Work Text:
Song Eunseok is absent again today.
It’s been two days. Sungchan’s been using Eunseok’s desk space next to his as an extension of his own, leaving his stationery and textbooks splayed across both desks during class. He’s even placed his schoolbag on Eunseok’s empty seat. It’s been super comfortable, quite honestly. Whatever genius came up with the height order of classroom seating certainly didn’t take into consideration how stuffy it could get for boys over 180 cm to spend hours compressed shoulder to shoulder.
Nevertheless, Sungchan was slightly hoping Eunseok would be back at school today. The reason is simple: it’s Eunseok’s turn at after-school duty, and with no student with a surname that starts with an ieung and somehow not a single Jang in their classroom, Jung Sungchan comes right under Song Eunseok in the roster, hence automatically inheriting Song Eunseok’s task in his absence.
Oh, well, Sungchan thinks. It’s just afterschool duty. He’ll put all the chairs up on their desks, sweep and mop the classroom floor, fill in the class journal, wipe the blackboard, and he doesn’t have to do it all over again tomorrow because for sure, Eunseok will be back to cover for him.
He does forget that absences usually entail another favour from a classmate. That is, until their homeroom teacher slides open the classroom door to remind him.
Sungchan is just finishing up erasing the blackboard. The homeroom teacher, Kim Cheolgil-ssaem, walks in carrying a manila envelope in his hand, and Sungchan already knows what he wants before he even asks, “Sungchan-ah, you’re good friends with Song Eunseok, right?”
If it were any other teacher, Sungchan would have played polite, but any other teacher would have also called him Jung Sungchan-sshi, so Sungchan doesn’t bother to mask his sigh.
“Hard not to get along if you get seated next to each other for three years straight,” Sungchan says. Three years straight, Song Eunseok and Jung Sungchan are the two tallest in their class, the same one they somehow ended up in for three years straight, too. So yes, he’s good friends with Song Eunseok. Let’s hope Eunseok feels the same, because god knows what Song Eunseok thinks most of the time behind that flat face of his.
Kim Cheolgil-ssaem laughs at Sungchan’s expression, reading him like a book. Unlike Eunseok, Sungchan’s hee ro ae rak reflects on his outside as clear as a mirror.
“He likes you back, don’t worry, everybody knows that,” Cheolgil-ssaem assures. He flaps the manila envelope between them and gets to the point. “If you don’t mind. Today’s and yesterday’s materials.”
“Aye-aye.” Sungchan puts down the blackboard eraser and receives the envelope earnestly, to Cheolgil-ssaem’s astonishment.
“That was easier than I thought,” Cheolgil-ssaem marvels. “I thought you were going to whine. But ssaem, don’t you know his house is like, up a huge hill, or something,” he adds his horrendous impression of Sungchan for effect.
Sungchan crosses his arms. “Hey! I’m a good friend, okay, ssaem? I do miss him and I’m worried about his sister.”
“Hah, there it is, I see, your true motive,” Cheolgil-ssaem tsks. It’s not a secret, Eunseok is absent but he’s doing peachy. It’s his sister who came down with a fever yesterday, and with their parents being away in Seoul for a relative’s funeral, Eunseok has to take a day off to watch over her. Cheolgil-ssaem himself announced this during yesterday’s homeroom.
At this point, Sungchan can physically feel his huge grin stretching his cheeks. He’s really terrible at a poker face.
“What can you say, I’m a nice guy, ssaem,” he insists.
His teacher is not falling for it, though. “Whatever, Sungchan-ah, as long as you get the lecture materials to his house. Tell him I’m giving him until Friday to finish them, that should be enough.”
“Yessiree.”
“She must be a looker, huh, I mean Song Eunseok already looks like that,” Cheolgil-ssaem comments, but Sungchan just continues grinning.
Eunseok is objectively handsome, Sungchan agrees, maybe the strongest contender for the most blessed features their school has had and will ever have for decades. Sharp nose, doe eyes, perfect teeth. Eunseok himself is already a chiselled work of art, but his sister? Out of this world. Prettiest girl and most beautiful human being Sungchan has ever had the privilege to lay his eyes upon. It’s a miracle she lives in these backwater outskirts and not the fashionable metropolitan that Seoul is becoming, having her face grace national television. Just thinking of her whips Sungchan’s heart to race. Her all-girls’ academy is a bit of a ways from their school, but that’s how it should be. Nobody else in their stinky all-boys’ school should even be allowed in her vicinity.
“Wipe that grin off your face, or any sane girl will flee from you,” Cheolgil-ssaem says, fed up. “Anyway, I have to go back to the faculty room. Bike safely, I know you’ve been there tons but Eunseok’s place still a hassle to go to—and thanks for tidying up.”
“See you tomorrow, ssaem!” Sungchan waves at Cheolgil-ssaem’s exit cheerfully. Cheolgil-ssaem disappears into the corridor, and in that empty, after-school classroom, Sungchan pumps his fist in the air.
There’s not much left to clean up. The second after-school bell chimes just in time, signalling all students to pack up and go home. Sungchan makes sure the chalks are all stocked up, the class journal returned to where it was on the shelf by the teacher’s desk, and the broom and mop stowed in the storage cabinet, then he zips up the manila envelope inside his schoolbag and leaves.
