Chapter 2

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2.

“Which university did you end up going to?”
“B Women’s University.”
“Is a women’s university fun?”
“…If you’re so curious, try attending one yourself.”

When I blurted that out in the local dialect, he chuckled softly, tapping the steering wheel. Yet, the irritable expression from when he first stared at me at the community center window still lingered.

Soon, the car stopped at a signal in front of a small, deserted elementary school branch campus. It was abandoned now, but it was the school we’d attended together as children.

Whenever I happened to pass by this road, I’d habitually glance at the sealed-off two-story building and the small, sparsely weeded playground. As is common for places forgotten and unused by people, our little school hadn’t changed in years.

The paint was faded by the sun, and an old “No Entry” sign hung on the gate, rust clinging to every peeled spot. 「Uisan Elementary School, Baegun Branch」. The school’s name, once plastered across the second-story exterior wall, had long since been removed, leaving only ten faded rectangles.

Above the entrance on the far left of the building, a school motto that hadn’t been removed still remained. I had never paid attention to that blue sign during the six years I attended the school; now, I saw it more often as a mere decoration on the derelict building.

「A Self-Directed Child Leads the Future.」 All the children who once passed beneath the entrance bearing that blue sign had vanished somewhere. And now, they only occasionally return to their hometowns, passing by their childhood school from afar, like irrelevant outsiders beyond its fence.

Truth be told, “the future” is often just like that. It has no particular sparkle, leads nothing by its own hand, and ultimately gets pushed and scattered somewhere.

It’s just time passing. Becoming distant from what was once close. Becoming irrelevant to everything that once mattered.

Becoming no longer us.

I shifted my gaze from the old school and briefly looked at Park Wookyung. Though a smile remained, his eyes, fixed straight ahead, were fierce.

“You said you were going to the same school as me, remember?”
“…”
“I want to ask if you went to a women’s university because you were afraid I’d follow.”
“…”
“But I also don’t want to ask.”
“Why would I think of you when I’m choosing a university?”
“You were studying like a madwoman, staking your life on it, and then you applied to a school so far below your potential, with no apparent reason.”
“There was a reason.”
“So, was I the reason?”

It was indeed a kind of escape. I wanted to escape from Park Wookyung. From the memories of our incomplete days.

And I also needed to escape from my father, who, perpetually short of money year after year, intended to chain me to this rural backwater forever. For that, I needed a full scholarship. Even if it meant not going to the best school, the one he would attend.

Anyway, by then, my grades weren’t good enough.

“You ran away like a rat, Yoon Chahee.”
“…Whose old story are you talking about?”
“I thought about that damn time again today, so it’s today’s story.”
“Let me out. There’s nothing special for me to talk to you about anymore. Even being ‘schoolmates’ is just a word. We’re not close friends anymore, or anything like that…”

Park Wookyung merely scoffed.

“You said you were busy.”
“Yeah. So I don’t have time for this with you.”
“But you have time to drag your suitcase all the way to your house? Gonna try hitching a ride on a passing tractor?”

His speech, mature enough to show the gap of several years, yet occasionally slipping into that familiar sarcastic, childish way of speaking, felt oddly unfamiliar.

In truth, everything about Park Wookyung felt unfamiliar now. So much so that it was hard to believe he had once been so familiar.

“However I get to my house…”
“You come home after years, with a whole list of resident registrations, abridged copies, and seal certificates.”
“It hasn’t been years. I came last Lunar New Year.”
“I was in the military then, so it doesn’t count.”
“What kind of logic is that?”
“So, you got all those documents just to take them to your dad?”
“…Stop the car.”
“Busy getting him another loan, are you? Again.”
“Hey! Stop the car!”

A sarcastic smile formed on Park Wookyung’s lips.

“You ran far away, pretending to live well, as if you’d never come near this rotten rural dump again. Ignoring what happened to your parents.”
“…”
“And you met a lot of guys, didn’t you?”

Which university did you end up going to? I realized then that his question had been nothing more than a greeting asked with full knowledge.

He knew everything. The school I went to, the minor news that had spread through the village from my mom and dad’s mouths, our endlessly declining and tangled family situation.

My few failed relationships, perhaps gossiped about by our mutual schoolmates I occasionally contacted.

“Why did you come back here like an idiot, instead of just keeping up that life?”
Park Wookyung’s voice, as he clicked his tongue, sounded ironically pleased. As if he was mocking my foolishness for ultimately not being able to abandon my home, yet also happy that I, against all odds, had returned to him.

