Chapter 21

Chapter 21

A new-build housing site on the outskirts of Sydney.

Under Australia's sun, breath catching hard, there was a youth climbing the stairs covered in dust.

"Heok, heok······."

Two 40-kilogram cement sacks on his shoulder.

The youth let out a rough breath and walked toward the second floor in silence.

A man of imposing impression, build nearing 190 centimeters. Park Dong-myeong.

Just turned twenty-two, he was the youngest of the chicken-coop share house where Jeong-su had first stayed.

"Hey, you bastard!! Park Dong-myeong!"

Then, from the second floor, a Korean technician's sharp stream of curses rang loud.

"Cement not up fast?! Going to move slow, not worth the build? Damn, I'll smash your head with a pry bar!"

Unlike the imposing looks, Dong-myeong's big shoulders flinched and shrank.

He was a youth whose heart, unlike the build, was more simple and soft than anyone's.

"So, sorry! I'll bring it up right away!"

The moment he set the cement down, Dong-myeong hastily bent his waist and came down to the first floor as if fleeing, and gripped the shovel again.

The owner of the interior company that hired Dong-myeong was a specimen of a vicious contractor.

The worst of the worst, a 'passion-pay exploitation type' combined with an 'exploitation pyramid'.

"Dong-myeong, you have no Australian site experience and you can't do English. I'll feed you and teach you the skill, so you know the first three months are apprentice? For now I'll count it as a cash job at 6 dollars an hour, so work without talk."

Illegal dirt-cheap labor, not even half the minimum wage.

On top of that, Owner Kang was coaxing him that to work under him he had to live in the old outer share house he ran.

When weekly pay day came, Dong-myeong too noticed he meant to skin money under every name, rent and pickup, even work-uniform and safety-boot hire.

Because a person he worked with had hinted it.

Because of that he learned the words Korean contractor, and noticed that Park Ji-hun in the chicken coop was a person of a similar sort to that Owner Kang.

Even so, Dong-myeong did not leave.

If only he learned the skill, if only he could learn the skill properly here, it seemed he could work even taking that petty money.

But that hope was not visible.

Peek wanting to learn even tile skill over the shoulder, and only a check and a stream of curses flew, "Don't steal someone else's skill, get out!"

Even so Park Dong-myeong wiped the sweat fallen on the dirty site floor and endured, and endured again.

He was an orphan from a care home, grown without knowing his parents' faces.

They said if he came to Australia he could live without money worry even on part-time, and live ordinary without being ignored as an orphan.

Even believing only the words that if he properly learned even one construction skill he could live treated as a person all his life, he scraped the part-time pay clean and came.

Because if he stayed in Korea he thought he would fall into a bad path himself.

'If I, with nothing owned and nothing learned, am to survive on this land······ I have to learn a skill no question. Whether one year or two, endure quiet and someday they'll teach me.'

On only that one blind hope, Dong-myeong endured disregard and contempt.

Dusk.

Only after the site work ended did Owner Kang stuff a few crumpled bills into Dong-myeong's arms.

"Today's daily pay. Tomorrow too, come to the pickup spot by 6 in the morning."

"Yes, sir. Good work."

Dong-myeong, whole body a cement mess, bowed his waist.

A tight day, used thoroughly as a consumable, with not one word of good work from anyone, went like that.

* * *

Tearing out all the carpet that had been pouring stench and gathering it in one place, the whole body became a mess of sweat and dust.

'Keu······ seems the smell is coming from the body too.'

For now the rest seems something to tidy tomorrow.

Coming back to the share house late at night, wilted like that, I finished parking roughly and opened the front door.

Inside the house was quiet as a dead mouse.

'Not even the weekend, where did everyone go?'

The lights were off too, so the living room was pitch dark.

Dragging the tired body, taking off the shoes, the moment I was about to step into the living room.

"Uwak! Shit, that startled me!"

In the middle of the dark living room, some bear was crouched.

Off guard, too startled, a scream jumped out without me knowing.

