Hobby (1)
"Hey, what do you guys even do when you get home after school?"
It started with Kang Hanbyeol's question out of nowhere. Yeonhee was the first to answer.
"I study."
"Ooh~ Honor student, as expected. But doesn't studying at home get boring too?"
"Hanbyeol, maybe you should actually study before you say stuff like that..."
"So is there anything besides studying?"
"Hmm... if I had to pick something else, I guess I just go on Neotube and watch videos?"
Even honor students didn't spend every waking hour studying, apparently.
Then the question moved from Yeonhee to Kim Naeun.
"What about you, Kim Naeun? What do you do when you get home? Not like you'd be studying."
"Why not? I could be studying."
"You don't really look the type."
"Naeun's actually pretty good at studying. I'll vouch for her."
"Whoa, unexpected."
Whatever special weight an honor student's endorsement carried, Kang Hanbyeol dropped his skepticism on the spot.
"So what do you actually do after school, Kim Naeun?"
"Hmm... I usually study a bit, then go hunting for good restaurants?"
That was pretty unexpected. For someone so small and skinny-looking, maybe she actually enjoyed eating.
"Oh, so you know a lot of places, then?"
"Heh-heh~ Well, yeah. I know pretty much every spot around our neighborhood."
She let out a smug little snort and thumped her own chest with a tiny fist. As if to back her up, Yeonhee chimed in.
"It's true. Sometimes Naeun drags me along to a restaurant, and it always turns out to be insanely good."
"Then Juyeong and I should get the tour sometime too."
He was making plans for some unspecified someday, and this time Kim Naeun asked first.
"Okay, then what about you, Hanbyeol? What do you do after school?"
The second the question left her mouth, the guy let out a meaningful little laugh, like this whole conversation had been a setup for this exact moment.
"Heh heh heh... Glad you asked. The truth is, I started going to the gym recently."
"That's it? I thought you had something actually impressive."
"Right?"
They'd clearly been expecting something big, and Kang Hanbyeol's answer was more than enough to disappoint them both. But as far as he was concerned, it was a big deal. He cleared his throat and pressed on.
"Ahem, ahem. So yesterday I tested my Big Three at the gym, and—"
"Hold on!"
Kim Naeun cut him off.
"What? This is the important part."
"What's the Big Three?"
"Wait. You don't know?"
"I don't know either..."
Of course neither Yeonhee beside her nor Kim Naeun, who'd asked the question, would know gym jargon. I actually knew the answer, so after sitting there with my mouth shut the whole time, I tossed it out like it was nothing.
"Squat, bench press, deadlift."
Maybe because I'd finally opened my mouth, three pairs of eyes locked onto me. The attention was uncomfortable, so I looked away — and Kang Hanbyeol, thrilled to have found a kindred spirit, started running his mouth with gusto.
"Oh! What, Han Juyeong, you been working out?"
"Well..."
I had, a long time ago. Very briefly. If I ever got seriously sick, I wouldn't even be able to take care of myself living alone, so I'd needed to boost my immune system. And with a middle schooler's scrawny body, I couldn't even move things around properly — I'd had no choice if I wanted to survive. These days I didn't need to bother, so I just lazed around in bed every weekend.
I'd drifted off into those grim old memories, and Kang Hanbyeol, apparently itching to explain it himself, opened his mouth again.
"Simply put, the Big Three is the combined total of the max weight you can lift once each for squat, bench press, and deadlift."
He said it with such pride, like he was showing off something you couldn't just look up in two seconds.
"Oh, so that's a thing..."
"It's not like I work out, so this is the first I've heard of it."
Leaving the two of them to absorb their new knowledge, Kang Hanbyeol pressed on.
"Anyway, the point is I hit 150 kilos!"
"Yeonhee, is that high?"
"I dunno...?"
You brought this up in front of two girls. Of course they wouldn't know, you idiot.
"Tch. They don't even understand how incredible this body is. Juyeong, you used to work out, right? You'd get how amazing I am."
It's not even that high, and he's acting so full of himself...
"It's about average."
I told him the truth, and he let out a deflated sigh.
"Aww... and here I thought it was something impressive."
"Right? We're the idiots for taking Hanbyeol seriously..."
"H-hey, no! Plenty of people can't even do this much!"
Which, put another way, meant plenty of people could.
We left Kang Hanbyeol hissing and sputtering to himself, and the girls' attention swung over to me. They stared like I was the only one left, and asked.
"Juyeong, what about you? What do you do when you get home?"
Did I even do anything when I got home? It wasn't like I'd ever really had hobbies, so I just listed off a couple of things I'd been doing lately.
"Same. I just watch Neotube, or play some games on my phone."
"So everyone's on Neotube, huh..."
Calling "watching videos" a hobby was a bit of a stretch, but these days it was so ubiquitous that pretty much everyone knew it. It was entertaining, sure, but you could also enjoy it anytime, anywhere, as long as you had a phone — an all-purpose tool in more ways than one.
