The Ones Who Have Been Forgotten
ʚ Title: The Ones Who Have Been Forgotten for meanie_minnie ♡
ʚ Pairing(s): Kyungsoo/Yixing
ʚ Rating: PG-13
ʚ Word count: 3,958 words
ʚ Summary: At fifteen, could he have expected to become such a miserable old man, who had accomplished and would be remembered for nothing? Or was that his lot in life, just by being human?
ʚ Author’s notes/Messages for the recipient: Based on A Werewolf Boy.
Present
The bride and groom look miserable. Kyungsoo kneels down, aims the camera at them. “Kimchi,” he says, willing his arms not to shake as he takes the picture.
His son sits in the back somewhere, no doubt arms crossed over his chest, waiting to go home. Kyungsoo doesn’t blame him; this wedding reception is an awful affair in the basement of some seedy Korean restaurant downtown. Children run around underfoot, while their parents stay seated and quiet, eying the dance floor maliciously. The food is tasteless; the wedding cake is chalky and sticks to the back of Kyungsoo’s throat.
The wedding was a month ago in Seoul, but they only returned to New York last weekend. The couple looks uncomfortable; they are being trotted out as showpieces for the parents to boast over, so that’s fair. It’s not an occasion either of them would wish to remember.
Kyungsoo doesn’t “play with his camera” much anymore, as Minah put it, but it was a favor that the bride’s parents asked of him. His son looks put out that he had to drive Kyungsoo here, since Kyungsoo doesn’t have an American license. Yet he does tuck away the yaksik without a second thought.
He turns away, chuckling to himself, remembering the way Minah used to coax Kyungduk into trying the same food as a child. Kyungduk always scrunched his little face into a cranky grimace; it’s coincidently quite similar to the look that Kyungduk is wearing now, but it does not look as cute on an adult.
Past
They don’t talk much about Kyungsoo’s father. Kyungsoo keeps his old sketchbook in his bedside table, his pencils in the mug on his desk where he does his homework. From time to time, he flips through the scribbles of flowers, stopping at the study of Seungsoo in their mother’s arms.
It seems to be etched with love and care, but that doesn’t explain why Kyungsoo only knows his father’s name and that he inherited the same eyes. The songs his mother sings when she’s lonely and drunk at night, and she thinks that Kyungsoo and his brother are asleep, tell him much more about the man who abandoned his family.
Seungsoo is no help, always pretending to be something he’s not. He acts in the school theater club. Their mother forces Kyungsoo to attend every show.
All it does is remind Kyungsoo of what he wants to be - more than just a face, or a mask, or a sad song sung in the dark. As placement exams approach, Kyungsoo thinks that he would want to be someone that the world knows. Someone not easily forgotten.
Of course, he doesn’t expect the sudden dizzy spells, the shortness of breath that spring. His mother, hovering worried, over his bed.
Out of school for months, he wonders. Will his friends even remember him?
Present
Kyungduk leaves while the bride’s father is trying to inconspicuously stuff an envelope full of money into Kyungsoo’s breast pocket. “You gave it back, right, Dad?” is the first thing that Kyungduk says, when Kyungsoo slowly lowers himself into the front passenger seat of the van.
It smells like fries and black coffee, since Kyungduk’s wife had taken the children to a fast food drive through after their doctor’s appointment today. Minah had protested, citing the benefits of Korean food; Kyungsoo had snorted to himself, thinking of the irony of the situation. Sohee had just shrugged in that way that meant she wasn’t going to listen to her in-laws anytime soon.
“Do you want some salad, halmeoni?” she asked Minah, with that sly look on her face.
Kyungsoo had reached over and squeezed Minah’s hand. Sohee and Kyungduk often left them at home when they go out somewhere special with the children; as a result, Minah lived vicariously through their grandchildren’s stories, told in a strange mix of Korean and English. “No,” Minah replied. “I think I will wait to eat at home.”
“Okay, halmeoni,” Sohee said, clearly relieved not to go to the expense.
Kyungsoo sometimes wonders how they went so wrong in their choice of a daughter-in-law. At the matseon, Sohee had been sweet, polite in her hanbok, slow and careful as she poured tea for them. Kyungduk had taken to her right away. It didn’t hurt that she was a doctor, currently practicing in America.
Minah likes to remind him that Sohee had remained kind, until Kyungsoo and Minah had come to stay with their son and his family. It took a year to receive their green cards, another couple of months to gather the paperwork to apply for Minyoung’s visa. The weeks played their toll; now Sohee is barely civil to Minah in public.
“Of course not,” Kyungsoo replies to his son, feeling the heft of the envelope under his vest. What Kyungduk doesn’t know won’t hurt him, Kyungsoo reasons, shifting the camera on his lap.
Past
Seungsoo complains, but their mother will not be moved. The doctor has recommended the countryside for Kyungsoo’s health, and so they leave the city in their little car, a large cart with all their possessions hitched to the back. Their destination is his mother’s childhood home, empty and shuttered since her parents died.
Kyungsoo doesn’t say much. He knows this trip is for his benefit, but he doesn’t want to leave home.
In the night, Kyungsoo awakes to his mother leaning over his bed, ruffling his hair. “I don’t want to lose you as well,” she whispers.
The house is intimidating as they pull into the yard. Seungsoo shrugs and hoists a chair. Kyungsoo reaches for a bag, but his mother swats his hands away. “Go rest, don’t strain yourself,” she says in that busybody way, that a recuperating Kyungsoo hates.
