[I got a younger sibling.
I’ve only seen their face in photos so far, and they’re a bit red and wrinkly.
Everyone says my younger sibling looks like Father.
I hope they get plump and chubby soon and become cute like you.
I want to play with them, but they have to stay in the hospital for now.
Mom and Father are at the hospital all the time too.
It’s quiet and boring being home alone.
I’m just waiting for the day you come visit……]
[Yeong-ah, do you remember what your oldest memory is?
I remember it clearly.
On a nice day, I was getting a bath outside.
Suddenly my body slipped, my ears went muffled, and my vision swirled with clear water.
I could see the red basin and the eaves of the roof, and the bright blue sky was engulfed in water and rippled before my eyes.
At that moment, people around me screamed in surprise, and I heard those sounds from underwater.
People immediately pulled me out of the water.
But I didn’t even cry. People stared at me like I was strange.
Babies originally live in amniotic fluid, right? So it’s not weird to know how to swim.
When I tell Mom this story, she says she doesn’t remember.
She says people only remember things from around age three, so there’s no way I could remember something from when I was a newborn.
But as you know, I’m really smart. I might be different from other people.
I still vividly remember the sky rippling outside the water and the old eaves…….
But you know, I think Mom actually knows but pretends she doesn’t.
There are secrets in the world that shouldn’t be told.
Actually……. (there are traces of heavy scribbling)
That’s why Father scolds me often.
Yeong-ah, please keep this secret.]
─From a letter long ago.
***
“Third floor roll call complete! Dismissed!”
Today too, the morning roll call ended with the dorm supervisor’s voice.
Yumyeong stuck to his bed as usual, letting Hanju’s nagging go in one ear and out the other. He kept the wardrobe door open, curled his body into the blind spot that the door concealed, became one with his blanket, and fell asleep.
After one round of checking whether the room was empty and when the dorm supervisor’s presence had completely faded away, Yumyeong slowly opened his eyes.
“Mmm……”
His sleep had been restless, so his eyes were still heavy.
Rubbing his eyes as he got up and headed to the bathroom, Yumyeong finished a vigorous face wash that wore down his cheeks from the friction. After the intense washing, water had spread even to his hair, leaving the ends dampened.
As if trying to clear his mind, he stared at the mirror and sharply slapped his own cheek. His smooth, plump cheek instantly turned bright red.
Looking at the mirror reminded him of last night’s dream.
“I feel so sorry for you…… so very pitiful……”
On the day it poured, Yumyeong had comforted his mother in the car for a long time. Though she wiped away her tears and saw him off with a smile at the end, in his dream, his mother was still crying.
He knew the reason. Because nothing had been resolved yet. This family still had many problems to solve. Especially the issues with his father.
It had long been confirmed that he had fallen out of his father’s favor. He knew it but wanted to deny it. The discrimination that had continued as naturally as breathing since childhood was perhaps destined to end this way.
‘Accept it. You were never loved anyway.’
Yumyeong sighed deeply and swept back his hair.
Once he graduated from school, he would soon be an adult. The age when he would have to stand on his own was approaching anyway.
However, contrary to reason, his heart still surged with emotion from time to time. He had learned that countless parents in this world love their children, that paternal and maternal love are human instincts. He had been indoctrinated with this through various writings, movies, and lyrics he had encountered until now.
Thinking about it, even though he had no memories of receiving love from his father, since the whole world said that was the truth, he naturally thought that way too. His father’s actions trying to deny the family felt incredibly unjust.
Even though his blood wasn’t mixed with his father’s.
This was actually a family taboo. Because of his appearance being clearly different from his paternal relatives, everyone suspected but hushed it up.
However, there are no eternal secrets.
Yumyeong quickly left his room and exited the quiet corridor. Hiding on the stairs and carefully listening to the dorm supervisor’s footsteps moving around the upper floor, when he moved away, Yumyeong opened the door leading to the sky bridge. When he unlocked the door with his key and stepped outside, the outdoor air and intensity of light hit him all at once.
“Haah.”
Facing the wind that opened up his chest, Yumyeong took a deep breath. Colliding with the strong wind blowing from high up, his shirt clung tightly to his body. His jet-black hair scattered chaotically and whipped through the air. Yumyeong looked down below, not caring that his hair was hitting his cheek.
How could he relieve this suffocating feeling?
Watching birds circling above in the sky riding the wind, he momentarily had an absurd thought. Flying freely through the air, even if just for an instant…….
But humans cannot overcome gravity.
Shaking his head vigorously and soon driving away the stray thoughts, Yumyeong turned his back and moved his steps into the school building. Crossing the self-study room, descending the stairs with quick steps, he found himself unknowingly running. Jumping down two or three steps at a time, Yumyeong bumped shoulders with a student who happened to be passing by.
