I Am... (3)
“Before we held her funeral, I had to make a decision. Anyone who knew what had happened to Surin would have felt, the moment they saw you, that something was wrong—and if the government or the Union ever learned you existed, they were certain to drag you off.”
I was not even half the size of an ordinary baby. I ate and slept and ate and slept the way infants do, but the difference was that I never cried; I passed every hour of the day in nothing but sleep. In the end, Grandmother and Dad buried every trace of me in secrecy.
Mother’s belly had never grown very large, so on the rare occasions she went out they dressed her in loose, generous clothes, and thanks to that the villagers never even realized she was with child.
“The day after Surin killed herself, people from the government and the Union came looking. They must have confirmed that the vital signs on her Certifier had gone dead. But there was nothing to tell them. They looked through the house, heard what the neighbors had to say, judged that Surin had committed suicide, and left.”
The agents from the Ability Users’ Union confirmed Mother’s body, took the family’s cooperation, gave the house a perfunctory once-over, and went back. I had been tiny then, and asleep all day besides, so hiding me, he said, had not been particularly difficult.
“Wait—but when you told me before, you said Mom killed herself at the hospital… So how does that work?”
“How could I have told you any of this back then? I covered it as best I could.”
Fair enough. If I had been told that my aunt, after a full year of quiet recuperation at home, had suddenly taken her own life, I would have been just as shaken.
Dad brought a single photograph from the album and held it out to me. In the faded picture, Mother was smiling wide—a girl who looked about my age. Her face had never appeared in the vision, but the moment I saw it, I knew. This was the mother who had given birth to me.
“Back then I was nothing but an ordinary medical student, and Mother was living alone out in the country. We didn’t know what would come of it afterward, but we decided to hide you and raise you as far as we could.”
Hearing that they had even been prepared to leave the country if it came to that, I understood how much Dad and Grandmother had thought of me, and I couldn’t say a word.
Whether I ought to call it a mercy or not, the infant I had been slept all day; when they trickled formula into my mouth I would wake, take it, and once my belly was full, fall asleep again, so I hadn’t required much tending, he said. I never fussed or cried the way ordinary babies do, and thanks to that, even when someone came calling, no one ever discovered there was a baby in the house. Grandmother and Dad fixed the attic into the best place they could manage for an infant, hid me there, and raised me. It was from then, too, that Dad began compiling a file of my health records. He hadn’t even made intern yet—only a medical student—but he studied desperately, again and again, until he had the skill to give me regular checkups, he said.
“What I couldn’t believe was that you grew that slowly for twelve years. In the middle of it I met your mom, we married, and after that your sister was born. And by the time your height and weight had caught up to an ordinary newborn’s, your mom had miscarried our second child.”
A miscarriage? Mom had miscarried?
A knock sounded. I turned toward the door, and Mom was coming in with drinks.
“Honey.”
“What is it.”
She came in carrying a tray with two glasses of chilled barley tea, smiling brightly. Through the open door I could see my sister, Hwayeon, and Yeongeun craning their necks this way, but Mom set the tray on the table in front of me, turned, shut the door, and came over. She sat beside me, drew me into her arms, and stroked my hair, then looked up at Dad.
“What do you mean, what is it? This is our son’s business—of course I should be here. Anyway, how far did you get?”
“I told him you’d miscarried.”
“Ah…”
A faint sadness crossed her face. She turned to me, still startled, and clasped my hand tight.
“That was when I was twelve weeks along. I hadn’t been well from the moment I got pregnant, and in the end, well, it all went wrong.”
Mom had been a college freshman then. After the pregnancy her health failed, and she had taken leave from school to recuperate, when one day, she said, severe pain set in and she began to bleed. The conclusion was a natural miscarriage—neither her fault nor Dad’s. She confessed that the loss had dealt her a terrible blow.
“Hehe. Back then your dad looked after this mom of yours like a real princess, you know? And then I went and miscarried, just like that. I was so worn out, so miserable, so sorry, I could hardly get a word out. The shock laid me flat.”
“Your mom’s miscarriage was a great shock to me too. But in that same moment, I realized it was also the chance to bring you out into the world.”
