Midday Guest Chapter 6

Thud, thud—kicks came flying in. A pair of high-heeled boots soared high, grazed Yiwon’s shoulder, and came back down.

“Aaargh!”

The one getting beaten didn’t make a sound, yet the one doing the hitting screamed as if he were the one in pain. The face of the man who lived and died by his pride turned bright red. At that, even Yiwon flinched slightly.

“…Fuck. Hey, grab him.”

His arms were seized, and his body was hauled up. Like a doll limp from being soaked in water, Yiwon hung there as fists as hard as stones were driven repeatedly into his stomach. Unable to breathe, he wheezed with a crimson face until his body was sent flying, crashing into something. He couldn’t pull his senses together.

Kim Sunwoo panted, pointing with his hand at the old traditional house behind them.

“Either pay back the money, or if you don’t have it, pay it back with something else.”

“…Ugh.”

As he put every ounce of effort into trying to breathe, a very faint, thread-like sliver of air finally began to fill his lungs. From Yiwon’s mouth, as he propped himself up on the dirt ground, a mixture of saliva and blood dripped down.

“Hey, aren’t you sick and tired of looking at my face?”

“…Heh.”

“If it were me, I’d hand it over and leave just because I was fed up.”

Yiwon lifted his head with a swollen face to look. One of the guys who had been stomping around the wooden veranda in his boots walked out triumphantly, waving an envelope he’d found in a drawer.

“Hyung-nim!”

“What, you bastard?”

“You should take this for now.”

5, 10, 15… Having checked the envelope, he made a dissatisfied sound through his teeth and stomped firmly on the back of Yiwon’s head.

“Hey, I’m coming back in a week. Have it ready for real then. Got it?”

Yiwon stared blankly at the men as they walked away with a month’s worth of his living expenses.

Blink. His slowly moving eyelids closed calmly. He was lying on the dirt yard, yet he wondered why it felt so comfortable….

Yiwon thought to himself as his forehead pressed into the ground.

At least it was a relief that the grocery bag was intact.

Things hadn’t been like this from the start.

In the past, Kim Sunwoo had occasionally cut Yiwon some slack for a few days, and even though he made it clear he was annoyed, he hadn’t driven a person into a corner using violence.

The relationship with Kim Sunwoo changed drastically when rumors began to spread that several rural villages, including Yonggung-ri, might be redeveloped.

Outsiders began appearing in the village. There were professional contractors and people who came looking for speculation opportunities.

Some villagers sold their houses at a reasonable price and left, while others rented out their empty houses and left to wait and see how things developed.

The problem arose for those with debt and those trying to snatch those houses for a pittance. Just like the relationship between Yiwon and Kim Sunwoo.

Yiwon didn’t know much about redevelopment, but listening to the village elders, he realized that there was money in it.

And Kim Sunwoo, having long since smelled the scent of money, had lost his mind. It was evident just by seeing how he relentlessly collected money while roaming around neighborhoods where he had no ties.

If he stayed like this, he might lose Haeundang without even getting a fair price. They said redevelopment projects were a battle against time. The rainy season was almost over; if he could just hold out until the off-season ended, perhaps he could make it through another year like that.

Yiwon brushed off the dirt and stood up.

He didn’t have time to lie around just because it was hard.

He prepared the dinner menu with his hoodie pulled up. Since the sun was still pouring down hot late into the day, none of the guests noticed that Yiwon’s condition was strange.

It was a relief. In a neighborhood already unsettled by redevelopment issues, if a violent incident broke out at an operating guesthouse, it would be safe to say the business was finished.

After confirming the guests were enjoying their dinner, Yiwon quietly returned to his room. He spat out the wad of toilet paper he had been biting and sat down with his back against the wall.

He had only closed and opened his eyes for a moment, but it was already dawn.

His body felt as heavy as a thousand pounds. When he took a shower and looked in the mirror, his appearance was truly a sight to behold. Bruises were already starting to rise around his eyes, and it was the same on his arms and stomach.

Fortunately, his legs were in relatively good shape, so he put on shorts and a white linen shirt. He also took out and wore a pair of pitch-black sunglasses he had kept tucked away in a drawer. He heard his father used to wear them in his youth; the lenses were so wide that they were perfect for a day like this.

That left his neck—his white, exposed neck became the problem. Peering into the mirror from various angles, Yiwon put on a wide-brimmed straw hat hanging on the wall, tilting it back, and tidied his outfit.

Putting it all together, he looked quite plausibly like a guesthouse owner.

Yiwon’s routine flowed as it had before. When a guest checked out, he tidied the guest room, and when a new guest made a reservation, he welcomed them.

Guests came sporadically.

