Chapter 5.5

Jaeyoung sighed as soon as the door opened. Sangwoo threw the jelly onto Jaeyoung’s lap.

“Order everything in one go.”

“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa….”

“And if you have something to say, say it. Don’t just sigh.”

“It’s miserable, so miserable.”

“I don’t know what you want me to do,” Sangwoo muttered and turned his back on Jaeyoung.

When he grabbed the door handle to the smoking room, he heard a voice from behind.

“I was trying to place orders until you asked me why I was sighing.”

Sangwoo forced a smile. If he wanted to say something, he could just do so. Why choose such a roundabout way and waste time and money on it?

“So why are you sighing?”

“My laptop broke,” Jaeyoung murmured as if had been waiting, and as if it were something he just said in passing at the same time.

Sangwoo’s curiosity was aroused.

“Where’s the problem?”

“I don’t know. It just beeps and it won’t turn on.”

“It’s probably an issue with the memory card being out of the slot or the motherboard. If the RAM is missing, it’s fine if you open it and insert it, but if the chipset is malfunctioning1, you have to submit it to the AS.2 Make a decision after listening to how many times the sound goes off.”

“I’m computer illiterate, so I don’t get stuff like that,” Jaeyoung depressingly murmured and sighed again.

“What should I do? Should I take it to a hardware store or something? It’ll cost around 500,000 won3 right?”

‘Is this bastard a pushover?’

Jang Jaeyoung turned around and folded his arms. Jang Jaeyoung was nestled in his chair while staring at Sangwoo. He began to mutter to himself.

“I brought it with me, but it’s not like it will be fixed if I touch it. I’ll have to look for the AS Center after playing some games. I wonder if there’s a place open at this hour. I’m really worried…”

“Give it to me,” Sangwoo blurted out.

He didn’t mean to help him out of pity. If a problem was before him, he simply had a desire to solve it. Jaeyoung clapped his hands and widened his eyes.

“Oh right, you’re majoring in computer science, aren’t you? Since it’s also a computer, are you able to fix it?”

“I’ll take a look at it.”

Jaeyoung didn’t mind and extended the green bag that carried his laptop. Sangwoo took it and returned to the counter. When he opened the bag, he saw a 14” white laptop. It was a foreign model that was released two years ago. He had used one like this as well, so it was a brand he knew well.

When he turned it on, it beeped twice without booting, just as Jaeyoung had said. If it beeped twice instead of four times, it was a sign of an issue with the memory. Sangwoo forced the laptop to shut down. He then grabbed a crosshead screwdriver out of the drawer and began to disassemble it.

‘Will this work?’ 

When he opened it, the RAM card didn’t even move out of the slot an inch. In fact, there was no RAM card at all. Sangwoo requested for a conversation with Customer #22.

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Admin: Sunbae, there is no RAM. [20:16]

Guest22: whatsdat?ㅠㅠ Check the bag [20:16]

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Sangwoo made a frown at that nonsense, but he searched the pocket of the green bag since he didn’t have anything to lose anyway. Ridiculously enough, there was a memory card inside.

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Admin: There’s one in the bag. Why did you take out the RAM? [20:18]

Guest22: itmusthavefallenout sinceikeptswingingitaroundㅠㅠ [20:19]

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‘You’re saying that the computer parts fell out on their own so the case was ripped off?’ 

That was the most absurd thing that Jaeyoung had said so far. Anyway, when he plugged the memory card back in and turned the computer on, it rebooted. However, it didn’t just seem like a hardware issue with his laptop. The boot time seemed unusually long.

Five minutes or something had passed when something appeared on the desktop that made Sangwoo speechless. There were design software icons, images, videos, documents, and all kinds of folders displayed on the screen. He wasn’t even able to see the face of the female celebrity set as the wallpaper because of this.

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Admin: The booting is too slow. Clear up the icons on your desktop and erase the programs you don’t use. [20:27]

Guest22: isitbroken?ㅠㅠ [20:27]

Admin: It’s not to the degree where it’s broken. I’ll install an optimization program. Buy a SSD and install it, if you can. [20:27]

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However, it wasn’t something that would be solved with a program. It was to the point where it took about a minute to even launch the web browser, so even if it weren’t old, it was worth figuring out how the computer had been used.

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Admin: I think it’d be better to do a formatting. [20:32]

Guest22: doitpleaseㅠㅠ [20:32]

Admin: There is no OS, though. [20:32]

Guest22: Come to think of it, there’s some sort of CD in the bag [20:32]

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Who in the world would carry an operating system disc in their bag? Surprisingly though, there was an authentic CD in the back pocket of the bag. Sangwoo felt the absurdity of the situation.

