Everyone around them had their own hardships — they understood all too well what it meant to have an extra mouth to feed — but it was a completely absurd misunderstanding all the same.
His aunt was no ordinary schemer. She mistreated Choi Eungil just enough to avoid being blamed for it, and showed him just enough kindness to earn other people’s sympathy.
He had been so underfed and poorly clothed that ringworm broke out on his skin, but so it wouldn’t show, she’d only spare him a sliver of soap when he washed his face. His great-uncle raised his hand at the slightest provocation, but the violence never quite crossed into the kind of daily beating that would have been impossible to ignore. So people naturally assumed that when Choi Eungil got hit, he must have done something to deserve it.
They did send him to high school, but outside of afternoon class hours, they had him hauling goods and running errands at the fabric shop, collecting empty bottles until late at night, and delivering newspapers in the early morning. So apart from the three or four hours he managed to sleep, Choi Eungil couldn’t even step inside that wretched room of his.
All that work, and they never once fed him a proper meal — not at the shop, not at home. He had to sneak into the kitchen and scrounge for whatever leftovers were lying around. When there was nothing, he simply went hungry.
After graduating high school, he could have escaped into the military, but he couldn’t say he truly served. Because of his orphan status, all he completed was basic training and six months of local civil defense duty. Even that had felt like heaven by comparison.
When he came back, the old life resumed. One day, dimly realizing he’d spend the rest of his days being bled dry like this, he spotted a newspaper ad recruiting for the Central Meteorological Bureau’s meteorological training institute. He applied in secret, sat the exam, and passed — unexpectedly.
His aunt and great-uncle objected at first, but then, for reasons of their own, allowed it — barely — affecting an air of magnanimity, as though granting a great favor.
Conditions were attached, naturally. During the training period, he was to earn money at a night job they designated for him. The other condition: even after completing the institute and being posted to a regional bureau, he was to send home ninety percent of his monthly salary every month.
Choi Eungil had no choice but to agree. When each day’s training at the institute was done, he made his way to Seoul Station every night. He waited tables at a run-down tavern in the Yangdong brothel quarter — the kind of place where beggars and prostitutes gathered in clusters, and the blind and disabled came to congregate.
During that period, he couldn’t set foot in the house at all. Using the curfew as an excuse, they had him sleep in a corner of the tavern kitchen. Whether the tavern owner had been instructed in advance, he never once laid eyes on a pay envelope. It had likely gone straight into his great-uncle’s hands.
He had spent his life having the money he earned taken before he could even touch it, and yet the neighbors saw Choi Eungil as some carefree layabout who spent the pocket money his aunt gave him staying out and gallivanting around.
At first it made him burn with injustice, but before long he learned to endure. He had no money to run away with, and nowhere to go. All he could do was hope the day would come soon when he’d be an adult, when he’d have a trade that could feed him.
He surely wasn’t the only one who had prayed his first posting wouldn’t be Seoul. Wasn’t this finally the chance to cut loose the burdensome, bothersome dead weight? Though of course, that same dead weight hadn’t thought about cutting loose the income Choi Eungil brought in.
They were the only blood family he had left, the ones who had taken him in after he lost everyone — and yet Choi Eungil had not forgotten a single bit of the injustice and resentment of all those years. He had no desire to hand over his salary on their terms. But he had nothing. Far too nothing.
And so.
This much is fine, isn’t it.
He had stolen in secret when no one was around. His father’s watch he didn’t consider stealing — it had always been his to begin with — but from his cousin’s room he had taken several things. A little travel money, a few worn-out items of clothing that no one would notice missing, some socks.
His cousin, two years older than him, was a medical student at Seoul’s most prestigious university. That was probably why people found it so easy to believe the lies his aunt’s family told about Choi Eungil. The word of parents raising a medical student carried more weight than that of a rootless orphan.
I had parents too. If they were still alive, I could have gone to university.
There had been a time in his life when he lived with a learned father who worked as a researcher at an astronomical observatory, and a kind, pretty mother. He had been scolded once for dragging his younger brother — two years his junior — to the water’s edge to play, but they had lived in a proper house with warm quilts and a small mother-of-pearl dresser.
What does any of that matter now.
Choi Eungil stopped on his way to the weather station and clutched his empty, aching stomach.
A sudden memory had surfaced, and something rose sharply in his chest. But he didn’t want to cry. This was the first day he’d gotten free of his aunt’s house, and he wanted to start fresh, unburdened. But the only thing holding him up was a battered old umbrella that anyone would have thrown away without a second thought.
He walked and walked, and whether from hunger or exhaustion, the weather station seemed to get no closer. Thinking of the green onion pancake smell that still seemed to linger in the air, he hugged his travel bag tighter against himself and pressed on.
Then he heard the sound of a car coming from behind. He turned to look — the sun hadn’t fully set yet, but a New Cortina with its headlights already on was approaching. A gleaming, deep-blue sedan, so polished it looked like water droplets would roll right off it.
They have cars like that out in the countryside too.
The road was otherwise empty, but Choi Eungil stepped aside just in case. He expected the car to pass, but instead it slowed and pulled to a stop right beside him.
“Hey there, kid. Where are you headed? Hop in. I’ll give you a ride.”
