SSL 15

A tune came out of his nose on its own. I’ll play the piano when I get home, Doyoon thought.

A note does not point to a separate meaning. There is no need to perform the task of reading the object ‘tree’ from the sound ‘tree’; one can simply play with the sound itself. That was why Doyoon liked music. Above all, he loved playing the piano.

While walking, Doyoon drew a picture of his house in his mind. A warm home. A bright place with a piano.

The spacious living room, wide open towards the balcony, the shiny new white laminate floor that mimicked marble, the leather sofa where all five of them could sit together and the large TV across from it, the family photos on the wall, and the piano next to them.

Hyung does not learn the piano anymore, but when he was young, he had a private tutor at home. His younger sister also started attending an academy this year. Hyung and his sister attend different academies, too. English, math, essay writing, and so on. However, only Doyoon does not attend any academy or have a tutor. Because he is too good at it on his own.

<Our Doyoon doesn’t need an academy. He can just follow hyung at home for piano. Right?>

Mom said that as she stroked Doyoon’s cheek. Dad had mentioned a couple of times at the dinner table about sending Doyoon to an academy soon, but Mom had cut him off sharply. Why would you do that for a child like Doyoon who does so well on his own. She said only kids who are not good at it need an academy.

Doyoon felt proud. As expected, Mom thinks highly of Doyoon. Looking back, Doyoon saw the traffic light, snapped to his senses, and stopped walking. He was already in front of the crosswalk.

“Eunseo, let’s raise our hands and cross.”

At the end of his sentence, Doyoon raised his hand high to show Eunseo as an example. Eunseo also tried to raise her hand, but she seemed to hesitate because of her shoe bag. Doyoon quickly took it and held it for her.

A new pink shoe bag. The embroidery of a cartoon character was sparkling.

Mom buys his younger sister a lot of new clothes and new bags. But Doyoon would receive better things. Because he always inherited hyung’s clothes, bags, and workbooks. Mom said so. That it is better to inherit things from family than to get new things. Because it feels like a connection.

<Hyung is the eldest son, so it can’t be helped. Your younger sister is a girl, so we have to buy her things separately. But Doyoon is the second child and a boy, so you can inherit hyung’s things. Isn’t that great.>

Crossing the crosswalk, the two entered a small park at the entrance to the apartment complex. As he walked across the sandy path, holding Eunseo’s hand tightly the whole time, Doyoon suddenly saw something at his feet. A squashed ball of fur, lying as if it had been thrown at the edge of the path.

His feet stopped on their own.

“Oppa, eek! Don’t.”

Eunseo already guessed and pulled his hand. Soon she reached out her other hand and started pulling at his collar.

“Don’t. Let’s go home. Please?”

His sister’s voice was distorted, and when he looked back, he could see her expression was crumpled too. But Eunseo’s gaze was not on Doyoon. Instead, she was scanning the surroundings widely. As if she was afraid someone passing by might see what Doyoon was doing.

Doyoon hesitated, looking at the wrinkled form of Eunseo’s face. This is a ‘crying face’. He knew because he had seen it often. The expression that says, I don’t like it, please don’t, or I might just burst into tears. Eunseo’s answer about that ball of fur is clear.

The answers of the other kids at school were also clear. A few months ago, when a similarly trampled ball of fur was found near the school store, the kids screamed and ran away, or poked it with a stick while cursing at it. The teacher also frowned and shook her head, picking it up with tongs and throwing it in the trash can. While warning them not to touch it because it was dirty.

Mom also taught Doyoon. When Doyoon had picked up a dead pigeon from the street with his bare hands to bury it, with a stern expression unlike her usual self, with no trace of a smile, Mom had said. That it was grotesque, dirty, and filthy. She told him to walk far away from such things when he saw them.

Therefore, Doyoon knew the answer well. The answer that everyone shared.

It was different from the times when he had failed to read the mood or acted strangely because he did not know the answer. Doyoon knew very well what an animal carcass on the street was supposed to mean. And yet, Doyoon hesitated for a long time.

“Okay.”

Then he finally turned around.

“Let’s go, Eunseo.”

Leaving the mouse carcass behind, Doyoon started walking. I’m different, he mumbled to himself as if making an excuse.

<Crazy bastard……. Makes me lose my appetite.>

<So fucking dirty.>

<Just causes trouble for others.>

No. I’m not like that.

