ITDW 11

In response to Jaeri’s hasty refusal, Jungyoon offered another option.

“If you don’t like that, how about I lock you up safely at home? Choose.”

It couldn’t be said that Jaeri had no romantic notions about being a college student. After all, it was the blueprint that had helped him endure his suffocating high school life.

For his hyung to watch over everything would mean he would have to live a college life like a high schooler, or even worse than a high schooler.

In any case, Jaeri did not deliberate for long. First and foremost, the joy of being able to go to college was too great.

“I’ll go to school, hyung. I’ll do really well. Thank you.”

He thought that while there would be restrictions on various activities if his hyung was watching everything, he would be safe in any situation. He was grateful that his hyung was paying this much attention to him. Jaeri knew very well how busy Jungyoon had been since starting the slightly delayed succession process. And that man had said he would spend a lot of time on him. He couldn’t help but like that.

After dinner, he underwent his routine cell phone message inspection, was instructed to cut his fingernails short, had ointment applied again, and had his weight measured. Jungyoon told Jaeri to gain at least 2kg by the next week. When Jaeri made a troubled expression, Jungyoon dismissed it, saying, “Would I tell you to do something you can’t?” so Jaeri had no choice but to answer that he would do so.

That night, reflecting on the day, Jaeri was so proud of himself that he found it a little hard to stay still. He took out the plan he had written in code a year ago, which he had tucked away deep in a drawer, for the first time in a long while.

1. Kiss hyung when he’s conscious

He put a checkmark next to it.

“Wow, you’re insane, Kim Jaeri.”

Jaeri buried his head on his desk for a moment and stayed still. His heart was pounding. Good job, hypomania. He hadn’t even completed Step 1 and Step 2, but he had accomplished Step 3 right away. Steps 1 and 2 were as follows.

1. Kiss hyung when he’s sleeping
2. Kiss hyung when he’s dead drunk

He got up from his desk, calmed himself down a bit, and contemplated what to do about the aforementioned Steps 1 and 2. He wondered whether to jump straight to Step 4 or to try these as well since they would be experiences, but then decided he was not in a position to be picky. He would do them all if he got the chance.

As Jaeri carefully examined his plan, his expression became unsettled. It seemed his self from just a year ago had been quite naive.

1. Kiss.
2. Have sex.

Kissing doesn’t immediately lead to sex, you idiot. Jaeri added new intermediate steps between 4 and 5.

4.1 Try touching hyung’s thing when he’s sleeping.

4.2 Pretend to touch hyung’s thing by mistake and stimulate it (must do this multiple times).

4.3 With my hand…

4.4 With my mouth…

Jaeri let out a big sigh. “Haah.” Now that he had fleshed out the plan, it somehow felt like he could really do it. Wouldn’t it work if I do it step by step? His ears turned bright red. He thought that it would be nice if the new hospital his hyung mentioned was a little negligent in its treatment of hypomania. If it was a doctor he could communicate with, he might be able to negotiate a little. Hypomania wasn’t that bad of an illness compared to mania anyway.

The hospital appointment date Jungyoon told him was in five days.

Today was a strange day. In terms of weather, it was like a sun shower, when it rains while the sun is shining brightly—what they call a tiger’s wedding day. To be precise, it would be like the sun starting to shine brightly while it’s raining. He had been depressed, but he had made two big gains. One was college, and the other was the first achievement of his so-called ‘Plan to Utilize Hypomania.’

Perhaps because of the excitement, blood rushed between his legs. Jaeri looked down at it, then went to the bathroom attached to his room. He sat on the edge of the bathtub and recalled the time Jungyoon had touched him. He imagined him not pressing on his testicles with his large palm while having an educational Q&A about a woman holding a knife or what have you, but saying, ‘Jaeri, does it feel good? Where does it feel good, tell your hyung. It’s natural.’

“Ah… all of it, all of it, it feels so good.”

Startled by the words that had just come out of his own mouth, he clamped it shut. It was probably fine right now since he was in the bathroom, but there had been many times he’d been caught doing it in his room. Jungyoon didn’t bother knocking and just came into Jaeri’s room. He had been caught so many times, and since Jungyoon said it was natural, it didn’t matter if he was caught, but it felt like the atmosphere would be really strange if he was caught now. It would look like he was masturbating because he was happy he got into college. Jaeri kept his mouth tightly closed and held back his moans.

