Healer

It was noon. The eunuch singers who woke up around lunchtime went out to town as soon as they put their spoons down. They relieved the stress of the week with shopping, and undoubtedly believed that luxury goods and expensive items would fill their empty scrotums.

Yaba went to the hairdresser since his hair was caught in his eyebrows. On his way he stopped by a chemical store. Cyanide, acetylcholine, reserpine… These drugs were sold only in trace amounts and had to be bought from place to place. Occasionally, when the drug store owner asked for an ID, he asked a passerby for it. The poisons collected in that way had been a proud amount so far.

At the end of the afternoon, Yaba headed home with his hard-earned medicine in his arms. He walked, staring only at his floor with raised eyes. Yesterday, he sang the brutal aria, and his throat didn’t get any better. It was no use pouring ginger juice and pear juice in succession. Besides, his brain was pounding at the thought of who Cocaine had been singing to in the bathroom.

At the mouth of the village, children were obsessed with spinning the top. Yaba frowned. The stereotype that children were adorable and unstained should be abandoned. Children were dirty and annoying. They were blown away by the belief that everything would be resolved if they cried or laughed. Yaba, who found a cat with a broken internal organs in a car accident, tried to run away from the children.

Then the horn sounded and the children scattered like cockroaches. In the meantime, a black BMW passed by and stopped next to Yaba. The tinted windows went down. Giha was in the driver’s seat, dressed in a sleek suit and even a handkerchief. Imsoo, who was usually attached at the hips with him, was nowhere to be seen. Kang Giha’s unexpected visit caused the scrotums of eunuchs to shrink. Kang Giha asked with a cool expression.

“What are you doing there?”

“Can’t you see? I’m walking.”

“If you are going to the dorm, get on.”

“No.”

Yaba walked straight ahead. The car was the most dangerous thing in the world. Too many Koreans don’t know that people are more likely to die in a car than in a bed. A black car followed behind.

“Why is your voice like that?”

“What?”

“I told you to practise in advance. Squeezing out a sound with an instrument that hasn’t been oiled is of course going to ruin it. Do you want to walk around without a coat on this cold day? Don’t talk and get on.”

People who were fat and flesh like this had no way of feeling the dullness of the cold. Now, the condition of his throat was poor, so it was cumbersome to respond. But Kang Giha was persistent.

“While walking like that, you could get hit by a falling flower pot or water splash.”

“…”

Yaba stopped. He hadn’t even thought of that. Yaba averted his eyes and looked to the left and right, then scrambled to get into the backseat of his car. The warm air melted the frozen fat. Kang Giha said in a low voice.

“Why are you sitting there?”

“I used to sit here.”

“Come forward.”

“No.”

Kang Giha’s eyebrows twitched.

“Come forward. Am I your chauffeur?”

“A person who defends is a lawyer, and a person who heals is a doctor. A driver is a driver. If you don’t want to be a driver, you can give Imsoo the steering wheel and become the boss. If you keep picking a fight, I will get off.”

Kang Giha stared at him fiercely, then smirked and laughed unpleasantly. It made him feel nauseous. The BMW started off with a soft engine sound.

“Belt.”

The kind of person Kang Giha was… Usually, he was willing to comply with Yaba’s requests. After ten years of repeated rebellion, oppression, and even stronger rebellion, it was Kang Giha who gave up. Yaba glanced at Kang Giha’s side profile. Usually, 3 or 4 days of hatching were sufficient. It had been a while since the bugs had been transferred to Kang Giha’s jaw, but there was still no sign of them. It must have been that the worm eggs were killed by his vicious blood.

“Stop it.”

Kang Giha said abruptly. He was entangled with sharp eyes trapped in the rearview mirror.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

Perhaps Yaba thought he had the so-called ‘eyes you want to sting’. Yaba stared at him with his mouth tightly shut. After having a stare-down for quite some time, Kang Giha looked ahead.

