CHAPTER 2

Gwanju, 2007

His favorite part of the day was walking through the rice fields of his town, and watch the hats of the workers disappear in between the long rice crops. Jiyong would stare, almost embellished, to the dirt road and the marks of the wheelbarrows creating narrow paths through the mud and the rocks. Paths that Jiyong, gladly, used for walking and jumping barefoot, enjoying the sensation of the water and the mud seeping through his toes.

Apart from the few workers, who were usually too focused on their own job to notice Jiyong, no one used to walk through those roads. They were dirty and treacherous, they said. But Jiyong find them nothing but fascinating. And that private nature gave Jiyong a feeling of being in his own special secret spot in the world, and he loved the secrecy above everything else. With a deep breath, he extended his arms and felt the sun touch his skin, the warmth spreading through his pores. Sweet drops were soaking his forehead and one of the straps of his backpack was almost about to fall from his left shoulder, but Jiyong could not care the less. He smiled. Three. He bent his knees. Two. He tensed his body. One. He opened his eyes and stared to the landing spot a few inches in front of him. Go. The mud under his feet gave up when he tried to propel himself and he slipped, his body falling forwards by inertia. Jiyong ended up with both hands and one half of his face buried in the mud.

“,” he cursed, spitting mud from his mouth and kneeling. He stared at his hands and then at the front part of his uniform  -usually white and now brown- and swallowed. That was going to cost him a good scolding. He tossed the mud from his palms and from his clothes as much as it was possible and cursed again. Annoyed, he searched around for his backpack, which had ended up a few meters in front of him –also buried in mud-, and opened it. From the insides he pulled out his pair of shoes and bent to tie his laces. That was the moment when he saw them. At first Jiyong simply squinted his eyes curiously, disbelieving of his own eyes, but then he followed with his eyes the subtle path that stretched along the road and frowned.

There was all along the road a line of small bread pieces left neatly over the mud. Jiyong took one of them and crumbled it within his fingers and wrinkled his nose, studying it with intent. He turned his head and looked at both sides of the road and noticed the path stretching from both sides, as if someone had been throwing them for a long while when walking through the road before him. After a long instant in which Jiyong seemed to sustain a heated internal debate, he sighed and shook his head, cleaned his fingers with the fabric of his pants and stood up. Now dirty and less excited than before he keep his daily walk to his house; not without, slyly and from time to time, following with his steps the breadcrumb’ path as much as he could. From time to time kicking the bread pieces to one side of the road.

“What happened to you?” someone asked at the distance a few meters ahead, and Jiyong immediately lifted his eyes from the breadcrumbs to the figure of a boy, probably his age, staring back at him. The boy had one small backpack hanging from one of his shoulders, a loaf of bread in one hand, and a beige dog playing in between his legs. But none of it was as disturbing as the playful grin he sported on his face. The boy stared down at his clothes and then back at his face, and raised one eyebrow when Jiyong didn’t answer back, “If you haven’t noticed, you are soaked in mud,” he said.

“How can someone not notice such a thing?” Jiyong asked back, rolling his eyes and breaking his silent trance. He flipped away some of the wet hair falling over his forehead, trying to conceal the redness spreading over his cheeks and snorted. The grin on the other boy’s face only grew wider, and the instinct to run away spreading inside Jiyong’s self only ignited wilder and tensed every muscle in his body.

“Then, what happened to you?” he asked again, and without waiting for an answer, he opened his backpack, took out a clean t-shirt and gave it to Jiyong. “I usually carry with me a second one, I swim at the river next to the wood cabin,” he said, shrugging, when Jiyong took the t-shirt and lifted one curious eyebrow, judging.

“Thank you,” Jiyong muttered and was about to take off his dirty one, when he stopped, stared at the other boy and let his hands fall down shyly at either side of his body.

A quite “Oh” escaped from the stranger’s lips, “Don’t worry about us. We can look away, don’t we Bredu?” he said looking at the dog and then at Jiyong with his playful smile. He turned away and squatted, his hands played with the dog’s fur. Jiyong changed t-shirts as fast as possible and saved the dirty one inside his own backpack. Once finished he took a moment and stood silently studying the boy in front of him. His back was wider than his and he looked if only a bit stronger and maybe older. But Jiyong interest spiked more at the way his hands traveled over the dog’s fur in a manner so tender, so cautiously smooth.

He coughed and murmured a “Thank you”. The boy stood up, turned around and nodded.

