The Man Who Knew My Name
Where Young-baek had vanished, only three things remained: a battered old car, a mechanic I'd never seen before in my life, and Im Ji-su.
As my scattered reason slowly filtered back, it could produce nothing more creative than a moment of sheer denial. What is this? Is this some kind of hidden camera prank? Except, unbelievably, this total stranger had just called me by name. Fine—anyone could have learned my name from the conversation he'd just overheard with Young-baek. But he'd spoken to me in banmal. Casual speech, like we were old friends.
"Let's go. Im Ji-su. It's hot."
"Wh-where are we going? And my car—"
"My shop's right up ahead."
……
Right. Whether I actually knew him was a question I could sort out later. I had come back to my hometown, after all. He might be a classmate my memory had misplaced, or someone my mother knew.
We walked along the dirt shoulder beside the car for about ten minutes until we reached the auto shop. The man shortened his stride to match my pace, then steered me to a cool spot inside and pulled a can of sports drink from the fridge to hand me.
"Oh—thank you."
"Same as ever."
"Same as ever, what…?"
"That look. It's still there."
The heat was one thing, but I'd just been handed my favorite drink, and the faint smile that crept over my face against my will was embarrassing—made worse when the man caught that exact expression and smirked.
Ji-su took a long drink and followed him with her eyes as he moved briskly around the office.
A man that handsome knows who I am? Then why don't I have the slightest idea who he is?
Seated somewhere cool at last, my reason returning, one thing remained stubbornly unclear: the face across from me belonged to someone quite striking. Forgetting a face like that would be a felony offense. My head was busy excavating every corner of my memory. Even in the middle of an upheaval that rivaled getting dumped, the handsome face kept pulling my gaze, and I shook my head in embarrassment at myself. What mattered first was figuring out how to handle the situation Young-baek had just left behind.
"I'm going to tow the car and bring it back. I'll be back in five minutes, so rest up."
Left alone in a stranger's auto shop office for the first time in my life, I sat before the faint smell of motor oil and the whisper of the air conditioner, and forced myself to actually think.
My mother was probably frantic at this very moment.
To her, Ji-su was always the brilliant daughter—the one who graduated high school at the top of her class, who snapped up scholarship after scholarship all through university in Seoul, who lived in the dorms all four years so she wouldn't burden her mother with rent, who tutored nonstop and went through her entire youth without knowing even the first letter of the word "dating."
And then, just days ago, over the phone, I had dropped a triple bombshell: that I'd been seeing a man for six years, that I was going to marry him, and that I'd be bringing him home to introduce him soon. I didn't need to see my mother's face to know how frazzled and busy she must be now—and how many questions she'd fire at me the moment we met.
"God. This is a disaster. What do I do."
There was no answer to be found in the thinking, and outside, the sound of the approaching car came to a stop. I scrambled halfway to my feet as the mechanic from before walked in, motioning me back down into my seat. With an economy of movement that wasted nothing, he fetched a round plastic chair from the corner and set it down with a clack, then seated himself directly across from me, close enough to touch, and stared straight at me.
"Um. That's… a little too close, I think."
"You're staring too. Funny thing."
I have way too much to think about. Who on earth is this man?
"Wow. Your thoughts are right there in your eyes. That's exactly the look. 'Who does this guy think he is, knowing me?'"
"Uh…"
He was so dead-on that I couldn't muster a rebuttal and simply blinked at him, dumbstruck.
He wore an expression of pure amusement as he asked,
"So. What are you going to do? About that hanwoo beef and the Cheongsong apples."
Right. I hadn't even gotten that far in my crisis planning. What do I do about that? It would be strange, showing up at my mother's door alone, lugging an ex-boyfriend's gifts with no boyfriend in sight.
"Your car needs the whole engine bay rebuilt—half the components inside are shot. At that point you're better off swapping the engine, and if you're doing that, you're better off buying new."
……
"Scrap it."
I hadn't really needed a car. But Young-baek had given it to me as a gift, and out of gratitude I drove it now and then. If it was gone, I'd manage without one. The problem was that the car was registered in his mother's name. It wasn't mine to do with as I pleased.
"Have you called his mother?"
"No, not yet… Wait, why do you keep talking casually to me?"
