Perhaps my full belly caused me to become overly complacent and comfortable because I overslept. I was awakened to the sound of someone rapping on the slide. The echoes groaned around me and I woke in a fright, heart racing. I caught my head on the lip of the slide and the collision caused my vision to spark and go white for a moment. When it cleared, Mr. Park was staring down at me with an unimpressed look on his face.
I scrambled to my feet and blurted out a greeting before he could scold me for not doing so again.
He flicked his spent cigarette butt off into the distance (illegal in a playground but I wasn’t about to tell a gangster he was doing something illegal). “So this is where you’ve been hiding, Jaehyun-a. Your mother’s worried sick of you.”
“She told you that?” It felt unrealistic that a literal loan shark would check in on my family and my mother would ask about me.
“Watch that tone, kid,” he snapped. “I went to your house to collect. You weren’t there and her anxiety was written all over her face.”
“She was probably more anxious about having enough money to pay the week’s interest,” I muttered bitterly.
“Oi.” Mr. Park gave me a light cuff to my ear. It didn’t even hurt. “That’s your mother you’re talking about. Have some respect.”
I was sullen. I still keenly felt my hatred that had arisen from the day I ran away.
Mr Park was watching me. “Something about you has changed,” he said slowly. “But you still look the same. Actually, no. You’re much dirtier. Come on. Let’s go.”
“I’m not going home.” I planted my feet defiantly. I wouldn’t be able to resist if he decided to drag me home but I’d give him a good fight over it.
“I’m not your errand boy or babysitter. I’ve got no reason to take you to your home. We’re going to mine.”
My curiosity won over my wariness. “Why?” I asked.
“Because you need a damn bath and a change of clothes,” he said matter of factly. Mr. Park walked off, clearly not caring if I followed or not.
I did want a bath, so I ended up following him. I was feeling grimy after two days, and the prospect of a possible bath was temptation enough for me to enter the lion’s den.
He didn’t talk much on the way back to his house. He came to my home often, but I’d never had reason to go to his. I wondered what kind of house a gangster would live in. Surely it was luxurious and filled with ill gotten trophies and illegal goods.
It was an apartment. Surprisingly it was only slightly larger than our two room hovel, but it was much better furnished and kept. I looked around curiously. It was well kept, but disappointingly normal. There were no racks of guns, no knives or swords on display. In fact it seemed plain and barely lived in, like the home of someone who had just moved in.
“You’re nosier than I thought you’d be,” Mr. Park grumbled. He grabbed a towel from a linen closet and tossed it at me. “Bathroom’s on the left. Go shower. I need to look for something you can wear.”
Mr. Park was easily half a foot taller than me, and his build was probably as thick as two of me. He must have caught my disbelieving expression before I turned to go to the bathroom, because he chuckled. I could barely hear him mutter something under his breath.
Even the bathroom was normal, though I honestly didn’t know what I was expecting to see. I didn’t dare to peek into the cabinets to see if there were any illicit drugs like in the movies. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to work the shower and when I did, I was ecstatic to find that it had hot water. It should have been normal, but the last few years we hadn’t been able to afford to turn on the water heater and had to take cold showers. I turned it up as hot as I could stand, and lavished in the feeling of streams of heat flowing over me, not quite burning but still hot enough to feel almost painful. I drank in the hot steam rising off the water. I imagined it filling my lungs and cleansing me from within.
“Jae- SSI BAL.” Mr Park had cracked the door open slightly and probably choked on the heavy steam now saturating the room. “Turn on the fan if you’re going to use up all the hot water,” he said crossly. He reached in to flick a switch, and a ventilation fan rattled to life. It had been so long, I had forgotten that step. “I found something for you to wear. Get out of the shower and wear it before it gets damp from all this steam.” The door clicked shut again.
