Three Against One
The little bell jingled.
It had been a while since I'd last set foot in Aunt's pork cutlet restaurant. A while by my standards, anyway — from Aunt's point of view, I probably looked like some freeloader who showed up day after day to scavenge discarded cutlets.
"You deliberately come when lunch rush is over, don't you? If you want free scraps that badly, why don't you show up when we're busy and actually help with the serving?"
"What are you talking about…? I clocked in at nine yesterday and didn't get off until ten. And now you want me to come here and work on top of that?"
"We do that every single day. Honestly, this kid grew up without a scrap of hardship and has no idea how hard the world is."
"…"
I felt a powerful urge to stick her on a deep-sea fishing boat for just one day and leave her floating out on the Pacific. Regardless, the moment I sat down, three discarded pork cutlets appeared on the table in front of me.
"So what did Harin say?"
"I didn't get a chance to ask. But I didn't pick up on anything unusual from the people around her, either."
"And how would you know that?"
"I've got my own sources."
"Don't tell me you called her homeroom teacher. You do know kids absolutely hate it when their parents call the teacher behind their backs, right?"
"Don't worry, I'd never do that. Oh — and sorry to ask, but if there's ever a parent-teacher conference, could you go in my place?"
"Harin told you not to come to school?"
"Something like that. And at this point, I can't go myself even if I wanted to."
I'd already met Teacher Eunju face-to-face. The second I showed up at a parent conference, the fallout would be catastrophic. Fortunately, Aunt and Uncle seemed to think I was just avoiding school because of that damn Saiyan Syndrome.
"Munch, munch… Come on, it's Friday. Tell Harin you two should go out for dinner."
At some point Uncle had settled into the seat across from me and started picking at the discarded cutlets himself. No wonder he seemed to put on weight every time I saw him — so this was his little secret.
"Going out, huh… Harin likes pork cutlets, you know."
"You're not seriously thinking of bringing her here, are you? That doesn't count as 'going out' no matter how you look at it. She's got plenty of other favorite foods."
"…"
Well, how would I know? When I just sat there like a mute who'd swallowed honey, Aunt gave me a look of pure pity.
"What do you two normally eat, anyway?"
"We just throw something together with whatever's in the house. Harin's never been picky about side dishes."
"And what do you talk about during meals?"
"Well… I tend to eat pretty fast. And Harin only finishes about half a bowl of rice, so…"
Smack! Aunt couldn't take it anymore and cracked me across the back of the head. I nearly bit clean through my tongue instead of the pork loin.
"Ow! That hurts! Why'd you hit me?"
"Did it never occur to you that you should slow down to match the other person? If I were Harin, I'd figure my dad had zero interest in talking no matter what I wanted to say."
"I-is that how it works? I'll try to fix it. So… what should I suggest we eat today?"
Aunt let out a long sigh and called her eldest daughter. The answer, courtesy of the older cousin who actually got along with Harin, was Hawaiian pizza.
School let out soon enough. I waited for Harin in a state of mounting nerves, rehearsing the line I'd prepared.
Hey, you're home? It's Friday — want to grab something good? How about Hawaiian pizza?
Was that too forced? If it was obvious I'd been standing around for hours just to say that, wouldn't it make her feel pressured instead?
Fortunately, that particular problem never came up — because Harin texted me first.
"…"
The operation I'd poured my heart and soul into planning had run aground before it even launched. Still — this kid studied harder than I'd given her credit for, didn't she?
She'd said her grades were bad enough that there was no point sending her to a cram school, yet she practically lived at the library. What if she actually had big ambitions for college and was just trying to self-study so she wouldn't be a burden on the household?
"…?"
Or maybe not. Maybe I was being way too optimistic.
Maybe Harin had zero interest in studying, and the real reason she stayed out was that coming home meant running into a certain uncomfortable presence no matter what she did.
That presence being me.
After all, I hadn't heard a word about the library yesterday. If she lounged around the house with her feet up on nights I worked late, then conveniently cleared out only on my days off — that was more than enough grounds for reasonable suspicion, wasn't it?
I sat there alone, lost in paranoid speculation, and before I knew it the clock had hit eight. If Harin wasn't actually studying and was just killing time somewhere, this was getting late enough to make me feel genuinely awful.
"…"
Think about it. The semester had only been underway for two weeks. Any kid who studied until ten at night would have left some kind of trail by now — that was just common sense.
Of course, I knew jack shit about Harin's grades. But her mom, or Aunt, or someone would have at least mentioned an intense academic drive if one existed, right?
They never had. Even if she wasn't so hopeless that she'd given up on studying entirely the way she claimed, she'd never posted the kind of stellar results anyone would brag about, either.
Once that thought took hold, I couldn't sit still any longer. I left the house immediately and headed for the municipal library to see for myself.
I stepped into the reading room with my heart hammering. If I ran into Harin head-on she'd assume I was spying on her, so I put on a mask and covered myself thoroughly.
It was barely early spring, yet the reading room was packed. Probably because of the upcoming civil service exams — I didn't see many students, just a sea of adults.
Even so, a few kids in school uniforms were scattered here and there. I scrutinized each one carefully, but Harin was nowhere among them.
"…"
Just as I'd suspected? Was Harin not studying at all — just trying to stay out of the house?
But if she wasn't at the library at this hour, where the hell was she and what was she doing?
"…!?"
And then I spotted a familiar bag. A black backpack sitting on an empty chair — unmistakably Harin's.
There was no need to wonder if it was just the same model. The math textbook on the desk had Kang Harin written along the edge.
Whew… thank God. Harin really had come to the library to study. My daughter was working on math!
