Sin ||KookV||

2

The hands of the clock hung above the blackboard pointed at 11.45 am. Other than the class monitor and the subject representative, no one was listening in Korean class. They were all impatiently tapping their feet, waiting for the lunch bell to ring. Once the bell rang, they all did a hundred-metre dash and immediately burst out of the narrow doorway.

A few seconds later, I was the only one left in the classroom. The director of teaching affairs was loudly reprimanding students who were running too fast. I strolled leisurely past my unlucky brothers and stuck a Peppa Pig, which I had torn off the pencil case of the person sitting in front of me, on the director's back along the way. My brothers who had been made to stand as punishment all gave me a thumbs up.

I wasn't in a hurry; I had a hyung.

Only when everyone had run off already did I then slowly walk out of the classroom block. The moment I took out my phone, I suddenly remembered that yesterday my hyung had told me that he had a lunch outing to attend in the afternoon.

Shit. My lunch.

I was already on my way back home when I patted my pockets and realised I hadn't brought my keys with me, so I made my hyung send me his location. If he was near our house I could conveniently go and get the keys from him, and if he was far away I'd wait for the housekeeper to come and open the door for me.

I thought the 'lunch outing' my hyung had mentioned was referring to drinking with a circle of big bosses where everyone would puke on their way back home and become toilet-hugging piles of shit. When he had just started working, for the first two years, he would drink alcohol nonstop every day. It had only gotten better recently.

When I called him, he didn't pick up. Out of fear that I would disturb his work, I gingerly pushed the door open a bit. Then it turned out that, fucking hell, there were only two people inside the private dining room: my hyung, and a woman opposite him.

I usually pitied girls a lot. There were a few girls in class who were as skinny as butterfly feelers. Because they couldn't reach the top of the blackboard, I always stayed in class for an extra ten minutes during the Monday afternoon classroom cleanups before escaping to play basketball.

The woman sitting in front of my hyung was probably about 25 or 26 years old. She had light makeup on and wore a short skirt. She was quite pretty, but I didn't pity her, because the vase next to her hand had a rose in it.

Only when a man and a woman were on a date would there be a rose. Mum had pushed hyung to look for a partner again. Hyung had only just turned 26 this year and he was already being urged and pestered past his tolerance level to get married.

That woman wore a pair of thin-strapped sandals with sheer socks. Under the table, she was hooking my hyung's leg with her toes. She hadn't eaten more than a few mouthfuls, yet she was quite diligent with touching up her lipstick and powdering her face.

I was extremely dissatisfied with this choice of sister-in-law. I didn't care if my hyung liked her or not; either way, my sister-in-law had to be pleasant to my eyes.

My hyung waved a hand to call me over and made me call that woman 'sister'. I flung my bag next to my hyung's hand and sat next to him with my leg up. In a flash, that woman transformed into a female offender being interrogated in court.

I questioned her about her surname, her name and her age. I told her the dowry didn't need to be large; an apartment in Seoul's 3rd Ring Road was enough and it was best if she could give birth to six sons for my hyung within seven years.

The lady called me a lunatic (80% of the insult was directed at both of us), took her bag and left.

It turned out that she really was quite pretty. I thought the prettiest part of her was her back when she turned and left my hyung -- mainly 'her leaving' and not 'her back.'