Bring It On! - Chapter 47

Chapter 47.

Just because the shelter was complete didn’t mean we could laze around like grasshoppers, singing songs all day. True, we no longer had to spend every single day cutting down trees like machines, but there was still plenty of daily work to be done. 

The harsher the conditions, the more diligently we had to move if we wanted to maintain a clean, human-like living space.

I peeled off the splinters from the uncoated wooden floor, tidied it, and scrubbed it with a dry cloth to remove dust. Jay, who seemed to have gotten a taste for furniture-making, built another wooden bed, and even a personal table and chair just for Suho.

“Hey, kid, sit down!”

Jay wiped the sweat from his forehead with his forearm and called out brightly.

Suho, who had been bursting with anticipation at the thought of having his very first desk, bolted over like lightning. 

The solid oak desk and chair were a little rough in appearance for a child, but the durability was undeniable. Suho didn’t care about design at all. 

He was so excited by Jay’s handiwork that he jumped up and down in place.

“Is this really mine? Huh? For real?”

“Yeah, I can’t even fit my butt in there.”

“Good thing you’re fat, then.”

“You little brat, not even a thank you?”

Suho just raised his hand lazily like an old man in his sixties and muttered, “Yeah, thanks.” 

His halfhearted gratitude clearly annoyed Jay, but when he saw Suho caressing the desk, resting his cheek on it, and looking genuinely happy, he seemed to let it slide this time.

“From today on, I’m eating all my meals here,” Suho announced to me with sparkling eyes.

“Hey, we’ve got a proper place for eating, you can’t. No.”

“I wasn’t asking you.”

“Your Noona would say no too.”

“Then why’d you even make me a desk!”

Suho’s nine-year-old voice thundered with injustice, but Jay didn’t bat an eye.

“For studying. The harsher the environment, the more you’ve got to exercise your brain muscles.”

“Studying, my foot…”

Suho pouted and traced the corner of the wooden desk with his finger. Even though Jay had sanded it thoroughly, there were still little splinters here and there. 

I quickly grabbed Suho’s hand and placed it on my thigh.

“Look around you. There are fish, fruits, even insects everywhere. You’ve got endless things to study and explore. If you record each of them with your hands and mind, someday you’ll find a use for all of it.”

Even as Jay went on with his little speech, Suho stubbornly pretended not to hear, fidgeting restlessly. At last Jay grabbed Suho’s soft cheeks and shouted, “Then at least explore nature!” 

Suho immediately scrunched his face and slapped Jay’s hands away.

“You do it! Why tell me when you don’t even do it yourself?!”

But Jay wasn’t embarrassed or flustered by the retort. Instead, he confidently raised his eyebrows, then suddenly turned his head toward me. 

What? Why was he looking at me? I saw his sharp eyes soften, and his perfectly normal ears flush red. When I mouthed, “What are you staring at?” he shamelessly spoke aloud.

“I’m exploring you, ugh!”

I instantly snatched up a piece of tree bark and hurled it at him. Don’t say things that’ll make Suho suspicious. 

But Suho, not caring what Jay and I were up to, sprawled out long across the desk. He was glad to have one, but seemed sulky at the realization there wasn’t much he could actually do with it.

I sidled closer to Jay. At my gesture, he bent down and puckered his lips. Not that, idiot. I grabbed his earlobe and pulled him closer.

“Suho can’t write.”

I felt his body stiffen beside me. His flat brows drew together. He must have realized how cruel it was to demand nature reports from a boy who didn’t even know how to write. 

Suho knew that kids younger than him could already speak not only their mother tongue but even a second language fluently, and solve difficult math problems with ease. Even if he never showed it to me, he must’ve felt deep inferiority and shame inside.

I remembered what his older brother, Lee Haeseong, had told me. When Suho was even younger, he had spent more than half the year in the hospital. 

He needed a guardian constantly by his side, but they could barely scrape together hospital bills, let alone afford a caregiver.

They were always behind on rent, forced to move from place to place. A coworker who pitied the brothers’ situation eventually recommended the Australian shipping company where I worked. That’s how Haeseong managed to get a job. 

