49th Translation Awards Fiction Grand Prize - A Covering Hand

Below is an excerpt of the winning translations. -- ED.

Written by Kim Ae-ran

Translated by Kim Seol-kyung

I open the window above the sink and look outside. The sea surface has risen slightly since yesterday. It has been raining all morning. When it rains, the cross also gets wet. I place the two rockfish I bought at the market during the day onto a cutting board. I put strength into my hand holding the knife, and the feeling of fish bone, muscle, and flesh getting crushed spreads through my entire body. The vibration inside my grip forms a faint circle and spreads to the furthest parts of my body. Touching food ingredients that are half-alive always feels uncomfortable. An apathetic thrill and aversion of breaking a taboo that has been violated for a long time, of killing something dead, occurs.

I lay out the rockfish, whose scales and guts I have removed, in a large pot. I add green onions, ginger, and refined rice wine and put it to a boil. I remove the cooked fish meat, set it aside, and boil the fish head and bones once more. First, I need to make broth for the seaweed soup. Bone broth. When I was little, I grew up eating food made from simmering bones. Among those foods, there was food which boiled live things as a whole like snakehead fish or loaches. As my mother was from Gangneung, my family put rockfish into seaweed soup instead of beef brisket, even on birthdays. I had forgotten about it for a while after moving out, but that is what I do now, too. Especially on my birthday and my child's birthday.

Bubbles rise up vigorously inside the large pot, and the ingredients bump into each other, bodies turning. Between the green onion stalks, I see a rockfish head whose mouth is half open. Its opaque eyes have cooked and become white. Skimming the impurities and foam with a ladle, I think of my child. Who could have been a different being but was born as my child. Jay, who came to me and not to another place. When he was a baby, he did not know how to swallow baby food or drink water through a straw; I had to teach him one by one. Now I see him using his spoon and chopsticks at the table and am surprised to see how thick his knuckles have become.

I turn the gas down to low and wait for the broth to thicken. It will take a couple dozen minutes at least, so I roll up my sleeves and do the dishes piled in the sink. I wash the knife and wooden cutting board with dish soap and rinse them one more time with vinegar; I also wash the stainless steel bowl and sieve, plate, and spoon. I rinse the spoon more meticulously because it is a utensil which enters the mouth directly. Whenever I rinse spoons, it feels like I am using my bare hands to touch the insides of my child's mouth. It probably comes from the memories of cleaning his teeth with gauze wrapped around my finger when he was little.

After giving birth, I had a rather difficult time breastfeeding. Even now when I recall those days, I remember eating, eating, and eating again for my breast milk to flow. I also remember shedding tears, wearing a postpartum girdle, both breasts exposed, the seaweed soup that my mom, who had come to care for me, cooked for a whole month, and the smell of rockfish which filled the house. Back then it seemed like my breast milk also gave off that smell. The milky liquid flowing from my nipples seemed like bone broth.

For quite a while, I felt like a hot, fishy, slimy lump. It was as if I had become a couple-dozen-kilogram package of nutrients with no name. In fact, many people treated me so. Even if it may have been in the form of encouragement or respect. Mothers in films or television dramas never let it show, but I found breastfeeding very difficult. It was several times that I cried with the baby, unable to offer or remove my breasts from the hungry, crying child due to my engorged breasts and nipples burning from mastitis. On top of that, Jay bit my nipples often around his first birthday, as if his gums were itchy from teething. One time, he bit so hard that I nearly flung him to the ground.

Even after all that trouble, I cried a little when I weaned him because I felt bad for him. While a part of me was relieved, a period of time we had spent together had ended. It was probably the same for Jay. Parting from what one is accustomed to is one of the things that adults are also not very good at. After a long time passed, I realized that providing experiences of rejection and loss to one's child is as important a duty as is giving them affection. After all, the world they will eventually encounter will be a far colder place than now, and because they are not yet aware that the world is a place where people choose to passionately hate others to endure the coldness.

I squeeze water from the soaked seaweed with my hands and slice them into bite-sized pieces. I drizzle some sesame oil into a heated pan and add the seaweed; small oil bubbles splash everywhere. I stir the seaweed, busily moving my wrist. While my hand moves routinely as it always has, my mind has been somewhere else since a while ago. What I heard at the bakery during the day has been bothering me. I had put a cake box on the counter and was taking out my wallet when I heard a familiar story from behind me. Holding the cake in one hand, I hurried out of the bakery. My face blushed as if my heart was pounding under my cheeks. Maybe I should have rebutted on the spot. Someone might have recognized me. I regretted that my not having said anything might have looked like I was admitting what had happened concerning my child.

