What Does It Feel Like?
What does it feel like?
I had been certain that today’s provisional return to high-school-boy cosplay would be the first and last. Yet according to Eunju, we apparently had to grab a meal “again”?
“Aren’t you eating, sunbae?”
“Hm? Ah… of course I am. But Eunju? You really don’t have to stress about the tteokbokki. As your sunbae, treating you to a single meal is nothing…”
“Even if it isn’t me, the others would want to pay you back somehow, you know?”
“Wonhui would never do that.”
“I’m not talking about Wonhui. I mean Mokhwa.”
“So there’s no escaping it after all… Speaking of Mokhwa, how do you even hold a conversation with her? All she ever does is poke you in the side!”
“There’s a whole language to it—the mood, the intensity, all of that. She’s just really shy.”
“Shy or not, how is that even possible? I’ve never heard Mokhwa’s voice once.”
Honestly, I wanted to sneak up behind her at school right that second, yell Boo!, and finally hear her scream. Eunju just laughed lightly and wiped the corner of her mouth.
“The truth is, Mokhwa isn’t great at Korean. She got teased for it a while back, and ever since then she’s barely spoken.”
“Not great at Korean? You mean she isn’t Korean?”
“No, her nationality is Korean. She’s just from a multicultural family. Her mother’s Japanese. She lived in Fukuoka until elementary school and only came to Korea once she started middle school.”
So that was why her name was so unusual. Between Koreans and Japanese, you could hardly tell the difference by looks alone.
No wonder those slightly protruding front teeth had looked so endearing—she was a sushi girl all along.
“I had no idea. Wait—so if I spoke to her in Japanese, would she answer?”
“You make it sound like you can actually speak Japanese, sunbae.”
“I’m no expert, but light conversation is doable.”
Japan is a maritime powerhouse. Live on the sea long enough and you’re bound to run into it. Especially when I worked under Park Changsu—I spent four whole years alongside a guy named Kazuma who was supposedly excommunicated from the yakuza. Thanks to him, my grammar was garbage, but my conversational Japanese was solid.
“You’re really something, sunbae. You don’t exactly look like you study hard, yet you’ve got all these weird specialties.”
“That’s all of them. But Eunju—I heard Wonhui is pretty furious with me?”
“She is. You took off without a word that day and haven’t shown your face since. She’s been waiting to catch you so she can tear into you.”
“Uh… can’t you smooth things over for me?”
“It won’t be that easy.”
“Then how do I fix it?”
“What Wonhui wants is obvious, isn’t it? Just buy her a meal sometime. Of course she’d feel awkward if it was just the two of you, so Mokhwa and I will come along too.”
“…”
Another promise added to the list.
The meal ended. After settling the bill, Eunju stepped outside and looked at me.
“You’re heading home now, right, sunbae?”
“…?”
Why ask that? Usually people suggest grabbing tea or something at this point, don’t they?
Of course, maybe the whole thing had been so uncomfortable she just wanted me gone. But I wasn’t the one who set up this meeting—Eunju was. And given how polite she normally was, even an empty gesture would have been the natural move. So if she was rushing me home…
Aha. This kid was planning to go meet Lee Jubin again.
“Leaving already? We barely just met.”
“Don’t you usually try to get home as fast as possible, sunbae?”
“Not at all. Come on—let’s take a walk and help the food settle. The flowers are in full bloom anyway.”
“You’re not seriously asking me to go flower-viewing with you right now?”
“I am. You got all dressed up for once—you can’t want to head straight home either.”
Truth be told, I had zero interest in looking at flowers with Eunju. But if I let her go now, that lunatic Lee Jubin would drag her into chicken-and-beer hell and push a perfectly decent kid straight into the pit of evil. I had to do something.
So I struck first. Eunju laughed like she couldn’t believe it.
“Fine. Let’s do that.”
She adjusted her bag over her shoulder and turned away. Was it just my imagination, or did the corner of her mouth curl upward as she walked?
Strange. I was clearly the one setting the pace, yet it felt like I was dancing on someone else’s palm.
A few blocks past the Daechi-dong academy district, Yangjaecheon came into view. Compared to Yeouido it was miniature in scale, but the feast of cherry blossoms piled up like cotton candy held its own against anything.
“Ah…”
Eunju, too, let out a soft breath of wonder, lips slightly parted before a spectacle far beyond what she’d expected.
Those big eyes—like something out of a pure-love manga—reflected the blooming petals and flushed a soft crimson. Her chick-like lips looked especially soft today. I almost wanted a taste.
Shake it off. Shake it off.
