“Mr. Hong, get in,” Yang Guman called out just as Junshik stepped out of the school building. He was holding the car door open. The dean of the first-year teachers was in the driver’s seat, and through the rear window, Junshik could see the back of Kim Dongho’s thick neck. He climbed in next to him and the car drove off.
“Everyone else already left?” asked the dean.
“Of course! You can miss other things, but not a meal with colleagues. There’s a rumor that you were going to give out our holiday bonuses at dinner. I hope it’s true.”
“Holiday bonuses for the teaching staff? Why, you’re paid even during vacation time…”
“Oh, you’re playing innocent again. How many days do we actually take off from work during school breaks? And we have to sweat it out in the heat to come in and teach extra classes.”
“What’s the point in staying home doing nothing when you can teach the kids at least one more thing!” Kim suddenly exclaimed. Everyone burst out laughing because he was just repeating the words of the principal.
“Thanks to your dedication, most of our students signed up for the supplementary courses over their summer break,” the dean said, after they’d finished their meal at the Japanese restaurant where they had gathered. The ten first-year teachers, all present, were seated in a circle in front of him.
“I’m not saying that because I’m the dean, but in my opinion, we should make those summer courses mandatory if necessary. I know some of you are thinking what good is it if we force them to sit there and study in the heat, but think about it. You let those little beasts loose, and they’ll just be up to no good. It’s what they do during vacation time that ends up leading them astray. And then think of the headache that makes for you teachers!”
Kim Dongho sucked his teeth. He seemed to be resisting the urge to disagree with the dean. Of course, it was a foregone conclusion. The decision about the summer courses had already been made.
But the dean noticed immediately. “Anyway, I’ll keep this short and conclude by thanking you all for your active participation. And this…”
He took a wad of crisp paper notes out of his trouser pocket. They were one hundred thousand won checks.
“I talked to the publisher we ordered the summer school textbooks from and put together a little extra for your troubles. I apologize for not having had time to put them in envelopes.”
As he drawled on, he handed one of the checks to each of the teachers, who did not all share the same response. Junshik was curious about Kim Dongho’s reaction—he was slightly red, fiddling with the check in his hand. After a while, the check had disappeared onto his person somewhere.
As they left the Japanese restaurant, Yang Guman sidled up to Junshik. “Mr. Hong, let’s go have a drink,” he said in a conspiratorial voice. “I know a place near here. The dean and Kim Dongho are coming, too.”
Junshik was already a little drunk from the beers he’d had at the restaurant, but he followed them. For some reason, he felt like getting plastered that night. They walked along a street already lit up on both sides with garish neon signs, though it was still early evening. Yang Guman came to a stop in front of a bar called “The Golden Pond” and led them to the basement entrance.
They went down the staircase, which was dark and damp like the interior of a cave, and entered a small room of six or seven pyeong echoing with loud pop music.
“Are you open, or what?” Yang Guman shouted.
The small door in the back rattled open. “Oh! Oh, look who’s here.” A woman rushed out and took Yang Guman’s arm, making a big fuss as if she were delighted to see him.
A fat older woman appeared behind her. “Oh, Mr. Yang!” she said. “It’s been such a long time!” Her nasal voice seemed oddly out of place coming from her body. “Why didn’t I hear from you all that time? I missed you so much. You didn’t happen to get another girlfriend, did you?” she asked, glued to Yang Guman as soon as they were all seated in a back room.
“I have respectable gentlemen with me today, woman. So why don’t you say a proper hello?”
“Nice to meet you,” she said. “I’m Miss Jang.”
“Madam, bring us some beers!” Yang shouted. “And send another girl!”
A young woman, thinner than Miss Jang, soon came with the drinks. She sat between Junshik and the dean, who raised his glass high and declared, “Let’s have a toast!”
Junshik emptied his glass in a single gulp. The alcohol burned his throat as it went down and, combining with what he’d already drunk at the Japanese restaurant, it quickly heightened his intoxication. The woman immediately refilled his glass and Junshik emptied it just as quickly. And even that did not quench his thirst.