Jaeri’s homeroom teacher looked at Jaeri’s desired universities with a troubled expression. Group Ga was empty, Group Da was empty, and in Group Na was H University’s Department of Economics. And there was a guardian’s signature.

“Jaeri, the Department of Economics at H University is a pretty significant step down… Are you applying for a safe option? I can understand leaving Group Da blank, but why didn’t you fill in Group Ga?”

“I just need to get into H University’s Department of Economics.”

Jaeri said in a casual voice, as if the teacher was asking something obvious.

“Still, why don’t you try putting one down for Group Ga.”

“Even if I get accepted somewhere else, I can’t go anyway.”

The teacher couldn’t understand Jaeri’s reason for having to go to H University. He tried to recall if the Hanyoung Group was the foundation for H University, but that wasn’t the case either.

“Huh? What do you mean? Jaeri, it’s just such a waste, that’s why I’m saying this.”

“There’s nothing to be done even if you think it’s a waste, sir.”

Jaeri couldn’t comprehend why he had to have this conversation. He couldn’t understand why a complete stranger was meddling, pretending to be worried about his life. When they didn’t even genuinely think it was a waste.

I’m going to H University’s Department of Economics, sir. Jaeri gave his teacher a final notice and left the counseling room.

He considered the hospital to be a place where the brightest, cleanest, blandest, and most simply structured sensations gathered. The hospital seemed like a space filled only with the elements of principle, as if it would not permit an exceptional human like himself. Mixed-race, son of a second wife, bipolar, gay, a person with a one-sided love for his brother.

Jaeri often imagined pouring soil all over the hospital floor. He would also scatter some fallen leaves, change the lighting to incandescent orange, and plant moss on the walls. Patients would be served cocktails every hour. That would be fun. Lost in his own imagination, Jaeri opened the hospital room door.

In the two-person hospital room with white walls, Park Jinsu and Yang Hyunjun were hospitalized side by side. All sorts of things like fruit, drinks, and snacks were strewn about every corner of the room, and the two swollen faces lying there, picking up and eating them, looked pathetic. Who finds guys like this pretty enough to bring them food? That was why Jaeri had come empty-handed.

Both of them had both their legs broken and were lying with both legs raised high above their hearts. The story went that they had touched the hostesses too roughly at a room salon and got their legs broken in a beating by the gangsters who managed that establishment. Jaeri hadn’t even known that the ‘room’ Park Jinsu had mentioned was that kind of room.

Bastards with shit for brains. Jaeri sat on the chair in the space between the two patients and looked down at his old friends. Park Jinsu and Yang Hyunjun’s caregivers all left, saying the friends should talk amongst themselves, leaving only the three of them in the room.

“You look like two squid caught in a net.”

Jaeri shared his honest impression. The two old friends reacted instantly. Park Jinsu reacted with words, and Yang Hyunjun looked for a hand mirror to check his face.

“Listen to the way this bastard Kim Jae talks.”

“Does it hurt a lot?”

“Fuck, you call that a question? Both my legs are shattered.”

Park Jinsu responded fiercely.

“Then ask for a painkiller shot.”

“I’m already getting them, you moron. Can’t you see this?”

“You’re the morons, you fucking morons.”

“What?”

“If I had known you were morons who’d ask me to go drinking via cell phone, I wouldn’t have even bothered with you. Do you even have brains?”

Jaeri looked at the guys’ casts and tried to suppress the boiling rage inside him. How do you get beaten so badly that your legs break? It must have hurt like hell, though.

“Ah… did you get caught?”

Hyunjun asked, looking a little sorry, with a foolish expression mixed with guilt. The old friends who had sometimes joined Jaeri in his delinquent acts had been warned multiple times that ‘important bad things’ must never be spoken of on the phone. Because his family was strict, and his basic privacy wasn’t respected.

“Hey. Still, you’re lucky. Your legs are fine since you didn’t go.”

Park Jinsu said with a genuinely envious look on his face. At that, Jaeri was so dumbfounded for a moment that he felt a jumble of words he wanted to say piling up in his head. He organized the logic in real-time and discharged them one by one.

“The fuck, what do you mean, lucky? Am I the same as you? If I’d known it was that kind of place, I wouldn’t have gone. You’re just kids, but you’re already rotten.”

“What, are you so pure? You just don’t chase after girls, that’s all.”