“What do you think? Is the work going well?”

“So-so.”

That was a lie. Every day he waited for that time, and as the time for Cha Yiseok to pick him up drew near, his heart was pounding to the point of becoming powder. He rarely even felt that he was alive. But now it seemed that he couldn’t say that. Kang Giha pulled something from the inside pocket of his suit and stretched out his hand behind him. It was an antidepressant.

“Take it. I brought it because I thought you’d have none by today.”

Yaba looked at the medicine from afar. The medicine was always brought by Kang Giha. Why did Kang Giha do such troublesome things and get medicine? Why on earth? Since when? He became curious about something he had never wondered before.

“Since when have I been taking this medicine?”

“It was about two years ago.”

“Why?”

Kang Giha’s face changed strangely.

“Why are you asking that again?”

“Don’t ask me why I’m asking, just answer me.”

Kang Giha’s expressionless but complicated face caught his heart.

“I fed it to you to save you. That’s all I know.”

After Giha gave his answer, he focused on driving. He was a human who could not use the tool of language to any useful purpose. It was only natural that fists and knives would be the most fluent conversational methods. Yaba randomly shoved the medicine into the back pocket of his pants. As he turned the corner and saw the dorm, he opened his mouth.

“I’m saying this in case you say the wrong thing, but know that Executive Director Cha and Cha Myunghwan are half-brothers.”

“Don’t they have the same mother?”

This was news to Yaba. He wondered why Cha Yiseok was trying to kill his brother, and why he simply referred to his father as the one who provided the sperm, but he just thought he was just like that.

“Cha Myunghwan was born to Chairman Cha’s second wife. Chairman Cha has been dating her since college, strictly speaking he had no other lovers, but her family background was not good, so there was a lot of opposition. In the end, Chairman Cha was forcibly married to a gorgeous woman from a political family, and had two daughters along with Executive Director Cha. Now, only the Director Cha remains.”

“Why?”

“Well, I don’t know about that. The family was in a mess with the girls. Both of Cha’s sisters died very badly in the same year. I don’t know if Chairman Cha made it that way, or if that’s why he turned his attention away.”

“How… It’s such a mess?”

It was more surprising than the fact that Cha Myunghwan wasn’t his real brother. Kang Giha glanced behind him.

“After getting married, Director Cha’s mother was apparently alcoholic and almost went to the hospital. However, information about Director Cha’s older sisters was more unknown. It was probably about 10 years ago. The eldest sister tried to marry an ordinary office worker, but after he met the opposition of the Chairman Cha, she committed suicide by poisoning. But after she died, it was revealed that she was six months pregnant. At that time, the kid’s father came to the Taeryung group’s office and even wielded a knife and it was chaotic. The second older sister was originally mentally ill and was a troublemaker in the family, but after it was found out that the first died, and less than a year later the second died in the alley in front of his house. And naked in the middle of winter. At that time, the Taeryung family was pouring out money to block the media.”

He continued, turning the steering wheel smoothly.

“But Chairman Cha never showed up to the funeral of his daughters.”

It was a surprise when the ancient ruins were excavated in the open fields. At some point, Yaba has stopped breathing with his eyes wide open. A feeling rushed through his tight chest. Yaba buried himself in the soft seat and leaned his forehead against the window. He whispered so that only he could hear it.

“So did my mother…”

On a cold winter night, his mother froze to death with only her underwear on. Just as the frozen body was taken away by his mother’s beauty, so the sister must have been beautiful enough to enchant the frozen body.

Outward lustre and destitute eyes… Cha Yiseok was walking in a world out of balance every day. His 20s were stained by the betrayal of his blood. So he looked so precarious. Like him who had his testicles stolen… Yaba wrapped his arms around him and closed his eyes. He wanted to see him soon. He couldn’t wait to meet him, and longed to take another deep look into those dry eyes. If possible, he wanted to sing a lullaby to his twisted eyes.