“I’m Lee Seunghyun, but you can always call me Seungri,” he said, stretching one hand towards Jiyong and kept smiling, with a smile that Jiyong just started to suspect was a permanent feature in his face.

“Ji-Jiyong,”

“Nice to meet you, Jiyong. Now try not to soil my shirt, would you?” he joked, bowed his head and turned away to keep his walking. Jiyong froze, looked at the boy walk away for about one minute until, suddenly, dashed to catch him up, shouting a “Hey!” that made the boy stop and turn.

“You! You are the one leaving the breadcrumbs’ over the floor?” he remarked, pointing with his finger at the path on the road. Seungri raised an eyebrow, looked at the floor then at the bread loaf in one of his hands and, for the first time, blushed. And that, Jiyong thought, was for reasons unknown disconcerting.

“I,” he opened his mouth and closed it again. He frowned. “Other wise Bredu wouldn’t follow me,” he gave as answer, looking at the dog with nostalgic eyes. The dog unaware of them kept sniffling one of the pieces over the mud.

“Bredu?” Jiyong kneeled and petted the dog’s fur.

Seungri lifted the corner of his lips in what Jiyong only could define as a proud grin, “Hmm. It seems he has a strange fascination for bread, so I called him Bredu,” he laughed, and squatted by his side to pet the dog’s muzzle.

To that Jiyong turned to look at Seungri and let out an amused loud laugh. Seungri blinked surprised, widened his eyes and then frowned.

“What?”

“You mean ‘Bread’,” Jiyong said, exaggerating his mouth movements, pretty confident of his advanced level in English.

Seungri fidgeted with the loaf of bread in his hand and lowered his eyes, ears turning red of embarrassment, “Maybe?” he let out, avoiding firmly meeting Jiyong’s eyes. He finally pressed his lips and drew his eyebrows together, “But you got to accept ‘Bredu’ is a damn nice name for a dog,” he said with a grin replacing the flush on his cheeks.

Jiyong laughed again and nodded, and with an almost unnoticed bit on his lip he murmured, “Indeed.”

The dog chose that instant to jump and Jiyong’s hand, which took him by surprise and forced him to stir backwards startled. One of his arms bumped with Seungri’s side, made the other boy lost balance and fall on his over the mud. And before Jiyong could mutter any apologize, the dog changed his attention towards a now startled Seungri; who quickly received him with wide arms and laughed when the dog his face. Jiyong closed his mouth and only stared, apologize forgotten.

“Is it yours?”

Seungri shook his head and patted the dog’s head. “He just follows me,” he said and stood up, “He is pretty, right?” he asked looking at the dog intently, “He walks me back from school everyday,” and the way he pronounced those words made Jiyong believe there was more in that sentence than what he possibly would ever understand.

Jiyong paid attention then to Seungri’s uniform. The red and the white were clearly from the famous private school at one of the closest cities. It was a long walk from there to Gwanju, though the education there was, by far, better than the one in the town. Jiyong shielded with his hand the emblem of his uniform and grimaced. His was from the town’s public school.

“You live in the city?” Jiyong asked, though it came out more like a statement than a question.

Seungri tilted his head and narrowed his eyes to that question. “My dad travels a lot to the city but I live in the town,” he said and pointed at the road, to the roofs of the houses that could be seen above the rice crops at the horizon.

Jiyong’s eyes sparkled and he let out a coy smile. “I see. Then, how can I return your shirt to you?

“You can keep it,”

Jiyong shook his head vigorously and held his hands in front of him, “It’s yours,”

Seungri shrugged and laughed, but his smile fell down his face when he looked at the way Jiyong looked sincerely disturbed to the idea of keeping his shirt, “My mom manages the town’s store,” he said, scratching the back of his neck, “You can always come by and say hello,”

“Ok,”

“Great. Then, nice to meet you,” Seungri said and stretched his hand. Jiyong shook hands with him clumsily, his eyes staring captivated at their interlaced hands. And then Seungri turned and walked away. This time Jiyong didn’t stop him.

Jiyong ran to his house after that. His was at the very edge of the town, almost part of very first rice fields at the border of the town limits. His mother was sitting at their dinning table, preparing their dinner when Jiyong opened the door and rushed through the stairs to his room. His mother simply looked at the running shadow of him, shook her head and smiled. Jiyong changed his dirty pants, took out his dirty shirt from his backpack, tugged both clothes in the laundry pile at one of the corners of his room and grabbed his notebook, books and backpack again and ran down the stairs, all of it as fast as possible.

As a habit now, he walked inside the kitchen, grabbed an apple and gulped the glass of water her m