My wish came true, in the most horrifying way.
The first thing that came to mind when I heard about my mom’s death was the memory of that day. The day I wished she would disappear, and how genuine my feelings were. Maybe that’s why I didn’t cry.
‘You devil.’
It felt like my mom in the memorial photo was yelling at me like that.
I had only thought about it; I never desperately wished for it.
But as if I were punished for that fleeting moment of blasphemy, it became a reality.
My mom was so excited to take her first ever plane flight in her life. On the morning of her departure, she was so elated that she even acted like a caring mom, putting meat on my plate. But no one knew that would be her last moment. She never made it onto the plane. The cause of her death was such a blatant and mundane car accident that it was hard to believe it was real. My mom who wanted an extraordinary life had an all-too-common end.
It felt like a full stop had been placed on my life.
No one came to my mom’s funeral. The funeral of my last father was in the adjacent room, but it was a clearly different world. They got into the same car and left the world at the same time, but their final journeys were drastically different. Unlike my mom, who had no one to place a chrysanthemum on her coffin, my stepfather’s funeral wreaths overflowed and even encroached into my mom’s funeral space. Even in death, my mom couldn’t cross the wall of her social class. I sat quietly against the wall of the empty funeral hall, eyes dry, staring endlessly at my mom’s memorial photo.
I had so eagerly anticipated the summer vacation when my mom would be away on her trip. But her brief vacation trip turned into an eternal one. Maybe people really did have their own fates. Perhaps my mom was born with a fate that made even dreaming of flying on a plane impossible. The moment she tried to defy her fate by getting on a plane, she couldn’t continue her life any longer.
Then what about me? If I continued to live in that house, might I also meet such a tragic end? More importantly, where would I go now? I was only the son of Chairman Ji’s wife, I wasn’t truly part of that family.
With no one left to hurt me, it felt like all the rotten blood was drained from my body, and I lost all strength. The wounds from the glass, which I thought had almost fully healed, started throbbing again.
I became a lone orphan overnight.
It had been less than six months since I took the Ji surname, so it would be easy for me to be disowned. Now, I was left to live in the world all alone.
I didn’t feel despair. Having nothing to hold onto meant there was nothing to regret losing. I wouldn’t be able to go to college, but if I got a job in a factory with a dormitory, I could at least make ends meet. Perhaps my situation would be better than when I lived off my mom. I could just work for my daily bread, take care of myself, and not have to worry about angering my mom or getting beaten? Starting now on.
I didn’t get to see him. Not even when the funeral was over.
Instead, his secretary, whom I had seen once before, conveyed a message to me.
‘He said for you to stay quietly at home.’
The secretary didn’t specify what he planned to do with me. But just because he didn’t give me a heads-up didn’t mean I shouldn’t get ready first.
When I returned home, I started packing. I only packed what I had brought with me in my original bag, so I could leave at any time. I didn’t leave right away because I wanted to pay my last respects. He was the only person who had ever shown me kindness. I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye, even if he didn’t care about such things. However, he was constantly away from home, and my departure was inevitably delayed.
Just as I had lost my mom, he had also lost his father overnight. I could never fully understand what it felt like to lose a close family, but I could imagine that it was a sorrowful and complicated matter, enough to keep him away from home for days. I had no choice but to wait.
One day, after enduring it for about half a month, I couldn’t stand it any longer and started going back to his study.
Since the day my body was covered in wounds from my mom’s beating, I had stayed away from the study, thinking it was no longer my place. Just because my mom was no longer there to hit me for wandering around the house didn’t mean things changed overnight. I spent all day sitting idly in my room. I only went down to eat at meal times and stayed in my room the rest of the time. Since I was still on my school vacation, I didn’t even go to school, so I had no reason to leave the house. I avoided walking around the house even more than before my mom died. I felt like a bird trapped in a cage.
After spending those days, one day it suddenly occurred to me that even if I couldn’t leave the cage, there was no reason I couldn’t move around a bit more inside it.
From that moment on, I started visiting his study again. It didn’t have to be just at midnight anymore. I went in the morning, afternoon, and evening—whenever I wanted, staying as long as I liked, and leaving when I felt like it. After all, it was a luxury I would never enjoy again, my last indulgence, and a little more greed wouldn’t make things worse. It was laughable. I thought I was immune to greed after watching my mom’s avarice, but here I was, proving myself wrong. Even though my mom was gone, her greed clung to me like a ghost.
I had long finished reading the novel I’d been immersed in. I thought about finding a new book, but I wasn’t sure I’d get to read until the last page, so I didn’t. I was a person who was going to leave this house soon. Instead of a new book, I wore out the pages of the science book he had first given me. I still didn’t understand the content, but holding any book was better than doing nothing.
After staring blankly at the unreadable text for a long time, I eventually closed the book and lay down. I wasn’t sleepy, but I forced my eyes shut. I thought I should cover myself with a blanket, but I didn’t have the will to do it. The study maintained a comfortable temperature even without the air conditioner, so I wouldn’t catch a cold without a blanket.
Unlike before, when I could quickly fall asleep on this sofa, I hadn’t been able to sleep easily in the study for the past few days. Maybe the reason I could sleep here wasn’t because the study was cool, serene, and peaceful. It wasn’t that.
Perhaps it was my expectation that there would be someone’s warmth nearby.
Click-
A sudden noise awakened my senses and filled the space. The sound of the door closing was clear. The sound of footsteps drew closer. My heart pounded irregularly. All my senses were focused on the approaching sound, but my eyelids felt glued shut. My vision remained closed, but my other senses opened. It felt like standing in a forest covered in dew. The familiar warmth was now close enough for me to touch.
It was him.
The first time I smelled it in the garden, I felt like I was standing in a dewy forest. The rich woody scent that lingered in this study too, like a lingering reverb on the tip of my nose. With all my senses alert, the moment I sensed the presence of the person standing beside me, I realized something new.
Maybe my greed wasn’t just to stay in the study, but it was the anticipation of seeing him at the door. Perhaps I wasn’t just frequenting the study, but I was waiting for its owner. Not just to say a final goodbye a little sooner…
I had to admit it. I had been looking forward to meeting him in secret. It wasn’t the elegant study I sought, but the warmth of the person who was staying somewhere there. I had to acknowledge that I had unconsciously relied on that warmth, as I couldn’t even sleep in the empty study.
It was time to open my eyes. The person I had been waiting for was here. Today, I could finally return to being Song Yewoon, not Ji Yewoon, whom he didn’t favor. But my eyes, which weren’t tired at all, wouldn’t move. It felt as if I were frozen with tension.
And then.
A gentle touch approached me.
That hand pulled the blanket up to cover me. My cool body warmed and relaxed under the soft blanket. The owner of the study spoke to the supposedly sleeping me.
“You’re sleeping well, you’re not even crying.”
His deep voice was warm. Even if I couldn’t see his expression, my ears seemed to interpret it that way on their own.
I suddenly felt like crying. A gentle touch, a warm duvet wrapped around me. A clear memory reflexively resurfaced in my mind.
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