What the hell was I thinking? Where had the “adult” sense of duty to pull her out of Lee Jubin’s disgusting desires gone—only for me to start doing the exact same thing?
Get a grip. She’s a minor. Worse, she’s my daughter’s classmate.
Standing alone in a field of flowers, breathing in the soft air—yes, she looked like a masterpiece of a painting. But if I got swept up in it and lost my head, then what?
“Sh-shall we walk a bit, Eunju? We’re supposed to be digesting, remember?”
“Do we really have to walk? Just standing here is refreshing enough.”
“…”
That was exactly the problem. If I lost even the pretense of “digesting,” all that would be left was pure self-interest.
No good. To clear this murky head, I needed to switch back into lecture mode…
“But is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“Back then you said you’d never dated anyone. Honestly, sunbae, you lie to me so often I don’t really trust you.”
“Does that make any sense? People usually lie to hide their shame. Who lies by advertising their own shortcomings?”
“You never know. From your perspective, maybe you thought that counted as a selling point.”
“How that could possibly be a selling point… Anyway, where I grew up, it wasn’t that unusual for people to graduate high school without ever dating.”
That was partly true. Kids these days were ridiculously precocious, but when I was young plenty of people still thought dating was something you did in college.
Of. Course. I had never once met someone who reached thirty-four without a single relationship. I still didn’t know how they managed it, but even the rookie deckhands would pull into port, snag a girlfriend, and brag about it like it was nothing.
“Is it because of her?”
Eunju asked carefully about Yu Jiyeon. Fair enough—the only romantic history of mine she knew involved the two sisters, Yu Jiyeon and Yu Minjeong.
“She had some influence, sure, but was it absolute? No. That noona’s been my sister-in-law for a long time. Still clinging to her after all that would mean I had serious mental issues.”
“It was only a few years ago, though, right? When something traumatic happens, it kind of imprints on you. It can last years.”
Those “few years” were already more than a decade ago. Still, a sudden question occurred to me.
“What about you, Eunju? You don’t seem to be seeing anyone now. When did you break up with your last boyfriend?”
“Me? A while ago. Why the sudden question? Don’t tell me you’re going to summon my ex just so you can lecture me.”
“I was just curious how kids these days handle dating. Like I said yesterday, I’ve got a lot on my mind because of Harin’s boyfriend situation.”
“You only just found out you and Harin are related, didn’t you? Why do you care so much?”
“W-well…”
Because I wasn’t her cousin—I was her dad. But Eunju had a point.
Everyone agreed my attachment to Harin was excessive compared to the time we’d actually spent together.
I’d built a few theories of my own. Guilt over my brother. A sense of duty to keep Mom’s dying wish. Or maybe the traces of Yu Jiyeon I instinctively sensed in Harin.
And though I really didn’t want to admit it, maybe—like Uncle said—I was just thrashing around trying to prove my existence as a father as fast as possible.
Because in the end, I wasn’t her “real” dad.
“What about now?”
“Hm?”
While I was lost in thought, Eunju tossed out a new question. But starting a sentence with no subject made it completely impossible to follow.
“You said you’d already forgotten about that Jiyeon person. So is there anyone you’re interested in right now?”
“Right now, huh…”
The question came out of nowhere, but the first person who floated into my head was, of course, Ms. Eunju.
The woman I’d met by chance at the school I’d wandered into—the one who had poured rain onto a heart I’d thought long since dried out and barren.
She’d said she was a first-year teacher this year, so she was probably around twenty-four, same as Eom Chaewon? A ten-year age gap was a concern, but I had Saiyan Syndrome, so outwardly it might not look like much of a problem.
And unlike Chaewon, she was cultured enough that we could probably bridge the generational gap. That sunbae guy who’d shown up at her place was a bit of a headache, but since she didn’t seem to be letting him in, there was still a chance.
Besides, she’d said that as long as there was love, any barrier could be crossed. Even if my salary was only thirty million won, even if I had no parents, even with Saiyan Syndrome—the only person who would love me was still her.
Of course, a few problems remained. For one, my daughter just happened to be a student in the class she was homeroom teacher of. For another, she still had no idea I was cosplaying as a high school boy…
Shake it off. Shake it off.
What the hell was I thinking? Setting everything else aside, the moment I put on the high-school-boy cosplay, the two of us had already boarded permanently diverging parallel lines.
And since I’d decided to quit that cosplay for good, I would never see her again. The second her homeroom assignment changed next year, even that soft, sweet voice would have to be buried forever in my chest.
“N-no. There isn’t.”
