Chapter 124

“No. I came to meet a friend.”“My brother?”“No.” He kept his answers short. It was awkward enough for Dowook to be receiving thanks, so he wanted to end the conversation as soon as possible.“I’ll see you around.”“Oh, okay,” Bada responded in surprise as Dowook passed by with his bicycle in tow. Bada felt that Dowook’s personality was as cold as the sharpness of his eyes.Just as Bada started to head home, she looked back at Dowook’s receding figure and remembered what her mother said about receiving help from others, ‘A responsible human being always pays back for the help received.’Bada rushed back into the store, grabbed a hot drink, and ran towards Dowook.“Um, here! Please take this,” Bada quickly said as she handed the confused Dowook a warm canned drink.This fulfilled her obligation as a responsible human being. Relieved of her obligation, Bada turned back only to immediately feel a tapping on her shoulder. As she turned around, she heard Dowook say,“I don’t like Red Ginseng.”Dowook tossed the canned drink back at Bada. The surprised Bada somehow caught the tossed can but immediately replied back,“Just drink it. It’s a gesture of appreciation.”“You drink it,” Dowook snapped back.Dowook lightly jumped onto his bicycle and powerfully pedaled away, quickly becoming a dot and then disappearing from the street. Bada stuck her tongue out in his direction and put the canned drink into her plastic bag.“Hmm! As if I care if you drink it or not!”

* * *“I want a girlfriend!” Dojin shouted.“I knew you were going to say that,” Maru replied.In the last period of the day, the teacher talked about his first love experience. The juicy bits of his story made all of the class students hang on his every word, enough so that they wouldn’t let him go even after the final bell rang.“Spring will come for me too, right? I’m surrounded every day in a field of sausages. When will my day come?”"What about Iseul?”“… hey, why did you bring her up all of a sudden?”Oho, look at this. The only single girl I recalled around me was Iseul, so Maru threw out her name. Who knew that it would garner such a wonderful reaction from Dojin?"If you like her, just tell her straight up like a Korean man. Like Taejun.”Ever since Taejun and Soyeon successfully became a couple at the soup restaurant event, Dojin seemed to fall under the spell of the dreaded ‘solo disease’. He acted like his innards were painfully twisting whenever he looked at the two couples in the acting club. Maybe it’s not a ‘solo disease’, maybe he’s just a delirious animal. Maru looked at Dojin and asked,"Iseul’s doesn’t look good enough for you?”"Not good enough?! She’s pretty!”"Then her personality?”“She’s nice and sweet, and cute too!”“I don’t think being cute is part of one’s personality but whatever. So, you like her then.”“Well, I’m not sure if I like her… hey! Why are you steering the conversation this way?”“You don’t have to look that far to make a girlfriend.”“… you’ve magically become an omnipotent love guru now, aye? What about you?”“Me?”“Yeah, you! You and I are in the same field of sausages, man.”It was then that Maru’s cell phone rang. He flipped the phone with his thumb and silenced Dojin for the moment.“Hello?”-Is this Han Maru?"That’s right. You should know from my voice.”-Oh, so it is you. You sound different on the phone.The person on the other line was Yoojin. Just when Maru was about to ask why she called, Dojin rushed close to Maru like a starved beast.-You still there?“Yeah, talk.”Maru could see Dojin’s eyes on the precipice of releasing a cascade of tears.Having heard a female voice on the other line, Dojin put on a frown that reflected the deepest sense of betrayal from his fellow man.-Do you have the script nearby?“I do.”Then turn to page 27 where bully number 2 and 3 come out.Maru slowly closed his eyes and reopened them. At this point, he already memorized the whole script. The scene in question was right after the student representative was beaten up by the class’ bullies. Chuljin and Seulmi just stepped into the classroom and were about to ask what happened to the student representative…-What’s your interpretation of your line? How are you going to deliver it?“What?”-I’m not certain on what’s going on emotionally for you in that scene.Maru pushed Dojin away and started to visualize the entire scene. Previously, Chuljin tried to befriend the student representative, but their underlying envy of each other became a barrier that caused an argument. Right before the scene in question, the student representative tried to hang out with the bullies, only to be ignored and then beaten up. Having seen this unfold, what would Chuljin be thinking? He’s probably thinking of getting back at the student representative, making this scene into a larger issue for the rep, right?“The student representative sure is something, huh? Getting all friendly with you guys without reason,” Maru stated his lines unabashedly to Yoojin.Dojin squinted his eyes and asked Maru, “The hell’s going on?”Oh. I see. It’s like that. You changed the lines a little too.“It’s after they’ve just had an argument, right? Chuljin’s probably not too happy with the student representative. It’s the perfect scenario: he wants to look down on the student rep, this situation falls into his lap, and his girlfriend is standing right beside him. Chuljin’s probably ready to pounce and take advantage of the situation to get back at the rep.”-He’s that type of character? Isn’t he a well-rounded guy?“He often says that he’s lonely. How would he feel if the representative approaches even his set of shallow friends and tries to befriend them? Wouldn’t Chuljin feel disgusted that the representative, who seems to have it all, would even take away what little bit he has left? That’s what I think, so I changed the lines accordingly.”-Oh~ So that’s how it is. That’s pretty impressive Maru!“It’s not really impressive. Are we done here?”-No.“There’s more?”-I feel like I won’t truly get it unless we do it face-to-face.“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”-Okay. Did you make notes regarding the characters in your script?“Somewhat.”-Can you show me?“There’s no reason I can’t.”-Great. I’ll see you tomorrow. See you later, boyfriend~.The way that Seulmi said ‘boyfriend~’ was how she practiced for the play.As soon as Maru hung up the call, Dojin shouted,“You bastard!”“What’s up with you?”“You’re going to escape the field by yourself? What about Daemyung? What about me?”“We were just going over our lines for the play.”"She said boyfriend!”"Haa,” Maru let out a long sigh.How can Maru calm down this fiendish, tunnel-vision animal? He gave a quick chop on Dojin’s Adam’s apple with his hand, sending Dojin back a few steps with a sudden ‘Keuk!’ sound.“Those who are thirsty should dig their own well. It’s not a saying for nothing.”“… where’s the well?” Dojin croaked out.“Somewhere.”“Damn it!” shouted Dojin.Maru ignored Dojin’s howls and calmly started reading his script.