The Phone Number
The days slipped by, one after another.
The day before I enlisted, I went to a barbershop and had my head shaved.
It was the first time in my life I'd ever had it cut that short.
When I got home and took off my hat, Mom looked at me, laughed, and ran her hand over my bristly head, calling me cute — but her eyes were brimming with tears.
The next day, the two of us drove to the training camp in Mom's car.
It was the very day the bet with Jinwoo was set to begin, but honestly, the tension of military life ahead left no room in my head to think about the bet at all.
The whole drive there, Mom kept trying to put me at ease, saying she'd heard that army life wasn't nearly as hard as it used to be.
But when we actually entered the training camp and it came time to part as I headed to the parade ground, Mom ended up throwing her arms around me and sobbing out loud.
Other mothers had their husbands beside them to comfort them, but my mother would be driving home alone, crying her eyes out after sending her only son away. My heart ached for her.
Even after intake was over, I could see her off in the distance, still crying, and it weighed on me — but there was no longer any time to dwell on it.
There was so much to adjust to, so much to learn, and all of it was frightening and nerve-wracking.
I knew I was hardly built for military life, but my defining trait of being 'ordinary' meant that while I would never excel at anything, I was never lacking either.
It was hard and miserable, but I could do everything at the same level as everyone else.
On weekends, we were allowed an hour with our phones.
Of course, I called Mom.
Was I eating well, was I sleeping, did anything hurt, was it too hard... her questions never ended.
I reassured her that it was less brutal than I'd expected, that the food was good and I was sleeping soundly, but there was a faint tremor of tears in her voice.
Only after the long call ended and I hung up did the bet with Jinwoo finally surface in my mind.
With his body running hot, Jinwoo might have already made contact with Mom.
There were no new messages.
I sent him one asking if he'd seen my mother, but no reply came that day.
The next day, when phone time came around again, I picked up my phone and found messages from Mom — and from Jinwoo.
I put off Jinwoo's messages, exchanged a few words with Mom first, and then opened his.
Just as I'd expected, Jinwoo had apparently already visited Mom's store.
Of all his messages, that was the one that leapt out at me.
He was making an effort to stay polite, but I could more than feel that Jinwoo was itching to talk about my mother in far cruder terms.
To be honest, it wasn't exactly pleasant hearing him appraise her face and body like he was grading merchandise — but I still wanted to hear everything that happened between Jinwoo and my mother.
The moment I read that, I felt my heart start pounding.
I had never once experienced, never once even witnessed, a friend referring to my mother by her first name.
It felt vaguely unpleasant — and yet strangely exciting — but once again I told him to do as he pleased.
Jinwoo said he was going to rent a place near our house.
He was already living on his own anyway, and the drive from our store to his university wasn't far, so his plan was to take an officetel near our store and stay there several days a week.
Jinwoo meant it.
I already knew it, but this drove home once more that he was genuinely, seriously going after my mother.
And so the weekend passed, and the daily life of a trainee began again.
Those days repeated themselves.
Every weekend, I called Mom and traded messages with Jinwoo.
Jinwoo either had no real progress to report or had progress that wasn't worth reporting — either way, he only said things were going well and offered nothing specific.
I figured I could relax.
He wasn't telling me much, but Jinwoo was probably desperate behind the scenes.
But my mother wouldn't budge.
She wasn't like the women who lost their minds over the men Jinwoo used to meet at nightclubs.
I was certain that things would stay exactly like this until my discharge — no, that within a few months Jinwoo would exhaust himself, admit defeat, and hand over the money.
And so training camp came to an end.
Mom came to see me on graduation day.
After the ceremony, I was allowed to spend a few hours outside with her.
Over those past weeks I'd been tanned jet black, and though I couldn't tell myself, I'd probably lost a little weight too.
Seeing me like that, Mom cried again.
I was assigned an administrative clerk position.
Just as I was finally getting used to training camp, I became a private all over again and transferred to my unit.
The first stretch after arriving was one long string of nerves, but surprisingly, I adjusted to army life well.
The job was nothing but paperwork, so it wasn't particularly difficult.
I didn't stand out for better or worse; when told to do something, I did it, and when told to cut my hair, I cut it — I got by uneventfully, without making a single ripple.
I wasn't especially good with people, but perhaps precisely because I had so little presence, I never caused any trouble either.
Half-there, half-not, I dissolved into the army.
Fortunately, neither the senior soldiers nor the new ones made my life difficult.
Best of all, smartphone use was free after the day's duties ended until lights-out, so the barracks had a settled atmosphere of everyone glued to their own phones doing their own thing. Once the rough discipline of new-recruit training had eased up somewhat, I could spend my evenings freely.
By the time I'd more or less settled into my unit, I was no longer worried about the bet with Jinwoo at all.
Even checking KakaoTalk every day, there was nothing notable to report from him.
And once the lack of progress dragged on, I found myself able to be honest with myself.
I realized that on some level, I had been hoping something would happen between Jinwoo and my mother.
Because I'd noticed that when I opened the app each day and found no report from him, I felt a faint flicker of disappointment.
Even as I was relieved that nothing was happening between Mom and Jinwoo, I was checking his messages every day nursing the quiet hope that there might, just might, be some scandalous report waiting for me.
But that unchanging sameness also meant that the hundred million won I would hold in my hands after discharge was gradually becoming a reality.
When I recalled how Jinwoo had stood there with Mina at his side before my enlistment, boasting with utter confidence that he could seduce my mother no problem and that he'd pay me a hundred million if he couldn't, it was almost funny.
My first leave was just days away.
Not only Mom, but all my friends — Jinwoo included — knew I was getting time off.
It was only a short three-night, four-day leave, so meeting Jinwoo too would be difficult; I'd made plans with just my close friends.
One day, as usual, the day's duties ended, I picked up my phone, sat on my bunk, put in my earphones, and opened my messages.
There was a message from Jinwoo.
In an instant everything flashed before my eyes and my whole body went hot.
He got her number?
The terms of the bet were, after all, 'sex' — so getting a phone number didn't even put him in the vicinity of success — but the mere fact that my mother had given Jinwoo her phone number was something I could hardly believe.
All the more so because, until that moment, I'd assumed there'd been no progress whatsoever.
The hand holding my phone was trembling.
No — my entire body was shaking.
It took me a long while before I could send anything back.
That pathetic reply was all I could manage.
But if I wanted the full story, I had to say something, anything.
They talk on the phone every day?
My mother, on the phone with Jinwoo, every day?
Since Jinwoo went silent again after that, I had to demand a detailed explanation once more.
I agonized forever over what to say, and that was the best I could come up with.
A short while later, Jinwoo uploaded a single image.
I tapped to enlarge it. It was a screenshot.
My mother's KakaoTalk profile page.
Her name was set as 'Juhee's noona' — Juhee noona.
A photo of my mother filled the screen.
It was one I had taken of her a few years ago, on a trip just the two of us.
She was wearing sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat, so her face wasn't clearly visible, but her whole figure showed — jeans and a blouse, my mother from head to toe.
For a moment I thought: maybe my mother hadn't given him the number at all — maybe Jinwoo had dug it up one way or another and simply saved it into his phone on his own.
Wasn't there a place at the store where her phone number was written down?
While I was still entertaining that thought, another image file arrived.
It was a screenshot capturing the conversation between my mother and Jinwoo.