A strange pair of hands takes the bag instead. Kyungsoo and his mother look up. A wizened old man grins at them. “Nice to meet you, neighbor,” he says, shaking Kyungsoo’s mother’s hand. “We’d be glad to help.”
They seem to pour out of the woodwork, these country folk, but they get Kyungsoo and his family settled quite quickly. His mother feeds them in return, waving the last one off at dusk.
Seungsoo sets off to explore the house, but Kyungsoo is pinned to the table by his mother’s gaze. She brings out a wrapped box. “A present.”
He opens it, cautiously. He finds a camera, staring at it, dumbstruck. “I know you’re angry about what has happened,” his mother says. “But let’s make good memories.”
Kyungsoo forgets that he’s fifteen, and throws his arms around his mother. She laughs.
They stop when they hear a sound outside. Seungsoo appears in the doorway, brow furrowed. “What was that?”
Kyungsoo’s mother slowly opens the door. “You boys stay back,” she warns, but Seungsoo wraps his fingers around the shaft of the broom.
Kyungsoo can’t see anything. His mother takes a lamp and shines it about. “Oh!”
It’s a boy, dirty and unkempt, crouching by the brush. He looks feral and mistreated, but Kyungsoo’s mother easily lures him into the house.
“He must be one of those orphans from the war,” Kyungsoo’s mother says. And that is that.
Present
When Kyungsoo came, he had aimed to get a job to help out his son’s household. After a miserable engagement at a grocery store that ended in him throwing his back while hefting a crate of eggplant, Kyungsoo mostly spends his days running after Kyungduk’s children. It’s not terrible, but sometimes he finds Minah staring longingly at the calendar in the kitchen, one that shows distant landscapes that are different than New York. He understands that feeling.
They’re here so that Minyoung and her husband can come here. Kyungsoo reminds himself of this everyday, but it’s hard to remember even the simplest of things, now, like where he put his glasses. Minah is worse sometimes; he often catches her looking at albums, fingers touching memories that she now memorizes instead of recalls.
The trials of old age.
Kyungduk and Kyungsoo don’t talk much in the car, on the way home. Kyungduk says, “I’d like it if you didn’t accept these kinds of gigs, Dad, as much.”
“Why not?” Kyungsoo asks.
Kyungsoo doesn’t have many assets left; he sold the convenience store that he and Minah ran together for twenty years, as well as the flat situated above it, before he left Korea. The money from photography gives him and Minah some leeway. He doesn’t like asking his own son for money.
“You know.” Kyungduk stretches in the driver’s seat at a red light. “It’s a pain for me or Sohee to drive you around. And you’re not really a photographer, just an amateur.”
These are valid excuses, but Kyungsoo can hear the thinly veiled truth. Kyungduk is ashamed of his old father, doesn’t want other people to think that he needs his father’s help to pay for household things.
He thinks of Minyoung, her sweet face kissing him goodbye at the airport. His son-in-law smiled, shook his hand firmly, but Kyungsoo knows better than to trust any of that now.
“We’ll see,” Kyungsoo says. He can feel Kyungduk bristle beside him, but Kyungsoo just stares out at the dark night instead.
Past
It takes a few days for all the grime to fully wash off, but what results is a handsome boy with dimples and shaggy hair. He doesn’t like having his hair cut, they discover, but he’s also not listed by any local registry. It only reinforces Kyungsoo’s mother’s suspicious, as well as “aggravates” her nurturing side, as Seungsoo says.
Seungsoo is a university student, traveling back and forth on weekends. His mother works a series of odd jobs in town. So it falls to Kyungsoo to try to civilize this young man, which turns to be no easy task.
Kyungsoo’s mother tries to explain it, but Kyungsoo doesn’t understand how a human orphan could turn into this. Yixing buries his head in a plate when Kyungsoo carefully presents food before him. He runs, instead of walking, dragging Kyungsoo behind him at a breakneck pace.
He slowly opens up, but he is affectionate like a dog, kissing their faces sloppily. Kyungsoo always gets the brunt of it, much to Seungsoo’s amusement.
But Kyungsoo finds that he is easily molded, and learns quickly. In spending time with Yixing, who never minds Kyungsoo reading out loud, he almost forgets his friends in the city, so easily forgetting him as well.
The neighbors call their adoptee Wolf Boy, because some habits never change. Yixing, as Kyungsoo names him, is lethargic and sleepy most of the time. But there’s always a spark of tension and mischief underneath, that frankly unsettles Kyungsoo in a way he can’t explain.
“Tell me who you are,” he demands of Yixing. But Yixing only looks back, his eyes telling of more worlds than his lead tongue could ever.
Present
The children are still awake when the two men return home, mostly because Sohee is laughing uproariously on the phone in the living room. Minah greets them at the door, bouncing little Taeryong on her shoulder. “It’s a friend from high school,” she explains skeptically.
Kyungduk pushes aside Minkyung, staring up at him with wide eyes, clutching onto her little blanket. “I have some work to do,” he says, before sweeping upstairs.
“It looks like I got you, baby girl,” Kyungsoo says to Minkyung. But her mouth trembles, and she pushes Kyungsoo away with little hands. “I want Daddy!” she shouts, running into the kitchen as she bawls.