“Why is our Mr. Hong drinking in such a rush today?”
Yang Guman’s hand was under Miss Jang’s dress, fondling her breast, and the dean was busily discussing something with Kim Dongho.
“We do not educate only with youthful enthusiasm. Passion and experience are just as important, and the students….”
Kim Dongho just listened without saying anything, his head half bowed. Junshik, staring at Kim’s thick eyebrows, suddenly felt like he was suffocating. What are my wife and brother doing now? he wondered.
“We need another plate of side dishes,” Miss Jang said to Yang Guman. “What shall we get?” She squirmed and giggled as Yang continued to grope her breasts.
“I like mussels,” he said.
“Well, that’s interesting. I prefer seaweed rolls myself.”
Now the two women laughed together. The one who was sitting next to Junshik turned to him. “My favorite is odeng,” she said.
Junshik’s drunkenness took him to another time and place, and he couldn’t distinguish the present from his memories. He was on a bus now, with his mother, driving past a market. Through the window he could see the throngs of people, delivery carts, merchants loudly shouting as they jostled each other. His mother, watching the scene, sat up, startled.
“Aigo!” she exclaimed. “What am I gonna do? The market’s already standing-room!”
She must have imagined, for a moment, that she was still working at her spot. Suddenly, she stood up and started to clap her hands and stomp her feet.
“Get your delicious fresh odeng and gimbap here!” she cried. “Delicious fresh odeng and gimbap!”
It was all so sudden that Junshik didn’t have time to react. He wasn’t the only one who was surprised. The passengers looked at her in bewilderment, but after a moment they began to whisper, tittering and pointing their fingers at her.
“Delicious fresh odeng and gimbap! Get your delicious fresh odeng and gimbap here! Good enough to die for!”
And then, just as suddenly, she was quiet. She must have realized she was on the bus and not at her old spot in the market. She blushed and slowly sat back down.
“Strange. She looks perfectly normal, but she’s completely out of her mind,” said one of the two women sitting just behind Junshik. She spoke so loudly that all the other passengers must have heard. His mother certainly had, but the woman must have thought it didn’t matter, since she was crazy.
“Musta been her husband made her like this,” the woman said.
“And how would you know?” said the other woman.
“What do seaweed rolls and odeng look like? Just like a man’s thing, right?”
“Oh, you’re so right! He musta had another woman on the side or maybe he just run off…”
“Yeah. Why else would someone who looks perfectly fine like that be screaming about odeng and gimbap on a bus?”
“Aigo, that poor thing.”
Junshik emptied his glass. The woman at his side lifted her face to his.
“Oh, why’s our principal looking so sad? Did you have some bad news?”
“Hey,” he said. “I’m not the principal.”
“No? Then vice principal?”
“Look, this gentleman is higher than a principal,” Yang Guman said.
It wasn’t clear who had originally coined it, but “Principal Wannabe” was the nickname his students and colleagues used for him. The joke was that he had started as an errand boy and was going to make it to principal.
Junshik felt he would suffocate if he didn’t release whatever it was that needed to come out of his throat, and to wash away that stifling feeling, he emptied glass after glass.
“Mr. Hong! Mr. Hong! What is it you live for?” Kim Dongho asked, raising his head, red-faced and drunk. Without waiting for a reply, he answered himself. “Me? I’ve lost my taste for life. No matter how much I think about it, I can’t find any joy in living.”
“What? No joy in living? Why, this is serious,” Yang Guman butted in. “If you already lost your zest for life at your age, it’s the end. Understand? The bell’s ringing. The day’s over.”
Junshik saw Kim Dongho’s red eyes glaring at Yang Guman. He stared that way, without saying a word, for several seconds. He was clenching his beer glass hard, with the force that he could just as well have used to slap Yang’s face. Go ahead and slap him, Junshik thought to himself. Why are you just staring at him like that? Slap him if you’ve got a pair.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Kim? Did I say something wrong?” Yang Guman’s lip curled into an unpleasant smirk.