No matter what the kids at school say, I’m not like that. I’m different from that. I’m not dirty, bad, or filthy. I’m a good little brother. I’m a pretty son. It’s okay. I’m not like that at all. So let’s not care.

No need to care. Doyoon hurried his steps and returned home. Feeling his back being pulled heavily as if caught in a ring of ominous guilt, while gripping his sister’s hand even tighter, as if holding onto a lifeline.

A blue city bus stopped.

Jaehyun got off through the back door first, and Doyoon followed silently. Jaehyun was walking ahead when he suddenly turned around and said a word.

“The weather is really nice. Right.”

“……”

Only then did Doyoon suddenly lift his head and look at the sky. It was perfectly blue without a single cloud. The sunlight was also transparently bright. I was nervous, Doyoon realized. So much so that I didn’t even notice the weather. It seemed he had entered a state corresponding to ‘being scared’.

After that, Jaehyun continued to look back at Doyoon from time to time and ask simple questions. Things like, isn’t it a bit hot, should we buy some ice cream. But Doyoon could hardly respond. Even though they were easy questions that he could usually answer. It was because one thought dominated his mind. He must have come to the same answer, too.

Cha Jaehyun must have come to a similar answer as the kids in middle school. Through about two stages. The first correct answer, ‘Because Kang Doyoon likes corpses’, ‘he’s a crazy psychopath bastard’. The second correct answer, if he is a ‘crazy psychopath bastard’, then ‘that bastard must be tormented to death’.

It was the answer that the entire student body had come up with. More than several hundred kids. So there was no way Jaehyun would be different. However, he was not sure about the third answer. That is, the answer to the method of ‘how’ he should be tormented.

The kids in middle school, for example, Park Kanghyuk, had never once taken Doyoon to his own house. Although he had told him to come to the PC bang where he was with money. But Jaehyun was calling him to his house from the beginning. To a house where his noona and her friends were all present.

What is he trying to do. Cha Jaehyun and Park Kanghyuk are different. Park Kanghyuk seemed to have a lot of friends, but his grades were not good. He could not play the piano either. He always had curses on his lips. Cha Jaehyun’s way of speaking was gentle, and he seemed to have the homeroom teacher’s trust. Besides, he was good at everything and very smart.

So Jaehyun might have found a slightly different, to use Park Kanghyuk’s expression at the time, ‘more fun’ method. As he mulled it over and walked with his eyes fixed on the ground, Doyoon’s shadow overlapped with another shadow. A large, square building shadow.

The shadow cast by the ocher-colored villa on the left. Doyoon hunched his shoulders.

To get to Jaehyun’s house from the bus stop, you always have to pass this building along the alley. A seemingly quite neat ocher-colored five-story villa, sandwiched between an office building and a new officetel.

The place where Doyoon had lived from the early summer of sixth grade until autumn. It was the house they had hastily moved to after his father had declared bankruptcy in his business.

About three weeks ago, when Jaehyun gave him the address, his heart had skipped a beat. It was not just because he thought he would have to take the bus. Doyoon was bad with directions and did not remember places well, but he remembered the address of the house he had lived in at that time clearly. Jaehyun’s house seemed to be near Nullyeong Villa.

The guess turned out to be correct. On the day of the first study session, Doyoon took the bus and got off in front of the convenience store he used to pass by every day. He walked to Jaehyun’s house, tracing back the scenery of the alley, which was almost the same as in his memory, as if in a nightmare. While almost stumbling from the shadow that struck him from the left at some point.

Today, too, Doyoon walked through the shadow of the ocher-colored villa. As he took his last step out of it, a sigh escaped his lips on its own. As if he had been trapped in a heavy memory and had just escaped.

Whenever he stepped around here, he always remembered that night. It is not a bad memory. Since it was the first time in his life he was able to face an important truth related to himself, it should probably be classified as a good memory. It does not matter if his stomach churns or he is seized by dizziness every time he recalls it. Because truth is good and right, anyway.

Sometime during the winter break of fifth grade, Doyoon thought. That the atmosphere at home seemed to have changed a bit.

It was not that he had noticed something from his dad’s and mom’s faces. Because the two of them were always smiling just like before. At least, that was how it looked to Doyoon. When they were in the living room or sitting at the dinner table, both mom and dad would chat with both corners of their mouths pulled taut. The expressions on their faces when they went into the master bedroom and talked just the two of them were, of course, impossible to know.

