The Reason I Lived So Hard
I am an orphan.
I have known it for as long as I can remember existing at all.
I grew up not in a home but in an orphanage, and I understood that from the start. I have no idea what kind of people my parents were. There was never any information, never even a story.
From early childhood I lived at the orphanage and commuted to school from there.
Adults say that once you weather the storms of society and gather enough experience, you lose your innocence. That is why some of them are so fond of the pure-hearted innocence of little children.
But even those adults do not know the truth.
Sometimes a child’s innocence, that pure-hearted simplicity, can be far more terrifying.
I learned that once I started school.
The kids in my class found out I lived at the orphanage and had no parents. Some thought it was fascinating; others looked at me strangely. And among them were the ones who decided to pick on me and make fun of me for it.
Third grade of elementary school.
That was when the teasing was at its worst.
One boy in particular—Yun Jun-min—singled me out for being a parentless orphan and tormented me relentlessly.
“Hey, you don’t even have parents. How do you go to school? If you don’t have parents, you don’t have money, so you shouldn’t be able to go to school, right?”
Jun-min would mock me to my face like that and, with the kids who followed him, harass me further.
Even so, I was fine.
Wasn’t I angry?
No.
Even when they teased me and bullied me, I just let it slide. I listened the way you listen to someone else’s story and let it drift past.
Maybe that was why Jun-min and the others got even more irritated and kept coming after me.
But back then I was completely indifferent, completely detached—like a doll that could not feel anything at all.
Then one day Jun-min said this to me:
“You’re always wearing the exact same face. It pisses me off. You can’t feel anything, can you? Even when I hit you, you just stand there like an idiot and take it! I heard the grown-ups talking. There’s this scary serial killer who showed up in Seoul and everyone’s freaking out, and they say the killer is a psychopath who can’t feel emotions or something. Are you a psychopath too?”
Then he shouted to the whole class:
“Seong-min might be a psychopath just like the serial killer on TV~! So you guys better watch out!”
I had no idea who the serial killer causing chaos in Seoul was, but from that day on Jun-min started calling me a psychopath. Naturally the other kids began avoiding me and staring at me with strange eyes.
It was true that I never smiled and never cried. When they bullied me I simply took it. When they hit me I simply got hit. That was all.
So maybe the kids really did start thinking Jun-min might be right about me being a psychopath.
Honestly, I started wondering the same thing myself—whether I really was something like a psychopath.
That was how thoroughly I lived as a bystander, enduring the bullying and the mockery without a single tear or change of expression.
To be honest, I did not even feel particularly sad about being an orphan.
And so my third-grade year seemed ready to simply drift by.
But one person was different.
“Yun Jun-min! You were calling Seong-min a psychopath and teasing him again!”
The girl who came running with a broom raised high, shouting at Jun-min’s little gang as they surrounded me while I drank water from the hallway cooler—our class president, Yoo Ji-ah—was not like the others.
“I wasn’t teasing him, it’s true~~ This kid always acts the same no matter how much we pick on him. Doesn’t that seem weird to you too, Class President? My mom said psychopaths are scary people and you have to be careful around them…! So this creepy kid who can’t feel emotions might do something bad later, just like the serial killer who showed up in Seoul!”
“If you keep saying weird things I’m telling the teacher everything!”
“You only bring up the teacher when you’re losing, Ji-ah…!”
“Want me to beat you with this broom…!!!”
“Fine, fine… we’re going, okay…”
Yun Jun-min was one of the bigger, stronger kids, and he was good at fighting. But he could not do a thing against Class President Yoo Ji-ah.
Her parents ran a successful business in the area, and Jun-min’s father worked as an executive at their company. Jun-min had heard things at home, and he knew Ji-ah’s parents well, so the class president was someone he simply could not afford to cross.
“Let’s go…”
Once Jun-min led his followers away, Yoo Ji-ah, still holding the broom aloft, let out a long breath.
“Seong-min, are you okay? They didn’t hit you again, did they?”
I shook my head at her question.
“So they didn’t hit you this time… good.”
Only then did she sigh quietly.
“Don’t just stand there and take it every time… When you stay quiet like that, Jun-min picks on you even more. The teacher said so too—if they bother you again, tell her… Why don’t you ever tell the teacher?”
“I just have to endure it… If I get through that moment, it passes.”
“Doesn’t it make you mad? They keep bullying you. Aren’t you angry?”
“I don’t know…”
I answered honestly. Flatly.
“You always say that, Seong-min… Sigh…”
I looked at her with fresh eyes.
“Class President… don’t you think I’m weird?”
The other kids avoided me. Partly because I was a parentless orphan, but also because they thought that, just like the serial killer who had set the whole country on edge, I might really be a psychopath the way Jun-min claimed.
But the class president was different.
“Why would you be weird? Because Jun-min called you a psychopath? I think that’s the weird part. I saw something last time…”
“Saw what?”
“When you were going home you picked up that little kitten with the hurt leg, right? I secretly followed you. You went to the orphanage. And I saw you asking the teacher there to take care of the kitten. You did it because you felt sorry for it. If you were really a psychopath like Jun-min says, you wouldn’t have done that.”
“……”
“And just because you’re an orphan doesn’t mean kids like Jun-min have any right to pick on you. Even if the other kids look at you strangely, that doesn’t mean I have to.”
Yoo Ji-ah always spoke with that clear, decisive certainty.
Even when the other children avoided me and thought I was strange, the class president never did. She always came to me first. She always held out her hand.
“Seong-min~!”
After school, as I was walking out the front gate, the class president called me.
“Heading home?”
“Yeah.”
“Then want to go to that snack place over there? I went to the countryside over the weekend, so Grandma and Grandpa gave me pocket money. I’ll buy you tteokbokki. Do you like tteokbokki?”