Park Jinsu scoffed.

“Then again, I guess your brain is purer than mine. The thought of how I got beaten to a pulp by my hyung because of your stupid heads—I’m so grateful you’re so pure.”

It wasn’t that he had been unfairly scolded for something he hadn’t done, but he thought there had been no need to get caught with such dirty and explicit content. He thought he might have been scolded less if he’d been caught in a more wholesome way, like a curious teenager having a glass of beer.

That was proof that Jaeri still did not properly recognize the danger of alcohol itself.

“Ah, did you get scolded a lot? I’m really sorry. But honestly, your hyung is kind of a psychopath. Over just a bit of drinking. Did we know it would turn out like that?”

“He said Kim Jae got beaten to a pulp. Keh keh…”

Yang Hyunjun spoke with his face contorted as if in concern, while Park Jinsu, for some reason finding it funny that his friend got beaten to a pulp, narrowed his small eyes even further and laughed with a keh keh sound. Yang Hyunjun shot a glare at Park Jinsu and then continued with what he wanted to say.

“How about you move out and live on your own when you go to college? I don’t think your hyung will change just because you’re a college student. I’m going to live on my own. If you’re okay with it, we could—”

Jaeri suppressed the anger boiling up at them and decided there was no need to stay long and get stressed out by guys who made his emotions swing wildly. He stood up, picking up the bag he had placed beside him. It had only been about five minutes since he arrived at the hospital, but there was no reason to waste any more of his precious time on these guys. All time during a hypomanic period is precious.

“My hyung told me to cut ties with you guys, so I just came to see your faces one last time, sort of as a sick visit and a farewell. I won’t stay long. Seeing as you both are still talking like assholes, it seems you didn’t suffer any mental trauma, so that’s a relief. Goodbye.”

“…Jaeri?”

Surprised by the abrupt change of topic and its content, Yang Hyunjun called Jaeri’s name and just blinked his eyes, but at Jaeri’s indifferent gaze that seemed to say, Why, what?, he was momentarily hurt and couldn’t say anything. Park Jinsu, who understood the meaning of Jaeri’s words a moment later, went ballistic.

“…What? Hey, do we look like a joke because we got beaten up by gangsters? We’ve filed a lawsuit against those bastards and hired some fucking expensive lawyers, you know?”

“Ah, stop with the super uninteresting stories, it’s boring. I’m leaving.”

Jaeri was so dumbfounded by Park Jinsu’s remark, which seemed to disregard the lawyers, that he almost lost it, but he was able to endure it, perhaps thanks to the effect of his medication, and left the hospital room as he was. The enraged Park Jinsu bellowed, “You son of a bitch! Hey, you, get back here!” But what good was shouting from behind? He couldn’t walk.

Jungyoon received a report from Security Team 1 that Jaeri had left the hospital room and was on the move. Jaeri’s security was originally handled by Security Team 2, but it had been disbanded a while ago on Jungyoon’s orders, and Security Team 1 was temporarily in charge.

Jungyoon did not bother to inform Jaeri of this fact. It was because ‘many people were inconvenienced by your childish delinquency’ could not be used as a card to pressure the kid. That kind of pressure doesn’t work on Jaeri. If he had brought it up, Jaeri would have said something like, ‘I’m sorry for bothering you, hyung.’

A torrential rain has been pouring in the child’s heart for years. He knows that the child is living by clutching onto just one point of warmth.

In front of a franchise tteokbokki restaurant well-known for being extremely spicy, Yoonjae asked Jaeri with a somewhat reluctant expression.

“Really, this?”

“Yes. I wanted to eat it. Ah, is it okay with you, hyung?”

“I like this place’s tteokbokki too.”

“Yeo Heejeon, you do?”

“Yeah.”

The pale man standing beside Yoonjae answered with a gentle smile. He and Yoonjae had been connected for seven years as friends, and now four years as lovers. When Jaeri went to the meeting spot to see Yoonjae and was a little surprised to see Heejeon standing next to her, Yoonjae apologized and blamed her own busy schedule. Yoonjae was someone who used her time efficiently. The meeting place was even in front of the Seoul Central District Court, where Yoonjae, a lawyer, had just finished a lawsuit.

They ended up entering the tteokbokki place, and not even a few minutes after they sat down, food began to be served. Jaeri, who was starving since it was past lunchtime, started to gobble down the kimbap.