Chapter 27: The Weight of Debt

The man next door must have tattled, because we soon received a call from the building owner. Faced with the threat of eviction, we threw in the towel.

My mother and I managed to clean up the mess with our savings, the severance pay the restaurant threw at her upon her dismissal, and money we borrowed from my aunt. I made a silent vow: I would never, ever live like that. All I wanted was a quiet, uneventful life. A normal one.

But a similar incident soon followed.

What happened was much the same, only the scale was far greater. It was a crisis so severe it felt as though our household finances wouldn’t just be shaken, but completely uprooted.

Yes, this was a crisis.

Until then, my mother and I had managed to get by. We rarely had the things we wanted, and I was in a position where I had to be grateful for a body that had stopped growing, but at least we could still hope for the future.

That was why, until that man came to our door, I truly believed that if we just held on, it would all pass.

‘What’s the big deal? You’re all grown up. You can talk with the man until your mom gets home.’

Despite being well-dressed, the scar on his upper lip gave him a terribly fierce look. His tone was gentle, but his gravelly voice was coarse. When I told him my mother wasn’t home, he didn’t click his tongue or spit on the ground, nor did he hand me a phone and demand I call her. He simply looked me up and down.

‘If you don’t have the skill, you shouldn’t be making a mess of things.’

He was more frightening than the men who had come before. I clasped my hands together without realizing it, squeezing my fingers until they ached to remind myself that my feet were still planted in reality. I fought to keep my mind from drifting away.

My mother returned shortly after, but the astronomical sum he quoted made her break out in a cold sweat. The name on the contract was, of course, Lee Sunwoo. The problem was that the name Park Hwayoung was written under the guarantor section.

My mother stared at the unfamiliar document, unable to believe her own seal was stamped upon it.

His next words made her face turn even paler, until she looked like a corpse.

‘You know, people are more useful than you think. A lot more.’

‘…’

‘Plenty of folks out there who’ll just pick them up and use them. You know what I mean, right?’

He saw right through her. He wasn’t like the others who had been fooled by her tough act.

Her thoughts were likely the same as mine. We shared the same space, the same terrible imaginings, painting an identical picture as if it were transmitted between us. Perhaps it was because we were both prey. The only one at ease in that room was the man. He alone was the predator.

As long as my mother’s weak spot was Lee Sunwoo, the outcome was set in stone.

‘What do you think I’d do if you just ran off, telling me to go ahead and cut your stomach open since you can’t pay?’

The man clicked his tongue, as if in pity.

‘I’d chase him down and cut his stomach open, of course.’

He spoke as if pitying Lee Sunwoo, whose stomach would soon be torn to shreds, rather than us.

Unless a bundle of cash fell from the sky, paying back the amount the man demanded all at once was impossible. The principal was bad enough, but the interest was absurd.

Then, as if granting us a special favor, the man told her to sign a promissory note. He produced a paper, almost as if he’d been waiting, which stated she would pay a minimum amount each month. With a trembling, wrinkled hand, my mother signed.

His work done, the man whistled cheerfully, looking relieved.

‘Getting money out of someone else’s pocket is this hard. So, study hard, you hear?’

After tossing me that jeering piece of advice and ruffling my hair, the man left. But by then, rumors had already spread like wildfire through the neighborhood. My mother couldn’t find another job, and the few relationships she had were ruined after she went around borrowing money to pay the first month’s interest.

My belief that things couldn’t get much harder than they already were was a naive delusion.

The rumors spread at school, too. I had somehow become the kid who was dragged away and beaten up by gangsters. Whispers of how they had hung me up and thrashed me reached my ears unfiltered. The other kids, who had already kept their distance, now treated me like a spectacle. Trying to ignore them, I gripped my mechanical pencil so tightly the lead kept snapping.

The interest we had to pay grew each month, yet my mother still couldn’t find work. What restaurant would hire her when gangsters could show up and smash all their dishes?

In the end, we used our security deposit to cover the debt. With no money to find a new place, we crashed at my aunt’s house, but that only lasted a fortnight. Her family wasn’t well-off either, and we had to endure my uncle’s pointed throat-clearing as we tried to force ourselves to sleep. Every day felt like we would choke on the unwelcoming charity.

Moving was our only option. Coming all this way, to a place where we only knew someone through several degrees of separation, was truly a last resort.

Here, my mother could find a job, and I could attend school without trouble. The physical distance from the loan shark would also lessen the fear of his sudden visits. For those reasons, we ran away without a second thought.

But reality was harsh.

