The Early-Return Spell
“Oppa, are you coming home early today?”
The moment I finished getting ready and stood by the front door, Hui-gyeong came scampering over and asked. Her breathing was short and sharp, but it wasn’t from the run—it was from the unbroken ten-minute kissing session she’d subjected me to before leaving the room.
“I’d love it if Gyeong-hun could come home early too, if he can,” Mom chimed in.
“I’ll try to be back before dinner as a rule, but if a part-time job suddenly comes up or a professor calls me in, who knows. I’ll text you either way.”
“Okay~.”
I didn’t even know what my professors looked like. The only people who could make me late were Tae-sik hyung or Gyeong-jun. Tae-sik hyung’s jobs especially were neighborhood work, so it was better to knock them out fast—though digesting that twenty-kilo shipment was going to take a few more days.
I shook the thoughts off and reached for the doorknob.
“Oppa!”
Hui-gyeong called out and threw both arms wide. Why does she always do this right in front of Mom…? I sighed inwardly but obediently pulled her into a hug.
“Heeing, can’t you just not go?”
“That’s a little hard.”
“Heeing~.”
Still clinging and whining, she pressed a quick kiss to my cheek.
Chup.
“That’s a spell to make my oppa come home early. I cast it, so you have to hurry back, okay?”
She was so cute I thought my heart might stop. Back when I’d been building walls around myself, her existence had been pure resentment and bitterness that kept me awake at night. Now that we were husband and wife, she had become the ideal woman who only hungered for her husband’s love and attention.
I hugged her tightly, but the moment I let go she looked regretful and smacked her lips. Then Mom stepped in for her own hug, and sparks flew from Hui-gyeong’s eyes.
Can’t be helped. I have to take turns with both of them or Mom will get suspicious.
I raised one arm first, and Mom nestled into it like a princess. She met my eyes for a second, then—exactly as Hui-gyeong had done—kissed my cheek.
Eung?!
“I cast a spell on Gyeong-hun too, so you absolutely have to come home early today!”
“Y-yeah.”
She didn’t stop there. Her lips slid from my cheek to my ear and she whispered, sticky-sweet:
“Promise?”
“Yeah. Promise.”
“Good! Hui-gyeong, Oppa said he’s coming home early today~. He promised Mommy.”
Mom looked thoroughly satisfied. Hui-gyeong glared at her with dead, lifeless eyes. Today especially, Mom’s smile felt strangely seductive. Until now she had always been pure mother, pure maternal affection. Now she looked me up and down, and the second our gazes met she would shyly glance away—so different from usual that even I could tell. I didn’t particularly want to follow that thought all the way to its conclusion.
Table it. Just table it for now.
“I’m heading out.”
“Have a good day!”
“Have a good day~.”
I opened the door with my wife and mother seeing me off. Something big had already happened first thing in the morning, but from this point on the real day was only just beginning.
Ha… so this is the happiness of a taken man.
At first the KakaoTalk notifications that started the second I left the house made me jump. I thought it might be Seon-woo, but it was an unfamiliar profile. Looking closer, it was Hui-gyeong. I’d completely forgotten I’d bought her a phone yesterday.
Heh. The second her big brother was gone she started firing off messages nonstop. I finally understood why Gyeong-jun got so happy every time Eun-sol bombarded him with KakaoTalks.
Then I saw the profile picture—a sticker photo of the two of us kissing at the amusement park—and nearly had a heart attack. I fired back immediately.
We traded messages in a frenzy. Every kind of coquettish line and cute emoji came flying at me. Short messages poured out without pause, and the second I replied the “1” disappeared. Even my lame replies got walls of “hahahahaha” back.
This was a first. In my entire life, this was a first. Sure, I had Seon-woo as a tutoring student, but she was different. She only said whatever she wanted to say. She didn’t react to me—she just found herself hilarious. And she was way too much of a pervert.
Exactly one minute had passed. The KakaoTalks kept ringing without end, and the way her tone flipped in an instant gave me chills. The fact that she’d caught me thinking about Seon-woo for even a second was even more chilling.