He had been deeply shaken, he said, and yet he soon understood it for what it was—his chance to bring me out—and he resolved to raise me as his son.
“But your dad, honestly, he was too much. Just think. Right after I’d miscarried, he came at me with a hard face I’d never once seen on him and said there was something he had to confess.”
What he meant was that he had judged he could no longer keep raising me hidden away in Grandmother’s house. By then I had grown to about the size of an ordinary young infant, but I still spent most of every day asleep, and he didn’t believe that could last forever. Of course, since it might, he prepared for that too. Because I had reached the size of a normal baby, his plan was to stage a natural birth, and then, after a few years, present me to the medical world as a rare disease and search for a treatment. Ever since the Phase World had been joined to reality, unprecedented rare illnesses had broken out more than once, so making it known would not have been difficult.
Dad acted boldly. Despite Grandmother’s attempts to stop him, he brought Mom—struck nearly mute, showing the symptoms of aphasia from the shock of the miscarriage—down to the countryside.
“Back then I was suddenly terrified he meant to throw me away.”
Led out of the house by his hand, she had been on the verge of spilling tears from fear, while Dad, oblivious, drove the whole way in stony silence without a word—and she let the old resentment show as she said it.
“Ahem. I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I was hardly in my right mind back then.”
At the belated apology she shot him a glare, then cradled my hand and went on in a gentle voice.
“And the place his hand led me to was your grandmother’s house in the country. I was startled, and scared, and curious what was about to happen—and when your grandmother came out, she had that same hard face, of all things. She took my hand with that stern look and led me inside, and oh, my. Your dad brought out from in there an angel so cute I couldn’t have dreamed it. That was you, son.”
An angel… Mom’s love came through so raw and aching that heat rose behind my eyes.
“The moment your mom saw you, she took you in her arms and just looked at you for a long time. And what she said to me—I still remember.”
“It was, ‘Is this child a baby angel come down from heaven?’ wasn’t it?”
“Mm.”
Forcing down the feeling that I might cry, I made myself speak.
“…Isn’t that usually when you’re supposed to ask whose baby it is? And then the marital fight that follows.”
Dad and Mom stared at me as if I were being ridiculous, then shook their heads.
“That boy now and then does or says something so absurd it reminds me of his mother, and it gives me a start.”
“Your mother said the same. That our son’s temperament is the very image of that young lady’s.”
Outside the door, Franc and Hwayeon were in an uproar, catching and holding back my sister and Yeongeun, who were determined to eavesdrop no matter what. Mom paid them no mind. With a wistful face lost in memory, she gazed into empty air and spoke.
“That day I heard the whole story of our son from his own mouth. The truth is, even before I heard it, I was already thinking I wanted that angel-pretty baby for my son—and then your dad, looking like a man carrying every sorrow in the world, goes and confesses he wants to raise you as our child.”
Hurt and vexed that Dad had hidden a thing like this all this time, she drove him out of the room and simply gazed at me. And then, as if it were a lie, I began to squirm and stir, and a feeling she couldn’t resist came over her, and she put me to her breast. When I started babbling and nursing, the pain knotted in her chest began to fade—and as she said it, her face overflowed with a mother’s love.
“I was nursing you like that when your grandmother came in, and I told her I wanted to make you our son. At that she wept without a sound. I had never seen her cry the way she did that day.”
Dad said that seeing Mom nurse me, and Grandmother weeping, brought Mother to mind, and his chest ached.
“In that moment your mom’s aphasia eased all at once, and from then on she hid the miscarriage, pretended she was still pregnant, and started going about in loose, roomy clothes.”
He deceived everyone around them, saying her health was poor and that he had brought her down to the country to recuperate.
“From the start, I only had to bind a cloth around my belly when I stepped outside, and with your grandmother helping it was terribly easy. Later we brought Siha down too, and I spent the days in the country taking online lectures—you wouldn’t believe how peaceful I was. I even caught myself thinking I’d like to just keep living there.”
