Chapter 68

Dinner time soon arrived. I stepped outside in response to someone calling my name and headed toward the kitchen. There was no problem since Madame had given me a brief tour of the house before taking me to her room earlier.

“Oh my, your clothes….”

The dining table was set neatly, but Jae-Ah had not yet come down, and Professor Seo was already seated. The moment Madame saw me, she mentioned my clothes, and I momentarily wondered if I had done something wrong and looked down at myself.

“Is it okay to dress like that? Aren’t you uncomfortable?”

“Pardon? Ah, it’s fine.”

I didn’t quite understand what could be uncomfortable, but it seemed that Madame thought I looked misplaced in my clothes inside the house.

“Come to me after dinner. I think there are some comfortable clothes left at home.”

“What kind of clothes? Just sit down.”

Fortunately, Professor Seo interrupted at an appropriate moment. I awkwardly took my seat, and soon Jae-Ah came down and sat down as well. Without a word, Professor Seo began to serve rice first, and seeing that, I said “I will eat well” and started my meal.

Of course, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t greet or eat like this, but given that I was in someone else’s home, I couldn’t disregard such manners. However, since neither Professor Seo nor Jae-Ah did so, it seemed that this wasn’t actually part of their household etiquette.

Seeing me, Madame chuckled slightly, which made me feel a bit embarrassed.

It wasn’t mere boasting that they were good at cooking; indeed, all the food was delicious. Recently, I had been eating almost solely on instant meals and couldn’t eat the whole day, so I hurriedly began to eat. And then, I even made a request that I would normally never make.

“Um, I’m sorry, but could you give me a little more rice…?”

“Oh my, was it that delicious? It’s nice to see you eating well. I’ll bring some more.”

A proper meal after such a long time warmed my insides. I couldn’t say that I was without shame, but my hunger outweighed it. Madame gladly fulfilled my request, and in the end, I devoured two bowls of rice.

“Thank you for the meal.”

While Professor Seo and Jae-Ah had already finished and left, I stayed at the table with Madame until the end. It was natural, not only because I had eaten two bowls but also because it wasn’t polite to be the first to leave.

As I carried my empty bowl and utensils to the sink, Madame commented,

“Oh my, you’re so polite. Jae-Ah doesn’t even bring her own things back.”

What should I say in response to such remarks about her child? Sadly, I lacked the social skills to answer these high-level questions. I had no choice but to awkwardly smile and let it pass in silence.

When I exited the kitchen, a spacious living room was immediately visible, but no one was there. It seemed both Professor Seo and Jae-Ah had gone into their rooms. The eldest daughter lived in a hospital dormitory, while the second daughter was out studying.

As I pondered whether I should return to my room, I spotted Jae-Ah coming down from upstairs.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, just.”

“Want to come to my room?”

“Shall I?”

Following Jae-Ah’s suggestion, I visited her room upstairs. Regardless of today’s circumstances, I would eventually need to go in again to resume tutoring later. Once I stepped inside her room, the first thing that caught my eye was the huge number of books on the shelf.

What surprised me was different; it was commendable that she read a lot, of course. However, almost all the books on Jae-Ah’s shelf were… light novels. More precisely, manga and light novels… in any case, they were all books that belonged to the subculture.

“There are a lot of books…”

“I’ve been collecting them since I was young.”

“Well, does the professor say anything about this?”

I knew what she was asking.

“Of course, he dislikes it. But he thinks it’s still better than not reading at all. You can’t see it, but there are other books in the back shelf.”

“There are more books back here…? I envy that.”

There is always a lack of space for books. Once a certain amount of books piled up, the ones I didn’t read often needed to be packed away in boxes, making that feeling even more pronounced.

Anyway, I was briefly distracted by the bookshelf. Jae-Ah’s room was really ordinary. There was nothing particularly noteworthy. It was quite spacious, but aside from the bed, desk, bookshelf, wardrobe, and drawers, there wasn’t much else.

I sat down on Jae-Ah’s bed without much thought. The bed looked quite expensive. I had rarely slept on a soft bed since I was a child, so I had a slight fondness for beds. While there was a small, uncomfortable bed at the orphanage, I hadn’t had anything since becoming independent.

Sitting on the bed, I placed my hands on it and swung my body up and down. It definitely looked like a comfortable and soft bed.

“What are you looking at?”

“…Oh, nothing. Just not anything.”

After giving Jae-Ah, who looked at me with a somewhat ambiguous expression, a playful jab on the head, I picked up a pillow lying on the bed and hugged it, laying down sideways.

“Haah.”

“What’s with the sigh?”

“I’m just a bit tired.”

Time passed, and while I stabilized a little, my condition still wasn’t good. For now, I had resolved to run away from that house, but simply fleeing like this wasn’t the end of things.

“What are you going to do about tutoring? Are you really going to do it?”

“I don’t know… Honestly, I don’t have the confidence to tutor right now.”

“Then, it’s fine.”

Since she had deemed it to be so, I thought I’d slack off for a while. While Professor Seo had said the same, he probably wouldn’t truly expect me to tutor in this situation.

