Born as a late only son in a wealthy household, he was a man who possessed nearly everything people in the world might envy. Overflowing wealth, good parents, polished good looks, and even a healthy body. In my eyes, U Jiheon was someone who had no reason whatsoever to be unhappy. Everything in the world was easy, effortless, and boring to him.
From the moment such a man set his sights on me as a romantic interest and started chasing me, U Jiheon’s life began to unravel. He didn’t even seem to hold any prejudice against homosexuality, and he never hid his feelings.
The day U Jiheon suddenly confessed in the middle of a tutoring session, his parents were literally appalled. It wasn’t because I was someone who had grown up lacking in a single-mother household. Of course, that too could have been a problem, but there was a reason that stood out far more prominently than that. It was my gender. They were utterly terrified that their one and only precious son might fall into the wrong path.
Unfairly, at the same time as U Jiheon’s confession, I was not only fired from tutoring but even my connection with U Jaemin was severed. His parents seemed to feel that my very existence was like a cancerous lump, to the point where they couldn’t even stand me being friends with their nephew. Even though I wasn’t even gay, and I didn’t even like U Jiheon in that way.
Of course, there had been a time when it was absurd, when I felt wronged. But I had no intention of picking apart who was right or wrong. It was already far too long ago for that. After eight years, it was only natural that even resentment, even love, would fade and dull with time. That was why I couldn’t understand U Jaemin’s actions even more.
“If you have nothing more to say, I’m hanging up. I’m going to block your number, so don’t contact me anymore.”
[Wait, Yunseong-a. The truth is, Jiheon injured his head badly.]
“…..”
[…Fortunately, he fell onto a parked car, so he didn’t die. But… he can’t remember anything from after he turned eighteen.]
“…What?”
I was left speechless. He lost his memory? Wasn’t that something that only happened in movies? For a moment, I considered whether U Jaemin’s words might be a lie, but he didn’t seem like the type to tell a lie that would be easily exposed. When I raked through my memories, eighteen was the time when U Jiheon and I were incredibly close and getting along famously. It was also the period when the guy, who couldn’t last a week with previous tutors because of his volatile personality, got along quite well with me alone and received boundless trust from his parents. But then, in the summer of his senior year, trouble arose at the worst possible time.
[Actually, when Jiheon was a senior… you didn’t give up on him.]
“…..”
[Since contact was suddenly cut off, you might think you just gave up… but back then, my aunt set a condition for Jiheon. She said if he got into our university through his own ability on the CSAT, she would allow him to see you.]
“…Are you kidding, with his grades? And suddenly in the summer of his senior year? That’s practically telling him to give up. And did I get no say in that decision? …Well… I guess she impulsively threw that out there thinking there was no chance he’d do it—]
[I thought so too back then. But… Jiheon got into our university’s business school. He couldn’t enroll, though.]
“…..”
[You know Jiheon is annoyingly resourceful. He aced the CSAT with his usual last-minute knack, didn’t he?]
I couldn’t believe that U Jiheon, who had been hovering between grades 5 and 6 on mock exams, had gotten into A University’s business school. And that was after starting to prepare when there were less than six months left until the CSAT. And to think that miraculous improvement in his grades had been for the sake of dating me. Even though it was all in the past, my head spun from the shock. I had no idea what to say.
[But after he actually got in, my aunt didn’t keep her promise. She enrolled him in a college in America.]
“He couldn’t even speak English for shit….”
[…Right. He must have had a terrible time studying abroad. A guy who had done whatever he wanted his whole life, unable to do as he pleased… it changes a person.]
“…..”
[My aunt forbade him from setting foot in Korea until he graduated from university. She was terrified. That her only son might turn gay. …What do you think his life was like?]
“…..”
[You know Jiheon’s personality. With everyone pandering to him, he was confident in everything, cocky… He was overbearing, but he’d been equally bright and cheerful. But after he turned twenty, Jiheon changed completely, like a different person.]
