Watermelon Ice Cream

“Uh… uh…” I stammered half-formed words as I cast my gaze toward the man. The moment my resistance stopped and my attention drifted elsewhere, the teacher looked back as well. The long shadow sliding past behind the car wiped the expression clean from his face.

“Do you know that guy?”

A black plastic bag hung from the walking man’s wrist. Wearing slippers much like mine, he drifted along the night road with a strangely loose, aimless gait. A man who carried himself as if nothing in the world concerned him was never going to help me.

It was simply that the sudden appearance of the man who haunted my thoughts several times a day felt abrupt and startling. The teacher—who had boasted with his own mouth about his rich dating experience—looked back and forth between the man and me. His eyes narrowed as though he had never expected a young man like that to exist in Chowa-ri. Because I made no special effort to hide that I knew him, the teacher’s suspicion found its confirmation.

“If you keep this up, I’m calling the police.”

“What?”

I had tried to redirect the teacher’s attention, but now that other side became the next problem. Bathed in the headlights, recognizing me would have been child’s play for him. The man who had been turning onto the path beside the rice fields stopped dead.

“What’s with that bastard.”

At the interest of the unfamiliar man who even changed the direction of his feet, the teacher’s shoulders hunched. As he lowered his head and his legs began to tremble, I quietly nodded toward the man—a signal to ignore us and leave.

I did not want two men starting a brawl and becoming the neighborhood’s evening gossip. What I feared more than my own reputation was word reaching my sharp-eared aunt and mother. If I could just get free of the teacher and lock the front gate of the house, everything would be peaceful again.

The man, who seemed to have no intention of meddling, soon continued on his way. The moment he stepped onto the dark country road, the teacher rummaged in his pocket. He pulled out a white cigarette pack and lit it with practiced ease.

His smoking, which paid no regard to the health of a minor, drained away whatever scrap of goodwill I still held. Without hesitation I turned my back on him, and he spoke to it.

“Then let’s just date for one week.”

Just as the looping argument made me feel nauseous, a figure walking from far off gradually grew clearer.

I, who had turned away, and the teacher, who had been improvising nonsense on the spot, both froze solid for an instant.

The man who had passed the bus stop with a leisurely stride looked at my startled face, then at the teacher standing behind me. Though he wore only a casual T-shirt, the pressure of the height difference alone seemed enough to keep the teacher silent. Not knowing why the man had circled all the way back, my own worry was far from small. In that moment he spoke to me with the easy familiarity of someone who had seen me only yesterday.

“Need help?”

His voice, which sounded ready to turn and leave without a second thought if I said no, drifted on the night air. What should I call this—moved, or uncomfortable? A man who seemed as if he would merely snort and walk on even if someone died beside him was asking whether I needed help.

Judging by the way the corners of my mouth rose toward the sky, the weight tipped toward “happy.” Hoping it would serve as an answer, I offered a faint smile. My face was so stiff it was hard to tell whether I was crying or laughing. The man approached slowly and stood beside me.

The gaze that had held both of us narrowed onto one person. A different energy stirred in those eyes that had always looked hazy, as if nothing in the world could rouse him. Even I, who thought I understood his temperament in my own way, felt a chill run down the back of my neck. Under that silent stare the teacher swallowed dryly.

“Um… that… are you Ji-eon’s cousin?”

The teacher who had swaggered when he was far away was now putting distance between us one step at a time of his own accord. The man let the question about being a cousin go in one ear and out the other, merely turning his head this way and that. His eyes, scanning the empty air as if searching for something, soon returned to their starting point. The smile that deepened on his face felt nothing short of dangerous. Whether the teacher felt the same, he began to edge backward little by little.

“Not many eyes watching around here.”

“What?”

“Where do you live.”

Even though the man asked in the most ordinary tone, the teacher bowed his head in greeting and fled. Fists clenched, he ran and yanked open the car door. Through the clear windshield I could see his shoulders heaving. It was the exit of a teacher I would never see again. I muttered under my breath that if I had known he was that timid I should have reported him from the start.

