Delusive Fate

#100

However, from Choi Tae-hyuk’s perspective, even such a brother was just a good-hearted person who loved his family and worried about his older brother, albeit with a bit of a rough manner of speaking. Choi Tae-hyuk, who had lived like this, thought his life would always be this way. Peaceful and joyful days spent with good people. A stable future.

Therefore, if there was any fault in this situation, it was entirely Choi Tae-hyuk’s sin.

The sin of laziness, never having experienced hardship; the sin of pride, arbitrarily generalizing and trusting humans; and as a result, the sin of lust, loving everyone with an overflow of love for humanity. Also, the sin of wrath for angering his brother by being pure and happy alone, among others…

He had thus committed most of the greatest sins mentioned in the Bible, and trapped in his own thoughts, he didn’t listen to others. Living in a happy idealism like a fairy tale protagonist, all that was happening to him now could be said to be entirely Choi Tae-hyuk’s own fault. After all, it was the way of things that a happy Little Red Riding Hood meets the wolf, and a happy Snow White receives the poisoned apple.

So Choi Tae-hyuk smiled awkwardly.

“Umm…”

The sight of the living room that his brother would surely have called ‘a disaster’ if he had seen it. Left speechless in front of it, he just rolled his light-colored eyes, inherited from his mother, this way and that. He thought to himself.

‘Should I… consider this as… having one more puppy…?’

But one that I didn’t bring home myself.

In fact, his real pet dog Ppomi was absent, having been hospitalized for a week due to a left foreleg fracture…

Anyway, Choi Tae-hyuk had just woken up a little while ago. Although the sun was high in the sky, it wasn’t unusual as he tended to wake up leisurely even on normal days. As he got up in a good mood and stretched with a “Nnngh,” Choi Tae-hyuk’s eyes suddenly flew open at hearing a strange sound. Bang bang boom boom woong woong. Noises that shouldn’t be heard were coming from beyond the door.

What’s this sound? A game? Or an action movie? Whatever it is, such sounds shouldn’t be coming from a house where I live alone, right?

Startled by the situation different from his daily routine, Choi Tae-hyuk sprang up like a released spring. The sight that met his eyes as he rushed out… Choi Tae-hyuk was utterly bewildered. In his living room, someone he had never invited, not family, not a long-time acquaintance, nor even a close friend, was shamelessly sprawled out playing a game.

Sensing Choi Tae-hyuk’s presence, the uninvited guest slightly turned his head to look at him. Choi Tae-hyuk’s gaze met with that of the man lying on the sofa with his calf draped over the armrest as if it were his own home.

“……”

“……”

Choi Tae-hyuk was flustered once again. The man who had entered someone else’s house at will while the owner was sleeping didn’t even greet him despite their eyes meeting. As the large eyes with slightly upturned corners blinked a few times before turning back to the TV screen, Choi Tae-hyuk became even more urgent. Taking a hesitant half-step forward, he raised the corners of his mouth in an indescribably subtle expression.

“Uh, well… um, hello…?”

“……”

“Good morning…?”

The man looking at the awkward-faced Choi Tae-hyuk raised himself slightly and glanced at the living room window. As if pointing out that it wasn’t morning with the sun high in the sky… Choi Tae-hyuk felt a bit embarrassed being treated as pathetic by someone who had entered his house without permission and was playing games without asking. Rubbing one cheek with a sheepish gesture, he said:

“From the morning… no, seeing your face right after waking up feels a bit… different. Good morning, no, good afternoon, Han-sol…”

The man in Choi Tae-hyuk’s living room, who had entered without invitation, was Lee Han-sol.

How did it come to this?

Choi Tae-hyuk pondered as he changed his clothes, having been exposed to the ordeal of Lee Han-sol as soon as he opened his eyes. Choi Tae-hyuk, who had been sitting demurely next to Lee Han-sol until just a moment ago, was so shocked that he had forgotten he was in his pajamas and hadn’t even washed his face after just waking up. He came to his senses when he heard the alarm sound coming from the bedroom.

“……”

“……”

“What are you doing?”

“Pardon?”

“Your phone is ringing.”

“What?”

“Are you hard of hearing?”

“Huh?”

“I said your phone is ringing in the room.”

“Oh, right. Today Ppomi…!”

Choi Tae-hyuk, who had been staring blankly in a daze, belatedly jumped up upon hearing Lee Han-sol’s rebuke and the faint sound of the alarm. His pet dog Ppomi, who had fractured her left foreleg last week when she got too excited during his brother’s visit and went berserk. He hurriedly moved his feet, finally remembering that today was the day Ppomi was to be discharged after a week of hospitalization following surgery.

As he hastily washed up and entered the dressing room to change into outdoor clothes, Choi Tae-hyuk thought about what kind of existence Lee Han-sol was. In his 27 years of life, he had never met anyone like Lee Han-sol. Among the people he had met, the strangest and most peculiar being was his own brother, but Lee Han-sol had dramatically overturned that ranking upon his appearance.

