Chapter 6 – Episode 6. A Friend Who Got a Job Shot a Glass of Wine
***
It was the next day when we were supposed to meet the kids.
A bit late at night.
I took the subway and transferred to Gangnam.
It was fortunate that there were at least some seats to sit at night, even though it was the green line of Line 2 that was being pushed back like crazy.
I got off the subway and walked down the street.
It was Gangnam that I walked for the first time in a while.
Isn’t it easy?
I used to come and play once in a while before I could properly resume my studies.
Still, when I study, it feels like time goes by slowly, so it feels like it’s been a while.
After walking like that, I arrived at a high-end bar in Gangnam.
I said I wanted to eat something simple…
Kim Joo-hwan said that he would shoot everything and invited me and Choi Jong-hoon to the damn nice Yangju house.
However, I didn’t come out dressed up.
I have no intention of hunting for a woman anyway, and it was a bit cold, so I put on a long-sleeved shirt underneath, and then came out wearing only a thick primary-colored blue hoodie on top.
The pants are plain jeans.
Because it was a hoodie and jeans, I felt comfortable both physically and mentally.
Upon entering the bar, one of the workers greets me.
“Welcome, how old are you?”
“I have a group.”
“Ah, yes. Welcome.”
Like a bar, the music playing is set to a fairly loud volume.
Listening to the song makes me feel freed from the day’s study.
Music seems to have an unknown power.
Even when studying, when my concentration is exhausted, listening to music somehow seems to increase my concentration.
In addition, the warm heating in the bar made me feel comfortable.
With just a hoodie over long sleeves, I thought it might be a bit hot after drinking here.
I walked in and looked for Kim Joo-hwan and Choi Jong-hun.
When I come to the bar, I like the chairs because it’s a nice place.
The overall appearance of each table was like a club booth, and each table was surrounded by luxurious, dark gray long chairs with a slightly soft feel.
I put my hand in the large horizontal pocket of my blue hoodie near my belly and took out my smartphone.
It was to contact you that you had arrived.
-Turr… Turrure…
The beep goes.
As I walked around the bar making phone calls, Choi Jong-hoon waved at me from a distance.
“Hey~!”
I hung up the phone and walked towards them.
When I arrived at Joo-hwan and Jong-hoon’s table, they greeted me with cheers.
“Hey! Lee Jin-hyuk!”
“Jinhyuk! Come on, sit down.”
“Hey, it’s been a really long time.”
“See you more often from now on!”
Cubs…
When I arrived, Kim Joo-hwan and Choi Jong-hoon were already seated and had a few drinks.
Nice to see you after a long time
My heart was also light.
I came after finishing my studies up to the amount I was aiming for, with the thought that I would come back with something to do even if I had to drink when I was drinking.
The table top was dense.
From liquors and soups to salads, dry snacks, fruits, etc., There were already a lot of side dishes set.
As I sat down, Choi Jong-hoon and I lightly put our shoulders together.
Then I gave them a hint.
“Look at Ji-joo~. Ah~, I have to pass like you guys. After that, I’ll see you every day. Well, regardless of whether or not you hold on, you’ll have a match within this summer.”
After all, writing is important.
Interviews and this side have a lot of competition rates, sometimes going up to 4:1 or 8:1, but usually it is 1.3 to 1 or 1.5 to 1.
It’s not that the interview is so easy, but it’s true that the handwriting that is close to 150:1 is hell, so once you get through it, you can breathe.
In the case of last year, the interview was over in early June, and this year it will be over by the end of the summer.
Choi Jong-hun stretches out his hand to the right as soon as I sit down.
He picked up an empty glass and poured wine into it.
“I hope you leave. I always go to the chicken restaurant you inherited from the owner.”
My father runs a chicken shop.
It’s not going very well, so my father is thinking about going back to farming.
Anyone who doesn’t know me might think I’m a bourgeois because I have a store in Gangnam, but I know that my father, who runs a fried chicken restaurant from a large company, doesn’t have a good income.
So, even after coming to Goshichon, I am living separately from my parents while being economically self-sufficient.
I put a headlock on Choi Jong-hun.
“Ah~, I’m going to search you bastard~!”
“Oooh! Hey! Drunk!”