Eventually she tires herself out in that fashion, until she falls asleep a full forty minutes after colicky Taeryong. Minah and Kyungsoo sit, looking out the window in the children’s bedroom. Minah would sleep on the floor in there if she could, but Sohee frowns upon that, saying that the children need to be taught to be “independent.”
“They’re children,” Minah says. At first, Kyungsoo thinks that she is reading his mind, but then he realizes that she is talking about Minkyung’s rejection. “They don’t mean anything by it.”
“No,” Kyungsoo agrees, as his wife leans into his shoulder. When did the white in her hair outbalance the gray? He thinks instead, We’ll be dead and forgotten by the time they can remember us.
“Call waiting!” Sohee shouts. Taeryong’s little fingers curl into fists defensively; Minah strokes his back.
“Haraboji,” Sohee says after a pause. Kyungsoo can imagine her standing at the foot of the stairs, holding the cordless phone in one hand. “Phone for you.”
Kyungsoo has no explanations for the confusion on Minah’s face as he leaves her side.
Past
Over time, the town gets used to seeing Kyungsoo and Yixing together. Kyungsoo enunciating his words, supporting Yixing, who cannot stand up straight.
They had taken him to a doctor, but the man had shook his head. “There were some things that Yixing would never be able to do,” he said. “Don’t expect much more than you would from a five year old.”
Kyungsoo bristles at the words, though. Yixing is strong, always eager to help Kyungsoo fetch the kindling for the stove fire or lift heavy boxes. He sits quietly when Kyungsoo can’t breathe, fetching the medicine Kyungsoo asks for instead.
He covers Kyungsoo with a blanket, when he falls asleep reading at night.
Kyungsoo takes many pictures of Yixing; he wants to remember everything.
Present
Kyungduk covers the price of the plane tickets for himself and Kyungsoo. Minyoung meets them at the airport, explaining that her husband is out of town. Kyungsoo is relieved.
Minyoung can pick up on the tension between the two of them. “Dad, is everything alright?” she asks into his ear in the taxi.
“Fine,” he replies, tugging at her ear like he did when she was five. She smiles for him.
Kyungduk sits in the front with the taxi driver. “Seoul’s changed a lot since the last time I was here,” he says, staring at the buildings and advertisements they pass.
Minyoung rolls her eyes. “When was that, five years ago?”
“It really has changed!” her brother says.
Kyungsoo is amused by the easy descent into childhood bickering, but he would prefer it when he wasn’t present. “Have you hired a driver to take us to the old house?” he asks his daughter.
She shakes her head. “I rented a car, figured I’d drive you there myself.” Kyungsoo cannot express how grateful he is to hear that - four hours in a car with Kyungduk sounds like torture.
“How come we’ve never been there before?” Kyungduk asks. “This so-called ancestral home.”
Kyungsoo slouches in the back seat, his arms falling over his eyes. He’s not so young anymore; traveling for a day straight tires him easily. “It’s been a while since I’ve been there as well,” he says. The questions stop after that; the bickering, unfortunately, does not.
Past
Now that Kyungsoo has a companion, he takes walks with Yixing around the surrounding countryside. Kyungsoo’s mother worries as they roam around by themselves. “We’re fine, Mother,” Kyungsoo reassures her. “I’m much stronger now.”
She smiles at him, but it is uneasy. Kyungsoo comes to realize that there were other things, other people she had in mind.
It’s one day, when they’re approaching the town from the slightly seedier side. Kyungsoo has never been in this particular neighborhood, but he doesn’t think much of it. He opts instead to hurry Yixing along, knowing that Yixing is an easy target because of the lack of sentience in his eyes.
“Hey!” Sure enough, a group of drunks have spotted them. “What’s wrong with you, boy?”
Kyungsoo tucks his head down, but Yixing digs in his heels. “Yixing, we have to go,” he whispers furiously.
“And you!” One of them says, laughing with yellow teeth in Kyungsoo’s face. He pokes him, painfully, in the side. “You’re a skinny kid, aren’t you?”
Kyungsoo is still weak. He falls in the dust, and the man rears back to kick him in the side.
It’s one moment when Yixing is behind Kyungsoo, thin and pale as before, his bangs falling into his eyes. Then his hand twists out of his grip and he falls to the ground as he snarls.
Then he lunges at them. Kyungsoo screams, seeing blood. He runs.
Present
The house is as Kyungsoo remembers, the old wooden beams and honey rafters low over his head. Kyungduk walks into a couple, when Kyungsoo forgets to remind him.
Minyoung laughs at him. “You’re so clumsy.”
Kyungsoo hasn’t been here in years. How had he forgotten the old oak table, where his mother entertained all the movers who helped them transfer their possessions from the cart into the house? And his old bedroom, the wardrobe in the same corner it was fifty years ago.
There are differences, of course. A newfangled stove, washing machine and dryer, air conditioning. It is expected. From what Kyungsoo knows, the house was rented for visitors to Suwon year-round.
The cupboards are filled, thanks to a distant cousin of Kyungsoo’s who’s really Minyoung’s age. They roll out blankets and prepare to stay the night.
Kyungduk has never been a nervous, frightful child, but he fumbles his spoon as they eat a small meal together before the fireplace. “Did you see something in the window?” he demands.
Minyoung and Kyungsoo look, but there’s nothing there. “I’m afraid you’re seeing things,” Minyoung teases.
“I’m not,” Kyungduk says petulantly. Again, not a good look.
Kyungsoo pushes his plate to the center of the table. He hasn’t eaten much. “I’ll go see.”
