“Yellow, I’m back from school. Nothing happened today either?”
This was the celandine poppy I said hello to every day after school. It was my mom who taught me the names and meanings of wildflowers. When my father came home and turned the whole house upside down, we’d hold hands and run away to the stream. Even while running, if my mom spotted a wildflower, she’d stop and stare at it for a long time. Her face, bearing bruises, smiled beautifully.
‘Hyo-kyung-ah, this yellow one’s name is celandine poppy. Isn’t it cute? The flower meaning is a mother’s love.’
I’d pointlessly play dumb and avoid her gaze. Blocking out her words was all too easy. Back then, I hurt her easily in that way.
‘Hm? Hyo-kyung-ah, listen. A mother’s love, it says. Our Hyo-kyung… you know how much Mommy loves you, right?’
My mom, who knelt down in front of me, moved her fingers busily. Looking into her transparent eyes, I wanted to ask. Why doesn’t Mom just run away? Why do you live like that? Jun-seok’s grandma says Mom is a loose woman. So she told me not to play with Jun-seok. Having to hear stuff like that from people… why can you only live like that?
But all those questions became useless. Now I was in the same position as her, clutching onto celandine poppies and pouring out idle words with my mouth closed.
“I took my finals today, but I got one math problem wrong. I really could have gotten 100 this time…”
Yellow, I’m really upset. With my knees crouched, I stroked the celandine poppy leaves with my finger. A soft earthy scent rose to my nose. It was definitely similar to a problem I solved last night, but I made a calculation mistake.
“The teacher said if I got 100 on math, he’d give me a math workbook…”
“Can you not speak, or is your fucking brain broken?”
Startled, I fell right on my butt. Ahn Jong-hwa was standing there with a lollipop in his mouth, cockily leaning on one leg. Under his school uniform, he wore a tacky bright red T-shirt—because of that, he got caught by the student discipline committee every morning. Yet he absolutely refused to give up that loud T-shirt.
Anyway, it was unexpected. Ahn Jong-hwa, the only person my age at the orphanage, had never once acknowledged me until now. Ahn Jong-hwa and I were completely different types at school. Besides being the same age, we had nothing in common. Oh, we had one thing in common—we were from the same orphanage. But that was kept strictly secret.
“Why’d you go quiet again? You were chattering away to that weed earlier.”
Ahn Jong-hwa chewed on the end of the melted lollipop stick just like a cigarette.
“……”
“You didn’t wanna talk, so you didn’t? And here I didn’t even know…”
Ahn Jong-hwa’s brow furrowed fiercely. The orphanage had been noisy because of me for a while, but I thought Jong-hwa wasn’t interested. He was the kid who pretended not to know me when I was teased for being mute in the school hallways.
“Well, whatever. At least you’re not a mute.”
When I continued to stay silent, Jong-hwa scratched his closely shaved back hair as if frustrated. When he finally turned around roughly, I ended up grabbing Jong-hwa’s sleeve.
I wanted to say it. That I didn’t close my mouth because I was ignoring you, ignoring people.
I just didn’t know what I should say. That I was afraid, just like I hurt my mom by blurting out anything, I might hurt someone else. That I felt like I was dying of frustration too. That no matter how much I tried to form my lips to let out words, it was as if there was a monster eating my voice and the world stayed silent. That even though my mom no longer existed in this world, even though I could never feel the warmth of the hand that rubbed my back when I couldn’t sleep, it was too quiet here… and that was so scary…
Ahn Jong-hwa looked at my lips opening and closing. His expression contorted strangely, then he rubbed the back of his head hard again. Jong-hwa’s short hair lay down like grass then stood back up. His palm must hurt, I thought.
“Got it. Fuck, I heard you, so stop talking.”
Ahn Jong-hwa answered as if he’d heard my story.
***
And we became friends. But Ahn Jong-hwa still ignored me at school. Whether we ran into each other in the hallway, at the school store, or on the way home from school, he absolutely never acknowledged me.
Instead, the face of the kid who threw an eraser at my back in the hallway calling me a mute ended up a mess. On days when I went to buy the bread that sold out fastest at the school store and turned back, bread would be hidden in my drawer like a secret. I often discovered Ahn Jong-hwa following me home after school at a consistent distance.
If anyone heard this, they’d ask what kind of friendship this was, but we really were friends. That day was the day report cards came out. Ahn Jong-hwa used to hang out with friends late into the night and climb over the orphanage fence to get in, but at some point he started coming home from school early, and now he was just waiting for me in the back garden of the orphanage.
“Yo, take this.”
