The Cutting Edge

026

"One million won every month would mean that it would take about..." Hyejin stared at the astronomical number that appeared on her calculator and then she collapsed her head onto the table. "Why is it still so expensive!" she exclaimed.

She was sitting outside the convenience store in the cold with her bowl of piping hot ramen, doing the math that she required in order to buy back the deed to the barbershop according to the installment plan that the estate agent had suggested to her. The offer that the agent had given her was already beyond her wildest dreams, but now that she sat down and thought about it carefully, it still wasn't a walk through the park. The problem was that she was stuck in a non-paying day job for a couple more months, thanks to her brother's sabotage, so she had zero income to pay for the shop's installments till this period was over. And that was not including the money she needed to pay for daily necessities and her father's outstanding hospital fees.

She jabbed at her ramen with her wooden chopsticks, trying to think of a way out of her situation.

"If you're not going to eat that then can I have it?"

Someone slid into the seat across from her and her chopsticks were removed from her hand. Loud slurping noises could be heard soon after, as the boy in the black cap started tucking in on her dinner.

"Hey!" Hyejin reached over and smacked him on the head. "That's my dinner!" Her next thought was about how she was going to have to live on one thousand won cup ramen for the next few months and that miserable feeling just got worse.

Ares looked at her dismayed expression and quickly pushed the ramen back towards her. "Sorry," he muttered, "it was only a joke. Didn't think it would upset you that much."

She didn't think she had been that fierce but Ares looked genuinely troubled by her reaction. Feeling slightly guilty at having lashed out at an innocent party, she shook her head and said, "It's ok I'm not upset. It's just that there's a lot on my mind. You can have the ramen if you want, just buy me another bowl later."

"Is it because of the barbershop?"

When he had gone back to the hospital to visit Hyejin and her father the day after the incident, he had heard about the problem with the shop. He had offered to help Hyejin buy the shop back, since the only thing he had plenty of was money, but she had outright rejected him. If there was one thing she had plenty of, that would be pride. Even if it took her ten years of hard labour before she saved enough money to save the shop, she would much rather keep it that way than to reach out her hand to take someone else's money.

Hyejin nodded her head. "The upside is that the estate agent offered me a monthly installment plan! So that means I actually have a fighting chance to get the shop back!" Then she deflated like a balloon. "But the downside is that even the installments are no small sum, especially since I'm a trainee who's not being paid..."

"My offer to help you pay for the shop still stands, but I know you're just going to say no. How about this, it just so happens that the cleaner who comes to do my household chores has just resigned to return to her hometown. If you are willing to drop by to do some cleaning every other day for about two hours or so, then maybe we could work something out?"

"Are you sure you're not just making things up?" Hyejin narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Isn't it a bit too much of a coincidence that your cleaning lady quit just when I needed a job?"

Ares laughed. "You can call her if you don't believe me. In any case, even if I were making things up, what difference does it make? I'm not giving you free money which you would most definitely throw back at my face. I'm paying you for a service which I legitimately need, because my schedule is so busy that I hardly even have time to be at home. It's just two hours every alternate day, so it hopefully wouldn't be too tiring for you after your day job at the Cutting Edge. I used to pay the cleaning lady about a hundred thousand per hour."