Ba Reum and his mother were eating breakfast together. Some days they succeeded in being able to eat together, but both of their working places and variable and unpredictable. Ba Reums work as first an officer and now a detective was always random hours and his mother was a psychologist at the emergency psychiatric ward of a big hospital.
"And how are you settling in at work?" Soo jin asked her son while scooping out the rice for them both.
"It's okay. Mos of he work isn't difficult, and most of the colleagues are fine." Ba Reum answered taking a bite.
"but?" his mother prompted.
"One of the detectives is really famous for solving loads of cases, and for being very intensive in his way of solving cases. But when I met him, he was such a slob. He was drunk on his last case." Ba Reum was a bit irked by the drunken behaviour.
"Ah." His mother said. "Is it that guy you wanted to meet?"
Moo Chi had gotten this legendary status when Ba Reum had been in police school. He had often come home with stories about this detective that went to the edge of law to find out the perpetuator. His mother sometimes found that Ba Reum was a bit obsessive about this man, especially about his willingness to step over the line.
"Yes. I must say that I'm a bit disappointed. I'm thinking about reporting it…" He trailed of.
"Was he really on duty when he was drunk?" Ba Reum thought a bit about the question. In fact he came after a few hours, so officially, Moo Chi wasn't on duty then.
"Not when I saw him." Ba Reum said.
"Perhaps it's best to observe first. I don't think the anyone is going to react very well if you report he could have been drunk while on duty." His mum said. It wasn't fair, but that's how the world works.
"Perhaps if you get to know him better, than you can judge better or even help. People don't take this kind of advise or comments from strangers very well. Even from friends its always a bit iffy.".
"Sure mum, I'll think about it." Ba Reum answers and starts to clean up the table and brings the empty dishes to the kitchen.
"Oh sweetie?" Soo Jin says.
"Yes mom?"
"I promised that I would gives this to Halmoni." Soo Jin held out some a nice pile of booklets "They are some pamphlets about colleges that Bong Yi can go to after she finish high school.
They explains about the costs and such. I promised I would bring the over, but I have a double shift at the psych ward today. Could you give these to her when you go to work?" she asked.
"Yeah sure, just leave them on the table." Ba Reum said and started to wash the dishes.
"Halmoni." Ba Reum waves to the old women standing in the front yard. She turns around and a smile immediately breaks out.
"Ba Reum, what are you doing here." She says.
"Mom told me to you give you these. They're college pamphlets for Bong Yi". Halmoni took them gratefully.
"Aigo, you are such a sweet boy." She said, patting him on the arms. "Always looking after us when you were an officer here in the neighbourhood and even now when you got promoted to be a detective, you still help us out." She said.
Ba Reum smiled uneasily. His mom had told him to keep the people around him happy, as to create as little friction as possible. Happy neighbours' could be somewhat nosy and meddled a lot, but unhappy neighbours could be downright nasty and could make it their live goal to make sure you were miserable-, even at the cost of their own happiness.
"How is Bong Yi doing?" Ba Reum asks "Still getting in trouble at school?".
Halmoni sighed and looked a bit sad.
"It's the third time I got a letter from the principal." She said. "It's always the same girls. Bong Yi keeps on saying that they keep on being nasty to her, but the principal and the homeroom teacher says it's not true and Bong Yi is just being mean."
"Some girls pick on her?" Ba Reum asked.
"Mmh," Halmoni nodded in affirmation.
"Aigo, look at the time, mustn't keep you here, you have work to do. Off you go." She said, waving him of.
He smiled a much more easy smile now and went to work.
Once Ba Reum is at work, he decides that it's time to investigate a bit. He knows which school is Bong Yi's and with a quick check on the website, he quickly finds out all of her class mates.
He looks up their SNS accounts and hacks in to their private threads, blogs and messages.
He quickly locates three girls who kept an PMing messages to each other about not only Bong Yi, but a few other students and even teachers.
They kept on saying stuff that Bong Yi was a slut and probably seduced the jerk into raping her or something.
She's always sleeping in class and playing the little victim too much. They made sure none of the other students took her side either. It wasn't Bong Yi alone they gossiped about, but other students as well and even some of the teachers.
But they kept on mentioning some rape case.
Ba Reum frowned. Rape case. He hadn't heard anything of Bong Yi being involved since he had known her, and they had been living in the same neighbourhood ever since he remembers. He looked it up in the computer system and soon enough found the correct files.
He went to check it all out, and what was done sickened him.
Bong Yi was like a little sister to him, and he couldn't think of a reason why someone would do this to another person.
He noticed that Kang Duk Soo was going to get out of jail soon, but he didn't seem to be the type that would stay quiet and not make a second victim.
