Christina’s birthday party was being held at a well-kept two-story house in the suburbs. The bright lights, lively music, and laughter filling every corner of the place made me forget the stress of school, if only for a moment.
When I arrived at the party, I spotted Armando waiting for me by the entrance, his face already tense.
“Brian! You’re late!”
Armando kept pressing at his wristwatch, and it was obvious he was wound up tight. As someone who had already experienced life as a married man, I was certain things weren’t going to turn out well for Armando today.
“Sorry, I was looking over some materials. But what’s with that look on your face? Anyone would think you were heading off to war.”
Unable to hide his excitement, Armando kept turning his head, scanning the party.
“Christina’s already here, but… there hasn’t been a good moment to talk to her. Look over there. She’s constantly surrounded by people!”
At the end of Armando’s gaze was Christina, at the center of the party with her blond hair and bright smile. Students clustered around her like honeybees around a queen bee.
She might not be on Chloe’s level—the girl they called the queen at school—but she was certainly beautiful.
“So you haven’t even managed to talk to her?”
“It wouldn’t be natural!”
“Ugh, fine. Don’t rush it. I’ll think of something, so calm down.”
I slowly looked around the noisy party. Then one person caught my eye. Chloe Harris. She was wearing a stylish black dress, quietly laughing and chatting with her friends. I carefully approached her and spoke.
“Hey, Chloe.”
“Huh? Brian? You really came?”
Chloe gave me a quick once-over from head to toe, then smiled. Since it was a party, I’d simply dressed neatly, but I couldn’t quite figure out what that smile meant.
“What? Did you think I wouldn’t come?”
“Mm, not exactly.”
“Anyway, I said I had a favor to ask, remember?”
After saying that, I stepped a little closer to Chloe and spoke in a whisper.
“You know my friend Armando over there? He really wants to talk to Christina, but he hasn’t had a chance. Could you maybe bring Christina over to us naturally?”
Chloe looked at me again with a curious glint in her eyes. After seeming to think it over for a moment, she nodded.
“Well, that shouldn’t be hard. But in return, you have to do me a favor later.”
“Of course. Just say the word anytime.”
Chloe soon went over to Christina and said something to her. A moment later, Christina began walking toward us with Chloe. Seeing that, Armando grabbed me and shook me as if he were about to stop breathing.
“She’s coming! Christina’s coming! Aaaah, I think my heart’s going to burst!”
“Get it together. Smile naturally. Ah, close your mouth. Stop shaking your leg!”
When Chloe arrived beside us with Christina, I greeted her naturally.
“Happy birthday, Christina.”
“Oh, thank you, Brian. Thanks for coming too.”
Chloe skillfully guided the conversation and introduced Armando. Though awkward at first, Armando soon eased into the atmosphere and managed to say a few words.
“Hi, Christina. Happy birthday. You look pretty today.”
“Thank you. You look nice today too.”
“Hahahahaha… Do I?”
The mood was gradually improving. But at that moment, a handsome giant of a man nearly 190 centimeters tall came up beside Chloe and gently wrapped an arm around her waist. It was none other than her boyfriend and the captain of the football team, Evan Creed.
“Chloe, they’re looking for you over there. Let’s go.”
“Okay, got it. Sorry, I’ll go first. Have fun!”
As soon as Chloe left, Christina returned to the friends calling for her nearby, and Armando merely stared blankly at her retreating back.
“How could you just let her go like that?”
When I pressed him, Armando turned back to me with a dazed expression.
“What was I supposed to do, not let her go?”
“You idiot! You should’ve grabbed onto the conversation somehow, no matter what topic you brought up!”
“Then you should’ve told me!”
“How was I supposed to say that out loud!”
“Damn it! Christina…”
The wistful look in Armando’s eyes was so disgusting I could hardly stand to watch.
“Ugh!”
“What? Is there a problem?”
“Forget it. Let’s call it a day and go.”
“Go? Already?”
“It’s already over. If you get drunk here? I guarantee you’ll lose your chance forever. If you end things cleanly here, another chance will come someday.”
“You’re telling me to leave Christina here with alcohol and men?”
“…Stop talking nonsense and let’s go. You’ll get another chance.”
And so, I took the gloomy Armando and left the party. Since I had borrowed my father’s car today, I drove Armando home and casually asked him along the way.
“Was there anything special at Silver Oak Farm?”
“Huh? Ah… it was kind of absurd when I went.”
“Absurd? What was absurd?”
“From the moment they called us in, they kept emphasizing, ‘We use organic farming methods.’ And then they had a few workers sprinkle stuff like organic fertilizer.”
“And?”
He tilted his head, then continued.
“But after all the farm work was done and I was about to leave, I suddenly wondered if it was really okay to just go home like that. You know? It’d mean I just worked hard and left!”
“That’s… true, I guess?”
“Exactly! So I pretended to leave, then acted like I was casually looking around and headed toward the warehouse. There were still a lot of workers who hadn’t gone home yet. The same workers who had been applying that organic fertilizer I mentioned earlier. And you know me—I can’t stand being curious. I wanted to know what kind of organic farming method they were using, so I went into the warehouse, and there were containers I’d seen plenty of times before.”
“What kind?”
Armando spoke as if he were an archaeologist who had made a great discovery.
“Pesticides.”
“What?”
