Side Story 3
“It was truly baffling. I didn’t understand a lot because it wasn’t standard Arabic, but anyway, it was the king of mysteries.”
“Uh, wait.”
Bom, who had been listening intently, suddenly looked bewildered.
As she listened, it seemed Jae-gyu had communicated smoothly in Egypt, taking Ubers to markets alone and even going on Nile River tours by himself. She only just realized it.
“So you kept speaking Arabic there?”
“Yes. I used a proper mix of English, Arabic, and body language. Why do you ask?”
“No, how can you speak Arabic?”
Jae-gyu chuckled and explained to a surprised Bom.
To put it concisely, he’d learned it from Arab sailors he worked with on a Chinese fishing boat when he was young.
Jae-gyu spoke lightly, as if it were nothing, but Bom’s heart still ached when she thought of young Jae-gyu working on that fishing boat. To have gone through that right after his father passed away, the emotional shock must have been immense, not to mention the physical toll.
She knew he’d learned Chinese while working in such harsh conditions, but she hadn’t realized Arabic was also a trace of that time. Had she asked unnecessarily? It only made her heart ache.
“Jae-gyu, so you speak three languages, right? Korean, Chinese, and Arabic? That’s really cool. You’re the king of foreign languages.”
Bom deliberately reacted as if it were nothing. Because if she showed she was upset, Jae-gyu would apologize as if he’d committed a crime. Even though he’d done nothing wrong.
“Well, I’ve forgotten how to read and write, so it’s not really something to brag about. Just enough to buy food and pay for things? A beginner, you could say.”
He was being modest, but Arabic isn't a language you can easily learn, even if you're exposed to it up close.
She’d once overheard him on the phone with an airline, and his English wasn’t bad either. His grammar was simple, like an elementary school student’s, but he was good at listening, and his pronunciation was surprisingly plausible.
Jae-gyu said his ears had opened up thanks to his immersion in American TV dramas, and his pronunciation had improved due to consistent shadowing. Even considering that, it was amazing how good he was.
“Ahem. Anyway.”
Wiping his nose, perhaps out of embarrassment, Jae-gyu continued his story about Egypt.
“I trusted Mustafa and set off. Ha, it was peaceful until then.”
Their small white compact car crossed the Nile River and arrived at the Giza Pyramid Complex just 30 minutes after leaving the hotel.
‘Oh, we’re here! Wow, it’s huge!’
On the endless, desert-like sand, an impossibly massive pyramid appeared majestically.
Jae-gyu, who had only ever seen the pyramids in videos and photos, couldn’t close his mouth at the grandeur of the real thing.
“I didn’t even notice I was getting sunburned from all the sightseeing. I really saw them to my heart’s content. They were incredibly cool.”
“Then did you ride a camel, too? I saw on YouTube that the touting is pretty serious there.”
“Nah. If I rode one, the camel’s back would break. Even the camel touts didn’t come near me. It was comfortable, thanks to that.”
Jae-gyu, who was excitedly admiring the colossal pyramids and Sphinx, noticed people taking photos that made it look like they were lifting the pyramids or holding the Sphinx in their hands using forced perspective, and decided to try it himself.
He said he was going to send them to me.
‘I’m sending these to my fiancée, so please take clear, good pictures.’
Standing in front of the pyramid, Jae-gyu asked Mustafa to take a few shots of him in the poses others were doing.
After that, he came up with his own ideas.
Putting the pyramid inside a finger heart, putting sunglasses on the pyramid, wearing the pyramid as a hat, and so on. He showed off his charm with various poses.
After taking plenty of pictures, he took his phone back and checked his photo album right there. Because of the intense sunlight, the phone screen looked completely black, so he had to shield it with his large hand and squint.
While he was in that state, carefully selecting the best photos, the surroundings somehow grew noisy.
“I looked to see what was going on, and there they were, cursing, pointing fingers, and fighting up a storm. Right in front of the sacred pyramids.”
“A brawl there?”
“Exactly!”
Jae-gyu, witnessing an unusual fight between three locals, watched for a moment before approaching them. He saw that Mustafa was also involved, fighting with them.
‘Hey! You can’t fight here! What kind of place is this?! You, put your hands down, come on!’
By the time Jae-gyu, with his large build, stepped between the three and sorted out the situation, a considerable amount of time had passed.
