Chapter 10

Chapter 10

I need to fix Minhae’s habit of obsessing over her stuff and going after other people’s stuff before she grows up… Hyunoh thought as he looked up at his ceiling.

It could have been overlooked as a cute habit at her age, but it could become a problem when she grew older. Thinking of finding a solution, Hyunoh closed his eyes.

Except a child began to scream outside his door.

“Mine! Mine’s missing!”

Hyunoh stood up and walked out. Minhae was wandering around the second floor and crying.

“What’s going on?”

“My eraser’s gone! The one you gave me… I was walking around with it, but I lost it on the stairs, and now it’s gone! It’s mine! It’s mine!”

Hyunoh immediately knelt in front of Minhae. “Minhae.”

“It’s mine! I was going to bring it to school tomorrow...!”

Hyunoh hugged Minhae’s small body that was kicking and flailing because one little eraser was gone. He patted her back to calm her down. “Minhae, I’ll find it for you. I promise I’ll find it for you.”

“You won’t! I looked everywhere! I looked under the stairs and above the stairs, but I can’t find it!” Minhae erupted into tears again.

Hyunoh patted her without a word. He couldn’t ask why she was screaming and crying over a lost eraser, something that would have been considered normal, because Minhae’s obsession over her belongings was a result of many issues.

It was from the lack of attention and the feeling of loss.

Hyunoh began to look around after calming Minhae down. Below the stairs, their live-in auntie and guards were looking everywhere for her eraser.

“You won’t find it! You’ll never find it. You won’t find Minhae’s eraser... Never...”

He held Minhae’s hand and looked all over the stairs as she mumbled and whimpered. They couldn’t find it, so he tried turning over the first floor carpet too.

The eraser was under a decoration on the second floor corridor. Everyone had thought it fell down the stairs, but she must have dropped it in the corridor, which caused it to roll around.

“I found your eraser, Minhae,” Hyunoh said as he dusted it off.

Minhae took it as though she was stealing it from his hands, and she trembled.

Hyunoh bent down and brushed her hair.

“Stop crying. We found your eraser. Put your name on it so you never lose it and go to sleep. All right?” he said gently.

“Okay...”

“I’ll buy you ten erasers tomorrow. Don’t cry.”

“Mm...”

Instead of looking at Hyunoh, Minhae was fixated on her eraser.

Hyunoh hugged her without a word.

Everything in that house was broken in some way, whether it was the person or the person’s heart. All those broken things could do was hug each other as best they could.

* * *

“Hi,” Doyeon greeted as he sat next to Hyunoh. He took out his stationery. He’d arrived earlier than usual, so he was surprised to see Hyunoh.

He knew Hyunoh got there earlier than he did, but he didn’t think Hyunoh would be there as early as the students on cleaning duty were. Just when does he get here?

Hyunoh raised his head to greet him and looked up from his worksheet. That surprised Doyeon even more. Why is he greeting me? Normally, he stares at me like I’m the village dog.

“How many pencils do you use, Doyeon?” Hyunoh asked in his usual soft tone.

“Me? Two.”

“Then lend me one.”

“What?”

“The stationery store doesn’t open in the morning, so I couldn’t buy a pencil. I don’t like wood pencils.”

Hyunoh reached out to Doyeon’s mechanical pencil as he waved his stump of sharpened pencil in the air. Before Hyunoh could touch it, Doyeon freaked out.

“Not that one! That’s mine.”

“What...?”

Snatching his pencil back, Doyeon opened his bag with pride.

It’s time.

His pencil case was already on his desk, but he took out another one and went through it. This was his “lending pencil case,” with the pencil, pen, eraser, and ruler he was willing to lend.

“I’ll lend you this, but not mine.”

“Why do you have two pencil cases? Did you steal one?”

“I’m just carrying an extra around in case other kids ask.”

Doyeon had a strong attachment to his belongings.

He didn’t like other people touching or using his things. He carried around a set of items he considered his that had his name on them, but he also carried around an extra pencil case to “lend.”

His belongings had a nice name sticker attached carefully in a corner, but the lending pencil case had none. He’d never gotten the chance to show it off in front of Hyunoh because he never asked, but today was the day.

Hyunoh looked at Doyeon’s fresh pencil case with a strange expression. There was a green mark on the case, as though he got it for free from Nonghyup Bank, and there were marks on the utensils as though they were from different companies.

“Does your mom work at Nonghyup?”

“No, I just got these from somewhere. I have a Chukhyup clock at home, too.”

“Huh... and this is for lending purposes if someone asks? You don’t have many yourself.”

