NTH 4

“I don’t know the reason either. It’s always been like this for as long as I’ve lived.”

It was an unbelievable story, but when you thought about it, the fact that Jeha himself had lived through repeated reincarnations or that his eyesight was close to 4.0 was something that could sound even more unrealistic.

Besides, there were a few things that bothered Jeha, making it hard to dismiss it as complete nonsense.

When he showed the video of Nana to the cafe employees, they all said only the face part looked blurry, and the students who sat at the same table as Nana at the opening general meeting could not remember who had been in that seat at all.

On top of that, there was the way the restaurant employee treated Jeha as if he were a customer who had come alone, and even when Nana shouted in surprise at the price of the fountain pen, everyone just glanced over and then turned their heads back as if they had not seen anything.

If all of those things had happened because of Nana’s faint presence, it also explained how he, who coughed up blood after running just a little, had managed to steal so successfully without ever being caught.

There would have been no need to run. No one who passed him at the scene of the crime would have been able to recall his face again.

“No, even if everything you’re saying is true, it’s still strange. What about me? Why am I the only one who perceives you so clearly?”

Jeha retorted, trying to think rationally. Nana shrugged his shoulders up and down.

“That’s why I said I was so surprised earlier. To have met someone who remembers my face.”

“Am I the first person you’ve met like that?”

“Yes. Ah, no.”

At the ambiguous answer that mixed affirmation and negation, Jeha raised an eyebrow slightly. Nana diligently scraped together the remaining grains of rice in the earthenware pot of rice soup.

“To be precise, you’re not the first, but the second.”

“Who was the first?”

“That, it’s better you don’t know.”

“Why?”

Nana put down the spoon he was about to bring to his mouth back into the bowl.

“I’m telling you honestly because you bought me such a delicious meal. It’s better to live your whole life without knowing who that person is. He’s a really, truly scary person.”

“…….”

“What did you say was the thing you wanted back the most earlier?”

Jeha felt a little embarrassed, realizing that he had been so captivated by the strange story that he had forgotten the very purpose of coming here.

“The external hard drive.”

“What does it look like?”

“It’s a square, black thing, about the size of your palm. It’s like a hard machine, used for saving computer files.”

“Ah, I think I know what you’re talking about. But is that more important than the six-million-won ballpoint pen? Are there a bunch of your selfies in there or something? Like, a thousand of them?”

“What on earth do you take me for. Important paper materials are in there.”

“Why did you save something like that?”

“Why do you think, because I had to write my paper.”

“Why do you write papers? Are you a doctor or something?”

Nana asked, blinking his eyes. Jeha suddenly recalled the fact that Nana had been speaking informally to him from the very beginning.

“But why do you keep speaking informally? You can clearly see that I’m much older than you.”

“Are you a꼰대? We don’t look that different in age. And in case you didn’t know, people in advanced countries like England and the United States don’t use honorifics.”

To be called a꼰대 by a young petty thief who probably could not speak a single word of English, when he had lived in England for 25 years and was even an English professor by profession.

Feeling it was absurd, Jeha let out a resigned smirk. Nana rested his chin on the table and stared intently at him.

“But really, what do you do?”

“A hag who gets extorted for a meal by a thief.”

“Hey, don’t be sulky and tell me. I’m really curious. You’re too, um… to be just an ordinary office worker.”

Nana trailed off and narrowed his eyes, scanning Jeha up and down as if to size him up. At that blatant gaze, Jeha let out a hollow laugh.

“Too what, to be just an office worker.”

“Overly handsome and have a good body. I’ve never seen an office worker like this before.”

“Have you ever even been to an office?”

“Of course. I’ve been to many.”

“Why. To steal things?”

“Yeah. And to secretly eat in the company cafeteria. But good companies make you scan your fingerprint or a card to get in, so I usually came up empty. My lack of presence only works on people, so it’s hard to trick machines.”

“Hah….”

“So I’m asking, what do you really do? You have to tell me where I should go to find you if I find that hard drive or whatever.”

Jeha thought for a moment.

This thief with a story seemed a bit pitiful, but he had not the slightest desire to get deeply involved with him. The cleanest thing to do would be to give up on the external hard drive, part ways like this, and never see him again.

That was definitely the right answer, so why did he feel so uneasy?

A moment later, Jeha borrowed a ballpoint pen from the store employee. He wrote his phone number on the palm of Nana’s hand.

“Contact me at this number when you find the external hard drive. I’ll decide where we meet.”

Nana, who had been looking down at the numbers on his palm as if they were fascinating, raised his head.

“Are you really not going to tell me your name?”

Jeha hesitated for a moment before opening his mouth.

