Chapter 138 – Episode 138. He Just Went to Do Some Volunteer Work
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Another week passed as I devoted myself to learning.
It seemed like it was Monday, but in the blink of an eye it’s Saturday.
Ah, well, looking back on the week, it seems like it went quickly, but each day went slowly.
And when I study, it seems that the unit of time goes more slowly than the unit of day.
I feel like I studied for about an hour, but when I turn the stopwatch on my phone, about 24 minutes have passed.
He felt that way a lot when he was in the army.
No matter how much I endured and endured, I had a mysterious experience of not knowing why time remained so much that it lasted.
Compared to those days, it seems that time goes faster when preparing for civil servants like now.
Unlike the time when libido was completely controlled and appetite and sleep were reduced and suppressed over time, life today is free even with fatigue.
That’s why no matter how much time I have to study, I’m 100 million times happier now.
On Saturday morning, earlier than usual, I was sitting on the bed when I got a phone call.
“Hello?”
-Brother, it’s me~ Can you come out now? I’m in front of the entrance on the first floor of my one-room studio.
The voice was Song Ji-eun.
I answered her
“Um, okay. I’ll be right out.”
I was preparing to go out in advance.
So after I finished the phone call, I immediately put on my shoes and left the door of the studio where I lived.
When I walked down the hallway and went out to the entrance of the one-room building, Song Ji-eun was standing in the chilly wind of a fairly early hour.
“Brother, hello~!”
Jieun also bowed her head to me and smiled at me, and I also waved her hand to Jieun Song.
Even though Song Ji-eun is quite cold, she seems to be sticking to her usual dress code, wearing something that matches her feminine style coat.
I looked at her Ji-eun and pulled her out on her as if she were playing a joke.
“Would you be able to wash the dishes properly wearing that?”
Haha, the inside is comfortable clothes, oppa~”
Song Ji-eun unbuttoned one of the buttons on her coat and showed me the inside as she spoke.
Because I’m a handsome man, beauties certainly don’t have many guards against me.
Occasionally, they come in for a beat, but taking off your coat like this and showing what you’re wearing underneath can be seen as not a job.
I talked to Song Ji-eun as we left the one-room building.
“Hey, Ji-eun. If someone else sees it, they’ll misunderstand it. You can’t take it off like that~. Uh, but shoes are shoes too? Are they really okay?”
“Yes. I have masked boots.”
If you go there, Janghwa will be there, but Song Ji-eun’s current appearance doesn’t look like someone who goes to wash her dishes.
Song Ji-eun, wearing a stylish coat and heels but not high heels, seemed more like a person going for a drink than a volunteer.
But, she said, if she goes there, she’ll have everything ready anyway, so she doesn’t seem to have much to worry about.
We were on our way to volunteer work.
The place I went to do the volunteer work was a ‘free breakfast restaurant exclusively for high school students’ in the gosichon.
I’m going to do volunteer work now, but I’ve had a chance to go and eat here too.
It’s been quite a while since I ate there.
When was it?
Before working part-time, there was a time when money management was wrong and the money ran out.
At that time, I happened to see people in the high school village going up one by one in the opposite direction from the academy at some time in the morning.
I didn’t have money at that time, so I followed along to see if there was an event to give out ramen and found a soup kitchen for high school students.
After working part-time and earning money, I never had to go to a soup kitchen.
It was because the food at the soup kitchen not far from the studio where I live was tasteless.
In a good way, it can be said that it is a healthy taste without MSG added.
To put it in a bad way, it’s very bland.
I had nothing to say about it.
Because it’s free
It is impossible to eat for free in this world, but it was grateful in itself because they gave food there.
Well, although I’ve never been there except when I ran out of money for a short time due to a money management mistake…
That’s how I remembered it as a grateful place that did pretty good things in my memory.
And Song Ji-eun said that she would go there to volunteer once in a while.
Unlike me, Song Ji-eun ate a lot there, but even after passing the exam, she still feels grateful, so she goes there occasionally, if not every week, to volunteer on Saturdays when she doesn’t go to work like this.
Today, there were a few people who couldn’t come out due to circumstances, so I needed volunteers, but for some reason, when Song Ji-eun asked me to help for just one day, I wanted to try it for a day.
So, I volunteered to go to the free luncheon center for high school students to volunteer with Song Ji-eun this morning.
Today, which is Saturday, I can lose money by volunteering for an hour or two.
But I thought this would be okay for me sometimes too.
When I study, I study, study, and study for 15 hours every day, so it seems that mannerisms will come from endless learning every day in the process of wrestling with books.
Rather, it’s okay when it’s like school days or college days.
There are mid-term and final exams in the 1st and 2nd semesters, so I have a mid-term goal of taking 4 exams, and there are vacations, so I can live a different life than during the semester.
However, there is really no such thing as preparing for the civil service exam.
It can be seen as a test with a side that makes people angry in terms of ‘sameness’ rather than studying in high school or university.
It is to make small changes in such daily life.
I don’t have much intention of going to volunteer work like Song Ji-eun again in the future, but I thought it would be worth doing at least once as a way to prevent mannerism.
