Chapter 58: The Root of It All

“W-Wait, surely not… Young Master Heesung…!”

It was the servant who had grabbed Heesung, demanding to know why his clothes were so covered in dirt. Heesung stared at her with clear eyes. Without noticing his gaze, she clutched Wonhwa and stammered.

Heesung was still puzzled. So what if she told on him? It didn’t matter. She was being annoying, so he’d made her trip. Just a little blood. Why was it a big deal?

So when Wonhwa led Heesung to his room and softly asked, “Did you do that?” he answered proudly, “Yes.” When she asked, “Why did you do that?” he said, “Because she was annoying and noisy.”

As Heesung had wished, the woman could no longer trail behind him. She couldn’t say anything irritating either.

She had quit her job. If you’re hurt, you can’t come to work.

Satisfying.

But he hadn’t expected this from Wonhwa.

“Hah.”

Young Heesung let out a sigh that didn’t match his fair-cheeked face. Somehow, it felt like twice as much trouble was coming.

Inside, the conversation continued.

“He’s still young. He doesn’t know how to treat people yet.”

“I think so too. What does a kid know?”

Wonhwa spoke in a sad voice.

“I only thought he was calm for a child his age. I thought he wasn’t making friends at school because he hadn’t adjusted yet… but if that’s not it…”

“A kid doesn’t know any better. It’ll be fine.”

Gyeongshin repeated, “It’s fine, it’ll be fine…” several more times. It was as if he was trying to reassure himself, not Wonhwa.

It wasn’t a lie, after all. Wonhwa attached a person to Heesung, not a furry animal.

A few days later, Wonhwa introduced a friend to Heesung when he came home from school. The child was the same age as Heesung and lived in the next neighborhood. He was the son of a small business owner that subcontracted for Gyeongshin’s company. Like the previous servant, he trailed after Heesung.

“Do you want to try this? Do you know this? Can you do this?”

The chattering was driving him crazy. Heesung lured him to the shed, locked him inside, and shut the door. The boy was trapped in there for over six hours. He was eventually found, exhausted from crying. Heesung was amazed he hadn’t died. Humans were tougher than he’d thought.

Wonhwa didn’t give up and brought a second child. He also followed Heesung around just the same.

Heesung deliberately climbed the stairs. When the boy followed, he pushed him without hesitation.

The third child Wonhwa brought was a relative of Heesung’s. She was clearly thinking that since Heesung had seen him a few times before, he wouldn’t act wildly.

The boy was a few years older than Heesung. Maybe because he thought of himself as the older one, he didn’t follow Heesung around. But every time they met, he nagged. “You should do it this way. You shouldn’t do that.”

He was terribly loud. So Heesung shoved a piece of glass into the corner of his mouth.

Wonhwa stopped bringing kids Heesung’s age for a while. Instead, she put Heesung in the car and took him far away. It was a villa overlooking the sea. Once settled there, Wonhwa started bringing adults. It happened to be vacation season.

Heesung overheard Wonhwa whispering to them. “You need to wear him out by teaching him all sorts of things.”

He could guess her intentions.

The problem was, they were all adult men. Every one of them was bigger than Heesung. It was hard to push them or stab them. Even if he attacked, he’d be counterattacked in no time. Heesung was stuck.

They sat Heesung down and kept teaching him things. Writing, music, art.

Heesung wanted to hit the instructor with his flute and stab the teacher’s eye with the brush in his hand. But it was clear that whatever he did here would only make life more troublesome.

So he held back.

The adults taught Heesung other things too. The meaning of showing him prison documentaries was obvious.

They also forced him to read books and write reports. He could manage novels, but fairy tales made Heesung angry. They only contained nonsense stories.

‘This is a prison.’

To Heesung, this place wasn’t a villa. It was a prison. In prison, you only meet people who visit you with the clear purpose of reforming you.

Learning active things was better. Heesung liked swimming.

When he glided alone through the water, he felt like he was the only one left in the world. A world where no one bothered him.

So he often used the pool in the annex. When he swam there, Heesung was free.

The same went for bicycles. Heesung rode his bike on the nearby mountain roads. The harder he pedaled, the stronger the wind. It was thrilling when his whole body cut through the air.

He wanted to ride something with two wheels even more, so he looked around and found that the world had something called a motorcycle. Heesung asked Wonhwa and Gyeongshin to buy him one, but they exchanged glances and deflected. “We’ll get it for you when you’re an adult.”