“I thought I might be late, so I went to check my watch. But when I reached for my phone in my back pocket, it was empty, and that’s when I knew. Sigh, they’d swiped it without a trace...”
“No way. So they stole it while you were breaking up the fight?”
“Ha, I’m not even sure about that...”
They didn’t just snatch it; they’d apparently smeared something all over his back pocket before leaving.
He couldn’t get into the car like that, so he changed into a galabeya that Mustafa pulled out of the trunk, and that’s how they rushed to the airport.
“That’s the whole story of what happened.”
Ah, so that’s why he looks like this now.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
“Haa. I’m extremely sensitive, so I usually notice right away if someone gets close...”
Saying he hadn’t noticed at all, Jae-gyu was visibly distressed. As he thought about it, he seemed to grow more indignant, and his hands gripping the steering wheel trembled.
“I’m starting to think it might be the Pharaoh’s Curse.”
“...”
Pharaoh’s Curse, my foot...
Even though she thought it was a ridiculous story, when he said he’d tried so hard to hold back tears that even tiny blood vessels had burst, she couldn’t help but pat his hand to comfort him.
Jae-gyu was someone who, once he bought something, used it for a long time. His phone contained a lot of various data, he mostly used card apps for payments, and he cherished it, even making his own case for it after it was discontinued. So it was natural for him to be heartbroken.
“The photos... you’re still using the cloud, right? It was auto-upload. So it should be fine. Unless they were completely lost.”
“Lost them. The sun was so hot that I turned off auto-upload because of overheating... Haa.”
“...”
“Terrible, just terrible. I’m cursed,” Jae-gyu muttered, his broad shoulders slumping.
“Oh, come on, it’s a good thing nothing worse happened.”
“Phew, yeah. I should think positively. Now that I think about it, it’s a good thing my passport was in my suitcase. If that had been stolen too, I wouldn’t have made it back on time.”
“As long as you’re safe, that’s what matters. What’s the big deal about being a little late?”
“Hey now. Still, I can’t be late. What kind of day is today?”
Jae-gyu’s gloomy expression vanished, replaced by a wide grin. Bom, too, finally let a gentle smile grace her lips. The brightened voices of the two became noticeably lighter.
“I’m looking forward to the dress. To think we’re getting married...”
“I know, right? I still can’t believe it.”
It felt like a distant future, but it was amazing how it had suddenly arrived right before them.
Last winter, on a day of heavy snowfall, Bom received a proposal from Jae-gyu.
‘Will you allow me to be by your side for the rest of my life, Bom?’
At that time, Jae-gyu, dressed in disarray, knelt on one knee in the piled snow and asked.
Bom’s answer was, of course, ‘Yes’. The elegant diamond ring he offered then now adorned the fourth finger of Bom’s left hand.
Both Jae-gyu and Bom themselves had thought that once they decided to marry, a wedding would instantly happen, and they’d become husband and wife right away. But they only realized that marriage wasn’t something that could be rushed through so quickly after they announced it to those around them.
The one who made the biggest fuss was Mom, Jung Nan-hee.
‘Son-in-law Gyu proposed? Already? Look at this, look. I told you to wait a bit longer, but you couldn’t hold back! What’s the rush? Oh, dear.’
Even as she said that, Mom seemed very pleased. Then she immediately focused on the ‘wedding’. For Mom, who valued appearances, her daughter’s wedding was an event she didn’t want to lose at.
‘Hold on. The wedding has to be in Seoul, right? Do it at the Saheon or Lameck Hotel, Son-in-law Gyu has plenty of money. Let’s see, what should we do first? First, Mom will get the date, so find out Son-in-law Gyu’s birth date, time, and the Chinese characters used in his name. Got it?’
The date Mom brought back after visiting a couple of reputable fortune tellers was November 24th. As a bonus, the compatibility reading she got was Tasangjiyeon.
It meant that Jae-gyu and she hadn’t met by chance, but were connected from a past life, forming their bond in this one. She didn’t know the specifics, but it sounded good, anyway.
November 24th was after the Suneung (College Scholastic Ability Test), so it wasn’t a burden for Bom, and the same went for Jae-gyu.
Both of them agreed on the wedding date, and from then on, they began preparing for the wedding.