Choi Jong-hoon put ice in a half-filled wine glass and handed it over to my seat.
We exchanged drinks and chatted.
We had a lot of hot topics.
Several.
It’s quite a lot to say many things.
What’s up…
Teachers in high school, things that happened at the canteen, meals that were not tasty, trips to Europe together during school days, trips to Thailand together during university days, stories about the military, stories about soccer, stories about soccer in the military, going to the sea together to play The story of hunting, the story of going to the club together and hunting, and the story of almost succeeding in hunting but ended up eating it in the second half were fun.
Among them, when the story of a woman came up, Choi Jong-hoon seemed to have accumulated a lot.
I got a job in February, and the reason was that I hadn’t had a girlfriend for the longest 9 months.
After drinking several glasses, Choi Jong-hoon at one point drank a glass and put it down and spoke.
“Really. Huh? My mom used to do that all the time? Just get a job. A woman lines up.”
He continued.
“Line? Ha… Women don’t line up, I’m standing in line right now. To the bank manager. Holy fuck… The manager and the manager have different lines, so I think they’ll fall behind in the middle.”
Company work was tough.
Everyone seems to be like that.
But we are ball friends.
Instead of consoling them, they laugh at them and swear at them.
Haha!”
“You idiot, if you have an assistant manager and a manager, shouldn’t you stand in the manager line? Why stand in the manager line?”
When Kim Joo-hwan and I teased him, Choi Jong-hun flicked his index finger, closed his eyes, shook his head from side to side, and then opened his eyes again.
“That’s not such a simple matter. The assistant manager is the president’s parachute. The manager is a fucking blue-and-white. A parachute destroyer.”
It seems that there is no such thing anywhere.
It’s been quite a while since I realized that the values of fairness, justice, and equality are just idealistic values shown on TV.
After all, the world is survival of the fittest.
Kim Joo-hwan and I each received Choi Jong-hoon’s words as if they were still teasing each other.
“Ol~, then, well done. That assistant manager will soon become a managing director. Our Jong-hoon, should look good, right?”
“Hey~, isn’t it a golden rope? The assistant manager is the chairman’s line?”
At our words, Choi Jong-hun narrowed his eyes and said.
“What’s important here is that my line isn’t important. Jeez… I don’t have a girlfriend yet. Uuuuu…”
Choi Jong-hun did the action of tilting his head back.
I put my elbow on the table and rubbed my own forehead with my hand while tapping the shoulder of Choi Jong-hoon, who was sitting next to him, with the other hand.
“Ah… You bastard. Just hold on until summer.”
Choi Jong-hoon buried his face in me and pretended to cry loudly, perhaps feeling the sadness of not having a beautiful girlfriend to spend the money with while earning money.
“I believe!
I throw my upper body back and shout.
“Hey! Don’t overdo it, you crazy bastard! People staring at you!”
We talked in such a friendly atmosphere.
I think I’ve heard somewhere that it’s a saying that new things are good, but friends are old friends.
The three of us talked like this for the first time in a while, so there was no end to what we had to say.
When three women get together, it is said that the chatter ends, but I thought that even when three men get together, the chatter can end.
We had endless conversations in the exchange of drinks.
At some point, the topic became a woman’s story.
This time it was Kim Joo-hwan.
“Ah, I’m a little sorry for Jong-hoon, but I’m really worried about it these days.”
“Why?”
“Because I have two girls.”
Joo-hwan Kim spoke.
Then, Choi Jong-hun tore off dried pollack and threw it at Kim Joo-hwan’s head.
“Ah, you bastard!”
Kim Joo-hwan made an impression.
“Ah… You bastard. It’s stuck in your head.”
“You can be plugged in, chew.”
“What? You fucking bastard!”
Kim Joo-hwan, as if not wanting to lose to Choi Jong-hoon, started making projectiles by tearing dried squid to counterattack his throwing of dried pollack.
“Yeah!”
“Fuck!”
“Don’t dodge! Fuck!”
I smiled looking at them.
Now that I’m a little late, I guess I’ll have to have a few drinks solo to keep up with some of the crazy stuff.
I gulped down a glass of wine while watching their projectile-throwing fight.
Cool and sweet
I think alcohol is really good.
