Chapter 01
“Oppa, come with me!”
“Our Jisu is good in every way, but she walks too slowly.”
It wasn’t that she was slow in every way except her walking—it was because Jisu was carrying all the apples and meat they had just paid for at the mart by herself, which was why she kept falling behind.
The man, as if he couldn’t bear the heat, shaded his forehead with one hand and continuously fanned his face with the other. His pace toward the parking lot was brisk, with no consideration at all for his girlfriend Jisu. No matter how fierce the August afternoon heat was, it wasn’t enough to justify ignoring a girlfriend carrying heavy bags and fleeing to the car.
“Jisu. Hurry up and open the car door. It’s hot. Come on, turn on the AC too.”
“No, help me carry this first and then talk.”
“Huh. Hey! Even my mom doesn’t make me do that kind of thing. You were the one carrying it from the start, so you finish it. Do you really have to make me do that? Besides, it’s going to your mom anyway.”
“Oppa! Is that something you say right now…….”
Jisu, grumbling to herself as she loaded the bags into the trunk, got into the driver’s seat. Youngbaek, sitting in the passenger seat, leaned back fully into the reclined seat and urged her again.
“Hurry up with the AC. Jisu. I’m hot.”
“Yeah. I just started the engine. Just wait a little. It’ll cool down.”
“Ha……. I think it’s hotter because it’s the countryside. I don’t suit the countryside. I told you before we came, didn’t I? I really hate it. Are you sure your house has an AC?”
Gyechon-ri, Gyechon-eup, Cheongsan-gun, Gyeongbuk—that was Jisu’s hometown.
They had just stopped by Gyechon Mart, the only mid-sized mart in the town, bought fruit and meat as gifts for Jisu’s mother, and gotten into the car.
“Oppa. Even if the countryside doesn’t suit you, this is my hometown. If we’re going to get married, we have to at least greet my mom. Stop saying you hate it.”
“No…… I’m just saying, does it really have to be me coming all the way here? Think about it. We have to come as a couple, right? But if your mom comes to us, only one person has to move. Isn’t that completely reasonable?”
Jisu swallowed her anger with a sigh. Since they weren’t married yet, she didn’t want to call her ‘mother-in-law’ either. But even so, ‘your mom’ was a bit much, wasn’t it?
But she knew well that getting angry wouldn’t change anything, so she gradually calmed down and her thoughts only multiplied. Was this man searching for ‘reasonableness’ in front of courtesy because Jisu was the weaker party in this marriage? Because she was the ‘eul’ in this relationship? Because she was poor? Or because she was a daughter raised by a single mother?
“Jisu, don’t tell me you’re angry? You know I didn’t mean it in a bad way, right? Oppa’s personality just doesn’t hold grudges. And anyway, the important thing is that I came here.”
Right. Youngbaek oppa…… isn’t a bad person. He’s just oblivious and can’t filter his words, but his nature is on the kind side. She tried to calm herself by reminding herself of that merit.
“But Jisu, why isn’t the car cooling down? Hey. Hot air is coming out! Ugh, this is annoying.”
“Oppa, we’ll arrive soon, so bear with it a little. Once we drive, the temperature will drop. I’ll get going.”
When she opened the window, hot air rushed in, and the AC seemed to have some kind of problem. Jisu hurriedly started driving.
But it wasn’t simply an AC problem. The car seemed seriously ill. The car made an ominous sputtering noise and stopped on the roadside before they had even gotten a few hundred meters from the mart. Eventually, thin smoke began to rise from the hood.
“Ugh! Hey! Isn’t this catching fire? I’m scared! I want to go home.”
“Oppa, what are you saying. Go home?”
Youngbaek, who had thrown open the car door and gotten out at lightning speed, ran far away and stamped his feet.
“Hey, haven’t you seen movies? At this rate it’s going to go ‘boom’ and explode! I’m leaving. I can’t die in this godforsaken countryside trying to marry you.”
“Oppa, wait. Calm down. Explode…… right. It can be scary. But the way you’re saying it is a bit…….”
“I don’t care, I’m leaving. I knew I didn’t want to come.”
Just as Youngbaek was making a fuss and opening his phone to call a taxi.
“Do you need help?”
A man approached and spoke—someone who, by anyone’s eyes, was dressed in a ‘I am a mechanic’ uniform. He had a bundle of six large water bottles slung over his shoulder. He must have walked from the mart.
Jisu felt as if she had met a savior. She looked back and forth between her car—so faded in color that it was now unclear whether it was mint, sky blue, or beige—and the man, and said,
“Ah, hello. Please help us! Thank you in advance! The car suddenly…… when I started it, the AC wasn’t working properly, and just now after leaving the mart and making a right turn, it barely made it this far and stopped.”
“Please give me the car key. Let me take a look.”
Jisu politely handed the key to the mechanic and approached Youngbaek. Youngbaek was sweating profusely and grumbling.