“I don’t dislike it.”
“So that means you like it, right?”
How “I don’t dislike it” turned into “I like it” I still do not know. But that was how she took it.
“Come on~! The tteokbokki at that place is really good!”
She grabbed my hand without the slightest hesitation and dragged me off to the snack shop.
The tteokbokki I ate that day really was delicious. Whether it was because the class president bought it for me or because the ajumma who ran the place was genuinely skilled, I could not say.
“There’s a lot, so you’re full, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I ate a ton too~! Let’s come again next time. I’ll buy it for you again…!”
Looking back, it was pure meddling. Class President Yoo Ji-ah was always like that—tagging after me, looking after me, buying me tasty things.
Other kids and Jun-min teased her for it sometimes.
“Want me to hit you with this broom!”
But she would just raise the broom boldly and scold Jun-min and the others right back. On top of that she was a good student and responsible. She was a girl who did not match me at all—me, the gloomy, dark one.
And then…
I was even invited to the class president’s birthday party.
Of course an orphan like me could never give a proper present. So the only thing I could offer was a mechanical pencil and lead set I had received as a gift from one of the orphanage teachers and had carefully saved without ever using.
Jun-min laughed at my gift.
“What’s this? Just an ordinary mechanical pencil you can buy at any stationery store?”
The other girls and boys either snickered or looked at me with pity.
But the class president scolded Jun-min, who had openly mocked me right in front of everyone.
“What’s wrong with a mechanical pencil! It’s the thing you use most when you study! And what matters with a gift is the heart you put into giving it!”
The other kids, who knew her personality, had already expected that Jun-min would get an earful for laughing so openly. But Jun-min himself was annoyed.
“Class President, do you like Seong-min? Why do you always take his side?”
“Yeah, I like him~! So what are you gonna do about it! Did I ask you to chip in or something?!”
“W-well… no…”
Even Jun-min had not expected her to say it so bluntly; he was the one left flustered. He must have thought she would be the one embarrassed by his words.
And so a small commotion passed at the class president’s birthday party.
Afterward a rumor spread through the class: the class president liked the orphan Seong-min.
“Why did you say that?”
After school I waited for her outside the teachers’ office and asked. Because of me a weird rumor had started.
“It’s fine. If you shrink back and get scared at times like that, kids like Jun-min just come after you harder. So you have to act confident.”
“Now they’re looking at you weirdly too.”
“As long as I’m confident, it’s fine. And as long as you’re confident, it’s fine.”
“……”
“And… it’s true. I do like you, Seong-min.”
“What?”
“That day, when you took the kitten. I was hiding and watching… When the orphanage teacher said she’d treat the cat, you smiled so brightly.”
“……”
“That was the first time I ever saw you smile. You always walked around with a blank face, looking so dark. It was really pretty. Pretty enough that I wanted to keep seeing that smile. I… I want you to always live smiling, Seong-min… I’m not lying.”
Yes.
That was how it was.
That day the class president said those words to me.
That she wanted me to always live with a smile.
And she really did act as if nothing was wrong.
All through third grade of elementary school, the class president lived boldly and without hesitation.
Then winter break came.
She came to find me.
“I… I’m going to America next month.”
America?
America meant a foreign country.
“I’m going to live with my uncle’s family in America. I don’t want to go… but it’s my parents’ decision, so I don’t have a choice. So…”
“You came to say goodbye?”
She nodded.
Then she pulled something from her pocket.
“Hold out your hand.”
I did as she said.
She placed something in my palm.
When I looked, it was a small scrap of paper, like a note.
“This is a lucky charm I made.”
“A lucky charm?”
She smiled and nodded.
“If you keep it with you, good things will happen to you, Seong-min. That’s just what I think, though.”
I stared down at the paper for a moment.
“Seong-min.”
I lifted my face again—and felt something soft against my lips.
When I looked at her in surprise, the class president gave me a shy little smile.
“You’re… not a psychopath… so you have to always smile… and live brightly, okay?”
Then she turned and ran off, leaving me standing there in a daze.
That was my first kiss.
And my first love.
After she left, I unfolded the paper she had called a lucky charm.
On it, drawn in mechanical pencil, was a little character that looked like me—grinning, flashing a V-sign, standing there like a mischievous kid.
A bright-looking little guy who did not match the gloomy, dark me at all.
And just as the class president had said in her final words, I tried not to live gloomily anymore.
I tried to live brightly. I tried to shake off the thought that I might be a psychopath. I tried to become someone who was faithful to emotion.
And that was how…
I had lived.
When Seong-min woke, Hye-suk was sleeping beside him.
He quietly slipped out of bed, left the bedroom, opened the front door, and stepped into the yard. He climbed up to the roof, retrieved a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the Rooftop Room, came back out onto the rooftop, and lit one.
“Hooo…”
Smoking, Seong-min stared blankly at the pre-dawn landscape.
A full month had passed since his date with A-reum noona, and they had all been living together peacefully. Hye-suk understood that he was seeing A-reum, and in return Seong-min made an effort to treat Hye-suk well.
The month had gone by faster—and sweeter—than he expected.
How long has it been since I last dreamed that…
This was the first time this year. Last year he must have had the dream about five times.
“Hooo…”
Gazing out beyond the rooftop while the cigarette burned down, Seong-min took out his wallet. From it he carefully withdrew an old, carefully folded scrap of paper—stained and faded with age.
He unfolded it with care.
On it was a boy grinning mischievously, holding up a V-sign.
The lucky charm.
Maybe it’s thanks to the class president’s charm after all.
The incredible ability that had come to him… the thought that this power might have been given to him because of the lucky charm Yoo Ji-ah had once pressed into his hand brought a wry smile to his lips.