After gaining financial freedom, even if it’s not a weekday when I’m really busy with work, I want to meet and go to clubs together on Saturdays.
Because when you get older, you can’t do that.
The world is, indeed.
Age is so big.
For a 20-year-old man to date a 20-year-old woman is something worth doing.
College freshmen of the same age, CC was widely spread.
It is difficult for a 40-year-old man to date a 20-year-old woman.
You have to be above the celebrity level with billions of dollars, otherwise it’s difficult.
The point is this.
Even if you want to do the same thing, you will be at a disadvantage as you get older.
I didn’t think about it until now and just played.
This is because all the women who come to me now are people who will never come again.
However, as I studied harder, I came to this thought.
Ah.
I guess I only thought of the women of the present.
Future me?
Ah.
The current me, meeting and hanging out with countless women, might have been living a life of consumption narrowing the range of women I could meet in the future.
I thought.
Maybe that’s why my recent studies have gotten better.
Having spent such a recent time, I did not feel so anxious about having a drink with my friends for such a long time.
Kim Joo-hwan and Choi Jong-hoon threw pieces of dried pollack and squid at each other, and a little later, Kim Joo-hwan started talking about his girls.
The summary of Kim Joo-hwan’s story is as follows.
Kim Joo-hwan got to know a woman while preparing for an interview at a large company, and it was going well with her.
In the meantime, she gets closer to one of her juniors from college and they eat together once in a while.
As time passed and department appointments came out, it became difficult to meet the woman preparing for the interview because she was assigned to a distant place, and her encounters with college juniors increased.
But for some reason, I like the interview prep girl more…
However, college juniors are also attractive.
The troubled look became the starting point for Choi Jong-hoon to start throwing pieces of dried pollack at Kim Joo-hwan again.
As I listened to the story, I took a sip of Western liquor.
So, like those who came earlier, I drank a few more drinks and followed the amount of alcohol, enjoying the gradually rising drunkenness.
Choi Jong-hun asked me if I was doing that.
“Jinhyuk, how are you these days?”
I replied languidly.
“I’m not dating girls.”
When I said that, Kim Joo-hwan and Choi Jong-hoon looked at me for a moment with widened eyes as if they had suddenly turned to ice.
And, as if the two had made a promise to each other, they burst into laughter at the same time.
Haha!”
“Chick kick kick kick kick kick kick kick kick kick kick kick kick kick kick kick kick!”
I was dumbfounded.
“…”
Shaking a slightly full wine glass and rattling the cold ice, I poured out my regrets to them.
“Ah, you fucking bastards! It’s real!”
It may have been unbelievable to them.
Somehow, I’m a guy who doesn’t cut off women.
Kim Joo-hwan asked me.
“Tsk… Yeah, what. It’s been a day or two since you haven’t met a girl?”
Under.
There’s no way I can say that I haven’t been seeing a girl for two days.
It’s been so damn long.
As for how long…
“Um… One, two or three weeks?”
When I answered Kim Joo-hwan’s words, Kim Joo-hwan and Choi Jong-hoon all threw dry seafood missiles at me, targeting me.
“Well, it’s! Chew!”
“Take it!”
I raised my arm to block their attack.
“Ah, fuck! You crazy bastards! What the hell is this for food!”
After the bombardment eased somewhat, they started asking me one by one.
“How did you meet the recent girl you met two or three weeks ago?”
I answered their questions.
“Oh, we met at the bookstore. Maybe.”
“Bookstore? What, staff?”
“No, I went to buy a book that might change my mood, other than the civil service book…”
I decided to solve the story with Kim Joo-hwan and Choi Jong-hoon.
There’s nothing so great about it.
But they are like the disciples of Socrates… When it comes to my words, especially when it comes to women, I open my eyes and listen as if my words are the truth.
“Wait a minute! I’m preparing to take notes on my phone!”
Choi Jong-hun even tried to open a KakaoTalk message with him and write down some of my words, telling me to wait for a while.
…
They are great pups.
Since they responded well, I decided to try my best to respond more to their reactions.
It’s been a while since we met recently, but what my friends are curious about is that it’s our first meeting, so it’s been a while, so there were some things that made me wonder if my memories were a bit correct.
“It’s nothing grandiose, but as for the recent meeting…”
