A Life That Should Have Been Blessed

Mine was a life that deserved to be blessed. It took a single night to send it tumbling into the abyss.

I was barely seven years old. There was no wrong I could have committed. The brand stamped on me was the product of a choice made by the woman who had given birth to me.

"She ran off, I heard."

"How suffocating must this family have been, for her to leave a child that young behind?"

"She always did have a thing for men, apparently. I heard there was a man she ran off with, too."

"Oh my god, really? So it wasn't that she hated the house. I thought she just couldn't adjust."

"Her own family was well-off, from what I hear. That's why the Madam even allowed the marriage."

"Oh, I heard it was a love match. Wasn't it?"

"A love match, I suppose, if you want to call it that. The elders didn't arrange it. They met by chance... and she was the one who pursued him, from what I hear."

"They made a beautiful pair."

"Didn't they just. Such a waste of our Chairman."

"And who did the wife run off with, leaving that precious Chairman behind?"

"The secretary. The attendant the Chairman assigned to her."

"Ah, that strapping fellow?"

Their cackling laughter lodged in my child's ears like shards of glass. Even then, I understood most of what they were saying. I didn't grasp the vulgar turns of phrase, but I understood enough of the substance.

So Mother abandoned me.

Mother.

A wretched mother.

I remembered the way her shoulders had drawn in, reluctant, when someone told her to hold me. Those long, brightly lacquered nails reaching toward me, then withdrawing before they ever made contact. I never made it into her arms.

Was it sadness I felt at the faint premonition that I would never see her again, or a kind of helpless dread? I don't remember well.

A child foolishly believes that the being who gave birth to them will, in some vague way, be on their side. I was a child, and even if I was far smarter than my peers, I had not yet outgrown that limit.

"That child looks too much like her."

"Well, she is his birth mother."

"You don't look like her, though."

"That's why Mother had a paternity test done the moment he was born, isn't it. Unfortunately, he was mine."

"So that loose little tramp at least kept a shred of loyalty to you."

Father glanced at me. It was not the look of a man worried a child might overhear. It was the look of a man curious what reaction I might show, having understood. I met his expectation with a blank face.

After Mother absconded in the night with another man, I found myself, from time to time — or rather, as a matter of course — placed before that kind of gaze.

Was I a seedling worth meeting expectations.

Was I material worth investing in.

Young as I was, I understood at least what those looks meant. In this household, where I had not a single person on my side, I would be thrown out if I failed to prove my worth. I straightened my back and mimicked my father's expression. He looked at me with a faintly peculiar face, then turned his eyes away.

"Remarry. You can always have more children."

"I'm busy."

"I didn't say you had to throw another wedding. Pick a girl from a good family, well-bred and quietly raised. I don't care about the rest — just bring home a woman who won't go spreading her legs around town, and have a child with her."

"What am I, a breeding machine?"

"Weren't you?"

"I really am busy."

"But you've got time to keep a girl from a bar?"

"That's a hobby. As you well know."

"So you're going to raise that child and no other? You know what people say about him. That tag will follow him for the rest of his life."

"I suppose it will."

"I won't have it. He's bound to take after that shameless mother of his and turn out stupid."

"Then you can teach him yourself, Mother."

"I said I won't!"

"If you acknowledge him, Mother, no one will have anything idle to say. I'll send Sa-eon to you every week."

"I told you I don't want to."

"However you choose to raise him, I won't interfere in the slightest. Roast him, boil him — do as you please."

"And if that child decides he hates it and runs off like his mother?"

"Then that's as far as it goes. I'll remarry and have another child. Or take in an adopted son, even."

A gaze like frost, making no attempt to hide its contempt, poured down over my head.

Grandmother had hated me for as long as my memory existed. She didn't need to put it into words; the feeling transmitted itself through the skin. The faint crease of a brow at the merest brush of contact. The temperature of eyes conducting a cold appraisal. The moment a cheap smile, freely given to everyone else, was withdrawn.

But I had to find the courage. Father was looking at me as if to hurry me along. Only by winning that woman's recognition could I secure my place in this house.

"Ha... Grandmother..."

"Even the knack for fawning — did he get that from his mother, too."

The humiliation woke something in me. It was instinct. If I backed down here — if I lost to this person — everything was over. The eyes looking down at me looked like those of the serpent-witch from a picture book.

But how noble are you, treating me like filthy seed just because I am my mother's child. Grandmother kept letters from a man who was not her husband and treasured them, and the servants who cursed me would blush and grow shy in front of Father.