I originally started watching it to look up cooking recipes, and by the time I came to my senses I was already hooked.
Honestly, with Neotube you could find any information you needed. What else did you even need?
"Nobody here has a particularly unusual hobby, huh."
"Isn't studying as a hobby pretty unusual?"
"What's wrong with a student studying?"
Well, Yeonhee had a point. Studying was a student's job. People like me and Kang Hanbyeol, who drifted through school without a thought in our heads, were the weird ones.
That aside... a hobby, huh. Compared to how tightly I'd lived back then, I probably had a decent amount of free time now.
I should think about it a little.
After school.
I was heading home like any other day when Yeonhee's voice from beside me snapped me out of it.
"What are you thinking so hard about?"
"...Is it that obvious?"
"If you walk around staring at the ground in a daze like that, I couldn't pretend not to notice even if I wanted to."
Now that she mentioned it, I probably would have said the same thing if I'd seen someone else doing that.
"Is something bothering you?"
There was real worry in her voice. It wasn't even that serious of a problem.
"It's nothing major. Just that thing Kang Hanbyeol was talking about this morning."
"Ah. Hanbyeol bragging about going to the gym?"
"Yeah."
"What about it?"
"I was thinking maybe I should pick up a hobby too."
"That's a great idea!"
She clapped her hands together and looked at me with something like pride. I wouldn't really know, but I wondered if this was the look a parent gave their kid. Getting that look from a classmate felt pretty weird.
"But why is that a problem?"
"I don't know what hobby to pick."
Aside from the things I'd done out of necessity, there hadn't been much in my life you could really call a hobby.
"Didn't you say you play mobile games?"
I did, but not that often.
"I only do that because I've got nothing else going on."
I never left the house, and just lying in bed zoning out for the rest of the afternoon after school felt like a waste — inefficient, even. That was why I'd started playing mobile games in the first place.
Come to think of it, that isn't exactly a productive activity either.
Lying around playing games on my phone wasn't efficient in any sense of the word.
"Then why don't you study, like me?"
What a horrifying suggestion...
"That's a bit much."
"Yeah? That's too bad..."
I'm the one not studying. Why is she disappointed...?
"Anyway, I think I need to give it some thought."
"Do you? Then should I do it with you?"
...I don't even know what I'm going to do, and she wants to join?
We walked along, tossing out one thing after another that might work, and before I knew it we were almost at my place.
"I'll get going, then. Think hard about that hobby."
"Yeah. Thanks."
The moment I got home I changed clothes, flopped onto the bed, and stared at my phone. I pulled up the internet and searched for "hobby recommendations."
Cooking. I already knew enough to keep myself fed, so I didn't particularly want to do more of that.
Reading. Looking at textbooks at school was more than enough books for me.
Fishing. It was one of those hobbies guys were supposed to like, but I wasn't particularly...
There were plenty of other options after that — plastic models, instruments, growing plants, singing — but nothing jumped out as something I actually wanted to do, or even something that appealed to me. Maybe I was just being picky, but I couldn't force myself into something I had no interest in, so I wasn't about to grab whatever was convenient.
Still, there's really nothing here I'd actually want to do...
I'd put the gym on hold, honestly — mostly because I was worried I'd start and then quit after barely any time at all.
If I had to pick one, though, there's nothing else besides the gym.
I'd worked out before, so it wasn't like I was going in with zero knowledge. And if I had to choose something, being able to just switch my brain off and focus on the exercise didn't sound half bad.
I opened the map app, punched in my apartment address, and searched for nearby gyms. There were only about three within a reasonable distance. I pulled up the reviews to check out the facilities. I wasn't going to get a personal trainer, so there was no need to look at the staff — I focused on the equipment and the space. The closest one to my apartment looked pretty run-down, which left the farthest of the three.
It was behind the school, the opposite direction from home, but...
If I'm going to do this, there's no harm in being a little picky.
With that, I paid for a membership online.
Back then, I never would have thought of spending money like this.
Hush money, I guess you could call it. I got living expenses every month, but it was money that could stop coming at any time, so I'd pinched every coin and saved as much as I could. By now it had piled up enough that I was reasonably comfortable, financially.
It's not really my money... but I have been too stingy about spending it.
Petty worries like that didn't matter right now.
Well. I should get ready and go before it gets too late.
The plan for today was just to drop by the gym I'd found, get a feel for the place, and be back before dinner. I left the apartment and headed back toward school.
I passed the front gate, cut around toward the back, and checked the map as I looked for the gym — and there it was, a gym in a large building you could see even from a distance. Looks like I'd found the right place.
I approached the building and was just about to walk through the door when—
"Huh? Han Juyeong?"
I turned toward the voice calling my name, and there was Kang Hanbyeol in a tracksuit, waving at me.
Why did it have to be you...?