A Meeting of Legends
My fingers hammered the back button as if I were fleeing the madness of the Monster Gallery.
I set aside, for the moment, the fallout from my controversy-dodging testimony and that careless pejorative, and prepared for the rainy season like any elementary-school head of household.
Priority one was the washing machine out on the balcony—if anything was sensitive to water, that was it.
I dragged over the stepladder from the corner of the balcony, stopped right beside the machine, unrolled the tarp that had been gathering nothing but dust, and, climbing the rungs on my small feet, barely managed to drape it over the top.
Someone might look up at the balcony, so I didn't go throwing transformations around carelessly.
"Ugh, reeks…."
The second the tarp was on the machine, the smell of nicotine and tar rolled over me. I clapped a hand over my nose before I could stop myself and spat a curse.
Lately I'd been shutting the door and running the air conditioner just to keep this out, so I almost never had to deal with the damned smell—but whenever I did have reason to come out here, it found me like a ghost.
Can't you just die of lung cancer already?
That was when a thick stream of water came spearing down through the open air in front of the balcony. It ran along the railing of the unit directly above, hit ours, and kept going toward the floor below. A clean, bright ribbon of water, with a sharp splash as it struck.
"Huh?"
What kind of flood was this on a clear day?
I was still staring at the wet path it had left, puzzled, when—
"Ah, shit, which bastard—!"
An unfamiliar shout, from someone who sounded a little older, erupted from the balcony below.
"Go outside if you're going to smoke!"
"You're a public nuisance, seriously!"
Right on the heels of the man's bellow came the voices of the couple upstairs. Just like the old saying never lies—the dog with dung on it chewing out the dog with chaff. In this case it was more like dung chewing out dung, but still….
Anyway, the upstairs floor-noise cat-crazy couple and the balcony smoking maniac had finally made contact. It was a summit of legends so oppressive I could only click my tongue in awe.
"Hah…."
Is this the Super Monster War?
"You sons of bitches… what floor are you on?! Don't you run—stay right there!"
Heavy, pounding footsteps loud enough to carry all the way up to the balcony above. I was not about to miss free entertainment on a dull day. I at least needed to slap on some slippers and head upstairs for the show.
But the moment I reached for the door, a slamming started on the other side that sounded ready to smash it in.
"Where do a bunch of green kids get off—come out! Get out here right now!"
Oh, for fuck's sake. Why is he throwing a fit at my door?
The old man who was supposed to go one more floor up was hammering on mine. It's not here, you senile crazy grandpa—one floor higher….
I wanted to spit the insult out loud, but the version of me living in this apartment was an eight-year-old elementary schooler. I hooked the latch at the top of the door with a stick first, then cracked the locked door open a little.
The second it opened, the door jerked outward with a rattle as he yanked on it.
"Open it! You gonna open it or not?!"
"Wrong floor!"
The old man had so much strength it felt like he might tear the door off. In a rushed, childish voice, I told the face in the crack that this wasn't his floor.
"Huh?"
The balcony smoker blinked through the narrow gap, peering inside.
"Ah, sorry about that."
That skin-crawling gaze swept past once, and the lunatic suddenly recovered his composure. With a short apology he stepped back from the door.
What a piece of shit.
"…What was that?"
When the rough grandfather voice finally cut off, Siyeon edged out from the back of the room, a little cowed, and asked carefully. Even the most confident first-grader would look like that if someone started yelling in front of their own door.
"Nothing. Just a grandpa who moved in."
I didn't bother telling Siyeon it was a fight between the upstairs and downstairs units. For the sake of a good show, I shut the door and slipped upstairs on quiet feet.
The old man who'd kicked the upstairs door the second he got there hadn't changed—his shouting carried up the stairwell before I'd even finished climbing.
"I'm smoking in my own house! If you don't like it, you move! Huh?!"
"Oh, please. We're just watering things at our place—what's the problem?"
"Woman, who do you think you're talking back to?! The blood hasn't even dried on your head—"
"If the blood on your head dried you'd be dead! You think age is a rank?"
"What?!"