As I rolled around on the bed, I reached out to the bookshelf right next to me. The shelf was filled with manga; while I recognized about half of them, the other half were unfamiliar to me.

The number of manga I had actually seen was very small because I didn’t have the leisure to read them, but more than that, I felt a personal aversion towards them a bit more strongly.

“Shonen manga is strange.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, orphans, you see, it’s harder for them not to get bullied at school than for someone else. Since my personality isn’t exactly the best, it made it worse.”

“…It seems like a really difficult topic to answer suddenly.”

“It’s fine. Anyway, since I have a bad personality, I dealt with it in my own way. Usually, it was other kids in the orphanage who got bullied, not me.”

“How is that related to shonen manga?”

“The themes you usually find in shonen manga are like that. Friendship, effort, victory, good vs. evil. Sometimes there’s manga where the protagonist gets bullied. But you know, when I see teenagers who love such manga doing the same bullying, I feel a bit disillusioned. I just can’t understand it.”

“I don’t think that’s the fault of shonen manga.”

“Well, maybe not. It’s just my little discomfort that doesn’t mean much.”

I know it wasn’t a rational feeling. But when it came to people’s likes and dislikes, it wasn’t decided solely by rationality. Because of this very unreasonable little discomfort of mine, I didn’t particularly like shonen manga. Perhaps it was because I had realized long ago that the world doesn’t flow like a beautiful story from shonen manga.

I randomly picked a manga I didn’t know at all and started reading it. It was a manga I had never seen, and it seemed to be pretty old, as the art style was quite rough. While I was reading the manga, Jae-Ah was on the computer doing something as time passed, and then I heard a knock on the door.

“Knock knock~”

“Come in!”

Jae-Ah responded to Madame’s voice. It seemed she didn’t treat her mother with formal language. As Madame entered the room, I reflexively stood up from the bed.

In Madame’s hands were a plate with apples and two forks. After placing the plate on the desk, she spoke to me.

“Um, Seol-guk? Is it okay if I call you that? Would you like to come with me for a moment?”

“Oh, you can call me however you like.”

Following her call, I left the room with Madame. She led me to a room in the corner on the second floor. Not understanding the purpose of the visit, I was puzzled when she showed me a box filled with children’s clothes.

“What’s this…?”

“These belong to Eun-seo and Eun-a, and oh, Jae-Ah too. They’re clothes they wore when they were younger. I thought it’d be nice if there were some casual clothes to wear comfortably while spending a few days at our house. What do you think?”

Although she referred to them as children’s clothes for convenience, they weren’t designed to be that childish. They were just ordinary, unremarkable clothes. However, of course, they were clothes that Jae-Ah’s sisters had worn, so most of what was visible in the box was women’s clothing, and there weren’t any clothes suitable for a boy.

How should I decline this offer? After all, it wouldn’t be polite to refuse the kindness presented by the lady of the house when I was staying there. Especially since it was a suggestion stemming from pure goodwill. Conscientiously, it felt difficult to refuse.

“Since they’re all clothes no one wears anyway, they were just sitting in storage. If you like them, feel free to take what you want. How about pajamas… how about this one?”

Madame said this as she pulled out a pair of pajamas in a chick color. It was similar in color to what I had worn at Ji Kang-hyeon’s house.

“Um, yes. I think it looks fine.”

I had no choice but to accept Madame’s proposal helplessly. I had explicitly declined the offer of other clothes, but it seemed it didn’t quite sink in.

While Madame left the room for a moment, I changed into the pajamas, and while they were definitely comfortable, at the same time, they felt a bit uncomfortable.

“Oh my, so cute.”

At Madame’s remark as she returned to the room, my face involuntarily turned slightly red. It was embarrassing, but it felt difficult to openly express displeasure. While I silently hung my head, Madame suddenly lifted the box high.

“I’ll wash these and keep them in the guest room. If you need or like any of the clothes, feel free to take them.”

“There’s really no need…”

“It’s okay. Don’t decline.”

Before I could properly refuse, Madame left the room just like that. Left behind, I let out a deep sigh and stood there for a moment.

I hadn’t realized it before, but I somehow found it a bit difficult to talk properly with middle-aged women. It had been the same with Seomun-sook. I had some idea of why that was.

For me, women never held a positive image. However, there were two categories that slightly faded that image: children and mothers.

Young children had not yet become women, and the existence of a mother felt like a part that was challenging to touch, akin to a wound for me. It felt like the aversion I consciously felt was slightly distancing itself.

From the fact that they had given birth to children and raised them without abandoning them, I found it difficult to criticize them. They were not my mother.

Of course, they were still women, but at the very least, they were useful women who had fulfilled their obligations. Is it a sin to be inferior and foolish by nature? It could be a source of aversion, but it couldn’t be original sin.

Perhaps…

No, saying perhaps held no meaning.

As I shook off the strange thoughts I had briefly entertained, I returned to Jae-Ah’s room.

Seeing me, Jae-Ah burst out laughing when she saw the pajamas I was wearing, and I lightly hit her on the head before picking the manga I had previously been reading back up.