Family
Family
"Seong-hwan-a, noona's heading out."
A-ra had the carrier she'd packed last night in one hand, and she was gripping my hand tightly with the other.
I gave her head a gentle stroke with my free hand, and she beamed before opening the front door.
"Take care. You absolutely have to call me at night, okay?"
"Yeah, I know."
Today was the day A-ra left for her overseas tour.
The music world had been buzzing for a while over the news that she—the woman who'd devoured the Billboard charts—was making her comeback.
The Qtube Gukppong Channel's claims that foreign singers were more on edge than domestic ones had become a reality.
"Don't bully Eun-ji."
"I won't bully her!"
I blurted out completely irrelevant words just to keep her in sight a little longer.
A-ra turned around, stuck her tongue out at me, and closed the front door.
"Haa... I should get ready for school too..."
I had to go early today to prep for an assignment; it was going to be busy.
The fact that I didn't even have time to feel lonely felt kind of tragic.
"Why do other married men and women get so happy when their spouse is away?"
I'd probably never understand it, not in my whole life.
With A-ra, I wanted to be by her side every single day—and even when she was there, I still found myself seeking her out. I'd never be able to relate.
"What about our Pipsqueak? She won't get to see her mom for the next two weeks."
"Mung."
She probably thought A-ra would come back later.
Just look at those bright, sparkling eyes.
"Let's get ready... ready..."
If I didn't get going soon, I'd be late, so I changed into my seouler clothes and stepped outside.
If I was late today, the professor might hold it against me because of last week's absence.
***
"Oppa!"
I smiled bitterly as I watched Minji rush toward me, arms open to throw herself into a hug.
She was trying to embrace her oppa out in public—when would my little sister ever grow up?
"She's only grown physically. Inside, she's still a little kid, a total kid."
"Hehe."
Still, she might sulk if I didn't hug her, so I opened my arms just enough and held her.
She grinned and placed my hand on top of her head.
Even when she was little, she used to put her own hand on her head to ask for head pats.
She must have known I'd be alone because A-ra had gone abroad—
she said she wanted to see my face for the first time in a while and asked me to come pick her up from school, so I went out to meet her in front of campus.
When I'd seen her not long ago, she'd looked gaunt from not eating properly. Now, she must have been taking care of herself and eating well, because her face had started to glow.
"You've gained a little weight, huh?"
"I've been eating all the stuff you sent me, so I've gotten a lot healthier, see?"
"What about the vitamins?"
"Finished them all!"
I'd have to take her to the hospital for a checkup next time.
If I didn't look after her, the only person left to do it was Mom—she might really end up dying alone.
Just then, I looked past Minji and saw
a few girls glancing in our direction.
At first I thought they were just fans, but since Minji kept looking back at them, they were probably friends.
But they didn't look unfamiliar.
"Hello. Are you Minji's friends, by any chance?"
"Ah... hello! Y-Yes, we're her friends...!"
"Oppa, they're my elementary, middle, and high school classmates—and now my college classmates too."
Oh dear.
So these were the bodhisattva-like friends who'd put up with our little sister when she was being a total nuisance among nuisances.
I'd heard she'd mooched off them for nearly half a year.
"Thank you so much for not kicking our Minji out and for taking care of her. Let me at least give you something as a token of thanks...."
"No, no! W-We're really close, so we're not the kind of friends who keep track of stuff like that!"
I tried to pull a wad of cash from my wallet, but they stopped me.
Even though they're younger than me, their strength far exceeded mine.
"Then..."
"Oppa, I'm hungry."
"You are? Then let's go eat. Your friends should come along too."
"Thank you!"
"Minji, you take the passenger seat."
I wanted to show my gratitude to her friends, so I decided I had to buy them a meal and told them to get in the car.
"Whoa... this car...."
"It's a Porsche..."
They were women, so naturally they were very interested in the car.
From the side, it probably looked like a regular SUV, but from the front, you could see a single horse rearing up boldly.
I picked up her friends, who'd been circling the car for a while, and drove away from the campus entrance.
Kids these days put on their seatbelts without being told.
The passengers in the back need to wear their seatbelts safely too, mmhmm.
"You two said you've been friends with Minji since elementary school, right? Then I feel like I should have met you before?"
"Yes! We ate together once before."
"Really? When?"
"Um...........when oppa was in the hospital..."
"In the hospital? Are you talking about elementary school?"
"No, when you went into middle school..."
"Ah! I remember now!"
Was it that day I faceplanted on the field and collapsed during PE class?
My body had been in really bad shape back then, so I'd been hospitalized.
And then after I was discharged, Mom, Minji, and two or three friends—we'd all gone out to eat together!
So those kids were you guys!
