Chapter 14 – Episode 14. I Need to Find My Phone
***
Originally, I hadn’t intended to drink that long.
However, as I was playing with my friends after a long absence, the time passed too quickly even if it was fast.
We ran the 2nd round in Gangnam, and Kim Joo-hwan and Choi Jong-hoon said they would do the 3rd round.
Fuck!
If I did that, I refused because I thought tomorrow’s study would be completely ruined.
Then they pulled out a card that I found quite appealing.
It was to do a third round near my house to reduce the burden of my tomorrow.
I’ve felt this since long ago, but these bastards…
I really like alcohol.
I like to drink, too.
My friends came to the bar near the studio where I live in the goshichon and even asked to have a drink, and the two of them concentrated on attacking me, but I ended up agreeing to their opinion.
I wanted to start studying tomorrow.
Instead, I promised myself that I would take a break after this drinking session and work really hard once my body recovers.
In a way, it seemed like this was because I gave a gap.
Regarding women, I had the mindset of putting a real barrier and not interfering with my studies, but I seemed to have caught my guard because they were my friends.
Now, I don’t meet for a while between girls and same-sex friends, and I thought I’d meet someone when I was really struggling with studying.
This kind of position is not that common, so I don’t think there will be that many days that I will refuse later.
When I was in school, I saw it every day when I went to school, and when I was in college, what I had left over was free time, so I had a lot of time to meet friends, but after starting a social life, everyone gets busier.
Once upon a time, I asked my parents about it.
Why don’t you meet your friends?
That’s why everyone’s lives are busy, so I heard that it might be after retirement that I can meet friends freely.
At that time, when I thought about it, I thought it might not be that difficult to hang out with friends before marriage.
However, I also thought that drinking late at night or until dawn when I had a family was not the case.
So, you should play.
After getting a job, until marriage.
My mindset is like that.
The third place was a potato stew restaurant near my house.
The direction is different from the studio in the gosichon where I live, but there is a 24-hour Gamjatang restaurant not far away.
There we ran 3 cars.
It was late in the morning, so there were only three tables of customers including ours.
“Yeah!”
“Cheers!”
I told them while eating gamjatang and drinking a glass of soju.
“Ah. Shit… Really, it’s only today. Today is the last time you guys will see me before my exam. Joo-hwan is celebrating getting a job.”
“Ah, okay~! Call me in the spring?”
Ha, really. Cubs.
What do you want to see so much?
Actually, I also like to see my friends, though.
“No. I’ll call you. The exams are in April, and I’ll call you when the exams are over. It’s summer when they’re all over, and even if the writing is over, you can breathe.”
After the writing is over, I will definitely relax and play more than now.
And after passing the civil service exam, I will play like crazy after I get off work.
I appropriately negotiated with my friends about my study period.
And I ran soju with Gamjatang.
As we talked while drinking, Kim Joo-hwan and Choi Jong-hun, who got a job in the middle, also talked about the house.
“Hey, what’s the price of this house? I heard that it’s going down these days.”
“Falling. Falling down a little bit and rising like crazy.”
“What is it? Then I have to buy it quickly?”
“Tell me if you need a loan. I’ll take care of it.”
Haha! Damn you. Aren’t you making me scared to start a business? House prices are going up?”
“Hey, really. Doesn’t it seem like it’s going to go up that much? Just look around a little bit. A few hundred million just goes up? We have to take out a loan somehow and buy it quickly.”
“Oh, fuck. Yes. I’ll have to look around.”
When I get to the point of buying a house later, maybe I should get some counseling from Choi Joo-hwan, a bank clerk, like Kim Joo-hwan.
If it’s still home, it’s a long story for me.
In addition to that story, there are other stories.
There were a lot of stories mainly in high school.
The stories of those days, entangled with numerous friends, occupied the main subject matter in our conversation.
I think men are a little like that.
Would you say you like a lot of characters?
That’s why I wonder if you like school stories.
Military, politics, or Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I think I like these because they are vast stories with endless characters.
Then, from some point on, it goes back to the story of a woman.
Although they are restrained, I am naturally interested in women, and Joo-Hwan and Jong-Hoon are in a position where they cannot fully satisfy their desires like me, so they are almost in heat.
After talking about women, this time the story of the establishment came up.
The story of the business was done a little late.
It was late, when the place was almost empty.
Choi Jong-hun flicked the chopsticks he had eaten.
“Hey, Jinhyeok. Eong-ah is really quick on this side, but I know that the NFs came in, right?”
