# Chapter 22
Jaei burst into tears. His mother and father just looked at him pitifully, not trying to counter his claims with detailed explanations. Jaei also knew exactly what kind of words would be used to refute the claims he was making.
Seungha, Doha’s younger brother, had turned eight this year. Seungha resembled Doha so much that even his parents acknowledged it, and he was raised as “Ryu Doha” for quite some time, brainwashed by his mother. And now they had suddenly disappeared somewhere and were missing. She had taken all of Doha’s coat, sneakers, and gloves to dress Seungha. He knew, he knew it all.
“How could I not recognize Doha… no matter how similar they look…”
Jaei prided himself on being the person who knew Doha’s face best in the world. From the age of eight until he was fourteen, he fell asleep every day with Doha’s face in front of him. Because of this, he knew exactly where the moles were on his body and face, which direction his eyelashes grew, and even how many wrinkles were on his lips. But this child wasn’t Doha?
He couldn’t remember Seungha’s face precisely since he had only seen it once at the funeral home. However, no matter how similar siblings were, even twins couldn’t be completely identical.
While Jaei was convinced of Doha’s reincarnation, his parents formed two hypotheses. First, that Doha’s mother had lost Seungha, and Seungha, having lost his memory due to an accident, had somehow ended up in Haesung-dong. Second, that Doha’s mother had trained Seungha and deliberately sent him here. The latter was clearly the more probable.
However, Jaei shouted that Doha had definitely returned in a younger form, and demanded a DNA test to conclusively prove it was Doha. He had many things among his possessions that would likely have Doha’s DNA on them. When his parents wouldn’t listen, he lay down on the floor and flailed his legs.
While Jaei was making far-fetched claims and throwing a tantrum like a child, his mother found the phone number of Doha’s father who had contacted them last year and called him. However, the person who answered wasn’t him but his younger brother who had inherited his number. After identifying herself, she was able to hear about his recent situation.
After clearing their debts with the “price” of their eldest son’s life, the couple’s relationship severely deteriorated. Having lost his son, and then his wife and remaining child running away, he was left alone and barely survived after attempting something extreme. Now, the news was that he had moved to the Middle East and was working while trying to get his life back on track.
Next, they needed to find Doha’s mother, whose whereabouts were now unknown. In truth, when Jaei’s mother received a call from Doha’s father asking about his wife’s whereabouts, she deliberately kept quiet despite having a channel of communication with her. This was because she wanted her to lay down at least one of her burdens and live the life she wanted.
The person who had initially introduced her to Jaei’s house was her acquaintance. This intermediary also said that they no longer met her directly and only exchanged messages. The intermediary, concerned for her who had fled with her child to another region to escape her ex-husband, wouldn’t easily share information about her current situation.
After Jaei’s mother first informed them that Doha’s father had gone abroad, the intermediary also opened up and shared her current situation.
[“She still lives blaming herself, saying Doha ended up that way because he had bad parents. After paying off the debt with the money received from Doha’s death, she keeps thinking Doha’s death was her fault. She says that good-hearted Doha ultimately paid off his parents’ debt by dying, that she’s living by paying off debt with her baby’s life price.”]
Mother’s eyes reddened. Jaei, who was listening to the conversation on speakerphone, covered his mouth with his hand.
“Is the second child growing well?”
[“She doesn’t talk much about Seungha these days. It seems like whenever she brings him up, she only ends up saying unpleasant things. I think it’s painful for her to look at him because Seungha resembles Doha so much. She knows she’s wronging Seungha, but she says she can’t send him to his father. The last thing she said was that if she keeps raising him herself, the child will truly become unhappy, so she hopes Seungha also finds better parents. Oh, and…”]
“Yes.”
[“She met someone who’s helping her. Seems like a good person. They’ve been living together for two months now. They haven’t had a ceremony though.”]
“Is that so? That’s really great. I sincerely hope only happy things happen to her from now on. Please tell her to think only about herself now, not her family. She’s suffered too much until now.”
With that, mother ended the call.
After gathering all the information, Jaei’s parents concluded that Seungha had been strictly trained by his mother to believe he was Ryu Doha and was in a state of silence about the past. They hypothesized that she had left the child in front of this house, but the child walked to the tteokbokki restaurant because he was hungry. This was the most plausible logic in the current situation.
Sending the child to this house might have been the best choice for both of them. Jaei’s mother said she didn’t want to interfere with the peace she had finally found, knowing how difficult her life had been.
