The Worst Kind of Parent
A lot had happened, sure… but setting aside how that sudden business first thing in the morning had caught me a little off guard, the day itself began ordinarily enough.
I made breakfast for Baek Eun-hwa, and after we'd taken turns washing up, we headed down to the underground parking garage as if it were the most natural thing in the world and climbed into one of the countless cars she kept stacked down there.
Not the outrageously expensive, flashy sports car she'd been driving last night — just an ordinary vehicle. Of course, even this one would take me stacking up my salary for a long, long time before I could ever afford it.
"Is there a reason we're taking a more modest car today than yesterday?"
"Those cars are all sponsored. They call them gifts, but the real intent is to advertise through me. Everything from the license plates to the bodywork is well-known to a lot of people, so it would only create awkward situations."
"Ah, I see…"
"When I'm out like this — just as Baek Eun-hwa, not as a hero — I deliberately take an ordinary car."
"Being you must be exhausting too, Eun-hwa."
Granted, the car we were in now was still an expensive model from an expensive brand. But compared to the rest of Baek Eun-hwa's collection, it was far more ordinary — that much was true.
…Setting all that aside, what a tiresome life it must be. People really were better off living ordinarily. The best life of all, I thought, would be one where you made plenty of money without being a public figure — a life where nobody knew who you were.
"…Well. It can't be helped."
"So where are we headed today?"
"…It's not anywhere special. Just a place I visit regularly. Regularly… yes. Just a place I go regularly."
"…Is that so?"
What is this?
I had no idea what kind of place Baek Eun-hwa was talking about. But her expression looked distinctly gloomy, so I didn't press her on the destination. I simply stayed quiet, connecting my phone to the car now and then to play some music, feeling a flicker of puzzlement as the vehicle turned toward the outskirts of the city — and remaining meekly, obediently silent all the while.
"…This is…"
"…I ended up bringing you somewhere like this without any warning. If I'd told you beforehand, maybe you would have reacted a little more normally."
"…Probably."
The place we arrived at was a public cemetery. No — putting it that way made it sound too eerie. A memorial park, perhaps, would be the better way to say it.
I'd been to so many different places with Saran and Batori that I hadn't thought much of it, sitting quietly in Baek Eun-hwa's car. Which made arriving here all the more startling, all the more surprising… and, by the end, I had a fairly good idea why we'd come.
In any case, the countless gravestones standing across that flat expanse of lush green grass cast a pall over what ought to have been a bright, open place. Gloomy… even that word wasn't quite right. The sunlight poured in beautifully, and the grass was impeccably kept — and yet it was a place that made you close your mouth without thinking.
And so I could do nothing but stand quietly at Baek Eun-hwa's side. I didn't know what I was supposed to say… but at the very least, the person buried here had to be Baek Eun-hwa's mother.
"I'm sorry. I was actually planning to come alone, but I somehow ended up dragging you along like this."
"…No. It's fine."
"The anniversary of her death is coming up soon, actually. I'm usually so busy I almost never make it out here… but I should at least observe the anniversary."
"Next week is the actual date, but I'll be too busy next week to come. So today I just… yes. Here I am."
Baek Eun-hwa was the quiet type even on ordinary days — not taciturn and short-spoken like Saran, just a composed person. But the way she looked now was incomparably more subdued than usual, and at the same time she kept glancing at me as if she felt guilty.
I already knew her circumstances through hypnosis. But Baek Eun-hwa herself had never spoken of them, and from her point of view, she would assume she had never told me a single thing about her mother. So of course she would look at me like that — like she owed me an apology.
"Is it all right if I don't ask whose grave this is?"
"I thought it would be better to just stay quietly by your side than to go asking."
"…It's my mother's."
"I… see."
We simply stood there in front of the grave, and the atmosphere was one in which no words would come. I had grown up in an orphanage in this life, and I had seen my share of orphans… but that didn't mean a situation like this had ever become familiar.
"She was a terribly rigid person. Frightening, at times. Cold, too."
Baek Eun-hwa said this quietly, more as if she were talking to herself than responding to anything I had said.