About the video the neighbor ladies were talking about, their strong coffees in front of them… I have seen it too. Our area had been in an uproar, and it had gotten into several online newspapers; it was difficult not to notice. At first, I was unable to watch the whole video and turned my head, but I summoned the courage to press the play button again, only because my child appeared in it.

-What do you call them? There was one of those kids. … oh, yes, a multicultural.

-Yes, I saw him, too. He certainly stood out.

-I heard his father, not his mother, is Southeast Asian.

-Really? … what for?

-He was one of the gang, wasn't he?

-I saw in one of the comments that he was the leader.

-No, he's only a witness.

-How can you be sure? The real boss never uses his fist.

-That's true. Those kids must have more pent-up anger, right?

-Anyway, it's become a terrible incident.

-It has, hasn't it?

-Yes.

-…

-I mean, a man died…

There is a faint burning smell in the air. I stir the pot quickly with a spatula and come to my senses. The seaweed ends have become grayish. I scoop a big bowl of bone broth from the large pot on the side and pour it into the pan. With a sizzle, yellowish green oil floats to the top. About the “rumor” people were talking about… I've asked Jay about it. I hesitated several times and managed to bring up the question. Jay looked at me with an immensely sad face and answered gloomily, as if to say how could you, my own mother, say that.

-Mom, I wasn't.

I examined my child carefully like an athlete competing in a game where she could not afford to make a mistake.

His face was not a lying one.

-You weren't, right?

-No, I wasn't. I don't even know them.

At that moment, I felt so relieved that I nearly burst out in tears.

-Of course, I knew it.

I open the freezer door and take out the garlic. It is minced garlic that I put in a zipper bag and froze thinly in cubes. Snapping off a block, I look at the clock. It is a little past six p.m. About an hour remains until Jay comes back from his private institute. I have marinated the bulgogi yesterday in advance, so I only need to start cooking the rice on time and grill the cutlassfish. Ah, and we also have the cake. I take out sea salt from the sink spice cabinet and season the soup. Then I put the spoon down and look at the stove fire for a moment. Ancient people also would have lit fires in the evening. When they were cold, hungry, or needed help. Which of the three would now be? The sound of soup boiling gently fills the house serenely. Today is Jay's fifteenth birthday.

*

The first food that Jay ate after weaning was white rice porridge. Around his first birthday, small white bones emerged in Jay's mouth like sprouts as if they had all made a promise. They were the only bones of the human body exposed outwardly. Jay adapted well to baby food. As if learning how to speak, he mastered the “tastes” he was experiencing for the first time in his life, one by one. Face full of thought and reason, slowly moving his jaw muscles. He continued the weaving of his thoughts, the cat's cradling of his senses. Then sometimes, as if spreading out beautiful lace he had made on his own, he would look at me and give me a proud look. Each time he did that, I would teasingly pay him a compliment, saying, “Why Jay, you've become a proper human!” I would say that, but would pet him firmly, putting weight into my palms, as if stroking an animal.

Jay grew well, alternating between plump and skinny. He did not forget to occasionally smile for the person raising him. Once in a while, he would come down with a cold, and a jawline unlike that of a child would appear, making him look quite elegant; now he is old enough for acne and ear grease. While Jay was at school, whenever I cleaned his room, I would see a hair or an eyelash that had fallen on his pillow and acknowledge that he was “growing up.” As a main character of a famous jailbreak film had dug a hole in his prison wall, put the dirt in his pocket, and disposed of it, Jay was growing up, constantly getting rid of a part of him. I was grateful to Jay. As for me, I had made my own choices for my life and had rarely regretted them, but it would have been different for Jay. From the moment we met, I had been an adult, and he had not. I suddenly recall how Jay sighed at the entrance of his day care center while taking off his boots. How I had reprimanded, “Why are you sighing?” and he had retorted, “Being a kid is hard.” I had been perplexed that he had described being a “kid” as an occupation or labor of some sort. Now that I think of it, I think Jay may have been right. The price one has to pay during each period of life due to ignorance or knowledge is steep.