On one day when rain poured down, two teams booked for two nights. They said they came for “rain-watching.” Throughout the weekend, they did nothing and fully enjoyed the rainy Haeundang before heading back.

Time passed, and it became two days before the one-week mark Kim Sunwoo had mentioned.

The credit card payments had been settled, and since there was a cash-paying guest, he included that too. But even after scraping every bit of money together, he was about a hundred thousand won short of the interest he had to hand over to Kim Sunwoo.

If only just one more team of guests would come, he could get through this off-season safely…

He was short on living expenses, but he could endure that. With the ramen and kimchi he’d bought in advance while they were on sale, and the rice stored in the refrigerator, he could last a month.

Daily life rolled on, creaking like that.

Lying in his room catching the wind from the electric fan, Yiwon looked out at the yard. Seeing the sun shining brightly, it seemed the rainy season was taking a break today.

Blinking slowly, he fell back into a sleep. Having worked busily while in a mess after being beaten by Kim Sunwoo, his physical condition was a wreck.

Coincidentally, it was a day with no reserved guests. It was only after sleeping for about two more hours that Yiwon finally came to his senses properly.

He took a shower and sat on the wooden veranda, catching the breeze from the fan. Because the weather was hot, he had no appetite and just wanted to eat something cool.

Yiwon put on his sunglasses and straw hat and headed for the supermarket.

With familiar steps, he opened the ice cream showcase and took out a Candy Bar. The weather was so hot that even in that short moment, beads of moisture formed on the wrapper.

Mr. Kim from the supermarket saw Yiwon and clicked his tongue through his teeth.

“Can you even see what’s in front of you like that?”

“It’s summer, isn’t it?”

“I’m saying it because it looks stifling to me.”

Mr. Kim pushed the paid-for ice cream across the counter. Yiwon gave a “Thank you” greeting and left the supermarket.

Given that he said it looked stifling, it seemed Mr. Kim hadn’t noticed Yiwon’s condition. It was a relief. Starting with rumors that the guesthouse owner’s lip was split or his eye was swollen, it wouldn’t take long for exaggerated stories to spread throughout all of Yonggung-ri and become a ghost story.

He had only walked a few steps with the ice cream in his mouth when the bottom started to melt. He was tilting his head and biting into it from the bottom here and there while moving his feet.

A black sedan was parked by the roadside. The car body was large yet not clunky, flowing elegantly, which reminded him of someone.

That man.

Recalling the man, Yiwon turned his head.

Looking toward the Yonggung-ri coffee shop instinctively, Yiwon’s eyes grew round and wide.

The wooden blinds were pushed to one side, and the man walked out through the entrance. Holding a document envelope over his forehead to avoid the sunlight, his eyes were narrowed into a deep frown due to the heat.

Looking around, the man’s gaze turned toward Yiwon.

Across the two-lane road, the two men stared at each other.

Yiwon, who had his lips pressed to the base of the ice cream, quietly pulled his hand away and closed his mouth.

The ice cream remaining on his lips was sticky, but he stayed still. It was only a few days ago that he had seen a strange scene while touching his mouth with his tongue in this very spot.

A sweet scent pricked his nose. Not even a car passed by. After staying like that for a long time on the quiet street, the man strode across the road and approached Yiwon.

Why… is he coming?

The pupils hidden behind the sunglasses busily scanned the surroundings. There were no people on the side where Yiwon stood, and most of the shops were either closed or empty.

Yiwon froze, flinching despite himself.

The man who had rolled someone up and put them in a trunk was getting closer to him. It was as if heavy shackles had been placed on his feet; he couldn’t move an inch.

The man stopped a few steps away from Yiwon and looked down at him.

Seen up close, he was taller and broader than Kim Sunwoo. And how firm his body looked. If he were to offend such a person and get hit, it was certain that even his bones wouldn’t be salvaged.

“…….”

“…….”

As if he might speak, as if he might act as if he knew him. An awkward atmosphere continued to flow. Yiwon secretly sucked his lower lip and lowered his gaze.

Behind them, a truck passed by making a loud noise. Rattle, clatter. After the truck passed the speed bump and disappeared into the distance, silence returned.

“Hello.”

“…….”

“Aren’t you going to say hello?”

Yiwon lifted his head and looked at the man. The man’s gaze passed over Yiwon’s long-sleeved linen shirt and straw hat, then stopped at the sunglasses. His dark eyebrows formed a peak as they went up and then came back down.

“Don’t you remember me? This is already our third time seeing each other.”

“Hello….”

Anxiety was buried in the end of his words.

The man tilted his head, looking down past Yiwon’s sunglasses.

“Your voice sounds terrible.”