[My First Love Lives in the Attic] Chapter 36
The Sinner, Receive Your Aura
Oh I-gyeom was generally quite satisfied with his job. A hundred days before the college entrance exam, his homeroom teacher had said:
“When you’re a high school senior who just took the college exam, that’s when your brain is at its fullest. You could take the civil service exam with that exact knowledge and pass.”
I-gyeom was deeply impressed by this and put the teacher’s advice into practice. He completely messed up the college exam but—miraculously—passed the local government civil service test.
While others were preparing for employment in college, I-gyeom was already employed. He went to work cheerfully at the Happiness Center, then the district office, then city hall.
There were certainly many challenges in office life, but the biggest perks of this job were that the salary was never late and he could always leave at 6 p.m. sharp.
Today, though, he got scolded for being late, and after acting all cutesy with his boss to try and soften the blow, he got yelled at even more. So when 6 o’clock came and he was freed, he dashed to Hwaran’s place like a dog off a leash.
Tarim must have arrived, right? Time for a delicious dinner and then to flop down and relax~ ♪
But when I-gyeom arrived at Hwaran’s place, the atmosphere was gloomy and ominous.
“…What are you guys doing?”
Two of Hwaran’s housemates were sitting solemnly at the kitchen table. Park Tarim and Kwon Hosik. Without even glancing at I-gyeom, Hosik dropped his voice dramatically.
“Sit down.”
It felt like he needed to hire a lawyer. I-gyeom immediately plopped his butt onto the chair.
“…Where’s Muru?”
Tarim answered.
“Library.”
The three most serious syllables in the world.
“Then when’s dinner…?”
“Shut it.”
Hosik shot him a detective-grade glare. Still, I-gyeom was thankful that at least he made eye contact.
“Hey… guys… What did I… What did I do wrong…?”
Like Al Pacino in The Godfather, or rather like Al Pacino as the Godfather, Tarim opened his mouth in a heavy tone.
“Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
“In the morning… I dropped it… it broke… I haven’t gotten it fixed yet…”
“What about the living room table?”
“I got startled while sleeping… thrashed around…”
Tears welled up in I-gyeom’s eyes. Hosik scoffed.
“You crying?”
“N-Nooo!”
“Those tears are the evidence.”
Sergeant Kwon Hosik was fully possessed by his former role on the 7th Investigation Team of Junsan Police. They had even turned off all the lights in the house except the one above the table, setting the perfect interrogation room mood.
“They’re not tears! It’s sweat!”
“If you really hadn’t done anything wrong, your tear ducts wouldn’t be sweating. You’re feeling guilty!”
BAM. Hosik slammed the table.
“…That’s why you’re being so docile. You sat when we told you to, shut up when we told you to. If you really had nothing to be guilty about and we talked to you like this—!”
At the word “if,” Detective Kwon suddenly stood up. I-gyeom froze stiff, staring up at Hosik. The detective’s shadowed face looked terrifying.
Tarim, leaning forward like a prosecutor, continued.
“Wouldn’t the usual you have said something like, ‘Jeez, stop being so dramatic and make dinner already’?”
Checkmate. There was nowhere left to run. I-gyeom dropped his head. Hosik gave a cold smile and slowly paced around the table.
“At approximately 3 p.m. today, I was cleaning the air conditioner at Kwon Hoyeon’s house. That house has two ceiling units and three standing ones. After eating regular—not even special—black bean noodles that Hoyeon ordered for me, I went back to labor. Because of that, I missed Tarim’s call. I finally got in touch while on the bus back to Junsan. The conversation I had with Tarim was… shocking, to say the least. Now, let’s hear from the victim, Park Tarim.”
Tarim gently took I-gyeom’s right hand and lifted it. Wrapped around his middle finger was a band-aid.
“Leaving the front door unlocked, not organizing the shoe rack, flipping over the living room table—those are all things you always do. You overslept, woke up startled, flailed around and flipped the table, and in the process—”
Tarim unwrapped the band-aid. The nail on I-gyeom’s middle finger was halfway off, barely hanging on. I-gyeom didn’t even say it hurt.
“Your hand must’ve hit the table. And in all that, you upended the shoe rack looking for shoes to match your OOTD. You were in such a hurry to get to work that you didn’t lock the door.”
“That’s… That’s stuff I always do!”
