Chapter 13: The Early Dawn (2)

When her friend had offered to buy drinks, Hee Yeon had assumed they were headed to a bar. Instead, she found herself at a makchang* shop full of smoke. Of course, there was nothing wrong with two women coming to such a place, but Hee Yeon had rather hoped to drown her sorrows somewhere a bit more quiet. Once the meat was on the grill and a few shots of soju had been downed, though, she realized that this was the better option. The inside of the shop was almost foggy from the smoke that made it past the vents, and the people were loud, meaning that not a single person in that space would bat an eye even if she were to curse her heart out.

“Honestly! It was like three seconds! How was I supposed to know something like that would happen?”

“Right?” Her friend, Hwasu, replied in kind as she flipped the meat on the grill. “I don’t think I could have done any better if something like that happened. Like what, are you just supposed to tell a crying student to go to the infirmary by himself?”

Friends are the best, Hee Yeon thought. It was empowering to know that her friend felt the same way. “Seriously, the principal is all safety this, safety that, but if he cares so much about safety, why doesn’t he just install intercoms in all the classrooms? We can be all like, beep! Yeah, infirmary? Class 1-3 here, we have an injured student, can you please come get him? Pfft, imagine that.” As Hee Yeon rambled on and on, Hwasu shook the water off a fresh leaf of lettuce and filled it with meat and vegetables, wrapping them up nicely before feeding it to her friend. Hee Yeon munched on it happily, giving Hwasu a thumbs up in appreciation.

“Speaking of the principal, what did he say about your punishment? Is the committee getting involved?” Hee Yeon’s face reddened at her friend’s question. If Hwasu didn’t know better, she would have thought Hee Yeon had bitten into a hot pepper. “It’s not even that serious!” Hee Yeon answered, frustrated. “The disciplinary committee? For real? How could I possibly have known about Hyung-Oh’s hemophobia? His mother never mentioned it once! Do I look psychic to you? And why was Kyung-eun walking around in the middle of class? Who told her that was okay? They’re supposed to stay in their seats even if I’m gone. How is any of this my fault?” Her rambling became more and more emotional as she emptied her soju glass over and over. “The principal is supposed to help me out as a teacher, not weasel his way out of trouble. Pushed it all on me! It’s apparently all my fault to him. I bet he was the one who suggested we hold this stupid disciplinary committee meeting first.”

Hwasu made no attempts to stop Hee Yeon from downing her soju like water. She was already off the rails, and becoming emotional like her would only aggravate the situation. Hwasu was walking the thin line between leaving Hee Yeon to let of steam and calming her down appropriately.

“And the parents, they’re all the same. First they’re kissing up to you left and right, being all ‘oh, please take care of my child,’ but as soon as something happens, they’re the first to blame teachers. Treating me like dirt. That’s why I can’t bring myself to like them, any of them. I mean, have you seen their faces when they bring gifts for Teachers’ Day? I swear to God I would tie my own mother up if she were to ever act like that. So embarrassing. And why do they all bring body lotion? I could bathe in body lotion for ten years, that’s how much body lotion I’ve gotten from them. But you turn your back one second and bam, ‘the children get hurt because the teacher is so lazy!’ Can you believe the nerve? I mean what? If you’re going to be all up in my ass, at least take me out on a date first, right? What do they know about me? Do they even realize that our job doesn’t end when classes end? We plan our curriculums, get all the textbooks and additional readings. Like, we have so much to do, but no we’re lazy. Damn it. Quitting is my only salvation.”

Time to calm down a bit. Hwasu grabbed the soju bottle from Hee Yeon’s hands and poured an adequate amount into her friend’s glass. “Hang in there. I hear that all the time, and I’m still here. Think about it. Those chatrooms with all the parents? We have to tell them what happens during class every time, it’s like writing up a separate report altogether. How is that any different from just straight up installing surveillance cameras in the classrooms? And some parents literally treat teachers like personal servants. It’s like that saying, what was it? Give an inch and he’ll take a mile? Yeah, that’s exactly them.”

The two friends continued to vent and agree with each other as they drank. The meat on the grill was burnt black, but neither of them seemed to mind.

****

On the day of the vacation ceremony, the students made their merry way to the school, listened to a short speech, and even more merrily made their way out of the school grounds. There was talk that one of the classes was holding an emergency parent-teacher conference, which is why the teacher in charge of that class looked like death during the whole ceremony, but none of the students cared about things like that. Summer vacation had officially started, meaning they were now free to do any and everything they wished.

