FBF chapter 16 part 3

Lee Jihoon’s father, who never arrives late, ended up getting to the hospital even earlier than expected. As he entered the hospital room, shaking off water from his hair, he was surprised to see me awake. Instead of showing concern for my condition, he picked up the bag I had placed on the fold-out bed, indicating it was time to go. I understood his intention but found it hard to leave.

Noticing I didn’t follow him, my father, who was trying not to wake my mother, mimed a question: “Why?”

I glanced at my mother lying in bed. My eyes then shifted to the IV drip, which had changed into solutions that I couldn’t read. Ultimately, I hesitated and spoke up.

“Dad, I don’t want to go.”

Without saying a word, he looked at me with an unreadable expression. My father, known for his warm smile, usually only bore that look when he was excessively sad or angry. Because I had insisted on staying with my mother until departure, my father had to wake up early even on weekends. Realizing it was unfair, I hesitated, knowing I had to speak.

“I had a dream…”

“…….”

“Anyway, it doesn’t feel like today is the day. I’ll call the coach and explain; can’t we just skip today? I won’t insist on anything after this, I promise. I’ll attend all the sessions from now on. Okay?”

While I had always been stubborn about staying in my mother’s hospital room, I had never missed training. If I sensed my mother was unwell, I focused my efforts on training more diligently, worried that the coach or director would inform her. My father noticed my unusual reluctance to skip training and showed hesitation, but he didn’t outright say not to go, implying he and my mother may have promised each other something about my participation. My parents made many promises that I would only understand later through results. The chatter of nurses nearby echoed louder in the silence my father maintained.

“Jihoon… Mom’s here.”

It wasn’t my father who broke the silence. As I quickly turned my head, I locked eyes with my mother, who was barely awake. With a sleepy face, she blinked slowly, and as soon as her focus returned, she smiled. Her voice, still drowsy, was softer than the sound of the rain.

“You can go and come back… I’ll still be here… What are you so afraid of?”

“…Mom.”

“It’s raining heavily. Be careful driving… and watch out when running… Just go back safely.”

My mother gave a gentle squeeze to my outstretched hand before letting go and drifting back to sleep. As I held onto her slipping hand tightly, my father approached me quietly.

“You need to listen to your mother.”

I finally looked away from my mother. My father was forcing me up from the fold-out bed. Still with red-rimmed eyes, he firmly grasped my arm.

“If anything happens, I’ll contact the coach immediately.”

“…….”

“Let’s go. We need to leave now to not be late.”

Reluctantly moving, I glanced back one last time. My mother was still asleep, tilting her head as usual towards the window, as if trying to hear the rain.

It was the second day of our training camp. They said the competing school had skills that were pretty equal, and it turned out to be true. The score was stagnant as we struggled on the field. Just when we managed to get a strikeout, our team’s batters would falter. Even in the bottom of the seventh inning, we were still at a tie.

To make things worse, it started to rain again. It was only a light drizzle, so it seemed that the directors were intending to finish the remaining game without stopping. The coach, who I glanced at, didn’t give me any signal even though our eyes met. I had to go on without a pitcher change. I squared my shoulders to relieve my stiff neck and assumed my position.

The opponent’s fourth batter was up, the one who had hit a home run earlier. He was a second-year student. He appeared to be fully focused. In the increasingly heavy rain, I could see his sharp gaze fixed on me. I held my breath and read his movements. One, two, three. The prolonged eye contact made the batter flinch. Now!

Clang, a swing and a miss. I saw the catcher lift his glove, and he tossed the ball back to me. That made it two strikes. One more would put our team into bat. I pretended to catch my breath, glancing away before looking back at my coach. He was watching me, holding his chin in his hand, but then he subtly turned his head away as if to avoid my gaze.

It felt strange. This can’t be right. He hated it when the team’s energy dipped during the match, and if I looked at him like that, he would usually yell at me to focus.

“Jihoon!”