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Admin: Do you usually walk around with an OS? [20:34]

Guest22: i don’t knowㅠㅠ it’s probably a freebie [20:34]

Admin: Got it. You have to back up your data. [20:35]

Guest22: what’s a backup tho?ㅠㅠ [20:35]

Admin: Find a high-storage USB memory stick or an external hard drive and bring it here. If you don’t have one, do it on the cloud.  [20:35]

Guest22: Look for one in the bag [20:35]

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Ridiculously enough, there was an external hard drive with 1TB in the inside pocket. At this point, you could even say that it was a magical bag that had everything. It was surprising that a person who didn’t even know what a backup was had an external hard drive with high-capacity storage.

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Admin: I’ll do a formatting. Did you partition the drive?[20:37]

Guest22: The C- and D-drives are divided into halves, with Windows in the D [20:38]

Guest22: idon’tknow anythingthoㅠㅠiheardthats ggoodtouseㅠㅠㅠ [20:38]

Admin: Yes. [20:39]

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Sangwoo backed up the data from the slow laptop to an external hard drive and formatted it. After that, he optimized the laptop and installed some basic software. He felt proud as he shut the cover. Time went by fast and he felt better inside since he’d done productive work.

“Hey, your eyes are sparkling.”

Jaeyoung was glancing down at Sangwoo with his arms and chin leaning against the counter. Since when had he been there? Sangwoo hadn’t noticed him at all.

“Are you already done with everything? That’s impressive.”

Sangwoo had belatedly realized it. It seemed like two hours had flown by while fixing and formatting Jaeyoung’s laptop. Nobody had asked him to, but he had done this on his own volition. Even though Jaeyoung wasn’t as heinous as he had been at first, Sangwoo had fixed the laptop that belonged to this annoying thug with a garbage personality. Sangwoo put the device in the bag with an irritated look on his face and held it out to Jaeyoung.

“Here.  The graphics tool isn’t supported, so don’t install it.”4

“Thanks, Sangwoo.”

Strangely enough, Jaeyoung’s two words deeply touched his heart. He felt a little strange. That’s because the price after two hours of labor couldn’t be replaced with a simple thanks, but the moment he heard that one word, he had the illusion of thinking his hard work hadn’t been worthless after all. Sangwoo nodded without looking into Jaeyoung’s eyes.

At that moment, the part-time worker for the night shift arrived and exchanged seats with Sangwoo. While Sangwoo cleared up his area and put on his coat, Jaeyoung stood in front of the door with the laptop bag hanging on his shoulder.

Sangwoo walked for a while, without thinking of anything. Then, when the endorphins circulating through his body from working on a computer had died down, he found himself facing a situation where he was walking side by side with Jaeyoung. Jaeyoung was walking beside Sangwoo with his hand in his pocket while humming a strange song. He hadn’t made an attempt to trip him, humiliate, or even torment him yet.

“What are you up to?”

“Huh?”

Jaeyoung looked at Sangwoo as if he had just discovered that Sangwoo was there.

“Where are you going?”

“Me? Oh… home?”

“This is the way to my place, though?”

“I live this way, too.”

That explained while he was walking next to him. He wasn’t following him; he was just on his way home.

“Sangwoo, you’re good with computers.”

“You just had everything that was needed in the bag.”

“I think I should compensate you since I’m thankful.”

“It’s fine. I did it because I couldn’t stand it,” Sangwoo firmly told him.

He didn’t know what he would get up to by using compensation as an excuse, and he hadn’t done it because he’d been hoping for something like that.

“No. You’ve worked hard, so you need to be rewarded.”

“It’s fine.”

Jaeyoung remained still for a while, then suddenly asked, “Do you want to watch a movie?”

Sangwoo wasn’t interested in movies, but as far as he knew, the equation ‘Cinema = dating course’ was a common view in society.

“Why would I watch a movie with you, sunbae?”

“Huh? I didn’t ask you to go watch it together. I was going to give you a ticket to go watch it by yourself.”

“…”

Sangwoo didn’t understand why he had been having so many weird misconceptions starting from a few days ago. He felt his breath become shallow and shaky.

“If that’s so, sure.”

He talked and walked as fast as he could chew. It was fortunate that he was almost home. Jaeyoung stopped walking in front of the studio apartment building. Sangwoo walked towards the door as if he were running away.

“Good night, Sangwoo.”

It was an unnecessarily friendly greeting. Jaeyoung’s greeting made Sangwoo feel awkward today. For some reason, Sangwoo wasn’t able to ignore him like usual.

“…. You too, sunbae.” Sangwoo said without knowing whether Jaeyoung had heard him or not, and ran up the stairs two steps at a time.

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Footnotes