Runner-up's Revenge

Dahye couldn’t hear the music coming from the store’s loudspeakers over the ringing in her ears. She almost felt as though she was submerged underwater, and the ringing was a warning signal.

What is that?

Dahye snapped to attention at the thud of Dowon’s fist smashing into the countertop. Freed from the watery haze, Dahye finally took a proper look at Dowon. What she saw wasn’t the usual Dowon, standing with his head down and shoulders slumped.

He was glaring at her.

She’d heard what to do in a situation like this. Or rather, what not to do. She knew you shouldn’t tell people who express suicidal thoughts to cheer up. If someone was still alive because they couldn’t find the willpower to die, you shouldn’t give them motivation. The first thing they do is attempt suicide.

Dowon was glowering at Dahye with bloodshot eyes, as if on the precipice of some important decision. Dahye curled her fingers into her damp palms tightly. She was scared of this wild expression she’d never seen on Dowon’s face.

Only the deep hum of the refrigerator filled the air around them. Dahye’s jaw felt welded shut. No clever words came to her. She couldn’t even spit out a sigh.

Maybe… Have I driven Dowon to the edge of a cliff?

Dahye squeezed her eyes shut and finally opened her mouth.

“You—”

“I’m sorry.”

She opened her eyes in shock. What she saw was the familiar Dowon, head down, shoulders sagging.

“I’m sorry for getting angry for no reason. Things have been tough lately.”

As if all of it had been a dream, Dowon was once again apologizing with his head bowed.

***

Dowon had heard, for people who didn’t know where their life went wrong, there was still hope. Conversely, in cases where one could pinpoint exactly where life went wrong, it was hard to turn things around.

Perhaps the latter was not just speculation, but cases where people truly knew they were too far gone.

Dowon clearly knew the point where he had gone wrong. He even knew the reason why. He knew everything, including how every small mistake had snowballed until they were large enough to crush him. He just didn’t know how to get back on the right path.

His eyes stung. Thinking of school, employment, Mom, and just everything sent his heart plummeting to his feet. His chest felt tight and painful, as if enormous claws were closed around it. Like some monstrous creature had seized him and was shaking him side to side, telling him to fall to his death. Yet his mind was clear, which made it all the more painful.

It was horrid how he’d just tried to blame these cascading dominoes on Dahye. She was just a stone that had fallen off the snowball he himself had rolled. Is it really the stone’s fault if you trip over it? It was Dowon’s fault. All of this was his own fault.

Every time he repeated that thought, he broke out in a cold sweat and his heart thundered in his ears.

“Can I have four scones to go?”

So, in light of the encroaching darkness, Dowon bought Hana’s favorite snack and headed to her house. He thought he might feel a little better if he made Hana happy. He opened the door to Hana’s house, holding the white box with the scones.

“Hana, I got you scones.”

He took off his shoes and peered inside. The lights were off.

“Hana, are you sleeping?”

Fluorescent light leaked from Hana’s half-open door. She couldn’t be sleeping if the light was on. But, if she wasn’t sleeping, she would answer. Something felt off.

“Hana.”

Something must have happened.

“Hana!”

Dowon dropped the scone box by the sink and opened the door to Hana’s room. He heard her sobbing before he saw her.

“You—Why did you take this out?”

Hana’s face was buried in her knees, and her hands clutched the back of her head as if she didn’t want to risk looking up again.

At Hana’s feet was a synthesizer. It was the instrument she had cherished most, a gift she received when she was immersed in music.

“Hana, I’ll put this back. But first—”

“No—”

Hana shook her head, trembling. She refused to show her face, now clinging to her knees as if she would die if she moved.

“Hana Baek, let me see your legs.”

He had a bad feeling. He grabbed Hana’s hands and wrestled them away from her knees.

Hana’s thighs, which fell limply to the side, were covered with scarlet slashes. Half had hardened to a dark red, dried with time, but half still oozed blood.

“…Why did you do this?”

Hana’s only answer was her continued sobs

Dowon took a deep breath. “I’ll put this back for now.”

Hana had deliberately taken out the synthesizer and looked at it while she cut herself. The streaks of red were packed close together, barely leaving any undamaged skin between them. Dowon put the synthesizer on a high shelf in the closet where Hana couldn’t see it. Then he brought a wet towel. The crusted blood didn’t wipe away easily.

“I told you not to take it out anymore,” he chastised her gently. “Did something happen today?”

Still, she didn’t speak.

“Hana Baek.”

Hana seemed unable to do anything other than cry. She didn’t answer, nor did she look at Dowon. He tried to comfort her while wiping the blood from her skin as the cuts continued to run red.

“Hana, do you want some scones? I bought them from the place you like. The caramel flavor is always sold out, right? But today there was one left—”

“I don’t need it…” she whispered.

He took Hana’s hand and cleaned the blood from it. He glanced at the bedside table. It seemed she had taken today’s meds. Either the medication wasn’t effective, or Hana had spent the day staring into space, sinking into depression.

“I don’t need it…” she repeated. “I don’t need anything…”

It seemed that Hana just wanted to wither away and die. After he’d managed to clean up her legs, Dowon laid her down on the bed. He thought it was best to let her sleep.

Hana closed her eyes, lying on the bed listlessly. After staring at her eyelashes for a while, he headed to the sink. He looked down at the scone box, wide open from being dropped.

