Chp.11| The Black Sheep and its Moth


When I arrived at home, Jin Hyung still hadn’t returned. My mother insisted she was going to call the cops but my father told her to wait on it. That's when they both started to interrogate me.

“Which friend was it, Ji Won?” my mother drilled me.

“I don’t know. Some kid’s house,” I answered, wiping my running nose with a tissue paper.

“What’s wrong with you?” my father inquired.

“Caught a cold.”

My phone started to vibrate against the coffee table.

My mother was staring me down with her eyes and I chose to ignore it instead. I never liked it when she did that to me. It was far more worst than having her questioning me. “Umma, don’t look at me like I’m some kind of culprit. That brat left to his friend’s house and he didn’t tell me which. He just told me to inform you.”



“How come I get the feeling you’re lying to me, Ji Won?”

Because I’ve always been a bad liar? “Why would I lie for?”

My father cut in, reaching for the phone but I beat him to it first. “Ji Won, shut off your phone immediately,” he warned.

My mother held out her hand, gesturing for me to give it to her. “Your boyfriend calling you?”

I snorted. “Umma, be real. I don’t any guys calling me except for---HERO!” I burst, jumping from my seat and turned my head away to answer it. “YAH! YOU BASTARD. DID YOU TRY TO KILL YOURSELF AGAIN?!!”

Hero was my guy cousin who lives in Pusan. A black sheep of the Lee family. He’s an adrenaline junkie who recently acquired this strange addiction to life itself. Until this day, I still haven’t figured out why his friends called him Hero.

Whenever he called me, he called for one reason only…

“Ji Won-ah! I need your help. I’m broke.”

What did I tell you?

“Are you in the hospital again?!” I asked.

The last time he called, he was lying in the hospital bed with broken limbs. He would use his bored excuse so that I would go over and keep him company.

Keeping him company = Giving him money

“Stupid. I’m in front of your house and---"

At the same time, the front door swung opened and in came Jin Hyung, crying his head off as he hurried to my mother’s side. “Mommy! They almost cut it all off!!” he whined, throwing his arms around her waist. She cradled him close, his back while trying to calm him down.

She looked at me accusingly. “Ji Won? What is going on?”

Jin Hyung wiped his eyes and pointed at me. “These older guys were picking on me. They took me to some scary place and started asking me questions. And when I called her for help, she hung up on me.”

I gritted my teeth and refrained myself from attacking the little brat.

“Your brother was in trouble and you hung up on him? Not only that but you also lied to me. How could you do that, Ji Won?”

Before I could answer her, the midget interrupted. “I almost died while she was stuck fooling around with her boyfriend.”

“You wouldn’t be dying you little b*tch, you’d be d*ckless!!” I shouted, ready to throw myself at him when a hand held me back.

I turned to look at the person, jerking my arm away. “Yah! Why do you have to stop---" I was staring into the handsome face of Hero a.k.a Lee Yoon Tae; my guy cousin that I was just on the phone with.

Lee Yoon Tae had unnaturally pale skin for a guy. The kind of flawless skin every girl would kill for. The thing is, he resembles Jae Joong from Dong Bang Shin Ki but he was taller with messier hair and more on the rugged side. How coincidental that they were both called Hero. I once told him that him and Jae Joong was separated at birth and Yoon Tae was the less fortunate one. He hates it when I compare him to Jae Joong.

He said to me, “Shut up. At least I’m 100% all me.”
And I told him. “Shut up. Are you calling him fake?”
“Yeah. I read on the internet somewhere that he’s really a girl. I bet his balls are fake too!”
And then I said to him. “You’re just jealous because he’s talented and he’s making money, and he’s getting all the girls.”
“Pshh, they’ll be disappointed once they find out the truth.”

Before I could open my mouth to greet him, I was shoved out of the way by my mother who began attacking him with her slaps. “You. It’s you who took Jin Hyung, right? It’s you!”

Yoon Tae was screaming out, “Auntie, it’s me! Stop it, auntie!”

Jin Hyung was giggling like a mischievous little bastard that he is. I saw my chance and grabbed him from his seat and slapped his head once.

Bingo. He cried.

My father, in the meanwhile was trying to pry my mother away from the fearful Yoon Tae. “Honey, that’s Yoon Tae. Let him go.”

My mother was still kicking and screaming when I rushed forward and dragged Yoon Tae up the stairs with me.

When we reached my room, I shut the door behind me, locking it in the process. Yoon Tae flung his black duffel bag and sat on the edge of the bed, cringing in pain. “Damn, she’s worst than my mother,” he whined, touching his now bruised face.

I went to sit next to him, taking notice of the badass appearance he was putting on. The motocross jacket, the pierced ears and eyebrow, the black tee, along with the wallet chain that dangled from his loose black denims screamed out rebel.

“I can understand why. What’s with you and calling unexpectedly and showing up whenever you feel like it? By the way, did you help Jin Hyung?”

“Yeah, followed him and his captors on my bike. At first, I didn’t think it was him. I was more curious in what the bastard were going to do to him. And then when I heard his crying, I knew right away that it had to be the midget. So I went in there with my bike and chased those ers away.” He started to laugh. “Should have seen the one guy, he pissed right in his pants cause he was so scared.”

