Chapter 47
Hello.
My name is Seo Yuna.
My parents chose the characters Yu (瑜), meaning “beautiful,” and Na (拿), meaning “to seize,” hoping I would never let go of anything beautiful in the world.
Pretty, isn’t it?
I grew up surrounded by just as much love at home as my name was pretty.
My mom loves me more than anything in the world, and my two older brothers dote on me like crazy.
My dad died when I was too young to know him except through photographs, but Mom said he was a truly beautiful person.
Calling a man beautiful is... rather strange, but somehow it suits him.
Everyone in my family was beautiful, but our home wasn’t.
It was far too cramped for four people to live in.
During the monsoon season, rain leaked through the ceiling, and in winter, cold wind slipped in through the windows.
My brothers would lie flat on the floor to do their homework, while Mom pushed the bedding to one side to make room for the dinner table.
On the rare days we grilled meat we had won as a prize, acrid smoke filled the entire home.
So when I was three, my dream was to become a princess.
I wanted to live happily ever after with my beloved family in a beautiful, spacious castle.
Mom was very happy to hear that.
So my brothers each confessed their own dreams, one by one.
My oldest brother said he dreamed of becoming a painter. Whenever he got tired of doing homework, he would draw me with a three-color ballpoint pen, and it looked exactly like me.
My younger brother said he dreamed of becoming a basketball player. He was tall and good at sports, so he would surely become an amazing player someday, right?
I suddenly grew curious in the middle of lunch and asked,
“What’s your dream, Mom?”
But Mom only said she had to go back out to work, and never answered my question.
For some reason, her retreating back looked so lonely.
* * *
“&%&@ %&$$&@@!”
I woke up before dawn to a loud noise.
When I looked around, Mom and my brothers were nowhere to be seen.
Where could they all have gone?
I was scared.
Then I heard a familiar voice outside the door. It was Mom and my brothers.
I couldn’t tell what time it was because I didn’t know how to read a clock, but why was everyone out at this freezing hour before dawn?
“The hospital said it was serious and told you to schedule the next treatment as soon as possible! So why did you go to work again today?”
“Where do you think we’ll get the money? We have to earn as much as we can while we’re still able.”
“That’s what I’m saying! You’re not well enough, Mom!”
My brothers were furious with Mom.
I was so frightened by this side of my brothers that I had never seen before that I couldn’t open the door.
“The doctor says it’s an illness that can’t be cured in Korea anyway. We’ll save even a penny by only admitting me when I’m really sick.”
“Mom’s life is at stake, and you’re worried about money?”
“...”
From that day on, our beauty slowly began to fall apart.
Though perhaps it had started much earlier.
Mom worked from morning until late at night just to feed us all by herself.
She went from building to building, working as a cleaner from morning to evening, and on weekends she often worked late into the night at a restaurant, so there were many times I couldn’t even see her face.
I missed Mom. I wanted to see her every day.
But I never wished for that longing to come true this way.
“Mom...”
“Why are you calling me, my pretty girl?”
“I can’t see you...”
“Hm?”
“I’m not over there... I really can’t see at all, can I, Mom... Waaah!”
Multiple sclerosis.
They say it’s a terrifying disease in which the police inside Mom’s body attack her body.
Mom’s eyes gradually lost their vitality, until in less than a year she could no longer even tell where I was.
As if she had met Medusa’s eyes, Mom’s body grew rigid as stone.
Her entire body below the neck became paralyzed, and she could barely move even one index finger.
I saw Mom desperately trying to twitch at least a finger to comfort me as I sobbed miserably.
So I had no choice but to hold even that finger.
It was the only way to let Mom, who could feel nothing anywhere else, know that I was right there.
Happiness came to our family in fragments, but misfortune was always an endless novel.
I can hardly remember when we were ever happy anymore.
“I dropped out of school.”
My oldest brother was the first to speak, sounding resigned.
If Mom had been her usual self, she would have nagged him to study and asked what on earth he meant, but today she said nothing.
From then on, my oldest brother got up at four every morning, dressed hurriedly, and left the house.
Then, at seven in the evening, he came home exhausted and immediately fell into a deep sleep.
As if working eight hours a day covered in construction-site dust wasn’t enough, he also worked a convenience-store shift in the afternoons.
My oldest brother, who had once been proud of his fair skin, grew increasingly brown, and his fine hands that had held colored pencils were covered in blisters.
My oldest brother became the true head and pillar of our household.
