A New Symptom

People generally say the GED is far easier than the Suneung. That doesn’t mean you can walk in without studying at all, of course. Still, I hoped the road this man was walking—having unwillingly crossed the threshold of dropping out—would not be a bed of thorns as he tried again.

I sincerely, without a single grain of pretense, cheered for his new start. It was a little different from the heart that had once cheered for Eui-joo’s life. Eui-joo had looked as though he could manage well enough on his own. He had the dream of living with his older brother, and a sturdy, resilient side that didn’t seem to belong to a sickly child. The worries I carried for this man were ones I had never held for Eui-joo.

Worries about how lonely he might be, how sad, how tormented. Ironically, the sorrow of the man who never shed a single tear felt more genuine than the loneliness of my aunt who poured out her complaints right in front of me.

If I had simply defined him the way others did—as something living in a world apart from mine—I would have been comfortable. But I had stepped into his world. I had opened the blue gate, sat on the wooden porch, and shared meals with him. To me he was no longer some unidentifiable thug.

He was Eui-joo’s older brother, someone who liked mathematics, who never picked and chose when it came to food, and who seemed to do rougher work than I had imagined. His temperament was easygoing itself, yet his quirky way of thinking sometimes flustered me and made me laugh. That was the person named Kang Eui-tae.

And recently a new symptom had been added to him. I hadn’t noticed it at first, but once I recognized it, it kept tugging at my attention. Take yesterday, for example. With the start of school not far off, I made plans with friends downtown. Because of the unexpected schedule, the practice test with him was postponed by a day.

Whether he would clear the average score we had set between us or not, I couldn’t know, but the next day I packed the promised bicycle and left the house. Instead of the old used bicycle I usually rode, though, the new one Aunt had given me was chosen.

Even so, handing over something someone else had used thoroughly and calling it a gift hardly seemed polite. Besides, I liked my existing bicycle, and Aunt’s was too big and burdensome. Mother was the sort who wouldn’t even notice if a bicycle vanished, and I would simply tell Aunt that the old one felt more comfortable.

To be more honest about my feelings, I wanted to see his face when his eyes went wide with surprise at receiving the new bicycle. The reason I chose the one with the clean saddle instead of the worn-out bike was that shameful.

“I’m here.”

On the table where he was preparing for the test, books were stacked in a shape that leaned like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Barely tearing his eyes from the pages, a shy smile spread across his face as he looked at me.

“You’re here?”

By now I could read his expressions without twisting them. After the expression, his shortened hair caught my eye. Noticing my gaze, he swept the hair back with his hand as if embarrassed.

“Does it look weird?”

“…No.”

The full story went like this. When I told him I couldn’t come because of plans with friends and that I would take a day off from studying, I couldn’t easily end the conversation out of guilt. Our talks, which used to be only a word or two, had grown warm and friendly lately. I felt an inexplicable comfort with him. His expression that stayed indifferent no matter what I said, his clean reactions as if free of the world’s prejudices—those must have been what I liked.

“When did you cut your hair?”

“Why.”

To him, who asked back as if truly curious, I shrugged and answered.

“Don’t men cut it often? It looks a lot longer than when I first saw you.”

I didn’t know enough about his hair to discuss it at length. I simply had little to say, and what happened to catch my eye was the length of it. With our modest practice test only a day away, he must have been hard-pressed just keeping up with his studies.

And then I understood.

“If you just leave it, it grows long anyway.”

These past few days he had been listening to my words with almost blind devotion. Whether it was a casual remark or empty praise, I confirmed in that way that my influence over him had grown.

Standing in front of the gate, watching him dive back into his books, a small curiosity rose in me. I also needed to be sure whether what I thought was correct. It was nothing more than a test born of pure curiosity.

“Hey.”

Even though I called in a smaller voice than usual out of timidness, his reaction was the speed of light. Caught in a gaze more intense than the summer sun, I couldn’t move. Tension made sweat gather in my clenched fists.

“Want to catch marsh snails in the river over there?”

To him it must have been a bolt from the blue. He was someone who preferred lying comfortably rather than laboriously catching marsh snails. When his study time ended he closed the door and went in for a nap.

So this was only a test. A test that could never be passed.

“Sure.”

But he answered in the affirmative. Without attaching a single question. Flustered, I kicked off my shoes and jumped up onto the porch as if leaping.

“Have you ever caught marsh snails?”

“Eui-joo taught me.”

“When did you meet?”

“On the phone.”

And his eyes never left the black, earthworm-like fingerprints on the page. He turned the book toward me and pointed to the part he had marked with red pen.

“I don’t understand this. Explain it.”

The man with the strong curiosity was unconsciously biting the tip of the pen. The bruised cheek and innocent eyes did not quite match. But with my head full of marsh snails I threw out a quirky question of my own, just like him.

“We’re not going to eat them. We’re going to catch them.”

“I know. You said let’s do that.”

“You’ve never caught marsh snails. It’s really bothersome.”

Then he exceeded every expectation and offered a soft smile. This was it. His expression was sending me signals little by little, very little by little.

“If you don’t want to catch them, don’t go.”

That I had become an important person to him. At the tail end of the season as summer vacation was ending, I did with him what I had never even done with Eui-joo. He granted my requests like an obedient puppy, or like a kind older brother.

“When do I take the test.”

“…Now.”

Coming to my senses, I opened my bag and took out the test papers I had printed in advance.

“I’ll come out when time’s up.”

I set the papers on the table and gave him space. In a one-room house, where was there to go? He immersed himself in the problems at a frightening speed. Meanwhile I occupied his room, sitting blankly in the corner where the folded blanket lay. I took a book from my bag, but my eyes busily roamed the room. When he had been hovering between life and death, when I had been nursing him in a frenzy, there had been almost no leisure to look around.

The luggage bag was still in its place, the blanket still in its place, the single-drawer structure unchanged—yet one thing was different. Eui-joo’s things were displayed on top of the television. An old photograph. A childhood picture of Eui-joo with poor quality, and Eui-joo’s student ID, framed together.

The only things he had kept without throwing away. It seemed as though he had finally accepted Eui-joo’s death, so I stared without noticing the time pass, comparing: this part resembles his brother, this part does not.

Then the time for grading arrived. I went outside with deliberate leisure. I glimpsed the bashfulness of the man who had left only the test paper dangling on the table. Looking around, I saw gray smoke billowing over the wall and the man’s back.

“You finished them all!”

Using his tall height he waved a hand over the wall. I chuckled and sat down to begin grading. Mathematics scored ninety. Korean hit the average exactly, and the other subjects did better than average. With just this much he would pass the GED without trouble. It was only regrettable that he had decided to apply late. If things had gone well he could have taken it in August this year and finished.

The man who exhaled a long stream of smoke as if nervous only turned his head after hearing my laughter. From the gazes that met over the wall the same emotion bloomed. Expectation. Excitement.

“That bicycle—Oppa, you take it now.”

At first he widened his eyes as if he couldn’t believe it, then soon offered a soft smile. The way the corners of his lips lifted suited the very idea of summer. It was piercingly fresh.

He smiled a pure, innocent smile that belonged to the age of twenty.

“Ji-eon.”

I had come to like the way he called my name without the family name.

“But I don’t know how to ride.”

The man who was still clumsy with chopsticks had never learned to ride a bicycle. Without an adult to teach him, learning would have been difficult enough.

So the things I would teach him increased by one more. Catching marsh snails was postponed until next time.

“I’ll teach you.”

For us, too, a next time had come into being.