“You know it took you thirty seconds to say that, sunbae? Even if I don’t pull a Wonhui impression, I can’t help thinking there is someone.”
“Huh? Did I really think that long?”
“You even shook your head in the middle. Who is it?”
“Hey, you didn’t actually think I was going to tell you, did you?”
“If it’s someone I don’t know, you could tell me. But the fact that you won’t makes me wonder—is it someone from school?”
“…”
Had Eunju always been this sharp? Or had I just leaked the information way too obviously just now?
“It’s not like that. Come on, let’s just walk.”
“You could at least give me the initials.”
“No way. The second I give you initials, the whole thing’s out. I am absolutely not telling you.”
“Isn’t it a little mean to get me this curious and then clam up? Fine. Just one of the initials, then.”
“Just one… I guess I’d say J?”
Even if Ms. Eunju was Eunju’s homeroom teacher, one letter—J—wouldn’t be enough for her to figure it out. She’d probably assume it was some third-year sunbae she didn’t know.
“…”
Eunju didn’t press any further. But the soft little smile she wore as she fell into step beside me was somehow even more infuriating. Time to change the subject.
“Ah, right—Eunju? If you imagined going to an amusement park alone with your dad, would you feel like you couldn’t breathe?”
“I don’t think it would be that bad. A little awkward, maybe. I already told you the rough version, didn’t I?”
True—between her biological dad and her stepdad, she had enough history with both that neither side felt entirely comfortable. But I was talking about ordinary families.
“Would it be the same even in a normal family? How do you think Wonhui or Mokhwa would answer?”
“Wonhui would refuse outright. Mokhwa’s the type who can’t really say no, so she’d go—but she’d keep texting me the whole time to complain.”
“Haa… Why does nobody want to do anything with their dad? Going with Mom as a trio is fine, right?”
“That’s because Mom and Dad fill in each other’s gaps and create a kind of stability. Just the two of you with Dad throws the balance off, doesn’t it? Why are you even asking?”
“Remember that niece I mentioned? She seemed bored stuck at home, so I wanted to take her to an amusement park—but the second I said it’d be just the two of us, everyone around me shut it down.”
“Uncle and niece is a little different, though, isn’t it? Then take one of her friends. She’s still young—just contact the other parents.”
Same answer as always. But it was impossible. I didn’t have the face to call Thuy’s or Mok Jihye’s parents, and no matter how proud a model taxi driver I was, showing up at an amusement park in full uniform was just a public nuisance.
“Haa… So that’s why you asked me that?”
Eunju let out a deep sigh. For a second a shadow seemed to cross her face.
“Asked you what?”
“Back then—when you asked if there was anywhere I wanted to go. That was so you could decide where to take your niece?”
“Uh… I guess that’s the only way I can put it here.”
“I see…”
Eunju walked ahead looking faintly disappointed, then sat neatly on an empty bench.
The atmosphere pretty much demanded I sit beside her. So I did, and said nothing.
Chatter and laughter…
While the two of us had gone quiet, Saturday at Yangjaecheon—cherry blossoms in full bloom—was packed with families out for the day. One family in particular stood out, a picnic mat spread, enjoying themselves.
A young dad and mom who looked about my age, with a little kid between them who seemed kindergarten-aged, laughing like they owned the whole world.
Mmm… I felt envious. It wasn’t that I’d ever been desperate to get married, but with my relationship with my daughter walking on thin ice, every ordinary family I saw filled me with an unbearable jealousy.
Suddenly I wondered what living together had been like for my brother and Yu Jiyeon. Even if it had only been a few years, they must have seen at least two springs like this one, right?
They’d still been together when Harin started walking. Had the three of them gone out for a cozy flower-viewing trip like that?
Had Yu Jiyeon held Harin’s hand and wandered around picking up cherry blossom petals while my brother sipped a can of beer and watched them with a contented smile—just like that family over there?
“What does it feel like?”
“Hm?”
Just as I was finally sinking into the mood, Eunju spoke up again—without taking her eyes off the exact same family.
“H-how would I know? I’ve never built a family.”
“Ah… that wasn’t what I was asking.”
“…”
Right—no matter how sharp Eunju was, she couldn’t crawl inside my head and eavesdrop on my thoughts. So what exactly had she been asking?
She discreetly raised a finger so no one else would notice, pointing at the dad who was sipping beer while watching his family.
“The alcohol. You said you’ve tried it, sunbae. What does it feel like when you’re drunk?”
“That? Just… losing your self-control, I guess? The string of focus you usually keep wound tight gets a little looser.”