As Cheolgil-ssaem is acquainted with, Eunseok’s family lives on the edge of Hanam City farthest from the Seoul border, on a hill that’s essentially part of a trekking path for Geomdansan Mountain. There are a few tuber and tobacco farms nearby but they’re not a farming family. Quite the contrary, Eunseok’s dad works as a supervisor at a steel manufacturer, and he drives thirty minutes to work each day. Eunseok and his sister commute to school by bicycle on a fair day, and they take more or less ten minutes, thirty if by foot in poor weather. In Hanam, where a good number of students are from farming families still, it’s not the most remote of residences. Beyond the distance issue, it’s the wild vegetation, unpaved slabs of mountain roads, and steep slopes that make Eunseok’s house an absolute challenge to reach.
This is why Eunseok just offers to hang out at Sungchan’s house when they get together. Accessibility, and of course, the fact that Sungchan’s got his own TV and VHS player separate from the one in the living room the rest of his family uses. Sungchan’s made Eunseok agree to not tell anybody else this, lest the other boys crowd his house like a bunch of anchovies, and Eunseok who doesn’t enjoy anything more than peace and quiet cannot be more incentivised to keep a secret.
From the bicycle parking area where Sungchan’s bicycle is, Eunseok’s house will be a two-minute cruise and eight minutes of purely uphill pedalling. Sungchan stashes his Adidas schoolbag in the basket and shakes his ankles, preparing himself for the leg workout.
It’s worth it, though. It always is when he gets to see Eunseok’s sister.
Sungchan remembers the day he met her like it was yesterday. June of last year. The temperature was roughly the same as now, late spring early summer instead of late summer early autumn. It was during the rainy season. For Sungchan and Eunseok’s final period, they had kyoryeon training when it was still a light shower out, but after school, the rain steadily started to pour in buckets.
Sungchan got stuck in the sundries shop near the city office on his way home, bought an umbrella there, and when the rain toned down to a walkable volume, stepped out to head the rest of the way home. Outside the shop and nowhere near their school, however, by some turn of events, he bumped into Song Eunseok.
Just as Sungchan was, Eunseok was still in his camouflage khaki kyoryeon uniform complete with the military beret. He was holding a half-translucent, plastic red umbrella and his right shoulder was sticking out of the rim, getting drenched by the rain.
Eunseok let this all happen because he was making space for somebody else under that same umbrella.
And it was a girl.
Where Sungchan was, he could only see her small back, but she wore a girl’s school uniform with the knee-length skirt and the vest. Sungchan couldn’t believe his eyes. Song Eunseok with a girl. That little-to-no-words Song Eunseok whose only pastime was spent holing himself up in a manhwa-bang reading pirated Japanese comic books and watching smuggled American movies on VHS tapes labelled misleadingly on purpose. Sure, Eunseok was painfully attractive, but from the general disinterest that he emitted constantly, Sungchan assumed that Eunseok wasn’t the type to care about getting a girlfriend. He never talked about any woman who wasn’t his mom or his sister, Sungchan thought Eunseok was in a realm above teenage romance.
But that was wrong. I was wrong about him, he has a girlfriend.
“Eunseok-ah,” Sungchan called and approached them before his mind could warn him to assess the situation. He almost mentally slapped his forehead.
Regrettably, his booming voice carried across the pitter-patter of the rain and the city-centre foot traffic. Eunseok perked up, and just as he did that, so did the girl under his umbrella.
And Sungchan’s world stopped.
That was dramatic, but it truly did feel like that to him. Like those moments in the Joseon period series that his mom was glued to on the living room TV, where the protagonist crossed paths with the love interest for the first time and the music mellowed, the frame-roll slowing down. The girl under Eunseok’s umbrella turned around and it was as if the raindrops around them fell into an instant hush.
Everything around Sungchan blurred except for her.
“Sungchan-ah, you got stuck in the rain, too?” Eunseok’s voice dragged him out.
Sungchan looked at Eunseok but couldn’t last a split second before he was pulled right back to the girl. He was reduced to a baby in front of a candle flame, pathetic.
“Yeah, um. Yeah.” He heard himself babble. His conscience kept refocusing his eyes to Eunseok’s direction, but the fool that dictated his brain continued to be distracted by the girl. “Your, uh? Um?”
Eunseok was either used to this, or didn’t bother with Sungchan enough, because there was no way he didn’t pick up Sungchan’s awkward behaviour. He said, “This is Wonbi, my sister.”
“Sister?” Sungchan blurted out. He turned to Eunseok, the girl, and then back at Eunseok. Doe eyes, sharp nose. Wonbi had plumper lips and at first glance, it wasn’t palpable but, “Jeez, now that you mentioned it, you do look alike.”
“Uh-huh.” Eunseok just brushed over that. Although tamed, the rain was still pouring, and he had an arm around his sister’s shoulder to pull her safely dry under the umbrella. “Wonbi-yah, this is Sungchan,” Eunseok introduced him, and when Wonbi didn’t budge from staring blankly at Sungchan, added, “He doesn’t bite.”
Ticked off, Wonbi elbowed him quite mercilessly. Despite this, Eunseok broke into a teasing, toothy smile that Sungchan had never seen, and Wonbi spoke up. “Hello.”
Sungchan had to stop himself from eyeing Eunseok. These siblings were rendering him scatter-brained. At first it was just Wonbi but after witnessing Eunseok grin cheesily, Sungchan had admittedly lost track of where to look.