It wasn’t until I heard my name called that I realized I had been blankly resting my glove on the ground. Even in a daze, my body acted as if it knew what to do. As I turned, the intensified rain poured down against my cap like a stinging insect.

Finally tearing my gaze from my coach, I could see the tense face of the opposing team’s fourth batter. One, two. Without even counting to three, I threw the ball. Clang, with that sound, I saw the catcher rise from his position. The ball was secured inside his glove.

The whistle blew. All my teammates scattered toward home base to prepare for the next inning.

I knew I had to join them, but instead, I walked away in the opposite direction. While my coach looked at me anxiously, the director furrowed his brow in confusion. It was clear that my coach had lost control of his expression. Normally, he wouldn’t have the luxury to worry about the expressions of those outside the game, not if my father wasn’t the one who had agreed to call him should something happen to my mother.

As I walked away, the mud puddles I stepped in soaked my pants. The sound of squelching shoes accompanied each step. I moved as if I had no time to care. I was walking to stand before the only person who knew something I hadn’t heard during the game.

Among the sounds of pouring rain, the sound of crying would surely seem insignificant.

“My mom….”

I could see my coach’s chin tremble slightly. Almost reading the answer before I asked, I confirmed it.

“She’s dead.”

The director turned, startled, to look at my coach. My coach, still tense, relaxed his tight lips and lowered his head. His barely perceptible nod silenced the surroundings, like the area was holding its breath. I felt the rain running down my face as I closed my eyes.

The world had ended. The problem was, that was the world that constituted me.

It rained throughout my mother’s funeral.

“Oh my, what is this…!”

Upon entering the house, my father realized what was happening and threw his umbrella aside, rushing out to the yard.

Laid out on the mat in the yard were the red peppers my father had dried the previous week. This was a familiar sight in our home, as it was something my mother always made sure of. She would say sunny days were ideal for drying them, and even from her hospital room, she would tell my father or me to spread some peppers out to dry in the yard as a habit. My father must have heard that just the day before she passed. Unlike my trivial thoughts of the necessity of spreading out the peppers, my father had placed them on the mat at a proper distance even after the rain, only to have them lose their vitality and spoil from being exposed to the downpour.

Under these circumstances, the peppers couldn’t be used for making chili powder or paste. Despite knowing this, my father, on his knees, hurried to gather the peppers from the mat. Thick raindrops constantly fell on his shoulders.

It was only then that I realized my own shoulders were also getting drenched as I heard the relentless sound of rain, as if it were echoing inside my skull.

“Don’t pick them up.”

As soon as I heard my trembling voice, I realized I had barely spoken throughout the last three days. My father turned to look at me, knowing I wouldn’t have hidden that fact from him. In the rain, I felt like I was looking at an illusion of my father’s face getting distorted. Yet he casually turned away again, ignoring my plea as he continued to gather the useless items from the mat.

With my mother now gone, I couldn’t stand my father acting as if she were still there.

“I said don’t pick them up.”

No matter how much I pleaded, my father didn’t listen. Even when a part of himself was drenched in sorrow, he stayed there almost laying on the mat, gathering every last one. He quietly collected something none of us needed.

In that moment, I understood. My father must have made another promise with my mother.

That he would carry on to ensure my life went well even without her, making sure to erase her absence too.

Cruel adults make such agreements without the child’s consent. They erase those who are unforgettable as if they had never existed, unaware that it is a form of violence. And in their acts of violence, they remain oblivious to the resentment brewing inside the child, vowing to go against it.

* * *

“Let’s go. You shouldn’t be here.”

I thought they would just walk past. Even when that guy stopped in front of an alley that looked like it was frequented by delinquents, I never imagined it was because of me. That was how it always was at school. Even when we happened to make eye contact, he would usually turn his head away and go his own way. I only ever locked eyes with him at times when I’d get caught for wearing inappropriate clothes at the school gate or sneak a smoke behind the incinerator, or when I walked home among a noisy group of friends. Those glaring eyes on me, which made me the most conspicuous, would soon shift elsewhere and return in less than three seconds. His unreadable expression remained the same. The only difference was that we happened to be in the same class, which meant I would have to see that expression more often. I didn’t need to read it to know that he looked at me with disdain. The shallow sigh I heard when he glanced at the career counseling form I had submitted with all the boxes empty proved that fact; anyone sane would have looked down on me.