“Dad.” Kyungduk looks alarmed. “It’s alright, it really isn’t a big deal. I can go look around later-”
Kyungsoo shakes his head. “You don’t know the property like I do. I will bring a flashlight with me.” Really, he just wants to look around, without his kids.
Past
Seungsoo shouts as soon as Kyungsoo opens his eyes. His mother grabs onto him fiercely.
“What happened?” Kyungsoo asks, disoriented.
It turns out that he fell as he ran home, and the breathing problems flared up again. “But where’s Yixing?” Kyungsoo asks.
Seungsoo leaves the room. His mother looks away. “Kyungsoo, we need to go.”
He doesn’t understand why they are packing so suddenly. Seungsoo finally explains. “That Yixing is a danger, attacked a group of men in town. He probably tried to attack you, too.”
“No, he didn’t,” Kyungsoo protests. “He was protecting me from them.”
Seungsoo’s eyes slide behind him in that adult way. “You probably don’t remember how it really happened.” No matter how Kyungsoo tries to argue, Seungsoo will not change his mind.
At night, he slips away to the old barn. He knows that sometimes Yixing hid here, when he missed the natural world.
The same eyes meet his. “Yixing!” he says. Yixing bowls him over in affection, and Kyungsoo laughs. “I didn’t know where you were,” he says. “I was worried about you, too.”
Then he freezes. He hears chanting in the distance, barking dogs and the clank of metal. “They’re coming for you,” he says. Yixing looks confused. “You need to leave!”
Yixing presses closer, but Kyungsoo can’t bear it. He pulls Yixing after them. The villagers follow but Kyungsoo runs and runs, until his feet are bloody. Yixing is still with him.
“Stay and wait for me,” Kyungsoo says. “I’ll let you know when the coast is clear, okay?”
Yixing catches onto his sleeve, as the sounds of the dogs grow louder. “Don’t go.”
For a moment, Kyungsoo can only stare. Then his voice breaks into a sob as he tears himself away. “I promise I’ll come back.”
His last memory of Yixing is distinct - of him waiting in the moonlight as Kyungsoo limps home, trying not to cough too hard.
Present
He calls Minah before he goes out. “Don’t do anything silly,” she tells him, worried. He laughs and teases her, feeling the old affection for his wife flare up again. But she is not deterred. “I know you have strong memories of that place, but it is no longer the same. Time has passed.”
As he opens the back door, he is instantly reminded of doing the same motion, so many years ago. Fifteen years old, opening the back gate as the sun rose. Time has passed, he realizes, and it has not been good to him. That much Kyungsoo knows for sure.
Kyungsoo walks the perimeter of the property, but sees nothing until a shape flickers at the edge of the woods. “Who is it?” he asks, lifting the light. “Come out and show your face.”
The person slowly makes his way towards Kyungsoo, crouching against the ground. Kyungsoo is alarmed until the light shines off the other person’s face; his breath catches in his throat.
The dimples are the same, as they have always been.
“Yixing?” he whispers. “Is that you?”
The hair, the eyes - the smile; they’re all the same. It’s both dizzying and horrifying. But then, Yixing was never a normal boy.
Yixing comes close, holding a book Kyungsoo recognizes. His stomach drops; his mouth twists, a sudden sour taste. He feels guilty - so, so guilty. “I waited,” the same voice says, stilted. “For you.”
Past
The sheets are sterile when he wakes up, but they still irritate his skin. “Oh, Kyungsoo!” his mother exclaims, when she notices.
Seungsoo chuckles from the window. “About time, Kyungsoo. You had us worried.”
Kyungsoo rolls over. “We’re in Seoul?”
“Of course,” his mother says.
“What about Yixing?”
They both look at him. “Who?”
There are no answers to be found, and eventually Kyungsoo stops asking questions. Kyungsoo develops every roll of film in his camera, but Yixing is nowhere. Eventually, he decides it must have all been a dream.
After all, a photograph never lies. The camera conveys truthfully his friendship with his college roommates, his love for Minah at their wedding. His amazement, holding a tiny Kyungduk; his pride, in opening his own business at Minah’s urging.
But still Kyungsoo wonders; yet he never went back. Eventually, he forgets, the memory fading just as good dreams slip away in the morning.
Present
In the barn, Kyungsoo falls asleep to the strange rhythm of Yixing reading to him. In the morning, he is alone in the hay, a blanket draped over him.. He quickly gets up, making coffee for Minyoung and Kyungduk, before they worry.
He can tell that his children are eager to leave, just as he is. He can see Yixing out of the corner of his eye, watching as they load up the car with their overnight bags.
He resists the urge to tell Kyungduk to speed up as they drive out of the yard and onto the main road. If he could, he’d run away from this place, from all his regrets and sorrows.
At fifteen, could he have expected to become such a miserable old man, who had accomplished and would be remembered for nothing? Or was that his lot in life, just by being human?
“It’s a nice house,” Kyungduk says at last. “Minyoung, you know anyone who would buy it?”
Kyungsoo can see her tilting her head thoughtfully in the rearview mirror. He thinks that Yixing is streaking in the woods after them, though that is not the case. He is still waiting for Kyungsoo on the ancestral property, forgotten, frozen in time. “I know a professor,” she begins.
“No,” Kyungsoo says, thinking of dimples. Both of his children turn to him in surprise. “I will not sell that house.”
As they begin to protest, Kyungsoo turns his head to the window. He surely imagines Yixing staring back at him, from the line of trees.
