CEL 63

The accident footage confirmed through the black box did not feel realistic. Uncle Seungho and Mother quarreled loudly for more than thirty minutes, and in the end, Mother failed to contain her anger and she hit his torso hard. She clearly had not been in her right mind to lay a hand on someone driving a car.

Uncle Seungho’s arm twisted from the recoil, and misfortune made the full shock slam into the driver’s side, so he died instantly on the spot. Mother’s limbs fractured, but she barely survived. However, since her health had already been poor, she did not regain consciousness.

Since on the family register only Jaeha remained as her relative, he also became Mother’s guardian. Father did not even show his nose, yet through another secretary he handed over a card. It was a card with no limit, one he had never given to Mother.

The doctor declared Mother a vegetative patient after about a month had passed.

Inside the empty hospital room he stared blankly at the woman’s chest rising and falling. He lifted his arm and grasped her hand. When he saw that no sharp response came, he realized she truly would not wake up.

It was rather a good thing. Now he didn’t need to draw anymore, and he didn’t need to listen to the shamans’ absurd ramblings, and he didn’t need to put on foolish acts just to gain favor from others. So this was not truly a bad matter.

Every time he went to the hospital room Jaeha repeated that thought like he was brainwashing himself. If he didn’t do that, strange voices kept echoing inside his head.

Time spent alone felt quite fine. Since every sound inside the house irritated me, he dismissed all the servants, and when peace finally came, he felt a certain satisfaction.

Only one thing failed to please him….

“Huff, huhh. O-okay… coqcondition….”

Even when she was awake, Mother had kept him constantly on edge, yet even lying down she was still clutching him in her claws.

“Oh dear. Are you alright? You endured again this time. Yes? So drink some water. Sit here. I kept calling, and you did not answer, so I was startled.” He ran without realizing the taste of blood filling his mouth. It was already the third time he had heard the words that he should prepare his heart. Even though he said he was fine, his heart still thrashed with worry, and only when he confirmed the thin woman breathing faintly did it calm down.

Jaeha clenched his ten fingers so tight that his palms bled. Already one year had passed, yet Mother still showed no sign of rising. He slumped to the floor and buried his face into his knees. He wanted to end everything instead.

Maybe because she mistook his quivering back for weeping, the housemaid cautiously tapped his shoulder with her hand. Gentle comfort reached him, “It’s alright, everything will be alright,” yet inside him turmoil still churned. Jaeha stayed that way for a long while.

“Ah, really on the verge of dying?” Along with the harsh sound of the door opening, a stranger’s voice came.

The woman’s face bore not a single wrinkle under the makeup, and her lips were painted in bright red lipstick. She wore a tight leather dress that clung to her body, and she chewed gum nonchalantly. As Jaeha blinked at her in a daze, the housemaid asked the question he should have asked.

“Who are you to enter without permission?”

“And who are you? You don’t resemble Yujin-unnie’s birth mother. Are you her stepmother?” At the rude answer the housemaid’s mouth fell open, so Jaeha stepped forward in her place.

“Who are you?”

“This side looks exactly like Yujin-unnie. You must be Jaeha? I am… your mother’s coworker?” Coworker?

The puzzling answer made him tilt his head blankly, and by then she had folded her arms and given a slight nod. She meant that the unrelated person should leave.

Jaeha hesitated for a moment, but since she knew his name and Mother’s name, she did not seem to be someone who came to spout nonsense.

In the end, he sighed and sent the housemaid out, though she glanced anxiously back. The woman flopped onto the sofa and swept her eyes around the room with frivolity.

“Wow, money really is nice. Even a hospital room has a sofa like this.”

“What do you mean by coworker?”

“Ah, can’t I catch my breath first?”

“…….”

“Alright, alright. A kid glaring like that. You inherited Yujin-unnie’s impudence, huh?” She grumbled and began to talk. For the first time he heard Mother’s past.

“Here, that’s all.”

After she finished speaking, the woman crossed her legs askew and gave a slight nod as if she understood his confusion.

Jaeha lowered hid gaze and arranged the words he had just heard.

Mother, who had been an orphan, was the ace of an illegal prostitution den called ‘Oasis.’ She had not thrown her body around carelessly, and since her pride was high, she waited for someone who would buy her dearly. And then maybe that part pleased Father, because the two of them grew close in a short time.

