“Next stop Nokcheon! Nokcheon Station! Exit through the left.”
Uh, uh, uh…Something like a groan leaked from Minu’s mouth as he had a bad dream sitting asleep next to Junshik in the hot and crowded train. The worn-out old fans hanging here and there stirred the air, but the car wasn’t properly air-conditioned and it was suffocatingly hot inside. Minu slept with his mouth half-open, his head resting uncomfortably against Junshik’s shoulder, his face covered in a sheen of greasy sweat.
Is this guy really my brother? Junshik asked himself. A sour smell wafted from Minu’s sky-blue shirt, which was soaked in perspiration and probably hadn’t been washed in days. His sunburned face was covered in a scraggly beard, but in his dark eyebrows and his thin, refined nose, he seemed to have retained his former looks. He still appeared to be carved from the same mold as their father, who was now buried in the ground. But was this because they’d met again after so much time had passed? Junshik wondered.
He found it strange that the more he looked at his brother, the more he seemed to be looking at the face of a complete stranger.
“This stop Nokcheon! Nokcheon Station! Exit through the left door, please.”
The train began slowing down. Junshik shook Minu by the shoulder. “Ah!” he cried out, opening his eyes wide, startled out of a deep sleep. He looked around for a moment as if he were confused about where he was, and when his eyes met Junshik’s, he smiled awkwardly.
“How can you sleep like that?” Junshik said. “We have to get off here.”
“Get off here? This is where you live?”
Minu looked out of the window, blinking, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Outside, there wasn’t a single light—nothing to see but darkness. But just then the door opened wide and there was no time for Junshik to explain.
After the train had left them with a loud blast of wind, they were the only two people on the platform at Nokcheon Station. It was as if they’d been abandoned, surrounded by darkness in the middle of a desolate field.
“Did we get off at the right stop?” Minu asked, glancing suspiciously around. “When you said you were living in an apartment, I was expecting you’d be in a regular apartment complex.”
“It’s still under construction. It’ll be a proper development soon enough.” Junshik took the lead and walked toward the exit.
Minu’s suspicion was not unreasonable. Everything around the station was a bleak construction site: pits freshly dug into the earth and buildings going up. Past the mysterious cement structures was a stream flowing with black wastewater from a factory. It had to be crossed to get to the site of the apartment building Junshik had moved in to. From where they stood, it was still out of view.
“Nokcheon. That’s one poetic name,” Minu said to himself, looking at the sign on top of the station platform. Junshik looked up, too, at the lettering brightly lit up in the darkness.
Nokcheon 鹿川—Deer Creek. Junshik had first started using this station only a week ago, that is, since moving to the neighborhood. Even then he couldn’t understand how the place had gotten such a lofty-sounding name, right out of a classical poem. He still didn’t have an answer. He had looked all around and come to the conclusion that the only explanation was the pathetic little creek that flowed near the station, but it was long dead and thick with sewage and factory wastewater. Perhaps in some misty past there had been an occasion when a few roe deer had come down from the mountain to drink there, but now that name had a ring of terrible irony that verged on sarcasm.
“Which way do we go?” Minu said. “I don’t see a path.”
“Just follow me.”
Down the stairs from the train platform, they were in the construction site not illuminated by a single light. Junshik walked first into the darkness.
“What’s this terrible smell around here, anyway?” Minu asked. He looked around, his nostrils flaring.
As soon as they’d entered the construction site, an unbearable stench permeated the hot and humid air. It was like the smell of massive heaps of rotting garbage, sewage, and wastewater all blended together. And there was another thing that couldn’t be ignored: the smell of shit.
They couldn’t see it now in the dark, but Junshik knew that the area around Nokcheon was entirely covered in shit—and that was no exaggeration. Nearby were makeshift eateries and shabby tented food stalls clustered around the train station to provide liquor and food for the workers, in addition to buildings that served as the field offices for the construction sites. But for some reason no one had given any thought to installing proper facilities. If you walked behind the construction sites to get to the train station, you were sure to see piles of human excrement in any dark or secluded spot. The terrible stench was inevitable, but on a sweltering night like this, it was all the more intense.