His drop in had surprised me and reminded me that I was indulging in luxuries that didn’t belong to me. I turned the hot water down significantly and finished up quickly. I found the clothes he had left for me. Surprisingly the pants fit well enough, but the shirt clearly belonged to Mr. Park. It billowed around my narrower frame and hung down well past my hips. Despite the bad fit, it felt surprisingly comfortable to be wearing clean clothes. I sniffed gratefully at the fresh smell of detergent still lingering in the clothes. We used plain soap at home.
When I came out, Mr. Park laughed at me. I must have looked comically small in his shirt. But apparently it wasn’t that. “Those are my girlfriend’s pants,” he grinned. That was embarrassing. The fit was nearly perfect. Now that he said it, I noticed the more feminine cut of the suit pants. There was much more flare at the ankles, and the thigh area was tighter.
“Tuck the shirt into the pants,” he suggested. I did so. Mr. Park gave me an approving look as he gave my (his) shirt collar a hard jerk to straighten it. “You clean up well enough for a gutter rat,” he said.
“Okay, let’s go.” I didn’t know where we were going, but I didn’t have any other plans, so I followed. Besides, it would have been strange for me to wander off with his clothes that I assumed were on loan only. He stopped just before an auto shop. “Stand up straight. Be on your best behavior,” he instructed me. He gave me a good clap on the back that snapped me upwards. I winced but held my posture as stiff and straight as I could.
“Do Hoon-ssi,” Mr Park called out. A man’s head popped out from under a car.
“Park Bonghwan-ssi! You’re late,” the head boomed cheerfully. With a scraping sound, the man fully slid out from under the car on what looked like a jury rigged creeper.
“The kid needed a bath.” He dipped his head as Mr. Do walked towards us and Mr. Do returned the greeting.
Being much younger, I dipped into a deep bow. “Hello, Do Hoon-nim,” I greeted him politely.
He hummed in approval. “This the boy? He’s got good manners. But…” Without warning he reached out and gave me a firm pinch in the arm. I barely kept from wincing visibly. “You warned me he was scrawny, but this kid barely has any meat on his bones!”
“He’ll work hard,” Mr. Park said. I looked up at him in surprise. He hadn’t mentioned anything about work, and the last time I asked he had seemed mad that I had asked.
“You’re too young to work for me,” he grunted. “But Mr. Do has been kind enough to take you on as an apprentice as a favor to me. Now, what do you say?”
“K-Kamsahamnida!" I thanked him in the most formal form and bowed again, holding it longer this time. "I’ll be in your care, Do Hoon-seuseungnim.”
“He really has got surprisingly good manners, being Baek Seung’s kid.” I blushed. So even he knew about my father. I hoped his reputation wouldn’t tarnish Mr. Do’s impression of me.
“He’ll be a far better man than his father,” Mr. Park agreed. “Anyways, I’ll head off for now. I have other things on my schedule.”
“Lots of people to shake down, eh?” The informal way Mr. Park and Mr. Do spoke with each other must mean that they were good friends. We waved him off.
“Bet you’ve never touched a car in your life,” Mr Do said.
“There was an auto shop class in my school, actually,” I replied.
“Eh! Not bad. So we’re not starting from scratch. Good! Come in, I’ll show you around the shop.”
I followed him into the shop. I had been given a rare opportunity and now it was up to me to make the best of it.
The day flew by. After a quick tour of the shop, Mr. Do picked up a set of tools. “For the first day, just watch and see what I do.”
Despite the seemingly easy task, I tried to memorize everything he said and did that day. I constantly struggled with the urge to ask questions. I wanted to look interested and focused on the task he was doing, but also didn’t want to ask too many for fear of disturbing him.
At last the shop closed for the night. Mr. Do asked me to wait, then went into the little makeshift room that served as his office. He came out with an envelope, which he handed to me. It felt surprisingly thick. “I trust you won’t run away, so here’s your first two weeks pay in advance.”
I muttered a stunned thank you and bowed until he waved me away.
As Mr. Do rolled down the garage doors, I peeked inside. What I saw inside made me feel light headed. It was much more than my usual two week score, even if I managed to snag a particularly nice watch. I hadn’t even done anything today.