Mom had come down bringing my sister from where she had been left at her maternal grandparents’, and with Grandmother’s help she raised her, playacting a swollen belly so the miscarriage would not come to light, and carefully spent seven months that way. Then, once she had matched the timeline to a full ten months, she pretended to give birth at home, and the next day wrapped me in a swaddling cloth, went to the neighborhood community center, and finished the birth registration.
Seeing her hold me so tenderly, Dad smiled a little, then quietly went on.
“When the registration was done and we came home, I worried what we’d do if you kept growing so slowly—but from a certain point, you started growing as ordinarily as the children your age. You were a little smaller than the others, true, but if you thought back to how you’d looked when you first came into the world, that growth was astonishing.”
“You know what? The whole reason your dad became director of a general hospital was our son. So that if something bad happened, he could deal with it himself. Isn’t that right, dear?”
“…Ahem.”
Seeing Dad look sheepish and Mom smiling so kindly, I realized every worry I had carried had been pointless. My chest grew as warm as her body heat. In that moment light flashed through the crack of the door, and with the sound of something being seared, screams spilled in.
Kzzzt!
“Good grief. These girls, honestly?”
At my sister’s and Yeongeun’s screams, Mom put on a show of anger and started for the door, then stopped short. She turned back to me.
“…Yeah.”
Hearing me, she laughed a soft hoho, smiled, gathered up the tray, opened the door, and went out.
Listening to the kyaa, kyaak of their screams, I turned to Dad, and he spoke with a face that was barely holding back a wry smile.
“The way I see it, the real angel is your mom.”
“I think so too.”
After all, it seemed to me a rare thing for an ordinary person to take a collateral nephew—a cousin’s child by blood—as her adopted son, and cherish him more dearly than the child of her own body.
“And… I don’t know if I ought to tell you this, but if not now, there may not be another chance. Your mom doesn’t know. But exactly once, when you were a baby, you drank blood.”
In that instant I had the feeling something important was about to come out.
“Blood?”
“Yes. Human blood. Your mom had just put your sister—she hadn’t been weaned yet—to one breast, and she was unfastening the nursing bra on the other side to feed you, when a broken clip scraped her nipple and drew blood. Only a little beaded up, but she paid it no mind and put you to the breast anyway. And from that moment on, as your dad sees it, you began to grow normally.”
“…You’re saying I grew faster because I drank blood?”
“That’s not something we can know. Perhaps the cause was your mom’s love for you, and her devotion.”
So that was it. Was that why, ever since I was little, Dad had never let me eat meat that wasn’t fully cooked? Because he didn’t know what blood might do to me? Come to think of it, I did seem to get dizzy, or feel some strange urge, whenever I looked at blood in particular. From here on, too, I had better keep my distance from blood and raw meat.
“After that, right up until you entered middle school, you grew up well without a single real bout of trouble. You don’t know how much comfort your growing was to me and your grandmother.”
He came slowly toward me, reached out, stroked my hair for a moment, and said quietly,
“…Thank you for telling us honestly. Whatever the truth is, thank you for trusting your family enough to say it.”
“It’s nothing…”
I felt a little shy, thinking how awkward it was to have Dad stroking my hair, and I was midway through that thought when he turned and spoke in an even voice.
“As it happens, we’re off from tomorrow. Shall we go see Grandmother?”
“Yeah.”
On the hill behind the country house stand three gravestones. Grandfather’s, Uncle’s, and Aunt’s. When I was little the stones had frightened me somehow, and I rarely went that way… This time, when I went, I ought to pay my respects not at an aunt’s grave, but at my mother’s.
Thank you for bringing me into the world. That Mother had put me to her breast first… that meant, at the very least, she hadn’t hated me. I should greet her, and thank her for giving birth to me.
When I came out of the room, my sister lay sprawled across the living room, magnificently singed, while Franc, Hwayeon, and Yeongeun were deep in animated talk with Mom. Hwayeon glanced at me as I came out with Dad, then spoke to her.
“Somehow, I think I finally understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Seoha’s inescapable, demonic cuteness. I think I finally get it.”
Mom and Dad stared blankly at Hwayeon. My sister, collapsed on the floor, lifted her head, looked at her with an incredulous face, then turned her eyes to me. It can’t be, that look said—and yet, somehow, she seemed to understand.
