TWYW C6

He could have afforded to sleep in one day a week, but now, it had become a complete habit, and Gyeoul would wake up early in the morning without an alarm. Gyeoul, who was looking out the window where the bright sun was rising along with the sound of chirping birds from between the window cracks, rubbed his dry face, kicked off the blanket, and headed to the bathroom.

As he took off his clothes one by one to shower, the body reflected in the mirror was filled with mottled scars. The scars, accumulated since childhood, including the newly engraved ones just before he entered university, covered his body so much that, with a little exaggeration, there was no space left. Looking at his reflection in the mirror, it felt as though various parts of his body were throbbing in illusion. Turning his head away from the body he himself found unsightly, Gyeoul entered the shower booth. After washing up quickly, Gyeoul got dressed, finished preparing for school, and left his room, stepping down the first-floor stairs.

“Are you leaving for work now……?”

Gyeoul’s eyes met his father’s, who was just opening the door and coming out of the master bedroom, and he bowed his head slightly, offering an awkward greeting.

“What bad luck to start the morning.”

“……”

“Getting into such a ridiculous department, you’re even leaving early to ‘study’.”

With his eyes trembling 불안하게, Gyeoul couldn’t bring himself to look at his father’s face properly and fixed his gaze on the floor.

“I picked you up and raised you, yet you don’t even know gratitude and live as you please.”

“I’m, I’m sorry……”

Fearing a hand might fly out at any moment, Gyeoul didn’t even know what he had done wrong; the words asking for forgiveness simply slipped out like a habit. Fortunately, it seemed his father had no intention of raising a hand so early in the morning. He turned his back, muttered a curse, and left the house.

“Gyeoul.”

He had noticed his mother standing in a corner of the living room since he was coming down the stairs, but she only now approached Gyeoul.

“You know your father says all this because he wants what’s best for our son, right?”

“Yes……”

“We love Gyeoul very much.”

“Yes…… I also……”

Gyeoul couldn’t finish his sentence. Leaving behind his mother’s hand stroking his back, he put on his shoes, quickly opened the front door, and left the house. Only then did he feel like he could finally breathe. Gyeoul took a deep breath in and out. He had been trying to avoid his father’s departure time as much as possible, but it was truly, as his father said, an unlucky morning.

No, since he wasn’t hit, maybe it could be called a lucky one.

Gyeoul dragged his listless feet toward the bus stop, his morning already drained of energy. To people who didn’t know him well, Gyeoul, emerging from a luxury housing complex, would look no different from any other rich kid. However, since middle and high school, thanks to his father being a member of the National Assembly, he had spent his school years amid jealousy and envy, with people bad-mouthing him behind his back for being a rich family’s child. Moreover, with his prickly personality and inability to deal well with people, he was always used to being alone.

Furthermore, as his father had said, the ones who picked him up and raised him when he was about to be out on the streets were his current adoptive parents. Gyeoul was born in the United States and spent his childhood receiving an abundance of love from his birth parents. However, the happiness he had taken for granted as a daily routine did not last long. While the family of three was on a happy trip, they were in an accident with a truck whose driver had dozed off, and only Gyeoul survived. If it were a drama, the story might be called cliché, but reality was not so.

After that, his father’s older brother, in other words, his uncle and his wife, adopted and raised him. He hadn’t heard the reason for the direct adoption, but he guessed that since the couple couldn’t have children, he had come to this house.

How wonderful it would have been if the story could have ended with ‘and they lived happily ever after.’

Not long after being adopted by his current adoptive parents, Gyeoul began to suffer from his father’s violence. It started for a simple reason: he called him ‘uncle’ instead of ‘father’. With such trivial reasons added on, being helplessly beaten by him who wielded violence soon became a normal part of daily life. And his mother, who always came to him after all the violence ended, would say that all of this was because they loved their son so much. Until his middle school days, she would hold the crying Gyeoul in her arms for a long time, mimicking a voice gentler than anyone else’s, whispering of their love. In his mother’s embrace, he had lived considering himself a beloved child.

However, Gyeoul began to realize something was strange when, during gym class while the other kids were changing, he noticed that only his body was covered in scars. Nevertheless, because they were the adoptive parents who had taken him in when he had nowhere else to go, he comforted himself by thinking it was something he had to endure. This was also what his mother had said to him, almost like brainwashing, every day when he was younger.

