ASD 8

There was a time when his mother disappeared.

He wasn’t sure if he was eight or nine. When he opened his eyes, his mother was gone. He had known since he was little that his mother worked at night and returned in the morning, so that day too, he went to school without thinking much of it.

But even when he came home after school, there was no sign of his mother. Usually, his mother’s face, lying as if dead from sleep or alcohol, would greet him upon his return.

That’s when he started to think something was strange. But young Gawon didn’t have a cell phone, and in a situation like this, all he could do was wait for his mother at home.

The sun was slowly setting, and his stomach was rumbling severely. He opened the refrigerator, but all he found was a single rotting onion and kimchi that had gone sour. Closing the refrigerator that didn’t even have a single egg, he opened the rice cooker, but the yellowed rice had all gone hard.

In the end, Gawon filled his stomach with water. If he drank one cup, then two in a row, his stomach would fill up nicely and he could endure. When he lay on his left side, he heard a sloshing sound, and when he lay on his right, he heard the same sloshing sound.

It felt as if fish were playing inside his stomach.

Then did that make him a small sea?

Thinking that, Gawon squeezed his eyes shut. Lying there powerlessly, he pictured in his mind the blue, vast sea he had once seen on TV.

It was incredibly big. The sea, surging in the TV, full of waves. A peaceful paradise where thousands of fish swam in schools in perfect unison, and dolphins leaped and danced. The mother of nature, with a generous embrace that could swallow the body of the sun, which burned terrifyingly red in the evening, in a single gulp.

Gawon blinked and wrapped his arms around his body. A sea so large could surely embrace his small, skinny body as much as it wanted.

He wanted to go to the sea someday and be held in its embrace. The strong waves would pull at his arms and legs and push his back. If he relaxed his body and lay comfortably, even the undulations would melt into his body and become one with it. He wanted to close his eyes, lie still, and completely entrust his body to the fierce current. Until his small body, too, wore away and became a fragment of the breaking foam.

…Someday, would he be able to go to the sea?

Gawon killed time by imagining and reimagining himself becoming seafoam and floating on the surface of the sea. But his mother did not return, not even after it became completely dark. It was the same the next morning, and the next evening.

Even without his mother, Gawon went to school diligently. He preferred school, where there were lots of kids and teachers. As soon as he came home, a massively swollen fear would swallow Gawon whole. So, even after classes ended, Gawon would linger at school for as long as possible.

He wanted to go home quickly and check if his mother had returned, but at the same time, he didn’t have the confidence to be alone in the empty house without his mother. Waiting for his mother who would return in the morning and waiting for a mother who he didn’t know when would come were worlds apart.

Inside the house where there was nothing to eat, Gawon survived the day on a single school lunch. He had been trembling in fear and waiting for his mother for three days.

Finally, the small side door burst open. Thud! His mother’s body was thrown carelessly onto the floor.

‘M… Mom…’

Gawon was too shocked to even scream. Trembling violently, all he could do was take in the sight of his mother, collapsed and covered in blood. Men in suits with cigarettes in their mouths strode inside.

‘Fucking b**ch, trying to run away and causing trouble. It was a fucking pain in the a** trying to find you.’

They spat out profanities nonstop as they pressed down on his mother’s discarded body with their feet. A shoe-clad foot ruthlessly lifted her tight-fitting dress, revealing the bruises and bloodstains all over her delicate body. The men looked down at his mother, whose body was defenselessly exposed, and snickered.

Gawon’s small body froze on the spot. His jaw chattered so hard it made a clicking sound. A stream of yellow liquid flowed out from between his scrawny legs. Even as he felt his pajama pants getting soaked with urine, Gawon couldn’t move a muscle. The men who had done this to his mother were so, so scary.

He would get a harsh beating from his mother for wetting himself, but Gawon would rather have his mother get up and hit him. It would be fine if she struck him so hard that palm prints were left on his back, just please get up. It would be fine if she cursed at him until his ears hurt, just please, please get up….

‘Ah… ugh…’

‘Mooom!’

