Almond(19)

*

Not before long, Gon seemed to realize I was no easy match. He continued to rile me, but he seemed no longer as confident as he was before.

“Is he chickening out? He looks totally nervous,” kids whispered behind Gon’s back. The more I didn’t react, and the longer I didn’t ask for help, the higher the tension mounted in the classroom.

Gon must’ve gotten tired of tripping me up or slapping me on the back of my head. Instead, he announced that he would have it out with me, once and for all. As soon as the teacher dismissed the class and left, the scrawny lackey ran up to the chalkboard and started scribbling something on it. In crooked letters, he wrote:

AFTER LUNCH. TOMORROW. IN FRONT OF THE INCINERATOR.


“I’ve warned you,” Gon shouted pompously. “It’s up to you now. Don’t wanna get beat up? Then don’t show up. I will just assume you’ve chickened out, and I won’t bother you anymore. But if you do show up, you’d better brace yourself.”

Without responding, I stood up and slung my bag over my shoulders.

Gon hurled a book at me from behind. “You hear me, asshole? I said, get out of my way or I will knock you out!” Gon fumed, his face getting redder from holding back his anger.

“Why do I need to get out of your way? I’m just gonna go about my way as usual. If you’re not there, I won’t see you. If you are there, I’ll see you.”

I turned around to leave as he hurled curses at me. All I could think of was that Gon was bullying himself in an exhausting way.





33


By the next day, the whole school had heard about the showdown between Gon and me. The campus was already loud in the morning. The occasional chitchatting hinted at what would follow during lunchtime. Someone said, “Man, time drags.” Some other kid said, “There’s no way he’s gonna show up there, don’t you think?” Some kids even bet on who would win. I just focused in class as if nothing was happening. To me, time went by as usual, neither slow nor fast. Then the school bell rang to signal our lunch break.

Nobody sat next to me in the cafeteria, which was normal, until after I finished lunch and stood up to leave. A few kids started following me. As I walked, the group behind me grew bigger and bigger. I walked out the exit door. The shortcut to the classroom involved passing by the incinerator. I plodded on. And there stood Gon. Alone without his minions, he was kicking the trunk of a nearby tree when he stopped at the sight of me. I could see him clenching his fists from afar. As the distance between us was getting shorter, the group behind me scattered one by one like useless dust.

The expression on Gon’s face was somewhat conflicted. He was too tight-lipped to look angry, yet his eyes were too upturned to look sad. I had no idea how to read his face.

“He’s definitely scared, what a chicken, Yun Leesu!” someone shouted.

Now I was just a couple of steps away from Gon. I kept walking, steady as usual. I would get sleepy after lunch, so my only thought was to take a nap back at the classroom. Before I realized it, I had passed by Gon like he was merely part of the scenery. I heard the kids shout Wow, before I felt a light shock in the back of my head. He must’ve slightly missed me because it didn’t hurt. But before I could turn around, a kick knocked me over.

“I said, get, outta, my, fucking, way!” For every word, he gave a kick, ringing my body like a steady ticking of the clock. “You, deserve, it!” The kicks became harder and harder. I was already lying on the ground, moaning, blood oozing inside of my cheek. But I still could never give him what he wanted.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, you asshole!”

He screamed at me, crying almost. The crowd watching us started to mutter. Hey, he’s gonna die, call the teacher! When a few voices stuck out from the murmuring, Gon turned to them.

“Who was that? Don’t talk behind my back, you cowards! Say it to my face. Assholes! Come on!”

Gon grabbed whatever was on the ground and started throwing things at them. An empty can, a wooden stick, an empty glass bottle flew across the air and crashed. The kids ran away, screaming. This was familiar. Granny. Mom. The people on the streets that day. It had to stop. Blood was spilling from my mouth. I spat it out.

“Stop. I can’t give you what you want.”

“What?” he asked in a huff.

“I have to act to give you what you want, and I can’t. It’s just impossible. So please stop now. Everyone’s acting like they’re scared of you, but they’re actually laughing at you.”

Gon looked around. A beat of dead silence, as if time had stopped. Gon’s back arched like a hostile cat.

“Fuck, go fuck yourselves!” He started screaming. Every word that came out of his mouth was obscene. Curses, swearwords, and sheer madness that those words couldn’t contain.





34


Gon’s real name was Leesu. It was his mother who gave him that name. But Gon said he never remembered being called by that name. He didn’t like the name because he thought it sounded weak. Out of the many other names he’d had, his favorite was Gon.

Gon’s earliest memory was of people who weren’t his parents speaking loudly in a strange language. He had no idea why he was there. Noises everywhere. He was with an elderly Chinese couple in a shabby ghetto town in Daerim-dong, where they called him Zhēyáng. For a few years, he never went out of his house. That was why there was no record of his early years.