How did I forget you?
ʚ Pairing(s): Kyungsoo/Yixing
ʚ Rating: PG-13
ʚ Word count: 3,958 words
ʚ Summary: At fifteen, could he have expected to become such a miserable old man, who had accomplished and would be remembered for nothing? Or was that his lot in life, just by being human?
ʚ Author’s notes/Messages for the recipient: Based on A Werewolf Boy.
Present
The bride and groom look miserable. Kyungsoo kneels down, aims the camera at them. “Kimchi,” he says, willing his arms not to shake as he takes the picture.
His son sits in the back somewhere, no doubt arms crossed over his chest, waiting to go home. Kyungsoo doesn’t blame him; this wedding reception is an awful affair in the basement of some seedy Korean restaurant downtown. Children run around underfoot, while their parents stay seated and quiet, eying the dance floor maliciously. The food is tasteless; the wedding cake is chalky and sticks to the back of Kyungsoo’s throat.
The wedding was a month ago in Seoul, but they only returned to New York last weekend. The couple looks uncomfortable; they are being trotted out as showpieces for the parents to boast over, so that’s fair. It’s not an occasion either of them would wish to remember.
Kyungsoo doesn’t “play with his camera” much anymore, as Minah put it, but it was a favor that the bride’s parents asked of him. His son looks put out that he had to drive Kyungsoo here, since Kyungsoo doesn’t have an American license. Yet he does tuck away the yaksik without a second thought.
He turns away, chuckling to himself, remembering the way Minah used to coax Kyungduk into trying the same food as a child. Kyungduk always scrunched his little face into a cranky grimace; it’s coincidently quite similar to the look that Kyungduk is wearing now, but it does not look as cute on an adult.
Past
They don’t talk much about Kyungsoo’s father. Kyungsoo keeps his old sketchbook in his bedside table, his pencils in the mug on his desk where he does his homework. From time to time, he flips through the scribbles of flowers, stopping at the study of Seungsoo in their mother’s arms.
It seems to be etched with love and care, but that doesn’t explain why Kyungsoo only knows his father’s name and that he inherited the same eyes. The songs his mother sings when she’s lonely and drunk at night, and she thinks that Kyungsoo and his brother are asleep, tell him much more about the man who abandoned his family.
Seungsoo is no help, always pretending to be something he’s not. He acts in the school theater club. Their mother forces Kyungsoo to attend every show.
All it does is remind Kyungsoo of what he wants to be - more than just a face, or a mask, or a sad song sung in the dark. As placement exams approach, Kyungsoo thinks that he would want to be someone that the world knows. Someone not easily forgotten.
Of course, he doesn’t expect the sudden dizzy spells, the shortness of breath that spring. His mother, hovering worried, over his bed.
Out of school for months, he wonders. Will his friends even remember him?
Present
Kyungduk leaves while the bride’s father is trying to inconspicuously stuff an envelope full of money into Kyungsoo’s breast pocket. “You gave it back, right, Dad?” is the first thing that Kyungduk says, when Kyungsoo slowly lowers himself into the front passenger seat of the van.
It smells like fries and black coffee, since Kyungduk’s wife had taken the children to a fast food drive through after their doctor’s appointment today. Minah had protested, citing the benefits of Korean food; Kyungsoo had snorted to himself, thinking of the irony of the situation. Sohee had just shrugged in that way that meant she wasn’t going to listen to her in-laws anytime soon.
“Do you want some salad, halmeoni?” she asked Minah, with that sly look on her face.
Kyungsoo had reached over and squeezed Minah’s hand. Sohee and Kyungduk often left them at home when they go out somewhere special with the children; as a result, Minah lived vicariously through their grandchildren’s stories, told in a strange mix of Korean and English. “No,” Minah replied. “I think I will wait to eat at home.”
“Okay, halmeoni,” Sohee said, clearly relieved not to go to the expense.
Kyungsoo sometimes wonders how they went so wrong in their choice of a daughter-in-law. At the matseon, Sohee had been sweet, polite in her hanbok, slow and careful as she poured tea for them. Kyungduk had taken to her right away. It didn’t hurt that she was a doctor, currently practicing in America.
Minah likes to remind him that Sohee had remained kind, until Kyungsoo and Minah had come to stay with their son and his family. It took a year to receive their green cards, another couple of months to gather the paperwork to apply for Minyoung’s visa. The weeks played their toll; now Sohee is barely civil to Minah in public.
“Of course not,” Kyungsoo replies to his son, feeling the heft of the envelope under his vest. What Kyungduk doesn’t know won’t hurt him, Kyungsoo reasons, shifting the camera on his lap.
Past
Seungsoo complains, but their mother will not be moved. The doctor has recommended the countryside for Kyungsoo’s health, and so they leave the city in their little car, a large cart with all their possessions hitched to the back. Their destination is his mother’s childhood home, empty and shuttered since her parents died.
Kyungsoo doesn’t say much. He knows this trip is for his benefit, but he doesn’t want to leave home.
In the night, Kyungsoo awakes to his mother leaning over his bed, ruffling his hair. “I don’t want to lose you as well,” she whispers.
The house is intimidating as they pull into the yard. Seungsoo shrugs and hoists a chair. Kyungsoo reaches for a bag, but his mother swats his hands away. “Go rest, don’t strain yourself,” she says in that busybody way, that a recuperating Kyungsoo hates.
