Runway Chapter 5

While Lee Wookchan was coming to pick me up, I just walked. I walked endlessly along the wide roadside.

Since it was an ambiguous time slot, there weren’t many cars on the road. About twenty minutes had passed, maybe. A loud noise that seemed like it would tear my eardrums came from far away.

I turned my head at that familiar mechanical sound. Sure enough, it was Lee Wookchan.

He came out even dressed in his school uniform—whether he had any intention of going to school or not—and parked his motorcycle, as he called it, on the roadside where I was walking.

When I approached, he handed me the helmet hanging on the handlebar. He didn’t care whether his own head cracked open or not.

When he first bought the motorcycle, I had thrown a fit. Why do you need this, do you really want to die so badly that you’ve lost your mind.

What did Lee Wookchan say back then. Probably.

—Is there even anyone who’d be sad if I died?

I think that’s what he said. In the end, it meant he didn’t care whether he lived or died.

That there’s no one who’d be sad if Lee Wookchan died. He doesn’t know anything. He’s a fool, an idiot, a moron, a blockhead.

Just imagining Lee Wookchan dying made me sad. Weren’t we the ones who’d been stuck together since elementary school.

Even though I got hit by the pellets Lee Wookchan shot, got beaten with his fists, and got cursed at and scolded by him until I cried.

We get along pretty well. When I cried, Lee Wookchan handed me his BB gun and let me shoot him back, and now it’s not to that extent, but sometimes he buys me ice cream, buys me snacks,

And, like this, he gives me a helmet too. It’s embarrassing to say between males, but that helmet is mine exclusively.

Lee Wookchan said there are many people who’d be sad if I died. At most, I only have Mom too.

…Would Lee Wookchan be sad if I died?

A word I can’t even imagine—death—keeps circling in my head.

“Did you buy ramen?”

“I was going to buy it in front of the house.”

“I’ll have to give you money.”

Lee Wookchan took his wallet out of his pocket. From it he took out a couple of ten-thousand won bills.

The wallet was thick. My pupils dropped straight to it. I couldn’t even take the bills and just looked at him.

“Where did this money come from?”

When I asked, there was no reply. Instead he just told me to get on quickly.

“I’m hungry. Yesterday I only poured soju on an empty stomach.”

Lee Wookchan changed the subject.

“I asked where the money came from.”

“It just came from somewhere.”

“Did you steal it?”

“You’re only saying bullshit, again.”

Lee Wookchan looked straight ahead. When I just stood still, he showed a look of annoyance and turned his head toward me.

“Get on, first.”

“I won’t get on if you don’t tell me.”

“Ha— really.”

Lee Wookchan’s expression hardened stiffly. Mine was the same.

We entered through our own respective entrances but in the end we’re in the same space. Lee Wookchan, who had been making a stiff face, soon grins as if he intends to lighten the mood. Then he lightly smacked my stomach as I stood still.

“Just get on. I’ll tell you at home.”

I know it’s a final warning. I bit my lip.

“Don’t bite your pretty lips.”

This is also clearly mockery. That I don’t have a manly face like Lee Wookchan, that I’m not enormously big like his friends, or fucking fat, or else that I don’t just act like a delinquent.

Still, in the end I got on behind him.

“Hyung, you have to hold on tight.”

Lee Wookchan says. I looked at Lee Wookchan’s broad back and grabbed the hem of his shirt.

Mina noona, Soyoung, and other girlfriends whose names I don’t know—when they ride behind Lee Wookchan, they wrap their arms tightly around his waist, or bury their cheeks in his back, or deliberately overact and shout oppa, go fast—but in the end all I could do was say from behind, ‘…you have to go slowly.’

The fortunate thing was that if I at least said that, Lee Wookchan definitely went slowly, unlike when he first appeared before me.

∞ ∞ ∞

Bubble bubble, water boiled in a silver pot with its bottom all scraped.

Lee Wookchan was lying down. As if the blanket Mom sleeps on were his spot.

He lay spread out in a big character and watched TV. Since there was nothing to watch, he put on some informational program. Well, it’s a weekday afternoon after all.