The situation turned complicated after Mother became pregnant. Father had weakness for blood ties, so he could not tell her to abort the child, and while he wasted time only worrying, Jaeha was born with no plan in place.

But Father had never intended to keep secrets from his wife, so he told the aunt right away, and Mother moved according to his words into a seaside village.

The past, like a cheap soap opera, did not even make Jaeha laugh. It was not grand melodrama, and it was not some great love of the century. It was just shabby adultery.

The one who came to the hospital room was the only person Mother contacted. In that damp place, they had leaned only on each other, like real sisters.

While Jaeha arranged the situation with a blank face, the woman let out a heavy sigh.

“But once every few months she contacted me, but this time I had such a bad feeling, so I put someone on it.”

“……”

“And then for it to turn out like this….”

Her manner was light, yet when it came to Mother, warmth spread in her eyes. When the story ended, she rose from her seat and came toward Jaeha.

Jaeha stared at the middle-aged woman, shorter by a head. As she studied his face from side to side, she broke into a sly smile.

“You grew well. Han Yujin can be proud of you.”

“…Proud?”

Had it not been enough for Father? His features twisted with no chance to hide it. He felt sick of the obsession, which clung with such persistence.

“Yes. She praised you often.”

“What did she say, that I was a painter of the century?”

“Painter? You draw?”

Her puzzled eyes met his at close range. The way she tilted her head truly looked like the expression of someone hearing it for the first time, so Jaeha also blinked quickly.

“She said you are smart and you study well.”

“…Study?”

“She said you are healthy with no chronic ailments, and you eat well too.” Did this person really pass on Mother’s words?

Jaeha let out a hollow laugh in disbelief. He crossed his arms and scoffed.

“Did you get scammed by voice phishing?”

“Have you always lived only being fooled? Yes, spinach. She said you dislike spinach, yet you eat it without complaint, isn’t that so?”

Unfamiliar words kept spilling into his ears. That she felt proud he had already grown tall enough to surpass his father, that on nights when he slept in the living room she quietly laid a blanket over him, that he was kind, that he trimmed his nails neat once a week.

His chest churned strangely. Not because it was moving, or because he felt motherly love.

It was closer to rejection. Why now? Why make him hear this now?

“Yujin-unnie did him some wrong, right?” Did her wrongs count only as “some wrong”?

After Mother ended up like that, Jaeha collapsed wherever he saw saturated red. His breathing turned rough, his fingertips trembled, and he could not calm himself. Now, as long as he avoided red paint or gaping wounds, he was fine, but before reaching that point, the number of times he collapsed had been countless.

Because he spent years obsessively drawing, when gloomy thoughts swallowed him, he unconsciously began to draw, and he even developed the strange habit of losing whole pieces of memory like a film cutting off, only to return later. Once he held a pencil or brush, it suffocated him, yet it still felt better than dwelling on problems he could never solve.

Anyone could see he was not normal. He had been that way since birth. So the words “some wrong” could not cover this situation.

“I won’t tell you to understand. But she bragged about you to me often, that part is true.”

“So what?”

His cutting retort could have provoked anger, yet she only scratched the back of her head awkwardly.

The woman fell silent for a while. She looked back and forth between Mother and Jaeha, she sighed, then puffed out her chest like she had decided something, and then furrowed her brows and pondered long. Her look showed she herself was not sure if she should say this.

“I don’t know how you will take it. The reason I came here is because Yujin-unnie asked me for a favor.”

“What favor?”

“She said if something happened to her, I should look after you.”

“…What?”

He repeated blankly, unable to understand it. It took time to literally parse and understand the sentence. She must have thought he was calling her a liar, because she hurried to add more.

“She said she never knows when or how something might happen to her, so she told me to look after you. She said since you are a good student, you must go to a Korea University, and she said let you do what you want. She said you lived obeying only her words all your life, so at least from now on you should have what you want….”

“Look after him.” Jaeha blinked slowly. It didn’t feel real.

Could life truly be like this? Could existence turn out this wretched?

The situation, worse than a cheap melodrama, did not even draw a laugh anymore. He turned his head and stared at the face with eyes closed in quiet repose. Even in a state where she lay in bed without opening her eyes, Mother still pressed down on him.