A strange pair of hands takes the bag instead. Kyungsoo and his mother look up. A wizened old man grins at them. “Nice to meet you, neighbor,” he says, shaking Kyungsoo’s mother’s hand. “We’d be glad to help.”
They seem to pour out of the woodwork, these country folk, but they get Kyungsoo and his family settled quite quickly. His mother feeds them in return, waving the last one off at dusk.
Seungsoo sets off to explore the house, but Kyungsoo is pinned to the table by his mother’s gaze. She brings out a wrapped box. “A present.”
He opens it, cautiously. He finds a camera, staring at it, dumbstruck. “I know you’re angry about what has happened,” his mother says. “But let’s make good memories.”
Kyungsoo forgets that he’s fifteen, and throws his arms around his mother. She laughs.
They stop when they hear a sound outside. Seungsoo appears in the doorway, brow furrowed. “What was that?”
Kyungsoo’s mother slowly opens the door. “You boys stay back,” she warns, but Seungsoo wraps his fingers around the shaft of the broom.
Kyungsoo can’t see anything. His mother takes a lamp and shines it about. “Oh!”
It’s a boy, dirty and unkempt, crouching by the brush. He looks feral and mistreated, but Kyungsoo’s mother easily lures him into the house.
“He must be one of those orphans from the war,” Kyungsoo’s mother says. And that is that.
Present
When Kyungsoo came, he had aimed to get a job to help out his son’s household. After a miserable engagement at a grocery store that ended in him throwing his back while hefting a crate of eggplant, Kyungsoo mostly spends his days running after Kyungduk’s children. It’s not terrible, but sometimes he finds Minah staring longingly at the calendar in the kitchen, one that shows distant landscapes that are different than New York. He understands that feeling.
They’re here so that Minyoung and her husband can come here. Kyungsoo reminds himself of this everyday, but it’s hard to remember even the simplest of things, now, like where he put his glasses. Minah is worse sometimes; he often catches her looking at albums, fingers touching memories that she now memorizes instead of recalls.
The trials of old age.
Kyungduk and Kyungsoo don’t talk much in the car, on the way home. Kyungduk says, “I’d like it if you didn’t accept these kinds of gigs, Dad, as much.”
“Why not?” Kyungsoo asks.
Kyungsoo doesn’t have many assets left; he sold the convenience store that he and Minah ran together for twenty years, as well as the flat situated above it, before he left Korea. The money from photography gives him and Minah some leeway. He doesn’t like asking his own son for money.
“You know.” Kyungduk stretches in the driver’s seat at a red light. “It’s a pain for me or Sohee to drive you around. And you’re not really a photographer, just an amateur.”
These are valid excuses, but Kyungsoo can hear the thinly veiled truth. Kyungduk is ashamed of his old father, doesn’t want other people to think that he needs his father’s help to pay for household things.
He thinks of Minyoung, her sweet face kissing him goodbye at the airport. His son-in-law smiled, shook his hand firmly, but Kyungsoo knows better than to trust any of that now.
“We’ll see,” Kyungsoo says. He can feel Kyungduk bristle beside him, but Kyungsoo just stares out at the dark night instead.
Past
It takes a few days for all the grime to fully wash off, but what results is a handsome boy with dimples and shaggy hair. He doesn’t like having his hair cut, they discover, but he’s also not listed by any local registry. It only reinforces Kyungsoo’s mother’s suspicious, as well as “aggravates” her nurturing side, as Seungsoo says.
Seungsoo is a university student, traveling back and forth on weekends. His mother works a series of odd jobs in town. So it falls to Kyungsoo to try to civilize this young man, which turns to be no easy task.
Kyungsoo’s mother tries to explain it, but Kyungsoo doesn’t understand how a human orphan could turn into this. Yixing buries his head in a plate when Kyungsoo carefully presents food before him. He runs, instead of walking, dragging Kyungsoo behind him at a breakneck pace.
He slowly opens up, but he is affectionate like a dog, kissing their faces sloppily. Kyungsoo always gets the brunt of it, much to Seungsoo’s amusement.
But Kyungsoo finds that he is easily molded, and learns quickly. In spending time with Yixing, who never minds Kyungsoo reading out loud, he almost forgets his friends in the city, so easily forgetting him as well.
The neighbors call their adoptee Wolf Boy, because some habits never change. Yixing, as Kyungsoo names him, is lethargic and sleepy most of the time. But there’s always a spark of tension and mischief underneath, that frankly unsettles Kyungsoo in a way he can’t explain.
“Tell me who you are,” he demands of Yixing. But Yixing only looks back, his eyes telling of more worlds than his lead tongue could ever.
Present
The children are still awake when the two men return home, mostly because Sohee is laughing uproariously on the phone in the living room. Minah greets them at the door, bouncing little Taeryong on her shoulder. “It’s a friend from high school,” she explains skeptically.
Kyungduk pushes aside Minkyung, staring up at him with wide eyes, clutching onto her little blanket. “I have some work to do,” he says, before sweeping upstairs.
“It looks like I got you, baby girl,” Kyungsoo says to Minkyung. But her mouth trembles, and she pushes Kyungsoo away with little hands. “I want Daddy!” she shouts, running into the kitchen as she bawls.
Eventually she tires herself out in that fashion, until she falls asleep a full forty minutes after colicky Taeryong. Minah and Kyungsoo sit, looking out the window in the children’s bedroom. Minah would sleep on the floor in there if she could, but Sohee frowns upon that, saying that the children need to be taught to be “independent.”