But even if he had grown accustomed to the violence, his father’s roars and the violence itself were not painless. Furthermore, there was a day in elementary school when he reflexively dodged his father’s fist, and he was beaten so severely that Gyeoul thought it might be better if he stopped breathing. So from the memory of that day, Gyeoul learned that it was better to just stand still and get hit, hoping for time to pass quickly. As time went by, he naturally learned that normal parents do not use violence in the name of love, but it wasn’t easy to overcome the learned helplessness. Gyeoul just dreamed of complete independence by graduating from college and getting a decent job.

Having encountered his father in the morning, Gyeoul fell into 괜한 thoughts, leaned his head against the bus window, and forced his eyes shut.

And while lost in various thoughts, the bus arrived in front of the university. As soon as Gyeoul got off the bus, he found his major’s lecture hall and went inside. Starting with Gyeoul, who was the first to arrive, students came in one by one, and once the group of about 15 had all taken their seats, the professor opened the classroom door and entered.

Today’s lecture was a workshop session on a short story Gyeoul had written. They had already done a workshop with another student’s story in the previous week’s class, but in Gyeoul’s eyes, it seemed less like a workshop and more like a time for pouring out harsh criticism. And, as expected, by the time the workshop was over, Gyeoul’s story had been torn to shreds and turned into pieces of trash.

‘The story has no substance.’

‘I don’t know what you’re trying to say.’

‘Why is this second paragraph even here.’

‘The story is so predictable you don’t even have to read the whole thing.’

Fuck, as if they’re all George Orwell and Hemingway.

After the workshop ended, Gyeoul was the first to leave the lecture hall, walking quickly past the main gate of the university. While sitting still and listening to the endless stream of words, which he couldn’t tell if they were criticism or condemnation without any proper reasoning, he had contemplated flipping the desk over countless times. His mood, which was already low from meeting his father in the morning, plummeted even further.

Gyeoul opened the door of the convenience store in front of the school and went inside. He immediately approached the counter and pointed to a pack of cigarettes that looked the most familiar. Having never once done anything that could be called rebellious under his violent family’s atmosphere, Gyeoul started smoking for the first time after he turned twenty, when he was severely beaten by his father after being caught secretly applying to the creative writing department instead of the law department. It wasn’t that he smoked habitually every day, but on days like today, he would buy a pack of cigarettes, smoke just one, and throw the rest in the trash. It was a habit born out of fear of what might happen if cigarettes were found at home, and at the same time, it was the only extravagance Gyeoul allowed himself, as he always had to save money since he had to earn his tuition and living expenses himself.

After paying for the cigarettes, Gyeoul stepped out of the convenience store and walked to a nearby smoking area. He tore the packaging of the cigarette pack, took one out, put it to his lips, and fumbled in his bag’s inner pocket for the lighter he had put there.

Ah, right.

He remembered the lighter he had thrown into the trash can along with the last cigarettes. The timing was awkward to go back into the convenience store to buy a lighter, as he had to go to his part-time job at the cafe. Gyeoul let out a deep sigh, put the cigarette back in his coat pocket, and turned his steps toward the bus stop.

“Sir, I’m here.”

Arriving at the cafe, Gyeoul greeted the owner, whom he saw almost every day, put on an apron, and stood in front of the counter. It was past lunchtime, so there weren’t many customers in the cafe yet. During that time, Gyeoul leisurely washed cups and dishes, organized the inventory, and immersed himself in the cafe work that was more familiar to him than his own home.

Before long, the outside grew dark, and around closing time, customers who looked like office workers started coming in one by one, and Gyeoul’s hands began to get busier. Since it was a cafe run by only Gyeoul, the part-timer, and the owner, it was just as hectic when customers rushed in all at once, even though he had been doing this for years.

“So you work here.”

Gyeoul, who was looking at the POS screen to take an order from the customer in front of him, looked up upon hearing a familiar voice. Yuhyeon was standing on the other side of the counter. Gyeoul, who was 177 centimeters tall, had never once thought of himself as short, but in front of Yuhyeon, he had to tilt his head up quite a bit to look at him.