Mother
When I opened the door, a familiar smell washed over me.
Doenjang soup. Steam hissing up from the rice cooker. A knife working against a cutting board. The morning sounds of a house where people actually lived.
"Oh, Ji-an's here?"
Mother poked her head out from the kitchen, beaming. She wiped her hands on her apron as she came toward me.
"What happened yesterday? When you didn't show up, I started worrying something was wrong."
"Ah. I had a few things to take care of."
"I see. Sit down, sit down. Breakfast is ready—eat before you go."
Without another word, she steered me toward the table. No prying, no sulking. Feeding me first was simply how Mother did things.
I never did manage a proper explanation for why I hadn't come the day before.
And she took that clumsy answer as if it were nothing at all. Somehow, that sat even heavier on me.
Woo Han-gyul was already at the table.
Eyes half-closed, spoon in hand, she was nodding off between bites—rice still in her mouth, her head dipping forward, then jerking back up in a startle, over and over.
"Woo Han-gyul. If you fall asleep while you're eating, you'll get indigestion."
"Mmngh..."
At the sound of my voice she rubbed her eyes and looked at me. Then the sleep seemed to vanish all at once, her eyes going round.
"Oh! Ji-an, you're here?"
"Yeah."
"Heehee. You came today."
She grinned, wide and open. The gloomy face from yesterday lit up in an instant.
Seeing that smile eased something in me, and left me guilty at the same time. I'd been distant for days, and still she smiled like that just because I'd sat down.
I took the seat beside her.
My place was set the way it always was—chopsticks and a spoon waiting. The rice bowl was heaped full, and steam was still rising from the soup.
A place laid out as if it were only natural. Even though I hadn't come yesterday.
As I scooped up some rice, Mother set a side dish into my bowl.
"Eat plenty. Your face has gone half the size it used to be."
"...Thank you."
Han-gyul started chattering beside me. Did I know what was on the school lunch menu today, what she thought of the drama she'd watched yesterday, how the exam range was way too long. When Mother scolded her to just eat already, she pouted for a second and then launched into something else entirely.
It was messy and loud. And eating in the middle of all that noise felt good.
I thought of last night's dinner—alone at that wide table. There had been far more side dishes than here, but the only sound had been the clink of my own utensils.
If this were really my home, how wonderful would that be.
It was a thought I'd had countless times since I was little. Wishing this noisy morning could be mine every day.
It wasn't the first time. But today the thought scraped at me with a particularly sharp edge.
Then Mother paused mid-bite, as if something had just occurred to her, and looked at me.
"Oh—right. Ji-an."
"Yes."
"Yeon-jin called last night."
The hand holding my spoon stopped for a moment.
Yeon-jin. Whenever Mother said that name, it always carried the warm familiarity of calling a friend. And that name was my mother's.
"She said she'll be coming back to Korea soon. She doesn't know the exact date yet, but it sounds like sometime next month."
There was a carefulness in her voice. Mother knew better than anyone what things were like between me and my mother. So whenever she had news like this to pass along, she always wore that faintly awkward look.
"...Is that so?"
"Mm. She said she wants to see your face after all this time. She'll be shocked at how much you've grown."
Mother delivered it as if it were nothing of consequence, then went back to her rice.
I turned the words over in my mind.
The news that my mother was coming to Korea. I had heard it from Woo Han-gyul's mother.
It wasn't strange. It had always been this way. My mother almost never contacted me directly. When she had something to say, she called Mother, and Mother passed it on to me. That was how my parents did things.
It had never bothered me before.
But today it felt strangely wrong.
I was learning news of my own mother at someone else's table.
Through the mouth of that household's mother. And that mother said my mother's name with far more warmth than I ever could.
I ate in this house. My utensils sat at this table. Mother put side dishes in my bowl.
And yet I was not a person of this house.
I wasn't a person of that other house either. No one was waiting for me there.
The rice in my mouth suddenly grated like grains of sand. It took a long time to swallow.
I can't belong to either side.
This house had my place setting. That house had my room. And in neither of them was anyone waiting for me.
"Ji-an, what's wrong? Is the food not sitting well?"
Mother asked, her face full of concern.
"No. It's delicious."
I picked up my spoon again. And I swallowed the rice as if nothing were the matter.
I couldn't taste any of it.
After breakfast, I left the house with Woo Han-gyul.
It was the first walk to school in several days. She was so excited she practically bounced as she walked.
"Ji-an, Ji-an. So I watched that drama yesterday, right? And then the male lead just suddenly disappears. But the female lead doesn't know and keeps waiting for him, and I thought I was going to die of frustration."
