I'll Show You That Rock Makes Money
After I bought Soo-ah a brand-new smartphone and a set of clothes, I watched, pleased, as she headed off to show them off to her friends. On the walk home, I ran into someone I had not expected.
…Is that Ji-soo?
I knew her at a glance, even from a distance. The woman crouched over there was unmistakably my first younger sister.
Except.
…What's with those clothes?
One look at what she had on threw me. If I had to sum the whole look up in a single word, it was rock star.
Studs and piercings I'd never seen were jammed through the fabric. She was dressed in something torn up like rags, her eyes done in heavy black makeup, and a huge bag rode her back.
…What is she eating…??
With a bag nearly half her own size strapped on, she was squatting in a corner, nibbling her way through a triangular convenience-store kimbap.
It's past quitting time. She ought to come home and eat a proper dinner…
I was just about to call out to her.
"Ji—"
"Ah! You guys are here??"
The blank face that had been working through the kimbap lit up all at once. She shot to her feet and hurried toward a knot of guys coming her way.
"Yo, Ji-soo! How you feeling today?"
"Never better. I think I could go all night."
"Love it. Let's run it till morning!"
The name I'd been about to call caught hard in my throat and never made it out.
…And who are those guys?
Four of them, about Ji-soo's age, every one in a long dark puffer. Only their faces showed, and every face was handsome. More than that—run it all night? Run what, exactly?
…This isn't about to turn into something, is it…???
She had carried herself with a steady grown-up calm ever since she came of age, and I didn't really believe she'd do anything reckless. Even so, as her older brother, I couldn't help worrying.
Should I follow them…?
I wavered. I wasn't getting any cold, ugly feeling off those men.
…Just in case. I'll only watch from a distance.
Worry won in the end. I turned off the road home and quietly fell in behind my sister.
Ji-soo and the men went into an old commercial building. Following at a quiet distance, I was startled.
This place is completely shot… What are they planning to do in here?
Calling it a commercial building was generous. The whole retail strip was already dead, vacancies everywhere. Even the corridor I trailed them down was grim. The lights flickered, the paint was peeling off the walls, and a nail salon that appeared out of nowhere with its lights dead only made the gloom worse.
…Not exactly a great place to come and do anything…
That was when it hit.
Yikes.
The bad feeling sent me ducking behind a pillar. From farther down the hall, their voices carried.
"Huh? Ji-soo, what's wrong?"
"…Nothing. I just felt like someone was watching…"
"What are you talking about? Who else would even be in this building… Get inside. Don't say creepy stuff."
…Her instincts really are sharp.
She didn't have an ability like mine, but she was quick on the uptake all the same. I'd nearly been caught. I steadied my hammering heart and headed for wherever she had gone in.
What is this… a practice room?
At the entrance there was nothing but a lone kiosk, and a sign.
…Looks ready to fall apart.
The room was so shabby it seemed on the verge of collapsing. The kiosk was black with grime, clearly nobody's job to maintain, and the soundproofing was poor enough that a little noise leaked out into the hall.
I couldn't make out a single word. What came through was unmistakably singing, though, and the scraps of my sister's voice in it were enough. Relief loosened something in my chest, and I turned my steps back toward home.
"I'm home."
"You're back? We were just about to eat. Sit down."
"Oh. Kimchi stew."
Dinner was the kimchi stew I'd requested from Mom over the phone.
"Mom's kimchi stew really is the best, with her touch in it. Make soft-tofu stew tomorrow? It's been a while."
"You sure? The soft-tofu stew you've been eating isn't my cooking. It's a big company's."
"……."
I had just uncovered a dark truth I had been fooled by my entire life.
"Wait. You didn't make that yourself? It was a corporate meal kit?"
"It's been a meal kit for about three years. What are you talking about… You really didn't know?"
"I didn't…"
"Oppa, are you actually an idiot?"
In the middle of that warm, noisy dinner, a thought struck me.
Three years ago… That's when Mom's back really started to go, and when Ji-soo started working.
Maybe I had been indifferent enough not to notice that Mom's soft-tofu stew had turned into a meal kit.
…Back then I was out of my head, scrambling to get hired and get ready, all just to pay down the debt.
The debt our father had left behind when he vanished was heavy, and paying it off had come before everything else. While I was running myself ragged—certifications, interviews, anything to land a job at a construction firm that paid—the one looking after the family was Ji-soo.
"…When's Ji-soo getting in?"
"Who knows? These days she doesn't come home until around eleven, after whatever she does once work ends… Why?"
