Partners in Speed - ver.2 (also Street Racers #2)

34. Taehyung

When I come back from a short test drive in the car I've just fixed, there's another one parked in front of the garage. Hyun is waiting for me again. I take a deep breath before getting out of the car. I will go back to work when he's gone.

I close the car door behind me, lock the car and lean against it. "Aren't you bored of this?" I ask, reaching to the pocket of my sweats for the lighter and the cigarettes.

He makes a face when I light one up. Funny how he's never made a face at his father. His. I don't have to consider them my family at all.

"I could never get bored of this," he say. He is three long steps away from me. I don't look at him. I want to have the balls to make his life as much of a hell as he made mine.

"What do you want for leaving me alone?" I ask. "Money?"

He scoffs. "I'm not that shallow."

"Says the same person who stole whatever I earned with my hard work."

"You call this hard work, or maybe racing?" We're moving into my favorite topic, I see...

"You call living with mom and dad success?"

"I call it investment. I don't have to pay for an apartment."

"You see, brother. Not everyone knows the luxury of that."

He walks my way. "If you weren't such a piece of shit, maybe you would, too."

"Now we're just casually going to insult each other, huh?"

"Would have been fun if you weren't a cry baby."

"What's your problem, Hyun? I'm out of your life, you're out of mine. You go out of your way to come here and talk shit." I draw on the cigarette. "Don't you have more interesting things to do? Studying law seems like time-consuming shit."

"At least it's worth something." He bops his head at the car behind me. "Not like this."

Am I ever going to break free from this? Even when I thought I did, it turns out I didn't, because he can come here any minute and remind me how much of a failure I am.

"Anything new you've got to say?" I ask, acting like it doesn't bother me at all. If he knows how much it bothers me, he will never stop.

"Oh, there is so much I've to say. I can go on and on."

"Hyun." I sigh, finishing the cigarette. "Can you get the fuck out of here while I'm being reasonably nice? I've got work to do."

"Quit calling this work. Come on. This is bullshit."

"I don't have time-"

"Do you know what would have happened if you went to college and got a decent job?" he asks, and I pause everything I was saying, thinking, doing.

Frankly, I don't want to know, but I don't find it in myself to tell him to shut the fuck up.

"Mom and dad always wanted you to go to college. They had this... great idea," he says, sounding too passionate about it for my liking. "I'd be a lawyer, you'd be a doctor, and that last piece of shit would work in IT. That was their idea, that's why there are three of us. Was, at least. Can you imagine how disappointing... how heartbreaking it was for them when one of us was erased from this perfect scheme? And then there was you. You, who could never get anything right. Every decision, every grade, every sport, every after-school activity. You fucked it all up, Taehyung. Do you know how upsetting it was for them? You're lucky they didn't kick you out earlier, too. They couldn't look at you. You were the reason mom cried, the reason dad doubted himself."