Suho, who had never stayed in the same neighborhood for more than a year, and spent most of that time hospitalized anyway, never had a chance at a proper education.

Jay gazed down at Suho’s dark head of hair, then walked toward him. Was he going to apologize? He tapped on Suho’s desk as though knocking on a door. 

The boy, still sprawled out, lifted only his head to look up at Jay with sullen eyes.

“What.”

“Starting today, you have two hours a day of special lessons with me.”

“……”

He wasn’t about to apologize, after all. Instead, Jay smiled with that slow, steady look. The way his mouth stretched open into a grin had something oddly chilling about it. 

The handsome face wearing that smile held a different kind of amusement within. Only then did I realize.

Jay didn’t feel the slightest bit sorry. He had simply seized the perfect chance to get back at Suho for the humiliation he’d once suffered while learning to swim.

***

“I quit!”

Exactly ten minutes into the so-called special lesson, Suho declared his escape. As he kicked back his chair to stand, Jay pressed down on his shoulder, scolding him with mock severity.

“A man can’t have so little patience.”

“Noona! Noona!”

“Always running to Sun Woori when things don’t go your way, huh?”

I had been making a spare knife, but at the racket, I turned to look. Jay stood with arms crossed, sharp eyes fixed on the paper atop the desk. With his face wiped clean of expression and his brows drawn tight in concentration, he looked more like some professor who tolerated no mistakes than the Jay I knew. 

But the discordance was glaring. The “student” receiving his lesson was pounding his chest like a drum, shouting in frustration.

I set aside the finished knife and walked over.

“Why are you getting so worked up? You’re doing fine, aren’t you?”

“Noona!”

As soon as I came closer, Suho stretched out both arms as if he’d been waiting for me, trying to drag me into an embrace. But Jay, appearing like a ghost, snatched me back before Suho could reach me. The boy was left flailing in empty air.

“Lesson’s not over yet.”

“This isn’t a lesson, you’re just messing with me!”

“Ah, have a little faith. Don’t doubt.”

“Noona, look at this! Is this really my name? It doesn’t look like the letters my brother taught me last time!”

The “brother” Suho spoke of was Lee Haeseong. I took the sheet from Suho’s desk. Written clumsily with charcoal from burnt wood, the scrawled letters did not say “Lee Suho.”

They spelled out flunky. Jay, with all his stern face and serious air, had wasted his time on nothing more than a childish prank. Figures.

When I turned to glare at him, Jay finally flinched.

“All right then, let’s start the real lesson.”

Sensing that any more fooling around might put his own life in danger, Jay wiped the mischief clean off his face.

Suho grumbled, “So annoying,” but didn’t actually leave his seat. Jay began writing down the consonants one by one. Suho copied them carefully, mouthing the sounds aloud as he went.

***

The ashen sky sagged low. Rain soaked everything into a damp heaviness. Inside the shelter, we’d propped up torches in advance for light and were busy putting up a makeshift tent over the kitchen area. 

On rainy days we could never cook with fire, so it was a job long overdue. We pushed back again and again until finally today we had no choice but to finish it.

Even as the tent went up, Suho sat at his desk, drenched in the drizzle, completely absorbed in study. So much for the whining about not wanting to do it. Now that he was hooked, he even forgot about his favorite seaside trips, spending every day glued to that spot, reviewing and reviewing again.

Jay tied the tarpaulin rope to the post, then brushed his hands together.

“Hey kid, let me move your desk over.”

As much as Suho’s sudden zeal for learning was praiseworthy, we couldn’t just let him sit there soaking in the rain forever. But to Suho, Jay’s voice sounded like an annoying interruption. After all, what was a little rain? 

On a deserted island, getting wet wasn’t exactly rare. So why was Jay making a fuss about him of all people?

“Lee Suho.”

At my stern call, Suho finally gathered the scattered things on his desk and trudged under the tent. Meanwhile Jay lifted the desk in one hand, the chair in the other, and carried both at once. 

Child-sized or not, it was still solid wood. Shouldn’t that be heavy? His freakish strength really was something monstrous.