The Corrective Chopsticks
“I must be crazy. Completely out of my mind.”
The corrective chopsticks rolling across the desk like some grotesque monstrosity stabbed straight into her conscience. She had coaxed a friend into going out with her, dragged the whole way to the very end, then abandoned every scrap of pride and sprinted back to snatch up those chopsticks.
A sigh fluttered down over the pair she had bought without a single plan. With a mountain of worksheets still waiting to be solved, she was only piling up useless expenses. She bit her lip hard, released it, and was in the middle of whipping herself when the doorbell rang.
“Ji-eon.”
“Yes?”
It was a voice she had completely forgotten. It had to be the tutor who had said traffic would make him a little late. She sprang up and slammed her forehead against the protruding edge of the desk with a solid thud. Groaning, she stuffed the newly bought chopsticks into the drawer.
“Just a moment.”
She ran and opened the front door to find the teacher standing there clutching a thick major textbook. In the sweltering heat he was wearing a jumper stamped with his university logo and sweating rivers. The tutor who had taken charge of her entire summer vacation came from the neighborhood next to Dongwa-ri. Four times a week a Seoul university student had promised to teach her for pocket money. Her aunt’s sprawling network of connections had made it possible.
Her aunt, a blind devotee of private education, could be even more aggressive than her mother at times. But her eye for people was hopeless, so Ji-eon disliked the current tutor intensely. If she said she wanted to quit, her aunt would raise hell, so she was simply enduring him for the length of the vacation.
“Did you review?”
“Yes.”
The first reason she disliked him was that he was a man. After girls’ middle school and girls’ high school she had grown comfortable only with her own gender. She would have preferred a female teacher, but her aunt insisted men taught better and stubbornly stuck with this one.
The second reason was that he was clearly a heavy smoker. The tobacco smell soaked into his fingers sometimes made her not even want to come near. The pens he borrowed and the seat he occupied reeked of that foul odor. With pens she simply refused to take them back, saying, “You keep them, Teacher.”
The third reason was the way he treated her. On days she wore shorts his gaze changed from the start. As if trying to look more carefully, he would stick his belly out while sitting and adjust his silver-rimmed glasses. Because her mother almost never turned on the air conditioner, long pants were hard to wear at home. On tutoring days she at least pulled out pants that barely covered her knees, yet she still felt his eyes constantly sliding downward.
Creak, creak—the rough, ungraceful sound of the fan matched the state of her heart. She deliberately got problems wrong to turn the teacher’s gaze elsewhere.
“I don’t really get this.”
“Oh? Which part?”
“All of it.”
She was waiting for the vacation to end as soon as possible. Her mother was busy with the salon and her nerves were frayed. Ji-eon kept her mouth shut for fear that her mother might pick a pointless fight with the aunt who had recommended the tutor. Besides, the teacher had never made any direct advances, had he?
Focusing on the smoothly rolling tip of her pen, she endured the hellish two hours. The moment class ended she gathered her pens and workbooks into her arms, while the teacher collected the materials with the sluggish hands of a slug.
“Ji-eon.”
“Yes?”
Ready to say goodbye, she tensed at the greasy upward glance the teacher gave her. He had taken off his glasses and was looking toward the living-room window that was growing dark.
“How about we try tutoring at a café sometimes?”
“Ah…”
She had heard that some students did that, but she had no desire to sit alone with him in a café. Going all the way into town would also take too much effort. She shook her head to refuse, and the disappointment that spread across the teacher’s eyes was ridiculously clear.
“You need to study in places like that too.”
“I’m more comfortable at home.”
“Ji-eon, don’t you want to go to university?”
With her current grades alone she could already aim for top universities. Just as fire was about to light in her eyes at the ridiculous threat, the front door opened.
“Aunt Jeong-su.”
It suddenly felt fortunate that her aunt, who distrusted men to the skies, and her mother were attached as watchers. The aunt who barged in the instant tutoring ended to send the teacher packing used a simple, friendly tone like any close neighborhood auntie whenever outsiders were present.
“You need to eat dinner. Hasn’t the teacher left yet?”
“Ah, yes.”
The teacher, looking sour, merely nodded and walked stiffly toward the front door. Staring at his back as he left with his sneaker laces still untied, the aunt clicked her tongue the moment the door closed.
“What good is studying well? His looks are just…”
“He might hear you.”
“Let him hear. Does he pay? I pay.”