Jay has probably had to pay his share for being Jay. There are several incidents I know of; there are probably much more that I am not aware of. When Jay was third grade in elementary school, he joined the church choir. Busy making ends meet, my sense of obligation had been greater than my excitement when I received the invitation for the event; but when I saw Jay on stage, I was moved. Seeing him standing among his peers with an intimidated look had made me realize that he was already experiencing social life with his small body. It was Christmas, and there was a lot of light in the church. Various “lights” such as the ceiling lights of low illuminance, the miniature bulbs wrapping the fake firs, and the candles held by the choir were floating around in the dark. I was slightly enchanted by the reverent, silent atmosphere. The children started to sing; with tongues which have less experience with “tastes,” with tongues which have eaten less dead animals, with tongues that were damp and clear. Some notes drew a thin arc in the air, then plummeted, some notes followed someone's solo flight, then dived together willingly, and just when people started wondering about the whereabouts of the notes which had just disappeared, a variety of notes, as if to console their extinction, soared up once again like wish lanterns. And in between, Jay's solo continued like a beautiful bridge. His voice was thin and clear like a bare bulb about to shatter to pieces at the slightest impact. When he sang a high note, it was as if a filament inside his vocal cords emitted a yellow light, quivering. I didn't know parents could be in awe of their children… What inside you makes that possible? Did I give you any of it? If it was not given to you by me, and you did not have it from the beginning, where did it come from? I remember clapping in a trance. I did not know at all how difficult it had been for you to finish the song that day. Church had always seemed like a safe place to me. It was why although I had no religion, I had sent Jay there. I had hoped that someone would be there for Jay instead of me when I had to leave him for work. Even if it was a god I had no acquaintance with.

A few days later, Jay said he did not want to sing anymore. He was upset that his friends had said, “You are really special.”

-Why? It's a compliment.

Jay pouted his lips.

-You don't understand because you're Korean.

I was surprised.

-You're Korean, too.

I turn on the tap water and a white mist forms inside the stainless bowl. With my fingers sparsely apart, I slowly rotate my wrist. Grains of rice pass by my fingers like time. I rinse the rice two or three times and put the rice on the stove in a cast-iron pot. I usually use an electric rice cooker, but today is a special day. I mix rice and sweet rice in a 2 to 1 ratio. This much will feed the two of us for two meals. Jay and I both like soft-boiled rice. Not only because of the taste, but because our stomachs are similar. Like I have a weak stomach and do not enjoy eating bibimbap. I place my hand on the wet rice. The opaque rice water silently laps over my hand. It is something I do repeatedly; every time I measure the rice water, I feel like I am gauging life. I imagine the route that the water which has arrived in front of me through the rusty water pipes of a thirty-year old apartment has traveled, the white rice which the water washes, and the process of that rice becoming blood. At such times, I regret that I did not finish my college studies that I had given up. Where I had met Jay's father was in front of bookshelves full of major textbooks. Without knowing that I would be entering a two-year nutrition course in the distant future, looking for a way to make a living on my own, I fell in love.

For a while, I tried to juggle school, work, and raising Jay at the same time, but I could not continue; I moved to my hometown where my mom lived. At first, the plan was to stay until Jay entered elementary school, but mom's health deteriorated rapidly and we ended up staying here. Mom passed away last year, and now it is only the two of us.

For several years, I worked at a middle school in town; recently, I moved to a nursing hospital. The move was inevitable as the school was merged with another school due to a shortage of students. Meal planning was considered important next to “grades” at the school because it was about deciding how resources would be allotted and to whom it would be distributed first. The “monthly menu” handed out each month was the only newsletter which was not thrown away by any student. One kid folded it into a book and carried it around, and another put it in a clear file and taped it to his desk. The determination of adolescent kids towards food was incredible.

-You mean that terrible stuff?

When a wide-eyed college friend of mine unknowingly slighted my “lunch tray food,” I forced a smile.

-They have nothing else to look forward to. Lunch time is all they've got. They finish their lunch and go to the snack bar for more bread and ice cream.

At home or at work, cooking a meal was literally labor, sometimes heavy labor. Even the simplest dish involved all processes including shopping, storing, washing, trimming, cooking, cleaning, and disposing. There were more than a few times that I had prepared food for hundreds of people, came home, felt utterly exhausted, and had instant noodles or bread for myself. Moreover, a nutritionist was a job which received “everyone's complaints about food” on a daily basis. If I catered to the taste of kids by including hot dogs or pork cutlet in the menu, teachers were reluctant, and if I catered to the preferences of teachers with curled mallow soup or seasoned chwi, kids hated it. If the side dishes were frugal due to the budget, somebody would complain in a tone which questioned my integrity, which left me feeling hurt. Complaints being filed because of boys who snuck out their lunch trays behind their homeroom teacher's back and threw them over the school wall because they simply did not feel like returning them was considered cute. There was a load of administrative work to take care of such as food ingredient inspection forms and transaction statements, and because I was a contract worker, I would be on edge in spite of myself during lunch satisfaction survey weeks or the committee monitoring period, checking the state of the kitchen more rigidly. One day, I heard the ladies gossiping while doing the dishes.

-Whew, what a nag. Why is she so sensitive?

-Leave her alone. It's because she lives alone.

-It's probably why she got divorced.

