My father was what you’d call a thug. He lived with vulgar words in his mouth, and his arms and back were covered with intricate tattoos. Because of his cantankerous personality, he’d get into fights wherever he went. The neighborhood people who feared my father didn’t try to speak to me first either.
“I need to pull off something big instead of these petty jobs. Fuck, there’s no money in this shithole, so that bitch of a mother ran off and left her kid behind.”
Father would slap my cheeks and say such things. That the reason Mom ran away was because he had no money.
“What are you staring at? Want to get hit, you fucking bastard? I don’t know who you took after to look so disgustingly ugly like this… Should I just kill you right now?”
When Father raised his hand again, I would lower my head and squeeze my eyes shut.
“Hyun Taeyoung. You’re going to leave home like your mom too, right? Like a little rat, the moment you get a chance, huh?”
Fortunately, he didn’t hit me this time. Instead, he grabbed my collar while puffing on his cigarette. Every time he spoke, I could smell the alcohol. When I shook my head vigorously, Father finally relaxed the intensity in his eyes and roughly rubbed the back of my head.
Father wasn’t always at his worst. Because there were days he didn’t hit me. Sometimes when he was in a good mood, he’d order jajangmyeon and sweet and sour pork from the neighborhood Chinese restaurant. Though most days I had to go hungry.
One dawn, that father brought someone home. When guests came over, they were mostly ahjussis with menacing faces, but today was different.
“Hey, Hyun Taeyoung. Kid, wake up.”
I, who had been curled up sleeping in the corner of the room, rubbed my eyes and sat up abruptly. Then beyond my blurry vision, I saw a child trembling while being held by Father.
The person who came home with Father this time wasn’t a fierce-looking ahjussi, but unexpectedly, a young child. A child who was a span shorter than me and looked too weak. If it weren’t for the short hair, the child was youthful and pretty enough to be mistaken for a girl.
“Father? …Who is this? Why are they at our house?”
“Shut your mouth.”
“……”
The child next to Father had blood on their clothes. There were bruises around the eyes, and the child made hiccupping sounds trying to hold back tears.
Father smoked chain cigarettes in the house and remained silent for a while. He also let out something like a big sigh. Even to my eyes at only thirteen years old, Father’s appearance looked somehow confused and precarious.
The narrow house was always filled with cigarette smoke, so Father’s smoking was a natural part of daily life for me, but it seemed it wasn’t for that child. The child kept coughing.
“Cough, cough!”
“Fuck, won’t you shut your trap? So noisy!”
“Hngh…”
“Want to get hit more? Huh?”
At Father’s intimidation, the child shook their head in fear. Even so, the coughing didn’t completely stop.
Father shoved the child at me as if throwing them and muttered curses.
“Hey, Hyun Taeyoung. You watch this kid carefully so they can’t go anywhere.”
“…Yes.”
“If that thing disappears, know that you’ll die by my hands instead.”
“Yes.”
Then Father went out to the living room while making a phone call to someone.
“Hey, President Choi. It’s me, to contact the kid’s parents…”
When I was left alone in the room with just the child, I could finally examine the child closely.
The child wearing a uniform with very soft and glossy material had very pale and fine skin, unlike me who was covered in acne. Like a princess character from a cartoon.
“Hello.”
“……”
“You look like a princess on TV. How old are you?”
“……”
“What’s your name?”
“……”
“I’m Hyun Taeyoung.”
It seemed the child didn’t want to talk. No matter how gently I tried to speak, the child just kept their lips pressed tightly together. Even that appearance was just like a doll.
After a few minutes passed like that, the child finally opened their mouth.
“Sniff… I’m Yujin. Kwon, Yujin.”
Yujin. Kwon Yujin.
That was the name of the child Father had kidnapped.
“Ten years old…”
And only ten years old at that.
After that day, as Father instructed, I did my best to watch over ten-year-old Kwon Yujin. So they could never escape from this place.
***
And now, 14 years later. That child was before my eyes.
“Who is… Ah.”
When I hurriedly put on my mask and went outside at the sound of someone knocking on the door, I made eye contact with a man standing tall in front of the entrance. A familiar face. I recognized Kwon Yujin immediately.