At my sound the huge build that had been crouched flinched, startled, and hunched the shoulders hard.

I took a deep breath and quickly felt the wall and flicked the living-room light on.

The face of the man sitting with knees together on the brightened living-room floor was revealed.

Park Dong-myeong.

The reason I remember this big friend is not simply the imposing looks and build like a gang action captain.

In this cramped chicken-coop share house, he was in the same pitiful state as me, laying a mattress in the corner under the living-room kitchen and sleeping a shrimp sleep, so I remember him.

In a word, a fellow living-room refugee like me.

But the fierce face revealed under the light was a mess.

Eyes bloodshot red, and cheeks wet damp.

"······Crying?"

Absurd, plain speech jumped out.

That was the first talk I exchanged with Park Dong-myeong.

Unable to bear the chemical smell from the body, I showered first.

And finishing the shower refreshed, I came out and took two cold cans of beer from the fridge.

Not mine, but bought with the shared living money.

I called Dong-myeong, still sitting blank in the living room watching the mood, with a chin jerk, and went out to the narrow veranda.

"Take it."

"Ah······ thank you."

Dong-myeong carefully took the beer can with both big hands.

Looking at the watch, it was well past 10 at night.

On an ordinary day the share house would have been swarming with working-holiday people, and it being this quiet was rare.

"No one home but the two of us?"

"Yes. Everyone went out to the city to drink. Only me left out."

Dong-myeong answered in a voice crawling in, fiddling the cold can.

A look full of shrinking, unlike the fierce build.

"Why didn't you go out?"

"Because I have no money."

"..."

Hiss, gulp gulp.

Nothing to say, so I tore the beer can and drank hard.

'The kid won't let a person speak.'

And leaning on the veranda rail, I looked Dong-myeong over slow.

Then the gaze stopped on his crude hands holding the can.

Every joint swollen thick, and calluses packed in.

Blisters burst here and there with scabs, and under the nails cement poison had risen and the skin was peeled white.

Not wounds made by simple restaurant part-time or farm work.

That was the medal and scar peculiar to site laborers who carry building materials of ignorant weight bare all day.

I drank one more sip of beer and asked as if tossing it.

"You, doing gombang?"

"Yes? Go, gombang······?"

At the site term that jumped sudden from my mouth, Dong-myeong's eyes went as big as king marbles.

"Gombang, carrying cement or brick loads up and down stairs. Looking at the state of your hands, exactly that. Doing laborer work under some Korean owner?"

Dong-myeong looked at me as if he had seen a ghost.

"How did you know······?"

"How would I know. Just your hands and the estimate comes exact."

I lightly crushed the empty can and clicked my tongue, tsk.

"But not even worth the build, why crying and falling over? Did the owner skim the money? Or coax you saying he'd teach the skill, and make you run only gombang all day?"

At my indifferent sore spot, Dong-myeong's big shoulders flinched once more.

A childlike face, the sorrow he had wanted to hide, or had only festered inside unable to tell anyone, caught in one go.

'Haa... I'm really weak to this kind of thing.'

* * *

I sighed deep inside.

Honestly, I had meant not to tangle deep with the people living in this chicken-coop share house if I could.

All passing ties, and working-holiday people busy each finding their own way to live.

But Park Dong-myeong in front of the eyes was a bit different from the other guys.

With a build that big, and on ordinary days a presence as if there and not there in a corner of the living room.

And not mixing with the crowd that pours out to the city everyone goes to and drinks hard. In many ways an amazing guy, and one who oddly drew the mind.

I laid the voice deliberately stern.

"You, say it straight. How much an hour does that vicious owner bastard give? How many hours a day do you work?"

"Uh······ that, I work from 6 in the morning to 5 in the evening······."

"The hourly?"

"A, apprentice period, so······ I get 6 dollars an hour in cash."

"What? 6 dollars?!"

An absurd hollow laugh burst from my mouth.

I get a base of 22 dollars an hour working as a forklift operator at Crane Australia, and this foolish one runs bone-breaking gombang for only 6 dollars? And they work that build eleven hours a day?

