Chapter 75
Events from the distant past and relatively recent past sporadically popped up in my head before disappearing, repeating this cycle.
In the beginning there was you.
His email address “In the beginning there was you” contained a much more distant past than I had guessed. Looking back now, that phrase seemed to be his message aimed at me, sent to me.
The boy who had been around twelve or thirteen years old, well-behaved and mature to the point of seeming forced, and the twenty-year-old young man who had blushed from the moment our eyes met at the terrace seating of ‘Mio palazzo’.
When I was young… I spent a summer vacation in this region.
Where did you go. I came here because of my hyung…
Cigarettes… when did you start smoking?
Looking back again, these were stories that seemed to imply we had a connection from an even more distant point in time. How simple it is to pick out foreshadowing after all the circumstances become clear.
I didn’t even feel the motivation to look for more information. This much confirmation was enough.
The dark experiences of the past must have carved vivid marks inside me. Ominous and eerie marks like blue bruises.
On the surface, I seemed to live normally, but that was merely camouflage. It was like being in a permanent incubation period, never knowing when or where it might manifest.
The black hand that had grotesquely distorted my insides, the entity that had infected me with pathogens was his hyung… how could I tell him that?
Or would I have to live hiding it from him too? Every time I saw him, I would recall the secret, and eventually just seeing him itself, the very fact of hiding such a huge secret from him would become torture. In the end, I would even feel guilt about deceiving him.
For the same reason, hadn’t I left Paeli because of guilt toward my family?
I let my hands drop powerlessly. I stared blankly at the flowers he had sent me, which were closer to death than life. Then, as if possessed by something, I grabbed my phone. It had nothing to do with my will. I watched my hand finding his name in the call log and touching the screen with the detachment of watching an actor beyond the screen.
My heart seemed to have become numb, unable to feel anything.
[This is the first time. Hyung calling first.]
[……]
Only after hearing his delighted voice as soon as he answered the phone did I realize I hadn’t even planned what to say or how to bring it up. But no matter how much time passed, no plausible plan would form.
[What’s wrong? Don’t tell me you called by mistake?]
[Um…]
[……]
[I don’t think I can go to Hongcheon on Saturday.]
[Ah…]
He couldn’t hide his disappointment. However, on one hand, I could also sense resignation, as if he had been prepared for something like this to happen.
[Hmm… something important must have come up. I was happy that you prioritized it, but if it’s because of work, I understand there’s nothing we can do about it. I’m a working person too…]
Still, I can’t help but feel disappointed though. Hearing the voice that added this, I chewed on my lower lip as if biting it off.
[Knox Hotel…]
[Yes?]
[I got an advertisement offer from Knox Hotel.]
[Ah… it ended up going to hyung after all. That’s great.]
[You knew about it?]
[It’s a project Team 1 is handling, so our team only shared a brief overview… there were several candidates.]
[Lee Han-ssi’s influence wasn’t involved at all?]
[……]
My tone was somewhat sharp. I hadn’t intended to corner him.
Just as grabbing the phone hadn’t been my will, the words flowing from my lips also seemed like scripted lines rather than my own thoughts.
[Our meeting in Paeli seven years ago. That’s not all there is to it. Lee Han-ssi being… Lee Han of Hanseo Group. Why didn’t you tell me everything?]
[I was going to tell you when we went to Hongcheon. But is that… important?]
[……]
[Yes. When I was thirteen, I visited ‘Mio palazzo’ with my mother at Jung Jiin-ssi’s mother’s invitation. I spent two weeks with Jung Jiin-ssi’s family then… I continuously… wanted to meet again. That’s why I went back to find you. Is there any reason I shouldn’t be that child from back then? If I’m from Hanseo Group… does our relationship change?]
I clenched my fist tightly and lowered my head.
Hearing the situation through his voice made all those facts, even though I already knew them, feel painfully vivid.
The back of the t-shirt I was wearing was getting soaked with sweat. I hadn’t turned on the air conditioner or fan in the humid sweltering heat with August just around the corner.
I had tried to bury it. Since it had already happened and time couldn’t be turned back, I thought covering it up was the best option. That dwelling on feelings of injustice or resentment wouldn’t change anything.
But I felt like I would become strongly resentful. Like anger would boil up.
The person who had chased after the bastard who called me ‘vino da tavola’ and shoved him into the fountain. The person who had avenged the insult to me in my place.