"Am I wrong? You're making a spectacle of yourself, honestly."
A fight so gripping I wanted popcorn from somewhere, right then.
"I've got anger management issues, you hear me?! Something bad could happen, woman! Even I don't know what I'll do!"
He'd been kicking the door like he meant to start swinging on someone, but once he was actually face-to-face, the fists never came out first. You know those pictures—two dogs snarling like they'll kill each other through the bars, and the second you open the gate they go quiet? That was exactly the feeling.
"What are you two doing making so much noise in front of someone else's door?"
Huh?
A door opened all of a sudden, and another voice layered over their racket—young, solid, a man's. I thought we were getting an interesting third-party intervenor.
But the moment the man from next door spoke, the smoking old man and the floor-noise cat mom went silent as if someone had hit mute. What was this? Had someone put bits in their mouths?
"Neither of you is a child. Can't you talk without raising your voices?"
"No—this wo—this woman dumped water on the floor below."
"You were smoking on the balcony first, weren't you? Honestly, when I leave my door open to work out, the smell comes in. I've been thinking of going down a few times to talk to you about it."
Curious what kind of person could shut up the anger-management-smoking old man, I climbed a few more steps and took in the scene on the upper floor.
Oh, shit.
The healthy physique that met my eyes drew an involuntary inner gasp. The man laying down proper common sense had a monster-tier body—muscle so thick a tank top looked like sleeveless tights. The kind of build that made you wonder if he entered bodybuilding contests. No wonder anger management had become anger well-managed.
"This is multi-unit housing. You have to think about the people living above you. It's not like there are no smoking areas. Is it right to hurt others just for your own convenience?"
"Ma'am, you shouldn't pour water downstairs either. What did the other floors do wrong?"
It was such a clean resolution I wanted to clap. I found myself thinking, as expected, that the first thing a person should do is get strong. Healthy mind in a healthy body, wasn't that the line? Though in this case, maybe it was closer to "violence is ruled by greater violence."
After that day, the cigarette smell that used to hit me every time I stepped onto the balcony almost vanished. Maybe the downstairs smoker had felt his life was threatened. Or maybe the rainy season had simply made him not want to go out there.
Even with the monsoon pouring down, school still had to be attended. Siyeon spun the twenty-thousand-won magical-girl character umbrella I'd bought her not long ago like a top in the street.
"Yaaah—!"
Raindrops ricocheted off the character umbrella and soaked my clothes.
"Don't spin the umbrella."
Before she could drench the people walking past as well, I poked her with my own umbrella and stopped the spinning.
Rain boots and raincoats were luxuries. Even the sneakers and clothes we already owned wouldn't last a year in a growth spurt, and special clothes only good for certain weather were expenses we could do without. She was happy enough with one character umbrella, and if she asked for something else that would be one thing—but buying things she didn't even want just meant more junk to throw away.
We reached school without trouble, swapped sneakers for indoor shoes, and sat down at our desks. Socks still damp through the indoor shoes made me kick them off under the desk and swing my bare feet in the air.
Elementary math past summer break. We were finally moving on to "grasping" two-digit numbers. For example: there are eight boxes of fruit with ten pieces each… and two pieces of fruit that are two each. Problems like that.
Air conditioner ran nearly three hundred, computer almost two hundred….
In a way, I was studying math too. A household account book I never thought I'd use in my life. You could call that math study, couldn't you? …Not that it was a worry an elementary schooler should be having.
A little tight, maybe…?
"Mari, what are you doing?"
While I was buried in the account book, someone called my name. With a stride longer than any child's, Teacher Seol-a crossed from the podium to the very back row in an instant. Elementary students only had one book open—anyone doing something conspicuous stood out, even in the last seat. On a desk that only needed a pencil case and one thin math book, I had two books spread open. That was me.
"Ah."
"You shouldn't mess around during cla—"
Hands faster than an adult's eyes snatched the account book. Written on it were calculations that ran into the millions and tens of millions. Right after that, Teacher Seol-a's face settled into a look that said, Why does this kid have something like this?