The aunt who fiercely believed in the power of money if nothing else immediately changed her expression and came over. Stroking Ji-eon’s cheek and saying she had worked hard studying, she spoke.
“You just need to study without worrying about a single thing. You know you’re your mother’s dream and your aunt’s hope, right?”
Then the aunt rolled up her sleeves, went into the kitchen, and began inspecting the refrigerator. Grumbling that they never stocked anything useful for side dishes, she pulled out empty containers; her sigh was bitterly sharp.
“If it weren’t for you, would I be living serving that old geezer, serving the adopted sons? You mustn’t get hooked by some tiger-faced bastard the way your mother did. When you go to university you’ll meet them all—all of them. Just endure a little longer.”
Whether she would actually be able to date well even after university was still uncertain. It felt a little unfair that the aunt blamed living as a servant in a rich house and playing stepmother on her. Wasn’t it the aunt who loved expensive clothes and shoes and luxury cars? It didn’t seem like something she should hear from an aunt with gemstone rings dangling on all ten fingers. But because she loved her aunt, Ji-eon folded the legs of the table without a word of complaint and stood up.
“By the way, Ji-eon.”
“Yes, Aunt.”
The aunt, who had been taking out zucchini, tofu, and enoki mushrooms as if she meant to make soybean-paste stew, suddenly looked at her with the face of someone who had just remembered something.
“You know that kid who died of tuberculosis. The Kang family’s son.”
It was about the dead Eui-joo. Leaning the table against the wall, Ji-eon slowed her breathing and stopped moving. She missed the timing and couldn’t even answer.
“I heard his older brother moved nearby. What does he do for a living, going around with that fierce look and ruining the neighborhood atmosphere? Jeju Granny said so.”
Even though she had been cooped up studying all day, her heart pounded like a child caught doing something wrong.
“So? Did that person cause some accident?”
“He will soon enough. Aigoo, if a young person is going to move in, wouldn’t it be better if someone a bit decent and normal came? Of all places, a half-decent-looking thug right around you.”
Chopping green onions—thwack, thwack—the cutting board cried out. The aunt who graded men according to prejudice shook her head. Barely managing to enter the kitchen, Ji-eon opened the refrigerator door and stood there letting the cold air wash over her entire body.
“If you ever see that man, absolutely don’t even speak to him. Don’t greet him even if your eyes meet. Got it?”
Under the aunt’s strict surveillance she couldn’t tell the truth. Saying they had already mixed words, mixed gazes, and knew each other’s personal details would drive the aunt crazy.
“Huh? Yang Ji-eon.”
When there was no answer the aunt put down the knife and planted her hands on her hips. At the increasingly sharp look in her aunt’s eyes, Ji-eon had no choice but to lower her tail.
“Yeees.”
“If you meet a guy like that, a woman’s life is immediately ruined. When you go to university, men with good looks, good families, and good personalities are everywhere.”
Fleeing from the aunt who was still muttering as if her anger hadn’t fully cooled, she ran to her room. She threw herself onto the bed and only stretched out a hand to open the drawer. The corrective chopsticks lying quietly inside made her fingertips shrink back.
Too wasteful to throw away. Giving them away was hung up on her aunt’s words. After thirty minutes of repeated deliberation she decided to slip them secretly into Eui-joo’s family’s mailbox. She muttered as if vowing to sort out her pity and her thoughts about Eui-joo’s older brother, Mr. Kang Eui-tae, with this one act. Because of her friendship with Eui-joo she simply couldn’t be harsh toward men. Praising herself for a satisfactory plan, she set her departure for thirty minutes later.
“Ji-eon!”
Startled by the aunt’s voice desperately calling her from outside, she slammed the drawer shut.
“Yes!”
Running out until the soles of her feet burned, she found the aunt hurriedly putting on shoes, having abandoned the cooking midway.
“Come out and lock the gate. That old geezer keeps looking for me so I have to go. I’ve prepped all the ingredients. Just boil them.”
“Don’t worry about me, Aunt.”
“Lock up well.”
The aunt who ran out with a pale face in short, hurried steps still made sure Ji-eon locked the gate before she left—without knowing that the niece leaning against the closed gate was revising the thirty-minute departure plan to three minutes later. Ji-eon stretched toward the full moon that was proudly displaying a bright smile as if nothing at all were wrong.
Once she simply handed over the chopsticks, sorting out her emotions would become much easier. Steps surging with sudden vitality crossed the yard exactly two minutes later.