“What the? Hey fucker, watch where you’re going! Huh?”
The name embroidery of the person he bumped into was blue. Since the embroidery color differed by grade, he could immediately tell they were a third-year.
“I’m sorry.”
Yumyeong bowed his head and tried to pass by again. However, before he could even take a step, his collar was grabbed. Yumyeong frowned at the rude grip. But the sunbaes clicked their tongues as if appalled at that face.
“You bump into someone and have the nerve to act dumbfounded. Did you not learn how to walk on stairs properly?”
“A second-year walking on the inside of the stairs? We’ve told you until our ears fell off to walk on the outside.”
“Must be lacking comprehension. This fucker is Shin Yumyeong.”
“Ah, this is Shin Yumyeong? Right? The one Gyeongjin rammed into.”
“Right. We’ve called him multiple times to educate him, but he doesn’t fucking listen.”
These were the sunbaes who, from the time he entered, had created a bunch of rules not even in the school regulations and forcibly made them memorize them. Always greet when you meet, don’t look them in the eye when greeting and bow your head, when using the stairs only walk on the outside so as not to obstruct the sunbaes’ passage, etc. Rather than being for order, most were added whenever they rubbed the sunbaes the wrong way.
Though he felt it was unreasonable, Yumyeong held it in and apologized once more.
After all, bumping into someone was his fault anyway.
“I’m sorry. Are you hurt?”
“What? What do you take people for? You think it would hurt from someone like you bumping into me?”
“Then I guess you’re fine.”
Yumyeong answered nonchalantly with a smile. Seeing his calm expression without even being intimidated before the sunbaes’ authority seemed to anger them more, as the third-year sunbaes surrounded Yumyeong and began throwing a fit.
“Hey, bow your head. Where do you get off holding your head up high?”
“Ah, yes…… Did you bomb your midterms?”
“What?”
“You seem to be in a bad mood.”
‘Even if you bombed it, there’s no way you bombed it worse than me.’ Thinking this, Yumyeong calmly watched the dumbfounded sunbaes. Just then, the school bell rang. Yumyeong bowed his head and moved to walk away. Or rather, tried to.
“Shin Yumyeong, you just wait for your summons.”
The sunbae’s order fell toward Yumyeong’s back as he turned around. It was a summons he had thought had been quiet for a while. For a moment, Yumyeong couldn’t hold back his expression showing he was going crazy from the annoyance.
“……Fucking annoying.”
“What? You little shit. Can’t get it together?”
However, before they could cause more of a ruckus, Yumyeong ran away using the class bell as an excuse.
***
Class time right after exams was bound to have scattered concentration. Moreover, the power of the warm sunlight was tremendous, as most students had lost focus in their eyes.
The food coma after lunchtime also played a part. The drowsy atmosphere was so powerful that even the diligent Hanju had lost concentration and was getting sluggish.
“Everyone, you are listening to what I’m saying, right?”
Silence flowed through the classroom.
“Should we open the windows?”
English teacher Choi Namseon had a soft personality, so students had always openly dozed off during his classes. He was the type who, even if someone slept face-down in the front row, wouldn’t yell at them but would instead get gloomy asking if his class was that boring.
This time, even the teacher himself couldn’t seem to resist the oncoming drowsiness and kept yawning continuously. When several students whined, “Tell us something interesting,” Choi Namseon stared into space and went on about the stock prices of several stocks he was personally interested in.
In the meantime, Yumyeong was scribbling small letters in the corner of his notebook.
[You’re going to do the astronomy club, right?
I’m going to do it too
Are you okay with that?
If you don’t want me to, I won’t do it]
Then he tore off the corner with the writing and folded it twice. Next, he tapped the desk leg of his friend in the next row with his long leg. As soon as the drooling kid looked this way, Yumyeong flicked his fingers and landed the note on the kid’s desk.
“Song Heeun.”
When Yumyeong gestured with his chin, the dozing kid’s eyes suddenly sparkled. The fact that the popular Shin Yumyeong had unbelievably been dumped by a girl, and that Song Heeun now treated him like an invisible person after that, was too famous a piece of gossip within the school.
The kid who received the note got even more excited himself, curious about how Heeun would react to this note, and nodded his head vigorously. Then he kept tapping the back of the student in front.
The note passed this way soon fell into Hakyoung’s hands through the next person, and the next. Hakyoung, who was about to thoughtlessly pass the paper to Heeun in the seat in front of him, suddenly looked back.
At that moment, Yumyeong and Hakyoung’s eyes met.
