Chapter 12.6

Smirk. Jaeyoung’s shoulders shook and the bucket he was outlining was destroyed. Sangwoo screamed on the inside. Shortly afterward, he began to draw beneath the part that had been messed up, when the marker had abruptly flipped from the pointed tip to the wide edge.

“No, can’t do. I have to see you suffer as well.” Jaeyoung said after a long while.

‘What does he mean by that?’

Sangwoo stared at the ceiling with a pouting mouth.

“If it’s troublesome, then just say it is so.”

Jaeyoung simply smiled and kept drawing without responding.

return 0;

The following day, Sangwoo was having a peaceful time for the first time in a long time. There had been a conflict with the designer due to differing opinions on parts concerning paid content, but it hadn’t been an emotional dispute.

At 8:43 p.m., Yuna said she was planning on pulling an all-nighter and that she was going to order pizza, so she asked what kind of pizzas they wanted to eat. Despite not offering to pay for it, Jaeyoung said that he wouldn’t eat if it wasn’t from a specific chain. Yuna cursed at the price, but ordered pizza from that place anyway.

“Hello? In three minutes? Yes, yes. Yes! The pizza is here. Chu Lettuce, go and get it from the first floor,” Yuna said after receiving the call from the pizza delivery guy.

Sangwoo glanced at the credit card she handed him.

“Why am I the one going?”

“Cause you’re the baby here.”

“Where is there a baby here?”

“Let’s not be so tiresome. The youngest one is supposed to do stuff like this.”

“Being young doesn’t make it less difficult or mean that time is less valuable.”

“You’re doing that again. Just go and come back, please!”

The height of an irrational way of thinking is that one has to boil ramen and get water because one is younger. He remembered the repulsive face of his sister who had called for him, saying it was an emergency, just to ask him to turn off the lights. Before Sangwoo decided to play a match against Yuna, Jaeyoung walked between them.

“Where are you going now?”

“Smoke.”

“Then you go get the pizza. Here, this is the card.”

However, Jaeyoung didn’t stop, and he walked to the door. He left while saying just one thing.

“I’ll buy it, so don’t ask Sangwoo to do those things from now one.”

“What?” Yuna asked as if she found it absurd, but Jaeyoung had already disappeared. Yuna spewed profane language. She wondered what was so bad about going down three flights of stairs and was furious that Jaeyoung had made her look like trash in order to keep his image.

“Hey. It seems like he’s pretending to be nice since he’s working with you. Don’t be fooled, okay?”

“I know since I’ve also been fooled a lot.”

“Sangwoo, Sangwoo, wooow…. Fuck, what’s wrong with him? No matter who looks at it, towards you, he’s conside…”

Yuna, who was in the middle of talking, shut her mouth. Her unhappy face changed into an incomprehensible one. She stayed quiet for a long time.

“I’m going to smoke as well.”

Then she left the work studio. Whatever, Sangwoo saved his work and cleaned the desk. He collected trash from Jaeyoung’s desk and threw it away, and he went to the bathroom to wash his hands, but Jaeyoung and Yuna hadn’t returned even then. They said it would arrive in three minutes, but 13 minutes had passed.

After absentmindedly sitting and waiting for another two minutes, the door opened. Yuna entered first and sat down in her chair. Jaeyoung carried a large pizza box and Coke and placed it on Sangwoo’s desk. He opened the box and handed Sangwoo a slice of pizza. Sangwoo was wondering about his unnecessary kindness, but he accepted the slice and took a bite out of the crust.

The pizza was lukewarm. Jaeyoung pulled another slice out, but this time, he brought it directly towards Sangwoo’s mouth. Yuna grabbed a chair and approached their desk.

“Aren’t you giving me anything?”

“Don’t you have hands? Or feet?”

“Forget I said anything …”

She roughly grabbed a slice of the pizza, folded it in half, and pushed it into her mouth. It was quiet for a while as everyone was busy eating. Then, when they’d had two or three pieces each, Yuna suddenly spoke to Sangwoo.

“Hey, give me your number.”

The screen sticking out from that direction was cracked like a spider web, and a distracting fluorescent orange jelly case was wrapped around the device.

“Why?”

“Just because? I have a feeling I’ll see you around the work studio a lot in the future as well. There might even be a reason I need to get in touch with you.”

‘I don’t think there is.’

Sangwoo unlocked the phone and entered his number despite thinking about something else. Yuna then called him for about five seconds and turned it off.

“Save my number as well. Chu… Lettuce. Done!”

“Please save it under my real name.”

Yuna ignored his words. Sangwoo opened a page to save her number. His hands stopped writing after ‘Visual Design Department Choi Yu.’ He was certain that the next syllable couldn’t be ‘Choi,’ but he got confused since he always called her that.

“Na,”Jaeyoung, who was watching the screen together with him from his side, hinted at.