“Hey. Im Jisu. Do you know you can’t even call a taxi on the app here? Does a countryside like this even exist in this day and age? Ugh, this is infuriating.”
“Oppa, speak quietly! That person said he’ll fix the car. Let’s wait a bit. Okay?”
There were certainly more inconveniences than in Seoul, but this was still a place where people lived, and they were currently receiving help from someone from this town—so Jisu was busy trying to rein him in as he spat out words that belittled the neighborhood. She desperately hoped Youngbaek’s words wouldn’t reach the person examining the car.
“I can’t be quiet! And I can’t wait. Can’t you see my skin is already burnt from sweating? My mom said sunscreen is useless if you sweat, ugh, this is so annoying. There’s not even a single spot of shade, what is this! And a technician stuck in a countryside like this is obvious. He definitely won’t be able to fix it.”
“……Oppa. Just stop it.”
“Stop what. If I’d known it would be like this, I wouldn’t have come!”
“How does that make sense? If you don’t come, how are we supposed to get married!”
The irritation she had been holding back finally burst. Jisu was human too. How much longer was she supposed to listen to this whining that was more unbearable than the heat? It was her limit.
“Oppa, did I beg for this marriage? Am I doing it alone? If we’re going to get married, we greet each other’s parents, then have the meeting of the families, and prepare and coordinate things one by one—isn’t that how it works?”
“Why are you getting angry. You don’t know because you haven’t tried it…….”
“Have I tried it? It’s my first time too! It’s common sense!”
At Jisu’s outburst, Youngbaek’s trigger was also pulled.
“Common sense? Did you just say common sense? Fine. Must be nice being a Korea University graduate. I’m just a high school graduate, so I have no common sense. I, the one without common sense, will leave.”
“Oppa! That’s not what I meant!”
“Listen carefully. Honestly, aside from your good academic background and pretty face, what do you even have? Huh?”
Just as Youngbaek was panting and about to tear Jisu down.
“Excuse me, car owner. Come over here for a moment.”
The mechanic called Jisu over, and the two’s argument was momentarily cut off.
“Yes, mechanic.”
“I can’t tell just by looking at it like this—I think I need to open it up and see inside.”
“……Sorry?”
“No, to be precise…… it’s more accurate to say there’s no hope. Anyway, what I mean is, it won’t be fixed by just replacing a minor part or two.”
Ah, then what should she do. The heavy bags in the trunk, carrying them all the way to Mom’s house…… Before she could even space out thinking about the route ahead, Youngbaek’s noisiness brought her back to reality.
“Oh! There’s a taxi! Taxi! Taxiii!”
He shouted eagerly at a taxi coming from afar, waving his short arms and making hand signals.
“Hey. Im Jisu. I’m leaving. I still came all the way here, so you talk to your mom nicely. Tell her something really urgent came up and I had to go back. I still came, so I’ve shown my courtesy. You talk nicely to my mom too, okay?”
“Oppa! Don’t joke around.”
Youngbaek, who really did get into the taxi that soon pulled up in front of them, quickly took on a comfortable expression—perhaps because the inside of the taxi was cool. And from inside the car, he waved at Jisu. Soon the taxi disappeared into the distance, kicking up dirt.
Jisu felt as if someone had poured cold water over her head.
She was so flustered she couldn’t even feel the heat.
The boyfriend who had come to greet her mother before their marriage had just disappeared. Waving with a smiling face.
“Ha, I’m speechless.”
The dirt the taxi scattered must have gotten into her eyes. That’s why tears were coming out. It was definitely not because she was crying.
No, she was crying because she was so wretched, so embarrassed, and her heart ached.
What should she tell Mom. What if she gets shocked and collapses again.
She didn’t want to cry, so she hurriedly wiped her tears, but the traces of crying weren’t wiped away.
“Miss. Haven’t you heard the saying, ‘The crappy car goes and the Benz comes’?”
“Sniff. I haven’t. Please fix the car quickly.”
“This isn’t something that can be fixed…….”
“…….”
“Throw it away. Don’t cling to it.”
She didn’t know whether he was talking about the car, or about the boyfriend who had just left her here and taken a taxi alone.
“It’s not a crappy car, though?”
“It is a crappy car. And a fucking crappy one at that.”
Closing the hood of the car—the used compact car that Youngbaek had given Jisu as a gift for getting a job, which already had 280,000 kilometers on it when she received it, with a faded ‘beginner driver’ sticker on the rear window—the man with grease smeared on his face and forearms said indifferently.
Everything surrounding the two of them was intense. The sweltering hot air, the still fierce sunlight, and the man’s burning gaze.
“So throw it away. Jisu.”
If wanting to throw something away meant it would actually be thrown away, she would have thrown it away long ago.
The six-year-old relationship, ragged as a tattered quilt, and this car too.
But.
“Im Jisu. You don’t recognize me?”