If he learned the truth, he would probably… be more angry than me, more hurt than me. Just as I couldn’t reveal the secret to hurt my family, I couldn’t hurt him.
At my prolonged silence, he sighed.
[I’m tied up at the company right now and can’t even go see you, but if hyung does this… I feel like I’m going to go crazy.]
With a much softer voice, he carefully continued his next words.
[You’re not… trying to say we should break up or anything like that… are you?]
[……]
[No way. It can’t be.]
[……]
[……Right?]
The inside of my throat was parched as if I hadn’t spoken for a very long time. Even parting my pressed-together lips wasn’t easy.
[I just… want to have some time to think alone over the weekend.]
My voice was rough like scraping the bottom of a dried-up well. I clenched my fist even tighter, as if to dig my nails into flesh. I couldn’t lift my lowered head.
[Right now, that’s all I can… I’m sorry.]
■
“Appa!”
The twins ran into the arms of their adoptive father who was waiting at the airport exit. A man in an immaculate suit approached Jiin, who was slowly following behind them while pushing a cart loaded with luggage. Jiin handed over the cart handle to him, who appeared to be the adoptive father’s attendant, and stuck his empty hands into his coat pockets.
The parent-child reunion he watched from a few steps away was heartwarming. Even though the twins were approaching twenty, they didn’t spare their affection for the father they could only meet once or twice a year.
“Jiin, you should come give appa a hug too. We’re seeing each other for the first time in 5 years, won’t you even give me a hug?”
The adoptive father urged with a gentle smile, arms spread wide toward Jiin. Though hesitant, Jiin approached with a faint smile and wrapped his arms around the broad back.
He had said five years, but it was actually their first meeting in six years. Jiin had grown up calling him appa from his earliest memories, and even when they last met in Miami six years ago, he seemed to have called him appa quite naturally, but with the long gap, that word now felt awkward to him.
“Have you been well?”
“Yes, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you. I didn’t show it, but you don’t know how disappointed I was that you didn’t come all this time. Isn’t it wonderful that we’re all gathered like this? Come on, let’s hurry into Manhattan! Okay?”
After exiting the airport and crossing the traffic light, the adoptive father’s car was waiting in the pickup area. A large SUV reminiscent of an official vehicle had a driver and attendant seated in the very front row. The adoptive father seemed to be living quite luxuriously in New York as well.
The adoptive father from when Jiin was young had been a warm and cheerful person. A kind ‘father’ who liked to share his cooking with people, treasured time with family, and had a broad embrace that Jiin could run to and leap into without hesitation.
That same man gradually began to obsess over external honor and displaying wealth… and eventually that change might have been a major cause of the divorce. Jiin could only vaguely guess.
It was also around the time he began to change that he started becoming a distant and awkward presence inside Jiin. No, perhaps he had gradually begun to distance himself from Jiin after the twins, his biological children, were born. It was such a subtle change that it wasn’t immediately noticeable.
And his reaction to Jiin’s sexual identity would have been decisive.
It wasn’t a grand or solemn declaration. When such topics somehow came up at the dinner table, he had spoken naturally about it. At the time, Jiin had never doubted that his adoptive parents and younger siblings would accept that part of him without any particular discomfort.
However, the adoptive father’s reaction was different from expected.
He didn’t show outright displeasure. But awkwardness was felt. And sometimes cold gazes, as if looking at an unwelcome stranger, made Jiin hesitate.
After the divorce was finalized and the adoptive father returned to America, for a while Jiin had also traveled to America with the twins to meet their adoptive father. Like other divorced families around them, in Jiin’s family too, the divorce was accepted as an issue between the couple, unrelated to the children.
Moreover, mother had never spoken ill of the adoptive father or made statements blaming the divorce on him. There was no reason for Jiin and the twins to feel aversion toward their adoptive father.
However, as years passed, to the adoptive father, he himself seemed more like a guest than a child. There was no open discrimination between him and the twins. But he also didn’t feel the same strong intimacy as in childhood.
Gradually, Jiin began to avoid trips to America, using ‘Mio palazzo’ work as an excuse.
But this time, for some reason, the adoptive father had actively invited Jiin.
Though he was reluctant to leave mother alone during Christmas and the year-end season, the adoptive father’s invitation expressing disappointment that he hadn’t come to see him in too long wasn’t unpleasant. While consoling himself that mother was enough, he might have secretly missed paternal affection after all.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
