SSL 38

“Oh, about Friday. It’s August 3rd.”

After saying that, Jaehyun glanced at Doyoon as if observing his reaction for some reason.

“Can you still come to tutoring like usual?”

“Huh? Yeah.”

“It’s your birthday.”

Jaehyun finished explaining.

“I was wondering if you had any other plans. Like going somewhere with your family.”

“I don’t.”

When his mother was around, they actually used to go out to eat. Since his father went bankrupt, they only celebrated simply. They would buy a rice cake or a slice of cake the night before, put it on the breakfast table for the person whose birthday it was the next day, and say happy birthday, and that was it. When Doyoon shook his head, Jaehyun tore a page from his practice book and said.

“Then let’s meet outside that day. I’ll draw you a map.”

Then he added, as if making an excuse to himself for some reason.

“My noona said she’s working from home. I think it’ll be better outside. There’s no other reason.”

“Okay.”

Jaehyun skillfully completed the map, marked the location of a subway station exit, and said they should meet there. As Doyoon nodded and took it, Jaehyun gestured with his hand, saying they should check the homework first.

The tutoring session went smoothly and ended exactly two hours later. However, Jaehyun looked over at Doyoyon’s textbook and narrowed his brow. Because in the corner of the last page for that day’s lesson, there was a crooked, handwritten memo. ‘Ask Jaehyun about Park Kanghyuk’.

“…What’s this?”

“Oh, this. I was curious.”

Doyoon swallowed and prepared the question in his mouth.

He had made a mistake last time. He couldn’t concentrate because he kept the thing he wanted to ask Jaehyun in his head. This time, because he had written it down, he was able to forget about it in his head. Because he had written it down so that it would be revealed right when the tutoring session was about to end.

“How is Park Kanghyuk doing these days? Is he having a hard time?”

“What?”

“I was wondering if you knew anything.”

Doyoon placed his hands neatly on his lap and continued.

“You said it last time when we went to the test-prep information session. That Park Kanghyuk’s situation had gotten bad. He couldn’t come to the academy, and he was hanging out with strange hyungs again. Is he getting beaten up, too?”

“…Why are you curious about that?”

“I saw him yesterday.”

As Jaehyun began to speak rather heavily, Doyoon replied, raising his hand near his own face.

“But he had a bruise on his face. It was swollen, like this.”

“Ah, so you thought it served him right. You’re curious how he ended up in that state, right?”

“Huh? No, that’s not it.”

“Then why are you asking?”

A gentle tone. A faint smile played on his face.

“You’re not worried, thinking, maybe it’s because of me, are you.”

“…”

But I am.

The answer lingered in his mouth. But for some reason, it felt like he shouldn’t answer that way. A feeling that he would be scolded harshly, like when he had given a completely wrong answer on an open-ended Korean language question.

He shouldn’t just blurt out the answer. Doyoon tried to explain properly with evidence. He began to construct sentences in his head. That kid named Park Beomjun at the information session said so too, that bad rumors started to spread about Kanghyuk after Woo Jincheol and I fought. He said I was the one involved.

Yesterday, Woo Jincheol gestured at me with his chin and said that to Park Kanghyuk too. That he was having a hard time ‘because of you’. And Park Kanghyuk had a bruise on his face. He had a big bruise on his face as if a bug’s legs had been torn off or a bird’s feathers had been plucked, and he looked like he was in pain.

If that’s because of me, if I hurt someone that badly again, then I should at least be aware… But before he could even move his lips, Jaehyun asked first.

“How did you run into him yesterday?”

“Oh, just by chance. We ran into each other on the bus.”

“So did Park Kanghyuk say that? That you ruined his life?”

“No, no. It wasn’t Park Kanghyuk, it was Woo Jincheol who said that. Not that I ruined it, but that he’s having a hard time because of me.”

“That son of a bitch… Why is Woo Jincheol showing up there?”

“The two of them were together.”

“Ah, fuck.”

Jaehyun let out a short laugh, muttering that birds of a feather flock together.

“Kang Doyoon, memorize this. Both of them are fucking bastards. You’re the victim, and they’re both the perpetrators. Park Kanghyuk is a son of a bitch not even worth a dick among them. He did bad shit to you. If Park Kanghyuk gets his spirit broken and gets his ass kicked, you should be happy and enjoy it. That’s the correct answer. Got it?”

“But…”

“Memorize it.”

A voice that had dropped low.

“Don’t ask again. Just memorize it. Understood?”

“…”

“Answer me. Are you going to memorize it or not?”

Doyoon shut his mouth.

He neither nodded nor gave an answer. He just kept his mouth shut tight and glared at the table. What is this.

Doyoon tried to put a name tag on the thorns sprouting in his chest. ‘Unfairness’, no, it seems closer to ‘disappointment’. I don’t know. Anyway, he didn’t feel like answering. You understood back then. You understood the heart that drew crushed corpses in the blank notebook.

