MTLNOVEL #055
#055
A dizzying headache arose at the sight before me.
Ki Baek-woo, curled up like an egg on the old curb in front of the apartment entrance, instantly left me speechless. I knew I’d look stupid, but my mouth gaped open involuntarily. I just stood there, frozen, doubting if what I was seeing was real or if I was having some strange hallucination from being outside for the first time in a long while. The funny thing was, Ki Baek-woo seemed to have the same reaction.
Ki Baek-woo, with his head half-raised, looked at me hazily. As if he was seeing me who wasn’t really there. His messy lips gaped like a carp.
“…Hyung.”
Curled up, Ki Baek-woo really looked like a small ball. Even though he had lost weight recently, his frame was still too big to be crumpled up like that. Yet, he was so tightly wound up that he looked amazingly small. Ki Baek-woo, who had buried his forehead on his sharply bent knees and rubbed it, looked at me again with his head half-raised. Hyung. This time his lips moved without making a sound.
“Crazy…”
Should I call this an exclamation or a sigh? Whatever it was, such a sound leaked out involuntarily. I was dumbfounded. I didn’t even know how to explain what I was feeling right now. It felt shitty and irritating as if I’d been hit on the back of my head, but it also felt like I was seeing something outlandish, and conversely, like I was completely drained and just wanted to give up on everything. My emotions were darting around like cockroaches, so even I couldn’t distinguish what was what.
What’s clear is that if Ki Baek-woo, crouching there like that, hadn’t been reported to the police yet, it would be nothing short of a miracle. Ki Baek-woo looked like a criminal who had just committed an impulsive murder and was now wallowing in self-hatred. It was impressive how he managed to look somewhat pitiful in such an appearance. I had the cynical thought that maybe for humans, everything works out if you have a good face.
Imagine this. If an ugly man more suited to a barn than a house was sitting outside like Ki Baek-woo is now, barely wearing one ragged slipper on one foot and the other foot bare…. If an ugly man who looked more like a rock for throwing than a person was all crumpled up like Ki Baek-woo is now, wearing dirty, stained clothes with even blood stains as if ketchup had been splattered on his top, wandering outside….
No, forget all that. If anyone, whoever they might be, was wandering outside with half their face covered in blood like Ki Baek-woo is now, they would have been locked up in a holding cell long ago, forget about looking pitiful. But Ki Baek-woo is sitting there freely without even wearing handcuffs. That must be all thanks to his face. I let out a hollow laugh. I criticized him with contempt.
“Ki Baek-woo, are you really crazy? What are you doing sitting there looking like that! No, why are you even outside sitting like that in the first place when you’re not some wandering dementia patient?”
“Hyung…? Is that you, hyung?”
Ki Baek-woo seemed to have just realized that I was a real person, not a mirage. His unfocused eyes, which had looked closer to dead than alive, gradually became clearer.
He suddenly stood up. Standing, he looked even more miserable. He must have fallen somewhere. His half-face covered in nosebleed was already awful enough, but there was also a scraped wound near his well-defined jaw with beads of blood forming. There was even a hole in his pants as if he had slid hard on the street.
“Hyung. It is you, right? Hyung.”
Ki Baek-woo, muttering like that and limping towards me, was appalling. He looked a bit like a zombie, so I unconsciously stepped back half a step.
Why on earth… why is he out here like this?
I was a bit dazed by the incomprehensible scene. The voice calling “Hyung, hyung” as if he had been too busy waiting for me to even check his own appearance made the back of my head throb.
The thoughts I had been having on the bus earlier resurfaced in my mind. How should I react to make this bastard stop this crazy behavior and go meet Jung Yi-dam instead? Because of that, I missed the timing to push away Ki Baek-woo, who had now come close and grabbed my arm.
“Where, where did you go? I was… you were gone, hyung… hyung.”
Ki Baek-woo’s two hands, clinging to my arm as if hanging on, were trembling.
“No, I just went to the pharmacy for a moment… But Ki Baek-woo, why are you out here like this? Did you roll around somewhere? Why are you in this state? You look really terrible right now.”
“When I woke up, I was suddenly lying in bed, but you were gone… You were gone, so that’s why.”
“What? What are you saying?”
“You weren’t at home… But once I came out, I didn’t know where you had gone, I didn’t know, I tried to look for you… But I couldn’t go anywhere and was just here…”
I tried calling too… but you kept not answering, and I… I thought you had really left me behind… Now you dislike me, and I even showed you a strange sight while you were eating and bothered you. So I thought you were completely fed up… In the end, thinking that’s what had happened, I….