He resorted to textbook pleasantries. “Hi! I’m Jung Sungchan, I, uh, sit next to him in class,” Sungchan said, referring to Eunseok with his palm.
“Two years in a row,” Eunseok filled in.
Visibly not the best with strangers, Wonbi sought solace in her brother. “They still sort you by height?”
“It’s not a fancy school like yours,” Eunseok said. Since Wonbi had already diverted her attention fully back to him, Eunseok nudged her shoulder to remind her that she was still in the presence of somebody else.
Sungchan recalled what Eunseok had told him about her. She wouldn’t be much younger, only a year below them, but he caught a glimpse of a slight pout on her lips before she corrected her stance and faced Sungchan shyly.
“My name’s Park Wonbi. Nice to meet you,” she recited in the manner of a kid being urged to greet a distant relative.
The surname difference must have stirred something that was visible in Sungchan. Eunseok followed up, reminding Sungchan of the old news: “My dad’s a Park, right?”
“Right.” Sungchan thinned his lips to control himself. He’s made enough fool of himself for a first impression. He asked Eunseok the general question, instead, “What are you doing all the way here?”
“She forgot an umbrella. Her school’s nearby,” Eunseok explained. Sungchan saw Wonbi pinch Eunseok’s sleeve and Eunseok got the hint. “Well, we have to get going before the rain gets heavy again. See you tomorrow.”
“See ya.”
Sungchan watched them leave, the rows of raincoats and umbrellas swallowing them up, but he swore that he saw Wonbi look back at him once.
See, Sungchan knows he’s not the brightest around, but he can’t help it. Ever since that rainy day a year ago, Park Wonbi has been in his thoughts day and night, at his every waking moment, and even some lucky nights in his dreams.
It isn’t like Eunseok’s never talked about her before, but after seeing Park Wonbi in the flesh, Sungchan covets all the little crumbs of trivia Eunseok would say about her in passing.
Eunseok’s family is complicated. Fascinating, to Sungchan. Unorthodox, to the other adults around him.
As much as the local officials are dying to grant Hanam the title of a city, it remains an overglorified countryside, and most folks are nosy about their neighbours’ business. Not aware, per se, but they sure act like they do.
Sungchan’s mom, for once, didn’t like Eunseok. She probably still doesn’t, not fully, and it’s none of Eunseok’s failing. He’s been nothing but a sweet and polite classmate every time he visits, and Sungchan’s mom melts at how handsome he is when he’s in front of her, but the moment he’s gone back home, she’d cluck, oh what a waste.
What a waste, she’ll say, such a nice boy, so handsome, too, but a family like that? She even warned Sungchan before, when she hasn’t even met Eunseok and all Sungchan had told her was I’m going to the orakshil with my classmate after school. With who? Oh, he’s my seatmate. His name is Song Eunseok. Yeah, the one with the house up the hill—how do you know so much, mom?
The house up the hill belongs to the Park family: the Park couple and their daughter, and then the son they brought from the wife’s previous marriage, Song Eunseok.
It’s strange, it’s unbecoming, his mom had said to him before she met Eunseok. She still says it to Sungchan now, though more apologetic about it, at least.
Sungchan told her he didn’t get it. What was so wrong about Eunseok’s parents getting a divorce, he thought out loud, only to learn immediately from her that it wasn’t even a divorce. Eunseok’s biological dad passed away around the time Eunseok was born. This made Sungchan all the more confused. So it wasn’t a divorce? What was the problem then?
The problem is that Eunseok is a Song. That’s the Song family son, his mom stressed. Every other adult seemed to share the same opinion. Eunseok was the Song family son, and the Song family was supposed to keep him, even though his father died. If his mom chose to remarry, then she shouldn’t have taken him with her. She’s free to become another family’s wife, but it’s selfish of her to take some other family’s son with her. No, Sungchan-ah, it doesn’t matter if she gave birth to him.
Sungchan shared a look across the dinner table with his older brother who was in between his military discharge and his university homecoming semester in Seoul. His brother shrugged discreetly and Sungchan ate some kimchi to chew instead of confronting his mom so if dad died and you remarried, you’re just gonna throw me away to grandma’s?
This town is ridiculous. Sungchan can’t wait to move to Seoul. The whole Park family situation is common knowledge between the ahjummas in the hair salon and their go-stop meetups at the coffeeshop that, in case that same neighbourhood cop comes poking his nose in again, does not involve any gambling whatsoever. Sungchan’s mom is a regular member. Of course they know about the Park family that lives up the hill to Geomdansan who doesn’t even own a farm. Of course they know about Song Eunseok. Sungchan’s not sure if his entire class knows, too. They might as well.
But they don’t know anything. Not really.
In the beginning, Sungchan opted to ignore Eunseok’s background to focus on who Eunseok was as a person, but being stuck next to the guy every school day, he let curiosity get the better of him. It wasn’t out of the blue or anything. Eunseok behaved like a normal boy from a normal family, and he’d mention snippets of his family normally, as well. Buying his mom flowers for her birthday, his dad teaching him how to drive, getting into a fight with his sister because he drank all of the milk in the fridge. How could Sungchan not slip up?