Honesty got me out of the crisis. It had worked before, and honesty really was the best policy. She still seemed a little sulky, so I threw in one more line.
The “1” vanished instantly, but there was no reply. What?
And the chat went silent.
Uh… um… looks like my wife just got really busy all of a sudden.
I tore my eyes from the phone and looked up. It was the same old road to school. The subway car was packed and chaotic with people staring only at their phones. In that suffocating, cramped space I opened the chat with Hui-gyeong again. Scrolling all the way back to the beginning took a long time. We’d talked that much in such a short span.
I reread the conversation we’d just had. The way she’d looked for me, brightened at my replies, kept asking questions, never letting the thread die—it was strange and it made me happy.
“When the time comes, I’ll give you everything I have.”
The words she’d sobbed to me the day I pushed too hard and got thoroughly chewed out. We’d only been together for a single day, yet I was already feeling what those words had meant. I could feel her pouring her whole heart into me.
“I’ll devote everything I am and live for that man.”
We were still so young that even a wedding wasn’t allowed—a couple who were both lovers and siblings. Born into a hard household and choosing an even harder path. The road ahead stretched ten thousand miles. But because you’re here, I have strength, Hui-gyeong. Oppa will find us a nest somehow. Let’s live there together for the rest of our lives.
KakaoTalk!
Ah for fuck’s sake, from morning until now… just stop already!
Since I was a graduating senior, I only had one morning class. The phone that had been ringing nonstop on the subway was quiet now. The moment I told her I’d arrived at school, Hui-gyeong said okay and backed off without a fight. Looking at stuff like this, she seemed determined to support me as a wife—cooking aside, anyway.
“Yo.”
“Heeey.”
I opened the clubroom door onto a space smaller than a storage closet. In the middle of the junk-piled room sat a table, and in the chair in front of it Gyeong-jun was sitting with a cigarette clamped between his lips.
“This is indoors, Gyeong-jun. And didn’t you quit smoking?”
“Ha, just been feeling like shit lately.”
“About what?”
“Just~ the future’s looking kinda unclear?”
What was this guy’s problem now.
“Things not going well with Eun-sol?”
“Nah, that side’s smooth. She clings to me every day, all ‘let’s eat this, let’s eat that,’ super proactive.”
Being a sucker was going smoothly, more like. I kept that one to myself.
“You and me both, our families are a complete mess.”
“Not you, Gyeong-jun. Yours is more like you just don’t get along with them?”
“If it’s only that bad, why would a father make his son work under some bastard together with his friend?”
“That’s because I needed money and dragged you into it…”
“I didn’t have a choice either once the family support got cut off.”
He said that, but the truth was he’d stepped in to help when I was so money-crazed I was taking every job I could find. Part of it was also fear that I’d get myself seriously hurt alone.
“Whatever. Jo Gyeong-hun, what are you gonna do from here? Graduation’s right around the corner.”
“Hell if I know.”
“You’ve got money.”
“I do.”
“You gonna hide it even from me? I know about your emergency cash, I know you bought that coin when it was still pocket change and cashed out when it turned into stacks of bills. I know all of it.”
“…….”
“But this is pure curiosity, okay?”
“What.”
“Why do you pile up that much money and never spend a single won? Meanwhile you’re still running every part-time job and tutoring gig. Doesn’t that kind of defeat the whole point of having made the money?”
Gyeong-jun’s tongue was unusually long today. Usually when he got like this, something serious was going on with him. The one truly bad habit he had was dragging out someone else’s heavy story first before finally unloading his own problems. Depending on the situation I wouldn’t even take the bait, but of course the topic he’d chosen was this one—the family problem I’d been wrestling with the whole time. We were close enough that we both knew exactly how fucked each other’s households were.
“With that money you could get free of your old man.”
“Get free? Just leaving the neighborhood would be waving a flag that we’ve got money. He’d come after us the same day demanding we hand it over.”
“So what then? Do what you said last time—hire Tae-sik hyung to erase him?”
“Wouldn’t that be the cleanest option?”
“You trust that bastard?”
