Since you’re our guest, maybe you should eat this instead.
No sooner was the offer out than I felt the sharp stares of the other children. My hair stood on end.
No thanks, I like sujebi.
With that, Jaemyung ate a huge spoonful of the rice, and everyone turned back to their own bowls. Rice was a sacred privilege afforded only to the head of the household responsible for keeping the family alive. That image has stayed with me ever since.
*
At my family’s shop, any of the fishcakes that came out of the deep fryer torn or with rounded corners were plucked out with tongs by my father and tossed to one side of the prep table. My father made the dough for the fishcakes, while two older girls who worked at the shop moulded the dough. They scooped just the right amount into shallow, square moulds, smoothed out the top, and gave the moulds a tap to release perfect squares of dough into the hot oil. I marveled at how smooth and mechanical their movements were. The cooked fishcakes would float to the top of the oil, a delicious golden-brown, and my father would scoop them out and place the sellable ones to the left and toss the torn ones to the right. My mother’s job was to count the cakes and either stack them or box them up for orders, and to handle customers. A large fan for cooling the deep-fried fishcakes rattled away all day long.
When my younger brother and I got home from school, we snacked on the torn fishcakes, still warm from the fryer. Once our hunger was sated, we’d laugh and point at each other’s greasy mouths. My mother would wrap up the rest of the torn fishcake from that day and send us out to deliver them to places she owed favours to or anywhere else that she needed to stay on the good side of. That meant places like the tiny shack inhabited by the elderly man who fetched water from the public tap for us and the other vendors in the marketplace, the garbage collectors’ station, the police box, and so on. Every now and then, we delivered fishcake to Jaemyung’s family, too; those days were feasts for the shoeshine boys. Because of that, my brother and I came to have some status in our neighbourhood. Grown-ups would strike up conversation with us first, asking where we were going and whether we were on our way back from school, and whenever one of us showed up on someone’s doorstep right around the time dinner preparations were beginning, the woman of the house would welcome us with a huge smile and tell us how much easier we’d just made her day.
In his spare time, our father filled out government forms for fellow marketplace vendors, as well as for other people in the neighbourhood who’d heard about his skills. I didn’t find out until later, but we were not nicknamed the ‘fishcake house’ as would have been customary, but rather the ‘scholar house’. I was one of the only two high school students in our neighbourhood at the time. The other was Cha Soona, the noodle-house daughter. Her family lived near the public tap, to the left of the first intersection, down the hill from Jaemyung’s house and mine.
Back then, rice was in short supply, and the government was waging a campaign to encourage people to eat more flour and mixed grains. At school, our lunchboxes were inspected daily, and anyone caught bringing white rice had their palms strapped. Flour, donated as food aid by the United States and stamped on each sack with a picture of a handshake, was distributed by the neighbourhood office and eventually found its way into the marketplace. Lunch in every home consisted of sujebi, knife-cut noodles, or banquet noodles — the extra-thin soup noodles that were extruded by machine and so insubstantial that you’d barely even chewed them before they were slipping down your throat. They were called banquet noodles because we used to eat them only on special days, but they were ubiquitous in our neighbourhood since you could prepare them many different ways, including in soup or tossed in a spicy sauce. What made it even better was cooking the noodles in a broth made from meat or anchovy stock with a handful of sliced fishcake. That was as good as a holiday meal for the neighbourhood kids. Of course, my brother and I quickly grew sick of fishcake, but it was still a decent replacement for meat. Fishcakes and noodle soup were the favourites of the people in our neighbourhood.
It hadn’t been long since we’d started selling fishcake, so I’m thinking this was right around the autumn of my second year in high school. My mother had wrapped up the leftover fishcake in newspaper and told me to take it to the noodle house. My heart immediately began to race. I knew Soona and had bumped into her several times on the way to and from school. You’d have to be new to the neighbourhood or possibly intellectually disabled to be a teenager living there and not know Soona. Besides, her house was right in front of the tap, where everyone in the neighbourhood got their water. The sight of her, walking down the market street to the bus stop every morning in her school uniform, the white collar stiffly ironed, her hair in two long braids, was like sighting a single white crane in the middle of a disaster area. She was beautiful, eye-catching even at a distance. She had these big eyes, fair skin, a pretty nose, and a certain primness in her expression. A smile is nice, but the truth is, it’s the girls who seem a little coy and standoffish, the unapproachable girls, that really drive boys crazy. That was Jjaekkan’s take, Jaemyeong’s opinion, and my feeling, too. None of us ever let on, but we were all in love with Soona.
I wrapped up the fishcake and rushed toward the public tap in my excitement, but I slowed as I got closer. For some reason, I suddenly felt ashamed of the fishcake wrapped in newspaper. I felt like everyone standing near the tap would take one look at the grease stains on the paper and know what I was carrying. Overwhelmed by a sense of inferiority, I muttered to myself, That’s the best you can do? Just this leftover fishcake? I arrived at her house. It had a square sign over it that said ‘Noodles’ and a piece of paper taped to the glass door that said, ‘We sell noodle soup.’ I assumed the neat handwriting belonged to her.