A hospital cafeteria requires careful attention because each patient needs a different menu. When food becomes poison, a patient can die of shock. There are many elderly people who are sick in nursing hospitals. People who have experienced war, know war, are still at war. Like any group, some of them are nice, others are not. Many of them exhibit weird fits of gluttony with obstinate faces, talk down to you if you humor them, scold you if you treat them with a businesslike manner, cut in line when they have nothing to do afterwards, and impose an elders-first mindset, saying, “There's an order for everything, even cold rice.”

-Don't be so stressed. Those are the only morals they have, the only morals they've ever had.

A long time ago, when we were walking arm in arm, and people kept glancing at us, this was what you had said, nonchalantly. Sometimes when I saw the elderly in the hospital, I was reminded of what you had said. I was enthralled by that cleverness or wit of yours, but on one hand, whenever you simply summarized and judged something, I felt an odd defiance. At times, it seemed like a rationality which was too pretty, which understood others in the easiest way, which omitted an individual's history and weight, context and struggles. Even if I was the one who was thirsty for rationality in this stuffy, wearisome little town.

Nursing hospitals have better job security than schools. Schools are continuously closing down, while hospitals don't have enough openings. However, nursing hospitals constantly reminded me of “old age.” Thinking about my latter years always made me feel afraid. How old will I be able to live with my current income? I don't want to be a burden to my child… I did not expect for my latter years to be elegant and luxurious, but I was often anxious about cleanliness and hygiene. During midwinter, whenever I warmed my body with hot water in the bathroom, I worried, “Will I still be able to take a shower daily like this, ten years later?” Will I be able to maintain the toilet, the blankets, and the window sills at a tidy level as they are now? I will need money in order to live cleanly. Like you first need to buy a closet in order to store things. There was a certain inertia to cleanliness which made you clean only the places that you usually cleaned. Will I get used to the stains if I left them there? I would be lucky to get into a nursing home when I grow old. There will be humiliation and insult that money cannot hide. Mom was a good example. From some time on, my childhood home, which had always been neat, became untidy, and hair came out quite too often from mom's carefully cooked food. At first, I thought mom stopped cleaning because she lacked energy. Only later did I learn that mom could not see the stains that were clearly visible to me. Dust was not being neglected by mom, whose eyesight had weakened; it simply did not exist. Moreover, the odor of mom's urine became increasingly repulsive. One day Jay, who had used the bathroom after his grandmother, thoughtlessly shouted,

-Mom, why does the bathroom smell like vomit?

After that, mom always sprayed air freshener in the bathroom after using it. It was an unknown item she had bought from the private health center she frequented. Its strong fragrance was more difficult for me to bear than the smell of mom's urine, but I did not say anything. Nevertheless, the few years that I spent with my mom remain as special memories. I have fond memories of completing a summer table with perfectly rolled omelets, not burnt at the sides, pickled cucumbers dipped in ice, steamed cabbages, and yellow croakers, deboning the fish with my bare hands and placing the meat on my son and mother's rice, chatting pleasantly. It was also mostly because I caused mom so much heartache when I got married. Thanks to mom, who looked after Jay, I was able to sleep like a decent human for a change and eat food at the table like a human being. I also learned that the best food in the world is the one that I did not cook. Living with a parent must have made me a lazy thinker because occasionally, I would forget my age. A year or two kept going back and forth after forty.

-Mom, how old am I now?

Whenever I asked her, mom would answer indifferently, tossing six to seven pills into her mouth.

-Count your own age.

Now and then there were times when mom felt unfamiliar. I was often embarrassed, wondering whether her liveliness and vitality that I remembered was actually just a different name for rudeness and vulgarity. When two older female cousins lost their children due to accidents within a month's time, mom said, “I don't know how something like this could happen all at once.” and, “I do not speak of it elsewhere, ashamed that someone might say our family is being punished.” Right in front of my cousin who was wearing mourning clothes. Had mom gotten old? Had she lost her discernment and self-control on the way? My face burned.

-Then was dad punished too?

When I questioned mom on our way back, she said it was because she was uneducated and ignorant and looked out the car window. Mom was living with the pension that my dad, who had been in the military, had left behind.

At mom's funeral, I heard from the elders of the family, “They say a long illness wears out even a good son's filial devotions. Your mother must have left so swiftly to save you from such troubles.” These words stabbed me most painfully, because when I asked myself whether the thought had never crossed my mind, I could not answer easily. I had always been afraid that my filial love might give in to my financial difficulties. Things would have been different if it were concerning my child.