“They’re children,” Minah says. At first, Kyungsoo thinks that she is reading his mind, but then he realizes that she is talking about Minkyung’s rejection. “They don’t mean anything by it.”
“No,” Kyungsoo agrees, as his wife leans into his shoulder. When did the white in her hair outbalance the gray? He thinks instead, We’ll be dead and forgotten by the time they can remember us.
“Call waiting!” Sohee shouts. Taeryong’s little fingers curl into fists defensively; Minah strokes his back.
“Haraboji,” Sohee says after a pause. Kyungsoo can imagine her standing at the foot of the stairs, holding the cordless phone in one hand. “Phone for you.”
Kyungsoo has no explanations for the confusion on Minah’s face as he leaves her side.
Past
Over time, the town gets used to seeing Kyungsoo and Yixing together. Kyungsoo enunciating his words, supporting Yixing, who cannot stand up straight.
They had taken him to a doctor, but the man had shook his head. “There were some things that Yixing would never be able to do,” he said. “Don’t expect much more than you would from a five year old.”
Kyungsoo bristles at the words, though. Yixing is strong, always eager to help Kyungsoo fetch the kindling for the stove fire or lift heavy boxes. He sits quietly when Kyungsoo can’t breathe, fetching the medicine Kyungsoo asks for instead.
He covers Kyungsoo with a blanket, when he falls asleep reading at night.
Kyungsoo takes many pictures of Yixing; he wants to remember everything.
Present
Kyungduk covers the price of the plane tickets for himself and Kyungsoo. Minyoung meets them at the airport, explaining that her husband is out of town. Kyungsoo is relieved.
Minyoung can pick up on the tension between the two of them. “Dad, is everything alright?” she asks into his ear in the taxi.
“Fine,” he replies, tugging at her ear like he did when she was five. She smiles for him.
Kyungduk sits in the front with the taxi driver. “Seoul’s changed a lot since the last time I was here,” he says, staring at the buildings and advertisements they pass.
Minyoung rolls her eyes. “When was that, five years ago?”
“It really has changed!” her brother says.
Kyungsoo is amused by the easy descent into childhood bickering, but he would prefer it when he wasn’t present. “Have you hired a driver to take us to the old house?” he asks his daughter.
She shakes her head. “I rented a car, figured I’d drive you there myself.” Kyungsoo cannot express how grateful he is to hear that - four hours in a car with Kyungduk sounds like torture.
“How come we’ve never been there before?” Kyungduk asks. “This so-called ancestral home.”
Kyungsoo slouches in the back seat, his arms falling over his eyes. He’s not so young anymore; traveling for a day straight tires him easily. “It’s been a while since I’ve been there as well,” he says. The questions stop after that; the bickering, unfortunately, does not.
Past
Now that Kyungsoo has a companion, he takes walks with Yixing around the surrounding countryside. Kyungsoo’s mother worries as they roam around by themselves. “We’re fine, Mother,” Kyungsoo reassures her. “I’m much stronger now.”
She smiles at him, but it is uneasy. Kyungsoo comes to realize that there were other things, other people she had in mind.
It’s one day, when they’re approaching the town from the slightly seedier side. Kyungsoo has never been in this particular neighborhood, but he doesn’t think much of it. He opts instead to hurry Yixing along, knowing that Yixing is an easy target because of the lack of sentience in his eyes.
“Hey!” Sure enough, a group of drunks have spotted them. “What’s wrong with you, boy?”
Kyungsoo tucks his head down, but Yixing digs in his heels. “Yixing, we have to go,” he whispers furiously.
“And you!” One of them says, laughing with yellow teeth in Kyungsoo’s face. He pokes him, painfully, in the side. “You’re a skinny kid, aren’t you?”
Kyungsoo is still weak. He falls in the dust, and the man rears back to kick him in the side.
It’s one moment when Yixing is behind Kyungsoo, thin and pale as before, his bangs falling into his eyes. Then his hand twists out of his grip and he falls to the ground as he snarls.
Then he lunges at them. Kyungsoo screams, seeing blood. He runs.
Present
The house is as Kyungsoo remembers, the old wooden beams and honey rafters low over his head. Kyungduk walks into a couple, when Kyungsoo forgets to remind him.
Minyoung laughs at him. “You’re so clumsy.”
Kyungsoo hasn’t been here in years. How had he forgotten the old oak table, where his mother entertained all the movers who helped them transfer their possessions from the cart into the house? And his old bedroom, the wardrobe in the same corner it was fifty years ago.
There are differences, of course. A newfangled stove, washing machine and dryer, air conditioning. It is expected. From what Kyungsoo knows, the house was rented for visitors to Suwon year-round.
The cupboards are filled, thanks to a distant cousin of Kyungsoo’s who’s really Minyoung’s age. They roll out blankets and prepare to stay the night.
Kyungduk has never been a nervous, frightful child, but he fumbles his spoon as they eat a small meal together before the fireplace. “Did you see something in the window?” he demands.
Minyoung and Kyungsoo look, but there’s nothing there. “I’m afraid you’re seeing things,” Minyoung teases.
“I’m not,” Kyungduk says petulantly. Again, not a good look.
Kyungsoo pushes his plate to the center of the table. He hasn’t eaten much. “I’ll go see.”
