A Scorching Day Chapter 8

There had been a time when his mother disappeared.

Was he eight? Or nine? He woke up and his mother was nowhere to be seen. He’d known from a young age that his mother worked nights and came home in the morning, so that day too, he went to school without giving it much thought.

But when he came home after school, his mother was still nowhere to be seen. Usually, his mother’s face—passed out cold from sleep or drink—would greet him when he returned from school.

From then on, he thought something was strange. But young Gawon didn’t have a phone, and the only thing he could do in this situation was simply wait for his mother at home.

The sun was setting low, and his stomach growled loudly. Opening the refrigerator, there was nothing but a rotting onion and sour, spoiled kimchi. Closing the refrigerator that held not a single egg, he opened the rice cooker, but the yellowed rice had all gone hard.

Gawon ended up filling his stomach with water. Downing one cup, two cups in a row, his stomach swelled up full enough to endure. When he lay on his left side, he heard sloshing; when he lay on his right, the same sloshing sound.

It was as if fish were playing inside his stomach.

So that would make me a little sea.

Thinking that, Gawon squeezed his eyes shut. Lying there helplessly, he pictured before his eyes the blue, vast sea he’d once seen on TV.

It was enormous. The sea he’d seen rolling on the screen, full of waves. Thousands of fish swimming in unison in schools, dolphins leaping and dancing—a peaceful paradise. The body of the sun, terrifyingly red at dusk, could be embraced and swallowed whole at once—a generous-bosomed mother of nature.

Gawon blinked and wrapped his arms around himself. Since that sea was so vast, it could surely embrace his small, scrawny body with ease.

Someday, he wanted to go to the sea and be held in its embrace. The strong waves would pull at his limbs and push his back. If he relaxed and lay still, even the surge would dissolve into his body and become one. He wanted to close his eyes and lie still, completely surrendering his body to the fierce current. Until his tiny body, worn down and worn out, became fragments of breaking foam.

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

Gawon imagined himself floating on the sea as sea foam, over and over again, killing time. But his mother didn’t return until it was completely dark. The next morning, and the evening after, it was the same.

Even without his mother, Gawon went to school faithfully. School was better—there were other kids and teachers. Whenever he came home, the fear that had swollen to enormity would swallow him whole. So Gawon lingered at school as long as possible even after classes ended.

He wanted to hurry home and check if his mother had returned, but at the same time, he couldn’t bear being alone in the empty house without her. Waiting for a mother who would return in the morning was worlds apart from waiting for a mother who might come back at any unknown time.

With nothing to eat in the house, Gawon survived on just one school lunch meal a day. And so, trembling with fear, he waited for his mother. It was the third day.

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

“Uh… Mom…”

Gawon was so shocked he couldn’t even scream. All he could do was take in the sight of his mother, covered in blood and collapsed, trembling violently. Men in suits with cigarettes in their mouths strode in.

“This bitch had the nerve to run away, causing all that trouble. Took us forever to find her.”

They kept cursing, kicking the discarded body of his mother. As a leather shoe unhesitatingly hiked up the dress clinging to her body, bruises and bloodstains were visible all over her fragile frame. The men looked down at his mother’s exposed, defenseless body and snickered.

Gawon’s small body froze solid. His jaw chattered so hard it made a clicking sound. A yellow stream trickled out between his bony legs. Even as he felt his pajama pants grow wet with urine, Gawon couldn’t move an inch. The men who had done this to his mother were terrifying.

He knew he’d get a good scolding from his mother for wetting himself, but Gawon wished his mother would get up and hit him. Even if she struck his back until handprints remained, he wished she’d get up. Even if she cursed loud enough to hurt his ears, he wished, please, she would get up….

“Ah… ugh…”

“Mommy!”

Only after hearing his mother’s faint moan did his legs finally move. Coming to his senses, Gawon ran to his mother and clung to her, wailing. Then, the leather shoe that had been roughly pawing inside her dress and trampling her body came to rest at the tip of Gawon’s chin.

