Stupid Bastard

My body, balanced on tiptoe, swayed. The man's voice, which I had taken for a mishearing, once again tore through the summer night.

“Stupid bastard.”

I couldn't tell whether he was saying it to Eui-ju or to himself—that was the only part that left me confused. And those words filled my glass-like heart until pity overflowed. The chest of the man who had seemed to be lying still and asleep on the wooden veranda rose and fell. Seeing him unable to hold up his head like a broken person, only his arms twitching, I found my feet unwilling to leave.

Just pretend I don't know.

I lowered my head from the wall and looked around the alley, silent as a grave. Getting tangled up with this man as a neighbor—even last time alone—had already put me through hell. He didn't want the help or kindness of some fickle high-school girl. I was the only one feeling pity, the only one feeling sorry, the only one smearing lingering attachment all over myself. If I kept up a relationship that made both of us uncomfortable, the only one who would collapse and take the loss was me.

They say having too wide a meddling streak is its own kind of disease, and that saying cut straight through my life. Was I really going to shove some unidentified man into a life that was already hard enough just handling the pressure from Mom and Aunt? I was about to tuck the pity into the pocket of my heart and step out of the alley when, as I adjusted the crooked bicycle seat, a crashing sound of something shattering came from inside the gate. All my dozens of doubts and resolutions turned ridiculous; my startled feet had already crossed the threshold.

Standing in the yard, my conscience became a river stone and rolled away into a blank white page. I saw the fallen man and the low table he had knocked over with his hand. The half-cleared table, the broken dishes, and the man who had tried to stand and failed, panting hard.

“Hey.”

The vow that I would only look for a moment and leave had probably been a lie I threw at myself from the start. Summer must have come and melted the old frost. A heart freed from the yoke of hypocrisy was urging me to interfere. The next-door auntie who had wiped the tears of the little kid who said ants were lucky to have so many friends; Eui-ju, laughing with her pale cheeks shaking by the river. So the reason I wanted to get involved with this man, to meddle, was because of those people back then. The ones who had trimmed the thorns of my childhood and watered me were the ones pushing me toward him now.

“What happened to your face?”

I fumbled for the light switch on the veranda and turned it on. The moment the house brightened, lost midges flocked toward the light. Scenes I would normally have frowned at spread out bare: the overturned table, the man's face turned into a mass of blood clots. It was the first time I had ever seen someone's eyelids swollen so badly they couldn't even open their eyes properly. If the face looked like someone had poked a beehive, the body probably didn't have a single uninjured spot left.

“Are you okay?”

I slid my hands under his arms as if I could move him alone. Nearby there were only two empty abandoned houses. Three numbers suddenly floated up in my blanked-out mind. My hand went into the man's pocket, still damp with barley tea. A small rectangular phone caught in my palm.

A cell phone had always felt to me like something I wanted and, at the same time, something I could do without. Only after today's events did I understand its use. A phone was something you had to have. On the scratched keypad I pressed 119. Just as my finger was about to hit the call button, a powerful grip snatched my wrist.

“Ah! You startled me.”

“…Don't.”

My short scream echoed through the house and his hand fell away. The eyes that barely managed to look at me through the swollen lids were unfocused. Now that I had come this far and seen everything there was to see, I set the phone down and met his gaze.

“But this is too much. You have to go to the hospital.”

“No.”

He said nothing else, yet the voice insisting he didn't want to go to the hospital was full of strength. He didn't even seem to know whose wrist he was grabbing and shaking. Through split lips he only kept repeating that he didn't want the hospital. Just watching him made my head throb.

I wasn't strong enough to drag a man who refused so stubbornly all the way to a hospital. I didn't have enough feeling to wait until he opened his eyes there, to claim to be his guardian and talk with the doctors. I didn't want to hear the man, once awake, resent me for bringing him either.

My heart desperately wanted to help him, yet my body wouldn't follow. At the same time I couldn't just leave someone who looked ready to fall seriously ill, so my mind only grew more frantic.

