Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Weekend morning.

Meeting the warm Australian weekend sun, standing in front of the share house, a familiar face appeared.

"Hi, Rosie!"

Today too, jeans and a comfortable hoodie, sunglasses pushed up on her head, Rosie in a casual outfit.

The reason she gave up precious weekend sleep-in and came looking for me all the way to this complicated city was only one, my shameless and earnest request.

'Rosie. I haven't even been in Australia a week, I really know nothing. I have to buy work clothes and safety boots that fit the rules, and to commute from next week all the way to that far Wetherill Park I absolutely have to pick a used car, and I don't even know where to go to buy one. Please help me!'

How pitifully I whined, holding the phone.

Rosie, who at first bounced me with "do it yourself!", in the end went soft and volunteered as my guide and driver, and drove all the way to the city.

Getting out of the car, Rosie found me and waved gladly.

"Hi, Jeong-su! You came out early."

At her bright greeting, I grinned and offered the first hello.

"As I expected, Rosie, you didn't have a boyfriend."

"······What?"

Rosie's steps, coming up gladly, stopped dead.

She pulled the sunglasses down to the tip of her nose and looked at me with a face that said this was absurd.

"Is that something you say out of nowhere the moment we meet?"

"No, think by common sense."

I shook an index finger and strung a very shameless sophistry.

"On this sunny, perfect weekend, coming all the way to the city to help the shopping of a strange man you've known only a few days, where in the world is a boyfriend who accepts that smiling? By common sense, absolutely impossible. Therefore you are definitely a perfect solo."

Hearing my miracle logic, Rosie's mouth fell open.

Her face, sucking empty air from being dumbfounded, soon flushed crimson.

"What?! Honestly, unbelievable! I came all the way to help because you whined that you were pitiful, and what? Another man? Solo?!"

"No, what I mean is that you're that kind······."

"Quiet! You bad guy! You walk the city floor all day today and get lost! I'm going!"

Huh.

I felt it before, but the kid really cannot curse.

What kind of bland curse is that.

Rosie, properly angry, turned sharp, panting, and began striding toward her car.

Thinking the joke had been a bit much, I quickly ran, blocked her front, and caught her arm.

"Aigo, Rosie! Sorry, sorry! I was crazy. My mouth is the problem."

"Let go! I'm going home right now to sleep more!"

"Ah, really! You're going to abandon this pitiful soul, not even a week in Australia, on the street? Please save me a bit. Hm?"

When I begged with both hands and made the most pitiful face in the world, Rosie pouted and glared at me.

Sorry, but it isn't scary at all.

I took the moment and quickly pulled a hidden card.

"Instead I'll repay today's favor for sure! Lunch and dinner, full course, I pay it all! Tasty things, things you want to cut, things you want to eat, pick them all. Okay?"

At those words, 'I'll buy you something tasty', Rosie's hand, about to open the car door, paused.

A soft-hearted, kind young woman.

She still looked at me sharply with a sullen face, then soon clenched a fist and began pounding my forearm and shoulder.

"Aigo, really! You really are the worst! You know?!"

Thud! Thud!

"Ouch! Sorry, sorry! I said I'm buying the meal. Hahaha!"

A solid hit was felt, but to me it was only the level of a cute cotton bat.

Watching Rosie, anger not fully released, pounding my shoulder again and again, I did not run, and burst out laughing, giggling.

* * *

The same hour.

Three women students the same age, twenty-two, from the chicken coop, going around cafés and restaurants in the city center handing out resumes, had used up the resumes they printed and were returning to the lodging with tired steps.

"Ah, Australian bosses really have their noses high. Telling you to just leave the resume is a hundred percent saying they won't hire you."

"I know. If your English is bad they could at least let you wash dishes, and they say sorry sorry and won't take it, I nearly cried from how bitter it was."

Under the sharp weekend sun, wandering the city floor for hours, the soles of their feet felt as if they were burning.

The three were walking plodding to the share-house entrance when they found a neat hatchback stopped in front of the building and a man and woman standing in front of it, and stopped dead as if by promise.

"Huh? Hey, that······."

"Isn't that the veranda guy? Han Jeong-su?"

Rub the eyes and look again, it was clear.

The very Han Jeong-su who, at the welcome party the first day, had torn into Park Ji-hun with a brutal force and disappeared to the veranda, and was treated as a plague you must not speak to.

He, who in the house always kept his mouth shut tight without expression, was now on the street in bright day, facing a dazzlingly pretty blonde Australian white beauty, bursting a refreshing laugh.

