As he tapped the ash from his cigarette into the ashtray, the man asked a question. His voice was slightly subdued, but warm. Hyungnam gave a small nod and took the opportunity to study him.
Even sitting on the edge of the bench, he looked tall. His legs were long beneath his suit trousers, and the hand holding his cigarette was smooth, without a single scar. He had a large frame, but his overall appearance was rather lean. He was quite different from Choi Eunhyung, whose sensual body rose in sculpted contours beneath his T-shirt.
What does he do for a living?
Hyungnam blinked a few times, then timidly pointed at his tie.
"Your tie... Why do you wear it like that?"
The man stared blankly down at his tie, apparently caught off guard by the question. The dark charcoal-gray tie had been stuffed haphazardly into the breast pocket of his dress shirt, as though it had been through a typhoon. A beat later, he burst out laughing.
"It gets in the way when I'm working."
"..."
"We all work like this. Now I'm embarrassed."
With the hand holding his cigarette, he fished out his tie and smoothed it flat with his palm. Despite his neat, immaculate appearance, his manner was remarkably unpretentious.
Seriously, what does this man do?
After watching him for a while, Hyungnam hesitated, then rummaged through the plastic bag in her hand.
"Here."
The man's gaze followed her fingers. Beside his half-empty bottle of soju, she set down a container of strawberry yogurt. She had bought it to eat instead of dinner.
He let out a disbelieving chuckle, groaned at length, and rubbed both hands over his face.
"Ahh, this is humiliating."
"..."
"I don't normally sit around drinking in broad daylight."
What difference does it make what kind of person you are?
Despite his hurried excuses, Hyungnam merely nodded with indifference.
The sun was sinking toward the horizon. She needed to get home and prepare dinner. But the man seemed to have no intention of letting her leave. As though he'd been bored out of his mind and was delighted to have found someone to talk to, he kept striking up conversations.
"Things aren't going well at work. I've been feeling pretty frustrated."
"I see."
"There are a lot of gangsters living around here, aren't there?"
"What?"
The question came so abruptly that it startled her considerably. When she feigned ignorance and asked him to repeat himself, the man seemed to grow frustrated and drank straight from the bottle. His Adam's apple bobbed conspicuously in his long, pale throat.
Before long, he lowered the bottle and released a short, pained breath.
"Truth is, I catch gangsters for a living."
"Oh..."
"These bastards have so much money, they've built their walls practically high enough to punch through the sky."
"..."
"Go to arrest them, and they've locked the gates. Get the gates open, and they're nowhere to be found."
Apparently, the man was a police officer or detective. He squeezed his eyes shut several times, then opened them again. In the brief glimpse she caught of their whites, she could see blood vessels streaking across them.
With his pale face and the gentle curve of his eyes, he looked almost like a shy boy. His occupation was unexpectedly at odds with his appearance. Then again, who would believe Choi Eunhyung was a gangster, with that innocent-looking face of his?
"Are you... here to catch gangsters now?"
At her hesitant, frightened question, the man, who was peeling the lid off the yogurt, chuckled.
"You think I'd be sitting here getting drunk if I were on duty?"
"Oh."
"Thanks for this. I'll be sure to repay the favor."
He raised the yogurt toward Hyungnam.
What a funny, strange man.
How does he expect to repay me when he doesn't even know if we'll ever meet again?
Covering her mouth with the back of her hand to hide her smile, Hyungnam gave him a little bow.
She had taken perhaps five or six steps toward home when her pace gradually slowed, and finally she stopped altogether.
Should I tell Choi Eunhyung? That there's a policeman wandering around the neighborhood with nothing better to do?
But her own safety mattered more than Choi Eunhyung's, and protecting herself would mean protecting him as well. There was no need to complicate things.
Hyungnam slowly turned around.
The man was staring listlessly into space, a plastic spoon no bigger than his little finger dangling from his mouth.
For no particular reason, Hyungnam stiffened her neck and spoke with deliberate firmness.
"There aren't any gangsters. Not in this neighborhood."
"..."
"I mean... there used to be, but they've all moved somewhere else."
She calmly pieced together one lie after another.
The man slowly turned his head toward her. With the spoon caught between his front teeth, he raised his eyebrows as though intrigued.
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Well, I'll be. I nearly wasted my time looking in the wrong place."
"..."
"Thank you."
Only after receiving his slightly muffled thanks did Hyungnam begin to feel uneasy. She gave a perfunctory nod that barely qualified as a farewell, turned, and walked away. All the while, she kept turning her own words over and over in her mind.
There aren't any gangsters in this neighborhood. There aren't any gangsters in this neighborhood...
