Chapter 24: Banana Milk and the Adjacent Seat

Song Yun Jae was absent for the entire week. His absence was officially recognized as sick leave. After crouching in the pouring rain with a broken umbrella and getting soaked to the bone, he had inevitably caught a cold, and his completely raspy voice seemed to have convinced the teachers.

The classroom without him was no different than usual. The empty seat by the window was an eyesore, and the phantom image of his dangling white feet flickered in my mind, but even that didn’t last long.

Song Yun Jae showed up at the gym every night. I cursed at him, asking what a sick guy was doing out, but he stubbornly insisted he was fine since he didn’t have a fever.

At 11 PM, when everyone else had gone home, he would cross the playground and come to the gym. Despite saying he had no fever, he seemed to have the chills, as he wore his cardigan for the first two days. Even when I threw a fit because I didn’t like it, he paid me no mind. When I explained the homework or the lessons he’d missed, he scribbled them down. I’d hand him the necessary textbooks, and he’d pack them neatly into his bag. It all started with a text from Song Yun Jae:

[If you don’t want to go home, play with me.]

That was the text he sent me during lunch the day after that night he’d waited for me, beaten and drenched. He’d become quite bold. He had been strange and daring from the moment he asked me to apply the ointment, but he was becoming more of a spectacle by the day. Though the real spectacle was me, reacting to every little thing and being dragged along.

Even knowing it was ridiculous, my fingers moved first whenever his clear face crossed my mind.

[What time are you coming?]

While irritably blaming my fingers for sending the message without a second’s hesitation, his reply would arrive.

[Around when self-study ends? Tell me the homework too.]

[Break is almost here, what homework?]

[They’re still moving through the material, right?]

[You want me to record the lectures for you?]

[Show me your notes.]

My handwriting is sh*t, though.

Thinking that, I jumped again. This wasn’t even about being played. I was the dumbass with the broken train of thought. Sure, let’s say Song Yun Jae was the bold one—I was the strange one. Everything would be fine if I just got it together, but it wasn’t easy. The problem was my senses and reactions, which had been malfunctioning for some time now. What was even funnier was his lingering presence whether he was visible or not, and my heart, which was somehow always one step ahead even when I tried to snap out of it. Since when had I been such an altruistic, philanthropic human being? So, clearly, I was the strange one.

I applied the ointment all week. Song Yun Jae’s bruises gradually darkened and then began to fade. I could feel the lumps just beneath the skin—where the flesh felt cramped—slowly loosening as I stroked it. I’d think it was a relief, then wonder if this “relief” was just the same texture as pity, and then I’d repeatedly feel like a dog for my eyes constantly drifting to the contours of his thin back, his protruding shoulder blades, and his collarbones. That week was a penance for me.

“But, don’t you get in trouble for going home this late?”

The voice of the boy looking through the notes I’d handed him broke my reverie.

After the woman’s father visited, she no longer waited for me. Part of it was likely because I was getting home at 1 AM or later, but considering she was the type of person who could wait on purpose just to vent her anger until she was satisfied, it seemed she had chosen a different tactic. I figured she chose another way after realizing that no matter how much she tightened the noose, I wouldn’t bow down the way she wanted. The fact that my father said nothing was proof. Entering a house where everyone was asleep and leaving while everyone was still sleeping was better than I’d expected. It was a stroke of luck not to have to see faces I didn’t want to see.

It was a hell of a taste—one you can’t give up once you’ve had it.

“What about you? Is it okay for you to keep coming out on night strolls?”

“My mom knows.”

“That you’re acting pathetic here?”

“That I’m playing with you.”

It was a retort meant to block my petty worry, but I was the one caught off guard. After I’d finished applying the ointment, Song Yun Jae was lying facedown on the mats, looking at my notes and eating snacks that he claimed tasted like banana milk. Isn’t that something a total toddler would eat? I watched him playfully kicking his feet, as if his bruised spots didn’t even hurt, and belatedly raised a mental question mark.

“…Did you tell your mother about me?”

“Yeah. Mom knows too—that you’re a son of a b*tch.”

The back of my neck felt heavy for a second. What did he say and how? Or rather, do eighteen-year-old boys talk to their moms about their friends? I’d need a mom to know, f*ck. I was flustered by the sudden confession. While I was just blinking and gaping like an idiot, Song Yun Jae’s next words made my embarrassment even worse.

“She said you were kind of cute.”

“Who?”

“My mom.”

I had no words. Was there anything I could say to that? I couldn’t even bring myself to curse.

