Chapter 17
How to Fix a Psychopath Episode 17
‘Can you give me your phone number?’
‘What!’
I put down the zipper bag containing my cell phone as if I was throwing it.
Why is that, why is that here… … . in this box!
“Ha, ha… … Really… … .”
He’s out of his mind. He was even in that cafe? How did he know? What happened to that guy? I felt like there was definitely blood on my new white phone.
‘Who are you looking for?’
‘Ah… … No. I think that handsome guy left the cafe.’
‘Was he an acquaintance?’
‘No, but he was a really handsome guy.’
“Ha…….”
I’m tired.
I rolled my eyes while washing my face feebly. The box on the messy floor caught my eye again. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I picked up the box again.
There was a piece of paper stuck on the floor where all the candies, chocolates, and lost cell phones had been spilled out. The A4 paper fit perfectly against the bottom of the box.
“What is this?”
I ripped the paper from the bottom of the box. I thought Eunwoo Lee had written a letter. But it wasn’t a letter.
“Floor plan……?”
Instead, there was a drawing of the interior of the building in a dizzying composition. For a moment, I thought it was a drawing of the studio apartment where I live, but it didn’t seem to be that. I couldn’t figure it out at all. I didn’t even know why Eunwoo Lee had sent this to me.
“Why…….”
There were dozens of drawings. 1st floor bathroom, 1st floor living room, 1st floor kitchen, 1st floor class A, 1st floor class B. I could only make out the letters.
I was just skimming through it, but the last page of the paper was full of writing.
My menstrual cycle was written down. Common symptoms that women experience before their period, good things to do to relieve menstrual cramps, etc. I tried to read through it all, but the writing was too small and I just didn’t feel like reading.
“How much do you know?”
I never told you.
Emotions between annoyance and anger began to boil over.
I put the candy and chocolate back in the box. I did the same with my cell phone. I put the drawing in the living room drawer just in case.
I wondered if the drawing represented the school I was attending, but the living room and kitchen didn’t look like anything you’d expect to find in a school.
It was difficult to call it a mistake because the drawing was made to fit exactly with the bottom of the box.
The box was shoved into a corner as if it were some kind of ominous cursed object, with the intention of throwing it away before I went to the school dormitory on Sunday.
“You crazy kid.”
As I was putting the things that Eunwoo sent back to me into the box, I got so angry. It felt like my emotions were piling up as the chocolates and candies piled up on the box. I felt like I was just pushing my emotions into a place that was too tight, even though there was nowhere to release them. That’s why I got angry.
It was just like a child playing a prank. If you ignore the prank of a child, the child will want to know and say, ‘I did it!’
Not knowing where to turn, isn’t Eunwoo Lee stalking me right now?
It was creepy. In the original novel, Lee Eun-woo never did anything like stalking. Even if he did, he would always scold those who were bothering them from behind, but I don’t think he ever stalked anyone. He was always anxious that someone would steal her away, and he would stick around.
Now that he didn’t show up, I was even more anxious. If I could just see his face, I could guess what he was going to do. It seemed like he was just going to watch from behind. It wouldn’t be strange if she was kidnapped anytime, anywhere.
But just… …. I let out a hollow laugh in my exhausted state.
Why would he do this? Even while avoiding my sight. Underlining the fact that sweets are more appealing than usual during menstruation. The anger that seemed like it would only be relieved if she screamed at him, strangely subsided when she saw that.
I dug through the box I had decided to throw away and took out the heavy cell phone.
“New one… … .”
It wasn’t that boy’s to begin with.
I pressed the power button. A cute mechanical sound came from the bleak one-room apartment. The phone turned on without any problems, as if the battery had enough power. It was a new phone, but it had already been activated. I could see the data bar rising at the top.
And then, as if it were a lie, a text came saying, “Jiing.”
There was no sender.
A text message with blocked caller ID. It looked like some text message sent to a kid he liked in school as a prank.
The screen was filled with the message, “New message.” I pressed the confirmation button on the pressure-sensitive phone screen with my fingernail. The screen quickly changed to reveal a text message.
[hi.]
“……hi?”
I was so excited. Huh, I let out a ridiculous laugh. I felt like I was with a boring friend who didn’t know how other people felt and was having fun all by himself.
I pressed the home button in frustration and searched through my phone numbers. There were no numbers saved. I thought that Eunwoo Lee’s phone number would be saved there, but the phone book was empty.
Hesitantly, my thumb went onto the notes section and opened the notepad. There was one note on the notepad that was stored. It was written by Lee Eun-woo. I pressed on it.
There was a poem in the notebook. It was a poem I had seen in a very famous textbook.