Granted, the open page was on exponents and logarithms and didn't have a single note written on it, which was a little concerning. But the semester had only just started, so…
Given that she'd left her seat, she was probably at the convenience store downing a cup of instant noodles. I should raise her allowance, I thought, and strolled out of the reading room humming to myself.
What a relief. Looking back, I'd been way too paranoid.
Harin was a pretty admirable student, throwing herself into her studies. And that cigarette on her bed? Just one of my old ones that had fallen there by chance.
Hmm… I really should talk her into a cram school. My take-home pay was a measly two-point-two million won, but I barely had anything to spend it on anyway. If I thought of it as investing in my kid…
"Put out that damn cigarette, you bitch!?"
"…?"
Had I just time-warped back to the 2000s? A thick, vulgar stream of curses came from somewhere nearby.
And it was a girl's voice. Instinctively, I moved toward the bushes the sound had come from.
Spit… spit…
Three girls were spitting onto the bare ground without pause. They weren't wearing school uniforms, but with hair rollers still clipped into their bangs and skintight athletic wear, they were textbook teenage girls.
And then —
A cloud of cigarette smoke drifted out from the opposite side. One girl sat alone on a bench, leisurely working her way through a smoke.
"…?"
I knew that face. She was the freckled girl I'd run into the day before yesterday, the very first person I'd crossed paths with on my way to Harin's school.
Kim Hyeonji, third-year at Cheonji High School.
I wasn't the type with such meticulous powers of observation that I remembered every face after a single glance. But her outfit hadn't changed one bit since then, so there was no mistaking her.
Tall for a girl, with a body that filled out her clothes just right. A school blazer worn over a green tracksuit.
And that easy confidence — one arm draped over the back of the bench, legs crossed.
On top of all that, her face was ridiculously pretty, enough to call to mind Olivia Hussey in her chain-smoking heyday. Not that kids these days would have any idea who Olivia Hussey was.
Hmm… why was this happening all of a sudden? Then again, when you thought about it, this was the library's true face all along.
Back in my day, every punk with nothing to do after school flocked to the library.
When they got sleepy they'd crash in the reading room snoring like chainsaws; when they got bored they'd step outside for a smoke and trade stupid jokes.
I'd hidden my socks and underwear just to keep the delinquent upperclassmen from shaking me down for cash, hadn't I? More than a decade later, the tradition was still alive and well.
Which made this even more of a problem. Harin was exposed to an environment this dangerous, and what the hell had her so-called father been doing about it?
Separate from that, the situation was steadily aquafying. Wait — not aquafying. Worsening.
"Hey. I told you to put out that cigarette."
"Still got two drags left."
"Keep it up and I'll shove the burning end down your throat."
"Go ahead."
"…"
Not a time warp — I'd walked into a martial arts novel. Kim Hyeonji sat there facing three opponents without so much as a flicker of composure lost, like some grandmaster of an entire school.
A classic "come at me" strategy. And she wasn't just pulling a cheap psychological trick — she was genuinely baiting them, daring them to try.
"Cut the bullshit and answer me. Why'd you mess with Sujin?"
"Who's Sujin?"
"Don't play dumb, you bitch! Park Sujin — the one you beat the shit out of in front of the karaoke place last week. Don't know her?"
"There's more than one or two of those."
"Hah… Get up, you bitch. You're dead today."
"…"
Kim Hyeonji neither stood nor answered. She just sat in almost the same posture as before, cigarette between her lips, and took a long, deep drag all the way into her lungs — pure mockery.
"You fucking—"
At last the other side snapped. All three charged Kim Hyeonji at once — and as an adult, wasn't I supposed to step in and stop this?
In that instant, something happened that I couldn't believe even though I saw it with my own eyes. Kim Hyeonji exploded off the bench in the blink of an eye.
Using one leg as a pivot, she spun her entire body a full three hundred and sixty degrees — and landed a kick square on her opponent's jaw before anyone could even react.
"Gaaahhh!!!"
One of the girls took a perfect counter and crumpled to the ground with a strangled scream. The other two froze, eyes blown wide, not daring to move.
"Hey! A-are you okay!?"
"Gaaahh… t-tee… teeth…"
It had been lightning-fast. Only after confirming the girl was down did Kim Hyeonji lower her extended leg.
Then she exhaled — a long, slow stream of the smoke she'd been holding. Was this a movie set?
Even movies didn't stage it like this, though. Neutralizing three people with a single blow and finishing with a cigarette exhale — what the hell was that signature move?
And she wasn't done. Kim Hyeonji flicked the ash from the butt in her hand, then cracked her neck with a sharp pop, advertising that she was still perfectly fine.
It looked like nothing special, but my eyes weren't fooled. Two quick flicks of her fingers snuffed the ember and disposed of the butt in one smooth, practiced motion.
This kid was no ordinary smoker.
"I'm out."
Kim Hyeonji raised a hand in a casual goodbye, as if nothing had happened, and walked off without a care. The girl who'd taken the kick to the jaw burst into tears, and the other two looked like they wouldn't dream of revenge.
"…"
For a second I thought, unbidden: That was cool… When I'd seen high school girls fighting right in front of me, I'd fully expected a messy catfight of hair-pulling and clawing.
But this ending was so clean it was almost terrifying. While some grown man stood there debating whether to break up a fight, Kim Hyeonji had already decided on her victory ceremony?
Even so, no matter how much of a man-child I was — a thirty-something who only aged on paper — I still had a last frayed thread of common sense. Before I knew it, my gaze had locked onto the bench where Kim Hyeonji had been sitting.
Because something was still sitting there. Something that made me tilt my head.
In her post-victory high, Kim Hyeonji had forgotten it — and of everything in this place, it was the one object that couldn't help but snag my attention.
A white pack with a red design, far too familiar. Marlboro Red.