summer is here, the best season of the year
happy third anniversary to delikara and myself! celebrating this occasion by gunning full throttle for stylisation and convoluted storylines. inspired in large by summer whispers. it's a great movie, so do watch it if you can.
Hyunjoo,
I look at the calendar beside me and I realize that it has been twelve weeks. Twelve weeks translate into three months, right? Twelve weeks are the equivalent of eighty four days… why do I feel like it has only been that same amount of time in minutes? I count and this is the twelfth letter that I have written. Will I burn these one day? I don’t know… who will do that for me? For us? In this span of time that you have been gone, so has our son. I cannot count the number of days I have left to see you again, so I will instead count the ones that I will be able to see him.
The nurse guides her to the hospital room, and tells her that visiting hours are short. Her teacher is barely recovering, not yet, and she should only stay for a maximum of ten minutes. The nurse doesn’t know that her teacher rarely speaks for extended periods of time, though, so she just nods in thanks and pushes her way in, the door slipping shut behind her without so much of a sound. Her teacher lies on the bed, silent, maybe asleep, still breathing, the drip quiet in a corner, the beep of a machine there, shades of the window closed. She stands closer to the side of the bed, not knowing if she should speak. Then her teacher opens his eyes, tired, looking up at her. Of course, she thinks, and bows in greeting.
Donghae hyung texts get your ass back to Korea now, and he asks why, but he doesn’t get a concrete reply. But Donghae hyung doesn’t joke around when it comes to Korea, so he makes a call to Sunye, their friend, Donghae’s girlfriend, and when she says to come back as well, he books a ticket online. He goes from city to city, transit area to transit area, half asleep, half awake, making his way back home only through motions. He has not been back for a very long time now, at first because he didn’t want to, then after because it has become some sort of habit. When he walks out into the arrival hall of Incheon, Donghae hyung is already there, face grim. Come on, he says, and he follows in silence.
When Younha first managed to secure a place in her first choice university, she was met with another hurdle: who was going to pay for her college fees? Certainly not her mother, who had her sister to feed first. So she looked around for options, hung out at the Student Services Office every single day, poring through scholarship brochures and wondering who would take on a poor philosophy student like she. It took three weeks before he came around, her teacher-but she didn’t know it then yet-that would be her lifelong influence, came along and told her I will be your sponsor. So that was that. He was a good teacher, a fantastic professor. He never talked much-it was always Younha talking and he commenting only rarely-but she was okay with that. He was her saviour, in some way, and Younha would do anything for him.
She tries the first, second key before figuring out that the third is the correct one. The Professor’s house is in the traditional, wooden style, and when she pushes the door shut behind her, the bell atop it jangles. Younha slips off her shoes in the darkened doorway. There is a light switch to pull in front of her, but she bypasses that and slides another wooden door open, the one five steps ahead. It leads her to the living room, no TV, two paintings on the wall, stacks and stacks of books in the enclave where a TV normally would have been. Typical Prof, she thinks and laughs. The house is composed of sliding door after sliding door, so when she’s opened the ones to the kitchen and the bedrooms, she finally finds the correct one that leads to the study. There is a non-negligible amount of dust floating in the air after she pushes the door open, carved with only a flower motif on the sides, and she waves her hand around, coughing a bit.
The study is connected to the back garden, and Younha pokes her head out. It is only slightly messy, overgrown grass a little, and she decides to clean that up when she is done with the books. Professor asked her to catalogue his book collection-I haven’t been able to do it, he told her matter-of-factly in his hospital garb and hospital room, so you will do it for me-and she looks at the mess in front of her and wonders how she will be able to do it. The books are everywhere, overflowing from the shelves, the cardboard boxes abandoned in the corners, on the floor. It is a collection she is envious of, but not so much now that she has to sort it all out. Younha consents to make herself a drink before she starts on her job.
Kyuhyun’s impression of his father has always been muffled, jerky-full of dust, like those old movies on videotapes that haven’t been cleaned out-but in them he at least remembers that his father was never weak. He sits at the bedside, while his father looks up at the ceiling, half-asleep or deep in thought, either one or, but he likes to think the latter because at least that is somewhat reminiscent of the time before everything between them became this disconnected, disconcerted. His father calls out his name, quietly but suddenly, and he nods as if to say he is there. What is that he can say? His father doesn’t know either, too, apparently, and does not say anything after his name. So Kyuhyun sits on the chair beside the bed until his father goes completely quiet, and even then his heart beats so quick as he leans over to make sure Dad’s breathing-please, please, please-and when he is sure that he is, Kyuhyun goes. Flees, runs, the nurse asks if everything is okay and he replies yes. I just need to go. He grabs the handle of his suitcase, loaded off Donghae hyung’s car, and goes. Hails a cab, where should he go? The driver looks expectantly up at him and asks home? Home? Kyuhyun wonders where that is and realizes he cannot remember the address so he just says to the nearest hotel instead.
He falls into a turbulent sleep of his own, memories criss-crossing over each other, blending into one congruent storyline that is far too blurry for him to make any sense of. He sees his mother, hands outstretched, his father beside, happy smiles, then light, dark, repeat, repeat, repeat. Then his eyes open and he focuses on the ceiling for a while, mind blank before thinking strangely that this is what his father must have seen just now, in the hospital. White light, white roof. He closes his eyes again, then rolls to the side, picks up his phone. Donghae hyung dials him first before he does it, and nags at him for not staying longer. Where are you? You haven’t been to Seoul in forever, where have you got yourself? He recites the name of the hotel off the complimentary matchbox and Donghae hyung asks why he isn’t home. What is he to say? I don’t remember, he decides on that, and Donghae’s reply is garbled, like his ear has malfunctioned. Kyuhyun keeps his eyes on the ceiling, until he falls asleep again and does not realize it.
Her mom calls once when she is knee-deep in books. Mom I’m kind of drowning in books right now, she jokes and her mother laughs on the other side of the line. Her mother and her and her sister are the closest, most tight-knit group on earth, pretty much because they only have each other in this world. A father is just a concept, and her professor is the embodiment of that concept in her life, this strangely distant yet always giving persona, one that is firmly rooted in her academia career. So that is why she’s doing this for him now, the father she never really had. Her mom asks if she will be coming back for dinner, Younha says yes because she’s not that bold to cook in her professor’s house-yet, she adds on as an after-thought, and her mother clucks her tongue at that. Soon after she places her phone down and starts her note writing again. She arranges the books in alphabetical order-Younha lives, thrives on order. It is a mechanism that she used to cope with the irregularities of life before college, and now that everything has fallen into pace again she uses it as a way of ordering herself to never forget. It is three when she hears a car pulling up in the driveway, all the way around from the garden that is behind her in its full resplendent, somewhat messy glory, and she picks herself up from the floor to go take a look.
Donghae hyung pushes his shoulder, tells him to get out. Hey dude this is your home, not mine, he jabbered on and on during the ride, how could you forget? How could he forget? Kyuhyun does not have an answer, so he just sits in the passenger’s seat beside, thinking, thinking, wondering how he could forget. Maybe it is because he has been away from Seoul for too long, immersed in the audacity of Los Angeles, New York, Hollywood, away from the tiny peninsular that he was raised up upon. Donghae hyung makes a sharp turn and then they are there. Here, in front of the wonderfully traditional wooden house with the misshapen post box on a metal stand and stray flowerpots in the drive way. Get off! Donghae hyung pushes him again, and he opens the door mechanically, retrieves his luggage case, and watches as the car backs up and drives away, leaving him in the wake and shadow of his house. Home. He looks at the post box, swaying gently in the wind, and reaches for it. It is hot to the touch, summer in Seoul is hell he remembers, smiles a bit at the memory of him eating ice cream in a heat wave and his mother cooking a nice sweet dessert soup. Father-Kyuhyun clutches his fingers into a fist, and then the bell jangles, the door swings open.