The man flashed a smile as pretty as if it had been drawn by hand, then rose from his seat. And held out his hand to me.
"I'll help you."
……
"Come on. We're going to go pay your respects to his mother."
That is not happening.
"No, thank you. I appreciate it, really. This has never happened to me before—I was mortified enough out on that road, and I'm grateful you came up and spoke to me first, but I can handle it myself."
……
"The car—well, please just fix it for now. As for the cost…"
"I told you, scrap it. I'll send it straight to the junkyard from here."
He wasn't exactly angry, but the faint smile that had lingered on his face was gone.
"The thing is, it isn't entirely mine, so I can't just throw it away."
"Ah, is that so? Does it belong to that whiner from earlier?"
"…Whiner? Excuse me?"
"Then the pathetic loser?"
"No! Look—you obviously heard our whole conversation back there, so please just forget it. And this is my problem, so I'll deal with it. Thank you so much for everything. Just give me the cost and your account number and…"
The man let out a long sigh before he spoke.
"Gyechon High, class of '70th."
"…I'm sorry, what?"
"You stood on stage as the graduating class representative and gave the farewell address. Hair in a single ponytail just like that, wearing a hairband. I clapped my heart out for you, you know."
"Oh. You're… a classmate. I'm sorry, but I don't remember you."
He held out his hand again and said it without much ceremony.
"Among the graduates of our class—no, among the entire school—was there a single person who didn't know your family's situation? You were your mother's pride, the pride of Gyechon township, the pride of Gyechon High. Im Ji-su, top of the entering class at Hankuk University's School of Business. And I'm pretty sure I heard you telling your mother just now that you were taking that pathetic loser home to introduce him."
Ji-su fought back the tears that welled up again from the hurt surging inside her.
Why she couldn't bring herself to tell her mother that today's events had been nothing more than a light little mishap—this man understood that too. Because I'm her pride. Because if she ever found out that the man I was going to marry treated me like this, I couldn't bear to see my mother's stricken, worried face.
A classmate I couldn't even remember knew it, and yet the man I'd dated for six years had spared my feelings not one shred of consideration and hailed a taxi back to Seoul. Then again, he was the kind of man who'd been raised like a prince, waited on hand and foot—never once having to calculate the cost of a taxi fare, or worry about anything so pedestrian.
"But honestly, I really don't know who you are."
"Yeah. You look like it, too."
"…I'm sorry."
"If you're sorry, shall we get going? To introduce ourselves."
The wish not to wound her mother won out, and in the end Ji-su took the hand her classmate held out.
The mechanic-turned-classmate moved without a moment's hesitation.
He hauled the luggage out of her trunk and carried it around to the parking lot behind the shop, loaded everything into a sleek black luxury sedan, and opened the passenger door for her.
"We're stopping by my house first. I can't show up to meet my future mother-in-law looking like this."
He said it while looking down at his work clothes, and Ji-su—failing entirely to register that the "his mother" of moments ago had somehow become "my future mother-in-law"—apologized once more.
"Running into you after all these years, and I've been nothing but a burden. I'm sorry for all the trouble. I'll pay you back for everything later, I—"
"You mean deposit it."
"…Yes."
Without another word, the man shut her door, rolled down the shop's shutter, and pulled straight out.
The inside of the car was silent. What Ji-su couldn't endure, though, wasn't the silence—it was her curiosity about the man beside her.
"What's your name?"
She asked, but no answer came. Leaving the township behind, the car ran some ten minutes down a narrow national highway before turning onto the road above Gyechon Reservoir. It was the road to a neighborhood of fine homes, famous since the old days for its gorgeous scenery, where the wealthy had gathered to live. But "wealthy neighborhood" wasn't a label born of the views alone. There was also the brutally practical reason that no bus ran up there, and with the houses perched on the hills, life without a car was nearly impossible. For that reason, even Ji-su, born and raised in Gyechon, had only been up here a handful of times.
"…I can't place your face, but if I hear your name, maybe it'll come back to me?"
"You never know."
She stepped into a stylish, modern house that looked as if it had been built only recently.
Before crossing the threshold, her eyes caught the mail lying casually on the key table in the entryway. She hadn't meant to look, but the recipient's name jumped out at her. It had to be that man's name.
"Yoon Jae-gyeom…?"