Runway Chapter 13

I pressed the keypad again while looking at the ceiling. Push, tap.

「I came to a friend’s house.」

The reply came quickly.

「That friend? The one you said curses a lot last time」

「What… yeah.」

「You must be close」

「We’ve been close since we were young.」

「That’s a shame, I was going to say let’s meet if you had nothing to do」

If I just typed, I think I’ll be able to go a bit later, the sentence would be complete, but the phone left my hand. Lee Wookchan had snatched the phone from my hand.

He scanned the screen with his eyes and read the text messages. Then, without my permission, he pressed the power button and shoved it into his pocket.

“What are you doing?”

“Pay some attention to me, will you? You rude bastard.”

“You weren’t saying anything.”

“I was about to now.”

“What did you say.”

Picking a fight for no reason even though he had nothing to say.

“Hey, Bae.”

Lee Wookchan stared at me intently. His gaze sometimes stripped me bare. It made me ashamed, and it made me feel humiliated. It was as if he knew everything about me, but pretended not to.

It was as if he was saying, ‘I know exactly what kind of fucked-up thoughts you’re having. So just shut up and stay by my side. Even if I meet other people, just stay next to me like a loser. You’re good at that, aren’t you.’

“…”

I kept silent. Anxiety boiled up to my throat.

Without realizing it, I clenched my fist.

Lee Wookchan propped his cheek on his palm and turned toward me. He placed his remaining hand, stretched out from lying down, on my cheek.

“Want to take my cold with you?”

He made a ridiculous joke.

“Are you crazy.”

When I retorted, he giggled. The hand placed on my cheek gradually gained strength.

“Why did you laugh earlier when I said I wasn’t going to Mina’s?”

“…”

Lee Wookchan grabbed my cheek and squeezed it firmly like dough. Because of that gesture, the corners of my mouth were forced up and then fell.

“You’re a funny bastard, really.”

“Let go. It hurts.”

“…”

It was right after that that he shut his mouth with an expressionless face. He stared at me blankly, very intently, for quite a long time.

Lee Wookchan blinked slowly. I swallowed saliva without realizing it. I avoided his gaze, afraid that my Adam’s apple might be noticed as it bobbed up.

Lee Wookchan, with his hand on my cheek, quietly gazed at me. He took a deep breath. Then he turned his back to me, fussing.

“Sleep, then eat dinner and go.”

I couldn’t bring myself to tell Lee Wookchan to give me my phone back. I looked at his back, then moved my gaze to the ceiling.

A small house, sagging ceiling wallpaper, Lee Wookchan’s breathing, emotions I couldn’t understand but that were in fact quite firmly established, seventeen.

I slowly closed my eyes too. I wanted to fall asleep feeling Lee Wookchan’s breath mixed with metallic rasp.

I fell into a deep sleep and then opened my eyes. Before I could even stretch, I froze completely.

I had my head resting on Lee Wookchan’s shoulder. Since both of us were lying down, it might be strange to say I was leaning on him, but while lying down, I had my head against his thick, hard forearm.

Lee Wookchan, with his body pressed against mine, was drenched in cold sweat.

Was it because I had fallen asleep next to him while he had a fever? Even I felt like my body was burning.

I barely managed to lift myself up. At the sign of movement, Lee Wookchan, who had his eyes tightly closed, also lifted his eyelids.

Eyes like a dark night sky without a single point of light turned toward me. Beasts hiding their bodies in that darkness and baring their teeth.

I can’t check his temperature by placing my hand on Lee Wookchan’s forehead. Because I know it’s a strange thing to do. Lee Wookchan let out a long, laborious breath.

“It fucking hurts, seriously.”

He lets out a hollow laugh as if even he finds it absurd. He spoke to me with a metallic, cracked voice.

I pushed his cheek for no reason. Lee Wookchan, who would usually have unleashed a torrent of curses like what the hell are you, what kind of bitch are you, was led by my gesture, turned his head, and then looked back at the ceiling as before.

He soon closed his eyes. His nose bridge stood so high that the inner corners of his eyes seemed deeply sunken.