The door opened onto a large room with a noodle machine; a belt and pulley system kept it turning. Outside, a drying rack as high as the courtyard wall was covered with noodles. Whenever I walked past the public tap, I could see them taking noodles off the rack and hanging new ones. Just inside the door, to the right, were bundles of dried noodles, wrapped in paper and stacked on a mat. I’d been there before to buy those very bundles.
I opened the door and stepped inside, but no one was around. I called out to see if anyone was home, and Soona stuck her head out of a door further in. She nodded, as if she recognised me. She came out to greet me and picked up one of the bundles of noodles. I caught a scent of something sweet.
Uh, I said, I didn’t come to buy noodles … Here.
She immediately recognised the package of fishcakes.
Oh, delicious!
She smiled at me, the straight line of her teeth showing through her lips. That smile was like a punch to the chest. My chest ached and I felt breathless.
Thank you, she said.
I had nothing to say in return so I turned to leave, but she stopped me.
Wait, please take this in exchange.
She offered me the noodles again. I took them without thinking and regretted it the moment I was out the door. Since it wasn’t offered to me by her parents, I should have refused. But how could I say no to her? I tucked the noodles under my arm and ran home for fear of being seen, my face bright red the whole way.
To me, high school girls were creatures I saw all the time on the bus to and from school, but for the kids of the neighbourhood who couldn’t afford to go to school, they must have looked like unclimbable trees. Once, I’d dropped by Jaemyung’s house in my school uniform, and bumped into Myosoon as she was coming out of the kitchen.
Oh, my! Minwoo, you’re so handsome! Look at that uniform. You look like something out of a movie.
And this part I still remember like it was yesterday: I knew then that they would all be out of my life one day soon. That was why, deep down, I believed I had to do right by them, no matter what. I suppose I’d been feeling that way ever since I’d first met Jjaekkan and his shoesh
ine boys.
*
Jaemyung had the corner on the best spots in town for his shoeshine stands; his territory was highly coveted. Clever, skillful Jaemyung ran the stands well. He befriended the manager of the Hyundae Theatre, who painted the movie posters, and the projectionist, and later, with their help, negotiated the rights to the space out front with the theatre owner, paying him a lump sum as street tax. Every neighbourhood had its share of gangs, but Jaemyung had fought to establish his place in the pecking order from the get-go, and had earned their respect. Though the ‘Three-way Intersection Gang’ across the street was the strongest, they were all friends of friends, so they left him alone.
The second location, in front of Manseok Grill House, was in the alley next to the theatre. Jaemyung and his boys had taken turns keeping the restaurant clean both inside and out and shooing away peddlers and panhandlers, for which they naturally earned the right to set up shop outside. As for Hometown Coffeeshop, that was right at the entrance to the Moon Hollow marketplace, on the first floor of a three-storey building. The location was great, and it was always bustling with customers since there were plenty of passers-by. But being right on the main street made it a little hard to set up a shoeshine stand directly outside. So Jaemyung set up shop in an alley nearby instead, complete with a tarp roof, like a food cart. Jaemyung spent most of his time in front of Hyundae Theatre and kept an eye on the Grill House, while Jjaekkan took three of the boys with him to work at the Hometown Coffeeshop location. Thanks to Jaemyung, I was able to see all the good movies for free at the Hyundae. All he had to do was nod to the ticket taker while giving me a little shove through the entrance, and I was in.
One day a fight broke out at Hometown. Jjaekkan was cleaning shoes with the ddaksae, when the jjiksae he’d sent to fetch shoes from the coffeeshop came back with a busted lip. Some newcomers had set up chairs right outside the coffeeshop and were shining shoes. They’d stopped the jjiksae from even entering the coffeeshop and had thrashed him right in the doorway. The ddaksae boys were ready to rush right over, but Jjaekkan stopped them and went to see for himself. Just as the runner had said, two chairs had been set up for receiving customers, and there were several pair of shoes that had been fetched from customers inside the coffeeshop. Three boys were squatting on the ground, cleaning the shoes. Jjaekkan approached them. But he did not waste his time with asking where they had come from or who told them to work there, or with warning them that the spot was taken.
You beat my kid? was all he said.
One of the boys, who was even shorter and stouter than little Jjaekkan, scowled until a deep furrow formed on his brow, and stood.
Find somewhere else to work, he said. This is our turf now.
Jjaekkan was so dumbfounded that all he could say in return was, Since when?
We got permission from the building owner, the boy said arrogantly.
Jjaekkan chuckled and turned to leave. He knew all too well how Jaemyung handled kids like these, so he didn’t bother dealing with him head-on.
