Hearts That Understand Each Other
I felt it—the quiet sense that our hearts were finally in tune.
“This place is…”
“What? Got a problem?”
I stared at where we’d ended up, a flicker of doubt settling in. It was a distinctly shabby old hole-in-the-wall. When Kangho asked what the issue was, I answered carefully.
“No. It’s just—since I’m the one paying, maybe we could go somewhere a little nicer…”
“Ha! Quit whining and get inside. Once you try the food, you won’t be saying that.”
Resigned to the fact that he only ever picked places that suited him, I followed him in. The restaurant was nearly empty, so we took a seat at random—though the chairs and table felt sticky enough to cling to skin. Is this place really okay…? Kangho, however, ordered with the ease of a regular.
“You drinking?”
“Yeah. But…”
“What?”
“Starting with soju? Shouldn’t we open with beer?”
He looked at me like I’d said something unexpected.
“That so? I don’t care either way—but are you sure you’re up for it?”
“Up for what?”
“The vibe you’re giving off is ‘I want to drink properly and get wasted.’ Did I misread that?”
I really couldn’t let my guard down around this bastard. Sharp as hell. Sure, I’d been snippy, but I hadn’t expected him to catch how depressed I was—how much I just wanted to get drunk. Definitely a beast. There was something instinctive in the way he read people.
There was no point denying it, so I gave up and nodded. And then… he crossed the line. He poured soju into a glass for me. Should I kill him? Ah, forget it. Not a chance. Fine. This must just be another option bundled into today’s misery. I took the glass with a look of pure disbelief.
“Let’s have a drink. Drink as much as you want. Cheers!”
“Cheers!”
He only drank about half and set his glass down. But something stubborn rose up in me. Even as the burn scraped down my throat like fire, I drained the glass to the bottom. It felt a little good—like I’d mixed a dose of forgetting into my gloom, and my mood lifted for it.
Watching me, he smirked.
“Whoa. Looks like the soju’s hitting you hard tonight. You put it away pretty well.”
“Is that so? Maybe. It was just one of those nights I felt like drinking.”
I poured myself another and brought it to my lips. Then, thanks to what he said next, I staged a spectacular disaster and sprayed it everywhere.
“What, all fluttery thinking you were going on a date with me?”
“Pffffft—!!!”
“Wow… last time it was cooking oil, today it’s soju? Spitting stuff on guys must be your specialty.”
“What kind of nonsense is that?!!”
My face went scarlet as I shouted. This little shit—I keep looking the other way and he just keeps crossing the line. I was genuinely grateful he’d helped me and saved me last time, but that didn’t mean I liked him. And on top of that, he had to say something this infuriating?
A… a date? If this were anything like that, I’d rather die than walk in here on my own two feet! A bastard like him would never understand, but I’m a man with a rare genetic disorder! In my old life, if I’d succeeded with my first love, there might have been a son just like him!
I could never say any of that out loud. He’d only call me crazy, or ask if I was already drunk. And somewhere deep inside, a voice seemed to whisper that I shouldn’t make him angry. Right. Hold it in. Today was just a thank-you for the help last time. So… endure it. Hear him out, whatever he says.
I owed him for that scar on his forehead. As a man, that was the right thing. So I couldn’t keep talking; I turned my eyes to the bottle and poured again. The soju was going down easy. Meanwhile the food we’d ordered arrived. But…
“Spicy pork, egg roll, and pork-neck kimchi stew?”
“Heh heh heh. Too much peak middle-aged-guy menu for your taste? Even the store ladies say the same thing when we go out drinking. Just put up with it. You’re buying what I want to eat. So…”
“This is insanely good. Wow… it’s really good.”
“Huh? Uh… y-yeah. Eat up.”
I meant it. At a glance it was the classic truck-driver-diner fare you’d expect from a shabby old shop. And that was exactly why it hit. These were the things I used to love. Back when I still worked a company job, people scolded me for having too much of an old man’s palate, so I couldn’t eat them often—and my wife didn’t like them either, so I never got them at home.
I never imagined I’d be able to eat them in peace in a place like this. And the taste, just as he’d said, was in the top few percent of restaurants, appearance be damned. So I dug into the food the moment it hit the table—and it was his turn to look flustered, laughing awkwardly before he finally picked up his chopsticks.
People really are simple creatures, when you think about it. After knocking back a few drinks too fast at the start, and once my stomach started filling with the food I’d been craving, the fullness softened something in my chest. Maybe this was what I’d been missing—an evening meal shared with someone.
Granted, not long ago that slimy manager had put me through hell over something like this… but put another way, I’d gone into that situation with some hope. Maybe I’d just been lonely for company. Looking back, I really was a lonely person—no one even to share a meal with.
Ugh. Thinking that made my throat tighten again. So I knocked back another drink to chase it off. As the tension eased and the alcohol began to work, things I normally never said started tumbling out. And that… got an unexpected reaction.
“Whoa, you run that as a tanker? Ajumma, that’s some seriously old-school style. Who even uses that anymore?”
“Huh? You know as well as I do—once you fast-up and drop the ult, there’s no counter.”
“Come on, that’s such an outdated play. Boring style. The other team won’t even queue.”
“Has that team ever even won a championship?”
“Whoa, this ajumma really going there? ’84 and ’92—”
“Ah. Before you were even born? Sure, fine, let’s say they won. Well done. Great job.”
“If I kill someone today, that’s still self-defense, right?”
“Even so, the true path is tonkatsu. Does an ajumma even understand the world of men?”