What kind of person had her mother been to her? Even if she told me, I would have a hard time truly understanding it. To me, the woman registered as little more than the one who had gaslit her, abused her emotionally, and left the single greatest mark on the way Baek Eun-hwa lived now.
But there were things like the suspension bridge effect and Stockholm syndrome for a reason. Reducing a perpetrator and a victim to something that simple was never a good idea — and that was all the more true between a parent and a child.
"From before I even started elementary school — from the time I was very little — Mother taught me about integrity and incorruptibility and all sorts of other things. She was the kind of person who always told me I must never refuse anyone, that I had to help people."
Baek Eun-hwa went on talking about her mother. The woman had been an Awakened of the same nine-tailed fox mutation type, and as a single mother she had subjected Eun-hwa to a coercive education from early childhood.
Wrongdoing… except they hadn't been wrongdoings at all. They were the ordinary, harmless things any child that age would do. And for those, she had beaten Eun-hwa's calves with a switch until they mottled with bruises — and that was only the beginning of behavior that could only be called the worst kind of parenting.
One time, she had caught Eun-hwa eating a snack she'd bought herself on a freezing winter day and immediately thrown her outside, leaving her to shiver for hours. Another time, Eun-hwa had merely gotten into a verbal argument with another student at school — and somehow her mother had heard about it, slapped her across the face the moment she came home, and sealed her mouth with packing tape while spouting nonsense about how the mouth was the source from which sin emerged.
Honestly, it was hard to listen to. Hard to understand. Even when I'd heard fragments of Baek Eun-hwa's story through hypnosis — even when I'd only gotten the rough outline — it had been difficult to comprehend. And the more detail I heard…
"…Even so, I think of her as my mother. I can't deny that she raised me by herself. She passed away just before I became an adult."
"…Maybe raising a child alone, as a woman, was just that hard. In Mother's case, she used illusion magic to hide her unusual appearance when she went out. But even setting that aside, she really did work herself to the bone. That's probably why she raised me so strictly."
The thought crossed my mind that Baek Eun-hwa was an idiot. A complete pushover. No — I was well aware there were all kinds of reasons for this. I knew that.
"…That's probably why."
I wanted to sigh. I wanted to get angry on her behalf. I wanted, more than anything, to just pull Baek Eun-hwa into my arms. Even if we were standing in front of the deceased — even if this was a grave, even if this was her mother — the woman had been garbage. I couldn't understand it.
"I think I've gone and told you something far too heavy. It was sudden, and I feel like I've said things I shouldn't have."
"…Just stand however you're comfortable. I'll tidy the grass a little, and then we'll go. That's all."
"All right."
But I couldn't do anything, because Baek Eun-hwa's face right now was thoroughly trapped in the past. I didn't know whether what I was thinking was kind or cruel. At the very least, saying anything in this moment would have been nothing but empty words — so I kept my mouth shut.
I stood behind her and watched as she wiped the gravestone clean and trimmed the grass around it. I watched because there was nothing else around to look at. I could hardly stare a hole through someone else's headstone, and I wanted to be ready — later, whenever later turned out to be — in case there was something I needed to say. So I simply stood there and looked.
"…Maybe it's because I haven't visited once all year. It's rather… dirty."
"…That can happen."
"I've wiped down the stone, tidied the surroundings… and I offered a modest cup of liquor. She was never someone who particularly enjoyed food anyway. So… this should be enough."
"Shall we head back, then?"
"…Yes."
And just like that, it was over. We had arrived here without warning, and the whole thing hadn't even lasted thirty minutes. Visiting someone else's grave was something I had only ever done on school field trips to the National Heroes' Cemetery, so it had felt a little awkward.
The last thing I saw, just before we left the memorial park, was a single gravestone — wiped clean now, unlike before, the name on it finally visible.
A name so similar to that of the fox I was responsible for. According to Baek Eun-hwa, she too had been a nine-tailed fox mutation-type ability user. Had she been someone quite a lot like Baek Eun-hwa, then?
…I didn't know. I had resolved the problems and worries of all kinds of people up to now, but the situation in front of me was… considerably complicated, even for me.