NTH 3

“No. What do you mean, celebrity.”

“Weren’t you the man who advertises water purifiers? You look just like the person on the stickers on every water purifier.”

“I told you, no.”

“If you’re not a celebrity, what do you use that face and body for?”

The thief’s eyes went wide. His expression showed he had wholeheartedly believed Jeha was the male actor who advertised water purifiers.

How on earth does a clumsy and somewhat screw-loose person like this go around committing theft? It was amazing he had not been caught until now. Jeha, having lost the will to fight, spoke in a resigned voice.

“Whatever. I’ll make a big concession and not hand you over to the police, so just give me back the things you stole.”

The thief lowered his eyes, avoiding Jeha’s glare.

“I want to, but I can’t.”

“Why. Have you sold them all already?”

“That’s not it, but I can’t say more.”

After a moment of silence, Jeha suddenly grabbed his wrist. The thief flinched in surprise and shouted.

“Why, why? What are you doing?”

“We’re going. To the police station.”

“No, wait, just a moment! You see, the thing is, I’m just really hungry.”

“What?”

More bewildered than annoyed, Jeha’s grip on the thief’s wrist tightened. It must have hurt quite a bit, as the thief winced slightly and said nonchalantly.

“I’m so hungry I can’t think straight.”

“……”

“If I eat something, I think I’ll be able to talk.”

*

“You’re really the one paying, right?”

“I said I would.”

“You’re not going to say you’re going to the restroom and then just sneak away, are you? People shouldn’t act like that.”

“That would be your story, wouldn’t it?”

The thief shrugged, as if he had indeed done that before.

Jeha, deciding he might as well be crazy, asked the thief what he wanted to eat. He pointed his finger at the boiled pork and rice soup restaurant right in front of them.

After entering the restaurant, Jeha sent a message to Professor Min apologizing for his sudden absence.

In the meantime, the thief, with sparkling eyes, looked over the menu and gently pointed his finger at the extra spicy, extra-large boiled pork and rice soup. Jeha, who was full from the chicken he had eaten at the general meeting, ordered only a bottle of beer for himself.

A short while later, the food came out. The employee, without even asking where to put it, matter-of-factly placed the rice soup, the bowl of rice, the beer, and the glass in front of Jeha and left.

Jeha had no choice but to move the food in front of the thief himself. He felt pathetic, wondering how he had ended up serving rice soup to a thief who had stolen his belongings three times.

The thief immediately flipped the bowl of rice upside down, roughly mixing it into the soup, then scooped up a large spoonful of rice and shoved it into his mouth without a second thought.

“Ah-hot, it’s hot!”

The thief shouted as he spit the rice back out. Jeha quickly handed him a cup of cold water.

“Are you an idiot? You have to let it cool before you eat it!”

“Haa, I didn’t know it would be this hot.”

“What is this. Is this your first time eating rice soup?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t lie.”

“It’s really my first time. Every time I passed by here, I saw people eating it so deliciously and I was so envious.”

This was beyond a foreigner, he was on the level of an alien. Jeha let out a light sigh and pushed one of the plastic plates stacked on the side of the table toward the thief.

“Dish it out, let it cool, and then eat slowly.”

The thief, without a word of thanks, took the plate, dished out some of the rice soup, and then started blowing on it to cool it before eating.

Perhaps the heat from the hot soup was making him warm, as he pushed the brim of his baseball cap all the way up. Because of this, his white, smooth forehead was revealed, and his entire face was properly visible for the first time. His features were quite pretty.

Jeha, after taking a few sips of his beer, casually tossed out a question.

“Hey, how old are you, anyway?”

The thief answered while munching on radish kimchi.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I really don’t know for sure. I’m over twenty.”

“……”

As Jeha fell silent, the thief glanced at him furtively.

“Am I twenty-two? Or twenty-three. It’s probably around there.”

“You must have a resident registration card. Isn’t your birth year written on it?”

“……”

This time, the thief was silent. He just ate diligently with a somewhat anxious expression. Jeha changed the question.

“What’s your name.”

“Nana.”

“What?”

“Nana. As in Ba-nana.”

“Are you a foreigner?”

“Maybe. I don’t know for sure. When or where I was born. But it’s true I’ve been in Korea since my earliest memories. And I can’t speak any foreign languages at all.”

