Winter Season Chapter 38

“Ah… Pastor Kim, you’ve arrived…”

“My, I didn’t know you had a guest. Perhaps it would be better if I came back a little later?”

Her tone was slightly exaggerated, but the atmosphere turned strange thanks to Yihyeon’s father and mother, who did not answer. Only after noticing the look of embarrassment on the middle-aged woman’s face did Yihyeon’s mother belatedly respond.

“Oh, no. This is Yihyeon, our youngest son. Yihyeon, say hello. These are people from your father’s church.”

He had wanted nothing more than to escape this place, but he suddenly found himself facing church guests and was put in a situation where he even had to greet them. He was so flustered and uncomfortable that he could barely manage his facial expression.

“Ah, that…”

However, the faces he encountered when he lifted his head were frozen in a more subtle and awkward way than Yihyeon’s own. He could see them exchanging glances among themselves.

Ah, these people all know. Then again, there was probably no rumor that traveled as lightly as the fact that the son of a church pastor, of all people, was gay.

Gazes entwined with curiosity, pity, and disgust all at once flew at him like stabs. He had done nothing wrong, yet his head kept dropping downward.

There seemed to be a small whispering sound coming from the back of the group, and then someone spoke up nonchalantly as if trying to refresh the awkward atmosphere. The person leading the group at the very front tapped Yihyeon’s shoulder lightly and curved their eyes into a smile.

“Oh my, he’s certainly tall and handsome, just as expected of Pastor Kwon’s son. I think he’s better-looking than my own daughter.”

“I agree. How can a man’s eyelashes be this long? You must be so happy, Ms. Pastor’s Wife.”

While they laughed among themselves and exchanged various remarks with Yihyeon standing right in front of them, Yihyeon did nothing but gnaw incessantly on his lower lip.

A fatigue so heavy it made even standing up a burden seemed to weigh down his entire body. He was only able to draw a proper breath when he exhaled a rising sigh.

“…I’ll head out first, Mother. I sent over what you asked for, so please check it.”

In the end, clenching his fists tight, Yihyeon pushed past the people and moved his feet urgently like someone running away. Moving even a little further away from his father’s hospital room was his single goal.

“Yihyeon, wait…! Wait a moment…!”

Around the time he had hectically escaped the hospital ward, someone snatched his arm from behind. When he turned around with a flinch, there was his mother, gasping for breath.

“Huff… puff… Is it because your legs are long… why are your steps so fast. Huff…”

He couldn’t bring himself to shake off the hands that were softly holding both of Yihyeon’s wrists. Yihyeon wavered between the thought of wanting to leave this place right this second and the complex emotions toward his mother, before relaxing his body and taking a step back. Because his insides and the area near his solar plexus became hot as if boiling, he closed his eyes and steadied his breath.

“Yihyeon, it must be hard for you too, but thank you for coming all this way and… helping with the hospital bills. It wasn’t too much of a strain, was it? You’re okay, right?”

Being here right now felt more burdensome than when he had gone to find Gu Seunghyeok and stood before him. No loud words had been exchanged, and he hadn’t been slapped or anything, yet he felt as if his entire body had been hacked to pieces with a knife.

He wondered if invisible, transparent blood was dripping from his arms, legs, and torso, pooling heavily on the floor. Could one really call this being okay?

“I’ll head out first. Just please check if the money went into the account properly.”

“Yihyeon, you came all this way, so at least have a meal with us before you go. Hm? Your sister is nearby too and said she’d be here soon.”

“I’m sorry. I have a schedule afterward…”

He had no schedule until evening. On the contrary, the bus times were awkwardly spaced, so he was in a position where he would have to sit somewhere and wait before leaving.

However, looking at his mother reminded him of his father, and also made him think of eight years ago, so his insides kept growing hot. He didn’t want to show the sight of that heat leaking out in the form of crying.

Yihyeon found it too difficult to control his expression, so he bowed his head and gave a clumsy greeting. When he tried to step aside to leave, Yihyeon’s mother urgently grabbed Yihyeon’s arm with both hands.