"Amazing. Is that woman his girlfriend? A complete princess out of a Disney cartoon?"

"Heh heh. Princess and servant?"

"Didn't he say he hadn't even been in Australia a week. He already has a local girlfriend?"

The three women students hid their bodies clumsily behind a utility pole and held their breath, watching the scene.

Jeong-su seemed to throw some joke with a slick face, and the white woman flushed and pounded Jeong-su's forearm and shoulder with her fist, as if dumbfounded.

Jeong-su did not run and took all the woman's cotton-bat hits, giggling, and the woman too, pretending to be angry, had a mouth full of a smile.

Nothing but the fussing of a fresh, sweet couple.

Soon Jeong-su naturally opened the passenger door and got in, the woman too got in the driver's seat, and the hatchback carrying the two slid softly into the city road and disappeared.

Only after the car had fully left sight did the three let out the breath they had held and begin to murmur.

"Crazy······. Did you just see that? Joking in English, completely natural?"

"I know. Oppa Ji-hun chewed him terribly last night too. Saying he was an ignorant blockhead, couldn't say a word of English, and would be stuck in a Korean restaurant kitchen his whole life."

"Is there still someone who believes that oppa? That's complete jealousy."

One woman student, forgetting even her sore legs, raised her voice, excited.

"Wow. What is this, really? In the lodging he acted like that so I thought he was a total outsider, and it turns out he was a complete insider."

"Ah, shit! A real crash of reality comes······."

The shortest woman student flapped the empty resume file in her hand and sighed, empty.

"We're struggling because we don't even have a Korean-restaurant floor-serving spot at 8 dollars an hour, and someone is going around with a local girlfriend."

"I know. Isn't it really funny? He doesn't give us a single look, and in front of a white woman he gapes."

"Men are all like that."

"Hmph! They don't even know white people age early."

"Right. I heard the skin is thin and sags fast."

Jeong-su had to become a bad guy on the spot.

Because they could not believe that the person they had ignored was, in fact, tremendously capable.

So they exploded a misplaced inferiority toward Jeong-su and Rosie.

"Still, it's a shame. If we had gotten a bit close, we might have asked that girlfriend and been introduced to even one local Aussie job."

"It's late now. Look at his eyes in the lodging, he treats us as complete invisible people."

The three, bitterness and envy and a self-mocking feeling about their own situation mixed, opened the front door of the chicken coop where a stale smell vibrated, and moved heavy steps.

"Unni! Oppas! I just saw Han Jeong-su outside..."

It did not take long for the rumor to spread.

* * *

Sitting comfortably in the passenger seat, I asked Rosie.

"So, how is our shopping course today, guide? Where do we go first?"

"Of course we buy your work kit first. Stop at a workwear shop and fit a fluorescent shirt and steel-cap safety boots. Then we eat up the lunch you said you'd pay, something very expensive and tasty, and then we go over to the used-car lots. Perfect?"

Rosie, hands on the wheel, sunglasses on, answered proudly.

"Very excellent. You can look forward to lunch."

Just as I was giggling and about to nod.

Squeak. Squeak.

From the lower part of Rosie's hatchback, running smooth, an irritating friction sound rang faintly.

I lowered the audio volume slightly, tilted my head, and listened toward the floor.

"Rosie. No strange sound from the car? Some problem on the lower side?"

"Huh? You hear it too?"

At my question Rosie suddenly went long-faced and groaned.

"Lately a metal sound keeps coming from under. Especially every time I go over a speed bump, a huge breaking sound, clunk!, from the floor, I'm dying of anxiety. I have to leave it at a shop, but the repair is expensive and I have no time, so I kept putting it off."

'It clunks going over a bump, and makes a sound on flat ground.'

The moment I heard her explanation, an estimate was drawn in my head at once.

The lower-arm bushing had burst and play had opened, or the shock or the stabilizer link had reached the end of its life.

"Tsk tsk. Keep that up and a wheel sits down in the middle of the road."

Before long Rosie's car entered the outdoor lot of a large mall.

The moment she set the car in a space and the engine cut, I undid the belt, opened the door, and got out.

"Huh, what? Why are you coming this way?"

Rosie, getting out, asked, startled.

I smiled and walked toward the front bumper on the driver's side.

Then, not caring about eyes around, I lay flat on the parking-lot asphalt where dirt dust rolled, back down.

"Huh. Huh?! Hey!"

Rosie's startled voice was heard, but I shrugged and crawled in under the car.