My body froze in place at the face I encountered as soon as I opened the door. The child I faced right before my eyes felt distinctly different from what I’d seen on TV or the internet, or from what I’d glimpsed from a distance.
Though I’d occasionally gone to secretly watch his matches, it had been really long since I’d seen him this close. Had he grown taller in the meantime? His eye level was even higher.
Long ago, the child used to look up at me, but as time passed, the eye level gradually caught up and now he had grown much taller than me.
Standing side by side facing each other like this was the first time since the child escaped from our house.
“……”
“……”
The situation itself was so surreal that I wondered if I was seeing an illusion. That child standing in front of our house.
But no matter how much I blinked and waited, the illusion before my eyes didn’t disappear.
Wheezing sounds spread from around my mouth covered by the mask. My heart was beating violently. Being flustered, even my voice wouldn’t come out as intended. I was just opening and closing my lips helplessly.
“I’m coming in.”
It was the child who spoke first.
Before I could even respond with anything, the child flung the door wide open.
The child, no, not a child anymore. Kwon Yujin, who was twenty-four years old now, long past being an adult after successfully escaping from our house, walked past me on his own and strode into our living room.
Without even taking off his shoes, he briefly looked around the living room, room, and bathroom. His expression was hardened. His eyes looked as if viewing filthy waste. That gaze was full of rejection and disgust.
I knew how to distinguish such gazes well. I was familiar with them. Because the neighborhood people used to show such contempt to me and Father quite often. After Father went to prison, it was a gaze I alone had to receive entirely.
So there was no way I wouldn’t know. How Kwon Yujin regarded me now. He probably hated me terribly. Even if he wanted to kill me right now, it wouldn’t be strange at all.
I stared blankly at Kwon Yujin’s face, then soon lowered my gaze to his left pinky finger.
Kwon Yujin, who naturally took out a cigarette, lit it without asking permission. The finger I examined during that series of actions looked fine. That finger I had broken when Kwon Yujin was kidnapped in the past.
I felt both relief and suffocating anxiety at the same time and barely opened my mouth.
“Here… how did you, why…”
Only after saying that much did I check whether I was wearing my hat and mask properly. After obsessively fumbling over my face and head, I finally felt relieved. Kwon Yujin couldn’t see my hideous face. That was fortunate.
Step, step. Heavy footsteps echoed through the house. I stood stiffly as if frozen in extreme cold and quietly held my breath.
My head was complicated. Why did he come to our house? Why did he come looking for me only now?
Was it to get revenge after all? Because he was angry? Because he hated me? Because he wanted to kill me? Because he wanted to send me to prison like Father?
I was confident I wouldn’t be surprised no matter what words he said.
“Hyun Taeyoung.”
When I was falling deeper into dark thoughts, Kwon Yujin called my name for the first time.
My name, accurately.
I carefully lifted my head that had been deeply bowed and met his eyes again. He was also looking directly at me.
It was a voice incomparably deeper and lower than the boyish voice of the past. As if chewing over and over to digest the changed range unlike my memory, I stood dumbfounded, unable to say any words.
A few seconds later, he deeply inhaled his cigarette. Isn’t smoking bad for a swimming athlete? I thought such things unconsciously while staring blankly at him.
“I’ve imprinted.”
As if condemning and cutting through my peaceful thoughts, Kwon Yujin opened his mouth.
A voice filled with humiliation. I couldn’t understand his words at once.
“What did you just say?”
“I said I’ve imprinted.”
“……”
“On you.”
Even I, a middle school graduate and son of a kidnapper, knew exactly what that meant.
But such a thing couldn’t be possible. Because imprinting happens when there’s a certain degree of emotional and physical exchange. We weren’t that kind of warm relationship.
So I thought Kwon Yujin might be mocking me. Because if that wasn’t it, there was no reason for him to appear one day without warning and tell me he’d imprinted on me.
“That’s a lie.”
I muttered quietly.
But only after seeing those black pupils without even an inch of wavering could I finally accept it. That it might not be a lie.
The vivid despair emanating from him made me feel like I would suffocate too.
“…You’re serious.”
Kwon Yujin, who was Father’s sin, a hostage, a victim, and once my only family, came to find me after 14 years and said it. That he had imprinted on me.
