ATTEW – Chapter 19

She said she hadn’t done much for him, yet thanked him for growing up so well. She laughed, saying she couldn’t possibly send off such a fine son to get married all on her own. When he replied that he didn’t even have a girlfriend yet, she grew genuinely upset, asking how someone this accomplished could still be single. So did she want him to get married, or not? When he asked, she smiled and said, of course, he should get married.

“Our son deserves to enjoy every bit of happiness there is.”

And yet—how had things ended up like this?

Why did his mother have to be crushed under a truck and leave without even a proper goodbye?

Why did that once-beautiful skin have to be scraped and torn until there wasn’t a single unscathed place left?

What did I do wrong?

As Jae-eon kept turning those questions over in his mind, he finally became aware of the tugging at his arm and slowly lowered his gaze.

“Oppa, why’d you put Mom’s picture up there?”

“……”

“How long do we have to stay here? Can’t we go home? When’s Mom coming back? Did she say she’d be late ‘cause the restaurant’s busy?”

“……”

The girl firing off those innocent questions with her pale little face was his sister, Gyueon. Seo Gyueon—his much-younger sister, born when Jae-eon was already in middle school. The little sister he’d practically raised himself, the one who was nothing but adorable and precious.

At nine years old, Gyueon had never encountered death. She’d never been to a funeral, so she clearly had no idea why they were here or what kind of place this was. More than that, she didn’t even know that their mother was gone. Jae-eon hadn’t told her.

No—he couldn’t tell her.

“Oppa, you promised me this morning. You said if I ate my dinner properly, you’d let me have one more candy later. You remember, right?”

“……Yeah.”

“I ate everything. I just left the red soup ‘cause it was spicy. I didn’t leave it ‘cause I didn’t wanna eat it.”

“……Okay.”

“You always keep your promises, right? So it’s okay if Gyueon eats one more candy, right?”

“Yeah.”

At his permission, Gyueon beamed and opened the zipper of the bag he always carried. From the front pocket—where he kept candy just for her—she took out a pale green one, popped it into her mouth, and started humming to herself. In her small hands were a few beads and a stretch cord.

It had been Gyueon’s birthday not long ago. She’d begged her brother—fourteen years older than her—for a bead bracelet-making kit as her present. Jae-eon, who’d been working part-time while waiting for his belated enlistment after graduating college, hadn’t hesitated. He bought her the biggest set they had.

He wanted his sister, who didn’t even know her father’s face, to grow up without any wrinkles in her heart. That was why he usually gave her whatever she wanted. He bought her clothes instead of buying his own, toys instead of books for himself. Even when their mother told him not to, that was one thing he never listened to.

That was who twenty-three-year-old Seo Jae-eon was.

To nine-year-old Seo Gyueon, he was always on her side—the coolest big brother in the world.

To fifty-year-old Song Jeong-hwa, he was a son beyond comparison.

But now, he wasn’t a dutiful son anymore.

The person who used to brag about him as her precious son had disappeared from this world.

“All done. Pretty, right?”

Jae-eon snapped back to himself at Gyueon’s bright cry as she tugged his hand over. Her eyes sparkled, clearly waiting for a big reaction like always. Only then did Jae-eon notice the odd sensation at his wrist and turn his gaze.

A bracelet made of alternating red, green, and white plastic beads gleamed around his wrist.

“……Yeah.”

“I made it so it feels like Christmas. I did well, right?”

“……You did.”

“You can’t ever take this off. I worked really hard on it, so you have to wear it every day.”

“……”

“Got it?”

“……”

“Got it?!”

“Yeah, yeah. I got it.”

Only after hearing his answer did Gyueon open the bead container again. She hummed a carol as she picked through the beads, though the lyrics were a complete mess.

“I already used up all the pink ones. Mom likes pink. I was gonna make Mom a bracelet too.”

So let’s buy more later—that was what her eyes said as she looked up at him. Just then, the phone in Jae-eon’s hand vibrated.