Nana.

It was a ridiculous name, but on the other hand, it strangely suited him as well.

“Then what’s your last name? Surely it’s not Mr. Ba.”

“Wow, is that a joke? That’s hilarious.”

Thinking it sounded too much like a dad joke himself, Jeha regretted saying it. Nana mumbled with his mouth full of rice soup.

“I don’t have a last name. Just Nana.”

“How can that be?”

“Everyone just calls me that. I’ve never heard anyone call my name with a last name attached, so I don’t even know what my last name is.”

If he delved just a little deeper here, it felt like a heavy story would come out, something like Nana being an orphan, or illegitimate, or a victim of a criminal organization. Then it would be him who would get tired.

It might be cleaner to just think of it as having built up virtue for a neighbor in need and to end this strange encounter with a single meal.

Just as Jeha’s heart was leaning toward giving up on the stolen goods, including the external hard drive, Nana abruptly asked.

“What about you? What’s your name?”

The thief was shamelessly asking for the victim’s identity. Jeha answered in a dry voice.

“What would you do with that information? It’s not like we’ll see each other again anyway.”

“Didn’t you have something you wanted to get back? That’s why you’re buying me food.”

“Can you even return it? You said you couldn’t earlier.”

“It’s quite difficult, but one item might still be possible. What was the most expensive thing among what I stole?”

From the looks of it, this guy, Nana, clearly did not even know the value of the items. He was just the dimwitted lackey, and perhaps a boss above him was using him.

Jeha answered bluntly, without any expectation.

“The most expensive thing is the fountain pen. The black one mixed with silver.”

“Really? How much is it?”

“Well, about six million won, I guess.”

“What did you say?”

Nana suddenly shouted so loudly that all the nearby customers looked at him. However, they soon turned their heads away indifferently, as if they had not seen anything.

“Don’t lie to me!”

Nana shouted, his voice full of anger. Jeha maintained a calm expression.

“It’s true.”

“What kind of ballpoint pen costs six million won!”

“It’s a Montblanc Limited Edition 1902. If you don’t believe me, you can search it up right now.”

“I don’t have a phone. And my brain is bad, so I can’t memorize long and difficult names like that.”

The fact that a young man in his twenties living in 21st-century South Korea did not have a cell phone was more surprising than the fact that his brain was bad. Jeha did not hide his bewilderment.

“Why don’t you have a phone? Are you a credit delinquent or something?”

“So, you’re saying you want that ballpoint pen back?”

It was obvious that Nana was intentionally changing the subject.

Right. What about him would be based on common sense? Jeha shook his head.

“It’s not a ballpoint pen, it’s a fountain pen. And the thing I want to find the most isn’t the fountain pen, it’s the external hard drive.”

“What’s that?”

“You took it without even knowing what it was?”

“The standard procedure is to just sweep up everything in sight. There’s no time to look at each and every thing.”

“But there’s time to eat cake?”

“I’ll die if I don’t eat like that. I’m always hungry, but I have no money.”

“You could work and earn money legally. And since we’re on the subject, does it make sense for you to be hungry again so soon when you were just stealing and eating a ton of chicken at the pub a while ago?”

“I couldn’t eat much earlier. If I stay next to strangers for more than five minutes, they get suspicious.”

“And less than five minutes is okay? Don’t people usually think it’s strange right away when a stranger sits next to them?”

“…You saw it earlier too. The rice soup, they only gave it to you.”

“What?”

Jeha remembered the employee placing the rice soup and the bowl of rice in front of him. There were two people, but only one serving of rice soup, so normally they would have asked in front of whom to place it.

But it could have also been that they just did it without thinking. Jeha asked in a tone that showed he could not understand.

“What about it? It could be a coincidence.”

“It’s not. It’ll be the same no matter where you go, not just here.”

“Why?”

Nana put down his spoon and answered in a voice tinged with loneliness.

“Because, I have no presence.”

“You have no what?”

“Presence. Don’t you know the word presence? Even if you’re not tall and handsome like you, normally when a person is somewhere, the people around them can see and feel that they are there, right?”

“Yes.”

“But wherever I go, I’m almost like a non-existent person at first. I get treated as if I’m not there even when I’m right in front of them.”

“Why on earth? It’s not like you’re an invisible man. You talk, you eat, you even steal things, and yet?”