For the boy, however, it was a bittersweet day. The library was closed, and it wouldn’t open until next Monday. Being unable to go to the library for an entire week, he had resorted to asking the teachers at the institute for a pass to the downtown library. However, the answer he got was less than satisfactory. “I’m sorry,” the teacher had said, “but you’re too young to leave the institute alone. I would love to take you there, but you see…I’m really busy.” If there were more students wishing to go to the library, it would have provided an opportunity to take everyone, as a sort of field trip, but that was not the case, and there wasn’t an institute in the country that would allow a first grader to wander around the city unsupervised. “How about asking the older children to let you borrow some of their books?”

The boy had thought of that before, but the only reason he hadn’t done so yet was because up until this point, he had thought the school library would be enough for him. Perhaps a bigger reason was that he knew better than to barge in someone else’s room and ask for their things. He was running out of options now, though, with the city library out of his reach, and hid his embarrassment as he made his way towards an upperclassman’s room.

“Whoa, hey plaster face! What’s up? Why are you here?” The first upperclassman he had visited was a sixth grader in the same elementary school, Hyung-geun Kim. He was a tan boy with a rather square face, which gave him a bulky look, and the boy knew that he often played soccer in the courtyard during break. Overall, the reason he had come to Hyung-geun first was because of the older boy’s outgoing personality, judging by how other children seemed to follow him closely. It was always best to start with the most approachable person. “Books? I don’t have that many. I gave out all my old textbooks too…but hey, I can give you these! They’re first semester books, but since that’s over…I can lend you second semester books too, as long as you get them back before the term starts.”

The boy thought to ask whether Hyung-geun had no intentions of reading over break, but smartly held back, choosing instead to borrow the first semester books. He returned to his room, stacking the books on his desk before moving down his list of potential book lenders. He had skipped over Hyung-geun’s roommate, Cheol-yong, entirely, since he was set on becoming a professional soccer player. Surely, that was the further profession from books the boy could imagine.

He knocked against an open door and waited in the hallway for permission to go in. “Oh! It’s you! Plaster face! What brings you here?” The girl who answered was Dayoung Jeong, a fifth grader with skin almost as tan as Hyung-geun and a playfulness in her eyes. She seemed like a very friendly person, like the type of person who could readily show their affection by touching. Surely enough, Dayoung left her seat in a heartbeat and pulled the boy inside the room by his hand. She had always been fond of the boy, more so than any other student, and often insisted that he sit next to her during the ride to school. The boy couldn’t quite bring himself to like her, however. She was much too straightforward, and it made him uncomfortable. But not as uncomfortable as Somi, Dayoung’s roommate who was just staring at him from her desk.

Somi was the only other sixth grader in the institute, and the boy was reluctant to get close to her, for no reason other than her smell. Though he was unaware of it, he had an acute sense of smell (his nickname, scrofa, was a comparison between his sensitive nose and the animal’s tendency to sniff everything), and there was something unpleasant about the way Somi smelled. He couldn’t quite identify the cause, but it wasn’t an unfamiliar scent. He had smelled it before, back at the peasant town, and he had never liked any of the people who shared this scent. He had no idea why he could detect this same scent on Somi, but it appeared as though no one else noticed. Hyung-geun had described her as pretty, but too gloomy: “she has a dad who comes visit her, but she always acts like she’s the unluckiest girl in the world.” Still, he was often glancing at her, commenting about how pretty things should be admired, which the boy never understood. Anyway, the scent was so fain that not even Hyung-geun, who paid so much attention to her, seemed to be aware of it.

The boy wanted to just ask for some books and leave as soon as he could, but defying all his expectation, Somi had been the one to gift him the most books. Her father visited her every weekend with food, clothes, or books, and she had given the boy three of the novels she had received. “You like books, don’t you? You can just take them. I’ve read them all already.” At least, that’s what she told him, though the books were much too pristine for him to believe her. Nonetheless, the boy thanked her with a small smile, and she simply nodded. “You can come back whenever if you want to read more books.”

After borrowing some books from Dayoung as well, the boy made his way back to his room with his arms full of new reading materials. Yet his steps were heavy, and it wasn’t due to the weight of the books. Somewhere inside, he knew that he would probably never go back to that room for more books. The man who had smelled like Somi had been beaten and kicked out of the town, and even before that, he had never been well received by the other townspeople. The boy’s mother had referred to him as a nasty, no good person, and the man had often picked on him. The boy could never forget the particular way the man smelled when he was kicked out of the town, and he hated it.

It was a disgusting smell, as though someone had mixed all sorts of food trash together in an indistinguishable pile, and he hated it.

<The Early Dawn (2)> End

*makchang – last viscus, or the last stomach of pigs or cows.