“Why don't you want to go?”

The eyes that had been staring blankly at the light until then slowly dropped. I entered the world of those murky irises. They widened a little as if he finally recognized me, then returned to their original size. Not that it showed much on eyes swollen shut like that.

“I don't have money for the hospital bill.”

Then he covered his eyes with his wrist as if irritated. The emotion the barely visible lips spat out looked like deep regret and sorrow. At least to my eyes.

“Go.”

Even in a state of bruises and swelling he still fretted over his situation; the man had more pride and stubbornness than he looked. But if I left him like this I would spend the next while worrying about him and fail to do my own work. Who would lose then?

“I have it.”

“I said go.”

“Do you have medicine at home?”

When his order to leave failed to work, the man irritably lowered his hand. I seized the timing before he could snap at me.

“I'll just give you the medicine and leave. It's not like you want to die, right?”

When I spoke with care, even the man's hard gaze wavered. Without another word he turned over; faced with that stubbornness I threw up both hands. His breathing climbed a rough mountain without knowing its owner's heart. Worried, I gently took his shoulder. I hadn't even put much strength into it, yet his whole body came with my hand. The man who couldn't open his eyes and was suffering had already let go of consciousness.

“Hey.”

The body under my hand shook as if riding a big wave. My efforts to wake him grew stronger, but his arrogant voice had already vanished without a trace. In my urgency I opened his phone again. Enter 119, press the green call button—that would be the end of it.

“Eui-ju…”

At the mutter of a man who seemed to have lost his mind, the thumb resting on the call button slowly moved downward. Right. He had no money. Eui-ju, Eui-ju's older brother, me—none of us had easy pockets. I simply couldn't make the call. The man with no hospital money, and me who couldn't afford to pay it for him. For the present me, who had no one to help, the only method left was to tough it out with my body.

I laid the man who trusted only his youth and abused his body flat on his back. With a rattle I opened the sliding door; a room appeared with a travel bag sitting in the corner as if ready to leave at any moment and a TV whose working condition I doubted. I ran to the drawers and searched for the first-aid kit every household has at least one of. After the first, second, and third failures, I found fever medicine in the last drawer. When I opened it there were two pills. Biting my lip in disappointment, I turned—and froze.

“Can't you hear me? Get out.”

The books the man had thrown into a puddle while banishing me, ruined beyond use, had been carefully brought back inside the room. My feet that had been stamping in place while pouring the two pills into my palm stopped all at once. The pages spread out to dry fluttered in the night wind.

My resolution to feed him the medicine and fly straight out of his house was forcibly extended. My gaze returned to the man sprawled out and dying.

I can do this. I lifted the man's arm lying in front of the sliding door. With life-or-death force I pulled his body. Using every bit of tug-of-war skill I possessed, I dragged the man, heavy as a sack of flour, little by little into the room. Walk, rest, walk, rest—just getting his head through the doorway took ten minutes.

By the time his legs crossed the threshold I was taking a shower in my own sweat. Even so, the man whose breath was stopping worried me more than I who was gasping. Only after succeeding in getting his body inside did I have a moment to catch my breath. I took down the neatly folded blanket from atop the drawers. Contrary to the musty smell I expected, it carried the scent of bath soap.

“Here, lie down.”

I put a pillow under his head and spread the thin summer blanket to one side. My body, having used every last bit of strength, slid down against the wall.

“Just ten minutes. Ten minutes of rest.”

At times like this I couldn't help regretting that I wasn't a man. If I had been a man I could have gone to school with Eui-ju and protected her from bad thugs, Mom and Aunt would have worried less about me, and I could have easily lifted and moved a man dying of pain.

I hoped that my body, which had stopped growing, might become a little sturdier after today. Through the unclosed sliding door the stars of the night sky glittered lonely.

If only the weather were cool, that would be nice. The man was terribly unlucky.