The driver leaned an arm on the window frame and called out to him. A slow way of speaking, but strangely light in tone.
“Pardon? Kid… who, me?”
“Hm? You’re not a student? You’re on the small side and looked like you were wearing a school uniform, so I figured.”
“No. I’m a working person.”
Choi Eungil said it clearly, deliberately. A quiet swell of pride rose in him after he said it. He hadn’t even started his first day yet, but — yes. He was about to be someone with a proper job.
He had done odd jobs at the fabric shop and worked at an illegal late-night drinking hole that served secret customers after curfew, but that couldn’t be called a real working life. He had never once received a pay envelope with the name “Choi Eungil” on it. But now it would be different. It was a meager salary, yes, but he’d be a government employee — and he’d have a name card with his own name on it.
Even tense from the unexpected stranger’s approach, Choi Eungil felt a crooked smile tugging at his mouth.
“Is that so? My mistake. Sorry about that.”
“Right, well….”
The plain-featured, affable-looking driver apologized without hesitation. Choi Eungil wiped the smile from his face and accepted the apology with measured composure.
He turned to walk on, but the car didn’t pull away — it kept pace, crawling slowly alongside him.
“So where are you heading?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I heard you. Just saying I’ll give you a ride.”
“I’d rather not.”
Choi Eungil refused as though batting the offer away. He’d been born and raised in Seoul, living as the “fabric shop’s freeloader” for a good ten years. He had no choice but to be suspicious of a stranger’s goodwill, to keep his guard up.
“Aren’t you going to the weather station? I’m heading that way anyway, so I offered. No need to bristle like that — you’re making a man feel bad.”
Choi Eungil shrugged and glanced over at the driver’s seat. The car wasn’t small, but the man behind the wheel filled it — he had the look of someone with a big build. His face was simple and round, and he didn’t seem to be lying, but the thought of getting into a stranger’s car simply hadn’t occurred to Choi Eungil in the first place.
Whether put out by the refusal or not, the man gave a blunt snort and picked up speed. Choi Eungil watched the tail end of the blue New Cortina recede and narrowed his eyes at it.
In a lawless world like this, what if you ended up getting trafficked? A respectable exterior doesn’t mean a respectable interior. He knew very well that some people put on a gentle front precisely to hide what they were after.
Come to think of it though — how had that man known he was going to the weather station? The question came to him late, but Choi Eungil soon forgot about the man entirely.
And so, exhausted and starving, he climbed all the way to the top of the weather station hill.
The words that greeted him when he finally arrived were devastating.
“What can you do? The staff quarters are under construction right now. Word was sent up to Seoul — looks like nobody told you before you came down.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“What do you mean, what. For now you’ll have to find somewhere to stay in the village nearby and commute from there.”
A man who appeared to be the weather station caretaker, looking well along in years, told him the lodging repairs would take about a month and suggested he look for an inn in town. He added that dinner had just ended and there was nothing left to eat, then handed over a single leftover sweet potato.
Choi Eungil had thought about at least greeting the staff while he was there, but the caretaker shook his head. He said everyone was on edge because a forecast had come out wrong, and sent him off with instructions to come back on his first official day.
Three days still to go before his official start, and in the meantime — what about food, and what about a place to sleep? Was there an inn that provided meals? This was an unforeseen blow out of nowhere, and Choi Eungil stamped his feet in frustration.
Once he officially started work, the weather station would presumably feed him, but the days off were the problem. With rotating shifts, there’d be gaps of two days at a stretch. Did he really have to look for a boarding house after all?
Choi Eungil turned away, hollow inside. He ate the sweet potato as he went and tried to think through what came next. He bit into it skin and all, stuffing his mouth, and trudged back down the hill.
Having something in his stomach made him feel like he might live after all. He choked a little from eating too fast, but clamped his mouth shut to keep the sweet potato from flying out.
If he couldn’t find a boarding house… he’d just go without food for two days.
He had arrived at this bleak conclusion by the time Choi Eungil turned back onto the road toward town.
He had to walk all the way back there again. His steps dragged with exhaustion.
“Even out here in the countryside, I can’t offer board for that price. We do the laundry and serve proper white rice, you know.”
“I don’t need laundry done and white rice is fine to skip. Isn’t there some way to work it out?”
“My goodness. So you want me to cook two separate meals? That’ll cost more in firewood.”
Choi Eungil pleaded so desperately that even the landlady seemed to feel sorry for him, but in the end he walked away with nothing. This was already the third time.
The government was pushing mixed-grain meals these days, yet every boarding house was serving white rice — which was exactly why the prices at every place he tried had exceeded his budget.
Choi Eungil set off again, this time to look for a cheap inn. The sweet potato had taken the edge off his hunger, but whatever gnawing thing lived in his stomach had him empty again almost immediately, bitter fluid rising in his throat.
Then a drop of water landed on his cheek. A moment later, a light rain began to fall. Choi Eungil grimaced and opened his umbrella.
“Hey now? I thought you went to the weather station — what are you doing here?”
He had been looking up at the sky with a uneasy expression when a bear of a man standing in front of a soup restaurant called out to him as if they knew each other.