Song Yun Jae was a guy who knew how to toy with people. Catching a glimpse of my frozen face with my brows knitted tight, he curled his lips into the most mischievous expression I’d ever seen on him.

“She said she’s curious about just how much of a son of a b*tch you are and told me to bring you over later. She said she’ll buy us tonkatsu.”

“Eat it yourself.”

Suddenly, the sound of his clear, ringing laughter echoed through the storage room. At the same time, my cluttered mind was wiped clean. With bruises that hadn’t yet fully faded, Song Yun Jae laughed. It was the first time since I’d met him that I saw a laugh befitting an eighteen-year-old high schooler.

“I’m lying, you dummy.”

Ah, the tonkatsu part is real, though. Even as he added that, his eyes were beautifully crinkled.

Sensing that I wouldn’t be able to forget his expression today for a long time, I awkwardly turned my head away.

“Ah, it’s seriously f*cking hot.”

During break, the lifeless complaints of the students erupted. It was mid-July, two days before the start of summer break. Due to the rainy season being later than usual, a scorching heat was continuing, the kind that looked like it was shimmering before your eyes.

“Did you rent the place? Move the vent up.”

“It is up.”

“B*llshit, the back of your head is flapping like crazy in the wind.”

“Hey, they said this period is self-study. The staff room is busy.”

The air from the air conditioner blowing from the back of the classroom didn’t really reach the kids sitting in the front. To make the front seats feel cool, you had to turn up the AC strength, but then the kids in the back would complain that they were freezing to death. The best solution was to run the AC moderately and turn on the fans mounted all around. However, the kids who had just come from outside couldn’t stand the slow process of the classroom cooling down like that.

Students whose cotton t-shirts under their uniforms were transparently soaked in spots swarmed in front of the AC. They cursed, asking when the “new system AC” they were promised was coming since they were still using one from the Korean War, yet they all jostled to move the vent blades to get the air on themselves.

This was because the teacher from the previous period had called everyone to the gym to throw a ball around for a change, instead of the self-study they were sick of before break. He could have just played a foreign movie without subtitles, but he made every single person play dodgeball and supervised them, only to end up running around the gym more excitedly than anyone else later.

The kids gathered in front of the AC were the main culprits who had run around with him. The sour smell of sweat spread through the classroom on the AC breeze. My brow furrowed instinctively. I could feel beads of sweat forming on my own forehead.

As if out of habit, my gaze turned to the side. Wiping my forehead with the back of my hand, I checked on Song Yun Jae. For once, he seemed to be reading a book he’d borrowed from the library. His clear face, which looked entirely free of discomfort, fluttered slightly as he followed the pages.

He’s in a world of his own.

In this classroom, Song Yun Jae was the only one maintaining his “freshness.” It had been about a week since he returned to school, but he was exempted from all outdoor activities on the pretext that he hadn’t fully recovered. Since he’d been playing in a dusty gym storage room every night all week—getting soaked in the rain and not getting proper rest with a body in that condition—maybe the “not fully recovered” part wasn’t an excuse. Even to the naked eye, his face had thinned significantly. While everyone else was reeking of sweat and guarding the AC like a pack of zombies, Song Yun Jae sitting there in an ivory cardigan, unable to stand the AC draft, also seemed to influence how others perceived his condition.

Today, too, Song Yun Jae had his three-striped slides hanging off his toes, wiggling them. If one slide fell off with a thud, he’d wiggle his toes again until the other one fell off. Watching him out of habit, I moved my desk right next to his without hesitation as the smell of sweat drifted over on the AC breeze.

“Ah, you startled me.”

Since a week ago—that is, since the night self-study in the gym ended—I had been sitting in the seat next to Song Yun Jae. Because of the classroom layout where we sit in single rows without partners, there was still an aisle for people to pass through between his seat and mine. The funny thing was, when I’d impulsively placed my backpack on the desk next to his usual spot and leaned down, Song Yun Jae had subtly welcomed me, saying it was “great.” Since that day, that spot had implicitly become my seat. Even so, I took my place every morning telling myself it was a relief there was an aisle between the two desks, chanting a mantra that this didn’t make us “partners.”

This time, I moved my desk flush against his so the aisle disappeared and pulled my chair in tight.

“…What are you doing?”

Holding down the page he was reading with his left hand, Song Yun Jae looked at me. His round eyes felt even larger compared to half a month ago. He’s already f*cking thin, what do I have to feed him to make him gain weight?

“Stretch out your arm.”