Breakup formula
W. Manggaejjitteok
- Please be advised that this content contains potentially traumatic elements. If you are uncomfortable with this, we recommend that you do not watch it.
Something hot and heavy pressed against my throat. How did I live all this time? I survived because I couldn't die. But how could I tell you this? I felt like I was going to drop the medicine bag, my strength draining.I put strength into my hand. I placed my hand on your cheek, trying to sound as casual as possible. Then I asked in that gentle voice you loved so much.
“What happened…?”
Hearing her gentle voice, you shed even more tears. To be precise, it would have been more accurate to say you clung to my embrace and cried. As I placed a hand on your shoulder to comfort you, who was crying silently, the slight trembling intensified. I wanted to ask you why you were crying, but I kept my mouth shut and gently patted you. It was sad. You cried just to see me, and it felt like I was making you cry.
“I heard everything… about the past five years since we broke up.”
The hand patting my shoulder stopped. "You heard everything about the past five years?" I lowered my head and looked down at Yeoju. I wanted to demand to know where she heard it, who told her, but I couldn't. It wasn't your fault for hearing it. But that didn't mean I wanted to tell her that story.
The past five years without you were the worst in my miserable life.
.
.
.
.
.
Five years ago, a month after breaking up with my girlfriend, I used the money I'd saved to rent a tiny semi-basement apartment. The tap water was rusty, and rats and cockroaches were everywhere, but it was okay. It was my first real accomplishment after graduating.
“Whew… This should be okay, right?”
I cleaned the dusty house with a proud heart and sat down on the floor. It wasn't big and bug-ridden, but I was happy. I'd moved out of that shabby corner of the house and had a home of my own. But that happiness didn't last long. Soon after, I received a phone call from an unsaved number.
Yes. Coming into this house may have been the beginning of my misfortune.
“…I got a call!”
After receiving the call, I hurriedly turned around and headed to the Namdaemun Police Station in Seoul. It had been four years. It was the first time I'd seen my father, whom I'd lost contact with since entering college. I rushed over to him after receiving the detective's call, and what I saw was his handcuffs. I hadn't expected him to change, but at least this wasn't the image I wanted.
“Oh my… Look at that. I told you I don’t really like that guy.”
“…What happened?”
When I asked with a stiff face, he said he'd been caught committing fraud under the pretext of investing. "Father." To me, those three letters were worse than a beast. My father was a gangster. And I, born of a woman he met in a brothel, was a headache to him.
A woman who had a child from a one-night stand waited until she was past the age at which she could have an abortion before going to her father to extort money. At first, my father told me to do whatever I wanted, whether I wanted to get rid of it or not, but even the woman, who was my mother, was not one to take small risks. When I told him that if he didn't pay and take the child, I would report him as a rapist, only then did my father, who had brought me here as if carrying a bomb, reach out to me without warning.
Domestic violence. I wish I'd just done that. I was dragged by my father to brothels several times. I was enveloped in heavy makeup and the pungent smell of perfume, and was sexually assaulted. My misogyny stemmed from that. Any slightest resistance would lead to a beating from my gangster-turned-father, so all I could do to survive was sit there, as if dead, and weep. Older women would give me money for crying, thinking I was cute. My father, having learned the joy of this, would even purposely beat me to make me cry.
I did that for ten years. The silver lining was that my father was getting older, and I was growing. As time passed, my father aged, but my strength grew. So, in my third year of middle school, I rebelled against him. After that day, I stopped going to brothels, but the domestic violence persisted.
The only fortunate thing is that the strength in my father's hand has decreased.
And I had become accustomed to that too.
“Anyway, I have some documents you need me to fill out as your guardian.”
I glanced at my father and picked up my pen. A year later, I met Yeoju and discovered love, but I was secretly anxious. I wondered if my father would meet her. Yeoju, who already knew the whole story, understood that it was okay, but would he say such things when we met? You never know. But… that was impossible now. Yeoju and I had broken up. I thought it was a relief, at least.
“I’ve written it all down.”
“Oh, yes. And please wait a moment.”
The detective left the room with the documents, and my father sat there, handcuffed. I sneered. They really suited each other, I thought. I sat down on a chair far away. Then my father, who had raised the back of the chair as an armrest and turned around, spoke.
“Why? Don’t you want to be humble with your father anymore?”
“Why are you asking something so obvious?”“But why did you come here? If you didn’t like it, then just don’t come.”
"Actually, you missed your father too, didn't you?" he said, chuckling, and I felt a surge of anger. "Is that even a word?" I barely managed to suppress my anger, sighing and pulling a cigarette out of my pocket. The anger wouldn't subside unless I lit a cigarette right away.
“Hey, don’t you know that?”
“……Haa, what again? What’s the problem?”
“That room salon bitch, she’s dead?”
I turned around, my eyes widening in an instant. The room salon bitch my father was talking about. That was my birth mother. My mother died?... My father gave me a mocking smile as I trembled, my lips trembling, and then delivered the final blow.
"Yeah. I heard she sold her body and was killed by a customer. It seems her skills aren't what they used to be. Even that pretty face, when you get older—it all looks the same. Maybe she wasn't able to tighten it?"
“Fuck……”
In the end, I couldn't hold back the swearing that was just beginning to flow from my lips. Mother. She never said a single kind word, but she'd come by every birthday and buy me pork cutlets. That mother was dead? I was devastated. My father was the worst. Even though I hated her, I often thought of her. Our family was doomed from the start.
I finally visited my mother's columbarium, but I was even more shocked there. I owed 50 million won. When I was told I had to pay it back, my eyes turned pale. It was so hard to even afford a semi-basement apartment, so 50 million won? It couldn't possibly be possible. Fortunately, a law student nearby told me that if I "renounced my inheritance," I wouldn't have to pay the debt, so I went to court.
I thought that the only thing that connected me to my mother was ‘debt’, and I felt foolishly guilty about it.
The thought that you knew this nonsense made me feel like my stomach was turning, almost crushing. The worst, most unfortunate moment of my life... I never wanted you to know. Feeling my breath hitch, I took a step back and covered my mouth with my hand.
“Breathe, breathe. Jeongguk, please…”
You, sobbing and weeping again, hugged me and patted my back. "I absolutely hate this. This is the worst. Please don't let me know..." I repeated to myself several times. Despite the warmth of their embrace, I felt completely uncomfortable.
“…I heard it from Kang Min, whom I hadn’t seen in a long time at the hospital. He was doing police training at the time, and he said he heard the story from a senior police officer.”
“… …”
“…I’m sorry. I asked on my own.”
“… …”
“And I’m sorry again.”
Because I couldn't be by your side at that time.
[Jjintteok's Saddam]
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