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Grandmother was blunt, but on the other hand, she took care of him meticulously and thoroughly.
On elementary school entrance day, seeing Bunhong who came to the predetermined location wearing a school bag bought from a department store and dressed neatly for his first day of school, she said:
“You must always dress well, smile, and behave politely wherever you go.”
Looking at her grandson who was grinning broadly, she stood silently for a while, then turned her head. Though she quickly wiped it away to regain her usual flawless appearance, it was the first time he had seen tears.
‘So adults cry too.’
He was curious about why Grandmother was crying, but she acted like someone who didn’t want to be caught crying, so he held back and didn’t ask.
“That way people won’t look down on you outside either.”
It was incomprehensible words. So he couldn’t answer.
Shortly after, several relatives who had never been seen before approached Grandmother to talk to her, and Bunhong was naturally left alone.
Bunhong, who had been just blinking his eyes silently, finally looked around. The atmosphere was excessively solemn. He could feel it just from the flow of the air. And everyone was wearing black clothes.
‘Where is this place?’
On the sign posted in front of the elevator he had seen on the way, it said <Funeral Hall>, which seemed to be the name of this place.
“Bunhong is still too young to be the chief mourner, so it would be better to have Uncle Minsik do it instead.”
“Can you contact that guy?”
The voices so low that you had to hold your breath and concentrate to hear them only uttered words that were difficult to understand. Adult conversations were that secretive.
Before he knew it, the place had changed to inside a classroom. In Bunhong’s heart, who had been led by an adult’s hand and left with other children in an unfamiliar place, there was only the wish to quickly return home and hide inside his blankets.
“Hey, want some candy?”
“Huh?”
His seatmate who was sitting next to him shyly extended his small finger and offered candy. Saying thank you, Bunhong smiled brightly. As soon as he received the gift, other children who had been watching from various places flocked over and surrounded him.
“What’s your name?”
“You’re really pretty.”
“Aren’t you going to be on TV later?”
It was the first time he received such intense interest. School life was enjoyable after becoming a popular star.
As is typical for that age group, girls didn’t particularly like boys their age. They were childish and only played mean pranks. But they seemed to think Bunhong was different from them, so their attitude toward him was quite favorable.
However, contrary to their thoughts, Bunhong still had the habit of unconsciously sucking his fingers sometimes.
To maintain that image the girls wanted, Bunhong would unknowingly put his fingers in his mouth and then quickly pull them out in case others might see.
“Bunhong is different.”
“His face is like a young nobleman too.”
“Right.”
“He’s handsome!”
Really? Am I special? He seemed bewildered.
‘I’m… not though.’
Bunhong sometimes felt like he himself was stopped. And that time and place was that night when his parents left, at Grandmother’s house. The five-year-old boy was still endlessly waiting for them.
As always when evening approached, the moon floating in the sky faintly shone even during the day, though not clearly, as if waiting for its time to sparkle soon.
Bunhong plugged in his MP3 player. It was a fascinating device that could hold about a hundred songs in a small machine. It was like a portable radio he could carry around. So it was a friend who could always be with him.
From school to home was about four bus stops away, but Bunhong deliberately didn’t take the bus and walked home. After listening to music for a while, he would arrive home.
Humming and walking down the street, by the time he reached home, the sun would gradually begin to set.
Music didn’t remain as simple song sounds, but mixed with the scenery. With the air of each moment, and through the gaps between gaps. As if filling the blanks between the spaces of the heart.
‘I’m not alone.’
So he could not be lonely. Because it was always with him.
“You don’t have a mom and dad, right?”
When he heard those words, rather than feeling humiliated, it was a moment when a certain premonition he had been carrying became certainty and established itself as a presence before his eyes, so he was rather unaffected.
He just understood the meaning of why Grandmother had so earnestly told him to live without shame.
‘They’re not there.’
They told me to wait, but they’re not coming. No, they won’t come. So from some point on, it seemed like he stopped waiting.
As he became able to count numbers well, he could feel even intuitively that much more time had passed than the twenty nights they had promised.
That it was already too late to come back.
“Don’t say that to Bunhong!”