First of all, Lee Han-sol was Choi Tae-hyuk’s tenant. As he managed several buildings, he had delegated the rental transactions to real estate agencies. Choi Tae-hyuk was a top-tier VVIP for the local real estate agencies, and the realtors, in order to maintain ongoing business with him, selected people who seemed unlikely to cause trouble and placed them in Choi Tae-hyuk’s buildings. To prevent unnecessary problems from occurring.

In fact, even without going that far, Choi Tae-hyuk was a good landlord in himself. For one, he never raised the rent on tenants who had already moved in. He never rushed people even if their monthly rent was late, and when there were problems with the house, he promptly sent repairmen without delay and didn’t fuss over unnecessary things, so tenants tended to behave well themselves to stay there for a long time. That’s why Choi Tae-hyuk had never imagined until now that one wrongly admitted tenant could terrify the whole neighborhood, or that his daily life would change like this because of it… Not at all.

Lee Han-sol was an extraordinary individual. Choi Tae-hyuk could pinpoint the exact date Lee Han-sol moved in. Because from the moment he moved in, incidents started occurring in the previously quiet neighborhood almost every day. The first was because of a food delivery motorcycle.

At that time, Choi Tae-hyuk was returning home after walking Ppomi. As he was coaxing Ppomi, who was refusing to go home, while entering the security code for the main entrance, he heard a loud voice nearby.

‘Hey, how many people have you buried so far?’

‘What? What are you talking about… Who are you?’

‘Fuck you, just answer the question. I’m asking how many people you’ve killed so far. Seeing how you ride that motorcycle on the street, I guess you’ve killed about a dozen people, where do you bury them each time? I’m extremely sensitive to such illegal and unreasonable incidents as I’ve been a victim all my life, you know? You picked the wrong person today. I’m definitely going to bury you in the mountains today on behalf of those people.’

‘What’s with this crazy bastard… Huh? Hey, don’t come closer. I told you not to come closer. The pizza’s getting cold, I need to deliver, don’t come, ahhh!’

Choi Tae-hyuk briefly considered whether he should intervene. After comparing the helmeted rider and Lee Han-sol who was threatening him for a moment, he dismissed it as nothing serious, thinking no big incident would occur. Lee Han-sol didn’t look like he could actually beat up the rider, and the rider seemed too rushed with his pizza delivery to fight with Lee Han-sol. And Choi Tae-hyuk’s prediction was spectacularly wrong.

According to Mr. Bu Dong-suk from Bu Dong-suk Real Estate, Lee Han-sol’s occupation was a hunter, but Choi Tae-hyuk found this hard to believe. He had never suspected anyone of trying to deceive him before. He thought it was wrong to doubt others without reason. The fact that he, for the first time in his life, suspected that Lee Han-sol might have lied to both the realtor and himself was significant. Because Lee Han-sol was busy roaming around outside every day like an unemployed person with nothing to do, and he would cause a disturbance in the neighborhood at least once a day. In a way that made it hard to believe he was a hunter, by picking fights with someone…

Choi Tae-hyuk was at a loss on how to handle the tenants’ complaints asking him to resolve Lee Han-sol’s misdeeds.

Hello, I’m making this request on behalf of the neighborhood residents. Please stop fighting in the neighborhood. The residents are scared.

That one sentence would have been enough, but every time he walked Ppomi, every time he briefly went to the supermarket or met someone, the Lee Han-sol he witnessed seemed too… abnormal. Choi Tae-hyuk was a bit scared. Because he had never seen someone like Lee Han-sol who was angry every day and caused a commotion every day.

What made it more difficult was the fact that the people Lee Han-sol picked fights with were those who had committed wrongs first, like smoking in non-smoking areas or threatening the neighborhood stray dogs… Lee Han-sol was too much of a righteous maniac to be simply labeled as a bad person.

For various reasons, Choi Tae-hyuk couldn’t easily approach Lee Han-sol and just spent time watching him from afar.

‘If I try to clean up these things in advance before that man sees and gets angry, would it get better…?’

That’s why Choi Tae-hyuk was picking up trash that someone else had just dumped on the day he ran into Lee Han-sol. Feeling sorry for the terrified tenants, he wanted to resolve the situation even in that way…

And the reason Choi Tae-hyuk said these words to Lee Han-sol that day was because he hadn’t anticipated at all that he would act like this.

“Ah, the reason you’re outside all day… is because you feel bad when you’re alone?”

Choi Tae-hyuk just wanted to sort out this chaotic situation. He thought that if he acted moderately kind, Lee Han-sol would recognize his sincerity like other people he had met so far.

“Then from tomorrow… how about you just come to my house? I have a lot of things to play with at home… and I’m a homebody, so I’m always at home. Haha.”

He had no idea that Lee Han-sol would actually start coming and going from his house as if it were his own…