Chapter 12: The Weight of Home

Crispy!!!MungBeanPancake (find_B12345): [The bebt the bebt]

Crispy!!!MungBeanPancake (find_B12345): [Lol lol lol lol lol]

If he answered incorrectly, he risked exposing himself.

Thinking he needed to learn a bit more about the Kitty Corps, Lee Do-kyung brushed it off with a laugh for now.

Do-kyung decided to end the conversation casually around this point without a formal goodbye.

Leaving a moderate sense of longing would ensure Woo-min didn’t lose interest either.

Just then, a call came in from Hwang Un-jae, and he spent a good while on the phone discussing their work.

When he returned after ending the call, Seon Woo-min had logged off without leaving any additional messages.

It didn’t matter.

Do-kyung had an excellent excuse to start a conversation with Seon Woo-min—that is, with Nokddoongie Bokddoongie—again.

All he had to do was photograph the Mung Bean figure and send it.

***

‘Seon-woo’s Side Dishes,’ named after the siblings’ surname, was located in a commercial area within an apartment complex.

“You’re here?

What, are you an autumn man?”

Seon Hye-ri, who was wiping the shelves of the display case, greeted her younger brother gruffly as he entered through the door.

Even though it seemed like she was picking a fight, Woo-min knew she was actually incredibly happy to see him.

“Here.”

Seon Woo-min handed Hye-ri the carrier containing the takeout yuzu lemon tea.

After finishing his shift at the café in the evening, Woo-min usually worked alternating days at the mart and the side dish shop, and if he had the energy left, he would do overnight designated driving afterwards.

Even on his days off from the café, which he didn’t use well, if he did take a break, he would apply for day labor in advance and do things like cleaning lodging facilities or loading and unloading parcels at logistics centers.

Today, his condition wasn’t very good, so he had asked to come in for the afternoon shift at the café, and in the meantime, he stopped by his sister’s shop.

Whether it was an emergency call from his sister because she was short-handed or during the busiest holiday seasons, Woo-min helped out at the shop as naturally as if it were his own job.

He didn’t take any payment.

Even when Hye-ri insisted on giving him an envelope, saying that family should be even more careful about such things, he shook his head.

It was to maintain balance in their relationship.

“You haven’t eaten breakfast, have you?”

“Yeah.

Hello, Auntie.”

Replying curtly, Seon Woo-min averted his eyes from his sister’s face, which was more heavily made-up than usual, and greeted the lady in charge of the kitchen.

“Woo-min’s here?

Come here and taste the soup.”

“Yes.”

Grabbing an apron hanging on the wall in the kitchen corner, Seon Woo-min ladled some spicy beef soup from the commercial pot into a small dish.

After tasting it silently, he said, “It’s fine, isn’t it?” and looked back.

The auntie smiled kindly.

“I was worried it might be a bit too salty, but what a relief.”

“It’s delicious.”

Seon Woo-min took out a disposable container and put in small portions of stir-fried seaweed stems, japchae, braised burdock, and other dishes.

It was Hye-ri’s job to attach the barcode stickers and close the lids.

When something felt a bit light, weighing it would invariably show it was short on grams, and Woo-min would receive it and refill the exact amount.

The kitchen auntie drank her yuzu tea and watched the well-coordinated siblings with kind eyes.

If they hadn’t been introduced as siblings, she would have naturally thought they were lovers, they were so affectionate with each other, and their appearances were completely different.

If not for Hye-ri’s explanation long ago that she took after their father and her little brother was the spitting image of their mother, she would have continued misunderstanding.

Their genders should have been swapped, the auntie had once clicked her tongue thoughtlessly, only to have to rub her forearm for a long time as Hye-ri slapped it repeatedly, saying “Auntie, really!”

“Eat this.

They opened a bakery across the street and gave it to me.”

Hye-ri held out a roll cake to Seon Woo-min, who had finished portioning the side dishes and was sitting on a stool in the corner of the shop.

Woo-min accepted it silently in an empty disposable container.

“You look so pathetic when you’re like that.”

Hye-ri burst out laughing at her younger brother, who was slowly nibbling at the cake with a sleepy face.

Sometimes she saw traces of his childhood in his dazed expression.

“You’re more pathetic.”

Seon Woo-min answered without looking at Hye-ri.

Not making eye contact meant Woo-min was angry.

No matter how much younger he was, Hye-ri felt cowed when he was like this.

“Eat fast and think about working, okay?”

“I came thirty minutes earlier than usual.

I was shivering from the cold, and now I’m sleepy because I’m in a warm place.”

“So you’re going to just sit there like that?”

“Just for a little while.”

Seon Woo-min, who handled everything perfectly at Baekseok Coffee without ever needing to be told, tended to talk back in front of his sister.

Knowing this was her brother’s way of acting spoiled, Hye-ri didn’t say anything.

Hye-ri always felt sorry for Woo-min.

Sorry and guilty.