Suspension and steering parts clumped with oil and dust came in at one look.

"Jesus! Han Jeong-su! What are you doing right now?!"

Rosie, able neither to do this nor that, freaked and shouted as if screaming.

Stuck under the car floor, I said toward Rosie's legs.

"Stay still a bit. This oppa will make a diagnosis."

The state under the car did not leave the expectation by an inch.

Or was it more serious than expected?

The rubber bushing of the lower arm holding the wheel had already hardened stiff and was half burst, and like this it cannot support the body.

Every time she went over a bump the lower arm dropped and stuck again, and the sound came from the impact.

At this level it was a fortune the wheel had not broken.

And from the scrape marks and rust marks here and there on the underbody, you did not need to look to know how she had managed the car.

"Aigu, tsk tsk."

I clicked my tongue and pushed the asphalt, crawling out.

Dirt dust was thick on the jeans and T-shirt, but I did not care, brushed it off, and stood.

"Rosie. Open the bonnet right now."

"Huh? Huh, okay!"

At my not-ordinary face, Rosie, suddenly scared, quickly pulled the lever under the driver's seat and opened the hood.

With a clack, lifting the hood, hot air and a sharp oil smell hit.

I straightaway pulled the engine-oil gauge, wiped it with a tissue, and stuck it back in.

"Good heavens······."

Checking the end of the gauge, I was dumbfounded and words would not come.

The engine oil had dried and was barely dotting under the L line.

The coolant reserve tank beside it was the same.

It was showing the bottom clear, a level where it would not be strange if the engine died of overheat on a highway run right now.

If engine oil and coolant were this bad, brake oil or transmission oil, you did not need to look.

The most comedy of it was that, in this mess, only the blue wiper-washer bottle was full enough to slosh.

Bang!

When I closed the engine bay without mercy, Rosie's shoulder flinched.

I folded my arms and began scolding her sharply.

"You really have no fear. Running a car until it gets like this, how. A car is something you have to manage the way you manage your skin. The underbody bushing is burst and the wheel is ragged, the engine oil has dried and twisted, the coolant is at the bottom. The only sound liquid in this car is the washer fluid that cleans the glass! This isn't a car, it's a coffin with an engine. You run the highway at a hundred like this? Then that day your life flies."

At the fearsome fact-bombing Rosie went long-faced, as if she would burst into tears any moment.

"It's that serious? I really didn't know. A red light or anything hasn't come up on the dash yet······. I just thought if I filled the gas tight at the station and wiped the glass well, it would keep rolling."

Seeing the face gone wilted and sullen, I could not scold more coldly.

A mistake ordinary people who know nothing about cars, especially women, often make.

I sighed and swept back my mussed hair.

Then I gave a short laugh and tapped Rosie's shoulder.

"Know you're lucky. Because you picked up a pitiful soul collapsing on the street today, your car is about to get its life extended too."

"Huh? You can fix it?"

"I told you I came out of the engineers. I repair heavy equipment of tens of tons, and I couldn't fix one toy car like this? Bring the parts and I'll fix it clean."

I indicated the huge entrance of the large mall where we stood, with my chin.

As it happened, a large Kmart and an auto-parts shop sat right inside.

"While we go to buy my work clothes and safety boots, let's clean out the auto corner first. Buy engine oil, coolant, and a few basic tools, and put out the urgent fire first. And the underbody parts, later we shoot the chassis number and order at a parts dealer, and when the parts arrive I'll fix it. Okay?"

Only then a bright smile spread on Rosie's face.

"Really?! Wow, you really are the best, Jeong-su!"

Rosie, excited, whether she had forgotten black the pounding with her fist earlier, grabbed my arm and jumped.

Something strange touched and it was a little uncomfortable, but I did not dislike it, so I just laughed it off.

"Good! Then I'll buy the engine oil too, and I'll buy lunch, something very expensive and tasty! Let's go quick!"

"Now, I said earlier I'd pay for lunch."

"No! You saved my life and my car, that much I absolutely have to do!"

"Then you buy that next time. Today there's the driving too, and I'm buying for you because I'm grateful."

"...Shall we? Okay! Then I'll do it that way."

Rosie suddenly stopped and undid the arm.

"Wait."

Then she brushed the dust on my back, pat pat.

And she linked arms tight again and led me to the mall entrance.

A week in Australia.

Somehow I had made a local girlfriend (?), no, accurately, a local woman friend.

Not a bad start to a weekend at all.

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