Then, he left Hana’s house.

A noise of disbelief huffed from his throat.

Nothing was going right. He didn’t want to be anywhere. Walking aimlessly through the streets wouldn’t change anything, but he felt he would suffocate to death if he stayed in a space that reminded him of reality.

He knew that misfortune always brought its own entourage. That was why Dowon’s twenties felt like they had been deliberately marred, as if someone had put in the effort to tarnish them. However, he had also heard that joy comes at the end of suffering.

At 27, it was hard to tell what kind of joy would come to Dowon, if it would come at all. Could it be that the joy at the end of suffering was simply the courage to end it all, to die without any regrets and put a stop to the overwhelming pain?

Even if his life were just some TV show he was watching, he wouldn’t enjoy it. He just wanted to end it quickly.

If the world was desperately telling him to die, he wanted to obey. He didn’t want to stubbornly weather the storm when he was being pushed like this. He wanted to fall like flowing water, using the excuse that it wasn’t his will.

Who on earth could he express these feelings to? Going through it alone was even more painful. Classmates? Friends? His boss? Hana? Family? None of those options made sense.

Yet paradoxically, he couldn’t die because of those people. It wasn’t a protagonist-like thought of staying alive for their sake. Those people clutched the strand of his life in their fists. With them in mind, he couldn’t even die peacefully.

If he died, his classmates would laugh, and his mother would struggle with debt and resent him. Hana… What would happen to her without him? Would she starve to death?

“This is really fucking shitty…”

Even calling it shitty was an understatement. Dowon thought it would be nice if a passing car simply crushed him. Rather than being a stupid late-twenties guy who committed suicide because he couldn’t bear the shame and embarrassment of his existence, it seemed better to perish as a young man who had lived diligently, but sadly lost his life too soon.

And so, his eyes flitted toward the road.

“Looks nice…”

He could see a family chatting and laughing in the backseat of a passing car with the window down. Based on the snippets of conversation, they’d had dinner together to celebrate something. Dowon found it hard to gauge how many years it had been since he had dinner with his family to commemorate something.

By the roadside, office workers who appeared to have finished a company dinner were parting ways, waving to each other with tipsy smiles. Dowon thought of Dahye. He thought of Dahye having dinner with her fellow admirable employees of Hanban Bank.

He thought of Dahye handing out her business card without hesitation. He thought of Dahye talking about how great it was to work at Hanban Bank. He thought of Dahye comfortably enjoying the results of sleepless school nights. He thought of Dahye stepping into Hanban Bank for the first time.

He didn’t even feel envious. Those were things Dowon could never enjoy.

Dowon entered the convenience store in front of him and bought a bottle of soju. Then he went home, lay down without even taking a shower, and drank the soju straight from the bottle.

He deliberately didn’t turn on the lights. In this world where everyone except him was happy, he didn’t want to even be seen in the window. The TV’s light illuminated Dowon’s face with a bluish glow.

He thought he wanted to do things his way, at least at the end.

***

“Why vent your anger…”

If she closed her eyes and focused, Dowon’s face floated around behind her eyes like an afterimage. Dahye pressed her fingers to her eyes and massaged them. It must be a side effect of exhaustion.

Dowon had looked so weak as if he would die if even a finger was laid on him. It seemed like, if she had uttered even a word, he might have stabbed himself in the throat with the box cutter she’d seen in the pencil holder beside the register. Dahye couldn’t unsee the terror that had been in those fierce eyes.

“Damn, why are you doing this?”

It wasn’t like she told him to kill himself. Of course not. Dahye just wanted a little payback. That must have been why he apologized; he knew, deep down, that he was at fault. That all of this was not Dahye being irrational, but rather the karma Dowon had built up.

“Why is he being so intense about it?”

But if Dowon really was having those dark thoughts, whose fault would it be?

“He’s just a good person,” Hana’s voice echoed.

Dahye kept thinking of the basketball Dowon had thrown back to her.

She found herself unable to sleep at all.

When her alarm went off, Dahye straightened her stiff body and looked out the window at the dim, bluish sky. With bloodshot eyes from her sleepless night, Dahye eventually headed to the pharmacy.

She went to a pharmacy near her office, frequented by many employees and specifically asked for the best option for fatigue recovery. She followed the enthusiastic pharmacist’s recommendation and bought a bottle of expensive vitamins. The price seemed excessive.

“I’m really emptying my wallet because of Dowon Lee.”

She put the vitamins in a shopping bag and headed to the convenience store. Wasn’t there a saying that when you’re depressed and tired, you should clean yourself up, then eat something delicious? She could just hand the bottle over, telling him to take a shower and have some good food.

If Dowon seemed to have recovered a bit, then she could bother him again. After all, you’re supposed to give the carrot before the stick.

“…Where did the part-timer here go?”

“Who? I’m the part-timer…”

Standing behind the convenience store counter was a woman she had never seen before. The stranger glanced over Dahye in confusion, before her gaze fell on the vitamins held in her hand.”

“Who are you looking for?”

“The guy who works at this time… Dowon Lee.”

“Oh, he quit…”

The hand holding the vitamins tensed. She rushed out of the convenience store, yanking out her phone, and selecting Dowon’s contact.

“What are you trying to do now?”

Without even a ring, an automated message played, telling her the number was unavailable.

“Did you just block me?”