She had done next to nothing for him as an older sister, yet her younger brother followed her so well.

Seon Woo-min’s habit of following his sister like a newborn duckling had worsened after their mother left.

Entering adolescence, Hye-ri found her younger brother burdensome and disliked him.

Unable to leave a young child alone late at night, she had reluctantly taken him to a friend’s house, but annoyed by him tagging along saying “Sis, sis,” she had eventually kicked him out and played with the door closed.

When, after a long stretch of silence, she grew scared and opened the door, Woo-min—unlike other rowdy kids his age—would be sitting quietly, reading a book without having caused any trouble.

Not in the living room or at the dining table, but next to the door of the room she was in.

On the way home holding his small hand, she always stopped by a stationery store to buy the jewel candies of the Invincible Power Kitty Corps that Woo-min loved.

It was nothing special, but his cheeks would beam as he said, “I like you as much as Mung Bean, sis.”

Though she no longer heard such expressions of affection as in those days, Hye-ri’s tenderness toward her younger brother remained unchanged.

“Dad’s curious about how you’re doing.”

As he aged, their father had changed a lot.

He had sufficiently reflected on his past wrongdoings and had even formally apologized to Woo-min.

But Woo-min had never once responded to his father’s efforts to somehow open his child’s closed heart.

Hye-ri wanted to reconcile father and son.

She hoped that since Woo-min’s deficiencies originated from their father, they could be filled through him.

“Tell him to just stay curious.”

“You little brat…”

Seon Woo-min was certain his sister would never understand.

Because she had only been hated unilaterally, while Hye-ri had received both hate and love, she couldn’t detach herself from their father.

She couldn’t see him properly.

What the siblings had experienced was abuse.

The frequent days of going hungry or not being able to wash could be glossed over as due to poverty, but having their part-time wages stolen or being beaten countless times had nothing to do with being poor.

Was that all?

How much had the curses, no different from hexes, clawed at their hearts?

Even trying to erase and shake them off, those sharp words were imprinted in his mind, frequently testing and controlling Woo-min.

“Don’t be so harsh, come visit once.

I’ll cook you something delicious.”

Hye-ri clicked her tongue and said, organizing the empty side dish containers.

Hye-ri, who had married early, now lived with her husband and father in the house they had moved to.

“No thanks.”

Seon Woo-min stopped eating the roll cake and put down the disposable fork.

The reason he had become independent right after being discharged from the military was because of his father.

After living apart for over two years, even seeing his face for a single day was torment.

He had suggested to Hye-ri that they find a room and move out together, but she had refused flatly.

She couldn’t abandon their father.

She said he was more pitiful than herself.

Woo-min also despised the man who was his brother-in-law, not much different from his father.

If the hot-tempered and volatile Hye-ri had bruises around her eyes like that, then his brother-in-law should be lying broken, unable to move a finger, but Woo-min didn’t feel the slightest bit sorry for him.

It was only in the afternoon that Seon Woo-min left ‘Seon-woo’s Side Dishes.’

On his way to the café with a heavy heart, he opened the chat window where the conversation had stopped.

Crispy!!!MungBeanPancake, who had promised to send photos, had completely forgotten, it seemed, and there was no word.

Since they weren’t close, Woo-min didn’t feel right prodding, so he waited silently for a few days.

If he forgot, there was nothing to be done.

Even if he changed his mind and didn’t want to send the photos, it was the same.

The fact that a Mung Bean fan existed at all was encouraging, so that was enough.

Without regret, Woo-min closed the chat window and turned off the notification settings so it wouldn’t appear on his phone screen.

***

“One hot latte, please.

But you know, seeing you up close, you’re even more handsome.”

A man with pomaded hair, wearing an obviously expensive designer jacket, leaned toward Seon Woo-min at the counter.

At the ridiculousness of the greasy pick-up line, the corners of Woo-min’s mouth curled up.

He had felt uneasy when the man kept dragging out the order with pointless questions.

If he’d known this would happen, he should have just stayed home all day.

At both the side dish shop and the café, it was one thing after another prodding at him while he was already in a low mood.

“I’m just telling you you’re my type.”

“Thank you.

Which beans would you like?”

Seon Woo-min responded with a kindness that was also firm, leaving no room for ambiguity.

He was also concerned about how this situation—a man openly hitting on him without any hesitation—might appear to others.

People probably wouldn’t immediately label him as gay just because a man made a pass at him, but he felt like he was the cause of it, and that bothered him.

Bae Jun-ho, who was setting madeleines on ceramic plates, was also trying hard to hide his shock.

Even Woo-min’s infamous stalker from before hadn’t made such an open pass at him.

Long ago, when they had been drinking beer together and Bae Jun-ho had reluctantly taken the refusing Woo-min to a fortune teller’s shop they frequented, after hearing Woo-min’s fortune, he was finally able to understand the strange things that happened to Seon Woo-min.

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