She found herself both ridiculous and contemptible for going out of her way to sweep aside even a threat as thin as a spiderweb, all for the sake of preserving her own miserable hide.
I could have just pretended I hadn't heard anything and walked away.
Self-loathing welled up inside her.
As Hyungnam walked toward the house, she glanced back over her shoulder.
The man had turned sideways to watch her.
Their eyes met, and she flinched.
He waved.
Hyungnam whipped her head around as though she'd seen something she shouldn't have, then hurried away as if fleeing.
His inscrutable, sticky gaze seemed to cling to the back of her head.
The promise of repayment from a man she would never see again felt exactly like a mousetrap in an attic, baited with something sweet-smelling.
***
When she opened the front door, she was greeted by a room full of acrid smoke.
As she slipped off her slippers and glanced toward the living room, smoke was curling lazily from behind Choi Eunhyung's head.
A whole sack of rice.
Hyungnam repeated the words quietly to herself.
"Where did you find that?"
At her audacious question, Eunhyung turned his head slightly and laughed with a breathy hiss.
"Planning to snitch?"
"Why would I?"
Dragging her feet, Hyungnam approached Eunhyung and stopped beside him. From the large plastic bag hanging from her wrist, she pulled out a long carton of cigarettes.
She dropped it onto the table with a thud and promptly hurried away.
"They didn't have Cheongja."
"Hey."
Eunhyung, who had been reclining so far back he was practically lying down, jerked upright the moment he saw the cigarettes.
In the center of the carton, a gold-embossed turtle ship with a dragon's head gleamed.
Eunhyung muttered in disbelief.
"You might as well have bought Sol."
Hyungnam didn't smoke, but she knew the cigarette brands men preferred by heart. She knew perfectly well that if Cheongja wasn't available, Sol was the obvious alternative. Nevertheless, she had deliberately chosen Turtle Ship.
It was the greatest revenge she could manage against Choi Eunhyung at the moment.
She went into the kitchen, put the rice on to cook, and pan-fried tofu in perilla oil. She figured that even if he wouldn't eat beans, he might eat tofu. Worried that he might refuse even that, she stir-fried some beef and set out kimchi as well.
By the time she was finished, she'd prepared a fairly impressive meal.
As she laid out the spoons, Hyungnam wondered what on earth Choi Eunhyung actually did in this house.
He didn't even go into the study anymore. He spent all his time loafing around, yet the moment she called him to eat, he came without a word of complaint.
Apparently, after all the spite she'd shown him, he'd expected a miserable dinner in return.
He seemed slightly surprised by the generous spread, which was no different from what she usually prepared.
But when he saw that there was once again only one bowl of rice on the table, placed in front of him, his face twisted into a fierce scowl.
"What's with you now?"
"I'm not eating."
"Why?"
"I'm not really hungry."
Ever since meeting the children selling gum, she hadn't wanted to eat anything.
Every grain of the abundant white rice she consumed so shamelessly seemed as though it might come alive in her mouth, wriggling like a maggot.
In a moment of thoughtlessness, she'd bought the yogurt as a substitute for dinner.
But in truth, that yogurt was the very embodiment of deception.
Its sweet, tart, luxurious flavor, and yet its thick, viscous consistency, so much like semen.
Wasn't it exactly like the course her own life had taken?
At least she'd given the yogurt to the man drinking straight soju, and that made her feel considerably better.
Come to think of it, didn't he say he was a policeman?
Hyungnam had been absentmindedly rubbing the end of the dining table with a dishcloth, pretending to be occupied with something else. Now she quietly opened her mouth.
"There's a policeman down the hill."
Instead of answering, Eunhyung looked at her.
Hyungnam tightened her grip on the dishcloth and continued.
"I'm not sure if he's a policeman or a detective... Anyway, he said he catches gangsters."
"So?"
"He asked me if a lot of gangsters lived in this neighborhood."
"And?"
"I told him they'd all moved away."
For no apparent reason, her throat tightened as though she were about to cry.
Perhaps her conscience, on the verge of shriveling up completely, had finally wrapped its hands around her windpipe.
Eunhyung, however, asked a very simple question.
"Why?"
Why? Because if Park Shineok gets arrested, I'll have nowhere to work. Other households only pay half as much as this one, and even then they're always late with the wages. And in the worst cases, the master takes advantage of the maid's body, and then the mistress of the house throws her out.
She couldn't very well brazenly recite such a painfully simple explanation.
Hyungnam pressed her lips tightly together and stared blankly at the steaming bulgogi.
For a little while, Eunhyung seemed content to share her silence.
Then, at last, he set down his spoon and rubbed both hands over his face.
"...Hyungnam."
"Yes?"
"Are you really that worried about your big brother?"