“Seuseungnim,” I thrust the envelope back at him. “I can’t take this. I haven’t done anything for you at all yet.”
His expression softened. “You’re a good kid, Jaehyun.” He pushed it back at me. “Park Bonghwan told me about your situation at home. Take it. I know you need it.”
I trembled at the thought of going home. But perhaps a money offering this substantial would be enough to extinguish my father’s anger.
“But Baek Jaehyun-a.” Mr. Do put his hand on my shoulder. His voice dropped a bit lower. “A word of advice. Don’t give it all to your parents. Hide some, either for yourself, or for your mother to buy food and things like that.”
I was absolutely thunderstruck at the idea of hiding money from my own parents. Since the time Taejun had still been around, it was clear that all earnings went to my parents. That an adult was telling me now to keep some hidden from them shocked me to my core. It was true that they didn’t use the money well. Despite my mother’s attempts to budget, most of it was eventually seized by my father to spend recklessly. And yet I had never questioned the concept that money was solely my parents’ duty to delegate. Had Taejun-hyung done the same thing?
I thanked Mr. Do again for his generosity and now his advice. He smiled and patted my shoulder and walked off.
I found myself walking towards my home despite my previous reluctance to return. I hovered at the entrance to our apartment. A chill ran through me as I remembered what Mr. Do had told me to do. I took the envelope out of my pocket and slid a few notes out. They were smooth, unbent and new. They must have come from the bank. I felt a strange discomfort as I folded them and slid them into my pocket. I’d find a more permanent hiding spot for them later. If I kept them at home, my father would eventually find it out.
Nervously, I knocked on the door. We usually kept it unlocked during the day (we had nothing of value to steal), but this time of the night, my mother locked the door. I just hoped my father wasn’t home tonight.
He opened the door. No such luck. Immediately his face swelled with anger at the sight of me. “Finally come crawling back? You damned son of a bi-“
I quickly took out the envelope of money Mr. Do had given me and thrust it at him. His cursing cut off as he took the envelope. I dropped into a deep bow. “Please forgive me, Father,” I begged in the most respectful tone I could. “I’m sorry for running away. I’m sorry.”
I could hear him taking out the money and flicking through it quickly. Irrationally, my heart leapt into my throat at the idea of him realizing it was less a few bills, even though there was no way he could have known what the original total was. He sucked in an excited breath at the sum of it. “What’s this? Where did you get all this money?”
“I got a job.”
“A job,” my dad cried. Though I was still bent over I could imagine the greedy glint in his eye. He pulled me into a tight embrace that suffocated me. “That’s my boy!”
Happily, he marched us back into the house. “Saemin! Throw that shit away. I’m going out to buy us fried chicken. Jaehyun’s got a job!”
My mother looked up in surprise. She let out a choked sob when she saw me, and rushed over. Like my dad, she also enveloped me into a stifling hug. My dad gave an exasperated TSK!
“Don’t be so dramatic, woman. He was only gone for a day.” He whistled merrily as he left. I wondered if he would actually return with chicken, or if he would forget on the way there and end up celebrating by himself at a card table.
My mother continued to hold me, and I could feel my shoulder growing wet with her tears. I patted her back awkwardly, unsure what to do in this situation. “I’m sorry for running, Ma.”
My apology inspired another choked sob from her and she gripped me yet tighter. I shifted uncomfortably in her grasp until at last she let me go.
“You must be hungry. Come eat.” I wasn’t actually that hungry, as Mr. Do provided lunch for his employees. I had already eaten today, but at least sitting at the table meant she wouldn’t be clinging onto me anymore.
She watched me as I picked at the food. Uncomfortable under her gaze, I slipped my hand into my pocket and took out a couple of the bills I had saved earlier. “Ma…” I pressed them into her hand discreetly under the table even though my father wasn’t even home. He probably wasn’t coming back.
She looked down in surprise. Her eyes welled up with tears again as she took the bills. “I don’t deserve to have sons as good as the ones I have,” she whispered, her voice unsteady and pitched with emotion.
I didn’t say anything because it was true.
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