She opens the door to a man and his suitcase, blue on wheels, he himself in white and camel brown. Her professor never said anything about having visitors-in fact he didn’t say anything after that one line, preferring instead to go back to sleep-so she just says hello nicely and politely, before asking him what he is doing here. He looks at her, tall, skinny, pale-faced and deep-set tired eyes, says he lives here. This is my house, he enunciates uncertainly, and she ponders on that. Prof never said anything about this, she points out, tells him like they are discussing the weather and why it is so hot out here. Why is it so hot, anyway? She adds on, like a follow up question. He doesn’t answer the first question, says it’s because Seoul is located in the middle of the sun for the second one. Younha laughs. He laughs too. Still, she doesn’t let him in. Who are you, again? He shoves his hands into the pockets of his camel brown pants, bottom hems so stylishly rolled up to display his white loafers, pretty and sparkling in the light. Who are you? He asks back. She thinks about it for a while, if it is safe to tell him her name, choosing instead to say she is a student of Professor Cho, his student at the philosophy department. He nods, then pulls out his passport from the right pocket. It isn’t green like hers, but black with the United States of America stamped on the front. He is American, unlike her professor, her, the rest of the citizens living in this area. He pulls it open, and shows her his photo, the rest of his details imprinted in severe black font. I’m Cho Kyuhyun, he says, the passport shows. I’m his son, he says. This one, the passport doesn’t.
Hyunjoo,
Today the school called. Our son is doing good… at what he does the best. Why are young adolescent boys so inexplicably drawn to violence and fights? Is there not one boy on the face of this earth that will resolve conflicts with brains instead of brawn? The school says that he doesn’t have any problems with his studies, so why does he get into trouble all the time? I thought-I thought that sending him away would keep him happy…
If anyone were to stay to bear the pain of continuing to live in this place, then I will be the one to do so.
It is strange-their roles are now reversed-he sits primly on the couch with his suitcase on wheels beside, hands hanging loosely off his knees, hair tousled, waiting for a cup of tea. She busies herself in the foreign kitchen, opening drawers of forks and spoons and knives before she finally finds the correct one containing all the china mugs. This is not her house-it is his-but for now it is like she is the mistress and he is the guest. Funny huh. Younha looks for tea bags and pushes a button for hot water. It gushes out, steam in the air, foggy in the dark. They don’t turn any lights on, so he sits in the slanted sunlight beside the study and she makes tea in the shadowed kitchen. Her phone rings, her professor’s secretary texts back with an affirmative-yes, his son’s name is Cho Kyuhyun, sends an old photo off Prof’s desk as another sort of confirmation. She delivers the tea to him, phone balanced perilously beside his mug of tea on the tray, sets it down beside him. He says thank you, and she holds up the phone beside his face. The one on her screen is young, energized, sort-of smiling right into the lens itself-the one beside it is not, but they look essentially the same.
He takes the mug and looks down at it, liquid inside, tea bag hanging outside. The strange girl in his house pushes the door towards the study room aside, leaves it open and goes back to the piles and piles of books on the floor. His father’s collection is impressive, amassed from years and years of hunting, collecting, treasuring, some sort of wealthy habit that he was only willing to spend on. Father would never buy a television: he would listen to the radio, type on his typewriter, buy five dozen books, but never purchase a coffee machine. And he liked espressos too. Kyuhyun reads the title off one of the books on the floor, Homer’s Iliad. Father always had a liking, some soft spot for the Greeks-read everything and anything accorded to the epic poets in his spare time. He finds it odd, oddly comforting that he can remember so much about his father simply by virtue of being in this house. He looks back to his tea, and it has already gone cold.
The ajumma drops by with lunchboxes, and the boy-man? Boy? Younha goes with boy because he doesn’t look older than she is-excuses himself after leaving half of his share empty. He washes the utensils quietly, water flowing down the sink like some natural spring she used to hear, listen to in her field trips during elementary school, and exits via the garden, sidestepping the books quite expertly. Younha eats her rice and thinks that he must really belong to this house, somewhat. When she is done with her lunch she packs everything up so that the ajumma can pick them up later in the evening, and takes a look at her notes. She is up to D now, fairly fast seeing how Prof has a massive collection, and continues to write. She chooses to work with the lower shelves first-she’s not too tall and she could not find a ladder-and dutifully climbs up from the floor, then back down again to write. Up, down, up, down. She works herself into a routine, one that blazes time by until the boy reappears again, flower in his hand. I found it in the back, he tells her in his quiet manner, loud enough for her to hear, too soft for her to decipher any sort of spoken emotion. Thanks, she replies, and he puts it down on her notes. Then he climbs back onto the platform from the garden, and disappears into the depths of the house again.
He figures out a cycle for himself: hospital, Donghae hyung’s house, hospital, grocery store, home. Repeat, never in reverse, always on time. He often wakes up to the sound of her in the study, always almost silent but not quite. She moves around like a cat, the kind that roams his garden, his father’s garden, sleeping in the neighbourhood, with one black eye and possibly another brown. One time he watches from the far end of the corridor, when she leaves the sliding door open. She always works on the lower shelves, higher ones untouched-she tries to reach for it once, but she tiptoes and still doesn’t manage it. He wonders if he should help, but routines are not meant to be broken, not by someone that she doesn’t know and he doesn’t know and the son of her professor but still a stranger. Sometimes they have lunch together, in silence that is neither stifling nor awkward, while she reads one of the books she plucks out of the pile and he works on his computer, devoid of sound, forever on mute. It is a thing they have in common-silence is a companion, not to be feared, but to be embraced.
She bikes home, to and fro the traditional wooden house that her professor used to live in. Now his son occupies it, silently, quietly, like a shadow living in the dark. He does his stuff and she does hers, they eat together sometimes when he is around in the afternoon but that is about it. It is not like Younha is too preoccupied with making new friends-one of the nurses told her, stationed at her desk just around the corner from Prof’s room, that he doesn’t have too much time anymore. She is only up to F, nearly encroaching on G territory, and she resolves to go quicker. Work done fast does not assure you of quality, Prof’s voice rings in her head, but quality is something to be sacrificed now. We do not have the luxury of time anymore, she tells herself aloud as she lifts books up and down and back up again. The boxes that are done are stacked up nicely in the corner, but there are more to come. This afternoon she is finally done with F, but this is also the end of the lower shelves. She stares up at the wooden bookshelf, too high up and out of her reach, no ladder in the house. She looks and looks at it until she almost believes the books will fly down to her by sheer power of will, but gives up when the shadowy new owner of the house slides the door open and tells her lunch is her-what are you doing?
The nurse says: you two come and go one after the other. You sure you don’t plan this out beforehand? Who is the other half of this two? Kyuhyun doesn’t bother asking, but sits by his father’s bedside, reading, sometimes aloud. His father is still mostly in slumber, sometimes awake, sometimes not. When he is lucid though they talk about America, the continent or country he asks, the place where you lived his father replies. He talks about New York, mostly, opting to stay in safe territory. The boarding school you sent me to, he says, isn’t as royal as you think it is. His father laughs, this throaty weak laugh that he doesn’t like, not one bit, but he continues, says how he really preferred elsewhere instead. Where else? Kyuhyun thinks about it, decides to talk about Harvard and his brief stint at Cambridge. He could not be a bad kid, no matter how much he actually wanted to be. Pulled the brakes when some guy suggested cigarettes, not even on druggie level, he thinks. He could not be a bad kid, so he resigned himself to studying hard, the way his father taught him, and then ended up in the prestigious playgrounds of Harvard and then some. His father sounds kind of pleased to hear that and falls asleep soon after, softly snoring, a sound so low it is almost hard to catch.