"No reason."
I tried to steer away from it, but Mom spoke first.
"Don't you start scolding her for staying out late doing whatever she's doing. Cheer her on. Ji-soo's been devoted to this family, almost fiercely."
"…That's true."
"These days the hospital bills come out of the money you send, but before that she told us not to worry—said she'd work a second job herself if that's what it took to pay them. I can't tell you what a comfort she was…"
After that, the praise for my sister went on for a long while. Soo-ah, fiddling with her new iPhone between bites, put in her own word.
"Yeah. Unni slips me allowance sometimes, too. And when she gets home she does the housework so Mom can rest."
"……."
As the eldest son, the weight of it sat heavy.
All of that should have been me…
In the places I wasn't, my sister had been holding this house together.
When Ji-soo gets home, I need to talk to her.
She got home when it was nearly midnight.
"I'm home…"
The door opened on a worn-out voice. I kept my greeting as natural as I could.
"Hey. You're back?"
"What. Oppa's here? Why aren't you asleep."
She looked nothing like she had that afternoon. The huge bag was still on her back, but the rock-star clothes were gone, swapped for the neat outfit she wore to the office.
"What's that on your back? That's one enormous bag."
"Ah—this?"
She let out a short laugh, gave one shrug, and said it.
"I was in a band. An office-worker band."
"…That didn't look like that kind of level to me…"
"…Nothing you need to know. I'm going to sleep. You should too, Oppa."
She smiled small, as if it didn't matter, and slipped into her room like it was the most natural thing in the world. Seeing her like that, I couldn't quite line her up with the girl who had been squatting over a kimbap, looking pitiful.
The door shut behind her. I hesitated a while, then got up after all and knocked.
Knock, knock, knock.
"What? What's wrong?"
Her voice came from inside.
"Mind if I come in for a second?"
Instead she opened the door herself and stepped out.
"What? Why?"
"Just for a minute. Inside."
"Ah—wait!"
She darted back in and snapped the case shut on the bag she had been carrying, but I had already seen it plain.
A bass that's completely wrecked…
There was a bass in the bag. The neck must have cracked; it was stuck back together with glue and tape. The strings had gone faintly discolored, as if they hadn't been changed in a long time.
Old, and then older still. She had been keeping a bass on the edge of death alive with crude, off-the-books repairs, and playing it anyway.
"Uh… why? Did something happen?"
Maybe ashamed to have shown me the battered instrument, she hid the bass behind her back as she asked.
"Sit down. You've been doing music lately?"
"Huh? Well… I was. Until today?"
I had expected her to hide it. She owned it without a fight.
"Until today?"
"Yeah. Today was the last rehearsal."
She dropped into the chair beside her, then ran a hand along the old bass as she spoke.
"We've been a band for a good while, but I told them I'm done after today."
"…Why?"
She went still when I asked. Her face tightened for a moment, then eased, and she went on.
"Nothing else for it… Living expenses have been tight. If I'm going to save for Grandma's hospital bills, and get Mom that back surgery someday, there's no room for a band after work. I'll have to pick up a second job."
"A second job…"
"I need to buy Soo-ah an outfit, too… Oh! I'm not saying the allowance you send isn't enough. It's just that Grandma's surgery costs landed on us all of a sudden, and the slack is gone."
She said it as if there were no helping it, but I could see, clear as anything, how sad her eyes were. Then, as if that look had never been there, she came back as her usual bright self.
"It's fine! I should work more and make money while I'm still young. The music I want to play can wait until later."
"……."
I watched her say it, thinking hard, and then I spoke.
"Ji-soo."
"Yeah?"
When I said her name, she looked at me. The sharp edges that the black makeup and those clothes had drawn on her were gone. Even so, the Ji-soo in front of me now struck me harder than that fierce version had.
So I asked.
"The music. Are you doing it because you truly want to?"
She gave a small, resigned laugh.
"…Yeah. Honestly, I was really happy making music. Happy enough that I thought this was my road."
She stretched, and kept going.
"…But I guess it's time to put the dream away and go back to real life. There'll be another chance someday. Probably."
That settled it. I said it to her.
"Allowance. Do you happen to need a little more?"
"Huh? What, is that what you came in to talk about? Well… when I was doing the band, money really was short. But I'm quitting now, so…"
"Huh?"
Right there, I pulled out my phone and sent the money to Ji-soo.
Click.
I pressed the button.
A chime went off on my sister's phone.
And—