However, according to the father’s wishes, they decided to go to the police station with the child tomorrow. There was still a 0.00001% possibility that he could be a completely unrelated stranger.
Jaei, who had been struggling to have a DNA test done quickly, suddenly grew quiet and lay on the floor. He just silently shed tears. He thought that perhaps it might be better to live forever without knowing the true identity of that child.
If it were revealed that the child’s DNA didn’t match Doha’s, he felt that the sense of loss he would experience at that moment would be indescribable. He realized that living with even half the expectation that Doha had returned to this world was the greatest hope he could have.
Eight-year-old Lee Doha, like Ryu Doha, grew up in Haesung-dong, but almost all the people around him had changed except for Jaei’s family and relatives. Director Hong Duyoung, who had been an apartment resident, had long left Haesung-dong, and all the teachers at Haesung Elementary and Middle Schools who had taught Ryu Doha had also completed their tenure and been transferred.
The parents informed the few relatives and acquaintances who knew the face and name of the deceased Ryu Doha, as well as a small number of neighbors including the owner of “Angel Snack Shop,” that the child was the younger brother of the deceased Doha. And they explained the circumstances in detail.
They earnestly requested that unless the child recovered his identity and memories on his own, they should not confuse him by proactively asking questions like, “Are you perhaps Doha’s brother?” Thanks to the adults’ consideration, the concerns did not materialize.
Ryu Doha’s classmates living in Haesung-dong also never connected Ryu Doha and Lee Doha. This was natural. Due to the age difference of seven years, their spheres of activity and times hardly overlapped, and Doha wasn’t the type to reveal his personal information online.
When his classmates became university students, Lee Doha was just a 6th grader in elementary school. Even if they happened to meet on the street, they couldn’t show any reaction beyond “That kid looks like Ryu Doha.”
***
At twenty-six years old, Jaei is still living his life depending on an unconfirmed half-possibility.
After sending Doha to school, Jaei swallowed sleeping pills and lay back in bed. He needed to catch up on his lacking sleep now so that he wouldn’t show an irritable side to Doha when he returned home in the afternoon.
Just as he was about to put in earplugs after getting into bed with the blackout curtains drawn to prevent light from entering, a phone call came in on his mobile phone. The caller was a real estate agent. Jaei threw away the earplugs stuck in his ears, jumped up from his seat, and answered the phone.
“Hello?”
“Yes, yes, Jaei-ssi. This is the real estate office. Can you talk right now?”
“Yes! Please go ahead.”
“Apartment 1002 has been put up for urgent sale.”
“Oh, really? I’ll make the contract. Should I come right now? What should I bring? ID card and seal, and also…”
Haesung Winners Castle, Building 201, Unit 1002. It was the building and unit number of the house where he had lived at age fourteen. When they moved back to this apartment five years ago with Doha, someone else was living in unit 1002. So they had no choice but to purchase unit 902 on the floor below.
He had asked the real estate office in advance to contact him first without fail if unit 1002 ever became available, saying he would purchase one more unit.
During the past five years living in unit 902, he had not once met Doha’s soul. It seemed that to meet Doha’s ghost, he would have to go to unit 1002. Thinking about it, this made sense. Ryu Doha knew his home as unit 1002. So there was no reason for him to visit a house with a different unit number to meet Lee Jaei.
Above all, his guilt that he still couldn’t shake off remained in unit 1002.
***
While Lee Doha was at school, Jaei personally moved the traces of Ryu Doha that he had been secretly keeping to unit 1002. These were precious and secret items, so he couldn’t entrust them to someone else’s hands.
He thought there was no need to tell Doha about the fact that he had bought another house. Like a cat moving its food, he was quietly moving his belongings to the second house, but he had no intention of relocating completely and leaving Lee Doha in unit 902. He just needed to spend time in unit 1002 and check something.
He changed the password of the lock installed on the front door of unit 1002. The password for unit 902 was an eight-digit number based on Lee Doha’s date of birth. The password for unit 1002 differed by four numbers from that of unit 902.
He entered the house with new wallpaper and flooring. Holding a box containing a thick photo album, middle school textbooks, diaries, letters, an old mobile phone, and various other odds and ends, he slowly entered the room where he had lived with Ryu Doha 12 years ago.
In the quite spacious room, furniture such as a bed, desk, and bookshelf had been arranged.
“Doha, I’m here.”
