“Hey, big brother, you’re already getting quite a paunch down there,” Minu said with a laugh the next day.
Junshik had just gotten home from teaching, and he was peeling off his undershirt, which was soaked through with sweat. Minu had only been with them for two days, but he already seemed as comfortable as if he were living at home. He’d probably meant the comment as a good-natured joke, but it made Junshik blush, as he’d just been humiliated.
“It’s inevitable as you get older when you don’t get enough exercise,” Junshik said, directing his words at his wife.
But she just gave him a contemptuous once-over. “Why don’t you just admit you tend to get fat?”
“Yes, you’re so right!” Minu said. “You know, even when we were kids, he already had a little belly. It was plump like a tadpole’s.”
Damn, Junshik thought. These two are really getting along. He forced himself to smile. “Hey,” he said. “I had a distended belly because I wasn’t getting enough to eat!”
“Your little brother looks better in just his undershirt,” Junshik’s wife said to him, smiling toward Minu.
Junshik couldn’t help noticing the strange heat in her gaze, but he did his best to ignore that impression. Maybe he was just being hypersensitive, but as his wife had just noticed, it was easy to guess that, under his own T-shirt, Minu was concealing an athletic physique. When they were children, Junshik had thought of Minu as a weakling, but now, to his great surprise, his younger brother was solid muscle without an ounce of fat.
“Sangmi, do you want to sing with Uncle?” Minu asked Junshik’s daughter.
She immediately climbed up onto his lap as if she’d been waiting for permission. She seemed to have gotten attached to Minu very quickly, without the slightest bit of self-consciousness. Whether it was with children or adults, Minu had always had this surprising gift of instantly gaining trust.
“Throw the pebble—splash, splash—don’t let big sister know…”
They started singing together and his wife joined in. Listening to the three of them, Junshik did not know what to do. It would have been only natural for him to join in, but he simply could not do it. What was it? He felt like a stranger. This moment seemed to belong only to the three of them, and for him to participate would have been immensely difficult. Junshik watched his wife kneeling there, singing the chorus in a soft voice. He was surprised to see that her face was flushed, rosy as the setting sun.
“Dad! Dad! Why aren’t you singing? Don’t you know this song?”
“Yeah, I do. But I’m going to bed. I’m tired….”
Junshik got up and went to his bedroom without even switching on the light. As he lay down in the dark, he could hear their voices: his wife, Sangmi, and Minu singing together in the living room.
“Throw the pebble—splash, splash—don’t let big sister know. Let the river flow away, far, far away…”
Their singing seemed ever so clear and serene to him. But he could not go into the living room and join in. He tossed and turned, suffering alone in the stifling, dark room. It wasn’t so much jealousy he felt, but self-loathing and the bitter disappointment of betrayal. The kind of sadness he felt when he was being punished as a child, when he had to watch from afar as the rest of his family was gathered around the table.
Why couldn’t he be out there with them? No matter how much he thought about it, Junshik couldn’t keep from clenching his teeth as he lay there, alone and in the dark.
“Would you like to hear a song I loved when I was little?” his wife asked his brother.
The more Junshik tried to fall asleep, the more agitated he became, and that made him even more attentive to the sounds coming from the living room. His wife began to sing.
“When the evening starlight shines on the branches of the elm tree, I miss my old friend…”
Her dreamy voice, filled with a secret sadness, echoed peacefully in the darkness of the summer night.
“Oh, that’s such a beautiful song,” Minu said. “I’ve never heard it before.”
“When I was little, I had tears in my eyes every time I sang this. Funny, isn’t it? And now I’m singing it to myself in my mind whenever I feel sad. I imagine an old friend…. I don’t even have a face or a name, but I imagine he’s waiting for me somewhere, just like in the song, and it makes me feel better….”
She had never shared that story with Junshik. She must have been keeping it from him all this time. And he had never heard her, either, speaking in that dreamy voice. He was at his wit’s end. Why was she telling this to his brother? Why reveal to him feelings that she’d kept to herself for so long?
When they had been working in the same office at school, she had never shown any interest in Junshik. She was cute, and he slowly became attracted to her, but it seemed to him that she must be dating someone. And since she didn’t bother to hide her coldness toward him, he had never dared to try speaking to her. Until one day, when he walked into the office after work and found her sitting by herself, crying. He was embarrassed, and he hadn’t known how to react. He couldn’t exactly pretend not to see her and just walk out—she was crying so hard—but he also hadn’t felt able to ask what was wrong. After crying for a good long time, she was the one who ended up asking him, “Will you buy me a drink tonight?” So that night he shared a drink with her for the first time, and two months later, they were married. And yet, even now, he still did not know the cause of her tears.
Junshik realized he knew very little about his wife, after all. They’d been together for six years now, but he’d never been able to penetrate inside her heart. Why was she giving up her secrets so easily to Minu?
His fury turned from his wife to his brother. Who the hell is this guy, anyway? What is he up to now? What was he doing before he got here? Minu hadn’t said much. He’d remained evasive about his past and about the reason why he had to stay with Junshik.
They were no longer singing in the living room. Junshik could only hear two voices talking. Unable to bear it any longer, he opened the door and went to the refrigerator, pretending he was thirsty and getting water. His wife was so wrapped up in her conversation with Minu that she didn’t even notice him. He walked over to the small room that Minu occupied. He searched through the clothes that were hanging there, and he felt a wallet in one of the pockets.
Junshik’s hands were shaking as he opened it. His heart pounded. He felt like a criminal. But he found nothing special—just an identity card, a few business cards, and some one thousand won bills—nothing that indicated who this man was or where he’d come from. He was about to put the wallet back in its place when he felt something a little stiff. It was a photograph, stuck in the back compartment. A young woman. She must have been about twenty—not beautiful, but cute. On the back of the photo were a few words written in ballpoint:
“The long and steep path you wanted to walk, I would always walk it with you. Mihye.”
Junshik quickly put the wallet back, afraid Minu might appear. When he was back in his bedroom, he lay down again in the dark. After a long while, his wife finally came to bed, their daughter in her arms.
“What sort of story could be that interesting?” Junshik asked as she put their daughter down.
“Hey, weren’t you asleep?” she said, startled. “I thought you’d gone to bed.”
Grinding his teeth alone in the dark, enduring the pain, and this is what it came to. He felt terribly spiteful.
“I think he’s so pure and innocent,” she said, sitting at her dressing table. “Since I’ve gotten to know him better.”
“Pure? Really?” Junshik turned to his wife’s face reflected in the mirror. It was white, covered in cold cream.
“Yes, really,” she said. “It’s been so long since I’ve met someone who’s still pure like that. It reminds me of the past, right? It makes me realize we’ve become too dirty. Oh, there was a time when I was pure, too.”
Hearing those words made Junshik seethe with anger. Is purity and innocence what keeps us fed? he thought. Does she think I chose this life because I gave up on my ideals? But he didn’t want to get into it at the moment with her. He chuckled. “Sure, he’s pure and innocent. How else can he stay here living off of us if he wasn’t pure and innocent?” he said.
“What are you saying? He’s your brother! And he’s so grateful to us for being welcoming to him.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Being grateful for the hospitality you get—that’s real purity and innocence, isn’t it?”
She turned and looked Junshik straight in the eye. “Oh, you’re so narrow-minded,” she said.