The Meaning of Revenge
Fools that we were, we couldn’t easily leave our seats. Not until the very last customer had walked out of the restaurant. Our conversation had looped back on itself so many times that we finally agreed to give each other some space. We drank like men in a liquor-bottle elimination contest, fierce and unrelenting.
The alcohol was strong, yet strangely I never grew drunk. Cha Jun-jae seemed to be the same.
Our silent drinking session stretched into two full hours of overtime and only ended when the restaurant was due to close. The staff member circling our table kept throwing pointed glances at the wall clock. I had been half-sprawled in my chair; now I scrambled to gather my bag and stand. The sea had become a mirror of the night sky, and the sight of drunk tourists staggering everywhere told me it was well past eleven. The restaurant apparently couldn’t bring itself to eject customers who had spent so lavishly on expensive drinks.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
Cha Jun-jae and I had devoured every last scrap of the seafood platter and pizza that had become our unwilling drinking snacks. I didn’t want to imagine how pathetic we must have looked—eating without once meeting each other’s eyes, without exchanging a single word, simply forcing the food down.
Cha Jun-jae rose, slipped on his horn-rimmed glasses, and took out his wallet. He handed his credit card to the employee who brought the payment terminal. While the transaction ran, he clutched his face as though drunk. Yet the instant the card was returned he accepted it with eerie composure and stood.
The belligerent man who had demanded a different server had vanished. With the haze of alcohol receding, his face had frozen into something cold. People supposedly split into two types when drunk: those who grow lively and those who sink. Cha Jun-jae clearly belonged to the latter.
I pretended not to notice the receipt trailing down to his knees and descended the restaurant stairs. Most of the travelers weaving along the road looked blissfully happy. Emerging from the darkened restaurant and heading for the clubs, they sang at the top of their lungs, danced without rhythm, and radiated pure joy.
I envied them.
The reason was simple: I didn’t have a single grain of leisure left in my heart. I was too busy fighting to survive to spare any attention for anyone else’s ease. The footsteps trailing behind me shattered my midnight sentimental thoughts. I wanted nothing more than to part ways with the man who could neither speak to me nor do anything about the silence between us.
Tonight I had confessed what was in my heart. I no longer had to remain entangled with him. The taste of liberation was far more bitter than it was sweet. The realization that it was better to be hated by him than to live as though he meant nothing to me. It troubled me because I understood the feeling perfectly. Even now he tormented me, only in an entirely different way.
I walked quickly, almost as if afraid he might call out. I headed for the sea where black waves lapped at the shore. My sandals sank deep into the sand. The grains biting into my soles stung like tiny needles, and the sight of darkness rushing toward me should have been terrifying, yet fear had deserted me. I had only one destination.
I stopped only when the sea brushed my toes. This was the day I had officially been liberated from Cha Jun-jae. Tipsy and aching, I felt a reluctant pang for the years we had been forcibly bound together. Yet the heart that still chased after me was as vague and boundless as the night sea itself. I had decided not to look back on the past I had settled. The old days that included Cha Jun-jae were something I didn’t even want to glance at. I wanted to design whatever future remained to me, but the shadow that had drawn up beside me did not seem inclined to allow it.
Whether he followed or not, I cut off all interest and dropped onto the sand. The dress my mother had given me was helpless against the wind. Its hem whipped madly, scraping my thighs and calves. I tied the cardigan carelessly around my upper body and drank in the sea with both eyes and ears.
That was when Cha Jun-jae sat down beside me. I had known he would. The man I thought would simply fall away was refusing to exit my life. It was a bitterly ironic situation.
The reason liberation no longer felt joyful was probably this. I had imagined he would cry and leave. I had imagined he would laugh scornfully and trample me on his way out. Never had I expected him to beg to remain at my side.
“Here.”
To me, still silently watching the sea, Cha Jun-jae held out a banknote. It was worth about ten thousand won. Bewildered but unwilling to refuse free money, I took it. The moment the slightly crumpled bill touched my palm, he showed his true colors.