She tells him that she is trying to develop her telekinetic powers via will of mind. He looks at her from the other side of the sliding door, almost too tall for its entire length, hair disappearing behind the top wooden beam. She waits for a moment, just to see if the joke sinks in and he will laugh or something. He doesn’t though, so she explains herself. Bookshelf too high, self too short. Et cetera, et cetera. I see, he says, and pushes the rest of the door open, steps in and looks like he will help her out or something. Is he for real? She thinks that and then when he turns around, says yes, then she realizes she did not keep that to herself. He barely needs to tiptoe, just raises his arm up and pulls the first three books down for her. She watches, mouth slightly slack. We are genetically miles apart, she says, and he looks at her as if he wants to laugh. Then he does, and continues pulling the books down.
The ajusshi at the tiny grocery store around the corner manages to procure a stool for her, so she uses that instead of him now. She clears out three of the shelves on the right, and starts on the first left one. This is a mini library, she thinks, and not every title is in Hangul, not everything she can read with ease. Is this some metaphor for life? Maybe her professor had hidden intentions in giving her this Herculean task, like when the real Hercules had his own Labours to complete. Perhaps Prof wanted to teach her something about life-or maybe not, as the entire shelf of books comes crashing down when she tips one over by accident. Nobody else is in the house today, the tall son out on some business, so she’s spared from any embarrassment and makes to step down and off her stool, rearrange the books at the bottom. At least she does not have to put them back up, she thinks, and almost steps off, but not before she spots the wooden box in the corner, serenely waiting to be discovered yet again.
Hyunjoo,
Remember how we used to write letters to each other every week? I do that electronically now. Still once every week, though. I used to handwrite my letters to Kyuhyun… but he never really got around to replying them. See how advancement in technology comes hand in hand with time? I suppose typing is the way to go now. Would you have stuck to handwriting your letters to him, if you were around? I suppose you would-you’ve never really been too good with technology. I still wonder if burning these at the end of my life will allow me to take them to you. Will they come along with me?
He takes his time to roam about the city, hiking on foot, taking the bus, sometimes a stray cab or so. Donghae hyung offers to show him around, as does Sunye, but he says it’s okay. I used to live here, remember? Donghae hyung laughed at that, saying that used to is not good enough. Seoul changes everyday. Time changes everything, everyone. As the bus rumbles on he ponders on that, looking at the somewhat foreign skyline. He doesn’t remember this building here, the ones that he does are not here anymore. There is a new bridge in place, five more new houses there. He doesn’t get lost though, so the thought of him still essentially belonging is good. But his is a detached sense of that concept, like a CD with scratches on the shiny side, still able to be played but not playing well. He has lunch at a nearby Chinese restaurant and watches the people that walk past the door, left open all the time, reminding him of the study at home, and that girl who is not too tall. Has she had lunch yet? Probably not, he thinks. He tells the ajumma-slightly halting, his tongue more used to English than the quick syllables of his mother tongue-for a takeout and then walks to the bus stop to take the bus home. Summer is here, in full force, and the young boy next to him licks a bar of melon ice cream.
The sun shines behind her, casting shadows everywhere, on the books, on the floor, on the box of envelopes that she has laid out and open on the low table in front of her. She recognizes the hand as her professor’s, rigid, every single stroke perfect and in place. Like he is some sort of calligraphy machine with a ballpoint pen. She struggles for a moment, wondering if she should read or not. Privacy-everybody is entitled to it, but technically this is her job. Her professor asked her to sort out everything in the study, and this is part of everything. So she pulls the letter out of its yellowing envelope, not unhesitant but firm enough, and reads, and reads, and reads. They are all addressed to the same person, Hyunjoo, no surname attached, everything written in banmal. These are not typical love letters, not bursting full of I love yous and I miss yous and I want to see yous, but the longing spills off the paper, the ink, onto her hands and makes her tremble. These are love letters to someone who isn’t here anymore, she realizes, to someone who was the love of her professor’s life. She folds each letter back reverently, out of respect, out of awe, and is about to open the next one when the prodigal son/owner of the house comes back. She shuts the box as quickly as she can, panic showing a little in her eyes: yes what is it? He looks at her, not caring in the least about her box of Prof’s love letters, and says that he has lunch for her. How did you know? She asks as he walks away. I figured out your lunchtime, he replies, and she eats quietly as he retreats back into his room that winds all around and overlooks the garden.
Hyunjoo,
I’m kind of hopeless at this, right? I’m horrible at everything except for philosophy. Even then it is hard for me to apply what I have learnt into my life outside of academia. I am not a great father, not even close to being good. Is it an excuse if I say that you were always better at child-raising than I was? I don’t know how to be a father figure in his life-I don’t even know how to get him back home. What would you have said to him, if it were up to you? I don’t know how to play you, but I do suppose you would have been ten times better. No, a hundred. And this is one of the many reasons I miss you so much.
The claps of thunder get increasingly louder and on the fifth one the clouds let themselves go, it starts to rain. She runs over to push the glass sliding doors leading to the garden shut, but not before the resident stray cat squeezes itself in and bolts into the kitchen. Hey! She yells, pushing the door lock down, clicking into place with a loud clack. The cat meows back pitifully, and she decides to let it be. How is she supposed to get home now? There is a tiny folding umbrella in her bag, but she looks out of the doors, orange study light reflected off them, at the rain pouring down from the awnings, the drainage off the sides of the roofing. This is a storm, the owner of the house says from behind her, and she turns back to see him pick up the cat, all wet and pathetic. You should wait for it to stop first, he says it like an offer of some sort, we can eat ramen or something. Or something, she repeats, looking at the cat as it meows at her again. She likes cats, but the idea of cooking ramen not so much. But the rain only seems to get heavier and heavier and so does her heart, so she agrees and secretly toes the box on the floor under the table and out of his sight.
In the end she doesn’t cook-he does. He does a mean job of the water-noodle-seasoning packet ratio, and cooks a pot big enough to feed five. Sorry, he explains, I lived with boys back in the States. Yeah I suppose so, she says, and waits for him to take the first bite. Owner of the house first. But he just opens the pot and hands the cover to her, like some big old gentleman. This is not the way a Korean boy is supposed to act, she mumbles in jest, but doesn’t demur and eats. They pass the cover between each other, she holding onto the cover longer than he does, a show of the fundamental difference in this odd Korean boy raised elsewhere. This is a very family act, she thinks to herself, but he focuses on his laptop at the side and she decides to on the rain instead. When will it stop? Another clap of thunder rumbles and she accepts it as an appropriate response that it will not, not yet. Her tiny ponytail is slightly wet from the rain flecking in just now, before the doors were closed, and half of his shirt is wet from the cat. She peers at him through the dissipating steam from the pot, like through frosted glass, and wonders at how similarly he behaves from the way her professor wrote about him in his letters. This is a son that hasn’t come home in many years, and he sticks out from the way he tries to slide back in. It is like he belongs and doesn’t, oxymoronic juxtaposition, and she thinks back to Prof in his white room and overly neat bed in the hospital. That is the reason why this son has come back home-and she feels so, so sorry for him, Prof, Hyunjoo in the letters, all at once. He looks up at her from his laptop, and the steam disappears.