There was no way a group teaching a middle schooler how to smoke was normal. The fact that I was entangled with them was the more ridiculous part. Ever since my mother passed, I had nightmare after nightmare without fail. They always featured my mother’s absence, as I continuously ran in the dark. My legs would swell to the point where I couldn’t run anymore, and only when I stumbled and fell would I wake up. Sweaty and panicked, I would sometimes hear my father’s muffled sobs from the hallway when I opened the door. My father only cried when he was sure I was asleep. He seemed to have been given that as a directive.

As I lay against the wall, gazing blankly at it, morning came. The fact that a day began without my mother made me angry every single day, no matter how many times I processed it. When my father, with his haggard face, urged me to eat breakfast, I would act as if I hadn’t heard him, packing my bag and leaving home. Outside the gate, I could see the things my father had thrown out belonging to my mom. I would take those items and hide them somewhere in the village, then once my father had headed out for work, I’d return home to hide some of them under my bed before going to school. This tedious routine repeated itself to the point of exhaustion.

It was easier to ruin my life than I had expected. It was simple and guiltless. I just needed to make sure my father loathed life enough to forget his sorrow and make my mother regret leaving me.

“Hey, come here.”

It was my first time being genuinely startled by Park Cheol-seung, who always seemed to just be a nuisance. I suddenly got scared, breaking into a sprint to block his path, only then realizing my guilt was tangible, crawling up my back. The boy who stood there, seemingly unbothered, was not the type to get involved in something like this unless I had provoked him in some way. Even though I didn’t know him well, that much was clear.

“Hey, he’s nothing, really. Just a nerd who studies. He doesn’t know anything, didn’t mean to say anything at all.”

While I blurted nonsense to prevent Park Cheol-seung, my focus kept drifting towards someone behind me. What if that guy really threw a punch? What if Park Cheol-seung dragged him into a gang? My mind was racing with worries. The kids who included me because they thought I might fit in, simply due to my outward appearance, might not feel the same about that guy. Just imagining that scenario caused me to break out in a cold sweat.

Park Cheol-seung was a dangerous guy. If one wasn’t like me, who had already decided to screw up their life, it was better to avoid him as much as possible. I knew that, yet the presence of someone behind me didn’t disappear. Rather, the harder I tried to push it away, the more insistent it seemed to linger.

Finally, Park Cheol-seung raised a hand. He really knew how to make someone feel miserable. Each impact felt more agonizing than the last, blood filling my mouth with a metallic taste. I swallowed it while desperately signaling with my eyes for the other guy to run away. I didn’t understand why he was still just standing still.

“Is this the police station?”

In an instant, everything cleared. The alley felt empty. A chill hit me. Park Cheol-seung was persistent, opposite of someone who had willingly chosen to ruin their life, ready to seek revenge, though he might initially have retreated upon hearing that I would call the police. I felt furious watching him upset the alley with his senseless behavior. I let out a burst of anger, shouting that he didn’t know who I was or why he was making this mess.

“Do you want to end up like those guys from earlier?”

But then he shot back with a response that left me speechless.

“Don’t do that. You don’t suit that kind of thing.”

It was like he had read every thought I had while staring at the wall in the early hours of the morning.

“Making the atmosphere awkward, trying to intimidate friends your age, associating with older guys who have nothing better to do, or smoking in sight of people you shouldn’t be doing it in front of.”

“…….”

“None of those behaviors benefit you.”

Whenever I jogged around the schoolyard, discarded cigarette butts crunched beneath my sliders as I stepped on them, or when I’d take a seat at the back of the city bus while spitting onto the floor, I felt like he understood everything. Yet, even within that understanding, he had the audacity to tell me to step out.

