Chapter 35: Visitor

Geun Young left work early today.

Her colleagues asked if her son had come home, seeing her, who never refused overtime, choose to leave right on time.

They also looked at Geun Young, who was unusually quiet today, with curiosity.

Geun Young, whose dry shoulders flinched at questions showing interest in her son, quickly changed out of her uniform and ran out like a young moth chasing Friday night fun.

She embraced her empty bag as she sat in the very back seat of the bus, stroking her wildly pounding heart.

Just then.

‘Doo-roo-roong Doo-roo-roong Doo-roo-roong.’

“Oh, you scared me…!”

The phone ringing in her bag startled her so much she almost dropped her child.

Did I have a child?

• Unnie. Bodam’s here, isn’t he? I have some leftover meat from yesterday, should I boil it and bring it over?

As soon as she answered the phone, her youngest sister, Young-ah, asked.

Geun Young adjusted her posture, cleared her throat to answer, but finally couldn’t hold back and pressed the bus stop button.

“I’ll call you back later.”

Click.

She stuffed the disconnected phone into her bag and hurriedly got off the bus.

Even though it wasn’t hot inside the bus, beads of sweat formed on Geun Young’s pale forehead.

Wiping the sweat with a handkerchief, she entered a pharmacy near the entrance of the market.

It was a medicine she always kept at home, but her thumping heartbeat was too loud to bear.

“One Cheongsimhwan, please.”

Gulp.

Geun Young, who wiped away the rest of her sweat while looking at her swollen face reflected in the pharmacy mirror, waited for the medicine to take effect.

Her face clearly showed signs of having cried heavily.

She could barely open her eyes thanks to applying ice packs after waking up in the early hours of the morning, unable to sleep.

Hoo—.

Geun Young took a deep breath and left the pharmacy with a much calmer expression.

She tightly curled her lips inward, which were inherited by Bodam.

With hands that were wrinkled and rough but still beautiful, she pressed hard on her already closed lips.

Easing the always heavy weight of her steps, she walked into the bustling market entrance.

“Bodam’s mom! Off work? Here for groceries?”

“Yes. My son’s here, so I’m going to buy some dinner ingredients.”

“Oh my! Bodam’s here? Buy him good stuff to eat! From my place!”

Geun Young also smiled brightly, following the fishmonger who laughed heartily while tapping a basket filled with fresh mackerel.

Unlike her young son, she was very skilled at the poker face learned from years of experience.

Stroking her chest, calmed by the medicine, Geun Young steeled her resolve and locked her lips.

More than fire, the most cautious thing one must be about, awake or asleep, was people’s mouths.

“Not mackerel. Please give me some hairtail.”

“Plenty, please,” Geun Young said, smiling shyly, her cheeks tinged pink.

***

Cough.

Bodam, who had a full-blown cold, couldn’t get out of his bed, which had a warm electric blanket.

Bomi, who heated up the egg porridge his mother made before leaving for work and brought it to him, only pouted.

“Are you really not going to tell me?”

Bomi asked, after handing Bodam medicine, who had cleanly emptied the bowl of egg porridge.

Bodam, who had never imagined Bomi nursing him when they were little, sniffled and swallowed the medicine.

“Oh, why were you crying with Mom?!”

Last night, Bomi, who usually slept like the dead even if there was the smell of chicken right under her nose, woke up to the sound of her mother and brother crying.

Startled, Bomi kicked off her blanket and rushed out, unable to say a word, frozen.

Her brother and mother were hugging each other in Bodam’s room, sobbing loudly.

Bomi’s heart sank, and she had a chilling premonition.

“Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”

She wondered if her brother had gotten some kind of illness.

He was already thin and weak, and seeing him return half his size after not seeing him, she was secretly worried inside, even if she didn’t show it.

They were so distant they didn’t even exchange updates, so there was nothing she could predict.

Mom and Oppa hugged Bomi too and cried for a long time, then finally calmed down and said it was nothing.

They said they cried because they were so happy to see each other.

Who do they think is a fool?

“Were you… fired?”

Bodam looked up at Bomi, who was probing, and patted his full belly before lying back down on the bed.

His pale face, from crying himself to exhaustion and then being drugged and sleeping all day, had turned into a plump dumpling with too much filling.

Yesterday, both Mom and he were too overwhelmed with emotion to properly explain things to Bomi.

“I quit my job.”

Bomi’s jaw dropped at the unexpected statement, and she struggled to choose her words.

She blinked her large eyes rapidly, forming an ‘eh’ shape with her lips as she considered her reaction.

The news about her brother, which she heard from her mother, was always positive.

She had thought it was fortunate that he earned well and seemed to enjoy his Guide work.

Because he said so himself.

“Ah….”

Bomi, recalling his exhausted, pale face, his lying down as soon as he got home, and the scene of him sobbing with their mother, calmly nodded.

