When the Hometown You Return To Has Changed # 3
It had been since middle school that I'd last been pulled aside by a girl who said she had something to tell me.
Middle school.
The girl who'd called me out back then was the third prettiest in my class. Kim Mina, was it? Sweet-tempered, always smiling — the kind of girl every boy in class nursed a little crush on. Even when I hit her with "How long has it been since you ate an orange? As long as it's been since the orange," she just laughed and laughed. I was certain that this was love.
So when a girl like that called me out to say she had something to tell me, imagine how my heart pounded. I was already sketching out our entire future in my head — all the way up to the wedding after graduation — when Mina said to me:
「Ildo, you're pretty close with Yongtae, right? Does Yongtae have a girlfriend by any chance?」
She'd called me out because she liked my friend Yongtae. I swallowed my tears and did my best to set the two of them up.
Anyway, being dragged into an alley by the delinquent Lee Jina this time had a similar feel to it. I vaguely understood it wasn't going to be one of those romantic things between a boy and a girl, and yet I couldn't help getting my hopes up all the same.
So I asked, feeling a little shy about it.
"So what did you want to say?"
What if she says she likes me?
Being a man, I supposed I couldn't help thinking like that. And Lee Jina was gorgeous the way a dangerous hornet is — intimidating at first glance, but undeniably pretty if you looked closely. If Kim Mina had been the third prettiest in class, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say Lee Jina could lay claim to at least the second spot.
Handled right, she might even have taken first.
Lee Jina spoke.
"You asked whether I was working part-time for you, right? I am. For me, this job is my real work — the awakened stuff is the side gig."
"This job" meant the moving and transport business, and "the other stuff" meant hunter work, I gathered. Point made, point understood.
So this wasn't a heart-fluttering tale of youthful romance after all. I felt a faint, bittersweet pang of disappointment — and at the same time, genuine puzzlement.
"A side gig?"
Quite a few awakeners juggled second jobs up through D-rank. Their awakener tier was low, sure, but in today's 5th Industry worksites, there was no shortage of places happy to have them.
But C-rank was a solidly respectable grade. From C-rank onward, hunter work alone earned enough to support a household comfortably, and focusing on it exclusively was actually better, both in pay and in prospects.
And Lee Jina was C-rank. She wasn't exactly friendly, but her skills were more than adequate — parties would be lining up to recruit her.
Yet hunter work was her side gig, and this was her real job?
"You're clearly good at it. Why not climb higher?"
I asked out of pure curiosity. Lee Jina kicked a pebble across the ground — pow — and answered.
"I like this work. I like driving. So keep it secret from the neighborhood elders that I do hunter work at all. Got it? They nag like nobody's business."
So that was how it was.
I found myself thinking that the world really did contain every kind of person. All I could do was nod and say I understood.
"Fair enough."
What was I supposed to do about it? It was her secret to ask kept.
But Lee Jina scowled, as if a fresh irritation had occurred to her.
"No. Actually, I don't feel reassured."
"Not reassured? About what?"
"I've known you a while, and you've got the face of a guy who'd chatter on and on about any secret the second he had one."
Wasn't that just plain rude?
But when I actually stopped to think about it... I'd never exactly been built to keep secrets. I'd just gotten done blurting everything I knew to Lee Jeonghun's little sister not long ago, after all.
Me...
Now that I thought about it, was I really the type who couldn't keep a secret to save his life?
What a shockingly humbling moment of self-reflection!
Just then, Lee Jina slid her index finger upward through the air.
"Then let's make a deal. Keeping my secret is a one-sided favor I'm asking of you, so I'll keep one of yours in return. You've got your mom and dad on your back about getting married, don't you?"
She had a point.
I'd all but cut off contact with my family partly out of my own inferiority complex, but also because every single phone call, Dad would launch into the girlfriend question, the marriage speech — the whole routine.
He'd done it again today. He'd do it again tomorrow.
"Honestly, you've never had a girlfriend, have you? Have you ever even held a girl's hand? I saw your TelTalk profile — a soccer player's photo. You don't exactly scream 'popular.'"
"......"
What's wrong with a soccer player? Is that... not cool?