“…”

I looked at Lee Wookchan’s face for a long time. Lee Wookchan always had a calm, composed face, true to his nature.

He didn’t seem to know that it made him look even more pitiful and sorrowful to the one looking at him.

“Bae Seonho.”

Lee Wookchan called me.

“Back when I was sick before. Do you remember. In elementary school.”

I remembered. Even in elementary school, Lee Wookchan got sick once every few years. The only one who knew that was me.

The teacher, of course, didn’t believe it. The teacher, who had been worn out by the guy who had been committing all sorts of misdeeds and bad things since he was young, happened to explode that day.

Holding the phone, in front of all the kids in the class, the teacher screamed at the top of his lungs and cursed Lee Wookchan.

I think he cursed his parents too. But it didn’t matter to Lee Wookchan. Because to him, parents were already meaningless beings.

When the teacher was holding the phone and spewing contempt and curses at Lee Wookchan, I was there too.

Watching the teacher, whose face had flushed bright red, shouting into the phone at Lee Wookchan on the other end, ‘Are you trying to mess with me right now, you fucking bastard!’, I flopped down at my desk.

And after school was over.

“You came looking for me. After seeing the address written in the attendance book.”

“That’s right.”

That day was the first time I went to Lee Wookchan’s house. We had known each other for years, but Lee Wookchan came to my house, not the other way around. Because hyung and noona made him uncomfortable.

Lee Wookchan let out a voice mixed with laughter.

“You were surprised the house was shitty, right.”

“A little.”

“Your expression was fucking hilarious. You didn’t know where to put your eyes so you kept looking at the floor, then at the broken roof.”

Lee Wookchan giggled with his eyes closed. I couldn’t tell what was funny.

Lee Wookchan said it was funny, but I felt a little sad. I couldn’t say why, but I did.

At that time, I was holding two ice creams in my hands. It was the best get-well gift I could afford.

Back then, Lee Wookchan and I fought and made up more often than now. Actually, it’s ambiguous to even call it fighting. It was a time when I got hit a lot.

Lee Wookchan, whose fists were always faster, also went around picking fights with kids for no reason back then. But even so, he always grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and shook me. If I told him to stop, he hit me on the head.

I think the first time I went to Lee Wookchan’s house was in the fifth grade of elementary school. He no longer shot BB gun pellets.

It was already after the guy named Lee Wookchan had become a weapon himself. Having inflated his body like a monster, able to bare his teeth and threaten the kids.

The Lee Wookchan of that time hung out with hyungs and noonas in school uniforms rather than kids his own age.

“But I was grateful back then.”

Lee Wookchan opened his closed eyes. Our eyes met again.

It’s a stubborn connection. In fact, this connection had the initiative with Lee Wookchan, and he held the string and dragged it around.

“You have to have been taken care of when you were sick for that to happen.”

I didn’t answer. Actually, I didn’t know what to say.

Sometimes, when I saw the weak side Lee Wookchan revealed, I became endlessly weak. It wasn’t that I thought I was in a superior position, but anyway.

“I guess I really am going to die. Doing this shitty reminiscing.”

After finishing his words, Lee Wookchan laughed self-deprecatingly. Then, not long after, he lifted his body.

The shadow created as he raised his upper body swallowed me. Lee Wookchan furrowed one brow, perhaps because his head hurt.

“Let’s go eat something. I’m starving to death.”

∞ ∞ ∞

We went down the steep hill and came to an indoor pojangmacha at the bottom of the neighborhood. Though it was called indoor, it was a place covered with an orange tarp and connected to the outside.

Lee Wookchan went there often. Because his noona was there.

Lee Wookchan opened the tarp and stepped inside.

“Hey, Lee Wookchan!”

Noona, who had been drinking soju and talking with mister-aged men, saw us and immediately scowled.

“Can’t you understand being told not to come? Are you determined to ruin my business?”

Her clear, ringing voice tore at my eardrums. Regardless of her voice or temper, Lee Wookchan’s noona is pretty.

According to Lee Wookchan, she took after their mother. Lee Wookchan took after their father. He hated that.

Lee Wookchan deliberately dug at his ear. He intended to provoke noona on purpose.