Choi Jong-hoon had become an expert in the establishment before he knew it.
Since the current salary he is receiving is high, there seemed to be no financial constraints on that side.
So, it seemed that Choi Jong-hoon was about to finish the round 3 after finishing the round.
“Jinhyeok-ah, Joo-hwan-ah, let’s trust only this hyung and go.
Choi Jong-hoon persuaded me and Kim Joo-hwan.
When Choi Jong-hun said he would shoot, Kim Joo-hwan responded immediately without any hesitation.
“Is that so? I’m Cole. Jinhyeok and you?”
But I didn’t really want to go to the establishment.
It’s never because I’m so fucking moral.
I have no reason to go to the establishment.
No… To be honest, even at this dawn, if I just make one phone call, I don’t know how many kids at the business are there, but pretty damn pretty kids who are rarely seen around would answer the phone in one second and come running in a taxi…
Is there any reason why I have to go to the business?
It even has a time limit.
I declined.
“I’m done.”
“Jinhyuk-ah, man! I’m shooting here. Let’s go together!”
Choi Jong-hoon strongly persuaded him.
But I smiled.
“It’s okay. I really don’t go. You guys know that.”
“Does it change your mind once you visit it?”
“Ah~, wouldn’t it be better to do hunting?
“Jinhyeok. At this time, everyone who will be able to get together and go eat rice cake. What time is it now?”
And Choi Jong-hoon continued.
“Jinhyeok. And fuck… I don’t know why hunting that other people are good at doesn’t work so well. Once before, when I approached because he liked me, I was treated like a kidnapper while asking why did you do that to me… Ha… It was so humiliating…”
That… It’s too bad.
Although I’ve never had anything like that.
When Kim Joo-hwan heard that, he said to Choi Jong-hun.
Haha! So, who wants to look like a kidnapper?
“Shut up!”
Anyway, the business may be worth paying hundreds of thousands of won to them, but it is a place that has no meaning to me.
I think it is creating an inefficient habit, such as having to buy a refrigerator if you want to drink water, but renting a refrigerator at a high price every time you want to drink water.
As I listened to their stories, I felt a little bit sick, so I thought about whether to have breakfast with a woman in my own way rather than at a restaurant.
It is not difficult to call and call a woman you know.
But I shook my head in my heart.
Since the 3rd car is near where I live, I can go home as soon as my nose touches it, so my mind was relieved, and I was tired because it was the first time I drank so much.
I sent Choi Jong-hun as a tutor and I decided to go home and sleep.
“Hey. Sing it when you become the president of a bank and you can spend a billion dollars a day on drinking like you’re playing with high-ranking upperclassmen. That’s enough for me to think about.”
Haha! Ah, fuck, that’s a no-brainer. In the company, the top floor is just, fixed, already.”
Kim Joo-hwan also convinced me.
“Aren’t you really going? Yamma, let’s go together today.”
“It’s okay man!”
The seats were nearing the end, and we clinked our last drinks.
It was good.
I felt it a lot when I was in college, but I like alcohol.
We got up from our seats together.
The two office workers, excluding me, battle in front of the checkout counter.
“Hey, Shiva, am I paying for this?”
“You say you’re shooting the 4th? I’m the one paying here.”
“Ah, sir. How much do you say this is? I’m paying!”
It was a bit like that.
As for Gamjatang, they have enough money that it doesn’t matter if I buy 10 bowls each of these bastards.
After leaving the place, they thought that if I rejected their offer and went home separately, Joo-hwan and Jong-hoon would go straight to the business.
At the seat, there were bottles of wine, glasses, side dishes, and a pot containing the remnants of Gamjatang, which had a lot left over and was still thick and delicious.
After the two idiots fighting in front of the checkout counter, I came out first and got some fresh air.
That’s how we all drank like crazy until the 3rd time together, and then we broke up.
As soon as I get up and leave the 24-hour Gamjatang restaurant, I feel quite chilly.
Darkness outside the store late at night.
It greets us
The morning wind was cold.
Surprisingly, it hasn’t been that bad yet.
Maybe it was because of the drunkenness.
After drinking for a while, I thought it was because of the heat in my body.
After the three of us left the store, Kim Joo-hwan asked me.
“Where can I get a taxi?”
I waved my hand in the right direction and led Kim Joo-hwan and Choi Jong-hoon.
“Follow me.”
“Uh. Wow, the roads here look so damn complicated. You know the roads, right?”