A light in a distant corner of the construction site cast long shadows of the two men. They didn’t look much like brothers.
First of all, they were different heights. Junshik was short and in his mid-thirties, but was already developing a paunch. His arms and his legs were spindly and weak, giving his whole body the appearance of something precariously out of balance. Minu, on the other hand, stood at least a head taller and had a slim, athletic physique.
Junshik looked at Minu, who was walking quietly in the dark. Even now, there were too many things he didn’t know about his younger brother. No, it would have been more accurate to say that he knew virtually nothing. But then again, Minu had suddenly reappeared after ten long years.
“He says he’s your brother,” the waitress had said that afternoon, handing Junshik the phone. The voice had come over the line: “Junshik, it’s me. It’s been a really long time….” And even then he hadn’t completely understood that it was Minu on the other end. It was as if, in the past few years, he’d entirely forgotten that he had a younger brother.
They had been separated since Minu was fourteen, when he ran away from home and went to Seoul. Junshik had seen him only twice since then: once after going home for their father’s funeral, and another time—while Junshik was doing his military service—Minu had come to visit him when he was near the Military Demarcation Line along the 38th Parallel. On that occasion, Minu had been wearing the patch of Korea’s top university on his chest. Ten years had passed since then. By now he should have been an elite employee of a multinational corporation or at least a high-ranking civil servant. But that day, when Junshik had gotten the phone call and gone to meet him at the café, Minu’s appearance had shocked him. He looked like some common day laborer who had just slipped away from a construction site. They had tea together at the café and then went to a restaurant nearby to have some grilled meat and drinks. Even so, Minu didn’t tell Junshik anything about himself, only that the small business he’d established during that time had had some problems, leaving him in difficult circumstances.
As they passed between the half-finished buildings, they could finally see the lights of the apartments in the distance across the creek. There, the construction was finished and the buildings were already occupied.
“Is that it?” Minu asked.
They stopped walking for a moment to admire the sight. Stretched out in the darkness, their countless lights blazing, the buildings felt unreal, like a gigantic theatrical backdrop. And among that wilderness of lights, one of them was where Junshik lived.
“Hey, we’ve finally arrived at our place.”
That was the same thing his wife had said only last week when they’d arrived in front of the apartment building with their moving truck loaded with all their possessions. It was true—before finally being able to afford their own place, they had traveled a long, hard road. The apartment they had just bought was located in a remote part of the enormous complex called Sanggye-dong New City, and in a far corner on the first floor of a fifteen-story high-rise. The first-floor corner apartments, as everyone knew, were cheaper than other units with the same number of pyeong in the same type of building in similar districts. Those apartments were less expensive and had the lowest investment value. But no matter the value, the most important thing was that, as Junshik’s wife had said, they finally had their “real home.” After failing the housing lottery nine times, Junshik had felt like he’d finally struck it rich when he picked a good number. From the time of his birth until now, he had become so acclimated to misfortune that he found his sudden good luck hard to believe.
When he’d first come to Seoul and worked as a gofer at the school, he had slept in a tiny room under a staircase. Later, he’d rented a room for thirty thousand won a month in a shabby neighborhood nearby. It was a room where the ceiling leaked like a sieve whenever it rained. Even after he got married, their first nest was a rented room in the basement of someone’s house. The ceiling was so low the wardrobe his wife brought with her would not fit, and so he had to saw off the legs, making her as upset as if her own legs had been amputated. After living there two years they’d moved to a slightly better place, this time on the first floor of someone’s house. But the second floor of the building next door—whose eaves were practically connected to theirs—was rented by a Protestant church, of all things. Every day they were forced to listen to the noise of hymns and the pastor’s sermons with calls for repentance and the cries of “Amen” blasting through the loudspeakers. And because it wasn’t properly heated, there wasn’t a day when their breastfeeding daughter didn’t have a cold; she eventually had to get injections for pneumonia. But now all the heartache of living in the rentals was ancient history. Now Junshik was the proud owner of a twenty-three-pyeong apartment with three bedrooms, a small living room, and all the hot water he could ever want gushing from the taps. He could use as much water as he wanted, go around making lots of noise, and there was no one he had to worry about or be considerate of. And not least, of course, he no longer had to worry about the rent going up.