She doesn’t-is unable to?-wipe the emotion away from her eyes, her face fast enough, and he looks at her, curious, a little. Are you okay? She stares at him, then nods her head, little ponytail at the back of her head bobbing, bobbing. Yeah I’m fine. She stands up and begins to clear the table; he helps her by carrying everything to the sink. This feels domestic, in the way that he didn’t feel when he was away, living with five other colleagues at the university, drinking soju and eating pancakes. This is domesticity, right? He asks her as she stands beside him, washing the dishes. He towers over her in a way that he doesn’t mean to, the genetic advantage that she speaks of enviously. She doesn’t answer verbally, nods and continues with the dishes. Did his parents do this when they were living in this house together? Suddenly he can see them, overlapping with the image of him and her in front of the sink, doing the same thing, quietly in the way that they did everything else. He hasn’t thought about his parents as one entity for a long time, preferring instead to keep a memory of his mother separate from the living person of his father. But now he sees them as one-this is then, why, only half of his father remains, because his other half is already gone.
His father drifts in and out of sleep more often than not now, and he reads books to him like bedtime stories. His father listens, he knows, and so he keeps up with the reading aloud. The nurses encourage it, as does the doctor, and he leans over to check for breathing movements more and more and more times a day. Are you afraid of death? He asks his father one afternoon, as the air conditioning hums in the enclosed room, and the dehumidifier sprays another burst of mist into the air. The water settles on the desk beside him, tiny droplets, and he waits for an answer he might not even get. He leans over again, for the sixth time in this hour, and checks-his father opens his eyes, tired but focused, looks up at him. I am, he replies, softly, but there is comfort in death that I know. He stays there in the same position, taking in his father’s words, stays until Father closes his eyes again before he slides back down onto his chair.
The limit of visitation timings seems to have been lifted. The nurse pulls the door open for her, smiles then leaves her alone in the room with her teacher, half-asleep with the dehumidifier dialed up to maximum. He’s half awake, turning to the side to look at her while she drags the chair to sit by his bedside. How is everything coming along? He asks, somewhat lucidly, like in a dream that has half dissolved. She updates him on her progress-she is almost done with everything, just needs to go through the entire list with a fine comb, and Prof you need to decide where you want everything to go. He listens like with a lazy ear, nodding slowly to the rhythm of her voice. I’ll think about it later. She sits there with her hands in fists on her lap, resting atop the denim of her jeans. Prof is somewhat of a stickler for proper dressing-he used to chase students out of his classes for wearing shorts in summer. If you don’t respect the places you are studying in then you aren’t respecting me. He used to say that all the time. The Prof she knows is stiff and law abiding, upholding his own code of principles. The Prof she knows is merely one half of him, now she realizes, the box of letters tucked away in her backpack on the floor. Prof, what do I do with these? She asks aloud, and he mumbles something in reply, what she cannot decode.
Hyunjoo,
I think I know why he isn’t coming back anymore. Might… he already realize what we have been keeping from him? How do I explain myself to him? Explain you, even?
It is two thirty in the afternoon, under the blazing sun in the garden when the hospital calls. He is about to go out, plucking a flower from his garden like a gift for his father, when the hospital calls. I am so sorry, the doctor’s voice crackles over the line, almost too soft to be heard. He feels the sweat on his brow, the plucked flower hot in his other hand, almost as if it will burst into flames at any given second. I am so sorry, the voice repeats over and over in his head. I am so sorry. He trudges to the window, his window that overlooks the garden, and climbs back into his room, lands on the wooden flooring of his room. I am so sorry. Nothing is clear at first, indelible words that don’t make any sense, but slowly, slowly, he begins to take it all in. I am so sorry. Sorry for? There is a sudden screech, from a bird of an unspecified species, loud and clear outside his window, thrown open to let him and the wind in. And then, and then he begins to cry.
So this is how it feels like when your job is done. She stands outside, on the driveway, beside the wayward post box with the peeling red paint job. She is just back from the hospital, where the nurses pass her a note, written by her professor before his passing. His penmanship is no longer distinguishable, no longer the same sort that she sees on old papers of hers and the love letters in her bag. The wind is hot to the touch, scorching her skin, her hair. There is something she must still do, though, before the job is complete. Prof tells her to take one book from every alphabet for her own. This is my gift to you, so you must give me a gift in return. Funny that he should have some sort of humour now, she thinks. She stands in the sun for a while more, letting it beat down on her. Then she lets herself in for one last time.
He returns home, bag of his father’s personal effects in hand, and the study’s door is wide open. She is here again, the girl. He places the bag in his father’s old room, musty, full of dust, closes the door and makes his way to the study room. She looks up at him when he knocks, politely, and smiles, a bit. Hi, she says. Hi, he says in return. The study is clean now, cardboard boxes at the side, the wall of shelves completely empty. They look like holes in the wall to him, something that was but isn’t now. That actually sounds a little like a description of him. There is a small stack of books next to her on the floor, and he supposes it must be his father’s last bequeathing to her. They never really got to know each other, this girl and he, but his father must have trusted her very much. He did, she replies as she packs up her pile of books. He did take care of me very much. He nods, like he knows and agrees, then bends down to help her out. They work in silence for a while, until she pulls her bag over and takes a wooden box out. It is plain, carved only with the name Hyunjoo atop of it. Hyunjoo? He looks at her. How did you get this? She pushes it to him, and tells him to read. It’s not mine, but yours now.
Hyunjoo,
He will always be our son, right? He will always be my son. Bloodlines do not matter to me-when you brought him into my house for the very first time, he was already my son.
She sets up a bonfire site, gathering dead leaves and newspapers from dates past and placing them in the middle. The matches are in the kitchen, and she walks past him, seated in a corner of the study, one knee up, one hand holding a letter, the other atop the box with his mother’s name engraved into it. Her professor never said anything about wanting his son to read these letters, being the stoic, stiff man that he is, but she disobeys her teacher for once. There are many things that she will never be able to understand about this father and his son, but it is because it is not her place to. The son has the right to know, needs to know, even. So she passes the box along to him, having read through half of it and no more. Privacy is something everybody is entitled to, she told her professor on the day she asked him on what to do, what to do with these letters that are addressed to someone she cannot deliver them to. And you read through half of them? Her professor said back, not accusatory, just in the manner he always did-a little jokey, even. She will miss him, she really will.
He places the last letter back into the box as she calls for him, for help with the matches. He clambers over the platform and joins her at the edge of the bonfire site, kneeling on the grass, dry from the sun, box of letters by the side. She holds out the matches to him, and he strikes it once, twice, thrice on the side of the box before it catches on fire. He tosses it into the middle, and together they watch the bonfire burn up by the side, now standing, the box in his hands. She doesn’t ask him about the letters, nothing actually, and they both stand in silence as the bonfire gets higher and higher. We have to control it, she says, suddenly. Or else it might burn your house down. He nods, slowly, and they decide to wait for a while more. Your house-he is the owner of this house now. No matter how long he has tried to stay away, to run, to hide, he is the owner of this house now. Another metaphor for life, maybe? Even if you are not of his blood, you are still his son. The air shimmers in front of them-summer is even hotter now, he says and she agrees. My father used to say that summer is the best season of the year. She looks up at him, surprised, then nods, agrees. I think so too.
He unlatches the box and takes out the bundle of letters, all in his father’s penmanship, neat, proper, like the man he was in life. She holds the box for him as he walks over, stands closer to the bonfire. Then he drops them in, almost respectfully, the last of his father’s work, the wishes he laid out on the very last cusp of his lifespan, and watches as they burn in the fire. The smoke winds itself upwards, further than the roof, further than the tree he used to climb when he was ten, further than the very tips of the tree’s leaves, all the way up to the sky and wherever lies beyond.
You think they’ll get them? He asks, standing beside her again. She cranes her neck up at the sky, then at him, then at the sky again. Yeah, she replies. I think they have already reached the person Prof really addressed them to. There is something underlying in her words, something warm and intelligent, that reminds him of his father when he was still ten, the year he got sent away, the year he discovered the truth and resolved to stay away for good. Father is no longer here but his house is. And so is this girl, who is very much like him. He looks down at her ponytail, flapping lightly in the wind, then back up at the sky. It is blue and cloudy, and summer-summer is here, the best season of the year.
