a customer’s stomach and caused food poisoning, or if that man happened to find out…

As the dreadful thoughts continued, his vision started going white. Eun-myeong held on to the sink to overcome the dizziness that made him feel like something was breaking apart right before his eyes. He barely ate anything and his head was pounding. Yet, amidst all this, his stomach growled again with hunger…

Come to think of it, when was the last time he had a proper meal? Ever since his sister disappeared, he had just been roughly putting something in his mouth day by day to get by.

‘You need to eat for your brain to function and have energy to work.’

The aunt’s voice echoed in his sluggish mind. Yes, that’s right. As hard as it was, he had to force himself to eat, following the aunt’s advice. Only then would he have strength, be able to earn money, and possibly help his sister if anything happened.

Eun-myeong walked slowly. Swish swish. Light green slippers brushed against the kitchen tiles. When he approached the fridge and opened it, there was a pot of spicy stew. Inside, various seafood items were haphazardly mixed together. They could never serve it to customers, but when there were a few items left, they often collected them like this.

‘When will we ever get to eat such expensive sashimi?’

And they used to gather in the kitchen with the aunts and share them. The current one was even worse because it had already been touched up once during the day.

The leftover rice was stuck together and had gone completely cold, no different from dog food. Yet seeing food for the first time in a while made Eun-myeong’s stomach growl even louder. He swallowed hard.

He grabbed the rice bowl and pot, shuffling over to sit at the table alone. Despite the TV playing in the background, an eerie feeling persisted amid the pitter-patter of rain on this gloomy day.

He carefully picked up a piece of salmon with his chopsticks and put it in his mouth…

Shudder. Eun-myeong’s shoulders trembled. His head slowly lifted up. Then the sound of a door opening – creak.

A massive, towering shadowy figure stood like a mountain.

It was that man.