"Is that so."
"And today's lunch has pork cutlet. Pork cutlet! That's my absolute favorite. If you're not going to eat yours, give it to me."
"Yeah. You can have it."
"Huh? Really? You're really not eating it?"
"...Yeah."
...What did she just say.
I couldn't remember a single thing I'd heard. The sound was clearly reaching me, but it kept sliding right past my ears.
Get it together. I told myself that over and over, and still my thoughts kept drifting back to that morning table.
Yeon-jin called.
That single line was still stuck in my throat like a grain of rice that wouldn't go down and wouldn't come up.
At some point, the chattering beside me cut off.
"...Ji-an."
"Yeah."
"You're not listening to me right now."
Only then did I turn my head.
Woo Han-gyul was staring up at me. The bright, excited face from a moment ago had already sunk into a sulk.
"I was listening."
"Liar. Just now I said I'd give you my pork cutlet and all you said was 'yeah.' Normally when I bring up pork cutlet you start lecturing me about how it's bad for you."
I had nothing to say to that.
She looked at me for a second, then stuck out her lower lip and turned away.
"...Fine. You don't have to listen."
She walked a few steps ahead. Her back was thoroughly pouty.
I should have said I was sorry. But I didn't know what words to put the apology in, so in the end I said nothing at all.
For a while we walked in silence.
Then, at the end of the alley, we ran into a familiar face.
"Oh. Hey, Lee Ji-an."
It was Park So-yeon. She'd been standing there with her bag slung over one shoulder; she saw us and raised a hand.
Then she looked from me to Han-gyul and back, one eyebrow lifting slightly. She'd clocked the awkward air between us in a single glance.
"What's with you two. Why does it feel like a funeral out here."
"So-yeon!"
In that instant Han-gyul went scampering over to her as if the pout had never happened. Then she pointed straight at me and tattled.
"So-yeon, look at him. He hasn't listened to a single thing I've said. I talk and all he goes is yeah, yeah."
"That so?"
"Yeah! I even offered him my pork cutlet and he just went yeah. His head is totally somewhere else."
"Tsk. How rotten of you, Lee Ji-an."
Park So-yeon took Han-gyul's complaints in full and played along. Then she glanced at me.
Normally she would have piled on right there. Hey, Lee Ji-an, keep that up and she's gonna dump you, something like that. Park So-yeon was not the type to let an opening like this pass.
But today she said nothing.
She just closed her mouth, gave Han-gyul a light pat on the shoulder, and nudged her forward.
And so the three of us headed to school.
Han-gyul chattered excitedly up ahead, and Park So-yeon walked beside me.
She was quiet the whole way. Only every so often I felt her eyes on me.
Once there was even the sense of her starting to open her mouth. I didn't look her way.
That sense dissolved into a short sigh and scattered. In the end, without asking anything, Park So-yeon went back to walking with her eyes fixed ahead.
Even after we reached the classroom, my head was still a mess.
I set my bag down, sat at my desk, and stared out the window, and somehow everything kept circling back to that morning table.
Next month, my mother would be here. So what face was I supposed to wear eating at that house. At a table I sat across from maybe a handful of days a year, if that.
"Hey."
I was sitting there blankly when a voice came from beside me.
I turned my head and found Kim Seol-ah standing there.
She was planted a little awkwardly next to my desk, fiddling with the sleeve of her uniform. She had something to say and couldn't quite get it out.
"Yeah."
"That... handkerchief."
"Yeah."
"I dropped it off for dry cleaning yesterday. Turns out you can't just throw something like that in the wash. Once it's done, I'll pick it up and give it back."
"You really don't have to go that far."
"What do you mean I don't have to."
Kim Seol-ah tapped the floor with the tip of her shoe.
"...I'm sorry for just using something expensive like that without thinking. I genuinely didn't know. I thought it was a regular handkerchief."
"It's fine. You really don't need to worry about it."
"I am worried about it. Me."
Kim Seol-ah shot me a look, then whipped her head away. And added, very quietly:
"...I'll buy you a meal sometime."
"Huh?"
"A meal. I'm buying. Okay?"
She didn't wait for an answer—just went back to her seat. The tips of her ears looked a little red, but that was probably just the morning light.
I watched her back for a moment.
I'll buy you a meal.
For nearly twenty years, I had always been the one watching other people's bowls. The one adding side dishes, packing medicine, checking whether the soup had gone cold.
This was the first time anyone had offered to buy me a meal.
Outside the window, the sunlight was still coming in. The throat that had grated so badly that morning finally felt like it was opening a little.