I-gyeom weakly protested. He had no strength left. Tarim placed a familiar object on the table—it was Tarim’s keyholder that she always carried.
The keys slid like a curling stone and docked perfectly in front of I-gyeom. Every sweat gland on his body activated, which was very visible to the two pseudo-investigators.
“The only person who had access to my keyholder… was you.”
“What about Hosik!”
“Do you see Hosik going to the bathhouse with me?”
Cold. Hosik hated the public bathhouse and couldn’t stand stuffy places. He claimed that the last time he went was five years ago, during a farewell party at Bongnim Bathhouse.
Meanwhile, I-gyeom was the kind of adult who would follow a stranger for bathhouse fees and a banana milk.
“It was four days ago, wasn’t it…? We went to Bongnim. Right in front of the lockers, you were stripping down when you said, ‘Tarim, can you get me a banana milk now?’”
“Tarimmm…”
“So I obediently bought banana milk. The keyholder was in the locker. An unlocked locker. I was gone for about a minute. That’s when it happened, right?”
“I-I’m sorry…”
“Master key.”
“I had no choice!”
“Give it.”
The accused collapsed onto the table. Aaaaah. He even made some pathetic groaning sound. The two interrogators gave him enough time for reflection. After about 20 seconds of agony, the criminal lifted his tear-streaked face.
“Can I… have a smoke…?”
“You don’t even smoke.”
“Just feels like I should…”
Tarim sighed, like a lonely Admiral Yi Sun-shin at Suro Fortress.
“First of all… I’m sorry for making you buy me two banana milks that day.”
“Now that you mention it, yeah. Bought one before the heist and one after the bath.”
“The master key… I don’t have it anymore.”
Kwon Hosik’s eyes widened.
“You took orders from someone!”
“I really didn’t want to… I swear…”
I-gyeom couldn’t even face his friends. He looked down.
“…They promised me a Pikmin deluxe gift pack…”
“YOU CRAZY BASTARD!!!!!!”
Hosik snatched up his phone. The healing game Pikmin Bloom. Under the <Shop> category—<Gifts>. Of the two gift packs available for other users, the highest priced one was…
“YOU SOLD YOUR FRIENDSHIP FOR 7,500 WON?!?!”
“You guys wouldn’t play Pikmin with me!!!”
“What do you mean we wouldn’t, asshole! I even accepted your friend request!”
“You never plant flowers while walking! No expeditions! No leveling up! Playing Pikmin with you was boring as hell!”
“You traitor! That’s why you didn’t invite me to the medium mushroom battle?!”
Tarim, who knew absolutely nothing about games, couldn’t follow a single word. She vaguely remembered I-gyeom nagging her since last year to download some walking game or whatever.
She was always taking photos while walking, and didn’t want to game with the same people she lived and ate with. She had no idea this would blow up like this.
“Hey. Pikmin or Pickypicky or whatever, the point is—who has my key now?”
It was time to name the final boss. The one who battled mushrooms with I-gyeom, leveled up together, and offered 7,500 won for the master key…
“…Gyeoul-noona.”
Tarim’s sigh was slower than Hosik’s punch. Hosik grabbed I-gyeom by the collar and spat through clenched teeth.
“You crossed a line.”
“No, no, no!”
“You like Han Gyeoul, huh?”
“No! We just played Pikmin together!”
“If you played Pikmin, that’s everything, you son of a—!!!!!”
Clack. The sound of the front door opening echoed from the living room. The grabbie, the grabber, and the bystander all snapped their heads toward the door.
At this hour, the only person who’d be coming in was Ju Muru. And indeed, it was her return.
“You crazy bastards—are you fighting again?!”
The familiar sharp voice shot through the air like one of Yi Seong-gye’s arrows. As the voice’s owner walked forward, small metal pieces clinked and jingled with every step.
Her long black hair swayed like a dance—on half her head, at least. The other half was shaved, revealing at least ten piercings in one ear.
Dark eyeshadow on her lids, blackish-purple lipstick, piercings in both her eyebrows and lips, chains jangling from her signature red-and-black tartan pants by Vivienne Westwood, and her usual spiked boots were already tossed somewhere by the front door.
“…Gyeoul-ah.”
Kwon Hosik called her name in a voice that sounded like he might cry any second.
