The Unexpected Brother
The funeral etiquette I had studied so diligently turned out to be completely useless. The chief mourner—Eui-joo's older brother—had arbitrarily skipped the silent prayer, the incense, and the bows. Declaring that a guest had arrived and we should eat first, he dragged me straight to the table. The black suit on his back was covered in little pills of fabric. His necktie sat crooked too; so this was what people meant when they said a man's circumstances showed in his clothes.
Yukgaejang in a paper bowl and cold, limp slices of boiled pork. Unidentifiable green side dishes, three honey rice cakes that looked half-desiccated, and kimchi with almost no seasoning. It was the first meal I had been offered after skipping both lunch and dinner, yet I stopped with the spoon halfway to my mouth.
The reason sat across from me: Eui-joo's brother, shoveling food as if he had not eaten in three days, mixing rice straight into the yukgaejang. From the very first bite he had picked up two slices of pork at once; that alone was impressive. I was staring in open astonishment at the blank-faced way he jammed the spoon into his mouth when the lights flickered. Looking up, I saw the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling blinking on and off like they had reached the end of their life.
It was an old funeral home; power outages were probably common. I had thought the place felt unnaturally dark. Five full minutes passed before the lights finally steadied again.
I set the plastic utensils I had only been holding down on the table. Into a life already unable to pass lightly over Eui-joo's birthday or his death, a new and peculiar difficulty had just dropped.
The necktie that looked ready to slide around to the back of his neck, the bandages wrapping his hands, the corner of his mouth split by a wound, the robot-like blankness of his face, the man eating as though a hungry ghost had possessed him. Yet when the fluorescent light returned, among the things I had expected I also discovered things I had not.
That his build differed sharply from skinny Eui-joo had been obvious from the moment he appeared. By my standards my gaze had to climb a long way before it reached the top of his head; even hunched, his frame carried an imposing bulk. But the features that the light now made clear possessed a refined quality no one would have believed belonged to Eui-joo's brother. It was strange, too, that his eyes were a bright, bright brown while his hair was pure black.
Looks capable of creating goodwill where none had existed before drew admiration and shock in equal measure. Admiration that such a strikingly handsome older brother had ever belonged to Eui-joo; shock that his chopstick technique for picking up kimchi was worse than a five-year-old's.
He clamped the chopsticks in his fist and stabbed at the side dishes—a truly dog-like mess of skill. That he managed to get any food into his mouth at all bordered on miraculous. Completely indifferent to anyone watching, he emptied an entire bowl of yukgaejang, then roughly yanked out a tissue and wiped his mouth. Eui-joo's wild-looking brother made even my tears dry up. His indifferent gaze, still roughly wiping the corner of his mouth, swept the table and landed on me.
"Aren't you eating?"
He spoke while looking at the untouched rice and yukgaejang in front of me. The abrupt question left me so flustered I could only flap my lips. Without the slightest hesitation the man reached out.
"Then I'll eat it."
Once my share of yukgaejang and rice had passed into his hands, the chaos began all over again. My lips parted of their own accord. Like someone who had never known the concept of taste, he mixed the rice into the soup and demolished it at high speed. Afraid he would choke, I opened a nearby cola and set it in front of him.
The spoon that had been darting between bowls gradually slowed and stopped. Silently swallowing the last of the rice, the man asked with his eyes lowered:
"You close with Eui-joo?"
His tone, speaking of the dead boy as if he were still alive, held not a shred of emotion. The way he simply resumed moving his spoon, as though my answer did not matter, made that clear enough.
"Yes, we were close. That's why I came."
"School."
"It's winter break, so I don't go."
Resentment I thought had died down began to lift its head inside me again. Besides the mother who had run away and the father who had run away, the person Eui-joo had liked and relied on most must have been this one older brother. Words asking what he had been doing all this time instead of coming to Chowa-ri to care for his sick younger sibling rose all the way to the tip of my tongue.
"Better than me."
He scraped the plastic spoon across the bottom until there was nothing left, then tilted the bowl and poured the last of it straight into his mouth. Setting the empty bowl down and pulling another tissue to wipe his mouth, every motion reeked of someone who had never been taught manners. His looks and his bearing lived in completely different worlds.
I had not been raised in pure luxury either, yet even to my eyes the man's gaping lack of polish came as a shock. Of course, thanks to Mom and my remarried rich aunt's efforts, I had lived like a dandelion in a greenhouse. Even across the entire school, lucky girls who never had to worry about household chores and only needed to study were rare.
Especially in a conservative place like Chowa-ri. It was a neighborhood that still seemed possessed by Joseon-era ghosts, convinced that disaster would strike if a girl left her hometown.
The village elders still found me somewhat endearing only because of the old connection. They had watched me since I was a chubby-cheeked seven-year-old, so they could greet me without flushing. Looking at Eui-joo's case made it plain. The same village atmosphere that still called a grandmother who had lived there more than thirty years after marrying in "the Jeju woman" might well have hurried Eui-joo's death along.
