Chapter Text
It had been so long since she had been here. Nearly eleven years. She knew that she would eventually lose her last living relative, but with her brother's return and all the changes he brought, she had somehow forgotten. He wasn’t her last living relative, but she couldn’t help but feel she was completely alone now that he was gone.
She could hardly stand long enough to walk back into the funeral hall. She couldn’t stand it in there. She just wanted, no needed, to get out. The more she saw, the more real the moment was.
Ijin’s friends had gathered around to support her. Her brother never was all that good with emotional comfort, he more often than not approached his issues with solutions. It just happened that there wasn’t a solution, not this time.
All of Ijin’s school friends had come to the funeral, to support her and to mourn alongside her.
Yeona sat next to her as she cried, trying and failing to calm Dayeon down. The group huddled around her as she wept. She couldn’t make out their faces nor their words, just the sheer panic they felt as she clumsily got up to walk back in.
They didn’t try to stop her as she waved them off, instead opting to silently follow behind her to go back in. There were so many people, people that she didn’t even know existed the year before. She would have never imagined that so many people would show up, it was both so reassuring to see so much support and so upsetting to see how many felt the grief over this loss.
She nearly bumped into a teary-eyed Mr. Cha, he looked down at her and gently put his hand on her shoulder.
“I’m so sorry for your loss”
He whispered it so silently, bowing as he moved out of her way.
As he moved the room came back into view. It was awful. She hated it and all that it stood for. It was all so wonderfully put together, and that only made her anger swell. The flowers, the mourners, the pictures, and the urn.
An urn she and her grandfather had picked out years before, now draped in the flag of their country. They nearly threw the ceramic jar out as soon as they had heard Ijin would be coming back home. It was almost a relief that they hadn’t, Dayeon doesn’t think she could have gone looking for one now.
There was something so harrowing about its size. It was made for a child, a nine-year-old boy whose body had never been recovered. It was never meant to house what little remained of her brother eleven years later.
It was upsetting, but it was fitting too, that he would be placed to rest in the urn that had been his for so many years.
There was almost nothing left of him, that’s what they had been told anyway. That they could hardly find even a limb belonging to the man who had briefly been her brother. For a moment she had hoped that maybe he would turn up again, like he had before. There was once again no real, solid, physical evidence. Just like before there had been no body to confirm, she wasn’t there to witness his death, so maybe he could still be out there.
His closest friends had done the honors of cremating what was left of him, the dust and bone fragments held firmly in a plastic bag tied together with a rubber band. There had been an odd feeling the whole day, but the moment Ijin’s old friends came knocking on their door, she and her grandfather knew that something was seriously wrong.
The older blond man carefully handed the baggie of remains to her grandpa and quietly pulled a small swath of cloth from his pocket. He handed it to her, and it all came crashing down.
The fabric had been leather, it looked like the same leather from her brother’s favorite jacket.
He wore it all the time, he had worn it when he left a few days before, how could she not recognize it? It was charred and discolored, it smelled wrong, but it was familiar, it just had to be her brother’s.
She remembers glaring down at the thing in her hand, she carefully looked towards her grandpa, for direction, for reassurance.
He seemed to have noticed it's meaning too and had begun to cry inconsolably. She looked towards the man, her ears humming lowly. He just shook his head as his mouth tried, and failed, to pull itself out of a mournful frown.
The scene in front of her now was almost impossibly worse. She honestly didn't know how it was possible, it fair, for that to be the case.
The utter silence that had drowned out her parents' funeral had always stuck in her memory as the worst day of her life. She could see it in her grandfather then, the lack of hope, he had aged so much in just a few days.
But this. This was so much worse. He was wailing. Heaving so hard that there was no room for him to cry. Just deeply unsettling gasps for air in between whistling exhales. There were visible patches of wet on his sleeves.
Dayeon couldn’t bear to watch. Her head fell low as her hands raised to catch it.
She felt rough hands pulling at her wrists. As she looked up the friendly woman, who had re-introduced herself as Maya, slowly pulled Dayeon's hands away from her face. She started profusely apologizing for the loss of her brother. It was so sincere. Maya held her so firmly and in such a kind manner that Dayeon couldn’t help but hug her as she continued to cry.
Maya quieted down and pulled Dayeon closer before helping her kneel down next to her grandfather. She couldn’t help but collapse in front of her brother.
It was so unfair.
He had so much left to do, he had so many people who cared and openly showed their love for him, and he was still gone.
Every single moment she had spent with her brother, she couldn’t help but dissect it. What she did wrong, what she could have said differently, what she should have said to him. It was infuriating that they had gotten so little time together after being separated for so,
so
long.
Maya softly tapped her shoulder and Dayeon looked up to see Major Kang staring back at her. His eyes were incredibly puffy, but his lips quivered as he lowered something into her hands. It was the flag, they had carefully folded the flag and placed a small hand woven medallion on top.
It wasn’t official, it held no meaning other than an artificial condolence to the family that had just lost so much.
But, coming from Major Kang, the man who cared so much for Ijin. Cared for him like family, and cared enough to bring him home to them. It meant the world. His acknowledgments to them, to Ijin, was so touching.
Her grandfather weakly upturned his mouth. His tears still flowing from his eyes, as pulled her tightly into his side.
In front of them Major Kang and his men form lines on either side of the memorial table. Ijin’s old friends formed a V-shape directly behind it. The soldiers say some words about Ijin’s sacrifice and the good he’s done while the former mercenaries stare forward with varying degrees of grief plastered into their features.
Kang and his men suddenly bow incredibly low towards the urn, while the rest raise their fists in the air. They bring them down with a loud thud against their chests one-by-one joining in the bow.
The men farthest from the table bow first causing a ripple of bows across the people that Ijin was so close with. Maya and the man with piercings bow seemingly second to last, but the last man to bow stands tall for a few moments longer than the others.
The man in the front, the one who had saved her, held his head high. He looked detached and impassive to it all.
It was appalling that someone so important to her brother, sat there unfazed at his funeral. Dayeon felt wronged.
She watched as tears fell from the eyes of the boy who was her age, his head tilted down in the shallow bow. Allowed his tears to fall straight from his eyes without ever touching his face.
The big burly man who had been misty eyed the whole day had started to cry as well.
Many of her brother’s old friends had looked crushed as soon as they walked through the doors to the funeral hall. But the man who had cared enough to save her life, to comfort her when she was scared, he sat unnaturally still.
Carefully, he lowered his head. A silent tear rolled down his cheek.
It was so small it was almost unnoticeable, gone in a second, but it was there, and it meant the world to Dayeon that she had managed to catch it before it slipped away.