It was when Jay was in elementary school that I realized that there was an inertia of cleanliness and an inertia of stains. A few days before the Christmas event at which I was in awe of Jay, he had lost in the choir leader election by three votes. Winning and losing while growing up is not much of a deal, but a somewhat insulting remark had been written on one of the ballot papers. The moderator thoughtlessly read it aloud and in the midst of the silence, a few kids had quietly laughed. Jay had been really curious of who had laughed, but had not been able to look back because his body had frozen. In fact, the laughter had been harder to bear than losing the election. Hearing from Jay's homeroom teacher about what had happened at church half a year ago, my heart clenched. I felt guilty and shameful for not having known how Jay had felt until now. He would have felt denied from his group even if there was another half that supported him. He would not have been able to escape the suspicion of “Was it you?” “Could it have been you?” whenever he faced his friends. It would have felt like time passed by, slapping him in the face every day. Like he was given a complicated and difficult assignment. To console you, all I had said was this, as if you could be proud.

-Jay, your father didn't come here to work. He came here to study. He had servants back home.

Not much changed in Jay's life after the choir incident, except that Jay started spending more time at the institute. I invested most of my small income in Jay's education. I believed that was the way to protect him. I wanted to make him into someone that no one could look down on. Jay obediently followed, and by the time he went to middle school, he became a person his classmates favored. But Jay and I both knew that something in him had changed. He did not need to tell me everything for me to know that.

I look outside from the kitchen window. As if doing so allows me to know where you are, how close you have arrived. The surroundings are already dark because it is winter. I take out a small frying pan from the cupboard and put in on the stove. I grease the pan with grape seed oil and carefully slide on two thick cuts of cutlassfish. A nutty smell spreads with a sizzle. The nuttiness of a predator, incomparable to the nuttiness of beans or the flavor of sesame seeds; the deep nuttiness of an organism which eats the flesh of others. Golden air bubbles abundantly sizzle around the silver body. I cover the pan with a glass lid and wait until the insides of the cutlassfish are softly cooked. A message notification alarm rings from the cell phone on the table.

-Mom, I'm on the bus. Will arrive in ten.

-Okay. Running a little late? Dinner's almost ready. Hurry home.

After sending the reply, I close the text message when the news page I had opened during the day catches my eye. I pressed the refresh button of the comment section of this news several times just today. I rearrange the comments in order of most recent, and familiar accusations and insults spill out. Most are accusations and insults towards the young perpetrators like “cancer-inducing lunchmites,” “human garbage,” “the reason the Samcheong Re-education Center should be revived,” but some reactions say “the old man has no excuse, either” or “I can understand where they are coming from.” Then one of the comments attracts my eye.

“K city middle school student old man assault video uncensored version. Disclosing personal info. Distribute widely. ”

An unblurred video has not been posted on the internet yet. My child's face will be in it, too… It can't be posted… How do I remove it? Who do I call? Sitting in a dining chair, pressing a hand to my forehead, I click the video. Without realizing it, I replay the part where Jay appears several times. I watch closely.

Jay and I watched the footage for the first time at the police station. Both of us watched in silence for eight minutes and forty-two seconds, holding our breath. It was a video that had been filmed by the black box of a car parked in front of the convenience store. There was no sound, but the screen was enough to assume what had happened. The unblurred version file currently on the internet was the footage I watched then.

Three boys, one girl. Four teenage kids are sitting in chairs in front of a convenience store. Hot-and-spicy-chicken-flavored ramen containers, cans of coke, and sweet-and-sour-pork-flavored snack packages can be seen on a white plastic table. An old man walks by, pushing a stroller filled with waste paper. One of the kids approaches the old man, holds out a five-thousand-won bill, bargaining something. The old man scolds the kid and shakes his finger at him. He spits toward the kids, loads the paper boxes piled in front of the convenience store on his stroller, and walks away. A kid who is seemingly the boss of the group throws an empty cigarette pack into the stroller as if shooting a three-pointer. According to Jay, the boy had done it because “the cigarette pack was also paper; the old man could add it to his waste.” “That's what he said to the old man,” said Jay. The cigarette pack flies through the air in an elongated arc, hits the back of the old man's head, and bounces off. The old man looks back with a furious face and a quarrel begins. The boss kid says something to the old man, and the other kids break out in laughter. The enraged old man takes hold of the girl's hair. The boss kid kicks the old man. Jay is watching all of this from the other side, in front of a claw machine. The old man topples on the ground from the kick. Slumped on the asphalt, he quivers, then stops moving. One of the kids tiptoes up to the old man and examines his face. Then sends a grim look to the other three. The kid looks around instinctively. His eyes meet the eyes of Jay, a witness, who is standing afar. Jay averts his eyes, turning his head. The kids hesitate for a moment, and quickly leave. Jay also disappears from the screen shortly. …. disappears, but after disappearing, reappears in about fifty seconds. Many people who watched the video focused on this particular scene. What is happening? What is he trying to do? Had he done nothing before because he was scared, but come back to save the old man? Jay enters the square screen slowly. And… he cautiously approaches the claw machine, picks up the Ryan doll that he had left there, and hurriedly leaves. Several minutes later, a young man working at the convenience store, who had come out to take out the garbage, discovers the old man. The startled young man urgently makes a call somewhere.

