Knowing Brother-Chapter 36

On the way home, I took the second line in the opposite direction. I got off at Euljiro 4-ga and passed the ticket gate twice.

I threw my paper bag in the trash can at the subway station far from Bangbae.

Mrs. Choi was lying down, hugging a large bamboo cushion, watching TV. Seol-woo listened to the TV for a while in his room and then came out to the living room.

“Mom. I think it would be better for me not to hang out with Dae-young hyung. He’s going to middle school now. You know he has a bad reputation.”

Mrs. Choi, who was wiping a cotton pad on her face, turned her wide-open eyes back.

“This and that, playing well and fighting, liking and then disliking. Are you guys dating?”

“I saw that hyung hit a kid from Hyeongil Middle School before.”

She added a little lie to what she had witnessed behind the mart. Mrs. Choi was surprised once, then clicked her tongue.

“What? ......Yeah, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“You never know when that person will be me. Up until now, honestly, I’ve been hanging out with him because I’m bored without him, but now that I’m going to middle school, I think it’s better to cut ties.”

Mrs. Choi looked serious and thoughtful. Mrs. Choi, who is faithful to the present, was finally recognizing the problem as an urgent task. Seol-woo continued with his prepared speech.

“So, go to the school you’re going to, and, Mom, change your phone number right now. Before you get involved with that guy any more.”

Mrs. Choi thumped the floor and got up, saying she would change her number right away and left the house. The front door closed and the sound of her shoes grew distant.

Mrs. Choi returned after about two hours. She laughed and said that she had changed her phone number to a new number for her child’s education, and she earnestly urged him to forget all the memories from that house.

Choi Seol-woo is now going to a middle school. Won Dae-young will return to Hyungil Middle School with his hair shaved. Living in a big house with rocks and grass in the yard, a pond, a garage, and a wall.

Seol-woo laughed lightly.

They were too young to make a promise to ‘not leave’ and keep it. Seol-woo was old enough to understand that.

The place where the string had come off stung.

I shouldn’t have been stingy.

Regret became resentment.

A few days later, Choi Seol-woo visited the two-story house again. He took a look from afar, and then walked up close to take a look. The house was empty because all the luggage had been removed.

He thought the front door was locked, but it opened when he pushed it. Seol-woo went into the yard and tilted his head back. A familiar face stood on the railing on the second floor.

He picked up a cigarette butt that had fallen under the magnolia tree. It was where Won Dae-young always squatted.

Seol-woo picked up the butt and blew on it. Then he put it in his mouth and sucked on it until it became mushy. A terrible taste filled his mouth. It felt like chewing on black ash. His tongue was bitter. He chewed on the cigarette butts until he felt nauseous.

Dirty, tasteless, trashy, bitter. It was the taste of life. Choi Seol-woo chewed and swallowed all the cigarette butts that the person who taught him that had been spat out. That’s how Won Dae-young was Choi Seol-woo’s homeschooling teacher until the end.

All the stories about this house were over now. It was a story that would remain as a memory that he would recall at least once in his life. Seol-woo pressed his chest as he turned around.

He couldn’t just leave it because it hurt. He pressed his chest with his palm and wet breath burst out of his mouth. But he didn’t let the pain out completely. The moment he stood on the crosswalk, clutching his forehead, he saw someone loitering in front of the convenience store across the street.

Seol-woo waved his hand to the other side. There was no response. It was natural, since there was no one waiting. He looked back at the convenience store as he walked to the subway station. There was still no one under the sun.

* * *

And, it was only two months later that Won Dae-young appeared in front of Choi Seol-woo, who had vowed never to make something she cherished again.

That year, Won Dae-young inevitably came back into Choi Seol-woo’s life.

It was the year in which Choi Seol-woo began to feel a complex bundle of emotions toward Won Dae-young that could be replaced with ‘love’, and the first of his three favorite games took place in 2013.

Around that time, she fought with Mrs. Choi every day. Choi Seol-woo was tall for a woman, and by the time she entered school, she had grown to 175cm. Her mature inner self, as tall as her height, was obsessed with finding out the ‘real’ hidden behind the ‘fake’ of the world.

“Mom. What on earth is the identity of the drug? You know you’re not old enough to believe in science fiction like androids. Is it fun to fool people and play with them?”

“Why are you saying that? Say it again. Did I play with you? I didn’t cheat, but did I cheat for my own convenience?”

