A Meal with a Savior
“Oh, the youngest one’s here?”
“Yes. But why is there bread? Is this lunch?”
“We didn’t order it. This gentleman said he wanted to thank us for meeting the police at the bar yesterday, so he brought some by.”
Being folded into the middle of such a dry conversation felt a little awkward.
Still, my gratitude toward my benefactor outweighed the awkwardness, so I gathered a little courage.
“That’s the man I saw at the bar yesterday. He helped take care of the drunk guy, so I wanted to thank him by bringing bread at least.”
I offered my thanks with a faint, slightly evasive air, my words carrying more than one meaning.
Do Hyeonjin’s expression turned to one of mixed pride and embarrassment, and he let out an awkward laugh.
“Ah. Well. I just did what I had to do.”
“I just heard bread’s technically hard for you to accept, so I’ll take it back.”
At my words, Do Hyeonjin looked a little disappointed.
It seemed he really did want the bread.
“Oh. Then would it be rude if I went back to the bakery and bought some in front of you?”
At my question, the police officer I assumed was his senior shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Forget the bread. Then go buy the kid a meal or something.”
“Oh, is that allowed?”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t see it this one time. But don’t come crying to us later when you get dragged in, all right?”
“Yes, that won’t happen.”
“Huh? I’m really getting treated to a meal?”
Do Hyeonjin was visibly flustered by the sudden turn in the conversation.
But he didn’t look annoyed.
In fact, he seemed fairly excited.
“But, uh, did that drunk guy hit you or something? We don’t usually see people going this far.”
“I’m just grateful, that’s all. What do you want to eat?”
We awkwardly walked out of the police station together.
Then we started deciding what to eat.
“Hmm. I usually eat gukbap at the place right out front.”
“You must like gukbap.”
“No. It’s just the cheapest thing around here. If I had money, I’d go to that conveyor-belt sushi place next door.”
“Then let’s go get conveyor-belt sushi!”
At my answer, Do Hyeonjin stopped walking and stared at me suspiciously.
“Sorry, but can I ask why you’re really going this far for me?”
I didn’t feel hurt by that reaction.
Honestly, it did look suspicious, so I needed to smooth things over properly.
“Well.”
I couldn’t tell him everything, so I had to wrap it in something plausible.
If it was all lies, it might show, so I should mix in just enough truth.
“This might sound strange, but you look a lot like my savior.”
Even after my explanation, Do Hyeonjin’s suspicion didn’t fade.
If anything, he looked even more uneasy.
“Then why don’t you buy that savior of yours a meal instead?”
This time, I answered honestly.
“I can’t meet them again.”
“You don’t know where they are?”
“I know what police station they work at, and I know their name too. I got their card. But I can’t see them anymore.”
That answer seemed to catch Do Hyeonjin off guard as well.
“You mean they retired or moved away?”
“Not exactly. I can’t really explain the details.”
After three seconds of silence, Do Hyeonjin awkwardly started walking toward the sushi place.
“No, I mean, I was just curious about the reason.”
It was an obvious lie.
Watching him squirm, I smiled a little.
He seemed to have taken it as something serious, but I decided to let it slide for now.
“Wait, so a police officer saved your life?”
“Yes. I was about to give up on living, but he tried to help me with everything he had.”
“Ah. I see.”
Inside the sushi restaurant, we ended up having a surprisingly normal conversation.
How old we were, what each of us did, what we liked to do when we had time off, and so on.
Do Hyeonjin, or rather Hyeonjin-hyung, was four years older than me.
“But you really became a cop early, didn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t say really early. Just not late.”
“That’s impressive.”
“The impressive one is you, running a company at your age, Siwon.”
We talked about all sorts of trivial things, but beneath that, the conversation gradually went deeper.
I told him I’d grown up in the Orphanage, and Hyeonjin-hyung told me his father had died young.
The cause of death was lung cancer.
“They say the lungs don’t have much nerve or anything like that, so by the time something feels off, it’s often too late.”
“Ah.”
“A machine that could confirm lung cancer from an X-ray alone. If only something like that had existed ten years ago.”
“We’re not a company that makes machines, but I’ll make sure we develop it well.”
“Sure. And if you ever need someone to talk to for an interview about patients’ families, let me know. I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.”
Even now, Hyeonjin-hyung was a genuinely warm person.
He’d grown up in a difficult environment and become someone so positive that he wanted everyone else to be as happy as he had learned to be.
I figured that kind of mindset was probably what had kept the police officer Do Hyeonjin from my previous life going all these years.
“You really know how to live.”
“Well, sometimes a day like this comes around, where someone buys you sushi. Haha.”
Seeing him laugh awkwardly eased something in me.
He looked much happier than when he’d first seen me, and for some reason that made me feel proud.
“So what are you going to make after machines?”
“It’s not a machine, it’s AI. Hmm, I’ll have to think about it based on how the market reacts.”
“AI?”
“Artificial intelligence. Think of it as a computer that learns things and works for you.”
“Really? Sounds like sci-fi.”
“It’s a technology people are already using in their own way these days.”
Our conversation flowed along without a hitch.
We talked about our work, our daily lives, and the futures each of us imagined for ourselves.
By the time we’d covered all that, the meal was already almost over.
“You’re done, right?”
“Yes. Thanks for the meal.”
I’d set out with the grand goal of having a meal with my benefactor, but the actual exchange had been remarkably modest.