“Why are you home so late?”
He heard his wife’s voice even before the door was quite open.
“And you’re empty-handed. Did you forget again? How can you be so absent-minded? Did you forget or is it that you don’t care? After I told you again this morning…”
She showered Junshik with criticism before he could even say anything to explain himself. He had forgotten to buy a goldfish aquarium. When they moved to the new apartment, his wife had set three goals: first, to install an aquarium in the living room, and then to set up first video, then audio equipment. Those three things were what you needed in a living room to not appear worse off than others. They’d moved around living in small rented rooms until then, so they hadn’t given much thought to properly setting up their home. But now that they were full-fledged apartment owners, she intended to decorate their place so it looked like the “interiors”—or whatever—that were published in women’s magazines. With Junshik’s circumstances, it wasn’t going to be easy to get a video or audio set right away, but installing an aquarium was a goal easily achieved even now. There were no shops yet in the area around their apartment, so he was going to have to buy one near his workplace and bring it home. The reason he hadn’t bought one that day wasn’t because he had forgotten his wife’s request—it was because he had met Minu.
Instead of answering, Junshik turned to Minu, who was standing behind him, and said, “Come on in.”
His wife’s eyes went wide when she saw. “Who is this?” she asked. It was an entirely different tone of voice.
“Hello, sister-in-law. Pleased to meet you.”
“What? Who are you?” Her expression was both surprised and terribly embarrassed, which was only natural, since Junshik had never once brought a guest home with him since their marriage, and now there was a complete stranger calling her sister-in-law and whatnot.
“This is Minu, my little brother,” Junshik said.
“What are you talking about? Little brother?”
“Don’t you remember? I told you I had a younger brother and we’d been separated for a long time?”
“Oh…” She nodded her head vaguely up and down. But her expression still said she didn’t entirely understand what was going on.
No sooner had Minu stepped inside when she grimaced and pinched her nose. It was because of the awful smell coming from his feet. She hated the smell of dirty feet. Minu must not have changed his socks in several days; they were stained in dirt and his big toes were sticking out. But Minu, oblivious, without any sense of honoring their privacy, walked around the apartment opening door after door, and yet it was Junshik and his wife who were flustered and embarrassed. Minu, meanwhile, looked at their sleeping daughter’s face—even gave her a kiss—and then joked with Junshik’s wife.
“You’re more beautiful than I imagined. My brother’s a lucky man.”
“What a thing to say…” She blushed a little, but didn’t seem displeased. While Junshik felt happy to see his brother so at ease, the words “more than I imagined” gave him a strange feeling for some reason.
“It’s late, so why don’t you get some sleep?” Junshik’s wife said to Minu. “I’ll get the room ready for you.”
After she had gone into the bedroom, the two men sat there for a moment in silence. Junshik couldn’t help but be deeply moved by the fact that his little brother had sought him out and was now sitting there across from him in his home. There should have been a wealth of stories piled up, waiting to be told, but strangely, in the reality of the moment, there didn’t seem to be anything appropriate to say. It seemed the same for Minu.
“It looks like you have a great place here,” he said, looking around once again. “How many pyeong is it?”
“Twenty-three on paper, but it’s really only sixteen or seventeen.” Junshik paused for a moment. “It was my dream for so long,” he added, “and it’s finally come true.”
“Isn’t this one of those neighborhoods where they had to force the old occupants out so they could put up the new apartments?”
“Yeah. But was that reason enough for me to turn down a place here?”
“I just said that because it came to mind,” Minu said. “Anyway, congratulations on your dream coming true, big brother.” He smiled.
Junshik thought his brother might have found what he’d said childish, but regardless of what Minu might think, he hadn’t been exaggerating one bit. For Junshik, it was the truth. They sat there in silence again until Minu suddenly yawned.
“You must be tired. Why don’t you get some sleep?” Junshik said, getting up.
