Desires Chapter 1.3 - The Dead Mother’s Ear

His mother, standing alone. Song Yeongin quietly gazed at her stooped and rounded shoulders that were curled inward. His mother turned back again and looked at Song Yeongin. How could she be so serene.

It was then. Suddenly, an overturned vehicle fell upon her. All around was stained with his mother’s blood. This terrible nightmare would appear whenever he was about to forget, and awaken Song Yeongin. One day, someone appeared in a dream and told him so.

‘It stood behind your mother who could not hear, its maw wide open. Did you see that ominous shadow? Oh, my child… yes, in truth, I saw you too.’

‘Remember. Let’s play hide-and-seek until your turn comes. Hide well so you cannot be seen. Because I will count the numbers very slowly. Go on now and hide well so not even a single strand of your hair can be seen.’

Song Yeongin had never, not even for a moment, forgotten that cruel shadow that appeared in his brutal nightmares every night and burrowed into him.

Song Yeongin’s mother was deaf, just like his younger sister. His mother could neither hear nor speak.

Song Yeongin shouted toward her turned back until his throat burst. He cried out and shouted from the opposite side of the road, far away. However, Song Yeongin’s cries scattered into the empty air and were torn to pieces.

[Why didn’t you jump in?]

“…….”

[You were close enough to jump in, oppa?! It was enough…. Why did you needlessly cover my eyes then? You should have run to Mom instead! If you had, she would have lived…! If you had, Mom definitely would have lived…!]

“Stop…. I’m sorry… Seoyeong, I’m sorry… It was all my fault, so let’s stop now.”

His pitiful younger sister, who had inherited their mother’s hearing impairment exactly, blamed their mother’s death on none other than Song Yeongin.

His younger sister resented Song Yeongin. With the skillful sign language she had shared with him since she was young, she conveyed her hatred and resentment with all her might. As if she would go mad if she did not do so. As if she simply could not live with a sane mind.

Her fingers became an accusatory gesture of resentment and hatred toward him, and Song Yeongin could give that child no answer. It was a tragedy that could not be washed away.

As his younger sister said, there was enough time. He knows the inner resentment his younger sister, Seoyeong, holds.

‘You are the only one in the family who can hear with your ears…! You’re the only one with perfectly fine ears, a perfectly fine throat…! You’re the only one with a perfectly fine body….’

And yet, why did he not jump in to save their mother. She resents and rebukes him, telling him to live his entire life carrying that bad karma.

It was quite, a far distance. But perhaps if he had run with all his might, at full speed, he might have been able to save his mother. We had quickly gone out of sight, and regrettably, it had been his mother’s mistake. His mother had probably thought that we, from that disappeared distance, would not be able to see her from afar.

Song Yeongin did not jump in toward his mother. Instead, he covered the eyes of his younger sister, who knew nothing… who heard nothing.

Song Yeongin had clearly seen it. The look in his mother’s eyes as she met her end… The moment he met those eyes, Song Yeongin’s two feet had frozen in place as if cement had been poured over them.

Her cause of death was not an accidental death. That was the truth known only to him, who had witnessed the accident.

His mother had committed suicide.

He could never, ever bring himself to say those words to his younger sister. His mother knew, yet she did not avoid it at the final moment. As if she had been preparing for death for a long time.

The accident had come suddenly, in a situation no one could have predicted. But his mother had met it of her own accord. As if with a face that said the only thing she could choose since being born into this world was death.

His mother’s face as she met death looked exceedingly serene. Was it from the relief of finally being liberated from their father’s violence? We belatedly learned that we had a debt so large it would not disappear no matter how much we repaid it. It was a debt that would only be swallowed up and disappear if someone died. His mother had embraced the debt and gone.

🌫️

Sometimes, death comes in a chain, one after another. Not long after his mother died, news came that his father, who had gone missing, had met a violent, untimely death on the street.

Song Yeongin does not know the end of the father who had been completely devoured by the demon of drink. That man, that father who had incurred gambling debts and devoured his mother, did not even have the right to be alive and breathing perfectly fine.

He only hoped that the man had gone in regret. He used to come home from time to time and pick out a sacrifice to beat like a dog, so he was only faintly relieved that he was gone. Now, he did not have to flee with his younger sister to the dark playground at dawn and ride the swings.

In that way, the ominous shadow he had seen in his childhood had wiped out the seed of this family. And Song Yeongin locked himself away.

Holed up in that shabby rooftop room, he gave up on life and death for several years and only painted. He became entombed in the grave of painting that was himself. He forgot about living and dying. He only painted. Except for when he opened and closed his eyes, that was all he did.

‘Ear of a dead mother….’

Her ear, which could not even hear my scream, my cry, scattering in the empty air.

The shame and pain, hatred, sadness, anger, disillusionment, resentment, pity, regret, and compassion that that ear had given him in his young days…. Containing all those emotions, painting over and over again, Song Yeongin deeply detached his mother’s death from within his own body.

Solely in order to live.

‘Yeongin, the Father knows that you are a very strong child.’

He does not know if he should say he was lucky amidst the misfortune. To have met Father Kang Hajong in Cheongsong Mountain address number 1, in the crumbling shantytown slum, in tearing poverty.

He was the sole savior of his life.

Just as the Father, in his younger days as a deacon, had first placed a brush and paints into his young hands, filling both of them, at the entrance to this crumbling shantytown.

The one who sent his deaf younger sister to a school for the deaf, the one who silently pushed rice and side dishes to Song Yeongin who would not come out of the house, was also him.

Thanks to him, Song Yeongin had survived like this.

Defiantly, even while brutally facing the terrible nightmares that still tormented him. With several graves buried inside his chest.

After his mother was gone, there was a new, small life that came. After death, there was, like a contradiction, another new birth. Song Yeongin vaguely felt that the child was like the reincarnation of his pitiful mother. So he simply could not turn away. He decided to save the newly born small life, one way or another.

For the sake of those who were left behind. For the sake of that tiny life that had not seen the light of the world for long. For the sake of his pitiful deaf younger sister, who was barely holding onto life through resentment….

Like that, Song Yeongin had to get up again and silently live on.