“Of course. I’ve lived here for a while. If I go to work, there’s a big road.”
Get out and walk to the taxi stand.
On the way we were walking, Choi Jong-hoon spoke to us in the cold darkness.
“Hey. Wasn’t the part-time job pretty?”
Kim Joo-hwan replied as if he had been waiting.
“Oh, that’s right. I saw it too. It was no joke.”
I only saw the aunt.
So I asked them what they were talking about.
“The lady who served us? Do you like it that way?”
“No, not the lady. The part-timer who came out to clean up our dishes at the end.”
I guess I didn’t see it because I came out a little early.
“Ah. Is that so? I haven’t seen it.”
Choi Jong-hun seemed to have been quite impressed by her.
“Wow… It was really great… But he was fucking cute. Who would a guy like that go out with? He’s not going to go out with anyone.”
Choi Jong-hoon smiled sinisterly as if he was looking at a slightly distant mountain as if he were thinking of that beauty.
Kim Joo-hwan smiled and said to Choi Jong-hoon.
“You’re not.”
“You fucking bastard!”
Kim Joo-Hwan and Choi Jong-Hoon quarreled again.
In the meantime, a large road came out not far.
The taxi was caught before long.
Since the two had the same destination, they boarded the same taxi.
I raised my hand moderately and said hello.
“Good entry~!”
“Oh! Pass!”
They got into a taxi and walked away leisurely.
Fuck guys…
To pass the exam after fucking drinking…
Anyway, I was grateful that he came to me with such thoughts.
I let them go and went home.
The road was dark.
It was still before the sanitation workers went to work.
I returned home through a dark road with few streetlights to take a shortcut.
When I came out of the slightly larger alley from the shortcut side, the lights were on at a few 24-hour convenience stores, marts, and bean sprout soup restaurants on the dark streets.
Still, the dark was dark.
After drinking heavily, I walked slowly through the streets at night and thought to myself.
I thought that maybe the period here could be a vacation time if you look at life in a big way.
When I had no specific interest in having a job and working, I just thought that having a job was a good thing.
Do what you’re told to do, get paid. I thought it was something like this.
However, if you listen to the words of the people who got a job, there were a lot of kids who said they couldn’t do it because all of them were so fucking stupid.
In fact, among alumni and seniors, some of those who told me about getting a job changed jobs several times.
Everyone speaks in unison.
I’d rather be in the army.
Even so, it seems that cases that are in relatively large places like Kim Joo-hwan or Choi Jong-hoon are a bit better.
He works like a dog, but at least he pays as much as he needs.
Bigger companies say it’s fine.
I work like a dog and I can’t even get enough money to spend.
It is, in their opinion, much better than some smaller companies.
That said, I just want to get into a good company with poisonous spirits, but that’s not the case.
Even the low-level civil service exam that I am facing right now requires such crazy vigor, but I can’t imagine how much more self-squeezing militia will be required for private jobs, high-ranking civil servants, or high-ranking public corporations.
I just want to get married in my late 30s after meeting hundreds, no, thousands of women while doing a job that guarantees a decent, stable life to some extent.
With that thought in mind, I returned home through the dark road, but when I was almost there and passed under a street lamp near the house, I felt something empty.
‘Oops!’
There was no cell phone in my pants pocket.
To check the hoodie pocket just in case, I tapped it with both hands on the top of the clothes.
But no.
‘What the fuck… Where?’
I looked back at my memory.
After talking to the insanely pretty female college student at the first location, I definitely remember fiddling with my phone as I returned to where my friends were waiting.
Then it’s the 2nd or 3rd.
I can call my phone, but my friends have already left, so I don’t have a phone to call my phone.
I was restless under a street lamp for a while.
‘Oh right. I should go to the convenience store and borrow a phone.’
I thought so and moved quickly.
It was toward the light of a convenience store in the distance.
After I started walking to the convenience store, it was time to walk a bit.
I spotted a passer-by.
It would of course be faster to borrow a phone from someone passing right in front of you than to go to the convenience store.
I judged her in her moment and then walked over to her.
“Excuse me, I just met a friend and left my phone at the store.
Very late in the morning.
Because it is a gosichon, originally it was a place with a huge floating population, but it was quite late in the morning, so people were hardly seen, and they were very sparsely populated.
So it is worth being wary, but a passer-by, a woman who looked to be my age, obediently took out her cell phone and gave it to me.
“Ah yes.”