“Kwon Jeha.”

“Is the middle character ‘a-i’ or ‘eo-i’?”

“Eo-i. The ‘Je’ as in Jeju Island.”

At that, Nana’s eyes curved slightly downwards as he spoke in a voice mixed with laughter.

“Jeha. That’s a cool name.”

The moment Nana pronounced Jeha’s name, Jeha felt a sharp pain as if he had been stabbed deep inside his chest.

It was a pain of unknown origin.

*

That night, in his dream, Kwon Jeha saw himself from a very distant past, from a life he could not remember which number it was. He had the name Park Taeseon.

Park Taeseon was born into a powerful noble family that had accumulated wealth through various bribes and corruption, and was living the life of a dissolute scoundrel, indulging in alcohol and pederasty while idling his time away.

Taeseon sat leaning crookedly against a pillar on the main wooden floor, drinking alone, and looked down with indifferent eyes at a man kneeling on the dirt ground beneath the floor.

It seemed his family’s servants had forcibly dragged over a tenant farmer who had failed to pay his rent on time. The man was shabby and gaunt, dressed in old, worn-out clothes, but his face was finely shaped, enough to be quite tempting if he were cleaned up and groomed.

Taeseon told the man to come closer. Without even looking up at Jeha, he crawled over like a four-legged animal and knelt again.

“Will you be held by me?”

Taeseon looked down arrogantly. The kneeling man slightly raised his head and looked at Taeseon with vacant eyes.

“I’m asking if you will offer your rear passage. If you do, not only will I extend the deadline for your rent, but I can also provide you with enough food to get through the winter.”

The kneeling man kept his head bowed low and was silent for a while. A moment later, when he raised his head, he was biting his lip and crying. Tears streamed down his grimy, fist-sized face. It was a face that made one want to make him cry in a different sense.

Taeseon slammed his cup down on the table.

“Why are you crying?”

He had not yet lifted a finger, nor had he forcibly stripped the clothes off a man who said no, so the sight of him biting his lip and sobbing was deeply puzzling. Taeseon questioned him again when he did not answer.

“Do you feel as if you’ve been dishonored? Because I dared to ask a pure thing like you, clean as a white cotton cloth, to engage in dirty pederasty?”

“No, that is not it.”

“Then what? Be warned that you will not return alive and well today if you do not speak the truth.”

“It is not because of you, my lord. I cried because of myself.”

“You haven’t said a word, like a mute, and now you say you cried because of yourself? You’ll have to explain it so I can understand.”

As Taeseon pressed him in annoyance, the man spoke in a slow but clear voice.

“I have a lover.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“A woman?”

“…….”

“Since you can’t answer, I suppose it’s a man?”

“Yes.”

Taeseon pressed on, as if he was flabbergasted.

“So, you cried so hard because you felt sorry for that lover of yours? Because you found it unbearably disgusting to be asked by a scoundrel of a nobleman to offer your bottom?”

“No, that is not it.”

“Then what on earth is it?”

“I was swayed, wondering if I should do it.”

“What?”

To the surprised Taeseon, the man answered with a calm expression, without even a frown.

“This year, there was a terrible famine, and there is no grain at home, not even tree bark to peel off and eat. Even if I don’t leave a single thing for myself to eat, the rice I have to pay as rent is far from enough. It has been a long time since I started gathering nameless grasses from the mountain to make porridge.”

“And?”

“But you say that just by letting you hold this useless body of mine once, the deadline for my debt will be extended and you will give me grain to get through the winter……. I was strongly tempted, wondering if I should really do it, if I should just go ahead and do it.”

“Then why don’t you just do it?”

“My poor lover, who said he would drown himself in the river if I ever gave my body to another, suddenly came to mind……, and so…….”

Taeseon let out a short sigh, “Heo.” Whether his lover drowned himself in the river or hung himself from a beam, Taeseon had not the slightest interest in their pure love. He raised one corner of his mouth and said spitefully.

“So what about it? Did I ever ask you to share affection with me? I’m telling you to work, to work. What’s the difference between working with your body, whether it’s tilling the land, feeding the cows, or engaging in pederasty?”

“Yes…?”

“Your lover is likely in the same situation as you. If you can get rice from me and feed him until he is full, wouldn’t that be good for both you and him?”

“Still…, I do not wish to do so.”

The man answered quietly but firmly.

Taeseon, who had momentarily agonized over whether to break one of the man’s legs or cut off his arm and lock him up, gestured for him to leave without another word. Then he ordered his underling to investigate the man. He specifically ordered him to find out in detail about that ‘lover’.

Less than three days later, the errand boy returned.