My mother couldn’t find work here either, and I was targeted by Im Namwoo from my very first day of school. We were far from the loan shark, but the due date for the interest payments still came around like clockwork.

At times like those, I wanted to get angry at my mother. Why did I have to suffer because of Lee Sunwoo? Why did she accept all of this as if it were a matter of course? But I wasn’t the only one struggling in a strange new place. She was, too. That thought alone was enough to barely suppress the words I wanted to say.

I believed the words I held back would simply disappear somewhere. Like moisture in the air, they might linger faintly, but they would be too weak to matter, something I could ignore.

But they didn’t disappear, nor did they fade. They merely curled up, waiting for the day they would erupt.

The day my emotions blew like a volcano was the day Im Namwoo decided to mess with me in a way he never had before.

After regular classes, we would do a quick clean-up before the afternoon self-study session. My designated area was the fourth-floor bathroom, but the kid assigned with me often vanished, leaving me to do it all myself.

Im Namwoo, with Kim Youngseok and Park Hyungtae in tow, showed up on a day I happened to be cleaning alone.

‘You cleaning by yourself? No one else here?’

‘…’

‘That bastard ditched, didn’t he? Want me to go drag him back for you?’

With a mountain of other things eating away at my sanity, I just wanted some peace at school, but Im Namwoo made that impossible. Usually, I just ignored him when he tried to pick a fight. Reacting only made it more fun for him. Even if he raised a fist and asked if I was ignoring him, I could just quietly take a punch or two and it would be over.

‘Are you deaf? Hey. When someone’s talking, you should listen.’

But that day was a little different. Im Namwoo snatched the mop from my hands and threw it against the wall. Startled, I jerked my head up. The hulking boy was standing close, glaring down at me fiercely. I stared back at him with wide eyes, but my surprise was fleeting.

‘…’

Seemingly as startled as I was, Im Namwoo’s expression shifted strangely before he grabbed both of my arms.

‘Let go…!’

‘Finally, a reaction. Playing hard to get when you’re so damn cheap.’

Even then, I thought he would just hit me a few times and be done with it. I wasn’t even fighting back, so I didn’t see the point in holding my arms.

But that wasn’t all. Im Namwoo gestured at me with his chin, and the two guys behind him rushed forward to hold me in place.

And then,

‘Just stay still. Let’s make this easy, huh?’

‘Are you… are you crazy?’

‘It’ll just be once, so stop playing so hard to get.’

‘…!’

At that moment, Im Namwoo’s hand slipped inside the collar of my shirt. His sweaty palm felt disgusting.

‘I made a bet with these guys. On whether you’d puke if I touched you. I bet that you would, but this bastard Kim Youngseok bet you wouldn’t. Let’s see.’

‘What kind of… crazy… I said let go!’

Was it because I was so stunned? My mind went blank, and my body froze. Or maybe it just felt that way because my arms were pinned. I thrashed wildly, wanting him to just hit me instead, and my knee accidentally slammed into his lower leg.

‘Ack! f*ck, hey!’

As Im Namwoo sank to his knees, the guys holding me rushed to help him up. I seized the opportunity and scrambled down the stairs. I didn’t feel safe even when I reached the classroom. I frantically packed my bag. When I told my homeroom teacher I was skipping the afternoon session, he just told me to go ahead without asking any questions. Even seeing me drenched in a cold sweat, my shirt a wrinkled mess, he pretended not to notice.

My mother’s reaction was no different from my teacher’s.

‘I told you to close the door gently.’

That was all she said, even as I stood there, having rushed home in such a panic that I hadn’t even had time to fix my clothes.

It was a day the fact that no one cared about me pierced my skin with a particular kind of pain.

That was why I couldn’t stop myself from asking.

‘Where is Lee Sunwoo, and what is he doing?’

‘What?’

‘What is he doing that makes us have to pay off his debts?’

At my words, my mother sat up from where she’d been lying down.

‘You know I can’t get in touch with Sunwoo either. I don’t know.’

‘Then you should have just disowned him! None of this would have happened!’

A belated fury made me shout. It was the resentment I had suppressed, the anger I had believed was gone.

It occurred to me that if my mother had cut ties with him sooner, none of this would have happened. But to my mother, Lee Sunwoo was the son she loved more than me, more than even herself. She strode toward me. A sharp smack echoed as my head snapped to the side.

‘Are you my only son? Sunwoo is my son, too!’

Bringing up Lee Sunwoo was like lighting the fuse to a powder keg. I knew that, but on that day, I just couldn’t hold it in any longer.