Eunseok, fortunately, doesn’t let the rumours stagger him. He might not get into details when he speaks, he seldom can with his one-sentence speech, but he answers any question Sungchan has about his family rather frankly. Not wanting to interrogate, it does take some time for Sungchan to piece together the full picture from the bits and pieces of family story that Eunseok supplies as casually as he describes the plot of the manhwa he reads. Sungchan learned only over the course of a whole school year that Eunseok’s dad had been weak and sickly since birth. He had a combination of lung and heart conditions, and passed away from pneumonia exactly two months before Eunseok was born.
“Came down with a fever one night and didn’t wake up,” Eunseok had said. They were in the school’s audiovisual room after class. Eunseok stuck the tip of a pencil in the hole of a cassette to re-twist the tape.
“Don’t you wish you at least knew what your dad was like?” Sungchan asked.
“I already have one.” Eunseok slotted the fixed tape back into the player, and this time, the music went on without hiccups.
Sooner or later after meeting Wonbi—sooner than Sungchan would rather admit—Eunseok saw through his poorly concealed intentions.
“You’re interested in Wonbi, aren’t you?” Eunseok asked on the way to Sungchan’s house from school. Granted, it wasn’t a mystery what Sungchan thought of Wonbi by how Sungchan had been persistently bugging to visit Eunseok’s house for a change.
Sungchan grimaced, then pouted. “Can you blame me? Have you seen her—damn, hold on, you see her every day, that’s unfair—” The bicycle he was pushing by the handle as they walked side by side bumped into a pebble, and he huffed. He had to reorient himself. “Okay. But are you… cool with that? Me, being into your sister and stuff?”
“She’s a handful,” Eunseok only warned. Sungchan sort of figured that out from Eunseok’s partial narrative of her that primarily involved her yelling and whining at him. But that was a given, if Sungchan’s older brother were asked about Sungchan, he’d say ‘whiny and annoying’, too.
Sungchan is biking through that same dirt-road intersection by the school. The mountain road to Eunseok’s house is to the left, while the paved city streets are to the right. Next to the snack shop crowded with students from Sungchan’s school is a small fresh produce shack owned by the snack shop sajangnim’s eccentric husband who is obsessed with music. Sungchan can already hear the vinyl record he’s spinning. The voice sounds like Yoo Jae-ha; Sungchan can recognise him by a mile since his dad also replayed his album endlessly when the singer died last year. Sungchan’s dad played it on the CD, though, nobody does vinyls anymore nowadays, it’s so outdated.
Deciding he shouldn’t visit Eunseok empty-handed, Sungchan parks his bike by the snack shop, combs through the brief procession of familiar faces with a few short greetings, and grabs five pears that look the juiciest from the produce shack’s basket. Five is an armful, and he has to open the sliding door to the shop with his elbow, placing the loose fruits on the counter as he calls for the sajangnim.
“You have a bag?” The sajangnim asks, ringing Sungchan up. Today, too, the sajangnim is in those World War 2 round glasses and dandy beige hat. He resembles the photographs of political traitors in Sungchan’s history textbook.
“Nope, bag please,” Sungchan says, already digging for the cash in his wallet.
The sajangnim plucks out a reused plastic bag that has the nearby supermarket’s logo to put the pears in, and while he does that, it seems the Yoo Jae-ha vinyl has come to an end, the stylus of the turntable rhythmically clicking empty at each spin. Although faint, Sungchan can now hear that the snack shop next door has the radio on, another news report about the 1988 Olympic Games that’s kicking off in a few days. That’s all the radio has on recently.
—our Seoul Olympic Stadium, decorated with extravagant floral wreaths and—
“Ah!” Sungchan is struck by an idea. “Sajangnim, do you have flowers, too?”
The sajangnim lifts an eyebrow at him. He points behind Sungchan, by the basket of apples. “Only those.”
Sungchan looks over his shoulder to find a stand with four hand-sized bouquets of white-yellow flowers that he can’t name. The petals are small and simple, neatly ordered in a single row. They don’t look like lilies or chrysanthemums, but just in case, Sungchan confirms, “They’re not altar flowers, are they?”
“They’re seasonal stuff.” Letting Sungchan browse the flowers, the sajangnim steps away from the cashier to lift the turntable stylus, ceasing the tick-ticking sound of the vinyl.
“Perfect, I’ll take these, too, then.” Sungchan chooses the bouquet with more yellow than white, and places the flowers next to his plastic bag of pears on the counter. The sajangnim adds the flowers to his total, and Sungchan winks at him after he pays. “It’s not too late to switch to CDs, old man. Embrace the new world, and all.”
The owner clucks. “Shush, just scram.”
Sungchan hears the stylus click again as he leaves, and another song comes on, Yang Hee-eun this time.
Outside the shop, the students congregating at the snack shops have all dispersed. Sungchan ties the plastic bag of pears closed before he settles it in his bicycle basket, then the bouquet of flowers on top of it.
It won’t be too forward to give Wonbi flowers, right? Technically, Sungchan is giving the siblings flowers. He’ll hand it over to Eunseok at the door, it’s for a get-well-soon, and if Eunseok needs some help holding the fort all by himself, maybe Sungchan can lend a hand and get a glimpse of Wonbi while he’s at it. Say hi. Heck, Sungchan can pass the bouquet directly to her. They’ve been promisingly friendly with each other as of recent. By this point he’s a regular and the only visitor to Eunseok’s house, and she’s shed all of her initial coyness towards him.