Jay became a little flustered after seeing the black box video. People later criticized him for coming back only for the doll, but I thought it was possible, as he was only a child. It was something else that really worried me. It was that Jay could have been traumatized by the events of that day. At times, it is not the doer, but the observer, that is wounded more deeply. For example, like “violence trauma,” which the elderly people at the nursing hospital who had experienced war, who knew war, often mentioned. The investigator checked a few simple facts and told us to go home. It ended with such ease that I felt sheepish for having been nervous. As we were getting up from our seats, the investigator asked an important question in a light tone.

-By the way, why didn't you call the police?

After quivering his lips, Jay answered in a small voice.

-I had skipped class from the institute that day… I thought I would get in trouble if mom found out.

These words left an odd stain in my heart. I knew that on the day of the week the incident took place, Jay did not have classes at his institute. I am not sure why at that moment I nodded my head as if I were agreeing with Jay. I would have understood if he had said he had done so because he was afraid of retaliation by the boys. Why had Jay lied?

I hear the sound of the door lock open. Along with the rustling of a polyester jacket, I hear the thumping of rushed footsteps and the vibration of the bathroom door closing. The house is old, and I can hear the sound of urine falling into the toilet all the way from the kitchen.

-Hey, what is that smell?

Jay appears, wiping his hands on his pants. His body carries the fishy vivacity and chill of outside air.

-…I burnt something.

-Hey, it's cutlassfish! I love cutlassfish.

-I know. They were twenty-thousand won a piece. I forgot about them.

While Jay changes in his room, I set the dinner table. I pour bulgogi into a deep frying pan and heat up the seaweed soup. I stir the bulgogi with long chopsticks, nimbly set the spoons and chopsticks on the table, and take out the cabbage kimchi. I quickly return to the stove, check the bulgogi, scoop the rice, and ladle the seaweed soup into bowls. I build up the mound of white rice nicely and make sure to add plenty of rockfish meat into Jay's bowl. It is extremely regrettable that the grilled cutlassfish is absent, but instead I open a package of roasted seaweed and put it on a plate. Putting food on plates instead of in plastic containers, however busy I am is how I live half-a-step differently than my parents' generation. I say half a step, but actually it is the way my life is decisively different from theirs. It may be owing to lower living expenses after coming back to my hometown, but I lecture Jay about not drinking out of bottles and drinking out of cups. Saying that sometimes it is those small actions that later protect bigger things. I heap the bulgogi onto a deep, wide plate, and today's dinner is ready. I take off my apron and sit at the table. Hazy steam wavers above the table-for-four where two people are facing each other.

-Let's eat.

-Okay.

Jay charges towards the bulgogi enthusiastically, then for some reason hesitates and minds his manners.

-You eat first, mom.

I let out a chuckle and tension is somewhat defused.

-Why Jay, you've become a proper human.

On a winter night in a moist kitchen, the irregular clinking and clattering of chopsticks and plates continues.

-Mom.

Jay asks without meeting my eyes.

-What's wrong?

-Nothing.

-Then why the long face?

-…It's because of the cutlassfish.

Jay laughs.

-You had me worried.

I laugh with Jay, but my eyes float toward Jay's hands, the back of his hand where his knuckles have become thick. When he was a baby, there were dents like dimples on the back of his chubby hands. And he kept on putting his hands into his mouth and sucking on them, unable to believe that they belonged to him.

-Jay.

-Yes?

-Eat a lot of seaweed. They're good for your bones.

Jay smiles, his face white from applying an inadequate amount of sun cream. From a while back, Jay started to apply sun cream excessively. He applied it on rainy days like today and when he went out late in the evening.

-You always say everything's good for you. Garlic is good for this, onion is good for that.

Seeing Jay getting cute, he feels like Jay and I feel a deep connection with him. When he was a baby, this child would chatter away about anything at the table with a high-pitched voice. Even the silly habit of using fillers like “um” “um” at every word to organize and delay his thoughts using simple vocabulary had been adorable. When did he grow up so fast? Following the brief sentiment, I purposefully bring up a topic to enjoy chit chat with him.

