Flashback. 3 Months Before the Accident
“Sergeant Yoon, Sergeant Yoon. Aren’t you going?”
“Ah, yes. I’m coming.”
“Girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Yeah, right. How’s it going?”
“Hey, why do you keep asking that? Of course it’s going well.”
Sergeant Yoon Jiwon joked around and hurried to join his team.
Yoon Jiwon, who was turning twenty-eight this year, currently belonged to the Intelligence Division of a provincial metropolitan police agency. Among his police academy classmates, his promotion had been relatively fast, and the department suited him well, so he was enjoying a pleasant work life.
His personal life was also impeccable. His family was harmonious, both parents were civil servants so there were no worries about their retirement, and his only sibling was a student at a prestigious university. Moreover, he and his girlfriend got along so well that the number of times they’d fought could be counted on one hand.
If life were compared to a voyage, Yoon Jiwon’s life was sailing smoothly.
While working as usual on such an ordinary day, Jiwon received a text from his mother. It seemed to have arrived while he’d briefly stepped away, but the content of the message was a bit strange.
Ever since Jiwon became a police officer, his mother always sent texts at mealtimes asking if he’d eaten and what he’d eaten, but today was an exception.
[Jiwon, can you come home?]
It wasn’t his mother’s style to get straight to the point without even a greeting. Thinking it was probably about his father, he immediately tried calling, but she didn’t answer.
His father, who was also a police civil servant like Jiwon, had voluntarily requested a transfer to his hometown at the beginning of last year, three years before his mandatory retirement. As he’d hoped, he was working as the chief of a local police substation in that area, and using the excuse of meeting hometown seniors, juniors, and old friends after a long time, he went drinking almost every other day.
His father, who already had high blood pressure, saw his health deteriorate rapidly due to frequent drinking and poor meals, and eventually collapsed once.
Because of this, Jiwon’s mother, who had been working as a teacher at a middle school in a small city in Gyeonggi-do where Jiwon’s hometown was and where the family had lived their entire lives, applied for early retirement. Since last fall, she’d been living between Chungcheong-do and Gyeonggi-do. Thanks to this, his father had quickly recovered his health.
But then came this urgent text telling him to come home. These days, “home” between them meant where his father was, so Jiwon speculated that his father had probably drunk again using year-end or New Year’s excuses and his health had taken a turn for the worse.
[Why? Did Dad’s blood pressure go up again?]
[That man definitely drank using year-end and New Year’s as excuses, he drank]
[Mom, don’t let it slide this time]
[Why should Mom suffer like this]
He sent several texts in succession and waited for a reply, and lunchtime arrived.
Is she driving?
There had been no contact for over two hours since he sent the text, so he thought that. He casually assumed she was probably at the main house in Gyeonggi-do and was hurrying to “home.”
But that wasn’t it.
[It’s because of Jisu. Mom’s in Gyeonggi-do. I think you need to come. Your father doesn’t know]
Why Jisu?
He tilted his head in confusion.
His younger brother Yoon Jisu, who was five years younger than Jiwon, was unlike him—exceptionally bright and quiet. He wasn’t just good at studying; his appearance was also remarkably pretty. Since childhood, he’d received suggestions multiple times to try being a child actor.
Naturally, he never lacked for girls around him as he grew up, but he’d never caused trouble or rebelled claiming adolescence, and spent a smooth childhood and teenage years.
And thanks to their mother, who was a teacher, ambitiously making him study, he was admitted to a prestigious university known by name alone, earning the envy of adults around them.
It’s not to brag about himself, but it was a harmonious family, and the relationship between brothers was good too. Jiwon used to brag about his younger brother, who was smarter and more mature than him, like a doting parent. Of course, there was quite an age gap with his brother, and they had almost nothing in common in daily life, so they didn’t hang out often, but he’d lived doing his part as an older brother. His younger brother also followed Jiwon’s words quite well.
After Jiwon became a working adult and his brother also became a college student, they were both busy so they only saw each other once or twice a year, but he did occasionally hear news about his brother through their mother. Of course, because he listened half-heartedly, there were tons of things he didn’t know, like which area of Seoul his brother lived in or what he’d decided to do about military service.
‘Yoon Jisu hasn’t gone anywhere. I can’t believe he’s living like a bookworm even after going all the way to Seoul.’
He couldn’t remember what story he’d heard, but he’d once said this to his mother.
It was because the news about his brother that his mother conveyed remained the same even in Seoul.