It won’t be the first time he visits when she’s ill, either. She was also injured that time he managed to smoothly flirt with her. It wasn’t that long ago, just before summer of this year. She broke her arm during gymnastics class and it was rolled up in a thick cast. Due to that, it was rather quiet at Eunseok’s house without the strums of guitar from her room. The wild birds and crickets chirped outside as Sungchan and Eunseok revised for their hanja test at the dining room table, but even so, the wood-panelled space of Eunseok’s house became rather lonely without that muffled guitar melody.
The weather was getting warmer. Eunseok vacated the table to get them some corn tea from the fridge, and in that empty interval, Sungchan heard her voice.
“You’re left-handed?”
Sungchan lifted his head up from his practice notebook. Wonbi was beside him, her arm in her cast and her overgrown bangs held aside by a yellow hairclip that had slipped quite loose.
She wasn’t standing too close, but Sungchan felt his heart in his throat.
“Yeah.” Sungchan was glad he wasn’t a loser enough to still stutter. He ate with his right hand, and he wrote with his right in class, too, unless he wanted the teacher to smack his arm with a metal ruler. “I was born left-handed, and I don’t wanna lose that skill so I’ve been secretly still using it.”
That seemed to delight her. The right corner of her lips lifted in a smile and then the left one followed, a full-blown grin. “That’s awesome.”
They’ve come a long way from the first day Eunseok brought Sungchan home. She was lounging on the living room sofa then and her eyes went as wide as saucers the moment she registered Eunseok wasn’t alone. Eunseok stopped her by the back of her uniform collar before she fled to her room without greeting a sunbae. The murderous annoyance towards her brother that flashed in her face briefly was adorable.
Sungchan’s fingers twitched and he gripped his pencil tighter. He smiled back at her. “It’s a secret, though. Don’t tell the adults.”
Wonbi made a zipping gesture over her mouth, then thought of something. “Do you want to write something here?” She tapped at her cast. It was doodled here and there by her classmates, get well soon wishes and inside jokes.
“Can I?” Sungchan asked, awestruck. What was in the air today?
She reminded him mischievously, “I’m asking you to.”
“Right, right.” Sungchan nodded along. Wonbi had her cast slightly lifted, and Sungchan warily curled his fingers around the wrist. “It doesn’t hurt, right?”
“It doesn’t feel like anything.” She giggled at his overcautiousness. “Have you never broken an arm?”
Nothing was funny, but Sungchan giggled, too. “No, I don’t think most people have.”
He didn’t know what to write. The space close to Wonbi’s elbow was free, and when Sungchan positioned his left hand to write something, the side of his palm touched her soft, bare skin. He doubted he had the IQ left to scribble something smart, so he drew a cartoonish cat, instead.
“There ya go,” Sungchan said. His hands left her arm and Sungchan closed his fists, savouring the electric feel.
Wonbi ducked to check what he drew. “A cat?”
“A cat.”
She traced the outline of the cat’s ears with her fingertip. “Cute.”
“You guys done?” Eunseok appeared behind her with two chilled glasses of corn tea.
Wonbi didn’t even spare him a glance. She rolled her eyes and started on her exit. “Was just leaving,” she sing-songed.
“Wonbi-yah, not so fast.” Eunseok held her back. He placed the glasses on the table, and Wonbi turned towards him, a little miffed that he needed something from her. The attitude didn’t faze Eunseok, this was regular programming for them. He wiped his hands on his shirt and reached to fix the hairclip on her bangs. “There.”
Wonbi gave him a reluctant thumbs-up without meeting his eye, and left to disappear into her bedroom. Sungchan watched her go, and he didn’t want to flatter himself, but he might have seen a flush on her cheeks. But then Eunseok tapped at the hanja he was just writing and told him the strokes were wrong, bringing him back into the real world.
Wonbi’s arm would heal over the summer break. It wouldn't be the last of her injuries, unfortunately. Wonbi falls sick quite often. Not ‘ill’, Sungchan guesses, but more like, she keeps falling into health-related misfortunes. A concerningly large part of Eunseok’s stories about her is her getting into minor injuries, spring pollen allergies, seasonal colds. Their severity is not so worrying, but their frequency definitely is. The injuries aren’t even a token of her being clumsy, she’d walk to school and somehow a tree branch would drop right on top of her head. That happened twice already, and that’s just what Sungchan’s privy to.
Eunseok jokingly called it her divine equal-exchange for her effortless natural beauty and the fact that she eats like a boar but never gains weight. Or Sungchan supposes Eunseok was joking about it, he couldn’t really tell from the deadpan delivery.
Eunseok’s mom, however, sincerely and truly believes that her daughter suffers from a cosmic curse. Eunseok told him about this when it was Sungchan’s turn to go to Eunseok’s house and Eunseok suggested a change of plans because my mom and Wonbi are having a cold war right now.
They ended up going to Sungchan’s house. Sungchan’s mom peeled and cut them some persimmons from the garden and in the privacy of Sungchan’s bedroom, going over their Maths homework, Eunseok elaborated that just the other day over the weekend, Eunseok’s mom took Wonbi to a shaman.
“A what?” Sungchan nearly choked on his persimmon.
“You know how she gets injured and sick all the time?” Eunseok put down his pencil. He was rarely ever serious, but that time he was. “My mom thinks it’s punishment from god, and she wanted Wonbi to go through a purification or something.”