“Idiot bastards, their acting is so fucking obvious.”

He cursed at people who were eating well for no reason. As always, he saw the world negatively.

I poured the powder into the boiling water. I put the noodles into the broth that quickly spread red. I added an egg and closed the lid.

“Add minced garlic and pepper.”

Lee Wookchan said, but I ignored him. I turned my body from the gas stove.

Lee Wookchan turned off the TV and raised his lying body. He drank the water I’d set out in advance on the low table. I watched Lee Wookchan.

“Why.”

Even though he felt my gaze, he asked belatedly. I hesitated. I pulled up my lower lip so my upper lip wouldn’t show.

“Why, I said.”

Lee Wookchan wrinkled one eyebrow in irritation.

“You didn’t tell me where the money came from.”

“I stole it. Good enough? I stole Mina’s.”

“Lies. I saw there were more bills in there.”

“What am I supposed to say.”

Sparks flew in the exchanged words. I swallowed dry saliva.

Even though there was nothing left in my mouth, I kept gulping down saliva. Lee Wookchan passed one hand behind his back and leaned his body.

He brought the remaining hand into his view and examined his fingernails. Lee Wookchan, who dislikes many things, also disliked long fingernails.

He always kept his nails short. Gazing quietly at his neatly shaped nails, he let out a deep breath, phoo, and raised his body.

“Jjeng hyung gave it to me. Satisfied?”

“…”

“Really. He gave me fifty for allowance.”

“That hyung….”

Don’t meet him. A bitter and stuffy taste pooled in my mouth. Shouldn’t we at least live doing the bare minimum of human decency. Aren’t you Lee Wookchan, who laughs at your noona and hyung but in the end walks the same path.

Would hyung have come back home for no reason. With his head shaved bare, abandoned from where he used to be, from where he was, with nowhere to go, he came back home.

“You hate him, so how could I tell you. Right?”

It’s not my business what the people Lee Wookchan is close with think of me, but I hate those humans.

I hate that they squat in front of the convenience store smoking, I hate that they drink, I hate that at dawn they use the apartment playground as their base and lie on their stomachs.

I fucking hate that they know my name and as they pass by say, ‘Seonho, where’s Chan?’

Clatter clatter, the lid I’d placed on the pot made a noisy sound. The guys struggling to jump from inside to outside lifted the pot lid.

Only then did I open the pot lid. I turned off the fire. The broth that had crawled up the walls of the pot streamed down.

It’ll burn. Anyway, cleaning the gas stove is my job.

I got two chopsticks. Only then did Lee Wookchan come out to the kitchen. While I scooped a full bowl of rice into the soup bowl, he brought the pot and set it on the table.

“Let’s eat.”

I had no appetite but I ate. Because I was upset, I even ate all the noodles Lee Wookchan should have eaten.

Since I’d boiled three packs of ramen, my stomach felt bloated. Anyway, I don’t eat the broth, so Lee Wookchan mixed all the rice in and ate it.

Gulp, he burped, and held out his cup. What. When I glared instead of answering, he asked me to pour water.

“I’m a guest, after all.”

The words that followed were absurd. Even a guest—a guest who comes this often doesn’t even get proper treatment. Still, I poured the water without complaint.

The guy who soothed his stomach by drinking water smacked his lips, chep, chep. He disappeared leisurely into my room. He’d clearly smoke in my room, the only one with a veranda. I did the dishes. Since I had to go soon, I brushed my teeth too.

Lee Wookchan, who came out in the meantime, peed next to me while I was brushing my teeth. The stream of pee was strong. Irritated, I kicked his butt with my foot.

“Hey, you’re going to miss.”

At those words, I set my toothbrush as far away as possible and fled outside. Lee Wookchan, left alone in the bathroom, also brushed his teeth familiarly like it was his own house and came out.

We sat still. I looked at the clock on the wall.

Tick, tock, tick, tock… The sound of the second hand was quite loud. I closed my eyes with that sound as background music.

Like a lullaby, it seemed that if I just closed my eyes I could fall asleep.