That said, dragging things out by suggesting coffee too would have been pointless.
So I sent him off cleanly.
“Thank you for treating me so well, even though I’m a suspicious person.”
“Not at all. I’m the one who should apologize for being too guarded at first. Thanks for the meal. From someone so much younger, too. Haha.”
It would have been a lie to say I wasn’t disappointed.
The moment he’d handed me his business card and told me to call if I ever needed anything had left such a strong impression that, honestly, I’d half expected to get another card today too.
But that kind of thing only happened in dramas.
“Oh, right.”
Even so, something good happened in a way that was real enough for life.
“You said to let you know if I ever wanted to hear more about the families of cancer patients, right? You meant that, so if I ever need it, come back to the police station.”
At that, I nodded.
“I can come by during lunch hour, right?”
“Yes. And if you need more people for interviews, let me know ahead of time.”
“How ahead of time?”
“Ah. I’ll give you my contact info.”
Hyeonjin-hyung naturally gave me his number and grinned at me.
“I looked you up earlier, and you’re a pretty incredible guy, you know? Keep your business going.”
I’d wondered how he could hand his contact information to someone he’d just met, but it seemed he’d looked me up first.
He was more thorough than I’d expected.
Still, because of that, his wariness toward me seemed to have almost completely disappeared, and I felt oddly satisfied.
“There’s a lot of news about me, isn’t there?”
“Yeah. You’re young, but you’re really making waves.”
“If I start doing even better, I’ll give you an interview too, and buy you something delicious.”
“Now that sounds good.”
Thanks to that, leaving wasn’t especially hard either.
It felt like I’d given him a little status update: the person you once saved is doing well.
It had been my own private update, but emotionally it felt like I’d just submitted an assignment properly and finally got it out of the way.
“Take care. I’m heading back to the company.”
“All right. Get home safely.”
We turned away from each other cleanly and went our separate ways, and I couldn’t have felt more refreshed.
I felt like I’d picked up a little more energy for living well.
***
On the way back, in the smoking area in front of the police station, the senior officer who had sent Do Hyeonjin off to Kim Siwon earlier waved him over.
“Youngest one~ Did you eat well?”
“Yes~ He bought me sushi.”
“The expensive kind?”
“We went to YumYum Conveyor Sushi next to the gukbap place.”
“Tch. If a man drags along someone he doesn’t even know, he should take him somewhere fancy!”
“It was expensive, though. It was good.”
Do Hyeonjin walked over to his senior and smoked with him.
The senior officer looked at the grains of rice on Do Hyeonjin’s clothes and grinned.
“How much did you shovel in your mouth if you even fed your clothes a bite?”
“My clothes? Oh. Ah!”
“Get it off before somebody else sees and starts talking.”
Do Hyeonjin’s senior cared about him.
He was a rare kind of pure-hearted young man.
He was the kind of upright young man who had become a police officer because he truly wanted to do the right thing.
Even though he’d grown up on public assistance because of family circumstances, he had never gone crooked; he lived steadily, and seeing him happy with his family had been pleasing in its own way.
That was why he had sent him to Kim Siwon, hoping he would get to eat something good.
“Did you steal some bread too?”
“No. You told us not to eat that kind of thing at the station.”
“How the hell did a bread freak resist that?”
“I ate enough sushi, so it’s fine.”
Do Hyeonjin thought back for a moment to the meal, then quietly spoke to his senior.
“The guy I met earlier said he was taking extra care of me because I looked like his own savior.”
“You should be taking extra care of the savior, then, not handing it out to somebody else.”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh. Really?”
The senior, who had been expressionless the entire time, looked briefly startled before composing himself again.
Watching him, Do Hyeonjin imagined he would probably have reacted the same way in front of Kim Siwon and laughed.
“He’d tried to kill himself, and the police stopped him, so I think he was really grateful.”
“There are a lot of people like that these days. It’s a shame.”
“He even gave me his card and kept looking after me.”
“Huh? Ah, that can get messy if you get tangled up in it. Don’t go doing that yourself.”
At his senior’s realistic advice, Do Hyeonjin quietly looked up at the sky and took another drag on his cigarette.
Then he exhaled the smoke and said calmly, “But the college student who tried to kill himself turned out to be the head of a company people see on TV now.”
“Oh. That guy runs a pretty big company?”
“Seems so. He did very well for himself.”
“He really landed on his feet.”
Do Hyeonjin smiled faintly and let his thoughts continue.
“Since I’m a police officer now, I think I’d like to be someone who helps people going through that kind of hardship.”
At those warm words, his senior frowned and shook his head.
“Didn’t you hear what I said? You’ll just end up having a rough police life.”
“I’m not talking about getting sentimental when I run into criminals.”
“Even so, getting involved with people like that is a pain! That’s the government’s job, not the police’s.”
But Do Hyeonjin only laughed and stubbed out his cigarette.
He wasn’t taking a single word of his senior’s advice to heart.
“Hey, are you even listening? You really can’t just go handing out your card to anybody.”
“I’m not handing it out to just anybody.”
In Do Hyeonjin’s heart, a resolve began to settle: even if ninety-nine times out of a hundred it became a nuisance, it would still be worth it if it meant getting even one chance to change one person’s life.
He’d need to set his own standards, of course.
There would still be troublesome moments.
But even so, it felt like he’d found something worthwhile to do as a police officer.