“Punishment for what?”
Eunseok’s eyebrows furrowed. Sungchan did ask for what, but he had an inkling that it was the whole remarriage issue. What Eunseok said, though, was, “For cheating on her first husband.”
Sungchan swallowed his persimmon. He abandoned the attempt to pick up his fruit fork from the bowl. He looked at Eunseok directly in the eye, and Eunseok didn’t look away.
Truth was, Sungchan couldn’t lie to himself that he didn’t suspect this. The timeline already provided the low-hanging theory. Eunseok was born in March, and Wonbi in March of the next year. 12 months exactly. A measly one year was too short for mourning and remarriage, regardless of how the adults kept going about how women couldn’t be left to fend for themselves. Eunseok’s mom must have known Wonbi’s dad before Eunseok was born, they might even have something going on already. Who knows? The love affairs of adults are beyond Sungchan’s comprehension.
Anyhow. That was autumn of last year. Sungchan climbed the hike to Eunseok’s house a few more times, since. Their mom, a housewife, was the one home for the most part, but a couple of nights when they lost track of time and it got dark out, Sungchan had to call his house to tell his mom that he’d be staying over at Eunseok’s, entailing dinner with the whole family, including Eunseok’s dad.
Eunseok’s dad who is the spitting image of Eunseok.
Sungchan wonders if the other adults know. His mom’s go-stop group, the parents of the students in his class. Have they seen Eunseok’s dad? Because if they have, the conclusion would have been right in front of them, so starkingly bright that Sungchan fears it’ll blind him.
In that first dinner, Eunseok’s dad asked Sungchan about his hobbies. He thanked Sungchan for being friends with his son. When he smiled, the whole upper row of his front teeth showed, and Sungchan could see his crow’s foot behind the frame of his glasses. His characteristics were thoroughly Eunseok’s, but the lopsided curve of his lips when he found something amusing was Wonbi’s.
He was such an ordinary dad. They were such an ordinary family.
Sungchan doesn’t remember the taste of the food that night. He remembers the sweat in his palms, Eunseok’s knee against his under the table, calming down Sungchan’s leg from jumping.
What’s so wrong about this? What’s different between this family and Sungchan’s own? Sungchan went home the next day and told his mom he wasn’t feeling well. It was a headache, it would be gone soon. So let him coop himself in his room. Leave him alone, lest he hear another one of her comments on Eunseok’s family, and he’d say to her what he couldn’t ever take back.
Sungchan thinks he will never understand adults. Not their rotten masks nor their pointless lies. He’ll grow up himself, but he won’t be like them. South Korea is changing and he’s determined to change with it.
Last spring, early at the start of this school year, Wonbi got into another frigid fight with her parents. Both of them. Because of that, Eunseok had to go straight home for almost two weeks and mediate the situation. What was that about? Sungchan asked once Eunseok was freed from his brotherly obligations. They were in the audiovisual room again, sitting cross-legged on the floor. They had no need of the materials, but Eunseok focused better there where it was just the two of them rather than the busy library.
“They came clean. Told us we’re fully biological siblings,” Eunseok said, and Sungchan was confused. Wasn’t that an open secret? One look at Eunseok and his dad should be enough.
“Did Wonbi not know this?”
Eunseok didn’t answer right away. He fiddled with the corner of his textbook page, and Sungchan watched the slight tremor in his fingers.
Seconds passed. Outside, a stray gale howled by and a heron cawed. Sungchan stretched his arms above his head, then leaned back against the case of VHS tapes and recording cassettes.
“Did you know?” Sungchan changed his question.
With his elbow propped on his knee and the palm of his hand covering half of his face, Eunseok’s eye shape was identical to Wonbi’s. Even the way they used them, looking up at Sungchan from under their eyelashes.
Eunseok sat up and leaned back against the shelves, too. Their shoulders brushed, and neither of them moved away. That had become where they belonged.
“If they had kept lying, I would have believed them,” Eunseok said. It didn’t answer anything, but Sungchan didn’t ask any more. Eunseok is as shuttered as a clam, and Sungchan is afraid that if he forces him open, Eunseok’s shell would shatter in his hands. He thought then, that maybe, this was one of those things that he’d unravel with time, just like everything else he’s learnt about Eunseok. Someday, he’d learn all about Eunseok, won’t he?
But they are both in their third year of high school now, and time is running out. It’s September. Chuseok will come and go, and their days will blur into practice paper sheets of formulas to memorise and drill questions to solve. It will snow and the new year will knock at the door, and by the first blossom of those plum petals, they will graduate.
There will be no more seats for Song Eunseok and Jung Sungchan at the back of the classroom.
As Sungchan starts his uphill pedal to Eunseok’s house, the rice fields below him that he gazes at every day from that classroom have transformed into yolk yellow right under his nose. The leftovers of summer wash out alongside the splotching golden-green of the trees. Up, up the slope, the breeze that twists in Sungchan’s hair prickles with a needling chill. The wind, it appears, is as impatient to carry him along the linear flow of time.
After he graduates, his family will move to Seoul. His parents bought an apartment in Gangnam that’s part of the urban development initiative a few years back. The news of the strikes and the political demonstrations is waning as of late, just as the construction of the apartment complex is being completed. His parents take that as a green light to relocate permanently.