Anyway, the fact-attack hurt bad. Even taking a Beam Saber squarely from Lee Jeonghun wouldn't have dealt me a wound this fatal.
Just as I was gearing up to get angry, Lee Jina looped an arm around my waist.
"Smile. Act friendly. Friendly."
With a line that seemed engineered to trigger PTSD, she pulled our faces close together and — click — snapped a photo with her phone.
It happened so abruptly I didn't have a single moment to react.
"Show your parents this picture and tell them we're dating. I'll play along. That way you can dodge all the elders' nagging questions from here on out. Deal?"
So... she'd pretend to be my girlfriend?
I genuinely wondered whether this deal was the right thing to do. Then Lee Jina added:
"You said you wanted to climb higher, didn't you? You won't have time for actually dating anyone, let alone getting married. And you're tired of making excuses to your parents every time, right?"
Still — did I really have to go so far as lying about having a girlfriend?
While my conscience was busy stinging over the prospect of deceiving my own parents, Lee Jina fiddled with her phone and slid the screen toward me.
She'd sent my mom a TelTalk message — complete with the little read indicator showing the photo she'd just taken had been delivered.
"I already told your mom we're together as of today."
"Already!?"
I was genuinely flustered.
The moving center owner was, in fact, famous around the neighborhood for sheer drive and force of will. After my friend's mother passed in a rift accident, it was neighborhood legend how she'd pulled herself together, found work, rebuilt the household, and kept the shop running single-handedly.
And her daughters had inherited that same iron constitution — tough, headstrong, and unafraid. Clearly they took after their father exactly.
"I've got to go check on a washing machine installation, so I'm heading off. Keep my secret. If you don't, I'll tell yours."
Whoosh—
And with that, Lee Jina headed straight into our house.
"My Ildo has a girlfriend!? Want to see his baby photos, Jina? The album should still be around somewhere! Let's see, let's see!"
My mother was a woman of extreme fuss and enormous reactions.
How enormous, you ask? The moment I got even slightly good at something — even a little better than the other kids — she'd want to hang a banner across the neighborhood announcing it.
Mom fetched the album for Lee Jina and gleefully flipped through it, showing off this photo and that.
"This one's from when he won first place in the kindergarten race!"
I was a nervous wreck.
Mom was being so cloyingly affectionate toward the girl pretending to be my girlfriend, and chattering away to the point of being an actual nuisance. And Lee Jina had been prickly and cool for the entire time I'd known her in the C-rank group chat, so I had no idea how she'd respond.
What if she snapped at my mother?
But my worries turned out to be entirely unfounded.
"How adorable. Do you have any more pictures?"
Face-to-face with the elders, Lee Jina was neither cold nor rude. She carried herself like the affable second daughter of the neighborhood moving company, and the gap was so complete I almost felt dissociative whiplash.
So this was why Dad had been sizing her up as a prospective daughter-in-law.
Which one was the real Lee Jina?
That was when it happened.
Oinoi, who had been diligently absorbed in a game of Minesweeper, stormed out into the living room in a towering rage.
"The computer of this house contains far too many mines...! This Oinoi keeps stepping upon the nymph-phobic mines and perishing...! This Oinoi..."
Oinoi and Lee Jina's eyes met.
Come to think of it — was this their first meeting?
I found myself intensely curious how Oinoi would react to this delinquent. Would she tremble like a leaf and hide in her room the way she did around Yu Ari? Or would she want to sock her one, the way she did around Lee Jeonghun?
"There is a female this Oinoi has never seen before...!"
As it turned out, Oinoi's reaction was remarkably matter-of-fact. If anything, it was Lee Jina who looked more thrown off.
"...The kid?"
"This is Oinoi, the nymph."
I explained briefly. Lee Jina murmured "...A nymph..." and shivered slightly. Come to think of it, Lee Jina adored Keongkeongi the dog-squirrel. I'd even seen her sneak peanuts into her pocket when she thought nobody was watching, just to feed him later.
Cool and prickly on the surface, yet secretly fond of cute things?
In that case, she might well take a liking to Oinoi too.
Lee Jina said,
"I'm Lee Jina, Ha Ildo's girlfriend. Nice to meet you."