Hyunjoo,
I look at the calendar beside me and I realize that it has been twelve weeks. Twelve weeks translate into three months, right? Twelve weeks are the equivalent of eighty four days… why do I feel like it has only been that same amount of time in minutes? I count and this is the twelfth letter that I have written. Will I burn these one day? I don’t know… who will do that for me? For us? In this span of time that you have been gone, so has our son. I cannot count the number of days I have left to see you again, so I will instead count the ones that I will be able to see him.
The nurse guides her to the hospital room, and tells her that visiting hours are short. Her teacher is barely recovering, not yet, and she should only stay for a maximum of ten minutes. The nurse doesn’t know that her teacher rarely speaks for extended periods of time, though, so she just nods in thanks and pushes her way in, the door slipping shut behind her without so much of a sound. Her teacher lies on the bed, silent, maybe asleep, still breathing, the drip quiet in a corner, the beep of a machine there, shades of the window closed. She stands closer to the side of the bed, not knowing if she should speak. Then her teacher opens his eyes, tired, looking up at her. Of course, she thinks, and bows in greeting.
Donghae hyung texts get your ass back to Korea now, and he asks why, but he doesn’t get a concrete reply. But Donghae hyung doesn’t joke around when it comes to Korea, so he makes a call to Sunye, their friend, Donghae’s girlfriend, and when she says to come back as well, he books a ticket online. He goes from city to city, transit area to transit area, half asleep, half awake, making his way back home only through motions. He has not been back for a very long time now, at first because he didn’t want to, then after because it has become some sort of habit. When he walks out into the arrival hall of Incheon, Donghae hyung is already there, face grim. Come on, he says, and he follows in silence.
When Younha first managed to secure a place in her first choice university, she was met with another hurdle: who was going to pay for her college fees? Certainly not her mother, who had her sister to feed first. So she looked around for options, hung out at the Student Services Office every single day, poring through scholarship brochures and wondering who would take on a poor philosophy student like she. It took three weeks before he came around, her teacher-but she didn’t know it then yet-that would be her lifelong influence, came along and told her I will be your sponsor. So that was that. He was a good teacher, a fantastic professor. He never talked much-it was always Younha talking and he commenting only rarely-but she was okay with that. He was her saviour, in some way, and Younha would do anything for him.
She tries the first, second key before figuring out that the third is the correct one. The Professor’s house is in the traditional, wooden style, and when she pushes the door shut behind her, the bell atop it jangles. Younha slips off her shoes in the darkened doorway. There is a light switch to pull in front of her, but she bypasses that and slides another wooden door open, the one five steps ahead. It leads her to the living room, no TV, two paintings on the wall, stacks and stacks of books in the enclave where a TV normally would have been. Typical Prof, she thinks and laughs. The house is composed of sliding door after sliding door, so when she’s opened the ones to the kitchen and the bedrooms, she finally finds the correct one that leads to the study. There is a non-negligible amount of dust floating in the air after she pushes the door open, carved with only a flower motif on the sides, and she waves her hand around, coughing a bit.
The study is connected to the back garden, and Younha pokes her head out. It is only slightly messy, overgrown grass a little, and she decides to clean that up when she is done with the books. Professor asked her to catalogue his book collection-I haven’t been able to do it, he told her matter-of-factly in his hospital garb and hospital room, so you will do it for me-and she looks at the mess in front of her and wonders how she will be able to do it. The books are everywhere, overflowing from the shelves, the cardboard boxes abandoned in the corners, on the floor. It is a collection she is envious of, but not so much now that she has to sort it all out. Younha consents to make herself a drink before she starts on her job.
Kyuhyun’s impression of his father has always been muffled, jerky-full of dust, like those old movies on videotapes that haven’t been cleaned out-but in them he at least remembers that his father was never weak. He sits at the bedside, while his father looks up at the ceiling, half-asleep or deep in thought, either one or, but he likes to think the latter because at least that is somewhat reminiscent of the time before everything between them became this disconnected, disconcerted. His father calls out his name, quietly but suddenly, and he nods as if to say he is there. What is that he can say? His father doesn’t know either, too, apparently, and does not say anything after his name. So Kyuhyun sits on the chair beside the bed until his father goes completely quiet, and even then his heart beats so quick as he leans over to make sure Dad’s breathing-please, please, please-and when he is sure that he is, Kyuhyun goes. Flees, runs, the nurse asks if everything is okay and he replies yes. I just need to go. He grabs the handle of his suitcase, loaded off Donghae hyung’s car, and goes. Hails a cab, where should he go? The driver looks expectantly up at him and asks home? Home? Kyuhyun wonders where that is and realizes he cannot remember the address so he just says to the nearest hotel instead.
He falls into a turbulent sleep of his own, memories criss-crossing over each other, blending into one congruent storyline that is far too blurry for him to make any sense of. He sees his mother, hands outstretched, his father beside, happy smiles, then light, dark, repeat, repeat, repeat. Then his eyes open and he focuses on the ceiling for a while, mind blank before thinking strangely that this is what his father must have seen just now, in the hospital. White light, white roof. He closes his eyes again, then rolls to the side, picks up his phone. Donghae hyung dials him first before he does it, and nags at him for not staying longer. Where are you? You haven’t been to Seoul in forever, where have you got yourself? He recites the name of the hotel off the complimentary matchbox and Donghae hyung asks why he isn’t home. What is he to say? I don’t remember, he decides on that, and Donghae’s reply is garbled, like his ear has malfunctioned. Kyuhyun keeps his eyes on the ceiling, until he falls asleep again and does not realize it.
Her mom calls once when she is knee-deep in books. Mom I’m kind of drowning in books right now, she jokes and her mother laughs on the other side of the line. Her mother and her and her sister are the closest, most tight-knit group on earth, pretty much because they only have each other in this world. A father is just a concept, and her professor is the embodiment of that concept in her life, this strangely distant yet always giving persona, one that is firmly rooted in her academia career. So that is why she’s doing this for him now, the father she never really had. Her mom asks if she will be coming back for dinner, Younha says yes because she’s not that bold to cook in her professor’s house-yet, she adds on as an after-thought, and her mother clucks her tongue at that. Soon after she places her phone down and starts her note writing again. She arranges the books in alphabetical order-Younha lives, thrives on order. It is a mechanism that she used to cope with the irregularities of life before college, and now that everything has fallen into pace again she uses it as a way of ordering herself to never forget. It is three when she hears a car pulling up in the driveway, all the way around from the garden that is behind her in its full resplendent, somewhat messy glory, and she picks herself up from the floor to go take a look.
Donghae hyung pushes his shoulder, tells him to get out. Hey dude this is your home, not mine, he jabbered on and on during the ride, how could you forget? How could he forget? Kyuhyun does not have an answer, so he just sits in the passenger’s seat beside, thinking, thinking, wondering how he could forget. Maybe it is because he has been away from Seoul for too long, immersed in the audacity of Los Angeles, New York, Hollywood, away from the tiny peninsular that he was raised up upon. Donghae hyung makes a sharp turn and then they are there. Here, in front of the wonderfully traditional wooden house with the misshapen post box on a metal stand and stray flowerpots in the drive way. Get off! Donghae hyung pushes him again, and he opens the door mechanically, retrieves his luggage case, and watches as the car backs up and drives away, leaving him in the wake and shadow of his house. Home. He looks at the post box, swaying gently in the wind, and reaches for it. It is hot to the touch, summer in Seoul is hell he remembers, smiles a bit at the memory of him eating ice cream in a heat wave and his mother cooking a nice sweet dessert soup. Father-Kyuhyun clutches his fingers into a fist, and then the bell jangles, the door swings open.