Ki Baek-woo was speaking intermittently, as if squeezing out the words. His posture was awkward, as if he was barely standing on weak legs. His gaze wandered around my chin area, unable to meet my eyes. Everything was trembling finely, pitifully like a rain-soaked dog, as if terrified. Wow, he really seems to have gone crazy. Does this bastard Ki Baek-woo even know what he’s saying as he rambles on?
The point of Ki Baek-woo’s disorganized and long-winded speech was this:
He had rushed out looking like a beggar and wandered around the neighborhood because he couldn’t see me. Because he thought I might have left for good, disgusted by him dripping nosebleed at the dining table.
The words and actions that the young Ki Baek-woo in my memories would often do. When I would go out without saying anything and come back, the small Ki Baek-woo who would say with eyes like an old man waiting for death to come tomorrow, despite being a child, ‘I thought you had finally decided to abandon me. Because I’m too useless and bothersome… I thought so….’ The mentally ill little kid who was in a state of delusion caused by the system, mistakenly thinking I was his entire world.
I wanted to tell this Ki Baek-woo clearly that his current actions closely resemble that kid’s, that I’m not needed by him at all, so please come to your senses and act properly. I was willing to repeat the same words until he understood. If only I could speak.
“I’m sorry, hyung. I’ll take better care of my health from now on. I’ll do everything well. I’ll do well…”
The wind blew through Ki Baek-woo’s voice, which sounded as if he was asking for permission. His hair, already disheveled beyond repair, swayed gently like willow leaves. I turned my head to look at the simply decorated landscaping once. Then I also looked at the evening sky behind Ki Baek-woo, which was turning a deep blue.
What the hell am I supposed to do, shit….
I had no idea how to react to Ki Baek-woo, who was in a state that would make even a beggar cry. I realized that when you’re this purely dumbfounded, even annoyance fails to rise, and anger rises only to cool down.
I pushed away Ki Baek-woo, who was still holding my arm and standing like a government official. Ki Baek-woo stepped back obediently.
“Hey.”
“Yes, hyung…”
“Just take this for now,”
“Okay.”
When I handed over the bag with the medicine, Ki Baek-woo took it without any question. I looked him up and down once more in his messy state, then just turned around wordlessly.
I climbed the stairs to the apartment’s common entrance with heavy steps. Ki Baek-woo followed, limping with an uncomfortable gait. The thought ‘He really does everything, does everything’ was all that came to mind. We got into the elevator that had arrived. The machine went up towards our apartment, and Ki Baek-woo and I got off in silence and pressed the door lock button of the front door. Until then, we hadn’t said a word.
I really don’t know. I’ve already dealt with Ki Baek-woo twenty-five times… but this Ki Baek-woo was, without a doubt, a first for me. It was incredibly tiring.
“That’s medicine, so take it or not as you see fit.”
I thought how sick I was of this as I opened the bedroom door and went in.
***
If you ask if anything changed after that day, there were some changes. First, my offensive power decreased a bit. I reduced a lot of the unnecessary things like bringing up Jung Yi-dam at every opportunity to make Ki Baek-woo feel guilty (though he is guilty), and giving all sorts of pointless orders to waste time and resources. I hate to admit it, but it was because my momentum had been dampened.
Even when we lived like street animals when we were young, Ki Baek-woo had never looked like such a beggar. Perhaps because of that, the messed-up appearance of Ki Baek-woo that day left a strong impression in my mind. It’s human psychology that when you’re trying to get revenge on someone, if they’re living an even more rock-bottom life than you planned, you end up thinking, ‘Sigh, how pitiful. Let’s just let it go.’ I felt like I had entered that state now.
“Hyung, eat some grapes.”
While I was lying on the sofa watching a rerun of
“Hah… Okay. Leave it there and go.”
“Okay. I’ll peel more while you’re eating.”
“I said go.”
“Mm… I’ll just peel this one and go.”
This insufferable and annoying crazy bastard. I’m really only putting up with you because moving day is not far off. If it were up to me, I’d just… As always, I inwardly cursed Ki Baek-woo thoroughly while watching his pointless actions with a contemptuous gaze.
The process of the grape being peeled, deseeded, and placed on the plate as pure flesh was dreadful.
“Why on earth are you peeling grapes like that? What’s the point of doing that?”
When I told him to just leave the grapes, Ki Baek-woo insisted on sitting down next to the coffee table and peeling them. I couldn’t help but ask him. In fact, it was closer to telling him to stop making such a fuss because it was annoying to watch.
“…To make you feel good, hyung.”