"Eui-joo said he missed you a lot. Even when I brought him side dishes, he saved them. Said he'd eat them together when his hyung came."
In other words: stop sitting there with that blank face and shed a few tears. I thrust the thorns out clumsily, but the other party was invincible. His hand fell slowly and came to rest on the table. Tap, tap—his nails bounced against the tissue box in a steady rhythm. The age difference did not look large, yet every gesture of his hands and eyes carried the feel of a world I did not know. Afterward he pulled his hand back, braced it against the floor, and let out a sigh as if he were finally full.
"What side dishes."
"Pardon?"
"You said you brought side dishes."
The completely unexpected question wiped my mind blank for a moment. In that empty state I barely managed to open my mouth.
"Stir-fried sausage, and miyeok stems, and pickled cucumbers, and…"
"Must've been fucking delicious."
"Pardon?"
"Lived well, ate well. Better than me."
He said, without the slightest weight, that the dead Eui-joo had been better off than himself. As if digestion were already finished, the man straightened his posture again. He was still trying, with that disastrous chopstick grip, to pick up a rice cake. Clearing the blank from my head and reclaiming my reason, I finally picked up my own chopsticks. I lifted the pink honey rice cake he had been aiming for and transferred it onto his chopsticks.
For the first time the man's expression changed. His eyes widened a fraction as he stared straight at me.
"Thanks."
After that plain delivery he shoved the cake into his mouth, chewed once, then suddenly lifted his chin and faced me. Another sigh escaped him before he asked, pronunciation still muddy:
"Go now. You've finished eating too."
Originally that had been my plan. There was no atmosphere for mourning of any kind. But if I left like this I would spend both night and day thinking only of Eui-joo's brother—and of those pathetic chopsticks stabbing at kimchi. Adapting quickly, I picked up the kimchi that was clearly his next target and held it out to him. The second time he accepted it with a shameless, already-familiar face.
"I asked you, you know. Why you didn't come…. I'm not angry, so please don't glare at me like that."
He had stopped chewing and was glaring, so I only made my tone more polite. When my attitude softened he busied himself finishing whatever was still in his mouth. Gulp—his Adam's apple bobbed roughly. After rinsing with a glass of water he let the words out like another sigh.
"Your parents still alive?"
"…Me?"
"Yeah."
"Ah. I—yes. No father, only my mother."
"They treat you well?"
"I'm sorry, but why… are you asking that?"
"Wondering if you need to go home. If they don't treat you well you can stay longer. If they treasure you like gold and jade, then go a bit. Later if noisy shit starts it's a pain. Right now it's…"
He turned his head to check the clock and narrowed his brows.
"Almost twelve."
He slipped a hand inside his suit jacket and rummaged around. When the red lighter appeared, my tongue loosened.
"This is a no-smoking area, right? It is no-smoking, isn't it?"
"What's no-smoking."
He opened the cigarette pack that had naturally followed the lighter, peered inside, and squinted as if disappointed. Seeing the empty pack together with him, I felt a wave of relief. I leaned my now-relaxed head back against the wall.
"You can't smoke here…"
"Yang Ji-eon."
At the sudden sound of my name my shoulders flinched. It felt like the moment he would say something important about Eui-joo. I straightened my bent back and waited for his next words.
"Lend me some money."
"Pardon?"
"So I can buy cigarettes."
"Pardon?"
"Even better if you buy them for me."
"I'm a minor."
"Minors can't buy? I think I used to buy them fine."
"Pardon?"
Apparently finding my endless questioning amusing, a sneer tugged at the corner of his mouth. The man who had shamelessly tried to send me on a cigarette errand showed not the slightest interest in the condolence money I had already set out. Only much later did I realize that had been his idea of a sophisticated joke.
After finishing the rice cakes he still made sure to eat every remaining side dish; I watched him blankly. Strangely, I was curious about this older brother of Eui-joo's who had appeared as if dropped straight from the sky.
"Um."
The man who had just put a side dish into his mouth fixed his gaze on me.
"What is your name?"
The answer could wait; the chopsticks moved first toward the dry boiled pork. I worked them faster than he could. Watching the meat slip dozens of times would have been worse than simply picking it up for him. He watched me transfer the pork to his plate in silence, then finally answered late.
"Kang Eui-tae."
Eui-tae. Kang Eui-tae. That was Eui-joo's older brother. After the brief personal survey we exchanged looks. Isn't the valley Mother always warns you never to enter always the deepest and most interesting one? The simple fact that I had passed midnight somewhere other than a study room gave me a quiet thrill.
Eui-joo's older brother was a strange person in every way. Whether it was fortunate or something else that this was not a day sad enough to shatter my short life, I could not tell. On the day of Eui-joo's funeral I simply continued an awkward memorial together with the man.