As soon as he pressed the save button, his phone disappeared. Jaeyoung had taken it and was typing numbers. It was his own number. He squinted at the name that appeared on the screen.

“When was Freeloader ever a freeloader? Since you’ve won, there is no reason to keep lording things over me.”

“I don’t like changing it once I’ve saved it. I don’t really use my phone unless it’s to search for things when I’m out.”

“Is there a 1 and a 2 as well?”1

“They were deleted a long time ago.”

When Jaeyoung clicked on his phone book, a list that only contained a few people appeared. Sangwoo didn’t understand why he would want to look at someone else’s phone book, but he let it be since it didn’t harm him in any way.

Gokmun High Kim Won Jong

Gokmun High Kim Chung Ho

Gokmun High Im Se Won

“Are they friends from your neighborhood?”

“Yes.”

“Are you close?”

“We sometimes meet to drink or to play games.”

Department of Mechanical Engineering Park Sung Joong

Department of Mechanical Engineering Lim Minho

Dorka PC Room Manager

Freeloader3

Department of French Language and Literature Ryu Jihye

“Was this guy Park Sung Joong your senior?”

“Uhm.”

“It seems like you don’t know who it is? I’ll delete it?”

“Sure.”

“Who is Lim Minho? Can I delete him, as well?”

“I think it’s a person I bought a graphic card from last semester, but it could also be someone else. Please delete it.”

Jaeyoung took it upon himself to organize Sangwoo’s phone book as if he had nothing else to do. The problem, however, was that his methods were too harsh. He didn’t mind deleting people he hadn’t contacted for over three months, but even in cases where it wasn’t like that, he still insisted on deleting them. For example, he thoughtlessly tried to delete someone like Ryu Jihye, who was currently taking classes with him and whose number he likely needed until the end of the semester.

Jaeyoung returned his cell phone to Sangwoo after getting the promise that he wouldn’t rashly delete the data. The list that had been scrolling downwards suddenly stopped.

“Who is he, this bastard?” Jaeyoung said while frowning. When he peeked at the screen, he saw the name ‘Jonghan ♥.’ No matter who was saved with such a strange name, Sangwoo was a bit offended by the sudden “bastard.” So he extended his hand.

“Stop this and give it to me.”

“I’m asking who it is.”

“Give it back. I know that you’re wasting time because you don’t want to work.”

“It’s because I’m asking who it is.”

Jaeyoung suddenly made a serious face and raised his voice. Sangwoo folded his arms and glared at him. Psycho bastard. He acted nice for a few days, and then he revealed his true nature. As expected, he thought that Jang Jaeyoung should receive treatment for his anger management disorder.

“Hey,” he said with a disrespectful look and voice.

“I asked you, didn’t I? Twice at least.”

“The name in Chinese is the character is Chu, 55 years old. Occupation, poet. Is it enough?”

Jaeyoung’s face, which alternately looked at Sangwoo and the screen, was suddenly overtaken with a look of absurdity. After having gaped blankly, he suddenly burst into laughter. He fully frowned and covered his eyes with his palms.

“Who on earth saves their father’s name like this?”

When Sangwoo first bought a cell phone, he saved his father by his real name ‘Chu Jonghan.’ However, the day he had discovered it, his father drank a lot, came back, gathered the entire family, and cried while saying that he didn’t get an ounce of affection in the household.2 This was the result of the agreement they had made after he repeatedly got requests for a correction of the name.

“If you put a heart just anywhere, there could be a misunderstanding.”

“It’s not anywhere. If my father didn’t exist, I wouldn’t even have been born.”

“You’re talking nonsense,” Yuna suddenly shouted and left the work studio. After the door slammed shut, Jaeyoung finished scanning the phone book. The hand that was swiping down the screen stopped once again.

“Is Ms. Chu Sanghee your older sister?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you put a heart?”

“Why should I? Siblings are enemies from their birth.”

Thinking about his sister, Sangwoo suddenly got angry. It would be better to break his finger rather than to put a heart after her name.

“Is your sister pretty? If she looks like you, I bet she’s pretty.”

“She’s really ugly, though.”

“Do you have a picture?”

“I don’t store pictures of monsters.”

Jaeyoung looks through the phone book without saying a word. The last part was ‘Hwang Geumrye.’

“It’s your mother, isn’t it? There’s no heart here either.”

“She didn’t ask for one.”

Jaeyoung nodded and closed the contacts list. When Sangwoo reached out to get his phone back,  Jaeyoung was already looking at his photo album. In it, there were several pictures of whiteboards and a folder.

Footnotes:

For those that wish to read up more on this term, here are some links:

https://seoulistic.com/korean-culture/a-special-kind-of-korean-love-jeong-%EC%A0%95/

https://blogs.transparent.com/korean/what-is-jeong/