You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

‘Yu-jin?’

It was February, at dawn, ten years ago. We were in the car on our way to swimming practice when Hae-jin called.

Mother pressed the speaker button. His voice was teary and trembling. ‘It’s Hae-jin.’

Something must have happened.

‘Where are you?’ Mother asked. She seemed to know what was going on, since she hadn’t asked what was wrong.

‘I’m at Yonghyon Hospital,’ Hae-jin said. ‘Grandfather… he just passed away.’ The doctor had asked for a guardian who would handle the next steps, and he couldn’t think of anyone else.

Mother opened her mouth, then stopped. She didn’t usually choose her words this carefully. She always knew what to say before she opened her mouth. I was growing frustrated. Why wasn’t she answering? All she had to say was that she was on her way.

‘Come on, let’s go,’ I murmured.

She glanced at me as if to make sure it was okay to skip practice.

I nodded.

She turned on her hazards, crossed two lanes and made a U-turn at breakneck speed. ‘We’ll be there in five minutes,’ she said.

Hae-jin’s grandfather was on a gurney, covered by a white sheet. Hae-jin sat beside him, looking down at his feet. He was dazed and limp. He didn’t notice us even when we were right in front of him.

‘Hae-jin,’ Mother said.

His shoulders stiffened and he looked up, his eyes unfocused. Could he even see us? He didn’t say, ‘You’re here,’ as I’d expected; instead he said, ‘I’m sorry.’

Mother opened her arms without a word and embraced him, gently patting his back. I stood to the side. Mother had deep frown lines on her forehead, her nose and cheeks were turning red, and she swallowed hard. Her expression was complicated and unfamiliar. Was she sad? Was she feeling his pain? Or was it that she understood what he was going through? Was she showing him that he didn’t have to worry, she would take care of everything? Was it all of the above? Or none of them?

Hae-jin, for one, seemed to understand what her gentle pats conveyed. He let out a noise through his clenched lips, and as he raised his arms hesitantly to hug Mother back, the sound turned into keening. Though she was nearly a foot shorter than him, he buried his face in her shoulder and wailed.

Although I could sense how sad Hae-jin was – my ears were ringing with his sobs – I didn’t feel anything. Mother was crying, the nurse’s eyes were turning red, but I stood there alone, shielded from emotion. I wasn’t able to say anything reassuring to him.

Mother talked to me about the adoption three days after the funeral. ‘What do you think?’ she asked, after she reminded me that Hae-jin didn’t have any relatives and didn’t want to go to an orphanage, that he and I got along well, and that we had a spare room at our place. ‘What do you think?’ wasn’t a request to hear my thoughts; it meant ‘You don’t have a problem with it, do you?’ Even if I did have a problem, I knew she wasn’t interested in hearing about it. But in this case, I really didn’t have any objections. As Mother had said, Hae-jin was my friend, and she had enough money to support two teenagers.

Two days later, on our way to early-morning practice again, Mother announced, ‘Hae-jin’s coming home today.’

At the time, we were living in a five-storey commercial building in Yonghyeon-dong, Incheon. Mother owned our flat; the entire fifth floor was our home. The bedroom in the hallway was reserved for my dead brother. Mother had furnished the room with his furniture, his books, and even the curtains from his room in the Bangbae-dong house. Every time I went in or out of the flat, I walked past that room. I always considered it Yu-min’s. Maybe that was why I was shocked when I came home later in the day to find that no trace of Yu-min was left in it. Instead of curtains, it had double blinds, and there was new furniture, a white coverlet on the bed, a home cinema system, and a City of God poster on the wall.

I looked at the room, amazed. It was clear that everything had been carefully thought through. It felt as if it had been dreamed about and planned over a long period of time. The colours, the furniture, and the arrangement of the room were different from before, but none of it seemed out of character; it was exactly to Mother’s taste, except for the poster. This was the kind of room she would have put together for Yu-min if he were still alive and now a teenager.

When had she begun thinking about doing this? I was genuinely curious. When she first met Hae-jin? Or when we went to see City of God ? Or was it when we were in the hospital last week? I never knew what Mother was really thinking about anything, but I had never been as confused as I was that day. I hadn’t realised she would switch her allegiance so swiftly. I hadn’t known that two days after mentioning the adoption, everything would be ready. Hae-jin had taken Yu-min’s place in Mother’s heart. He didn’t even have to change his last name; like Mother, he was a descendant of the Kimhae Kims. That was how he became her firstborn son. Later, I realised that I was the only one with a different last name – my father’s.

‘Yu-jin,’ Mother called from the front door. She had returned with Hae-jin.

‘Hey, Yu-jin,’ Hae-jin said. His voice suggested to me that he would come further into the flat only if I answered.

I went out. He was standing by the front door, his shoes still on, a bag and suitcase next to him.

‘I’m here,’ he said, sounding uncomfortable and shy. His cheeks were turning red, as though he had just revealed a secret. Mother stood behind him, watching me, looking a little tense.

I had to clear the air and say it. I faced Hae-jin. ‘I’m not going to call you hyeong .’ However Mother felt about it, the only person I could call ‘elder brother’ was Yu-min.

Hae-jin took it well. He nodded, still looking uncomfortable, and stepped into the living room.

That was how the three of us became a family. The portrait now hanging in the living room was taken that day in a nearby photo studio to celebrate.

‘Are they twins? They’re practically identical,’ the photographer had said. And for the last ten years, we really had lived like twins, peacefully coexisting despite trivial conflicts, the way all siblings did. That was our relationship even until just yesterday.

Would it still be possible after all this? Even though Mother was lying on the roof and the murderer, namely me, was hiding in her bedroom, covered in blood? I thought of Mother embracing the orphaned Hae-jin ten years ago. Maybe now I could identify the chill pressing down on my throat. Maybe it was loneliness.

I heard Hae-jin running up the stairs, rat-tat-tat like gunfire.

‘Hey, Hae-jin!’ I called. ‘I’m in Mother’s room.’

His footsteps continued upwards. Maybe my voice was too soft.

‘Hae-jin!’ I yelled, feeling panicked. ‘In Mother’s room!’ I was shouting loud enough for the whole neighbourhood to hear me.

Hae-jin stopped. ‘Huh? What?’

I yelled even louder. ‘Mother’s room, I said!’

‘With Mother?’

Shit. I hadn’t thought about how to explain Mother’s absence.

‘By myself!’ No answer. No movement, either. The soles of my feet itched. I wanted to run up, grab him by the scruff of the neck and drag him back downstairs. ‘Come quick!’

I wasn’t worried that he’d go into my room or onto the roof. He wouldn’t do that. Hae-jin would never invade someone else’s privacy. Whether physically or verbally, he only moved within the limits granted by the other person. Even if he saw a girl drowning, he’d ask her if he could please grab her by the hand to save her – not that that would ever happen, because he sank like a brick in water, and was afraid of it, too. What concerned me was where he was standing. The door to my bedroom was closed, walls enclosed either side of the stairs, and there was no window on the landing. He was in a passageway with no air circulation. It must reek of blood and bleach. I had to get him off that staircase.