Kim quickly relaxed his grip on the glass. “Oh, it’s nothing,” he said. “You’re absolutely right. Actually, that’s what I was thinking myself.” He turned to Junshik again. “That’s why I took up indoor fishing lately. You know about it? You’re not fishing in the open air under the sun—it’s in the basement of a building. It’s the perfect hobby for someone like me who hates seeing the sun.”
“You don’t like seeing the sun? Well, this is serious. Serious,” Yang Guman interjected again. But this time, Kim Dongho said nothing.
“You’ve got to do something, at least. Otherwise, what’s the fun in living?” he said to Junshik. “You know, if you hook the one with the red fins, you win a TV. Keep chasing that bastard and you can’t even tell how time is flying. Why don’t you come with me sometime?”
“Hey,” Yang said, “we’re already drinking and the ladies haven’t properly introduced themselves. Don’t spoil the atmosphere. Who wants to start?”
“Why don’t we just pass today? Do we really have to?” Miss Jang said, still clinging to Yang.
“What do you mean ‘pass’? The introductions are a special tradition in The Golden Pond, right? Miss Jang, you start. Do a demonstration for us.”
“Aren’t you sick of seeing mine? Why do you want to see it again?”
“I brought my colleagues today. So why don’t you do a proper introduction?” Yang Guman took out two ten thousand won bills from his wallet and placed them on the table.
Jang then stood up without much hesitation. She took off her shoes and climbed onto a chair. Her face expressionless, she removed her blouse and let it drop to her feet like a used tissue. She took off her skirt and tossed it aside, and when she bent over, Junshik could see rolls of flesh jiggling under the sheer black fabric of her underwear. She removed her clothes one layer at a time, as if she were molting, her face blank all the while because it was simply a tedious and boring task for her. She only gave one cursory smile when her eyes met those of the four men who were fixated on her every movement. Kim Dongho, his face bright red, was piercing her body with his stare. The dean looked on as if he were stupefied. The red lights revealed everything—even the patches of cellulite on the woman’s flesh. She was big-boned with lots of flab. Her belly sagged, and she looked off-balance because of her pendulous and unattractive breasts. Junshik noticed her large, dark nipples sunk in the two protruding mounds of flesh. They displayed the same indifference and the same insolence as their owner’s face as she removed the only scrap of cloth left on her body and began to sing.
“The spring breeze, blowing under the bright pink skirt…”
Junshik gulped down the glass in front of him as if he were trying to quench an irresistible thirst. He was holding in the anger and contempt he’d been harboring for a while, and it was becoming less and less bearable because he didn’t know who it should be directed at. Suddenly he stood up.
“Delicious fresh odeng and gimbap! Get your delicious fresh odeng and gimbap here!”
His colleagues stared at him, flabbergasted, wondering what craziness had gotten into him. Junshik himself didn’t understand what had just taken hold of him. He clapped his hands and stamped his feet in rhythm like his mother had done those many years ago.
“He’s nuts,” said Miss Jang, standing naked on top of the chair, her mood soured.
“Mr. Hong, what’s the matter with you? Sit down,” said the dean.
But Junshik began to shout even more loudly, walking in circles around the table:
“Delicious fresh odeng and gimbap! So good they’re to die for! Odeng and…”
Someone suddenly grabbed him from behind. It was Kim Dongho. “Mr. Hong, you were having such a good time. Why are you spoiling our get-together? You’re acting like you’ve lost your mind….”
Junshik twisted around and shoved him away. Kim lost his balance and fell on the table, dragging the bottles down with him. There was a loud noise of shattering glass and women screaming.
“Yes, I’ve lost my mind,” Junshik said. “I’m crazy! But then what does that make all of you? You call this living? Can you live like this and say you’re alive? You pathetic bastards!”
He turned and walked out of the room but then almost immediately went back in again.
“Here, you can split this among yourselves.”
As his colleagues looked on, still stunned, he tossed his bonus check and it fluttered to the floor like an autumn leaf.