“Ha ha, funny,” I mocked. “That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”

“Your father didn’t tell you? I’m transferring schools again, and I’ll be staying here in Seoul.” He reached up to scratch the back of his head, smiling guiltily. “I kind of made a promise to my mother that I’d graduate this year. That---and the fact that annihilated the old man’s car. Too make up for it, I have to pass.”

Yoon Tae had always been a hopeless student who chooses to use his brain outside of school. He changed schools like he changed outfits because of his lack of showing up. I couldn’t believe my father neglected to mention anything about Yoon Tae coming over to stay with us. Which wasn’t a bad thing because Yoon Tae had always been fun to hang around with and I consider him to be something like an older brother to me. Even better, he was good at keeping the annoying brat away from me.

The bad side to it?

Yoon Tae was going to find out about the invincible PingPongBoy and most likely they’ll turn into bitter enemies because Yoon Tae was the competitive type.

“Which school?” I asked, finding that my voice had gone small.

He gave me a sideway glare and answered, “What other school, dummy? Yours of course.” He moved to reach for his bag. “You could say I’ve changed and I've taken upon a new interest.”

“Really? You have a girlfriend?”

Reason why I asked him that is because I’ve always suspected him of being gay. This was the guy who never dated any girl before. Which is quite surprising considering that he always get mistaken for Jae Joong and has plenty of girls stalking him most of the time.

His eyes widened. “Yah! You think I have time for a girlfriend? Girls are only good at one thing.”

I stuck my chin out. “Oh really and what is that?”

“Driving a man crazy with their numerous of complaints.”

“Shut up. At least our brains are in our head not our pants!"

He just looked at me like I was a dummy. "Where the hell did that come from?"

I decided to get back to the point. "What is it?”

“I decided to do something different from all my extreme sports,” he said, slowly removing a black object from his bag and held it front of me. “Ta-da! It’s a ping-pong racket. She’s different from all the rackets out there. I call her The Black Moth. What you think, Ji Won?”

Great. Just ing great. All of this was too much of a coincidence. If Butterfly Kenji wasn’t bad enough, stupid Lee Yoon Tae had a name for his racket too.

Out of pure annoyance, I snatched the racket from his hand and tossed it across the room, and then stood up to face him. “Have you lost your mind? Out of all the sports in the world, why did you have to play a dumb sport like that?!”

He stood up with his furrowing together. “What’s wrong with you? That’s my racket you just threw!!”

Shoving my head, he hurried to pick up his racket. “Touch it like that again, and I’ll rip your head off,” he barked at me and began to blow and wipe at it as if the thing meant the world to him.

___


I woke up to the sound of my phone and blindly reached for it beside me to answer it. “Hello?”

“She’s sick,” came the voice of Park Jung Sang.

Feeling a little out of it myself, I said, “Huh?”

“She’s sick because of you. You better get you’re a$$ over here and bring over some remedy.”

“Why don’t you do it?”

“Because you’re her babysitter. Besides, I can’t. I have to watch the house.”

“Whatever, you’re just lazy.”

“You better come.”

“You miss me that much? Ohhhh how sweet of you my loveable boyfriend,” I said sweetly, adding smooches with it. And then I hung on him and went back to sleep.


One hour later…

“Ji Won, wake up!!” the voice shouted.

I grumbled and then turned over to flutter my lids opened to find that I was staring at a guy standing half with only his pants on, carrying a tray of something in his hands.

I quickly sat up in a panic. “What are you doing in my room?!”

“Dummy, who do you think I am, your boyfriend?”

It was only Yoon Tae.

Wait a second here. Yoon Tae has washboard abs?!

“Auntie told me to reheat this soup for you so---"

I didn’t let him finish. I was up and hopping from my bed. “I’m late for school!!!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, rushing out of my room.

Yoon Tae had caught me by the arm and half-dragged me back into the room. “What the hell? You’re sick. Go back to bed.”

“I am?” I felt my head, feeling it burn. “Wah! I am!” I cried out.

Was my immune system that weak?

Yoon Tae forced me to sit on the bed. “Why are you so excited to go to school anyway? You’re boyfriend waiting for you?”

I glared at him from under my brows. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Right. Then who’s the punk who keeps calling you?”

“He called?”

Yoon Tae handed me the phone. “Ten missed calls. I deleted the other ten out of boredom.”

I felt my head spin. “Did you talk to him?”

“Twice.”

Uh oh.

“What did he say to you?”

“He cursed me. Told me to off and put you on the phone.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told him to off and leave you alone.”

Not a good start.

“That’s it?”

“No. I told him that threats over the phone are useless. If he was such a tough guy, he’d be over the house by now.”

“You what?!”

The sound of sudden pounding made me jump. I hurried to my window, fearful of seeing the truth.

There he was, pounding hard on my door. PingPongBoy was fuming mad. My heart pounded even faster and I found it hard to breathe.

I turned to face my cousin. “Lee Yoon Tae, I’ll kill you first before he has his way with you!!”

And that, my friends, was the last thing I said before I fell unconscious.