“That’s not the point...! What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me? I have so much to be careful about and I’m taking medicine that costs hundreds of thousands of won. What’s wrong with the collection team? Why are we being chased? Are you a debtor? Mom, do you owe me money? How much to whom?”

“Where in the world can you live without debt? Are you a teenager who’s picking a fight over something like that?”

The conversation always went back to square one. I was more curious about the reason why she didn’t reveal the illness than the illness itself.

One day, I looked at Mrs. Choi’s resident registration card and calculated the age at which she gave birth to Seol-woo. She was 17 years old.

“What happened? Did something bad happen...? Mom, no matter how much you live for today... Why did you do that? I’m not saying anything, I’m just curious....”

Mrs. Choi was deceived by the lie that she would make her a solo female singer like Lee Hyo-ri and Chae Yeon and went to Seoul. She fell in love with a man who made empty promises, but everything about him was fake. His name, his job, his age... Everything that made up the man was fake, so she said that after he suddenly ran away, she couldn’t even ask him about it. Mrs. Choi still doesn’t know who the ‘real’ man is. freeωebnovēl.c૦m

The process of finding out the truth hidden in the fake was bitter, like the taste of a cigarette butt.

“Still, I thought I had to erase it in Seoul, so I didn’t go back to my hometown and held on. But, the day I went to find a hospital, it was snowing in Seoul. I saw Seoul covered in snow, and you kicked your feet for the first time in your stomach. You seemed excited to see the snow... This cold and rotten city is like heaven on a snowy day... I was convinced that I could be a snowy heaven for you alone. That’s why your name has snow in it.”

Mrs. Choi lived more fiercely than anyone else, within her capabilities. Ever since she decided to give birth to Seol-woo.

“Look, she’s so pretty now that she’s born!”

Seol-woo cherished and cared for her because he knew she had clenched her teeth and done her best. This was a feeling that could definitely be called love.

Fearing that Seol-woo would be teased when she went to middle school, Mrs. Choi quit her job at the neighborhood bar and borrowed seed money from her close friend to open a franchise snack shop. Even though she worked alone and wore a wrist ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) guard every day, Mrs. Choi stubbornly refused to let Seol-woo into the shop.

In accordance with Mrs. Choi’s wishes that rumors about her being the son of a snack shop owner would not spread, Seol-woo made every effort to hide his identity at school.

“Oh, I’m a little sick. I was homeschooled while receiving treatment at home.”

Thanks to his thorough efforts and a face that seemed to have grown beautifully in a greenhouse, Choi Seol-woo was imprinted on everyone’s mind a month after entering school as ‘the boy in class 8 of the first grade who was weak but homeschooled because he was from a wealthy family, who didn’t have a cell phone because he was frugal, and who always read books and was quiet’!

The children gathered in the classroom were busy gathering information. Who was good at fighting and arguing, whose parents were wealthy, who was strong and weak, and who should he give up the top spot in the hierarchy to so that his pride wouldn’t be hurt. During that time when they were busy exploring each other’s strengths in the classroom,

Choi Seol-woo successfully packaged himself well and blended in with the group.

Choi Seol-woo’s father was a goose dad who worked overseas, and his mother was a daycare teacher with a firm educational philosophy. Their home was a newly built apartment in Ahyeon-dong. The reason he didn’t have a smartphone was because of his ‘parents’ educational philosophy’, and he left a strong impression by not backing down and scolding the guy who attacked him for being a mama’s boy by saying, “If I’m a mama’s boy, then you’re addicted to smartphone stimulation?”

The reason she was not teased even though she was excluded from physical education class was the same. Her cold yet confident attitude, her eye-catching appearance, and even the story behind her being homeschooled. It didn’t take a few weeks for a few elements to stimulate the fantasy of the kids in her class and transform into mysticism.

Choi Seol-woo knew why she had to lie. If she told the truth, it was obvious how the dozens of faces in the classroom would change.

At school, Seol-woo was full of lies. But Choi Seol-woo always wanted to find out.

‘Am I bad for lying, or is the world that makes me lie wrong?’

No matter how hard she tried, she had a hard time coming up with an answer.

Anyway, Choi Seol-woo, a first-year student in class 8 of a co-ed middle school, was not an android being chased by a debt collector, but the only son of a wealthy family with a weak body.

Her homeroom teacher was the type of person whose thoughts were clearly expressed in her expression. She didn’t hide her pitiful concern for Seol-woo. Her small face, skinny body, short bob hair, and glasses matched her delicate personality.