Only after hearing his mother’s faint m**n did his feet move. Coming to his senses, Gawon ran and clung to his mother’s body, wailing. Then the shoe-clad foot that had been carelessly rummaging inside her dress and trampling her body came to rest at the tip of Gawon’s chin.

‘How old is our little boy?’

‘Hic, uhhh… uh, huuuu…’

His tongue had turned to stone. A strong scent of cologne and cigarettes wafted from the men. Gawon lifted his face, stained with tears.

‘Don’t just bawl, kid. You have to answer.’

‘Ei, ei, eight, sob, eight…’

He was like a snake. The man with slanted eyes and a scar on his face. He was looking down at Gawon, smiling with amusement. The moment their eyes met, a shiver ran down his spine.

‘You’ve got a pretty face. Is this a little d**k or a little b**ch?’

‘Whatever it is, eat a lot and grow up fast. You’ll have to grow up quick to pay off the debt your mom and dad made.’

The men snickered and laughed. Puff, cigarette smoke settled on Gawon’s small, white face. The man with the scar by his ear patted Gawon’s small head with his large palm and then turned around.

Only after all the men had disappeared outside the side door did Gawon lock the door, trembling. Then he grabbed his mother’s small body, groaning in pain, and wailed.

‘Mooom… Mom…’

After that, his mother repeated such an act three or four more times. For a day, if it was short, or for five days, if it was long. She would disappear in a flash as if she had never existed here, and then be dragged back, covered in blood, over and over again. And each time, the taunts of the scary men, who would poke the Gawon who had grown a little taller, also grew in intensity.

As he got a year or two older, Gawon came to understand what this series of events meant. And who those men were.

His mother had wanted to run away. From her life, sold off by the man who was his father, whose face he did not know, from the wretched poverty, and from the ruthless gangsters.

But his mother had never once, not a single time, included Gawon in that escape.

The bell signaling the end of break time rang.

Gawon sat at his desk with a dazed expression. He didn’t know how he had managed to return to his senses. While Heo Yeonggyu’s group smoked, they kept poking Gawon and playing low-quality pranks on him, but Gawon paid them no mind.

His father… is a gangster.

The voices of Heo Yeonggyu’s group, who had said that about Gijun, still echoed in his ears.

‘But, I heard some gangsters already scouted Ahn Seongjun hyung.’

‘That hyung really, really likes Gijun. When I told him we were in the same class, he was really happy and said he’s a brother he cherishes.’

Come to think of it, the classmates had talked about that too. That the thug from around here, famous enough that even Gawon knew of him, who had already been scouted by a gang, was close with Gijun.

He himself didn’t know why his mood sank like this as he pieced together the kids’ words. Gijun had no relationship with him whatsoever. Therefore, whether his father was a gangster or whether he hung out with thuggish older guys, it was none of his business.

Conversely, even if those beings called gangsters were a detestably repulsive presence in Gawon’s life, that had nothing to do with Gijun.

So then why am I.

‘…I don’t know. What’s it got to do with me.’

Shaking off the idle thoughts, he forced himself to focus his gaze on his textbook. He took notes diligently while listening to the teacher’s monotonous words. Neat handwriting was spun from the tip of the thin mechanical pencil lead. But the writing, which had flowed without pause, stopped at the same time the pencil lead snapped.

A silent sigh escaped.

In the end, he had no choice but to admit it.

That he hadn’t wanted to believe it.

The fact that the kid who had smiled as brightly as the sun and had taken off his gym shirt for him without hesitation, the kid who had innocently smiled and offered him an energy bar, telling him to eat it, was intimately connected with gangsters.

Gawon’s dry gaze reached the back of Gijun’s head. His large frame was slightly hunched over. He could see his elbows, firmly supporting his upper body, and his broad back. The angle of his head would dip, then jolt back up as if startled.

Nod, nod. After staring for a long while at Gijun, who was sitting in the very front, constantly dozing off, Gawon turned his gaze away. The scent that had risen from the gym clothes the kid had lent him seemed to linger at the tip of his nose. For some reason, he felt a little dejected.