-You know, before at the school, I saw that no one was talking to each other before homeroom hour. Everyone was lying on their desks, using their smartphones without even turning on the lights. Do you do that too?

-Oh, that? It's hard to see the screen if you turn on the lights. And it's bothersome.

-How can you study like that?

-That's why they collect them.

-Who? The teacher?

-The cell phone helper.

-There's such a thing?

-Yeah, there are all sorts of them. The recyclable waste helper, the homework helper, and they get points for it.

Jay slurps down some seaweed and removes a small bone from his mouth.

-You know about the lunch helpers, right?

-Yes, I know them very well.

Hearing about cell phone helpers makes me worry about the world my child is living in, but I refrain from showing it. When he was little, he was naturally cut off from the outside world once the front door of our home closed. Now it seems he has to carry around the “outside world” in his pocket at all times. Exchanging messages with his friends, playing mobile games, and watching real time internet broadcasts is about all he does so far, but sometimes I am concerned that too many “socials” may be stuck in his body. It seems that he is connected twenty-four seven to “society” where all sorts of reputations and explanations, closeness and anxiousness, jealousy and smiles coexist. I felt worried because I had gone into the world before him and had experienced such oppression and fatigue, because now is a time when one does not have to say “I'll meet you on the rooftop” to assault somebody. Even now, while having dinner with me, Jay could actually be getting beaten up somewhere by someone, bleeding. Jay would say I am old-fashioned for thinking like this.

-Why did you break up with dad?

I raise my head slowly so as not to be flustered by the sudden inquiry.

-…I told you before.

-Not that. The real reason.

Jay puts on an important look like he is an adult. As if he knows the world better than me.

-Was it because of me?

-How many times do I have to tell you that it wasn't because of you?

-Then why…?

-Stop being silly and finish your dinner.

-Come on, tell me. As a birthday present.

…Tell me. I don't know what to say and laugh instead. How would I explain. If I did, would you understand? This may sound weird, Jay, but adults do not say goodbye easily. Realizing our differences that do not overlap does not always mean farewell, either. Before it is a compromise, it is a courtesy towards the other, a form of humility. Nonetheless, some people end up going separate ways. It sometimes happens, not because someone is at fault, but although each did their best. Due to each person's inherent way of existing and gravitation. It is not that they do not stay together, they cannot. Like an asteroid passing Earth at lightning speed. Two immense potential events pass by according to mathematical principles. Magnificently and uniquely, swish; at times, at an intense speed, without realizing that it has happened, swish. But each person knows that something inside has burned and disappeared. They have passed by but have been burned. For passing by. If they had collided, they would have broken. But they passed by and were charred. Adults may be people who have many such traces of soot in their bodies. The soot leaves a code inside that only oneself can entirely understand. Having doubt and a sense of awe simultaneously not about what the other has said, but what the other has not. What were we talking about? Oh, yes, mom and dad were… tired. “Understanding” takes effort, so we hurl it first thing when we are tired, like we take off our hats when we lie down. …I do not explain all of this. Instead, I think about how I could get out of this predicament and say words that are neither entirely true nor false.

-Why did your dad and I break up?

-Um… because we had different opinions?

Jay lets out a light laugh unexpectedly. Then, in a reprimanding tone, says something that might as well be from a textbook.

-Then you should have had a discussion; it's a democratic society.

I clear the dinner table and get the cake from the veranda. It is a classic fresh cream cake that most bakeries sell. The ends of the fresh cream blobs decorating the edge of the cake have a slick finish, and the kiwi, strawberry, and tangerine coated with sugar shine like colorful plastic.

-Should we light up the candles and sing?

-No. Let's not do it, no.

-We should at least light the candles then.

From a long, wide paper envelope attached on top of the cake box, I take out pastel-colored candles. Foil is wrapped at the bottom of each thin spiraled stick. A candle representing each year, there are a total of fifteen candles. I poke the candles deep into the soft cake sponge. Every year I light Jay's birthday candles, I feel happy and solemn. I know how difficult and precious life is, an accumulation of year after year, long day after another.

-Huh? Where are the matches?

I turn the paper envelope upside down and shake it down on my palm. I don't know if the bakery owner forgot about them or if I had been so disconcerted during the day that I forgot about them.

-Then light them with something else.

Jay says nonchalantly.

-… Where could it be?

I turn from the table and rummage through the sink drawer. It is where I keep disposable chopsticks, toothpicks, bottle openers and the like. I thought I saw a lighter rolling around there before.

-Not there?

-That's strange.

I walk over to the shoe closet and look through the tool box. Among work gloves, some string, and a hammer, I see the emergency candles I bought to use in case of a blackout. No matches in there, either.