[Hey, aren’t you enlisting in like a few days? Are you just going to work part-time until then? You really aren’t gonna see us before you go? Don’t even think about skipping visits. I’m telling you nicely—get in touch, man.]

Jae-eon’s brow furrowed as he read the message, his face going blank.

It was Sunday now—Monday meant enlistment.

And yet, his sister had no one to take care of her, and she knew nothing.

The reality that crashed down on him without even giving him time to grieve his mother began to crush him that night.

And when he finally came to his senses—

He was running.

Running while calling every possible number. Running while gulping down ragged breaths, chased by time. Standing still in shock at his situation was a luxury he couldn’t afford. There was no time to curse the inflexible, overly complicated systems that demanded so much.

Of all times, it had to be a Friday night.

Of all things, a record-breaking snowstorm.

Of all moments, the end of the year.

With his mother’s death, he’d become the head of the household overnight. He had a young sister to support. Thinking of Gyueon, he had to postpone his enlistment—but even then, he’d need to keep postponing it until she was older. But he had no way to contact the responsible officer.

He spent Friday night in the empty funeral hall, searching the internet nonstop. From Saturday morning on, he called a lawyer he knew through someone else, sought advice, and went to see his professor. He ran around all day, looking for anyone who might help even a little. In the meantime, he’d asked one of Jeong-hwa’s coworkers at the restaurant to watch Gyueon, just for a short while.

“Yes, sunbaenim. I’m Seo Jae-eon, class of XX from the Economics Department. Assistant Kim Do-yoon gave me your number. Yes, I had a question about applying for a deferment of military service. I’m scheduled to enlist the day after tomorrow, but my situation right now is—”

Even as he explained everything to a senior he’d never met face-to-face, his feet didn’t stop. He took the stairs two at a time, three at a time.

—”They weren’t divorced?”

“Yes. It’s just that… I heard my father has quite a bit of property. I think my mother held on, hoping at least that would go to my sister and me after he passed.”

—”Your father’s alive, right?”

“……Yes.”

Jae-eon pictured his biological father, surely living comfortably somewhere under the same sky. Of course, he hadn’t thought to inform him of his mother’s death. The man wasn’t someone who’d show up grieving even if told, and seeing him would bring nothing good. There was no reason to contact him.

His mother would’ve approved of that choice. To her, Jae-eon’s biological father was someone she wouldn’t want to see even after death. Just thinking about him would make her grit her teeth.

He was the same to Jae-eon. There wasn’t a single good memory attached to that man. As a child, Jae-eon had desperately wished his mother would divorce his father. Or that she’d run away with him. If even that was impossible, he’d wished his father would just die somewhere.

But all of it had been futile.

His father was not the kind of man who would let his wife escape easily. Whenever she even brought up divorce, she or Jae-eon would be locked away in a cramped room for days on end.

Later, his mother told him she’d endured it all because of him. She said she’d swallowed the verbal abuse that rained down every other day, the violence that followed every few days, the suspicion and distrust packed into every glance—all for her son. She said she’d borne it again for the child who’d taken root in her womb, even while knowing her son’s heart was bruised from watching it all.

“You should’ve run away by yourself, Mom.”

“What kind of mother leaves her child behind? That’s not a mother.”

“……”

“I thought enduring it was the right thing. I thought I had to. I thought that was the way to protect you and Gyueon. I didn’t realize my children’s hearts were getting bruised while I was only focused on enduring it myself.”

When he said it was his fault for holding her back, she told him it wasn’t him—it was that man. She said that the day he finally reached out to even her precious son, she decided she couldn’t let him grab Jae-eon’s ankle, too. That was why she chose to run away in the dead of night.

While heavily pregnant.

And yet, in the end, that man still grabbed Jae-eon by the ankle like this. A man who’d never been any help in his life—why would he be now? Jae-eon knew that.

He did.

And still, because he was his father, Jae-eon had hoped.

The realization made him feel endlessly foolish.