He set down the hair dryer and, placing his right hand on the crown of my head, stared at me for a moment in the mirror. When our eyes met, he pressed down firmly on my head with his fingertips before disappearing from the mirror first.
It was the kind of touch you’d give a runaway puppy that had come home, a light pinch born of exasperation at its nonchalance—eating and playing with its toys as usual, oblivious to how much you had worried.
Rubbing the spot on my head where his hand had been, I followed him and stood up from the mirror.
We moved to the study.
Even though it was now what you could call the height of summer, there was a faint warmth on the floor I stepped on, as if the boiler had been turned on. And yet, my body didn’t feel hot. I had no way of gauging how long I had been trembling with tension and fear, or what time of the early morning it was.
His study, with its heavy, custom-built mahogany bookshelves and decor of weighty colors and furniture, was classical but not authoritarian. Rather than a space merely for reading and pursuing intellectual hobbies, it was more like a small drawing room that also served as a place to enjoy discussions and socialize with acquaintances.
The space seemed to resemble his affectionate side—the side that knew how to cherish those close to him, even if he appeared cold and unapproachable at first glance.
After motioning for me to sit in a high-backed chair with a plush cushion, he walked over to a decorative cabinet set up like a small bar, switched on the electric kettle, and poured whiskey and tonic water into a glass.
Sitting awkwardly in the chair, I stared at the dehumidifier humming with a low whirring sound, then mustered the courage to speak to his back, which was turned to me.
“Um… I’m sorry.”
He turned only his head to look back at me.
“For calling you so suddenly and making you come… You must have been surprised.”
Carrying a teacup on a saucer and an on-the-rocks glass, he approached. Instead of reacting to my words, he told me he wouldn’t be giving me any alcohol and handed me a white teacup in which a pale green tea was gently steeping.
“I need to hear you out while you’re sober.”
He added this with a stern growl mixed with a hint of playfulness as he sat in the chair opposite me. I had actually wanted to borrow a little help from alcohol, but as I was currently in the position of a misbehaving puppy, I nodded obediently and cupped the warmth of the teacup in my hands.
After taking two or three sips of his drink as if savoring it, he slowly swirled the glass in his hand and spoke in a more lenient voice.
“I was surprised by the sudden call, but I came back home of my own will, so there’s no need to be sorry. If I hadn’t felt like it, I would have told you to go back.”
The him I was getting to know through my own experience was not that kind of person, yet he seemed to judge himself as quite the cold-blooded man.
“I’m glad to hear you’ll be painting… but I wasn’t hoping you’d come to me looking like you’re being chased by a ghost and tell me as if you were surrendering.”
He set the on-the-rocks glass down on the small table beside his chair. His gaze, which had been angled somewhere around my shoulder, slowly traveled up to find my eyes.
“You asked for help, didn’t you?”
“……”
“What can I do to help? Tell me what kind of help you want.”
I had definitely said it at the front gate. That I would paint, and to please help me. They were words I had mumbled unconsciously, but I wasn’t unaware of the reason I had said them.
As he watched me, unable to open my mouth, just fidgeting with the teacup and twitching my lips, he let out a sigh. Hmph.
“I’m no god, but I should be able to solve most of the practical problems that arise in the secular world. Probably. So, trust me and tell me.”
In truth, I believed in his abilities more than he thought. It was a belief so absolute, almost like a child’s blind faith in an animated hero, that I was surprised at myself the moment I became conscious of it. If I hadn’t vaguely believed that there was no problem he couldn’t practically solve, my subconscious wouldn’t have had me rushing here through the rain like a madman.
The reason for my hesitation was that, in order to ask for his help, I had to lay out the stories of people other than myself.
Exhaling the breath I had taken in a deep sigh, I began my story with a slight tremor in my voice.
“The fact that I’m being chased.”
“……”
His eyes twitched and narrowed slightly. As if he hadn’t expected me to bring that up.
“To be precise, it’s not so much that I’m being chased, but it’s the situation of my Hyung and his partner, who I lived with.”
From what I had learned while working together, he and the Director, whose connection went back to Hong Kong, had a relationship that was more than just a business partnership; they were practically family. Nevertheless, the two of them did not share the secrets of others.
In the process of my becoming an employee at Phantom, the Director had asked him to accommodate me because I had a somewhat complicated situation, but she hadn’t told him the details of that complicated situation, and he, in turn, hadn’t demanded an explanation on the grounds that he couldn’t hire someone without knowing the full story.
The fact that he wasn’t asking about my reaction to his painting was probably for the same reason. He wouldn’t cross the line into another person’s territory that they clearly didn’t want to reveal, and he probably wanted the same respect for his own domain.