“You said with your own mouth he has a reputation for keeping his word.”
“When there’s no money big enough for him to covet, sure. What are you gonna do later when that hyung turns around and blackmails you by threatening to tell the cops you ordered a relative killed?”
“No way. A paying customer…?”
“Gyeong-hun, why are you so naive in the weirdest places? When he used us for that job this time, did he even give us a composite sketch of that Choi Jun-hyeok guy? The bastard’s running wild in your own neighborhood and he never even told us what he looked like, right?”
“…….”
“And no matter how much you hate him, you don’t commit patricide. That shit follows you for the rest of your life.”
The sudden unsolicited advice rankled.
“You know my old man took over the organization after he took out Grandpa. Even when one gangster takes out another gangster, my dad still cries alone every year on Grandpa’s death anniversary. Funny, right? A big shot in the underworld still does that after committing a crime against kin.”
But the bastard had watched it happen up close, so I couldn’t argue. What a truly rotten friend.
“Just try moving first. Move, and if he still comes after you, then I’ll step up and help. If your whole family agrees, then I’ll really help you.”
“…You serious?”
“Don’t go through a guy like Tae-sik hyung. Ask me instead. Ask me.”
“How the hell would you manage that?”
“…….”
“Your father pushing you again to take over the family business?”
Both of us had fathers standing in the way of our futures. I had my problems, but Gyeong-jun’s father still wanted him to take over. Before we ever went to Tae-sik hyung the two of them had seemed to reach some kind of final decision, but of course it hadn’t stuck. He’d driven his own son into rough work out of spite, and now that the kid was doing well and growing, the old greed was back. Meanwhile Gyeong-jun bitterly resented having a family with nothing clean about it. The reason was simple: he could never have an ordinary person’s happiness.
“That’s why I’m trying to keep my distance from you for a while too. Dad’s eye is on me, which means Tae-sik hyung will be watching me as well. I don’t feel safe.”
“Then what about Eun-sol?”
“…I should let her go meet someone better. She’ll only get hurt if she stays with me.”
It wasn’t empty bravado. There used to be a girl he’d been casually dating while working a normal part-time job. Gyeong-jun’s father had put tails on her and pulled every dirty trick trying to get leverage over his son, and it had ended in the filthiest way possible.
“I’ll go talk to her nicely today and send her off.”
“Today? Right now?”
“Yeah. What’s the point of dragging it out.”
Looking bleak, Gyeong-jun finally lit the cigarette. We were at the far end of a building scheduled for redevelopment anyway—no one ever came here.
“Hoo…. Hell, strike while the iron’s hot. I’m going right now.”
He barely took a couple of drags before stubbing it out on the table and standing up.
“Hang in there, man.”
I offered the empty encouragement, and he answered with some painfully realistic advice of his own.
“Spend some money, you bastard. On yourself or on your family. Spending money is good. You can enjoy so much and solve so much. Having that much cash and still living like a beggar isn’t tragedy—it’s just pathetic. Pathetic.”
This crazy bastard. Honestly that stung worse than anything earlier. But somehow, because it came from him, I found myself taking it to heart.
“I’m out.”
I watched Gyeong-jun’s back as he waved and left, sinking into my own thoughts—when the pile of blankets next to the table suddenly writhed.
“Euing?!”
It kept thrashing like a pupa shedding its skin, and then from inside it our club president, Eun-hui noona, popped out like a genie from a lamp. The only other same-year student who hung around with me and Gyeong-jun. Always wearing a hat pulled down low—Eun-hui noona.
“Noona, why the hell were you in there?!”
“Hey. Jo Gyeong-hun.”
“Wh-what?”
“Just now Gyeong-jun said he’s letting that skank Eun-sol go, right?”
“…How much of that did you hear?”
“Answer the fucking question.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Hoo, haah… not yet.”
Muttering something incomprehensible, Eun-hui noona crooked a finger at me.
“You’re Gyeong-jun’s best friend, right? I trust you. Follow me.”
What the hell was this noona’s real identity? From my older same-year peer I was catching the distinct scent of someone from a very similar line of work.