He was convinced that he would never break free from her.

“…Did you take money?”

“I took it, but I never used it. I put it all straight into savings, so check for yourself.” The woman rummaged in her cross bag and handed over two worn passbooks. Deposits of several million won had begun a long time ago. From the year of his birth.

Some months had small sums, and some months had excessively large ones as if to make up for shortages. As Jaeha stared blankly at the irregular numbers, the woman spoke in a tone that sounded like an excuse.

“I’m saying this so you won’t misunderstand, but I never spent it. Even though Yujin-unnie said half of it was mine to take, I hated to snatch even a penny, so I put it all in.”

Jaeha brushed the line of the smaller amounts with his fingertip. It must have been around the time when shamans were constantly being called in.

“With this much, greed would be natural, yet you still came to me.”

“What kind of bratty talk is that…. Hey, even in the underworld there’s loyalty, right? And also….” She shifted into a slanted posture and added after a moment’s hesitation.

“You never heard it, that’s why. You never heard what Yujin-unnie’s voice was like when she talked about you. If you had, you could never think about laying hands on this.”

He clenched his teeth and shoved the passbooks roughly back in her hands.

“Take them. I don’t need them. And don’t come to me again.”

“I said they’re yours.”

“Enough, just keep them.”

“Hey, what’s with you? Maybe you’re too young, you don’t know how precious money is. Do you even know how much this is worth? Can’t you read numbers?”

“If you don’t leave, I’ll drag you out.”

Her earlobes flushed red in an instant, and she muttered, “Ha, damn, crazy,” repeating meaningless filler. Jaeha turned his head, watching her clutch the back of her neck and knead it like her blood pressure had spiked. He did not want to think anymore. Right now he only wanted to go home and draw.

“Fine then. Since you still don’t know the world, I’ll keep them myself. I’ll just say one more thing and leave.”

When Jaeha’s eyes asked “What now,” she clenched her fist, but after a small breath she whispered.

“Position makes a person, and position makes chances. People say university doesn’t matter, but even now, graduating from a good one means being treated as a good person.”

“My work was one that drew finger-pointing, so I don’t want you to live like that. Don’t live being cursed at, and take your share proudly from Jaehyeon-ssi.”

“…What are you doing right now?”

“Your mother’s will.”

“She hasn’t passed away yet.”

“…I know. I know, so if she wakes up, you can confront her yourself about why she left a will like that.” Her eyes, lifted high at the corners, drooped down. The gloom that flickered across her features for a moment made Jaeha’s spine prickle.

He could not recall clearly what happened after that. He only remembered shouting at her to get out quickly. Security guards, hearing the noise, dragged out the woman dressed suspiciously.

On the hard chair, Jaeha stared at the familiar face. He felt like tears should come, yet no matter how he searched his features, they remained completely dry.

“…Is Mother going to die?”

Compared to the repeated words “Prepare yourself” or “The chances are low,” the words about university made him return to reality. He thought that he truly would be left alone in the world.

“She made me like this… who gave her the right to die?” A voice dragged up from a swamp filled the hospital room with emptiness.

“I won’t come here anymore.”

His hand touched her gaunt cheek. The skin, slightly chapped and cold, met the back of his hand.

“This time you come find me. Because you never once came to find me….” Hs throat felt clogged, or maybe it wasn’t his throat, maybe his breath itself was being smothered.

“This time let’s do it that way.” He closed his eyes. The sterile hospital smell hovered at his nose.

The seasons turned many times.

He entered Korean University, his contact list filled with meaningless people, and he met Father a few times.

His relations with Heo Juyeop still stayed poor, yet outside of weariness, no other feelings remained.

Mingling with people, laughing and talking, turned out not so difficult. Since his emotions were dull, that was fortunate. A normal person would likely have gone mad long ago and ended up in a mental hospital.

Voices still sometimes battered his head, yet when he drew, the world grew quiet, so it did not matter much.

Another incident touched his quiet life in the autumn of his twenty-first year.

“Student Jaeha….”

He wondered if the sound of shoveling up wet soil would be like this. Hearing the housemaid’s sodden voice, the grip on his phone tightened. He felt he knew what words would follow even before hearing them.

“Yujin, huuh… Yujin-ssi has••••”

It was the news that Mother, to the very end, left without ever granting his wish.