Nothing will tie Sungchan down to Hanam any longer. There are fewer and fewer farms every year, local shops are closing, whole neighbourhoods bulldozed for new highways to be paved, replacing them. Everyone he knows, including Eunseok, is racing to move to Seoul.
So Sungchan has a grand plan: he’ll ask Wonbi out for a date after her fever gets better. He’ll ask her to be his girlfriend—he’ll talk to Eunseok, first, for his blessing and all, though Sungchan knows Eunseok will just say that it’s her choice to make.
If she says yes, Sungchan promises to take care of her. He’ll buy her all her favourite food and he’ll bike her home when she’s feeling tired. Eunseok says she’s a scaredy-cat, but if she’s willing, Sungchan wants to take her for a ride on the motorcycle his brother lets him borrow sometimes. She can wrap her arms around his waist and hold on tight.
Sungchan wants to go to the movies with her. He wants to take her dancing. He wants to listen to her play the guitar and he’s heard her sing on the patio of her house, she has the most beautiful voice he’s ever heard.
He’ll have to move to Seoul and he’ll have to go for his military conscription, but it doesn’t matter. He’ll write her letters, he’ll call her all the time, whenever he can. And maybe in the future, years, years later, he’ll find a good job and he’ll propose.
He lets himself dream. He’s naive, he’s childish, but that’s fine. Sungchan kicks his pedals down, biking faster, gaining speed. He lets his lungs strain for air, the adrenaline pumping through his veins. He can’t afford to stay still.
He cannot stop and have the fear catch up.
The fear that it is all going to be over soon.
Not just between him and Wonbi, but even between him and Eunseok. Because while Sungchan thinks Eunseok is his best friend, he isn’t sure Eunseok thinks of him the same way. They might not end up at the same university in Seoul, or they might not be in the same faculty, the same class, and if there isn’t anything to keep them shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, would Eunseok still willingly be by his side?
Will he answer Sungchan’s calls? Will he come when Sungchan asks to meet up?
An egret caws, mocking his restlessly darting imagination. Sungchan laughs as he bikes higher and higher up the hill, watching the egret flap its wings and cruise above the rice fields.
There’s an old Buddhist temple on the curve of the hill. He’s almost at the house. He rounds the turn and the rice fields vanish from view, the trees on both sides of the dirt road forming a cave-like canopy around him, the sway of the leaves casting pools of sunny spots beneath him.
In the distance, he hears a dog barking, and recalls that Eunseok warned him about a runaway dog recently. It’s likely from the dog meat farm down the hill, it’s escaped its enclosure and caused a ruckus around the tuber fields near Eunseok’s place. Eunseok even joked that with Wonbi’s track record of misfortunes, it’d show up in front of her and chase her around sooner or later.
The barking sound did come from the road ahead, close to where the front entrance to Eunseok’s place is. Not eager about an encounter with a wild, rowdy dog, Sungchan opts for the alternate road that’ll lead him to Eunseok’s patio, instead. It’s a narrow trail that cars can’t pass through, an overgrowth of shrubs and tall grasses blanketing the footing.
Since it’s troublesome to bike through, Sungchan gets off his bicycle and pushes it by the handle as he walks, careful of the pears rolling inside the plastic bag and the bouquet in the basket. He’s practically there, he can already spot the grey, brick fence of Eunseok’s backyard. Sungchan puts his bike up against the fence, slings his bag on his shoulder, and picks up the pears and the bouquet. They never lock the gate during the day, they only have raccoon problems, nothing concerning a human being, and a raccoon doesn’t care about locks on a gate when it could just jump over it.
Today, the gate isn’t locked, either. Sungchan lets himself in. He can knock on the patio door and announce his presence there, that’s how Eunseok goes home bringing him along sometimes.
He hasn’t heard guitar strums yet, and he worries that Wonbi is still feeling unwell. Eunseok did take the extra day off to watch over her. Eunseok’s done the chores, too, it seems. The laundry lines are drawn out in the backyard, bedsheets and blankets hung out on the farthest line to cover up the smaller items of personal clothes on the lines closer to the patio.
A mountain breeze tousles the drying sheets, and through the gaps, Sungchan catches sight of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the patio. The sofa is there, adjacent to the windows, and Wonbi is lying asleep on it.
Immediately, Sungchan stops on his tracks. Not because he doesn’t want to wake her, no, that doesn’t cross his mind yet.
He’s just—stunned.
She’s pretty, that’s a fact he’s known for a little over a year, now, since he’s first met her, but from time to time the reminder strikes him dazed out of nowhere, and this is one of those instances. He’s never seen her asleep. The features of her youthful face soften, her lips slightly pursed. She has some colour in her, the fever must have come down, but she’s still wrapped up to her shoulders in a blanket.
Sungchan eases his weight on his soles, to not have the grass crunch under his sneakers and wake her.
But his efforts are for naught. Wonbi-yah, he hears Eunseok’s voice call her from the inside, the walls and windows subduing the volume to Sungchan’s ears.
Wonbi’s eyebrows scrunch and she turns from her side to her back. Eunseok walks in from the kitchen, and Sungchan doesn’t know why that compels him to hide himself behind the drying sheets. Neither of the siblings notices him, why would they? Nobody goes around these areas, he’s making no noise.
Eunseok gets down on his knees by her head and puts his palm on her forehead to check her temperature. His mouth is moving, and so does Wonbi’s, they’re talking, but Sungchan can’t hear them. Wonbi shoves Eunseok’s hand away and Sungchan can’t help but smile watching them. They’re having those quarrels again.