She opens the door to a man and his suitcase, blue on wheels, he himself in white and camel brown. Her professor never said anything about having visitors-in fact he didn’t say anything after that one line, preferring instead to go back to sleep-so she just says hello nicely and politely, before asking him what he is doing here. He looks at her, tall, skinny, pale-faced and deep-set tired eyes, says he lives here. This is my house, he enunciates uncertainly, and she ponders on that. Prof never said anything about this, she points out, tells him like they are discussing the weather and why it is so hot out here. Why is it so hot, anyway? She adds on, like a follow up question. He doesn’t answer the first question, says it’s because Seoul is located in the middle of the sun for the second one. Younha laughs. He laughs too. Still, she doesn’t let him in. Who are you, again? He shoves his hands into the pockets of his camel brown pants, bottom hems so stylishly rolled up to display his white loafers, pretty and sparkling in the light. Who are you? He asks back. She thinks about it for a while, if it is safe to tell him her name, choosing instead to say she is a student of Professor Cho, his student at the philosophy department. He nods, then pulls out his passport from the right pocket. It isn’t green like hers, but black with the United States of America stamped on the front. He is American, unlike her professor, her, the rest of the citizens living in this area. He pulls it open, and shows her his photo, the rest of his details imprinted in severe black font. I’m Cho Kyuhyun, he says, the passport shows. I’m his son, he says. This one, the passport doesn’t.
Hyunjoo,
Today the school called. Our son is doing good… at what he does the best. Why are young adolescent boys so inexplicably drawn to violence and fights? Is there not one boy on the face of this earth that will resolve conflicts with brains instead of brawn? The school says that he doesn’t have any problems with his studies, so why does he get into trouble all the time? I thought-I thought that sending him away would keep him happy…
If anyone were to stay to bear the pain of continuing to live in this place, then I will be the one to do so.
It is strange-their roles are now reversed-he sits primly on the couch with his suitcase on wheels beside, hands hanging loosely off his knees, hair tousled, waiting for a cup of tea. She busies herself in the foreign kitchen, opening drawers of forks and spoons and knives before she finally finds the correct one containing all the china mugs. This is not her house-it is his-but for now it is like she is the mistress and he is the guest. Funny huh. Younha looks for tea bags and pushes a button for hot water. It gushes out, steam in the air, foggy in the dark. They don’t turn any lights on, so he sits in the slanted sunlight beside the study and she makes tea in the shadowed kitchen. Her phone rings, her professor’s secretary texts back with an affirmative-yes, his son’s name is Cho Kyuhyun, sends an old photo off Prof’s desk as another sort of confirmation. She delivers the tea to him, phone balanced perilously beside his mug of tea on the tray, sets it down beside him. He says thank you, and she holds up the phone beside his face. The one on her screen is young, energized, sort-of smiling right into the lens itself-the one beside it is not, but they look essentially the same.
He takes the mug and looks down at it, liquid inside, tea bag hanging outside. The strange girl in his house pushes the door towards the study room aside, leaves it open and goes back to the piles and piles of books on the floor. His father’s collection is impressive, amassed from years and years of hunting, collecting, treasuring, some sort of wealthy habit that he was only willing to spend on. Father would never buy a television: he would listen to the radio, type on his typewriter, buy five dozen books, but never purchase a coffee machine. And he liked espressos too. Kyuhyun reads the title off one of the books on the floor, Homer’s Iliad. Father always had a liking, some soft spot for the Greeks-read everything and anything accorded to the epic poets in his spare time. He finds it odd, oddly comforting that he can remember so much about his father simply by virtue of being in this house. He looks back to his tea, and it has already gone cold.
The ajumma drops by with lunchboxes, and the boy-man? Boy? Younha goes with boy because he doesn’t look older than she is-excuses himself after leaving half of his share empty. He washes the utensils quietly, water flowing down the sink like some natural spring she used to hear, listen to in her field trips during elementary school, and exits via the garden, sidestepping the books quite expertly. Younha eats her rice and thinks that he must really belong to this house, somewhat. When she is done with her lunch she packs everything up so that the ajumma can pick them up later in the evening, and takes a look at her notes. She is up to D now, fairly fast seeing how Prof has a massive collection, and continues to write. She chooses to work with the lower shelves first-she’s not too tall and she could not find a ladder-and dutifully climbs up from the floor, then back down again to write. Up, down, up, down. She works herself into a routine, one that blazes time by until the boy reappears again, flower in his hand. I found it in the back, he tells her in his quiet manner, loud enough for her to hear, too soft for her to decipher any sort of spoken emotion. Thanks, she replies, and he puts it down on her notes. Then he climbs back onto the platform from the garden, and disappears into the depths of the house again.
He figures out a cycle for himself: hospital, Donghae hyung’s house, hospital, grocery store, home. Repeat, never in reverse, always on time. He often wakes up to the sound of her in the study, always almost silent but not quite. She moves around like a cat, the kind that roams his garden, his father’s garden, sleeping in the neighbourhood, with one black eye and possibly another brown. One time he watches from the far end of the corridor, when she leaves the sliding door open. She always works on the lower shelves, higher ones untouched-she tries to reach for it once, but she tiptoes and still doesn’t manage it. He wonders if he should help, but routines are not meant to be broken, not by someone that she doesn’t know and he doesn’t know and the son of her professor but still a stranger. Sometimes they have lunch together, in silence that is neither stifling nor awkward, while she reads one of the books she plucks out of the pile and he works on his computer, devoid of sound, forever on mute. It is a thing they have in common-silence is a companion, not to be feared, but to be embraced.
She bikes home, to and fro the traditional wooden house that her professor used to live in. Now his son occupies it, silently, quietly, like a shadow living in the dark. He does his stuff and she does hers, they eat together sometimes when he is around in the afternoon but that is about it. It is not like Younha is too preoccupied with making new friends-one of the nurses told her, stationed at her desk just around the corner from Prof’s room, that he doesn’t have too much time anymore. She is only up to F, nearly encroaching on G territory, and she resolves to go quicker. Work done fast does not assure you of quality, Prof’s voice rings in her head, but quality is something to be sacrificed now. We do not have the luxury of time anymore, she tells herself aloud as she lifts books up and down and back up again. The boxes that are done are stacked up nicely in the corner, but there are more to come. This afternoon she is finally done with F, but this is also the end of the lower shelves. She stares up at the wooden bookshelf, too high up and out of her reach, no ladder in the house. She looks and looks at it until she almost believes the books will fly down to her by sheer power of will, but gives up when the shadowy new owner of the house slides the door open and tells her lunch is her-what are you doing?
The nurse says: you two come and go one after the other. You sure you don’t plan this out beforehand? Who is the other half of this two? Kyuhyun doesn’t bother asking, but sits by his father’s bedside, reading, sometimes aloud. His father is still mostly in slumber, sometimes awake, sometimes not. When he is lucid though they talk about America, the continent or country he asks, the place where you lived his father replies. He talks about New York, mostly, opting to stay in safe territory. The boarding school you sent me to, he says, isn’t as royal as you think it is. His father laughs, this throaty weak laugh that he doesn’t like, not one bit, but he continues, says how he really preferred elsewhere instead. Where else? Kyuhyun thinks about it, decides to talk about Harvard and his brief stint at Cambridge. He could not be a bad kid, no matter how much he actually wanted to be. Pulled the brakes when some guy suggested cigarettes, not even on druggie level, he thinks. He could not be a bad kid, so he resigned himself to studying hard, the way his father taught him, and then ended up in the prestigious playgrounds of Harvard and then some. His father sounds kind of pleased to hear that and falls asleep soon after, softly snoring, a sound so low it is almost hard to catch.