He decided that it was best to give his co-worker an anonymous warning about this perp soon, just to be on the safe side. It's better to keep tabs on these kind of people.
Ba Reum then went further with his work on the school bullies
He changes all the settings of their SNS accounts to public. For now that would get them in enough trouble. They were still young, and he knowing teenagers, this would be enough to ruing their lives for now.
Now how come they haven't been in trouble for bullying. A lot of what they described seemed over the top obvious and halmoni told that Bong Yi already tried to report them.
He checks their parents connection and learns that the teacher is the uncle of one of the girls and one of the father's is a big donator to the school and another one has a mother who's is a famous lawyer.
Let's put those connections public as well, and make sure that some journalist came out to the SNS accounts of their children.
That will learn them to not mess with my people. Ba Reum thought.
Some evidence to sort through arrived and he turned his attention to his work until it was lunch time.
His phone rang on the dot of the beginning of lunch time. He took out his cell phone and he saw it was Chi Kook who called.
"Hey Ba Reum." Chi Kook said.
"Hey, something wrong?" Ba Reum asked. It was not Chi Kook's habit of calling during the work hours.
"Yes, everything's fine. I just wanted to ask for a favour. I ordered a package for my mom's birthday and it will arrive tomorrow at a take-out point, and I have to go get it, but I can't leave work in time. Could you get it for me? It's not far from your workplace"
"Yeah sure, just text me the address and the send me the code through." Ba Reum answered.
"When will you come and get it?"
"Actually, if it's alright I'd like leave it with you until her birthday, that ways she won't discover it before." Chi Kook said. His mom had the habit to snoop around the house to search for her presents.
"Oh, I have an early shift that day though, I won't be home, but you have the key right?" Ba Reum said, "you can just let yourself in and get it on your own." Ba Reum had long since given his two only friends the keys to his and his mom's house, just like he had a copy of their keys.
"Thanks Ba Reum, I owe you. I'll make it up over drinks." Chi Kook said with a laugh in his voice.
That evening, when he returns home it was raining and he saw Bong Yi standing at the bridge.
She kept on standing still and waiting in front of the bridge.
"Ya, Bong Yi." He said and touched her arm.
Bong Yi was startled and out of reflex she sucker punched him in his eye.
Ba Reum yelps in surprise and pain and slips on the wet ground, right in the mud.
He was still holding Bong Yi's other arm and pulls her with him.
He landed on the muddy patch, getting covered completely in the mud, and Bong Yi landed on him, staying relatively clean.
Halmoni chooses that moment to show up.
"Ooh, I caught these youngster doing these things in the rain." She muttered loudly for them both to hear.
Bong Yi pushed off Ba Reum with the speed of light, hiding her blush.
Ba Reum just blinked up, red at his ears.
"Halmoni, where were you, I've been calling you three times already." Bong Yi shouts at halmoni.
"I was still with the other women" she said, feeling guilty about being late.
Ba Reum finally got himself upright and tried to brush some of the mud off.
"Aigo, look at you." Halmoni tsk'd "You should come over to our house. It's closer by then yours. You'll get sick if you stay in these clothes." Said, taking Ba Reum by the arm and pulling him along.
"It's not necessary". He said and tried to pull from her grip, which was surprisingly strong for one so old.
"I won't have a no for an answer. You got this dirty because of my Bong Yi. The least I can do is make sure you won't fall sick and feed you up a bit. Your mum isn't home this evening. Otherwise you'll just be home alone, and she'll never forgive me to let you get sick." She said. Ba Reum couldn't think of a way to get out of this, so he just meekly followed her to her home.
The clothes he got were Halmoni's own, they were very soft and warm, but the look Bong Yi gave him was so incredulous that he felt embarrassed about wearing them.
He quickly closed the pink vest over the shirt he was borrowing.
"The food looks nice." Ba Reum said and tried to pick up a piece of omelette. Bong Yi tried to stop him, bit he pushed her chopsticks away with his and quickly ate two pieces. "Mmm, nice" he said with a full mouth.
"Hey, these are mine" Bong Yi said.
"I made them especially for Ba Reum, with extra cheese." Halmoni said and handed Ba Reum a towel filled with ice cubes for his eye, which had already started to swell.
Bong Yi turned red when she saw what she had done to his eye.
"Feeling guilty?" Ba Reum said. She looked up startled and he stole the last piece of omelette from the plate.
"Why you, I should have punched you harder" she said and got up angrily and went to another room.
Ba Reum was laughing a bit to himself, he always loved getting a rise out of her.
And then Halmoni started to talk about her curves and suddenly he wished that Bong Yi was still here, or better yet, that he wasn't here.