“8328, 8328, 8328…”

Where I turned my eyes, the man was suddenly reciting a four-digit number under his breath. With a creak the teacher backed the car out, climbed onto the road, and floored the accelerator. Wondering whether there was any need to be that frightened, I examined the man’s appearance carefully and something protruding from the black plastic bag caught my eye. Tools—hammer, pliers, that sort of thing—were inside. He had unintentionally threatened the teacher.

I looked again at the face from which all emotion had drained, then at the license plate on the rear of the departing car. What the man was memorizing was the number of the car the teacher had driven away in. This was the moment I ought to thank the man who had not simply passed by but come back for me. Yet my pursed lips awkwardly postponed the words of gratitude. At his unusual reaction my heart, which had been soaring, faltered and hesitated.

The gaze that had followed the fleeing car only dropped once the engine sound faded completely. Even knowing I owed it to him, I felt gratitude and a creeping unease at the same time, torn between the two.

He could not have failed to sense those feelings, yet the man paid them no mind. He simply met my eyes, then turned and went his own way. If anything, had he spoken first I would have grown wary. Because he stepped aside so carefully not to make me uncomfortable, my conscience wavered.

“Excuse me.”

Even when called, the man who gave no answer strode on with long steps, though he might have glanced back once. He turned into a side path where the streetlight meant nothing, widening the distance between us. Wearing heelless slippers that could slip off at the slightest misstep, I launched into a chase.

“Excuse me!”

The man, master of sudden moves, suddenly rummaged inside the black plastic bag he carried. I quickened my pace further and followed him down the side path. As if deliberately luring me, he slowed, then sped up, adjusting his stride and tormenting my insides.

Beads of sweat gathered at the tip of my nose. I was not unaware that this was the direction of his house. What on earth did I mean to say once I caught him? With no plan, no thought, only impulse, my flimsy slippers ended up standing right beside him.

“Um…”

As if he had known all along that I would come, the man drew something from the black plastic bag. Watermelon-flavored ice cream—the kind Eui-joo had loved. Memories I thought had long since faded caught hold of a person once more. Looking at me, who had fallen silent over a single ice cream, the man gave a short snort of laughter.

“This is what Kang Eui-joo used to like.”

“…No.”

“You’re such a fool too.”

With that he handed me the watermelon ice cream and took out a fresh one for himself, putting it in his mouth. I could not even manage a word of reproach toward the somehow annoying man. There had been no real malice in the voice that called me a fool. While we shared the ice cream, his heat-weary feet crossed the threshold of the gate. Whether on purpose or not, he left the door open and went inside.

The open door and the melting ice cream. It looked for all the world like bait set out for me, yet the man’s unhurried air, which seemed to hold no particular design, broke those suspicions of mine.

It was always like that. By the time I came to my senses I was already being swept up in that free wind of his. I had reached the front of the gate, yet I still hesitated over whether to follow him across the threshold.

Light came on in the man’s house, pouring silk-like brightness even into the dark alley. Having switched on the lamp of the wooden veranda, he sat comfortably with one leg stretched out, eating his ice cream. Then he turned on the fan. He lay face-down on the dining table that had been left spread open and began to read a book. I fretted, wondering whether he could even read it properly.

I could not say with certainty what had changed the mind that had only been drawing diagonal lines of indecision. Was it the ordinary electric light, the summer breeze brushing the back of my hand, or the sight of him turning a page once every second? In any case I hopped over someone else’s gate and went in. Around then the man who had been absorbed in reading with an empty ice-cream stick in his mouth also lifted his head.

“You just need to pass the GED, right.”

The rotating fan happened to blow his bangs aside. With his forehead revealed, the fine lines of his face and the bridge of his nose drew even sharper attention. Even seeing me stuck fast against the gate, the man said nothing.

Only when the fan’s neck, having swung the other way, looked as if it might snap did his quiet lips open.

“It’d be good if you help.”

That the man’s house, where he had merely replaced a single light bulb, looked as cozy as before—

made me a little happy.