She tells him that she is trying to develop her telekinetic powers via will of mind. He looks at her from the other side of the sliding door, almost too tall for its entire length, hair disappearing behind the top wooden beam. She waits for a moment, just to see if the joke sinks in and he will laugh or something. He doesn’t though, so she explains herself. Bookshelf too high, self too short. Et cetera, et cetera. I see, he says, and pushes the rest of the door open, steps in and looks like he will help her out or something. Is he for real? She thinks that and then when he turns around, says yes, then she realizes she did not keep that to herself. He barely needs to tiptoe, just raises his arm up and pulls the first three books down for her. She watches, mouth slightly slack. We are genetically miles apart, she says, and he looks at her as if he wants to laugh. Then he does, and continues pulling the books down.
The ajusshi at the tiny grocery store around the corner manages to procure a stool for her, so she uses that instead of him now. She clears out three of the shelves on the right, and starts on the first left one. This is a mini library, she thinks, and not every title is in Hangul, not everything she can read with ease. Is this some metaphor for life? Maybe her professor had hidden intentions in giving her this Herculean task, like when the real Hercules had his own Labours to complete. Perhaps Prof wanted to teach her something about life-or maybe not, as the entire shelf of books comes crashing down when she tips one over by accident. Nobody else is in the house today, the tall son out on some business, so she’s spared from any embarrassment and makes to step down and off her stool, rearrange the books at the bottom. At least she does not have to put them back up, she thinks, and almost steps off, but not before she spots the wooden box in the corner, serenely waiting to be discovered yet again.
Hyunjoo,
Remember how we used to write letters to each other every week? I do that electronically now. Still once every week, though. I used to handwrite my letters to Kyuhyun… but he never really got around to replying them. See how advancement in technology comes hand in hand with time? I suppose typing is the way to go now. Would you have stuck to handwriting your letters to him, if you were around? I suppose you would-you’ve never really been too good with technology. I still wonder if burning these at the end of my life will allow me to take them to you. Will they come along with me?
He takes his time to roam about the city, hiking on foot, taking the bus, sometimes a stray cab or so. Donghae hyung offers to show him around, as does Sunye, but he says it’s okay. I used to live here, remember? Donghae hyung laughed at that, saying that used to is not good enough. Seoul changes everyday. Time changes everything, everyone. As the bus rumbles on he ponders on that, looking at the somewhat foreign skyline. He doesn’t remember this building here, the ones that he does are not here anymore. There is a new bridge in place, five more new houses there. He doesn’t get lost though, so the thought of him still essentially belonging is good. But his is a detached sense of that concept, like a CD with scratches on the shiny side, still able to be played but not playing well. He has lunch at a nearby Chinese restaurant and watches the people that walk past the door, left open all the time, reminding him of the study at home, and that girl who is not too tall. Has she had lunch yet? Probably not, he thinks. He tells the ajumma-slightly halting, his tongue more used to English than the quick syllables of his mother tongue-for a takeout and then walks to the bus stop to take the bus home. Summer is here, in full force, and the young boy next to him licks a bar of melon ice cream.
The sun shines behind her, casting shadows everywhere, on the books, on the floor, on the box of envelopes that she has laid out and open on the low table in front of her. She recognizes the hand as her professor’s, rigid, every single stroke perfect and in place. Like he is some sort of calligraphy machine with a ballpoint pen. She struggles for a moment, wondering if she should read or not. Privacy-everybody is entitled to it, but technically this is her job. Her professor asked her to sort out everything in the study, and this is part of everything. So she pulls the letter out of its yellowing envelope, not unhesitant but firm enough, and reads, and reads, and reads. They are all addressed to the same person, Hyunjoo, no surname attached, everything written in banmal. These are not typical love letters, not bursting full of I love yous and I miss yous and I want to see yous, but the longing spills off the paper, the ink, onto her hands and makes her tremble. These are love letters to someone who isn’t here anymore, she realizes, to someone who was the love of her professor’s life. She folds each letter back reverently, out of respect, out of awe, and is about to open the next one when the prodigal son/owner of the house comes back. She shuts the box as quickly as she can, panic showing a little in her eyes: yes what is it? He looks at her, not caring in the least about her box of Prof’s love letters, and says that he has lunch for her. How did you know? She asks as he walks away. I figured out your lunchtime, he replies, and she eats quietly as he retreats back into his room that winds all around and overlooks the garden.
Hyunjoo,
I’m kind of hopeless at this, right? I’m horrible at everything except for philosophy. Even then it is hard for me to apply what I have learnt into my life outside of academia. I am not a great father, not even close to being good. Is it an excuse if I say that you were always better at child-raising than I was? I don’t know how to be a father figure in his life-I don’t even know how to get him back home. What would you have said to him, if it were up to you? I don’t know how to play you, but I do suppose you would have been ten times better. No, a hundred. And this is one of the many reasons I miss you so much.
The claps of thunder get increasingly louder and on the fifth one the clouds let themselves go, it starts to rain. She runs over to push the glass sliding doors leading to the garden shut, but not before the resident stray cat squeezes itself in and bolts into the kitchen. Hey! She yells, pushing the door lock down, clicking into place with a loud clack. The cat meows back pitifully, and she decides to let it be. How is she supposed to get home now? There is a tiny folding umbrella in her bag, but she looks out of the doors, orange study light reflected off them, at the rain pouring down from the awnings, the drainage off the sides of the roofing. This is a storm, the owner of the house says from behind her, and she turns back to see him pick up the cat, all wet and pathetic. You should wait for it to stop first, he says it like an offer of some sort, we can eat ramen or something. Or something, she repeats, looking at the cat as it meows at her again. She likes cats, but the idea of cooking ramen not so much. But the rain only seems to get heavier and heavier and so does her heart, so she agrees and secretly toes the box on the floor under the table and out of his sight.
In the end she doesn’t cook-he does. He does a mean job of the water-noodle-seasoning packet ratio, and cooks a pot big enough to feed five. Sorry, he explains, I lived with boys back in the States. Yeah I suppose so, she says, and waits for him to take the first bite. Owner of the house first. But he just opens the pot and hands the cover to her, like some big old gentleman. This is not the way a Korean boy is supposed to act, she mumbles in jest, but doesn’t demur and eats. They pass the cover between each other, she holding onto the cover longer than he does, a show of the fundamental difference in this odd Korean boy raised elsewhere. This is a very family act, she thinks to herself, but he focuses on his laptop at the side and she decides to on the rain instead. When will it stop? Another clap of thunder rumbles and she accepts it as an appropriate response that it will not, not yet. Her tiny ponytail is slightly wet from the rain flecking in just now, before the doors were closed, and half of his shirt is wet from the cat. She peers at him through the dissipating steam from the pot, like through frosted glass, and wonders at how similarly he behaves from the way her professor wrote about him in his letters. This is a son that hasn’t come home in many years, and he sticks out from the way he tries to slide back in. It is like he belongs and doesn’t, oxymoronic juxtaposition, and she thinks back to Prof in his white room and overly neat bed in the hospital. That is the reason why this son has come back home-and she feels so, so sorry for him, Prof, Hyunjoo in the letters, all at once. He looks up at her from his laptop, and the steam disappears.
She doesn’t-is unable to?-wipe the emotion away from her eyes, her face fast enough, and he looks at her, curious, a little. Are you okay? She stares at him, then nods her head, little ponytail at the back of her head bobbing, bobbing. Yeah I’m fine. She stands up and begins to clear the table; he helps her by carrying everything to the sink. This feels domestic, in the way that he didn’t feel when he was away, living with five other colleagues at the university, drinking soju and eating pancakes. This is domesticity, right? He asks her as she stands beside him, washing the dishes. He towers over her in a way that he doesn’t mean to, the genetic advantage that she speaks of enviously. She doesn’t answer verbally, nods and continues with the dishes. Did his parents do this when they were living in this house together? Suddenly he can see them, overlapping with the image of him and her in front of the sink, doing the same thing, quietly in the way that they did everything else. He hasn’t thought about his parents as one entity for a long time, preferring instead to keep a memory of his mother separate from the living person of his father. But now he sees them as one-this is then, why, only half of his father remains, because his other half is already gone.