-Oh, heavens, why isn't there a single match in this house?

-Then just leave it, mom. We're going to turn them off anyway.

-No, you should light the candles and make a wish. You don't have a lighter, do you?

-What?

-Give it to me if you have one. I won't say anything.

-I don't have one, mom.

As I lift flyers in the storage box, reluctant to give up looking for the matches, these words pop out of my mouth.

-Would you like to go with me to attend that elderly man's funeral tomorrow?

I surprise myself by blurting out something I had not thought about. And think maybe the reason my heart has been so heavy all day was to say this to Jay.

-Let's do so. It would be nice of you to offer your condolences to the old man.

-Jay, do you know how to bow to the deceased?

-You cover your eating hand like this.

I cover my right hand with my left hand in front of Jay, demonstrating awkwardly.

-I used to get them confused all the time. Got nervous that I would make a mistake. But I never forgot once I memorized it like this. The hand covers the eating hand, the courtesy of covering the eating hand… Oh, right, and it is the opposite for me.

Jay stares at the end of his feet for a while and finally speaks.

-… I'll think about it.

Hearing Jay say that breaks my heart.

-Okay, thanks, honey.

A cell phone suddenly rings from Jay's body. Jay checks the caller and goes to his room quietly. For a moment I remain in the kitchen alone and look at the empty chair and cake in front of me. Why did you do it? What were you thinking when you did it? At the questions bombarded at him along with the blinding camera flashes, a kid covering himself with his jacket mumbles with a barely audible voice. That he had no intension to hurt the old man. That the old man swore at them first. That they were just trying to “teach him a lesson.” The old man was in critical condition for a few days before he passed away. It was today that I learned from an article that people got in touch with his offspring with whom he had lost contact years ago, but they had refused to claim his body and the funeral was to be held without family or friends.

-Who was it?

-Just some kid I know.

Jay puts his cell phone into his pants pocket and sits across from me.

-Do the kids at school say anything?

-It doesn't matter.

Across Jay's face saying it doesn't matter, a faint shadow falls.

-This won't do. We'll need to light it at the stove.

I pull out a birthday candle and go to the stove. Tick tick tick tick- I turn on the stove and gaze at its blue flames. Ancient people also would have lit fires in the evening. When they were cold, hungry, or needed help. I carry the candle, whose wick is burning yellow, and approach the cake.

-By the way, I didn't know you liked Ryan dolls so much.

Jay's face hardens a bit.

-Huh? What do you mean?

I tilt the candle I am holding in my hand and light another candle.

-There are three identical ones in your room.

-I didn't get them because I like them. They got picked because those are the ones that are there the most. Because there are lots of them, they are picked easily…

Black smoke rises up from the candle like thread. I slowly deliver light to the next candle, and the next.

-Is that so?

Finally all of the candles on the cake shiver as they shine the surrounding. The lumps of yellow flames are warm and beautiful. Wax drips rapidly.

-The videos haven't all been removed yet.

-I called the cyber police and they said they took down the original, but it is taking time because copies are being distributed.

Jay's face which appears in the unblurred video is apparent with alarm. At first his expression is full of curiosity; then at a certain point he covers his mouth with his hand, his pupils wide, allowing you to assume how startled he is just from that scene.

-Anyway, you know how the video has no sound?

-Yeah.

-They were saying something and laughing amongst themselves halfway through the video. What were they saying?

At the corner of Jay's mouth who had kept silent until now spreads a strange air, maybe of an innocent enthusiasm, or of a know-it-all.

-A denture-nag?

Then he quickly stops smiling as if he has realized a mistake. As if it had been an important secret. He promptly conceals it like it was treasure that no one should discover. I stare at his face. Not because he has uttered a strange word, but because I feel as though I have seen that expression somewhere before. But where? Where was it?

-What does it mean?

-Uh, it's just something kids say. Mom, aren't we going to blow the candles?

Jay hastily gets up from his seat and turns off the kitchen light. A cold, dark winter night. Yellow light flickers between us. Why do we both look a little different under the light? Now it is really time to make a wish. I hold my breath, preparing to applaud for Jay. Jay closes his eyes and puts on a faint smile. Seeing his smile, I let out a gasp. My throat starts stinging and blood rushes to my face as I see the smiling corners of his mouth. What Jay had hurriedly covered with that hand, that hand which had appeared on the video, that hand with its thickened knuckles, may not have been a cry but a laugh. If so, what had I given to Jay all these years? Jay, who has opened his eyes, looks at me with a clear gaze. Then he heaves his chest high to gather his breath and blows out the candles. The candles go out and instantly it gets dark. I stay still in the dark, searching for Jay's face which I cannot see.