Model student. Bookworm. Goody-two-shoes.
That’s why he was even more puzzled.
Why his brother?
He tried calling again, but she didn’t answer.
Deliberately refusing to take the call meant she intended to explain the details when they met face-to-face. It was his mother’s own way of communicating, so he had no choice but to go to the main house.
After work, he postponed his appointment with his girlfriend and hurriedly drove to the main house.
It was almost 10 o’clock when Jiwon arrived at the main house apartment, and before he could even finish entering the door lock password, the door burst open.
His mother’s eyes were swollen.
“Mom, what’s wrong? What happened?”
Startled Jiwon shouted.
“Come in, first.”
His mother pulled Jiwon into the entrance and hastily closed the door.
The air inside the house was cold, as if the boiler hadn’t been turned on long ago.
Because his mother had been living at his father’s hometown recently, this apartment was empty many days. So there had been talk going around about whether to dispose of the apartment soon.
“Why? What happened?”
Even when he asked again, there was no answer.
His mother kept her mouth tightly shut and regulated her breathing.
“Did you eat?”
Her voice trembled as she asked.
“I did. Did you?”
“Want a cup of coffee?”
“What happened? Why Jisu?”
“No. Beer would be better.”
She kept saying other things and avoiding answering.
Since she was originally the type to only open her mouth when she wanted to, Jiwon gave up and did as his mother asked, buying beer and snacks from the convenience store.
What on earth happened for her to be like this?
This was the first time he’d seen his mother this flustered since his father was stabbed with a knife while chasing a robber when he was in 6th grade.
“Mom, it’s supposed to be really cold tomorrow. The wind is no joke.”
Jiwon shivered and put the convenience store bag down on the dining table.
In the meantime, his mother had put rice in the pressure cooker and was boiling dried pollack soup. It seemed to be food for his brother, who was the subject of conversation, rather than for themselves.
The two sat across from each other at the dining table, drinking beer and having an ordinary conversation.
“Is Heejin doing well?”
“Yeah. She’s doing well. She’s making a fuss saying she misses you, Mom.”
“Why does she like her future mother-in-law so much?”
She said that, but she didn’t seem to dislike it.
“Who said anything about getting married?”
When he deliberately answered like this, his mother glared at him.
“You have to get married, of course. Do you think girls like Heejin are common? Honestly, you’re drowning in blessings.”
“Somehow Mom likes Heejin more than me.”
“Of course I like her. If I were a man, I would’ve married her, you.”
Jiwon laughed loudly at his mother’s answer.
In fact, there had been talk of marriage recently with his same-age girlfriend whom he’d been dating for two years. The atmosphere around them was one of dissuasion, saying twenty-eight was too young to get married, but the two were positive about it.
“Don’t care teachers get vacations?”
“What vacation? Because it’s vacation, they’re needed even more.”
“Are the kids bearable?”
His mother glanced at him as if asking what kind of question that was.
“You’ve become more crooked since becoming a police officer.”
“I didn’t become crooked, I was originally crooked because I take after you, Mom.”
“Oh my. What words.”
Between the two mother and son, the word “crooked” implied having bad eyes.
Perhaps because he took after his mother, who was severely nearsighted, Jiwon had very bad eyes since childhood. On the other hand, his father and younger brother had such good eyesight that there were jokes about them being Mongolian.
After deciding to become a police officer, the first thing Jiwon did was eye surgery. Since driving was essential for police officers, he had lens implant surgery, which had the least “light scattering” side effects, and had been doing well for 8 years without any vision deterioration.
Still, attacking his mother with eye talk every time was one of Jiwon’s regular jokes.
After finishing asking each other how they were doing, his mother finally spoke.
“He’s sleeping in Jisu’s room.”
“Right now?”
“Yeah. The kid’s become a complete wreck.”
His mother sighed.
“A wreck? What does that mean? Are you talking about Jisu?”
His mother frowned and opened a new can of beer, gulping it down.
“Mom.”
“There were signs.”
So since he took a leave of absence the year before last, Jisu had changed, she said.
Jisu, who had stopped by home during winter break of his second year, announced that he would take a leave of absence because an internship position had opened up in the field he wanted. While he was somewhat young to have a job, everyone in the family responded positively to the idea that finding one’s aptitude early might be good.
And last year, they thought he’d returned to school as a third-year student, but apparently not. Neither his father nor Jiwon knew about this.