Perhaps because of that, the nagging Mom used to do now fell to him.
“Seo Noeul. Your homeroom teacher called.”
“So what?”
“Why did you get into a fight with your friends at school?”
“... Why do you care, hyung?”
“Talk, unless you want to die.”
“Ha, like hell I would. They were spouting some crazy crap about Yuna’s hair color, so I hit one of them. Happy now?”
“...”
“And I’m quitting school now, too. It was too hard trying to work at the same time.”
“What?”
“Yuna’s entering the Academy next year. If I keep doing deliveries like this, I’ll barely make any money.”
It all began when I went to the school myself to deliver the homework my younger brother had left behind.
Apparently, his friends teased him about my unusual red hair when they saw me.
Maru didn’t blame Noeul either, and in the end, the whole matter was brushed aside.
After that, I became conscious of my hair color.
Thinking back, there had been plenty of kids at the playground who teased me, too, saying my hair looked strange.
I had thought they were only doing it because they were jealous...
I asked Mom honestly,
“Mom, is my hair color strange?”
“Who says that? It’s the prettiest in the world.”
“But why is my hair the only red one? Mom’s is black, Dad’s was black, and my brothers’ are all black, too.”
“Well...”
Mom had always avoided answering that question.
But this time, I was being stubborn, and I had no intention of backing down.
“Am I really not your daughter, Mom...?”
“No, absolutely not.”
“Sniff... Then what is it?! Why won’t you tell me?”
Does Mom dislike me?
My family hides so many things from me.
I always found out only later that Mom was sick and that my oldest brother worked at construction sites.
“Yuna, will you come over here to Mom?”
I didn’t want to listen to Mom.
Even so, I hugged her tightly. Mom couldn’t move, after all.
“When you were little, Yuna, there was a huge fire in our apartment.”
“A fire?”
I had never heard of it.
And an apartment, at that.
You mean we used to live in a multi-story apartment building, dozens of floors high, instead of a cramped semi-basement room like this?
“It was when it was just your father and Yuna at home. The fire spread throughout the entire apartment building in an instant, so there was no way to escape. Even so, your father did everything he could to save you, our Yuna.”
Why are you only telling me this now?
And why was I the only one who survived...?
* * *
These days, it was only natural for every household to have one portable oxygen respirator for each family member, but I guess back then they only had one.
Dad must have used it on me. And until someone came to rescue us...
He kept
right on
watching over me.
But the smoke kept pouring in, and Dad eventually couldn’t withstand it.
By the time Mom got to the hospital, Dad had already passed away.
But I must have been in critical condition too, after inhaling so much smoke.
In the end, Mom didn’t even have time to say goodbye to Dad before making a decision.
She decided to transplant Dad’s Aura Heart into me.
That’s why 60 percent of my mana circuits are Dad’s, apparently.
So apparently, the reason I have this beautiful red hair, like a princess in a fairy tale, is Dad’s Aura Heart, too.
While Mom was telling me all this, I kept holding back my tears.
If I cried too in our cramped home, Mom would hear me and be sad.
No... Did I even have the right to be sad?
I ran out of the house without thinking.
The sky was clear without a single cloud, and the weather was beautiful.
In the park, children my age were holding both their parents’ hands.
They must have come out for a family outing.
My chest hurt so badly.
If I had never been born,
my father, who had been an ordinary office worker, wouldn’t have been at home then.
Instead of spending the compensation money on my surgery, he could have used it to move us into a better home.
Then Mom wouldn’t have had to push herself working day and night for our sake, and she might never have fallen ill.
Maru hyung would have gone to art college, drawn his friends’ portraits, and achieved his dream,
and Noeul hyung would surely have become a proud, popular professional basketball player, right?
If I had never been born,
just like the family I had seen moments ago,
my family would have deserved to enjoy a life straight out of a fairy tale.
We could have gone on outings to the park together and eaten meat as a side dish every day in a warm apartment.
I wasn’t anything like a princess.
I was an evil witch who handed out poisoned apples, stole voices, and put people into an eternal sleep with a spinning wheel’s needle.
My brothers were still working day and night for me, without even knowing it.
Everyone in the family was looking only to me, to the point that they had given up the dreams they had cherished for so long.
They were hoping I would become the final hope of this family.
The burden made it hard for me to breathe.
If only I hadn’t been accepted into the Academy... I repeated the same thought over and over.
I regretted it terribly, but now there was no way to turn back.
Because now it wasn’t only my own life hanging in the balance.