“Yihyeon, wait a moment. Mom will just say one prayer for Yihyeon.”

He wasn’t even grabbed that hard, yet it felt as if shackles had been placed over his entire body. His chest felt so stifled, as if his solar plexus were being pressed tight, that Yihyeon couldn’t manage to say the words to let him go and only parted his lips.

Yihyeon’s mother moved her arms down and held Yihyeon’s two hands in hers. Her deep-double-lidded eyes closed slowly, and a small, powerful voice leaked from between her parted lips.

“Our Father in heaven… Thank you for sending our precious son Yihyeon back to the family’s embrace like this.”

The real father who gave birth to me denied my existence. I don’t know how great this person called the Father in heaven is, but I didn’t think he would be great enough to embrace a child even others had discarded.

“Please do not let your child fall for Satan’s temptations any longer; guide him onto the right path and let him enjoy peace within the Lord’s embrace. Protect our Yihyeon so that he does not fall for the cunning tricks of the demons.”

To the very end…

At the prayer that continued with mumbles, Yihyeon let out a hollow, resigned laugh in spite of himself. In the end, both his mother and father would not accept his existence.

A Satan with a pastor and a devout Protestant as parents. How laughable.

Amen. Hearing the softly whispered sound, he looked up at the sky that was a chillingly vivid blue.

After breaking away from his mother, who seemed prepared to recite prayers without end, the place Yihyeon sought out was the smoking area in a corner of the hospital. He thought it would be a bit better for breathing than going inside the building, so he sat on a hard bench and put a cigarette to his lips.

As he leaned against the backrest and tilted his head back, the sunlight was blinding. Inside his vision, which was washed over in pure white, things like the pattern of the hospital gown his father was wearing or the wrinkles on his mother’s two hands kept flickering.

To avoid thinking of anything else, Yihyeon closed his eyes and focused only on exhaling cigarette smoke. He thought the time for being hurt by this kind of thing every time had passed, but his chest had been feeling like it was being pricked since a while ago. Because it felt as if something would spill out the moment the heavy thing pressing on his solar plexus disappeared, he tried hard to empty his thoughts.

“Yeah, yeah. Yeong-ji’s mom. You arrived already?”

Around the time the cigarette butts piled under his feet became a heap and his frozen sneakers became more than cold—becoming hard—someone approached and sat next to Yihyeon while on a call. The voice, which sounded like a middle-aged woman’s, seemed to stop next to Yihyeon, followed by the “click” sound of a lighter wheel turning.

“Oh my, really? Something like that happened? Oh dear, how did it come to that… Even the heavens are indifferent.”

The voice mumbling through the cigarette kept piercing his ears. He felt it was time to get up and go anywhere. When he lifted his eyelids while facing the sky, a vivid blue void unfolded before his eyes.

“My goodness… I never even knew Pastor Kwon had a son because he only ever talks about his daughter. Oh dear, but hearing about it, I can see why. That a man likes a man, it’s so disgraceful, how could he speak of it. By any chance, did they say they tried sending him to a mental hospital? I heard there are hospitals these days that fix that kind of thing.”

The lady in the next seat was absorbed in her call without giving Yihyeon a single glance.

“Satan took a place in his heart to defy the Bible. The Pastor must have suffered so much, my goodness… Eight years? My oh my, Father God…”

Yihyeon blinked slowly and stared at the sky where clouds were drifting. Whether by coincidence or revelation, the shape of the approaching cloud resembled a cross.

“Homosexuality is the sin God hates most among all sins. They’ll only snap out of it once they all fall into the fires of hell. To think that those cursed by Satan are mixed in among ordinary people—”

The lady continued to sneer about this and that, not even knowing that the Satan she was speaking of was sitting right next to her. Yihyeon laughed with a sound of escaping air and then slowly stood up from his seat. Looking up at the sky one last time, he let out a long breath of cigarette smoke.

Thinking of the state of his bank account, which now had no source of incoming money, he should have been looking for a part-time job to do over the weekend, but he felt no motivation at all. Since he was in the business of luring men even during the day when the sun was perfectly up, would it be any different at night?