“…You understood about the notebook.”

His voice slipped out.

“What?”

“He’s in pain too. I’m concerned because he’s in pain…”

“What are you, Stockholm syndrome? You’re talking nonsense.”

“It hurt when I was hit, too, and since he’s hurting like me… he’s the same as me.”

“What the f… Hey!”

Jaehyun gritted his teeth and shouted.

“He was a bastard, a fucking perpetrator, and you were the victim. Can’t you understand? How are the two of you the same?”

Doyoon frowned because of the voice. His ears were ringing. He tried to move his lips again in protest, but his headache only deepened and the words wouldn’t come out. He could tell that he couldn’t explain it well out loud either. Even though it was teeming in his heart.

When he sees something in pain, Doyoon feels pain too. Cha Jaehyun says not to care because Park Kanghyuk is a bad guy, but that’s the same as saying that it wouldn’t even hurt to beat Kang Doyoon up since he’s trash and a bug anyway. But Doyoon was in pain. It hurts the same for any human. Human flesh is so weak that it breaks and hurts easily when you hit it and stab it.

Doyoon couldn’t quite understand why Park Kanghyuk had tormented him so relentlessly. But he had never been able to guess why others did what they did anyway. He only knows that anyone can be in pain. That’s the only thing he can empathize with. The only moment he can feel that someone is ‘the same as me’.

I thought you understood.

When they were sitting across from each other with the blank notebook on the floor, he felt that Cha Jaehyun understood exactly that. So he was happy. As he sat there with his lips unconsciously pouting, a sneering-like sound reached his ears.

“You really are a strange one, aren’t you?”

When he looked up, Cha Jaehyun was smiling. His eyebrows were furrowed, but only his mouth smiled. A strangely distorted pronunciation.

“You try so hard to push away the person who is eagerly approaching you because he likes you, but you seem to care about the guy who tormented you to death because he hated you. You’re trying to approach him yourself.”

“…?”

“Do you know my birthday?”

As he spoke, Jaehyun stared right into the center of Doyoon’s eyes.

“Your birthday is August 3rd. When is my birthday?”

“Uh… I don’t know.”

“I asked for your birthday a long time ago, but you never asked. You’re not curious, are you?”

“…”

“Answer me. Are you even curious?”

Doyoon just opened and closed his mouth, half agape. This is hard.

The question ‘are you curious?’ is similar to ‘do you like it or dislike it?’. A feeling of being forced to pay attention to his own emotions and desires. To treat them as if they are worthy of attention. His stomach churned, and Doyoon inadvertently scrunched up his eyes. Why is that kind of thing important.

The reason he hadn’t asked Jaehyun was simple. Because he thought it would be crossing a line.

Because Doyoon himself had been flustered when he was asked the question. In fact, Doyoon couldn’t be sure. Whether the birthday on his family register was the day he was actually born, the day his adoptive parents brought him home, or some other day. So if he answered August 3rd, it could be a lie. But to explain the circumstances, he would have to reveal a fact that even his family kept hidden, so he just said that date.

He couldn’t carelessly throw back a question that had confused him so much at someone else. That’s why he didn’t ask Jaehyun. It doesn’t matter whether I’m curious or not. I just, I was only thinking of you… Doyoon began, frowning, trying to somehow organize his tangled thoughts and spit them out.

“I did it because I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“What are you talking about? That’s not an answer.”

“I mean… if I ask something like that, it’s touching too much. It’s trying to know too much, so it’s crossing a line. I don’t want to go that far.”

“What’s so much about a birthday? Hey, I tried. I…”

Jaehyun touched his forehead.

“I tried in my own way. I tried to know you and I tried to get in. Even now, I’m still… doing that, but you don’t even want to come in that much? You’re scared to ask about just one birthday?”

“I don’t really know, what you’re saying…”

“Forget it.”

Jaehyun let out a shallow sigh and waved his hand.

“I said forget it. You can go.”

Jaehyun got up and started to clear the table. He put the writing utensils back in the pencil case and stacked the textbooks and notebooks after closing them. Then he picked up the stack and briskly went into his room, leaving the door half-open instead of completely closed.

Doyoon swallowed dryly.

Jaehyun had told him to go. It seemed to mean he should go home. The tutoring time was over, so it was right that he should go. Still, Doyoon just stared at Jaehyun’s room and couldn’t easily leave the table, and although he slowly packed his things, he couldn’t bring himself to head for the door. Instead, he hesitantly approached the door and began to speak.

“…Cha Jaehyun.”

Silence.

“Jaehyun…ah.”

“…”

“Cha Jaehyun…”

“What.”

When he spat it out through gritted teeth, there was a sign of movement.

Jaehyun came back out, frowning. He didn’t come completely out of the room, but leaned against the doorway and crossed his arms. Doyoon began in a small voice.