"You foolish bastard! 6 dollars isn't even half the Australian minimum! And look at the state of your hands. Tile or carpenter, not once holding a trowel, only carrying cement sacks every day? Teaching the skill is just a trick to work you like a slave cheap!"

When I burst heat and shot, Dong-myeong's head drooped deep.

"I know······. I know, but... still, endure and hold, and someday they might teach even one······."

"Endure what! Do that and you only get bone-sick, far from a skill. Anyway, fellow compatriots come abroad and no thought of helping, only eating the back! Bad bastards! The way I see it that owner is a guy who'll use you moderate and chase you out. So don't waste strength for nothing."

At my fact violence Dong-myeong hunched the big build and muttered in a crawling voice.

"Still······ better than being sold to a country farm not knowing why. Better than Park Ji-hun, that person, skimming money in the middle and passing kids who know nothing to a farm······."

"······Huh? Wait. What did you just say?"

When I set the beer can down and asked, Dong-myeong flinched and watched my mood.

"Who? Who did you just say?"

"Ah, that, Hyung Park Ji-hun who uses the master room here..."

"What about Park Ji-hun?"

"I······ heard that hyung is a contractor too, like Owner Kang. Coaxing working-holiday people just over from Korea, sending them to country farms to work, and skimming money every day as a fee in the middle... so that hyung has a lot of money and goes out to the city every night drinking expensive liquor and playing, a hyung I work with on site told me."

At the unexpected truth from his mouth I lost words and went blank.

At my face gone fierce in an instant, Dong-myeong, thinking he had made some big slip, was bewildered, the flustered look plain.

I pressed my forehead with one hand.

And soon, absurd, I burst a hollow laugh.

"Haha······ hahaha! I'll go crazy, really."

The vicious contractor the agency branch manager had spoken of.

Parasite bastards everywhere sucking the blood and spine of working-holiday people, he said, and one of them had coiled in the master room of the chicken-coop share house I live in.

They say it's dark under the lamp, and exactly that look.

"Really, every kind of thing······."

I shook my head.

Then I lowered the gaze again and stared at Park Dong-myeong crouched on the mattress.

A build big and sturdy like a bear.

A temperament dull to the point of naive, not knowing how to harm others even while taking illegal exploitation, only quietly overworking his own body.

Above all that foolish stubbornness of going out to a rough site every day until the hands are that state.

'······Usable?'

Anyway, working today, I had thought I needed one demodo, an assistant.

Tearing carpet, what strength it took.

And in front of the eyes, a strong demodo to carry the waste that will come out tremendously from here?

If this guy sticks on, rather than me alone, efficiency will rise more than double.

And the guy in front of the eyes was the one with the finest hardware among the countless laborers I had met in thirty years as a site chief.

I stroked my chin and asked Dong-myeong as if tossing it.

"Hey. Build."

"Ye, yes!"

"You, want to try working under me?"

"······Yes?"

Dong-myeong looked up at me with rabbit eyes.

"From tomorrow I go into a remodel job on a detached house I bought too. I'll tear and fix from demolition to finish, and I need one strong assistant to carry loads and help the demolition."

Dong-myeong's mouth fell open.

I quickly tapped a calculator in my head.

"I haven't formally set up a company in Australia yet, so I can't do a formal TFN contract for you. I have to give it as a pay job, cash, like you were doing······."

I stopped a moment and hesitated.

Thinking of the money I get at Crane Australia, or Australian local prices, I could not give too little like 6 dollars.

But however good the strength, I could not give a technician rate from the start to a complete beginner either.

I looked straight at Dong-myeong's eyes and said.

"For now let's start at 18 dollars an hour. Looking at how fast you learn the work, I'll raise it more later."

"······Yes? Ei, eighteen dollars?!"

Right. I know it's a lot too.

But I can't give moderate to a guy who was doing 6-dollar slave labor!

Look at that.

The moment he hears those words, red eyes, as if he'll pour tears any moment.

How do you give money small to a guy like this...

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