Heesung knew that was a lie. Fine, he didn’t want it anyway. That was his thinking, and he backed off.

When it seemed Heesung liked sports, one of the teachers took him to a children’s soccer team. Heesung was good at soccer too. He seemed to have considerable athletic talent. But he was poison to teamwork. He ignored everyone’s signals and never passed to anyone. The results were good, but his relationships with his teammates were the worst. Heesung quit soccer with a look of not caring.

Actually, Heesung just liked being alone. He disliked others being a nuisance. But the world said you couldn’t live like that.

He wondered why he had to converse with people he had no interest in, but no one explained the reason. They only said he shouldn’t.

A few weeks later, school started, and Heesung returned to his original home.

A few months after that, when vacation came around, Heesung was sent back to the prison. He was confined there.

If he hadn’t grabbed the back of an annoying kid’s head in class and slammed it into the wall, he might not have been locked up again. But whether at home or in prison, it was the same. He had to meet adults and keep learning useless things.

In later years, whenever Heesung got into trouble, he was stuck in the villa. School and everything else didn’t matter.

Wonhwa was adamant. So he was stuck there, meeting adults.

Years passed like that, and Heesung became a middle schooler.

He was just about at his limit.

“Heesung. Hello?”

Wonhwa and Gyeongshin brought a new adult. It was one of the days he was shut away in the prison during what they called vacation.

“Just call me Teacher.”

Another annoying thing was about to happen. Irritation flared. Why wouldn’t the people around him just leave him alone? The more he tried to escape, the more annoying things piled up.

Heesung had long thought all of this was absurd. What reason was there for him to change? What had he done wrong?

If they hadn’t bothered him from the start, none of this would be necessary.

Then Heesung quickly realized something.

After everything, Wonhwa, who always brought men, brought a woman for the first time. What’s more, Wonhwa stood beside her, hands clasped respectfully. It was a deference Heesung had never seen before.

That wasn’t all. Today, Gyeongshin was there too. When introducing the pests who clung to Heesung, only Wonhwa had ever shown up. Today was different.

The woman seemed like the most important adult Heesung had ever met.

Heesung looked her over without letting on. If he used her well, he might escape all this trouble.

And she was a woman, conveniently. Heesung had been growing taller.

The woman was different from the people he’d met before. She still bothered him, but it was on a different level.

What she did wasn’t teaching. It was counseling. And she only bothered him at set times. Three times a week, two hours a day.

Other than that, she didn’t pester him.

What they did in those two hours varied.

At their first meeting, the woman asked Heesung questions, one after another.

“Why don’t you make friends at school?”

“Your grades are good. Do you find studying fun?”

“Do you like exercise? Have you read any book you enjoyed?”

Answering was easy.

“They’re noisy.”

“No.”

“I like swimming and bikes. I don’t read books.”

The questions, which had only scratched the surface, sank in faster than expected. She dragged an old incident to the surface. The root of all the trouble in Heesung’s life.

“Why did you choose that method?”

“Was it intentional to leave the awl, saw, and shovel nearby?”

“What did you think when you saw the person get hurt?”

That question naturally brought her to mind. Even though it was years ago, her face was vivid. Rage crawled up from somewhere inside Heesung.

She was the root cause of everything. If she hadn’t existed, he wouldn’t have had all this trouble.

But apart from the anger, the woman was the first person to ask Heesung about that incident outright. Everyone treated Heesung like an explosive about to blow. Even his parents did.

They couldn’t ask directly either. They just brought in friends, made him study, play instruments, draw, and exercise, so he wouldn’t have time to do anything else.

Heesung found it a bit fresh. He felt like answering sincerely.

“Because if she got hurt, she couldn’t come to work. She followed me around and annoyed me. She’d always add a comment about whatever I did, snacks, homework, whatever.”

“I couldn’t stand her.”

“The pit was shallow. It wasn’t enough to hurt her. But I was young then, so I couldn’t dig it deep.”

“So I deliberately put tools around it, so she’d hurt herself when she braced with her hands. Then she’d be quiet.”

The woman paused for a moment, then brought up other incidents.

“How did you feel then?”

“At that time?”

“Why did you do it?”

Heesung was starting to get bored. He was getting irritated too. He answered half-heartedly, but without lying.

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