“I do, you brat. That’s why it’s spicy pork. Why would tonkatsu—with that trash cost-performance—be a man’s dish?”
The atmosphere had gone absurdly warm and lively. Even I was surprised. What was this? Had I drunk too much? When I came back to myself, I realized that at some point I’d been sitting there chattering away with this guy like he was a little brother I’d been close with for years. Shockingly, the conversation just… worked.
I puzzled over it for a moment, then found the reason. Ah… it was the same as before. Even though I’d been driven out now, back when I used to hang around the men’s break room and get along with the male staff—this was the method that always worked. Talk about the things men liked.
And astonishingly, it worked on this cocky little bastard too. I never saw that coming. He strutted around the store like a male lion ruling over a pride of lionesses, riding high over the female employees and doing whatever he pleased… but at the end of the day, he was still a man.
Of course he wouldn’t hate talk from the world only guys really get. In practice he laughed at my nonsense, got annoyed, flared up, then laughed again—showing bursts of feeling I’d never seen from him before.
And watching that… I felt good too.
Ah. Right. I really am a man. My body may have ended up like this, but I’m still a man who can connect over talk like this, who finds it fun, who—even if the guys are rougher than the female staff—gets along better with them. The conversation felt like proof of that fact. My mood lifted, and the glasses kept filling and emptying in a steady rhythm.
He cracked up at the last thing I said, looked at me, and spoke with an expression that seemed a shade clearer than before.
“Whoa. Gonna have to look at you differently, Ajumma. Didn’t think we’d click over stuff like this.”
“Thanks for thinking so. You little punk.”
“What? Dropping the polite speech now? Fine. That’s kind of cute too.”
Huh? For a second I thought I’d heard something weird. But before I could dwell on it, he kept going.
“You should’ve gotten along with other people like this more. Then I wouldn’t have had reasons to get the wrong idea. Do that more often. Smile, get along, walk around looking bright.”
“I did walk around like that. The ones foaming at the mouth to tear me apart first were your girlfriends.”
That seemed to rub him the wrong way; he straightened a little and looked at me flatly.
“Hey. Watch your mouth. ‘Girlfriends’? Those aren’t my girlfriends.”
“Fine. Let’s say the older ladies with families don’t count. But… isn’t Jeong-ah still your girlfriend? She seems to think she’s past girlfriend and all the way to your wife.”
At that, his expression hardened somehow, and he drained his glass. Huh? What was that reaction? Had I said something I shouldn’t have? But soon his face eased again as he poured and spoke.
“Wife, my ass. That loose, crazy bitch. I’m not keeping anything like a wife next to me.”
“Yeah? Then what are they?”
“They’re just females I screw when I feel like it and put to work. That Jeong-ah bitch got some idea in her head and goes around acting like my wife, putting on airs… but I never recognized her as that.”
I’d heard something similar before, but hearing it again still left a strange taste. In the past I’d been sure the two of them had a mutual arrangement and shared power because of it. So I’d thought the root of the harassment aimed at me was this bastard sitting in front of me.
But maybe all of that really had been Jeong-ah acting on her own? This guy was selfish, sure, but maybe he wasn’t specifically malicious toward me—just an equal-opportunity tyrant. My head felt like it was getting tangled. Then he spoke as if turning the subject.
“Come to think of it, Ajumma, you’re a really weird person.”
“Huh? What’s that supposed to mean?”
At my question, he propped his chin on his hand this time, met my eyes with a strangely serious look, and spoke in a quiet, even voice.
“You’re seriously nothing to look at. Tall-ish, sure, but skinny as a stick, a total stick figure with no curves, short hair like a guy’s, and those vague honor-student glasses. Not a single scrap of charm anywhere you look.”
“Ah… so that’s what you mean by weird? Thanks for the compliment, you son of a bitch.”
I was genuinely a little pissed, so I cursed him fully expecting to get hit for it. But he kept talking.
“But the strange part is… when I look at you, my eyes keep going there. Some kind of instinctive feeling? There’s nothing to see, but just being near you, I keep getting aware of you—this weird kind of presence. What the hell is that?”
Suddenly… hearing that started to sour my mood. A subtle déjà vu crawled over me. Ah! I remembered. What that manager bastard had said last time. The tone was somehow the same. I never thought I’d hear something like that from this guy’s mouth right after that vile piece of trash.
The good mood I’d built up seemed to sink again. And the image from daytime—my ex-wife and son looking so happy it felt like a denial of my very existence—rose fresh in my mind. I knocked back my glass to bury it. Even then, he kept talking.
“Like I said before, I just took Jeong-ah’s word for it and figured you were some low-class bitch who flirts with guys and leeches off them. But… I think I need to change my thinking a little.”
“Am I supposed to thank you for that, you bastard?”
“No need. It’s just me changing my mind. From what I’ve seen of you… I don’t think there’s any reason to deliberately shut you out like this. Honestly, I think it’d be fine to just bring you over to our side.”
“Heh heh heh. Oh my, is that so? Thank you so much. However shall I repay this kindness?”
I… was pretty thoroughly drunk. I was spouting absolute garbage at him without a filter. In fact I could feel my eyes starting to slide shut. Fine. If he was going to hit me out of anger, let him. Getting hit while I was out of it might even be better.
As that thought floated through my head, his voice reached me like an echo.
“Ajumma. Snap out of it. What—are you falling asleep? Ajumma….”
From far away… a faint sound, and my consciousness grew thinner and thinner. Like that, I boarded the last train on a road from which there would be no return.