“…What about you?”
“Me?”
“You must have met people too, right?”

You too? I wanted to bite my tongue. Park Wookyung chuckled a little more, sounding amused by my words.

I should have asked why he wasn’t back at university and was uselessly here.

“How many girls do you think I’ve met?”
“I don’t care.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I don’t.”
“You look pretty pissed off now that I said I have girls. Right?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Why? Are you jealous?”
“What a delusion…”
“It’s fun to delude myself for a moment. So, how long will you be here?”
“What about you?”

I dodged the question by asking one back. Park Wookyung shrugged.

“I’ll be here until next spring semester.”
“…Why are you here so long? Aren’t you going to school?”
“I was discharged when the semester started. The air force has a longer service period.”
“…Ah.”
“So, are you disappointed?”
“It doesn’t matter how long you’re home, so I feel no disappointment.”
“What about you?”

A crisp dismissal.

I was in the same boat, having taken a year off from university. I had completely cleared out my studio apartment and shipped all my belongings, so there was no going back anyway. I desperately tried to compose myself.

Besides, with my mom sick, I couldn’t leave this place.

“…I’m the same.”
“Good.”
“Nothing about this is good.”
“Why? We’re nothing, so what does it matter to you?”
“We’re here. Let me out.”

Despite my protests, Park Wookyung stubbornly drove the car all the way into the orchard, not just stopping at the entrance. Parking his car next to my dad’s was a blatant hint, delivered right to our home.

I clutched my throbbing forehead. My mom, who had come out at the unexpected sound of the car, already looked surprised.

“Goodbye.”
“…”
“Make sure you give your mom a good answer about what we are.”

His voice was teasing. As if he knew everything my mom would say to me from behind. An abrasive retort escaped me.

“I have nothing to answer.”
“You will soon, so it doesn’t matter.”

While he held my wrist, preventing me from getting out, my mom approached Park Wookyung’s car. He rolled down the window and instantly changed his expression.

“Wookyung-ah!”
“Hello, Auntie.”

My mom’s face lit up as she saw my hand caught in Park Wookyung’s grip through the window. All her old dreams were there, full of hope.

A shameful dream, one that could never be realized.

“How did you two end up coming together, like this? Did you know our Heeya was coming home today? To drive her all the way to the house like this.”
“No. I just found out today. If I’d known earlier, I would have gone to the terminal to pick her up.”
“Oh my, Wookyung, you speak just like a Seoul person now. Living in Seoul and speaking there, you naturally forget the dialect here, don’t you?”
“It does happen.”
“Our Heeya said the same. A few months after she went to university, I called her and she’d forgotten all her dialect… When she said ‘Mom,’ it sounded like some stranger girl was talking. Though her speech was always polite and soft anyway…”
“Well, she always spoke beautifully, didn’t she?”
“She’s my daughter, but I really don’t know where such a beautiful child came from…”

My ears burned as I watched my mom, for the first time in a while, packaging me as beautifully as possible to present to Park Wookyung. His eyes, glancing at me as if satisfied with my mom’s attitude, were smiling.

I was utterly mortified and pulled away from Park Wookyung. My mom looked a little surprised, but I didn’t care.

I tried to open the trunk to get my luggage out, fumbling for the button, when he got out and gently pushed my hand away.

“Here.”
“…Thank you for the ride.”

Instead of my suitcase, my phone was placed in the hand I extended to receive my luggage. Park Wookyung grinned like a boy.

“My number. I changed it.”

Since I had changed my number as soon as I went to university, his attitude of asking for my new number, as if it had just changed yesterday, felt alien. However, my mom, who, unlike my dad, had been utterly charmed by Park Wookyung since he was little, smiled brightly at him, showing no sign of discomfort.

Only then did I notice my mom’s face, swollen from illness. Instead of arguing, I reluctantly typed my number into Park Wookyung’s phone.

“My number is the same, you can just memorize it.”
“…”
“I haven’t changed it once, just in case you ever called back.”

His lips tightened. Park Wookyung took his phone back, lightly gripping and then releasing my hand, and his touch overlapped with memories from the past. My mom’s face showed an emotion I hadn’t received.

Park Wookyung politely said goodbye to my mom, and gave a sharp, formal nod to my dad, who had rushed out of the cold storage and was glaring at them. Then, without a backward glance, he disappeared from the orchard.

On the road where he vanished, a memory of him riding his bicycle towards me, long ago, briefly surfaced.

Ah. It was a memory that held no use now.