“Rest.”

‘He got fired. One hundred percent fired.’

“Call me if you need anything.”

Bomi, who threw out such kind words in her uniquely chic voice, immediately left the room.

She didn’t press further for the sake of her brother’s pride, who seemed to have returned home after being fired from his company.

Bodam, bewildered by Bomi’s unfamiliar affectionate attitude, even forgot to ask her to turn off the light.

She wasn’t an inherently talkative sister anyway.

Her fists usually came out before words, so she was quite taciturn.

“You worked hard.”

Just before closing the door, Bomi casually uttered and disappeared.

Bodam, opening his swollen eyes as wide as possible, muttered ‘Aish’ and looked for a tissue.

Tears were about to burst again.

If he was going to be touched, it should have been a pleasant feeling, but his wide-open tear ducts quickly made his eyes moist.

He felt that his sister, who used to be just big, had truly grown into a full adult now.

To hear such words from Bomi.

Bodam, immersed in old memories that billowed like cumulus clouds, moistened a tissue slightly and sat up.

There was a lot to do.

He had to resolve things that he couldn’t tell Bomi, who felt like he was still just a year younger.

He also firmly decided to only tell Jo Yeon and his mother about the lottery win.

“Alright, shall we do this?”

Bodam took out his fully charged phone and stretched his neck, cracking it.

It was time to pay off the debts that had been pressing down on his body like rocks every day.

He had reduced the debt more than his target in a short period, but some still remained.

He first made an appointment with his tax accountant, with whom he had become close enough to exchange New Year’s greetings comfortably.

He carefully reviewed and checked each detail he had written down in his phone’s memo app.

It didn’t take long, thanks to burning his youth without rest.

He thought to himself, ‘I really have lived diligently.’

“This much is fine.”

The day came when those heavy burdens felt light.

All the amounts he was writing down felt like a dream.

“Ugh—.”

He thought it was quick, but two hours had already passed.

Concentrating on the small screen with a turtle neck made his eyes ache and his body throb.

When he lived at the Center and was home alone, he would quietly groan and then grudgingly go to work, but now there was no need for that.

“Bomi-yaaa—.”

Thump-thump-thump.

Bodam, who instinctively pressed his body against the wall upon hearing his sister’s unchanging footsteps, felt a bit scared.

“What?”

He didn’t expect her to actually come just from calling her name once, so Bodam only moved his lips.

He just called her because they were together at home.

“Are you sick?”

“…Yeah.”

“Want water?”

“No….”

“Juice?”

‘Was my sister ever that pretty?’

Bodam, who suddenly wanted something sour, nodded as if to say, ‘Yes!’

Bomi’s appearance, with large glasses and stray hairs sticking out like antennae, looked cute for the first time in his life.

“Is this all your luggage?”

Bomi, who handed him an orange juice poured into a large beer glass, looked at the travel bag sitting alone on the floor with curiosity.

Bodam’s luggage, after living away for six years, was just one backpack.

The only valuable item inside was his laptop.

“I usually leave almost everything behind. Because of the Esper wavelengths that stick to them.”

“That’s a f*cking waste.”

“It’s fine, everything is passed down and reused within the Center anyway.”

Most of his clothes were uniforms, and even small dishes and furniture were all provided by the Center.

When he first entered the Center, he used a 6-person room, and as his tenure increased, his accommodation was upgraded to 3-person, then 2-person rooms, and after taking on Attack Team 3, it went up to a 1-person room.

“If Esper wavelengths stick, it takes a long time to remove the watch, right?”

Bodam looked up at Bomi, who was showing interest in his work, and extended the corners of his mouth in a good mood.

They say that even if siblings fight fiercely when they’re young, they all become close when they get older.

With a contented heart, he cleared his sore throat and thought he should explain in detail.

He tried to explain it as simply as possible for a civilian to understand.

“Yes, that’s right.”

He replied to Bomi, who had already left the room, as he saw Bodam open his mouth, his eyes shining with eagerness.

His sister, sensing that he would talk at length, just left.

To explain the unfinished part, even to himself: Espers had to wear their power-user watches for life, but Guides could remove theirs immediately if their indirect wavelength reading remained at 0.

It was safer for their identity as a Guide not to be revealed in civilian areas as much as possible.

“Want more juice?”

“I haven’t finished this yet.”

“If you leave any, you’re dead.”

Bodam gulped down the juice, intimidated by his sister’s presence, which was comparable to an Esper’s.

‘That kid. I guess she is worried about her Oppa’s health after all.’

He thought about what gift to give his precious honey pig at home.

His house contract was slowly coming to an end, so he needed to start looking for a new place.

Ding-dong.

Just as he was trying to organize his to-do list and rack his brain, a visitor arrived.

Bomi’s voice, as booming as any adult man, asked, “Who is it?”