“Eun-dam.”
“Ha.”
Whenever he called my name like that, I used to demand money. He had taken the old joke seriously and prepared cash in advance. Thanks to that free bill, courage surged through me and I finally looked at his face. Cha Jun-jae was still gazing at the sea. As though sensing my stare, he slowly opened his mouth.
I knew the line. I had never wanted to watch any film Cha Jun-jae appeared in, but when a free ticket landed in my hands I had gone alone to a late-night screening. The movie hadn’t been a success. Still, it was the one that had permanently etched his name into the public consciousness. His pure, fresh-faced beauty as a newcomer and his startlingly natural acting. I had acknowledged him even more deeply than the critics who praised him. It was a film I could hardly bear to watch.
“Don’t you want revenge?”
I set the banknote he had given me quietly on the sand. I pressed it down with my palm so it wouldn’t blow away and looked at him openly. As though he had been waiting for exactly that, Cha Jun-jae turned his gaze to me. In his eyes, darkened by the sea wind, the aftertaste of liberation shimmered.
That was when I understood.
“Do whatever you want to do to me.”
Cha Jun-jae was a wounded person. If there was any difference between us, it was that I knew why my heart ached. Cha Jun-jae did not know how he had become this way.
“...Jun-jae.”
“If that doesn’t appeal to you, torment me instead.”
“There was a protagonist in that line you mentioned.”
A character who sparkled with innocent brilliance while carrying out revenge. Once that revenge—the sole meaning of their life—ended, they lived as a wreck until the final curtain fell.
“In the end they die, don’t they?”
“Eun-dam. You are not that protagonist.”
With a faint smile, Cha Jun-jae’s eyes looked hollow, as though they were seeing something other than me.
“Even after revenge is over, if it were you, I believe you would leave happily.”
“...”
“No matter what state I end up in, how completely I fall apart, you’re the kind of person who would go on living well regardless.”
I wondered whether Cha Jun-jae’s thoughts had become twisted. Was there anyone who could declare so calmly that it was fine if his own life was destroyed? And to an old friend who had just confessed that she hated him, no less.
The hot breath of the night sea swept across Cha Jun-jae’s forehead. The eyes his hair had hidden were now completely exposed.
Cha Jun-jae waited for my answer. I believed his words were wrong. I would walk the same path as that movie’s protagonist. In my case, however, I did not want revenge. Tormenting others had to suit one’s temperament. I was afraid that hating him would turn into understanding him. What other conclusion could there be except that he was an ordinary man with his own story? Once I accepted that, choosing between hatred and affection would become impossible. I did not want to circle back to the path that led to hating myself.
“It’s true that I hate you. But revenge, murder—those genres aren’t for me. And… stop giving me money. At this rate I really will become a chaebol.”
I slipped the bill into my pocket and scolded myself. I should have staked something other than money on Cha Jun-jae. But that was already in the past.
“I simply want a life where I am no longer entangled with you, Jun-jae. I’m not asking for anything outrageous, am I?”
“To me, it is outrageous…”
“Why on earth?”
I hadn’t meant to ask, yet Cha Jun-jae had finally prodded my patience past its limit. He blinked slowly; at times his face could look sharply keen. Then his words, spoken with deliberate slowness, flowed into the sea and into my chest.
“To me, you are revenge.”
“…Revenge?”
“There is nothing else.”
Cha Jun-jae’s eyes, now fully open, gazed across the distant sea. The emotion rippling in those dark, bean-like pupils was profoundly calm and at the same time fiercely obsessive.
“So if you won’t take revenge on me… then I must take revenge on you.”
“…Are you drunk?”
“Make me want to take revenge on you again.”
With those words his head dropped. Like a petal falling, Cha Jun-jae’s head came to rest against my shoulder. My parted lips closed without making a sound.
A dark premonition washed over me. The feeling that my long vacation would now have to be shared with Cha Jun-jae.
With his head on my shoulder, I gazed out at the night sea.
It was a night when thoughts multiplied endlessly.