When he went into the bedroom, his wife was lying down facing the wall. He could tell she wasn’t in a good mood. He lay down beside her, hoping she was asleep.
“What am I supposed to do when you bring some guest without even telling me?” she said suddenly.
Junshik explained that it wasn’t his fault, that Minu had appeared suddenly without notice. He added that Minu was not “some guest” but his little brother.
“But you could at least have given me a call, right?”
He told her that he was sorry, that he hadn’t had a moment to call her. When he apologized, she was quiet for a long while, as if she didn’t know what more to say, and then she asked him what in the world his brother did for a living to be looking like that.
“That’s right…. I always thought he was going to be a success,” Junshik said. “From the time he was little, everyone talked about how smart he was. He told me he started a business with a friend, but it went under and now it looks like he’s having a hard time just making do.”
He vacillated about whether or not to tell her that Minu would need to stay with them for a while.
“If he’s your brother, how could you have no contact for so long?”
“Because we have different mothers. Way back, when my father was a schoolteacher, he fell in love with one of his colleagues. That’s how Minu was born. His mother raised him at first, but she remarried and Minu came to live with us. We were together for a few years after that until my mother passed away, and then his mother came and took him back. We’re half brothers, but we have different surnames.”
“It sounds like your family was a real headache.” She said nothing more.
Junshik couldn’t fall asleep. He tossed and turned in the dark, old images floating up from the depths of his memories like frames of a faded film. He was in second grade. One day, when he got home from school, he noticed something strange in the air he had never felt before. His mother should have been working at her stall at the market, but she was sitting at one end of the raised wooden floor staring blankly into space. When her eyes met his she just let out a sigh. Not a word was said. Then he noticed the unfamiliar shoes left on the stepping stone under the floor. They were small shoes—for a child of five or six—shoes that were hard to get at the time. He threw his schoolbag on the floor and opened the door to the bedroom. He was stunned: inside was his father, who had been gone for several days, and seated in front of him was a stranger: a young boy with big, shining eyes. Junshik turned around, about to shut the door and quickly get out, but he was interrupted by his father’s sharp voice.
“You insolent brat! When you see your father, you say hello. Where are you running off to? Come here!”
Junshik walked cautiously into the room.
“This is your little brother. From now on, you take good care of him, understand?”
Junshik just nodded, not speaking, watching the boy out of the corners of his eyes. The boy, pale-skinned and pretty like a girl, was regarding him furtively with eyes full of suspicion. He was wearing shorts and knee socks—it was the first time Junshik had ever seen a boy in knee socks like that, just like a girl. He simply could not believe that this pretty boy, dressed like a spoiled rich kid, could be his brother.
Junshik ran out of the room to his mother, who was still sitting in the same place on the floor.
“That boy in the room,” he said. “Is he really my little brother?”
She nodded without a word.
“Why didn’t he come out of you? Why did Dad bring him? Did he find him abandoned under a bridge?”
His mother didn’t answer. She just let out a sigh that could have split the earth. Junshik could tell from his mother’s behavior that this was some serious secret, but he couldn’t ask her anything more. Then he saw a book bag lying in a corner. It was made of leather and looked brand-new. He opened it and found a pencil case, notebooks, and other school supplies, all brand-new.
Just then the boy suddenly ran out of the room after him, screaming, “It’s mine! Don’t touch it!”
He grabbed the book bag away from Junshik and burst into tears. It seemed that he had been waiting for this opportunity, and when he started wailing, the bedroom door flew open. Their father ran out, grabbed Junshik, and started mercilessly beating him on the head.
“What am I going to do with you, boy? I told you to take good care of your brother. Why did you make him cry? You little punk!”
Junshik lit a cigarette in the dark and put it between his lips. His chest was heavy and sore on one side as if someone had punched him there. His father was in the grave now, but there were still lots of things he wanted to say to him. He was still full of resentment toward his father, who had left the world without giving him a chance to spew out all the things he was holding inside.
“Hey, put out that cigarette!” his wife said in annoyance.
He’d thought she was asleep.