His father drifts in and out of sleep more often than not now, and he reads books to him like bedtime stories. His father listens, he knows, and so he keeps up with the reading aloud. The nurses encourage it, as does the doctor, and he leans over to check for breathing movements more and more and more times a day. Are you afraid of death? He asks his father one afternoon, as the air conditioning hums in the enclosed room, and the dehumidifier sprays another burst of mist into the air. The water settles on the desk beside him, tiny droplets, and he waits for an answer he might not even get. He leans over again, for the sixth time in this hour, and checks-his father opens his eyes, tired but focused, looks up at him. I am, he replies, softly, but there is comfort in death that I know. He stays there in the same position, taking in his father’s words, stays until Father closes his eyes again before he slides back down onto his chair.
The limit of visitation timings seems to have been lifted. The nurse pulls the door open for her, smiles then leaves her alone in the room with her teacher, half-asleep with the dehumidifier dialed up to maximum. He’s half awake, turning to the side to look at her while she drags the chair to sit by his bedside. How is everything coming along? He asks, somewhat lucidly, like in a dream that has half dissolved. She updates him on her progress-she is almost done with everything, just needs to go through the entire list with a fine comb, and Prof you need to decide where you want everything to go. He listens like with a lazy ear, nodding slowly to the rhythm of her voice. I’ll think about it later. She sits there with her hands in fists on her lap, resting atop the denim of her jeans. Prof is somewhat of a stickler for proper dressing-he used to chase students out of his classes for wearing shorts in summer. If you don’t respect the places you are studying in then you aren’t respecting me. He used to say that all the time. The Prof she knows is stiff and law abiding, upholding his own code of principles. The Prof she knows is merely one half of him, now she realizes, the box of letters tucked away in her backpack on the floor. Prof, what do I do with these? She asks aloud, and he mumbles something in reply, what she cannot decode.
Hyunjoo,
I think I know why he isn’t coming back anymore. Might… he already realize what we have been keeping from him? How do I explain myself to him? Explain you, even?
It is two thirty in the afternoon, under the blazing sun in the garden when the hospital calls. He is about to go out, plucking a flower from his garden like a gift for his father, when the hospital calls. I am so sorry, the doctor’s voice crackles over the line, almost too soft to be heard. He feels the sweat on his brow, the plucked flower hot in his other hand, almost as if it will burst into flames at any given second. I am so sorry, the voice repeats over and over in his head. I am so sorry. He trudges to the window, his window that overlooks the garden, and climbs back into his room, lands on the wooden flooring of his room. I am so sorry. Nothing is clear at first, indelible words that don’t make any sense, but slowly, slowly, he begins to take it all in. I am so sorry. Sorry for? There is a sudden screech, from a bird of an unspecified species, loud and clear outside his window, thrown open to let him and the wind in. And then, and then he begins to cry.
So this is how it feels like when your job is done. She stands outside, on the driveway, beside the wayward post box with the peeling red paint job. She is just back from the hospital, where the nurses pass her a note, written by her professor before his passing. His penmanship is no longer distinguishable, no longer the same sort that she sees on old papers of hers and the love letters in her bag. The wind is hot to the touch, scorching her skin, her hair. There is something she must still do, though, before the job is complete. Prof tells her to take one book from every alphabet for her own. This is my gift to you, so you must give me a gift in return. Funny that he should have some sort of humour now, she thinks. She stands in the sun for a while more, letting it beat down on her. Then she lets herself in for one last time.
He returns home, bag of his father’s personal effects in hand, and the study’s door is wide open. She is here again, the girl. He places the bag in his father’s old room, musty, full of dust, closes the door and makes his way to the study room. She looks up at him when he knocks, politely, and smiles, a bit. Hi, she says. Hi, he says in return. The study is clean now, cardboard boxes at the side, the wall of shelves completely empty. They look like holes in the wall to him, something that was but isn’t now. That actually sounds a little like a description of him. There is a small stack of books next to her on the floor, and he supposes it must be his father’s last bequeathing to her. They never really got to know each other, this girl and he, but his father must have trusted her very much. He did, she replies as she packs up her pile of books. He did take care of me very much. He nods, like he knows and agrees, then bends down to help her out. They work in silence for a while, until she pulls her bag over and takes a wooden box out. It is plain, carved only with the name Hyunjoo atop of it. Hyunjoo? He looks at her. How did you get this? She pushes it to him, and tells him to read. It’s not mine, but yours now.
Hyunjoo,
He will always be our son, right? He will always be my son. Bloodlines do not matter to me-when you brought him into my house for the very first time, he was already my son.
She sets up a bonfire site, gathering dead leaves and newspapers from dates past and placing them in the middle. The matches are in the kitchen, and she walks past him, seated in a corner of the study, one knee up, one hand holding a letter, the other atop the box with his mother’s name engraved into it. Her professor never said anything about wanting his son to read these letters, being the stoic, stiff man that he is, but she disobeys her teacher for once. There are many things that she will never be able to understand about this father and his son, but it is because it is not her place to. The son has the right to know, needs to know, even. So she passes the box along to him, having read through half of it and no more. Privacy is something everybody is entitled to, she told her professor on the day she asked him on what to do, what to do with these letters that are addressed to someone she cannot deliver them to. And you read through half of them? Her professor said back, not accusatory, just in the manner he always did-a little jokey, even. She will miss him, she really will.
He places the last letter back into the box as she calls for him, for help with the matches. He clambers over the platform and joins her at the edge of the bonfire site, kneeling on the grass, dry from the sun, box of letters by the side. She holds out the matches to him, and he strikes it once, twice, thrice on the side of the box before it catches on fire. He tosses it into the middle, and together they watch the bonfire burn up by the side, now standing, the box in his hands. She doesn’t ask him about the letters, nothing actually, and they both stand in silence as the bonfire gets higher and higher. We have to control it, she says, suddenly. Or else it might burn your house down. He nods, slowly, and they decide to wait for a while more. Your house-he is the owner of this house now. No matter how long he has tried to stay away, to run, to hide, he is the owner of this house now. Another metaphor for life, maybe? Even if you are not of his blood, you are still his son. The air shimmers in front of them-summer is even hotter now, he says and she agrees. My father used to say that summer is the best season of the year. She looks up at him, surprised, then nods, agrees. I think so too.
He unlatches the box and takes out the bundle of letters, all in his father’s penmanship, neat, proper, like the man he was in life. She holds the box for him as he walks over, stands closer to the bonfire. Then he drops them in, almost respectfully, the last of his father’s work, the wishes he laid out on the very last cusp of his lifespan, and watches as they burn in the fire. The smoke winds itself upwards, further than the roof, further than the tree he used to climb when he was ten, further than the very tips of the tree’s leaves, all the way up to the sky and wherever lies beyond.
You think they’ll get them? He asks, standing beside her again. She cranes her neck up at the sky, then at him, then at the sky again. Yeah, she replies. I think they have already reached the person Prof really addressed them to. There is something underlying in her words, something warm and intelligent, that reminds him of his father when he was still ten, the year he got sent away, the year he discovered the truth and resolved to stay away for good. Father is no longer here but his house is. And so is this girl, who is very much like him. He looks down at her ponytail, flapping lightly in the wind, then back up at the sky. It is blue and cloudy, and summer-summer is here, the best season of the year.