Even I was surprised this time. To advertise organic farming and then shamelessly spray pesticides like that…
“Those bastards! They’re pulling a stunt so they can advertise wine made from organically grown Cabernet Sauvignon!”
“Exactly!”
“Goo~od!”
Excited, I high-fived Armando while driving.
“It would’ve been the perfect day if only you’d managed to win Christina over too.”
“You’ll get another chance. You saw it earlier, didn’t you? Christina greeted you really brightly.”
Armando tilted his head.
“So what? Does that mean she likes me?”
“You idiot! It means, at the very least, she doesn’t find you repulsive.”
“What’s that supposed to be? That’s all?”
“That’s where things start with women. What matters now is how you build your image from here on out. Anyway, good job.”
“Since I did this much for you, if I have nowhere to go after graduation, I can work at your farm, right?”
“…Y-Yeah. Then… of course.”
‘What’s going on? Is his family that hard up?’
I was flustered, but farms were always short on workers anyway, so there was no reason to refuse. After dropping Armando off in front of his house and returning home, it was already past nine at night.
“You’re home early.”
“It’s already past nine, you know?”
“Good. Do you know how worried I am that you might get influenced by strange kids in America? They do drugs and things at parties, don’t they?”
“…You really don’t have to worry about that. But where’s Dad?”
“Your father’s studying right now. He’s been like that all the time lately.”
My father, who had run a business in Korea, had never studied anything other than language, at least not that I’d seen before his death in my previous life. Maybe it was because I hadn’t paid enough attention to him. Or if not that, then perhaps he simply hadn’t had a reason to study.
“He’s studying grapes?”
“Yes. I think he borrowed books from the library. He brought an English dictionary and has been struggling through them, so don’t go bother him.”
Even if he could handle basic conversation, books that required specialized knowledge were bound to have a lot of unfamiliar words.
“Let me know what books they are later.”
“Why?”
“So I can recommend ones that suit him.”
“Ah~ That might work. All right. I’ll sneak a look later.”
“Okay.”
I went into my room, washed up, and lay down on my bed, and all sorts of thoughts came to me. In particular, memories of resenting my father after we decided to immigrate to America came rushing in painfully.
The memories of being torn away from familiar surroundings and friends, of the despair I felt when I faced gazes filled with hatred toward me—and how I had projected all of that onto my father.
‘I won’t do that anymore.’
With that vow, I closed my eyes.
*
Three days later, the wine facility we had been waiting for was finally available for use.
“Once it’s been cleaned out, it actually looks pretty good, doesn’t it?”
The building with the winemaking equipment had looked fairly decent to begin with, but after repairs and a thorough cleaning, it was only natural that it looked even better.
Beside the equipment, the three of us had also moved a large amount of grapes from the storage shed.
“Will this really work?”
My worried mother asked.
“How do we start now?”
And seeing my father, eyes sharp with determination to learn, I smiled softly.
First, I walked up to the large vat of the equipment and placed my hand on it.
“This is the press. First, we put the harvested grapes in here and squeeze out the juice. We shouldn’t press too hard. If we gently press them and extract the grape juice, we’ll get a cleaner juice with less astringency.”
“But can vinegar really be made with grapes that are this… subpar?”
The grapes in the box right beside us, the ones with low commercial value, definitely lacked the firm plumpness of high-grade fruit, and some of them were rotten here and there.
Mother put one of them in her mouth and immediately grimaced.
“Ugh… it tastes awful.”
“Why would you eat it if you knew it wouldn’t taste good?”
“I just felt like trying one. They really aren’t in good shape.”
Unlike Campbell grapes or wild grapes, which were commonly eaten in Korea, Cabernet Sauvignon wasn’t something people normally ate raw. The reason was that its skin was thick, tough, and highly astringent, while its seeds were large and its acidity strong.
In short, Cabernet Sauvignon was a grape that tasted bad if you simply ate it.
“Vinegar doesn’t depend on quality as heavily as wine does, even if the grapes have low commercial value, so you don’t have to worry. After pressing here, we move the juice directly to the fermentation tank. This is the fermentation tank.”
I moved beside the equipment and pointed to a tall, round stainless steel tank. Mother and Father followed me and peered inside.
“After adding the grape juice, we put in a little yeast and maintain a steady temperature. Then the yeast consumes the sugar in the grape juice and turns it into alcohol. This is the primary alcoholic fermentation process.”
“Then it becomes liquor? If you drink it, you get drunk?”
At Mother’s cute question, I burst into laughter.
“That’s right, it becomes alcohol. But what we’re trying to make isn’t liquor, it’s vinegar. We ferment this alcohol one more time through acetic acid fermentation to make vinegar.”
“Oh~ Our son is a professor.”
‘I really was a doctor, though…’
Just then, the cell phone stuffed in my back pocket suddenly vibrated. The vibration was surprisingly intense.
Bzzzz…
After my phone shook my butt once, I took it out and saw that a message had arrived. But its contents were surprising.
- Help me out. Can you come to our farm this weekend? from Chloe
“Huh? How does she know my number?”
“Why? Who is it?”
At Mother’s question, I quickly replied that I understood and put the phone back in my pocket. I didn’t want Mother getting strange ideas for no reason.
“It’s nothing.”
But then I suddenly grew curious about why Chloe was calling me to her farm.
‘Did she say they ran a cherry farm? What’s this about?’