Even while saying that, Bunhong pretended not to see the surrounding friends who were hesitantly stepping backward and instead laughed.
They were all still too young to accept the concept of not having parents. Friends gradually began to avoid him. It was a society where deficiency became a disability.
That’s just how that era was. Even though society is rapidly changing now, at that time, such discriminatory atmosphere was prevalent in the social climate itself.
So he became alone again.
It was after that when he started studying. Since the absence of parents had established itself as a deep-rooted inferiority complex from childhood, achieving something was important.
From middle school, he moved and grew up in a different environment, so there were many people around him again. Even in an environment where he could easily go astray, Bunhong maintained a sincere life.
Since his inherent nature was like that, he approached given tasks more faithfully than anyone. During his school days when he was devoted to studying, he made preparation and review as natural as breathing.
He really did it ‘like breathing’ without any purpose or meaning.
Write down your dream.
That’s why when he first faced that question, he had no choice but to turn away. So he didn’t study as a means to get that answer. It’s just that everyone has beliefs.
When he took his first test at school and received his first report card after staying up all night studying hard, Bunhong realized:
‘Ah. Grades come out as much as you work hard!’
The reward was as sweet as the time he put in. The fact that there was something that could be achieved just by working hard served as a great sense of accomplishment.
After realizing that, though he was already like this before, he never once tried to be lazy. Kim Bunhong was the only student who actually did the teacher’s half-joking homework of writing lines corresponding to the number of wrong answers.
From some point on, he developed techniques for studying, and as he worked hard, his grades improved proportionally and his skills shot up.
‘Perfect score Bunhong’, ‘School’s top student Bunhong’, etc. These were all nicknames people called him. Teachers would jokingly say to students who did well on tests that ‘pink flowers bloomed on the test paper.’
He never felt good about such praise.
A model student who quietly only studied was followed by some respect regardless of family environment, so he just chose that path. It wasn’t that he wanted to become a judge or prosecutor like adults said.
It’s just that in his world, it was as natural as breathing that those who worked hard took that much achievement.
‘Even studying hard doesn’t work’ – among friends who said that, he had never seen anyone who slept less than Bunhong or whose hands became black and who solved problem books so many times they turned yellow and worn out.
Since he had no particular desire to do something or dream of becoming something, life was just like that. No one noticed such boredom of his. Anyway, on the surface he was a flawless model student. Because he acted for a moderately ordinary life.
Pretending to be happy, pretending to have grown up loved, pretending to have grown up in a normal family. He smiled brightly and wore a mask. Because he thought that if he showed any crumbling side, people would dislike and leave him like his childhood friends.
For fear of being abandoned.
“I heard the school trip is going to Japan.”
“Ah. I went to Osaka. We should rather go to Europe.”
It seemed like he was the only one excited because he had never been abroad at all. When asked, “Where have you been, Bunhong?”
“Me too, Japan…”
That’s how he had answered.
Lying was easy. It was just a small lie that wouldn’t harm anyone. Because it was trivial and very minor lies in daily life, if he just set up a few settings in advance, there was no worry of being caught and it passed by without incident every time. So even though the size might be small, the number of times he lied only kept increasing.
As expected, there was nothing that couldn’t be done with effort. He built a world on a sandcastle that could collapse at any time. Meticulously and thoroughly, he drew a blueprint with care and created a new persona, fitting himself into it.
As a result, even if not on the inside, on the outside Kim Bunhong looked like a flawless, very happy child.
Because effort never betrays you. That one sentence was the truth that ran through Bunhong’s life.
When he first became a trainee and took the monthly evaluation, he received the lowest rank for the first time, but he didn’t feel frustrated or anything like that.
‘Of course I don’t have the basics.’
If he worked that hard, practiced without sleeping when others slept and improved his skills, his rank would naturally rise. As always.
Because the world is fair and generous to those who work hard.
His belief was never betrayed, so despite the training period of only a few months, he was eventually able to join the debut group. He didn’t know then that he was lucky to debut because his color matched the group they originally intended to debut.
Life always had answers. The power that led Bunhong to where those answers lay was ‘effort’. It was the truth of the world, a force stronger than the gravity that pulls objects to Earth.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