The lips that condemned me. The slender fingertips that pointed. Father, shoving me forward from behind. The driver and the bodyguards, who noticed the wounds on my arms and neck and back and said nothing at all.

I couldn't breathe.

And still, every week, I had to walk on my own two feet into the country mansion where that nightmare of a hag lived. There, that woman poured her wretched temper onto a seven-year-old grandson. An emotional, illogical monster. Hideously mean, a two-faced hypocrite.

Until that terrible summer of my fifteenth year, when someone finally found out.

Even on days that steamed with heat, I could not wear short sleeves.

Goddamn hag.

The sprawling house had air conditioners in every room, but she never used them. The air, thick with moisture, was more like being underwater. I couldn't breathe; my skin clung to itself, sticky; every inhalation was torture. Whenever I came to this house, I always felt as though I were sinking alone into a swamp.

The hag always summoned me to the cramped study on the second floor.

Past a well-lit corridor, the study lay hidden deep inside, quietly steeped in the dust-smell of old books. It was not a kindness, sending me in there to read.

It was so no one would catch the ugly face she showed only in front of me. To bury her raw, keenly honed accusations among the thick volumes and the shelves. And to lock me in a room where not a sliver of light entered, and break me.

After years of it, I had grown calloused even to her nitpicking. Baseless accusations don't wound you. An old woman gone senile will say anything.

That ignorant, two-faced old woman was quick enough when it came to reading a room. She must have realized I despised her from the bottom of my heart. Of course she did. And so, unable to win with words, she resorted to that base violence of hers.

"You don't even cry."

"Shall I cry for you?"

The thin switch split the skin. A sharp crack, and the familiar pain flared hot. She wanted me to beg. She waited for me to drop to my knees, wring my hands, and plead.

As if I would ever give her what she wanted, even if it killed me.

I knew it was stupid obstinacy.

It would have been to my advantage to fawn, to give her the reaction she wanted, to curry favor with a senile old woman. And still, I could not bring myself to bend.

I hadn't done anything wrong.

What did I do wrong.

What did I do wrong, that I should have to beg forgiveness from the likes of you.

At fifteen, all I had was fear, obstinacy, and obsession. I did not want to lose. The moment I submitted to that ignorant, repulsive creature, I would truly become the trash she said I was. And I was supposed to admit that?

Say something that makes sense, and maybe I'll pretend to listen.

Violence doesn't scare me.

It had been terror to the seven-year-old Kang Sa-eon, but the child who used to fall asleep clutching a bleeding forearm, unable even to put ointment on it, had grown enough now to endure the pain.

Thin arms, like thorns. A gaunt face with a harsh cast to it. Large eyes and long lashes. Wrinkles at the corners of the eyes and mouth. Thin, bloodless lips pressed tightly shut. To me, the hag looked like a praying mantis.

She was like those insects from childhood that hid in the grass, their pitch-black eyes gleaming grotesquely. A thorn-like grip seized my bleeding forearm. I sneered at the face twisted with rage at my refusal to submit.

"Get in there this instant. Don't let me see your face!"

"You'll have to let go first. For someone who can't stand to touch me, you sure have a grip."

I don't like it either, something like you.

But for all the bravado of that retort, I — the tips of my fingers — were trembling wretchedly. Being locked in a room where not a sliver of light entered was more terrible, more terrifying, than I could have imagined.

Don't let go.

No. Let go.

The joints of the thin fingers clamped around my wrist were white. Grotesque. Revolting. Like the downy legs of an insect.

I bit my lip. I didn't want her to know I was shaking. That would please her. But my body would not obey.

It felt as though someone were splitting the flesh and driving a blade-tip into the joints of my bones. The sound of fingernails scraping a chalkboard tormented my eardrums. Cold sweat ran down me, and nausea surged up...

If I threw up in that face, I might feel better.

But I, commendably, managed to hold the vomit down. Not for the hag's sake. If I were locked in that room right after throwing up, the smell would make me suffer.

Standing still in the dark, every kind of face rose up, and I thought I would go mad. That place was truly terrible. My mother's blurred face. The tutor who looked at me with poorly disguised anticipation, playing at shyness. The servants whispering, loaded with pity and curiosity, as if looking down at something very amusing. Those smooth, soft faces.

Every woman was like the hag.

No matter who I looked at, I could see some part of her in them. Women — and, more broadly, human beings — were all terrible.