For that reason, I ended up going with Song Ji-eun.
There were not many people in the morning gosichon that I walked with Song Ji-eun.
There are people who have extremely busy study schedules in Goshichon shown in TV documentaries, and people who line up in front of the academy early in the morning to get a good seat.
But it is a minority.
Of course, morning people do not necessarily study well, but TV definitely shows the image of a small number of exam students who are working extremely hard on their studies, and it seems that most ordinary cases are slightly distorted.
After talking a little while breathing in the morning air with Song Ji-eun, I soon arrived at the Muro Soup for high school students not far away.
Quite a few people had already arrived at the fairly large soup kitchen for exam students in the basement, even at the early hours of our arrival.
People were busy secreting this and that, and we also got ready to wash the dishes.
It was nice that it was indoors, so I didn’t feel the cold morning breeze outside.
I had been there before, so I knew how this place worked.
When people lined up a little later, I could wash the dishes they left after eating in real time.
Unlike normal food plates, the plates here are round plastic plates that are easy to wash, similar to those found in buffet restaurants.
“Hello, it’s the first time I’ve seen you today? I heard you came to help with a request from Jieun.”
“Hello.”
“There’s a place to hang clothes over there~, boots over there.”
“Ah yes.”
People welcomed me regardless of gender.
It may be a bit sensitive because it is morning, but maybe it was because they volunteered to volunteer, and somehow their faces were filled with gentle smiles.
The group was divided into two groups.
Auntie Jo serves meals to the students waiting in line, and young man Jo is mainly in charge of washing the dishes.
I ended up doing the dishes with several young men.
Quite a lot of high school students soon arrived.
It was a good feeling to hear the words “I enjoyed it” Or “Thank you” As the dishes were placed in a place like the dishwasher.
While washing dishes and doing physical activities, I was able to roll my head endlessly and remove the thoughts I had been experiencing one by one.
While washing the dishes, once in a while, if the food distribution side ran out of rice or side dishes, he would go and bring a rice cooker or a container of side dishes.
Service time was not that long.
Compared to the past 6 hours when I was working part-time at a restaurant, the time I worked here was chewing gum.
By the time the feeling of washing dishes lessened in the middle, I changed my speed towards the doorway.
There was a table in front of the doorway.
Various breads and drinks were piled up on the table.
I got to share it too.
Rather than sharing, it was just to see what was taken.
According to the guidelines, you can bring several, but you just have to refrain from sweeping them all in your bag, for example, but bread and drinks were a kind of dessert.
I even chatted with the woman in the corner who shared bread and drinks.
“When I ate here before, I didn’t think there was anything like this.”
The woman standing near me at the table answered my question.
“At that time, it was probably a weekday, right? It changes every time on Saturday, but snacks always come out.”
“Ah~, is that so? There are so many. I think there will be more.”
“Uh, yes. That’s right. I tend to receive generous amounts of bread, so I always have some left over, but we take all the exam students who come to the cafeteria, and we take the rest.”
When her people weren’t around, she chatted with her for a while, and when people came to pick up bread and drink and leave, she smiled and greeted them.
On the vinyl of the bread, ‘good bakery’ was written, but the maker was the name of a common local bakery, so there was nothing special.
Even though they looked like cheap breads, they looked like fresh breads that had just been made.
And the drink was an orange drink in a 200ml carton.
I ate a lot of this and it was delicious. The unit price is cheap, but I think it’s okay.
I acted according to the instructions given.
For those who are mainly worried about what kind of bread to eat, it was the role of relieving their anxiety by saying, haha, ah, you can take several.”
Occasionally, there were people who didn’t bring bread and drinks, but most of them took 1 each of bread and drinks, and people were grateful.
As always, here too, there were women passing by, looking at me with wide eyes.
Not just there, but quite a lot.
There were women who looked at my face while pretending to choose bread and drinks, and there were women who looked at my face while talking to me.
It didn’t matter much to me because I was used to the interest of so many women.
Perhaps, among them, I could exchange all the previous exams with the students who came to eat free meals with the feeling that they were pushing me directly and a little bit, and I could meet them after the volunteer work.
But it didn’t.
Among the high school students who came to eat at the soup kitchen, there were beautiful women and some women staring at me.
After a few days, there might be some women who would approach me strongly even if there were a lot of people standing like this, but once during the day, there were many women who looked at me slowly, but in the eyes of other volunteers around me, they did not actively court me.
Anyway, I was just distributing bread for volunteer work, but people’s attention, especially the attention of many women, seemed to be focused more on my face than on the bread they love so much.
There was also a lot of interest from the high school students who came to eat, and while I was distributing bread and drinks, I got to know the volunteers while talking to them.
One was a woman with a normal impression, and the other was a woman with a bit of charm.
The name of the woman I thought was attractive was Go Eun-young.
While sharing bread with Ko Eun-young, we talked about this and that next to her, and she felt a little more at ease when she learned that she was the same age as her.
The other woman was older than me, so I always respected her, but from the middle she started talking to Eun-young Ko, and before I knew it, she started talking like her friend.
