Deviant 1995 - Chapter 8.1

Chapter 8.1

However, the stingy boss only hosted a company dinner once a year on the company’s founding anniversary. Even then, Miran heard that they just had black bean noodles and sweet and sour pork at a Chinese restaurant.

Miran, who had been lounging on the floor with her back against the sofa, stretched and got up to head to the kitchen. She wasn’t really hungry, but she felt like snacking. As she peeked into the fridge, she was delighted to find a bottle of beer hidden among the neatly organized containers of side dishes and small portions of food.

“Ah! Baseball is 0B Bears, beer is 0B Lager!”

Miran, expertly popping the cap off with a spoon, chugged the cold beer straight from the bottle. Her stomach felt slightly relieved as the beer went down her throat.

After finishing the bottle in no time, she lay back down on the sofa. But since it wasn’t her favorite team playing, she quickly lost interest in the baseball broadcast. She flipped through the channels with the remote, but with only five channels, there wasn’t much to watch.

A few months ago, she had heard about cable TV, which had dozens of channels. But her older sister Juran, who clung to traditions like a noblewoman from the late Joseon Dynasty, would never accept such modern inventions without resistance.

Eventually, Miran turned off the TV and lazily glanced at the frames covering the living room wall.

From her kindergarten graduation photo, where her cheeks were as chubby as a ‘Cabbage Kid,’ to the photo of her wearing a graduation cap after being the first in her family to graduate from a four-year university last February, her 24-year life was all encapsulated on that wall.

“Why did they have to frame that one…”

Miran’s gaze lingered on a photo from her high school drama club days. She was wearing an oversized men’s suit and sporting a long-tailed mustache above her lip while taking a bow on stage.

The principal, who ignored the policy on allowing long hair, didn’t permit hair longer than three centimeters below the ear. So, Miran had a short haircut throughout her three years of high school. Initially, it was to save on salon costs, but later, whenever her hair grew a little, people around her insisted that she looked more ‘handsome’ with short hair, and they urged her to cut it.

With her tall stature and distinct features, she looked almost like a pretty boy during her high school days, especially when she wore jeans and a denim jacket with a backpack slung over one shoulder. With her outgoing personality and willingness to sing and stand out, she was as popular as a celebrity at her all-girls high school.

Students, like her juniors and seniors, would come to see her during breaks, and she often received love letters from admirers. She was so famous that she was known as ‘The Leslie Cheung of XX Girls’ High School’ even to students from nearby schools.

*Leslie Chung (장국영)

Thanks to this, she always played the male roles in the drama club, which she joined following a friend. On the day of that performance, she received so many bouquets, chocolates, letters, and stuffed animals that she couldn’t carry them all.

She chose to major in Theater and Film not because she had a particular talent for acting but because her high school experiences naturally led her in that direction. However, once she tried to enter the entertainment industry, despite her glory in high school, she found nothing came easy.

“I should have studied hard and aimed for a pharmacy or teaching degree instead of goofing off in high school.”

But it was too late for regrets. Even with hard work, not just anyone could get into pharmacy or teaching colleges.

Miran let out a long sigh, and her gaze settled on the only family photo. It was a black-and-white picture taken at a local photo studio when her father returned from a construction site in the Middle East in the 70s.

Her parents, in their early forties, sat stiffly in a red velvet chair with gold trim while twenty-year-old Juran, eighteen-year-old Yeongran, and sixteen-year-old Geumran stood awkwardly behind them like a screen, all with forced smiles. Baby Miran, barely a year old, was in Juran’s arms.

Shortly after this photo was taken, her father returned to the Middle East and died in a fall while building an apartment. The ID photo he had taken for his passport became his memorial portrait. That photo was placed on top of her mother’s lacquered dresser for a long time as if to prove that a father had once existed in their lives.

Her mother had used the money her father earned in the Middle East, combined with the compensation for his death and additional loans, to buy a small shop attached to a modest house. She tirelessly ran the shop from morning till night, raising her four daughters with sheer determination.

One winter dawn, while she was outside changing the briquettes, she collapsed and suffered a stroke.