Though Ahn Jong-hwa completely ignored me at school, at the orphanage at least, he spoke to me first. What he held out without preamble was a math workbook.
It wasn’t a workbook from a year ago that upperclassmen had gotten tired of using, nor was it a teacher’s edition with all the solution processes written in. It was a brand new workbook. I didn’t need to erase pencil marks with an eraser or cover the solution process with Post-its.
“Did your eyes go retarded too? My arm’s gonna fall off, so take it already.”
The workbook that had been held awkwardly in Jong-hwa’s hand suddenly landed in mine. When I looked up at him with a puzzled expression, he suddenly grinned. Startled by his own laughter, he spat out a curse, then rubbed the back of his head hard again.
“You got first place in the whole school again, right? It’s a congratulations gift.”
That’s right. The math problem I got wrong by mistake didn’t affect my school ranking.
“But were you always good at studying? Is it fun? I find looking at books fucking boring. Just looking at one word in a textbook when I sit at a desk makes my head ring.”
Listening to Jong-hwa’s grumbling voice, I fiddled with the celandine poppy leaves. Jong-hwa no longer treated me like a crazy bastard for giving names to nameless wildflowers and talking to them.
“Yellow. I hate studying too. But I have to study. Because that’s how people leave me alone…”
Even if I kept my mouth locked shut and stayed on the outside alone, adults didn’t treat me like a problem child because I was the school’s top student who at least did well academically. At school too, they’d occasionally sneer calling me a mute kid or pull childish pranks, but I didn’t suffer any violence or bullying beyond that. The only way I could protect myself was through studying—that alone.
“No one will protect me.”
I became able to talk to Yellow even with Jong-hwa next to me. Words that were indistinguishable between being my inner thoughts or conversation directed at Jong-hwa gradually increased. Sometimes Jong-hwa would snap at my soliloquies calling me a retard. But right now, he was quiet. It was definitely the timing for him to get annoyed asking what kind of retarded shit I was talking about.
As I straightened my crouched knees, I glanced up at him. Ahn Jong-hwa was lost deep in thought. The setting sun cast shadows on Jong-hwa’s face. The shadows made his boyish face grow up in an instant. No wonder the girls from the high school across the street lined up at the school gate.
“I…”
Jet-black eyes stared straight at me.
“The reason I don’t acknowledge you at school… it’s because I’m worried you’ll get bad luck rubbing off on you from being associated with a thug like me.”
I was shocked by his unexpected words. I blinked at him.
“If I acknowledged you, some trash bastards would take interest and test you out. Right now… anyway, it’s just loser virgins jealous of your grades grumbling for no reason. But if you get associated with me, the teachers’ attitudes will change first. It’s shitty, but that’s how the world is, you know.”
The gaze that had been looking straight at me fell to the ground. Jong-hwa’s sneakers dug at the dirt floor. Jong-hwa’s words reminded me of moments I didn’t want to face. My father always said to my mom:
‘You slut! My fate got all fucked up because I got involved with you… You know? It’s all because of you!!’
Completely drunk, he’d say this while flipping over the store’s money box. While stealing the money earned from that very whoring he accused her of. My father’s love, which pointed fingers at my mom while using me as a hostage, fearing she might really leave, presenting himself as someone who couldn’t survive alone—that love was selfish and nauseating.
My mom never got angry at those accusations or made excuses. Instead, I would bite that father’s arm or cling to his legs. Then my mom would take me, dumped at the faucet, and run away.
I was angry at that mom. Why couldn’t she leave that household with a father like that? To run away. Why could she only live like that? But the next day, my mom would always wake me up with a swollen face. And then I’d feel relieved.
I was no different from my father. The blood of a loose woman and an irresponsible man flowed through me simultaneously.
“Don’t get involved with a bastard whose life is fucked up like mine. Just keep living normally like you do now.”
Jong-hwa’s furrowed face, his resigned tone, his devastatingly lonely self-loathing overlapped with some moment from my childhood. I wanted to gather up those broken pieces and carefully stitch them together. Would my rag-like life have some hope then?
And I finally admitted it. I didn’t dislike people. I didn’t dislike mixing into crowds. I didn’t want to be alone. I just wanted to live normally.
Even if their blood flowed through my body, despite my already ruined childhood, I wanted to live well. I wanted to laugh like ordinary, normal people.
Even though I’d already experienced how much people could hate and destroy each other with that shabby emotion called love, I still longed for that warmth.
Looking at Jong-hwa, I opened my mouth for the first time. Tears flowed endlessly. I didn’t shed a single tear even at my mom’s funeral. No, I couldn’t cry.
“…Thank you.”