“Dad.” Kyungduk looks alarmed. “It’s alright, it really isn’t a big deal. I can go look around later-”
Kyungsoo shakes his head. “You don’t know the property like I do. I will bring a flashlight with me.” Really, he just wants to look around, without his kids.
Past
Seungsoo shouts as soon as Kyungsoo opens his eyes. His mother grabs onto him fiercely.
“What happened?” Kyungsoo asks, disoriented.
It turns out that he fell as he ran home, and the breathing problems flared up again. “But where’s Yixing?” Kyungsoo asks.
Seungsoo leaves the room. His mother looks away. “Kyungsoo, we need to go.”
He doesn’t understand why they are packing so suddenly. Seungsoo finally explains. “That Yixing is a danger, attacked a group of men in town. He probably tried to attack you, too.”
“No, he didn’t,” Kyungsoo protests. “He was protecting me from them.”
Seungsoo’s eyes slide behind him in that adult way. “You probably don’t remember how it really happened.” No matter how Kyungsoo tries to argue, Seungsoo will not change his mind.
At night, he slips away to the old barn. He knows that sometimes Yixing hid here, when he missed the natural world.
The same eyes meet his. “Yixing!” he says. Yixing bowls him over in affection, and Kyungsoo laughs. “I didn’t know where you were,” he says. “I was worried about you, too.”
Then he freezes. He hears chanting in the distance, barking dogs and the clank of metal. “They’re coming for you,” he says. Yixing looks confused. “You need to leave!”
Yixing presses closer, but Kyungsoo can’t bear it. He pulls Yixing after them. The villagers follow but Kyungsoo runs and runs, until his feet are bloody. Yixing is still with him.
“Stay and wait for me,” Kyungsoo says. “I’ll let you know when the coast is clear, okay?”
Yixing catches onto his sleeve, as the sounds of the dogs grow louder. “Don’t go.”
For a moment, Kyungsoo can only stare. Then his voice breaks into a sob as he tears himself away. “I promise I’ll come back.”
His last memory of Yixing is distinct - of him waiting in the moonlight as Kyungsoo limps home, trying not to cough too hard.
Present
He calls Minah before he goes out. “Don’t do anything silly,” she tells him, worried. He laughs and teases her, feeling the old affection for his wife flare up again. But she is not deterred. “I know you have strong memories of that place, but it is no longer the same. Time has passed.”
As he opens the back door, he is instantly reminded of doing the same motion, so many years ago. Fifteen years old, opening the back gate as the sun rose. Time has passed, he realizes, and it has not been good to him. That much Kyungsoo knows for sure.
Kyungsoo walks the perimeter of the property, but sees nothing until a shape flickers at the edge of the woods. “Who is it?” he asks, lifting the light. “Come out and show your face.”
The person slowly makes his way towards Kyungsoo, crouching against the ground. Kyungsoo is alarmed until the light shines off the other person’s face; his breath catches in his throat.
The dimples are the same, as they have always been.
“Yixing?” he whispers. “Is that you?”
The hair, the eyes - the smile; they’re all the same. It’s both dizzying and horrifying. But then, Yixing was never a normal boy.
Yixing comes close, holding a book Kyungsoo recognizes. His stomach drops; his mouth twists, a sudden sour taste. He feels guilty - so, so guilty. “I waited,” the same voice says, stilted. “For you.”
Past
The sheets are sterile when he wakes up, but they still irritate his skin. “Oh, Kyungsoo!” his mother exclaims, when she notices.
Seungsoo chuckles from the window. “About time, Kyungsoo. You had us worried.”
Kyungsoo rolls over. “We’re in Seoul?”
“Of course,” his mother says.
“What about Yixing?”
They both look at him. “Who?”
There are no answers to be found, and eventually Kyungsoo stops asking questions. Kyungsoo develops every roll of film in his camera, but Yixing is nowhere. Eventually, he decides it must have all been a dream.
After all, a photograph never lies. The camera conveys truthfully his friendship with his college roommates, his love for Minah at their wedding. His amazement, holding a tiny Kyungduk; his pride, in opening his own business at Minah’s urging.
But still Kyungsoo wonders; yet he never went back. Eventually, he forgets, the memory fading just as good dreams slip away in the morning.
Present
In the barn, Kyungsoo falls asleep to the strange rhythm of Yixing reading to him. In the morning, he is alone in the hay, a blanket draped over him.. He quickly gets up, making coffee for Minyoung and Kyungduk, before they worry.
He can tell that his children are eager to leave, just as he is. He can see Yixing out of the corner of his eye, watching as they load up the car with their overnight bags.
He resists the urge to tell Kyungduk to speed up as they drive out of the yard and onto the main road. If he could, he’d run away from this place, from all his regrets and sorrows.
At fifteen, could he have expected to become such a miserable old man, who had accomplished and would be remembered for nothing? Or was that his lot in life, just by being human?
“It’s a nice house,” Kyungduk says at last. “Minyoung, you know anyone who would buy it?”
Kyungsoo can see her tilting her head thoughtfully in the rearview mirror. He thinks that Yixing is streaking in the woods after them, though that is not the case. He is still waiting for Kyungsoo on the ancestral property, forgotten, frozen in time. “I know a professor,” she begins.
“No,” Kyungsoo says, thinking of dimples. Both of his children turn to him in surprise. “I will not sell that house.”
As they begin to protest, Kyungsoo turns his head to the window. He surely imagines Yixing staring back at him, from the line of trees.
How did I forget you?