Eunseok said that they get into fights often, but Sungchan disagrees. They’re pretty peaceful. Their arguments are mostly Wonbi nagging him and Eunseok doing whatever she asks of him reluctantly. Sungchan’s arguments with his older brother have involved actual fists being thrown around.
Wonbi kicks her foot down on the sofa petulantly and Eunseok tilts his head backwards, he’s losing this argument again. He stands up, gathers the blanket and Wonbi’s legs by her ankles, and sits down on the sofa, putting her feet on his lap.
Wonbi is visibly pleased by this. Her body language says it all. She stretches her arms out and there’s a winning smile on her lips. She’s warmed up, tossing the blanket down to the floor, and although Sungchan is far away, he can see the annoyed frown on Eunseok’s face.
You can’t let her have everything, Sungchan distinctly remembers Eunseok saying that. She’s pretty, everyone just lets her have everything she asks for, she’ll get too full of herself, but here Eunseok is himself, doing exactly everything and anything she asks for. Sungchan snickers to himself. He really wishes he had a handycam to record them for video evidence.
He’s been stalling. He should hurry up and stop hiding behind their laundry sheets. Knock on the door, make his presence known.
But it’s far too entertaining, all this material to bug Eunseok with later. Maybe even Wonbi, too.
Wonbi is now digging her toe into Eunseok’s stomach. Sungchan doesn’t have a sister, he doesn’t have a basis for comparison. It’s siblings teasing each other, he thinks, a form of a playfight and a younger sibling wanting to be spoiled, but Eunseok takes Wonbi’s dainty foot into his hands and Sungchan feels his cheeks heat up when Eunseok obediently massages her foot for her.
Maybe he’s jealous. This is the girl he’s had a steady crush on for a year, a love at first sight. That’s silly, though, isn’t it? What is he jealous of? Eunseok is her brother.
Sungchan wonders if Wonbi purrs at him. What sounds is she making? Why does Eunseok get to hear her, but not Sungchan?
Wonbi gets bored of the foot rub quickly. Fully awake, she sits up. Okay, Sungchan thinks. Maybe she’s going to go somewhere else, maybe retreat to her room. Sungchan will wait for her to leave, wait some more seconds, and then he’ll knock on the window to not freak them out. But she doesn’t do any of that.
She doesn’t get up from the sofa.
Instead, she climbs onto Eunseok’s lap.
And Sungchan freezes.
Now this. Certainly, this is not, usual. Is this not? Sungchan can’t move. His muscles and his bones are nailed into place, his limbs a stiff dead weight. The hanging sheets in front of him sway in the wind, yet they don’t do anything to obstruct his line of sight.
Eunseok doesn’t push her away. Her arms come to rest on his shoulders, and he doesn’t scold her, he doesn’t laugh it off.
He holds her down by her waist. Sungchan notices that she’s swimming in the button-up pyjama that she’s wearing, it’s too big on her, it’s not hers to begin with. Her fingers play with the hair on his nape and Eunseok cups the side of Wonbi’s face, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear.
Sungchan is not innocent. He knows what’s coming next. He knows. But he still cannot move. He doesn’t move.
Eunseok kisses his sister’s lips and Sungchan stays there to watch.
Sungchan doesn’t know this feeling. It’s not something he’s supposed to know as long as he wants to stay sane. He tastes bile on the base of his tongue, a hacking convulsion that threatens to slice up his throat.
Leave. Leave now. They haven’t noticed you, they don’t know you’re there. Leave.
Why can’t he leave?
Sungchan has never kissed anyone in his life. He’s only seen kiss scenes in pirated foreign movies and when he imagines his first kiss, he doesn’t even imagine it playing out like that. He’s too dumb and idealistic. He’s got his head in the clouds. He wants a picture book kiss. Prince and princess, a true love’s first kiss, something like that.
That’s not how Eunseok kisses Wonbi. His hand cradles her neck, his tongue opens her lips and he’s devouring her. They kiss like adults do, like they’ve done so a thousand times. And this beautiful girl that Sungchan is infatuated with is responding to Eunseok hungrily, writhing on her own brother’s lap.
His best friend. Sungchan thinks Eunseok is his best friend.
He can’t see them clearly, he’s stuck where he is, the laundry sheets, the wind. Eunseok’s hand has found its way onto Wonbi’s chest, his mouth on her jaw and her bared neck. A wildfire sparks in Sungchan’s belly, spreading to his chest and consuming his ribs, setting his whole skull aflame.
If they had kept lying, I would have believed them.
A dog barks behind Sungchan. Something rattles something rustles—steel, rocks, plastic, paper, petals. The pears break free of its bag and spill onto the grass on Sungchan’s feet.
The last thing Sungchan sees before he bolts is two pairs of wide, doe eyes on him.
Sungchan doesn’t know how he ran. His body that refused to budge just moments ago now moves of its own accord. He flings open the gate, his bike has toppled over, he hauls it off the dirt and he’s pedalling. Blades of tall grass and leaves of wild bushes scratch at his arms, he pedals and he pedals and he pedals downhill.
Don’t think, don’t think, forget, don’t think.
The bile on Sungchan’s tongue thaws, and Sungchan screams at the top of his lungs before it can sweeten.