“How old is our little one?”

“Hn, uhh… uh, hnnn…”

His tongue had turned to stone. The strong scent of perfume and cigarette smoke wafted from the men. Gawon lifted his tear-streaked face.

“Don’t just cry, kid. You have to answer.”

“Se, se, seven, hic, seven…”

He was like a snake. The man with slit-like eyes and a scar on his face. He looked down at Gawon and was laughing joyfully. The moment their eyes met, a chilling shudder ran down his spine.

“He’s pretty-looking. Is this a little boy or a girl?”

“Either way, eat a lot and grow up fast. You need to grow up quick to pay back your mom and dad’s debts.”

The men chuckled and laughed. Smoke puffed down onto Gawon’s small, white face. The man with a scar by his ear patted Gawon’s small head with his large palm and then turned away.

Only after all the men had disappeared beyond the side gate did Gawon, trembling violently, lock the door. Then he clung to his mother’s small, pain-racked body and wailed.

“Mommy… Mommy…”

After that, his mother repeated such incidents three or four more times. As short as a day, as long as five days. She’d vanish as if she’d never existed there, only to be dragged back covered in blood, over and over. And each time, the terrifying men’s taunts, as they patted the one-spurt-taller Gawon, grew more intense.

As he grew older year by year, Gawon came to understand what that whole series of events meant. And who those men were.

His mother had wanted to run away. From the life that the man called his father—a man whose face he didn’t even know—had sold off, from the suffocating poverty, and from the merciless thugs.

But his mother had never, not even once, ever included Gawon in those attempts to escape.

∞ ∞ ∞

The bell signaling the end of break rang.

Gawon sat down in his seat with a dazed expression. He couldn’t tell in what state of mind he had returned. Throughout the time Heo Yeonggyu’s gang had been smoking, they’d kept tapping Gawon and playing cheap tricks, but Gawon hadn’t registered any of it.

His dad is a gangster, he said.

The voices of Heo Yeonggyu’s gang, saying that about Ki Joon, still lingered in his ears.

“But, I heard Ahn Seongjoon hyung already got scouted by gangsters.”

“He said he really, really likes Ki Joon? When I told him we were in the same class, he was all happy and said he was a cherished junior.”

Come to think of it, the classmates had said those things too. That a local delinquent so famous even Gawon knew of him was close with Ki Joon—and that he’d already been scouted by gang organizations.

As he pieced together what the kids had said, he didn’t know why his mood was sinking so low. Ki Joon had no relationship with him whatsoever. So it was none of his business whether Ki Joon’s father was a gangster, or whether Ki Joon hung around with older delinquent types.

Conversely, even if gangsters were a disgustingly loathsome presence in Gawon’s life, that had nothing to do with Ki Joon.

But then why was he…

‘…Never mind. What’s it got to do with me.’

Shaking off the stray thoughts, he forcibly focused his gaze on his textbook. Listening to the teacher’s monotonous lecture, he diligently took notes. Neat handwriting emerged from the tip of his thin mechanical pencil. But his uninterrupted note-taking stopped at the same time as the lead snapped.

A silent sigh escaped him.

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

He hadn’t wanted to believe it.

That the kid who had smiled like sunshine and unhesitatingly given him his gym top, that the kid who had innocently smiled and handed him an energy bar, telling him to eat—was deeply entangled with gangsters.

Gawon’s dry gaze reached Ki Joon’s back. His large frame was slightly hunched. His elbows, supporting his solid upper body, and his broad back were visible. His head, dropping at a tilted angle, would startle back up.

Nodding, nodding. After staring at Ki Joon, sitting in the very front and continuously dozing off, for a long while, Gawon averted his gaze. The scent that had wafted from the gym uniform the kid had lent him seemed to linger at the tip of his nose. For some reason, he felt a little melancholy.