“That doesn’t matter. Which pencil do you want? Brown? Black?”

“Brown.”

“All right. Remember to return it once you’re done.”

Hyunoh nodded, borrowed an eraser, and returned the pencil case to Doyeon.

“Two pencil cases... You’re one special nutcase, Doyeon...” Hyunoh mumbled as he stared at the pencil in his hand.

Doyeon felt the urge to hit him and wondered why he would say things like that when he was kind enough to lend his stuff, but he decided to ignore him. Doyeon knew he would come up with other grating comments.

When break time came, Hyunoh sat on the windowsill. He heard that there would be a small drizzle in the afternoon, and the smell of wet grass was from that rain.

While Doyeon was talking to the kid behind him, Hyunoh placed the “lending” pencil back in his “lending” pencil case and searched Doyeon’s actual pencil case.

Then he found the one with Doyeon’s name on it and stared at it wordlessly.

Hyunoh thought carefully over it, then raised his head to spin the pencil around his fingers.

Doyeon sat up from his chair, his conversation over, and turned to Hyunoh.

“Hyunoh, Sungjae said you’re really good at Kurendin... Hey, that’s mine.”

Doyeon’s expression hardened. His eyes were on his pencil in Hyunoh’s hand.

“I said that’s mine.”

“I know whose it is.” Hyunoh smiled as he leaned back.

Doyeon reached out. “I lent you one, so use that.”

“I want to use this one. I don’t like how the other one moved on the paper.”

Hyunoh ignored Doyeon on purpose and continued to spin the pencil. The way he watched Doyeon’s face turn paler than usual was sharp.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the pencil fell out of Hyunoh’s hand. It bounced against the window and jolted out into the air.

At the same time, Doyeon stood up from his chair.

Crash! The chair fell back.

Doyeon ran out of the classroom without a word. He sprinted to the garden underneath their classroom, probably to where his pencil fell.

Huff, huff—

When he was down the staircase and in front of the garden, Doyeon began searching. He bent over and rummaged through the plants.

While someone might have asked why he was getting panicked over a pencil, all Doyeon could think about was finding “his” thing.

The rain soon drenched his hair and neck.

The thin, small pencil was nowhere to be found. Doyeon’s movements began to falter. He bit his lip, his face pale, and ran his palms across the ground bit by bit.

Suddenly, a hand appeared by his side and rustled through the grass. It plucked out a pencil with his name.

Doyeon followed the hand up and straightened his back. Hyunoh was staring at him while dusting the soil off his pencil.

Doyeon held his hand out wordlessly, and Hyunoh returned it without much protest.

They were quiet.

Doyeon rolled the pencil in his hand, not knowing what to say or do. He probably looked strange as he was rummaging through the garden because his friend dropped a pencil. The moment he understood what he’d done, he felt embarrassed.

“Doyeon, the class bell just rang.”

Doyeon didn’t answer. Hyunoh’s words felt like a question that asked why he was looking for a single pencil when class was about to start.

“I know. This is... because of you. You dropped my pencil.”

“I’m sorry. Let’s get back to class.”

Doyeon followed Hyunoh back into the building.

The rain had stopped, the skies were gray, and the air was damp.

When Hyunoh got to class, he shamelessly made up an excuse: “Sorry, I was visiting the principal's office with Doyeon.”

The teacher nodded. It probably worked because Doyeon and Hyunoh were the best students in class.

Doyeon sat down and glanced at Hyunoh. He seemed focused, and it was like he didn’t care about what happened at all. Doyeon decided to focus too.

When all of their classes were over, Doyeon felt relieved. It seemed like Hyunoh hadn’t found his actions strange, which was good. Now, he could hate Hyunoh for taking someone else’s property and dropping it out the window.

Doyeon took out his math workbook and began working through the answers. He got one out of twenty wrong. The questions weren’t hard, but he was upset he got one wrong.

Did he have to register with a tutoring center again? Aeyoung could do things on her own now.

He stared at the red line with complicated feelings. Then, Hyunoh called to him.

“Doyeon.”

“Yeah?”

When Doyeon turned around, Hyunoh reached out to open the window some more.

The scratching sound of the window was sharp.

Hyunoh leaned forward on the back of his hand and stared, which was too much for Doyeon, who rolled his gaze to the side. When he looked back at Hyunoh, he was still staring at him with his brown eyes. They were almost clear and unlike those of a high school student.

Doyeon felt his throat become dry.

“What? Say something if you’ve called my name.”

“Do you feel like you lack attention, too?”

Hyunoh’s sudden question rendered him speechless, so Doyeon barely got his lips moving.

“What?”

“Were you raised without love?”