“Don’t joke around with the secret of my birth.”
“Who said it was a joke? I am truly, literally, one hundred percent serious.”
There wasn’t a shred of falsehood in Hwayeon’s dead-serious face. Franc and Yeongeun weren’t saying a word, but they were secretly nodding along in agreement. My sister staggered up, went to the sofa, and sank down, then looked at me and carefully broached it.
“Th-then Seoha and I are cousins?”
“…Do you hate that I’m your real little brother?”
“Who said I hate it?!”
Startled, she all but shouted it, shot a glare at Mom and Dad, then walked over to where I sat slumped on the carpet, stroked my hair, and went on.
“To think I was the only one who didn’t know. I feel like Dad and Mom deceived me.”
Her face was strangely flushed, and complicated, as she looked at me, and I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
“Aigoo. So Seoha’s face was that dark because this was weighing on him?”
“Well… listening to Grandpa Murdin, the whole world started to feel like a lie. You have no idea how crushed I was. If I’d been some other family’s kid, and not Mom’s and Dad’s and my sister’s…”
I couldn’t finish, and closed my mouth, and the house fell quiet for a moment.
“So. What do you mean to do from here?”
Perhaps not wanting the subject to go on, Dad asked first. It was almost unheard of for him to turn a conversation aside like that… Anyway, I thought I knew what he was asking.
“I’m going to find the ones who made Mother like that and kill every last one of them. Those bastards don’t just go after humans—they snatch the women of every race but their own, torment them, and take pleasure in it. The worst kind of monsters. I’ll track them all down and erase every single one.”
When I answered with my eyes flashing, worry crossed Mom’s face, but Yeongeun stepped forward first, nodding as she spoke.
“If it’s you, Seoha, you have the right. Only—don’t let the hunger for revenge swallow you while you chase it.”
I had a family and lovers who loved all of me. As if I would throw them aside, fight those demon bastards, and die a hollow death—or lose myself. I let out a small breath and looked out the living room window at the pitch-black night sky.
Dad and Mom, my sister, and even Hwayeon and Yeongeun—none of them cared in the slightest that demon blood ran in my veins, and they treated me just as they always had. It made me so happy I could have cried. Call it the feeling of the anguish and emptiness knotted in my chest coming undone. Like a gloomy monsoon that had dragged on and on, until the rain clouds broke and a blue sky and a warm sun showed themselves and shone down on me.
After we went upstairs, I gave Hwayeon and Yeongeun a shortened account of what I had heard from Dad and Mom, and Yeongeun came up beside me with a slightly angry face, caught my arm, and started poking my cheek. Poke, poke.
“Think of it the other way. If I were half human and half demon, would you throw me away?”
“You think I would? If I were that kind of person, Franc wouldn’t be here right now—and neither would Miho or Hiarid!”
I frowned at the absurd hypothetical, and she squared her shoulders and thrust her chest forward.
“There, see? You think that way yourself, and yet you expected a different reaction from us?”
“…”
I had nothing to say, so I shut my mouth—and Yeongeun, grinning, sat down on my right and linked her arm through mine. Hwayeon sat on my left and spoke as well.
“In fact, your assumption may be wrong. If we look only at the result, couldn’t we say you were born of human and human? That’s how it appears on the health records Father compiled, too. And there’s no way to verify the spiritual side of it.”
“If I didn’t have the premonition, I might have thought that. But the premonition insists that all of it is true.”
“…Hmm. Then it must be true. Even so, nothing about my attitude is going to change. Because you are my, my… one and only m-man.”
I looked at Hwayeon, face flushed and stammering, then pulled her by the waist into my arms, and Franc embraced both of us as she said,
“Seoha. Whatever kind of being you may be, we will not leave your side. So please—say no more of things that only wound you.”
“…Yeah.”
Receiving the comfort of their hearts, here in the nest I shared with my lovers, what fear and dread still remained vanished completely. I thought I might cry, but showing tears felt somehow shameful, so I barely, barely pressed them down and held them in—and my lovers smiled as if they knew my heart entirely.
With lovers who looked only at me and thought only of me, and a family who loved me, how could I ever become a demon?