"Ahh... a girlfriend...! This Oinoi had assumed beyond all doubt that the Kore Yerim was the girlfriend of the master of this house...! Truly, the arrows of Eros fly without discrimination between the paid and the unpaid...!"
"Kore Yerim? Ildo, who on earth is Kore Yerim? A foreigner?"
Dad, who had been listening to the conversation between Lee Jina and Mom from the sofa with exquisite caution, furrowed his brow slightly. Just as I was sensing ill omens on multiple fronts, Oinoi thrust her hand into the air and declared:
"The Kore Yerim is a most magnificent Kore...! For reference, this 'Kore' is a word meaning an exceedingly lovely young lady and maiden of spring, and this yellow-haired female also possesses the qualities of a Kore...!"
So that was settled, apparently.
My parents wore expressions of complete incomprehension, but said "I see," almost in perfect unison.
They do say couples grow alike.
Before long, Dad asked,
"What's this, Ildo? You had someone else you were seeing? Who's this Yerim? An ex-girlfriend?"
"No, she's... how do I put it. More like a coworker. You know Seo Yerim, right? She's all over the ads and dramas."
Seo Yerim.
At that name, my mother jolted upright.
"Seo Yerim! The one from the water purifier commercial! Mom just switched our water purifier to her brand — the one over there! Good heavens, our Ildo is working with a celebrity right now? Shouldn't I be hanging up a banner!?"
Disaster.
This is why I don't visit my hometown house often.
I could feel it: if I stayed any longer, this fire would grow beyond all hope of extinguishing.
And in situations like this, the best tactic is a strategic retreat.
"I should get going. I meant to see my little sister's face, but she's coming home way too late. It's five in the afternoon and she's still not back. She's only just turned twenty-one — why is she out this late? I'd be imposing a curfew!"
"Ildo, take some kimchi with you on the way!"
And with those parting words, I escaped the house.
Lee Jina soon followed me out.
"Heading home, right? I'll drive you. You have to be consistent when you're running a con, or the elders start getting suspicious."
And with that, Lee Jina climbed into her one-ton cargo truck.
Vrooom—!
It was a truck so old it was practically a manual these days, but the way she worked the gearshift one-handed with easy competence said she was far from an amateur behind the wheel.
Oinoi, riding in a truck for the first time in her life, was utterly delighted.
"This thing called a truck is most magnificent...! If this Oinoi loaded the nymph sisters into that vast bed back there and drove about to view the spring flowers, it would be splendid indeed...!"
A strangely vivid image kept forming in my head.
While Oinoi pressed herself to the window, gawking at everything, Lee Jina drove with a completely blank expression. It was the face of someone on the verge of getting irritated.
Had my mom really been that much of a handful today?
And so we rode on in silence for two full hours.
By the time we pulled up to the well house, rush hour had caught us, and it was somehow already seven in the evening.
The black electric car parked in the front yard was oddly familiar.
So Seo Yerim was here.
"Thanks for the ride. Long way."
Slide—
I hopped down from the truck and thanked Lee Jina. If I'd taken public transit, it would have taken even longer and left me even more worn out.
Just then the yard gate creaked open, and Seo Yerim appeared, scowling.
"Hey, Ha Ildo. I told you to answer my messages fast, didn't I?"
Ah — so she had texted me.
I'd been sitting quietly in the passenger seat staring at the road like a polite guest, and checking my phone would have felt rude, so I'd never seen it.
I gave Seo Yerim a breezy reply.
"Went to visit my parents' place. Didn't have time to check my phone — I was busy sitting in the passenger seat."
"Really? And since you weren't the one driving, why exactly would you have no time to look at your phone?"
Seo Yerim narrowed her eyes and slid them slowly over the cargo truck.
The moving company's battered old vehicle seemed to genuinely fascinate the chaebol heiress.
Clunk—
Just then, the driver's door opened and Lee Jina stepped down from the truck.
Whether it was that shock of yellow hair, Seo Yerim visibly startled.
"What — it's a woman?"
Had the truck's aesthetics made her assume the driver would be male?
Lee Jina walked around back and began lowering the kimchi containers from the cargo bed to the ground, entirely without ceremony.
"Kimchi delivery."