Who I was being chased by. Why I had reacted that way in front of ‘Isolation’? He doesn’t carelessly touch upon the difficult parts of others’ lives. Not out of shallow curiosity, of course, and he would be the same even if he had a serious interest.
If I wanted him to know about me, if I needed him to, I had to open my mouth myself.
It wasn’t easy to make my voice come out, like forcing a rusty, long-unused spring to turn.
“That it could all be over… I realized that today.”
The moment I saw my uncle standing stock-still like a phantom in the dark shade of his umbrella, I knew intuitively that we had been playing house in the palm of their hands—or at least, in Morae’s father’s.
Morae’s prediction had been right.
They had already known where we lived and had simply been biding their time, giving us some leeway.
I grabbed my uncle’s hand and headed down the stairs without a plan. My family didn’t have the money to have someone followed. It was obvious my uncle was just a messenger, bringing a message from Morae’s father.
We went into a shabby skewered-meats tavern about a two- or three-minute walk from the bus stop. When I got a closer look at my uncle’s face under the even dimmer light, made so by the grimy lampshade, I could see that he had been through severe torment after we left.
It wasn’t something we hadn’t anticipated. Though we never said it to each other, Yeehan and Morae were clearly aware that they had hurt and sacrificed many things to make this choice, and they were prepared for the lifelong guilt that would follow. They had also expected the pressure her family would put on ours, but in their own words, they had feigned ignorance and made a “selfish choice.”
When we took over the boat, our family had taken out a loan from Mr. Lim’s family, just like every other family in the village. There must have been other smaller debts that had accumulated before that. The demands for repayment began about a month after we left, and a week ago, they had received an ultimatum. As he told me this, my uncle pressed his lips together firmly, making the deep lines around his mouth even more pronounced.
Either pay back the debt within a month, or catch Seo Yeehan, who had spirited away his daughter, and make him kneel and apologize.
That was Mr. Lim’s demand—no, his command.
Though he had clearly come with an umbrella, just as water droplets had been falling from my hair, a drop of water that had collected at the tip of the hat my uncle had pulled down low, now fell heavily onto the table.
My uncle waved off the draft beer and ordered soju. After downing two shots in a row, he rubbed his wet face with his thick, rough hands. Those hands, which looked as if they couldn’t be pierced even by a nail, were powerless before the task of sustaining a life and a daily existence.
No, had my grandfather or my uncle ever even had the chance to ponder the concept of a “life”?
For them, who had lived clinging only to the task of pushing each day behind them, one after another, wasn’t the very word “life”—which requires a holistic and three-dimensional perception of one’s existence rather than a partial one—a luxurious philosophy?
My uncle had come to find us not to steer his life in a desired direction, but out of the necessity of ensuring his minimal survival, day by day.
“As long as there’s debt, our family can’t be free from theirs. And… your uncle is not well-off enough to live without debt.”
As my uncle muttered this, looking down at the third glass that he had only poured and not dared to touch, I felt no resentment or anger toward Morae and my brother. Rather, he wore a pained expression, like someone forced to take part in something he didn’t agree with. It wasn’t hard to guess at the war of nerves he must have had with Morae’s father before coming to find us, and the sleepless nights he must have spent blaming himself for his own incompetence and despairing.
Everyone was making the choices they had to make, from their own positions. The discord in relationships brought about by each of those choices, and the resulting chasm, seemed so vast that no amount of wisdom could ever bridge it.
I told him most of the situation, except for the fact that Morae was an Alpha.
The severe difference in the two families’ circumstances and the resulting opposition and conflict, the pressure and threats, the extreme choice made through rebellion and severance. And the repeated pressure and threats from their inability to accept that choice.
The history of the two people I loved was condensed so simply.
I worried that the unique specificity of the people named Lim Morae and Seo Yeehan had vanished, and that only the stereotype of a reckless young couple’s elopement had been conveyed. I resented my poor storytelling skills, which were woefully inadequate to convey the uniqueness of someone’s life in a few minutes of talk.
I closed my mouth for a moment, feeling as if I had done something terrible to Morae and my brother.
Hmph. He crossed his arms and let out a long breath, his eyes looking as if he were reviewing the details.
“So, you stopped your uncle from meeting the two of them for now. And you, Mr. Seo Yeehyeon, are trying to resolve this without them knowing?”
The question did not carry a tone of criticism, as if to say it was a foolish thing to do.
“…Yes.”
On some kind of nerve, I had promised him I would find a way and contact him again tomorrow, asking him to give me just one day. The moment I parted with my uncle, I had rushed straight here.
Leave a Reply