However, Doyoon felt that his siblings’ faces had changed a little. His younger sister Eunseo and his hyung Eunwoo looked gloomy, unlike before. They did not smile much even when mom and dad smiled. They often ate with the corners of their mouths drooping or their brows furrowed. They also became less talkative.

After that, other symptoms slowly appeared. Dad started coming home late. His face also changed a little. His cheeks sagged, his complexion became rough, and his nose turned red. He became silent in the living room and no longer smiled with the corners of his mouth raised at the dinner table. His shoulders also slumped.

But mom alone remained the same. In the living room and kitchen, she still smiled brightly, and in the morning, before the children left for school, she would hug each of them in turn and kiss their cheeks. Doyoon would feel something ominous from his father’s appearance but would be relieved upon seeing his mom.

The vacation ended, and the new semester began in March. One day, when Doyoon came home from school, he found red stickers all over the things in the house. The floor also seemed a little dirtier. Upon closer inspection, there were footprints. Traces as if several people had come and gone with their shoes on.

What is this? Doyoon thought. Then he heard his mom’s voice.

“Did you have a good day at school?”

Mom got up from the dinner table and came towards Doyoon, saying. A smile. Doyoon checked the corners of his mom’s mouth, her cheekbones, and the narrowed shape of her eyes. So it was indeed a smile. A perfectly identical smile to her usual one.

“Yes, I had a good day.”

Doyoon replied, relieved. And he asked, just like usual.

“Can I play the piano?”

“Sure. Put your bag down, wash your hands, and then come and play.”

Mom seemed to hesitate for a very brief moment, but she soon gave him an answer. Doyoon nodded excitedly. But his younger sister, who had come with him holding his hand, for some reason, her eyes welled up with tears and she ran into the room she shared with hyung Eunwoo.

Doyoon tilted his head for a moment, but as his mom said, he put his bag in his room, washed his hands, came out, and played the piano. He played his favorite, the fourth variation of the Goldberg Variations, for a long time, humming along with a nasal sound without even realizing it. Not even knowing that his hyung had also returned from school and was standing blankly in the shoe closet, staring at him.

A few days later, the stickers that had been on the things disappeared. Doyoon saw a letter among the messy documents on the dinner table and tried to read it. It contained a mix of words he had never seen before, like ‘declaration of bankruptcy’ and ‘exemption from seizure’.

In mid-April, Mom disappeared.

Right after that, one day, his hyung fought with his dad. While setting the table with Doyoon, he threw down the rice paddle and exploded. Dad spoke calmly while sitting, but hyung continuously shouted at the top of his lungs. It was a loud voice he had never heard before from his usually gentle hyung.

“That was all mom’s money, and you’re the one who flushed it all down the toilet. And you even lied about it!”

“Eunwoo……”

“A debt collector came to see me before the stickers went up. He was waiting in front and spoke to me on the street. In front of all my friends.”

Hyung said, pounding his own chest with his fist.

“Your father lied, he pretended his business was still doing well and borrowed money from us, he covered his debts with more debt. Your dad is going to jail for fraud soon, tell him to spit out the money and go……. You didn’t say a single word of that to mom, did you? You lied to mom just the same. That everything was going well.”

“……”

“It’s no wonder mom got sick and tired of it. Dad’s being like that, and the child isn’t even his own, a monster……”

“Eunwoo!”

The words were cut off for a moment. But they soon continued. With tearful sentences like ‘Did you just obediently stamp the seal, you should have begged and held on, saying you were sorry’, ‘Why did mom abandon even us, her own children’, the conversation that seemed like it would never end finally ended, and his hyung went into his room and slammed the door. Eunseo, who had been sitting at the corner of the dinner table, burst into tears belatedly.

Doyoon just sat there blankly. He could not understand what was being said. Mom, my mom. The person who stroked my head, kissed my cheek, hugged me, and praised me well. That was all Doyoon knew about his mom. He had not even thought to wonder about anything else. But mom had disappeared. For reasons that Doyoon at the time could not understand at all.

In May, the remaining family moved. After disposing of as much furniture as they could, including the piano, the four of them moved to a nearby villa. Dad said this place was also too expensive. That it was not a place to live for long. But he said they had to come in a hurry because of the school district system. He had somehow borrowed money by begging his relatives.

“Eunwoo, you’re in high school, and Doyoon, you’ll be starting middle school soon, won’t you? You have to go to good schools.”