The title was ‘My Flower’.
My flower
A child raised by my hands
My flower
A child who has blossomed with my affection
My flower
A child who bloomed with my sincerity
Waiting for me there without legs
My flower
My flower
The name I raised you with is neither rose nor tulip
It’s my flower
As I quickly skimmed through the short poem, my jaw tightened. The achievements of this poet, whom I had learned about in middle school, were remarkable in many ways. In his youth, the poet had written many poems about his beloved lovers, and these poems were only now being re-evaluated as having a high literary standard. My flower in the notebook was one of them.
However, it is said that the poet had neither a lover nor a wife before he died. The lover who stayed by his side all his life was unclear, and it was later revealed that there was a woman that the poet had a crush on. However, it seems that things did not go well with that woman. The reason was that the woman the poet loved had disappeared.
Nevertheless, the poet wrote the poem as if he had been in love with the woman.
At that time, Lee Eun-woo was busy listening to the teacher who was vaguely explaining this poem. He even folded his textbook as if the content would appear on the test, and he colored the poem like crazy with a highlighter.
Suddenly, he looked like a crazy person who had lost his sense of humor. Even though it was midsummer, I felt a chill at the sight of him.
I closed the notepad again. Then, I got another text message. It was as if it had waited until I checked the notepad. I still couldn’t identify the sender of the text message because the caller ID was blocked.
I pressed the confirm button.
[My lovely flower.]
Are you talking to me? I frowned. I let out a hollow and incredulous laugh and turned off my phone.
In this eerie poem, you likened me to a flower? That was unpleasant. I am not a flower.
I threw my phone into the box and lay down on the floor. Silence emerged.
“Haha…….”
Laughter broke out again, as if to ask when it had been unpleasant.
It was funny. At the end of middle school, I was scared of Lee Eun-woo. Lee Eun-woo, who acted out of the ordinary, felt like a monster, not a human. However, as time passed, Lee Eun-woo didn’t seem as scary as before.
It was as if I had gone to another country, and I had to adapt in this novel as well. This goes for Eunwoo Lee too.
Still, Lee Eun-woo was a psychopath on a level that I couldn’t understand, and he was a crazy person who was crazy about me.
But is she too tired of this situation, or was she sick of Lee Eun-woo’s actions? Or is she no longer interested in what Lee Eun-woo does?
Haha… … . It wasn’t a funny situation, but I couldn’t stop laughing. I imagined how hard Lee Eun-woo had packed the box for this. I imagined how he must have written this poem while holding onto the opened cell phone. I could imagine all these incongruous scenes. He was meticulous and thorough, doing it thoroughly and checking it again.
I stopped laughing and just stared at the ceiling.
* * *
A week has passed.
After begging my aunt for help, I received a cell phone that was revived. It was the cell phone I had been using before. My request to only allow outgoing calls was met with a rebuke from
my aunt, who said, “Don’t bother me,” so I had to settle for just getting it back on a low-cost plan.
Anyway, the only days I could use this phone during the week were weekends. I didn’t tell my friends around me because I was afraid that I would become closer to Lee Jeong-yeon if she found out that I had a way to contact her.
I never took out my new cell phone given by Eun woo, which he had sent separately, and left it on the veranda of my studio apartment.
I took out my cell phone from deep inside my dorm locker the next weekend.
I was worried that the battery might have run out since I hadn’t used it for about 5 days, but that didn’t seem to be the case. The phone turned on with a short vibration while on silent mode.
The data bar filled up quite slowly compared to the phone Eunwoo Lee had given me.
Since it was a cell phone I used in middle school, the phone book was full of records of phone calls and text messages with Eunwoo Lee.
First, I looked at the texts that had been sent. Even now, I can see
that the replies I sent to Eunwoo were so awkward or that I had nothing to say. I could see the sincerity in trying to please Eunwoo and not sending short replies.
In comparison… … I went out of the sent text message log and into the received text message log.
“uh……?”
There was a text message I hadn’t seen before. The date wasn’t today. So, it was the exact date I stopped using this phone.
Thinking back, I had to completely empty out the studio apartment that day, so I stopped for a long time in the afternoon. It wasn’t even my phone anyway, so I left it in the phone box and didn’t look at it all day. Anyway, it was a day to prepare secretly, and I couldn’t let Lee Eunwoo find out. So these text messages must have come in the morning.
I counted the number of letters that were not even marked as read by pressing the button below.
“One, two, three, four… … How many… … .”
The sender was ‘Eunwoo’, who was saved affectionately.
I stopped counting when the text went over two pages and just pressed the OK button.