It took Jaemyung and Jjaekkan less than a day to find out who the kid was. The kid’s nickname was ‘Tomak’, which meant ‘stump’, and he was one year younger than Jjaekkan, which made him the same age as me. He’d moved there two months earlier from another neighbourhood in the shadow of the mountains. It was right across from ours, so he knew some of the kids in the Three-way Intersection Gang already. They said he was a black belt in taekwondo. A taekwondo studio had opened on the second floor of the Hometown Coffeeshop building just a few months earlier. The master was a third-degree black belt, about three or four years older than Jaemyung. Tomak was teaching taekwondo to younger kids there as well. That was how he’d recruited several of them to work at his shoeshine stands so he could make money on the side. Jaemyung came to an immediate decision.
Fuck it. Drop the coffeehouse.
What? Are you crazy?
Jjaekkan was livid. I couldn’t help butting in either.
That’s a bad idea, I said. Word will get out that he pushed you around.
There’s no point in rushing this, Jaemyung said. Jjaekkan, starting tomorrow, collect shoes from the other shops near the three-way intersection.
We were unhappy about it but didn’t argue with him. When there was no return fire, Tomak grew even bolder and came to Jjaekkan’s new location to extort whatever coins he could take from the ddaksae. Finally, Jjaekkan blew up at Jaemyung.
What’re you, scared? If we say nothing, we’ll get eaten alive.
The children of Moon Hollow all knew better than to cross Jaemyung, and the power he held had earned him the prime spots along the main road. But with Tomak’s appearance, the power balance shifted, and gangs of younger kids, seven or eight at a time, began to circle. I’d been around my share of slum children while living outside Dongdaemun and in Moon Hollow. They pretty much raised themselves. They would drop out of school early and gang up to work as street peddlers or thieves, and when they got a little bit older, they went to work in factories. Most left home permanently when it was time to do their military service.
As luck would have it, Jaesup came home just a few months later and heard all about the changes to the neighbourhood from Jjaekkan. The second Jaemyung got home from shining shoes, Jaesup grilled him about it.
I’m just trying to stay out of trouble, Jaemyung protested. A taekwondo master won’t be easy to beat, so I’m biding my time.
Are you kidding me? Are you not Jaemyung, younger brother of Supsup? What’d you study all that hapkido, judo, and boxing for? How do you expect to make a living this way? We’re going there first thing tomorrow and ripping him a new one.
The next day, the two brothers took three of the older ddaksae boys with them and headed downhill to the market. When they got to Hometown Coffeeshop, the shoeshine boys out front told them that Tomak was in the middle of teaching a beginners’ taekwondo class. They all ran upstairs. The master had left Tomak in charge and was out running errands. The ddaksae ignored Tomak, who was in the middle of barking out a series of hi-yah!s, and chased the students out of the room.
Nice to finally meet you, arsehole.
As Jaemyung clenched his fists, Tomak assumed an attack position, sliding his feet into place.
Let’s get this over with.
Look at you! Trying to act tough.
Jaemyung ducked to avoid Tomak’s roundhouse kick and socked him hard in the side and twice on the jaw. Tomak fell.
So much for your black belt. Get up, you little shit.
Jaemyung hauled Tomak up by the collar and punched him in the stomach with a right hook. Tomak curled up like a shrimp and writhed on the floor. The whole time, Jaesup was tearing the mirrors off the wall and smashing picture frames and whatever else he could find. Jaemyung finished with a warning.
I hear you ripped off my boys? I’ve been trying to look the other way, but no more. I know where you live. I know where your dad works. I’m nice, so I’ll let you have the coffeehouse. But if you take so much as one step away from there, I will ruin you. So watch it.
They left Tomak curled up on the broken glass and left. They figured the master would come looking for them as soon as he saw what had happened.
Up the main road through the centre of town and past the intersection near my house, the paved road ended and split into two paths, one of which was the stone staircase. The other path wound around, leading eventually to the top of the hill, but the staircase went straight up to the peak. Right before the peak was a clearing where someone had tried to put in a planted field but gave up. From there, you could see the whole neighbourhood and beyond, all the way down to City Hall. In some spots, you could even see some of the new alleyways and right into people’s yards. The top of the hill was frequented by everyone, young and old alike, but this abandoned field was ours alone. We assumed Tomak would know where to find us. When the sun was on the verge of
sinking, the lookout warned us that they were coming. Jaesup and Jaemyung sat at a janggi board, while the rest of us stood around. Tomak was the first to appear along the path, followed by his muscular taekwondo master.
Who did it? Which of you arseholes smashed up my studio?
Jaesup waved him over.
You’re the master? Come sit with me.
Jaemyung stood to clear a spot for him. Tomak’s master didn’t hesitate, despite the rest of us standing there. He walked straight over. Jaesup remained seated at the janggi board.
I don’t mind fighting you, but hear me out first.
The master was red in the face, fists clenched, as if ready to rush at him that second.
We don’t need to talk, arsehole.
As he took a step closer, Jaesup waved his arms.
At Dusk Page 5