And so I realized—it wasn’t that he thought I was pathetic every time he looked at me. Maybe he genuinely wanted to help, something I had never once imagined. He accepted the blow I threw right away, responding to stories I had yet to ask about.

His expression was so devoid of emotion that I finally understood it was his armor.

“Value those who will cry for you.”

“…….”

“No matter how much you squeeze into an ill-fitting coat, you’re not that kind of person. I just wanted to tell you that it seems you’re the one who doesn’t know that fact, one I do even though I don’t know you well.”

Brushing off remnants of his presence, he stepped out of the alley. I stared blankly at the figure that had left, having just missed the opportunity to leave before ending up here, and eventually stood up.

While sitting at the bus stop, tears suddenly welled up in my eyes. I felt guilty. Not because my cheeks hurt from the punches Park Cheol-seung had dealt me but because I felt sorry for making a bruise bloom on the cheek of a kid who had likely never been hit before. Though our misfortunes came from different places, I acted out in a self-destructive manner while he bore his unhappiness in life, draped in armor he had created for himself. I wiped my tears with my fist, stepped into the pharmacy tucked behind the bus stop, and although I knew there was bacitracin at home, I rummaged through my pockets to buy another tube. I decided that I needed to somehow deliver it through Kang Youngsoo.

My father cried when he saw me come home, dragging my grandfather’s hand. It was the first time I had seen him sob deeply, shaking and crying like a child, after only reddening at the funeral. I realized it was because he had held back his tears, thinking he couldn’t show them in front of me since I was holding back my own. After seeing my eyes swollen, my father seemed to find permission to express his grief. Without feeling the slightest hint of shame, we just cried, looking at each other for a long while. We exchanged apologies, only to later say it was alright. But as that dragged on, it became awkward, and so I eventually blamed my hunger to excuse myself. After eating a bowl of ramen my father made, who looked woefully swollen out of concern, I tossed a blanket over him as he dozed in front of the television before stepping out again.

My steps led me naturally to my grandfather’s house. I still had the bacitracin I hadn’t been able to give him earlier in my pocket. My grandfather’s house had a low stone wall, allowing me to see whether the lights were on before stepping in.

I stepped back, craning my neck to peek inside. The room where my grandfather usually slept was dark, but a faint light shone through the room next to the storeroom. It didn’t seem like he was asleep. Right as I was contemplating whether to go in and give it to him, the light spilling from my grandfather’s yard vanished. The light from the storeroom next door had gone out.

“Ugh, damn it.”

I snapped back to reality, momentarily forgetting about the bacitracin in my pocket, and checked my wristwatch. It was precisely twelve o’clock.

Could it be he sleeps on a schedule? I could bet he might do just that. Though I had only caught a glimpse earlier, a stopwatch was always on his desk, as if he timed himself whenever he solved problems.

Now that I think about it, Kang Youngsoo was said to be the top of his class or something. Perhaps I should have paid more attention, and as I felt regret for the first time, I checked the yard once more. The two rooms separated by a maru (wooden floor) were both dark. Those inside must have been asleep too.

I dragged my slippers and returned home. Without covering myself with the blanket I had used to tuck in my father, I laid a pillow beneath his neck and after washing up, I headed to my room. I checked to see if the bacitracin I had left on the desk when I entered was still there and then flopped onto my bed.

Lying there, staring at the ceiling instead of the wall was a rare occurrence for me. Every time I gazed at the patternless ceiling of our house, it reminded me of the hospital’s ceiling I looked up at while lying on the fold-out bed, which had troubled me. In that position, I placed my hands on my stomach.

I pondered how I would hand the bacitracin to him when we met at the bus stop tomorrow, and then thought about how I should approach him. It seemed I had never properly called his name once.

“Not Seong-uk, but Seon-uk. Ji Seon-uk.”

I remembered a voice lacking any fluctuation from when someone once corrected my name.

Not his last name, but first. Repeating it a few times to memorize, I closed my eyes.

He is Seon. Seon. Do not forget.

For the first time since my mother passed away, I didn’t have a nightmare that night.