“That doesn’t sound particularly good. So why does everyone want to drink?”
“Losing self-control isn’t only a bad thing. People focus on the bad stuff just as much as the good. When you drink, you let go of the bad thoughts too—and maybe that’s the sense of release they’re after.”
“That makes sense.”
Eunju nodded as if she understood. But was that really all she’d been thinking while looking at that cozy little family?
“I’m curious.”
“About what now?”
“I’m curious what it feels like to lose self-control. So I want to try drinking.”
“…?”
So she wanted to drink? And she was announcing it right in front of me?
“You’re joking, right? I get being curious, but do you really think I’d allow that?”
“I figured you’d say that. I’ll just ask someone else.”
“Someone else who?”
“Hmm? Teacher Lee Jubin?”
“What? Are you out of your mind? You’re going to drink with who?”
Had she lost it for real? I’d barely dragged her away from the temptation of chicken and beer, and that was still all she could think about? Eunju shot back:
“Am I too young? You said your uncles used to give you a glass each, sunbae.”
“How is that the same thing? That was… if you were going to drink anyway, better to learn under adult supervision and control.”
“Teacher Lee Jubin is an adult too. So what’s the problem with learning from an adult?”
“Haa… Fine. Learn from me instead of Lee Jubin. But you follow my instructions, and you only drink exactly as much as I give you. Got it?”
She kept threatening me with Lee Jubin every other sentence—I couldn’t take it. Left with no choice, I hurried to a convenience store, bought two cans of beer and a bag of potato chips, and came back.
“How did you even buy these?”
“I’ve got my own skills.”
“So it wasn’t just your uncles giving it to you—you’ve been drinking like this on your own the whole time?”
“Haa… I’ve got a lot on my mind. But I learned proper drinking etiquette, so you can relax.”
“Who taught you?”
“Well… the boss at a place I used to work part-time.”
More precisely, Park Changsu—the first captain of my life. After our first fishing run, he’d called my dazed self up on deck, handed me a glass of soju, and told me to forget everything.
The same man who’d pointed a gun at me twenty-four hours earlier was now offering me a drink, and my head went blank. But one glass became two, two became three, and eventually I did forget.
Look on the bright side. She was a minor—my daughter’s classmate, no less—but I was a parent of a student at her school, wasn’t I?
Eunju would drink someday anyway. If I taught her properly as an adult first, she ought to be grateful, right?
With that forced self-justification, I cracked open a beer can. Eunju took it, held it for a moment, and sniffed.
“It doesn’t smell particularly good.”
“Still better than starting with soju. Anyway, remember this. We’re going one sip at a time and watching how it hits you. The second you look tipsy, we stop. Understood?”
“Got it.”
Gulp, gulp…
Eunju took a mouthful, then worked her throat. If Hyeonji drank with a kind of rough elegance, Eunju was mystical—like an elf from a fairy tale moistening her throat with dew.
“Ugh…”
She scrunched her face and delivered her verdict on her first-ever beer, setting the can down and looking my way.
“It feels like I just drank a really terrible soda.”
“Even as empty flattery, calling it tasty would be a stretch. If it didn’t have alcohol in it, it probably would’ve gone out of business ages ago.”
“I don’t really feel my self-control weakening or anything.”
“Uh… Eunju? Even medicine takes about thirty minutes to absorb into your system. Aren’t you being a little impatient?”
“I’ll try a bit more first.”
Eunju forced down a few more sips. Still not adjusting to the taste, she set the more-than-half-full can on the bench and reached for the potato chips.
“Does it taste better if you eat it with chicken? Is that why the teacher keeps asking to do chicken and beer every day…?”
“Ab. So. Lutely. not. The beer just rides along on the taste of the chicken. When you’re eating it with chicken, how could anything taste bad?”
Cut that off in advance—if curiosity about chicken and beer sent her running to Lee Jubin, we were finished. Eunju looked at me and asked,
“So what do we do now? Just sit here and wait until I get drunk?”
“Wasn’t that what you were curious about? Science experiments are basically just waiting, right?”
“Maybe the amount is too small for me to get drunk? What if I drink a little more?”
“No. You clearly agreed to drink under my instructions.”
“Huu… Fine. I guess things never go the way you expect. I was curious what it felt like, though…”
“…”
I couldn’t say a word. Because the moment Eunju finished that sentence, she suddenly rested her head gently on my shoulder.
Softly…
And that wasn’t the end. She naturally reached out, wrapped her arm around mine, and began stroking it up and down.
The experiment was a success. This kid was definitely drunk.