“…Stop. Anyway, he and I are—”
[After being forced to study abroad, he started going off the rails badly. He grew distant from his parents and now he’s practically estranged from them. Even after coming back to Korea two years ago, he kept causing one incident after another, completely out of control.]
“Jaemin. I know what you’re trying to say—”
[My aunt is so anxious. She’s afraid Jiheon might try to kill himself again if he gets his memories back—she’s even seeing a psychiatrist lately. She says she wants to compensate you with money or whatever. You know Jiheon’s personality. He can’t even get along with his caregivers.]
“…..”
[Yunseong-a, I know I have no right to say this… but please, just once, seriously consider it.]
“U Jaemin.”
[…Yeah.]
“I know why you contacted me. I know you’re trembling in fear that your cousin might die. No memory after eighteen? It just had to be the time when he and I were getting along so well.”
[So I’m asking you—]
“But Jaemin. What do you expect me to do if I meet him? His parents said they’ll compensate me with money or whatever? So should I take U Jiheon’s parents’ money and date him? What if Jiheon gets his memory back then?”
[……..]
“I… don’t want to start something I can’t take responsibility for. So stop it now, too.”
[Yunseong-a, Cha Yunseong, wait—]
Ignoring U Jaemin’s voice calling my name desperately, I ended the call. Honestly, for a moment, I felt an unwarranted sympathy for U Jiheon. It was an undeniable fact that his life had gone wrong because of me. But separate from sympathy or compassion, I didn’t want to feel responsible for his misfortune. Compassion I couldn’t take responsibility for would become poison for me, and for U Jiheon as well.
I let out a small sigh and looked at my laptop to write my resume again, but my mind was so chaotic that I couldn’t focus at all.
***
Standing in front of the apartment entrance three days after the funeral, my chest felt tight. I hadn’t wanted to come back here if I could help it, but I had no choice because I needed to do a minimum of cleaning before listing the house with a realtor. Besides, I couldn’t keep living in a motel forever.
I mechanically entered the passcode and slowly opened the front door, and the scenery of the silent house came into view. Inside the apartment, it was exactly as it had been when my mother passed away, as if time had stopped. In one corner of the narrow living room, bone-dry laundry was hung up, and in front of the TV, the cheap handbag my mother had bought recently lay overturned.
My heart pounded as if I were terrified, and my fingertips went numb. Swallowing down the urge to turn around and flee, I stepped into the living room, and the stench of rotting food waste stung my nose. Approaching the kitchen sink, I saw unwashed cups and the pot in which ramyeon had been boiled, left abandoned exactly as they were. I stood in front of the sink like a person gone blank for a while, staring at the small maggots born from the food waste.
The white creatures crawling slowly across the kitchen counter squirmed continuously to survive. Gazing at those repulsive lives, I suddenly thought about my mother’s life.
It was a life with far too many reasons to be unhappy. She had been an orphan from birth, had me by accident at barely twenty, and raised a son through grueling hardship at a young age, but life repaid her with nothing. She was diagnosed with liver cancer at the young age of forty.
But even in such difficult circumstances, my mother did not easily break. If she had been a weak person from the start, she would never have dared to raise a son alone at the tender age of twenty, having just taken off her school uniform. For a long time, my mother repeated surgeries and chemotherapy treatments, dreaming of a happy ending.
But was it wrong to hope for luck in an unhappy life? Even after undergoing surgery several times, the cancer metastasized to the point where it could no longer be cut out, and she had to have her liver removed, ultimately requiring a transplant…… For my mother and me, time and money were always in short supply.
My twenties always seemed like wandering through a long, dark tunnel with no exit in sight. Of course, it must have been the hardest time for my mother herself, but it couldn’t have been easy for the one watching, either. Fear always coexisted like insects crawling beneath the skin.
Then, a few years ago, my mother finally received a declaration of complete recovery from cancer. It was something everyone had thought impossible. But the joy was brief; misfortune revealed itself at the most careless moment, as if mocking us.