"Sorry, your oppa tends to forget things a lot."
"No, we only saw each other for about thirty minutes at the time, so it can't be helped."
"Wow... but how on earth did all of you manage to get into the College of Dentistry?"
"Minji taught us how to study."
"Hehe, that's embarrassing."
"...Minji did?"
I knew she was good at studying, but was she also good at teaching?
More than that—being able to send same-age students to an In-Seoul dental college was practically a superhuman-level talent, wasn't it?
"Minji."
"Hm?"
Minji answered with a bright smile.
She seemed to be in a really good mood.
"During vacation, maybe you could try a tutoring part-time job or something. Seems like it'd work out."
"Really? Should I give it a try?"
"Oppa will introduce you, so try it once."
Now that it had come to this, I'd have to send all our younger siblings from the orphanage to In-Seoul schools too.
If what her friends said was true, Minji was an incredible talent.
If they went to provincial schools, it'd be harder for me to look after them, wouldn't it?
Our younger siblings, fighting!
*
"Oh, right. Have you two been to Minji's place?"
"Yes, we were honestly shocked."
"We'd been worrying because she wasn't coming home, and then she called us bragging that she'd gotten a place of her own..."
Apparently, she'd bragged about it the very next day.
A friend who'd been drifting around without a home suddenly saying she had a house—how stunned must they have been?
"At first we thought, 'Did she go into another gosiwon...?' and we were worrying like, 'If that's the case, just come live at our place...'"
"But it had two whole rooms, all the furniture and cooking tools were already there, and the fridge was fully stocked with side dishes and everything. We were amazed."
"At first we honestly wondered if she'd buried someone in the ground and stolen their house."
"Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"
Minji turned her head and glared at her friends, as if they'd been teasing her.
The two of them instantly composed their faces, as though they'd said nothing at all, and cleared their throats.
"At first we thought maybe oppa was too busy to take care of Minji, but then we found out that Minji hadn't even called you once..."
"We were so dumbfounded we told her to make a phone call right away."
"So that's why she called..."
"Uh-oh....."
Her friends had apparently told her to at least call me, and that was why she'd sent a text asking to meet up.
Where on earth could you find friends like these?
"Minji, you used up all your luck on making friends."
"Meeting oppa and Seonsaengnim was 70 percent, meeting my friends is maybe 30 percent? And since those bastard parents threw me away the moment I was born, shouldn't there be an extra 100 percent left over?"
A shocking string of words burst out in an instant, but no one here was fazed.
Minji was a truly kind and lovely kid, but strangely, whenever the topic of parents came up, horrible words would just fly out of her mouth.
I'd known it since we were little, and her friends had spent all those years together with her, so they must have already known too.
"Tch. If you say something like that one more time, oppa's going to get mad, okay?"
As you could probably tell, Minji harbored an intense hatred for the parents who gave birth to her.
Of course, she'd been abandoned the moment she was born and knew nothing about them, but she held such deep resentment that she cursed them every single night.
"Tch... oppa, you're too nice."
"I'm not that nice."
Of course, the only reason I could say something like that to her was because I'd been in the exact same situation.
If someone else tried to say, 'Still, they're your parents, isn't that a bit harsh?'—that wouldn't just be unhelpful; it would be no different from pressing Minji's nuclear button.
"So, how about starting to call Mom 'Mom' soon?"
"No way. To me, the word 'mom' means something worse than nuclear waste trash."
"Eugh...."
Because I knew Minji's feelings so well, I never pressured her—at most, I was just asking if she couldn't try it just once.
It seemed like Minji would never be able to call Mom 'Mom.'
***
We finished the meal, dropped off her friends, and arrived in front of Minji's place.
But instead of getting out of the car, she just sat there quietly for a long time.
"What's wrong?"
"Oppa, can I sleep over at your place? Just for today?"
"At my place? Hmm... It's not like you can't, but..."
"You said you were raising a dog, right? I kind of want to see it, too..."
It seemed like bringing up the parents topic earlier had been the problem.
When we were little, whenever the subject of parents came up, Minji would always come and cling to me every night.
But since I'd be bringing a woman home, I'd have to call A-ra to make sure there were no misunderstandings.
"Just a moment, let me make one phone call."
"A-ra unnie?"
"Yeah. She left the country today, remember."
"Right... I'd completely forgotten."
I saw Minji's bittersweet smile and stroked her head.
Then I took out my phone and called A-ra.
Bringing someone else to the house without permission while A-ra Noona was away didn't sit right with me.
I thought that even if it was family, I should get A-ra Noona's approval whenever possible.
Weren't these the first steps in respecting the head of the household?
I'm a principled husband who respects the head of the household.