Parents
Min Taegi and his wife had first met in college. Back then, Min Taegi had been a student activist. A senior from his department dragged him down to a basement room, promising there was an interesting book waiting there, and somewhere between its dubious premises and its sheer pull, he had radicalized himself without ever noticing it happening. From his second semester he was out marching in demonstrations, smashing bricks and singing protest songs.
He met Kim Jeongran, now his wife, in the same circle. One thing led to another, they started dating, and by the time graduation rolled around she was pregnant, so the marriage followed. Cornered by practical concerns, he sat the civil service exam, and that was that.
"Still, we made a decent life for ourselves."
Three children, all healthy and good-looking. The two girls in particular were brilliant enough to be shown off anywhere without a flicker of embarrassment. The eldest, Min Dain, had gone to Yonsei, then on to the same university's law school, and was now an attorney. The youngest, Min Dajeong, was a professional golfer.
Their second child, Seojun, was comparatively ordinary... He had never lived up to expectations, but at least he had never gone off the rails anywhere or made a nuisance of himself at the family's expense. Min Taegi had hoped the boy would simply look after himself, wherever he ended up. Honestly speaking, he had never wished even that with any real sincerity. He himself had been far too busy, what with office work on one hand and minding the youngest on the other.
"And yet, he's mayor now."
More than two hours had passed since the exit polls were announced, and Min Taegi still couldn't make it feel real. He just stared blankly at the vote-counting broadcast. Maesan City kept coming up, over and over. It wasn't his imagination. Maesan was only one of more than two hundred basic local governments in the country, but the massive incident the day before had drawn attention far beyond its weight class.
Not just in Gyeonggi — the birth of the nation's youngest municipal head was all but certain. He was on track to win with the highest vote share in the entire capital region. Youngest ever, and the highest vote share? The titles were dazzling. And Min Taegi could not believe that the man holding them was his son. The world was hardly short of remarkable people.
"Luck... yeah. Anyone can see it was luck."
The words had slipped out on their own. No one was around, but Min Taegi cleared his throat anyway. What would change if he wrote it off as luck? A victory won because his rival had done him the favor of dying did not make the certificate of election worth any less. Whatever the ingredients of the win, mayor was mayor. And yet Min Taegi could not bring himself to accept it gladly. He couldn't have said precisely why. It wasn't as if the declared winner would change just because a man tucked away in his back room refused to acknowledge it.
"Seojun becoming mayor — the rank and the man don't match."
Mayorships were not for just anyone. In truth, the pedigree was almost predetermined. Roughly half had come up through local councils. Three in ten were administrative-exam hires. The rest were professionals or civic-organization backgrounds. Unlike a National Assembly seat, which could be snatched with enough name recognition and image polish, a chief executive needed a certain measure of hard-won experience — because once elected, you had to lead an organization of several hundred civil servants at the bare minimum.
"And that boy has none of it. The People's Choice Party made the wrong call from the very start, that's all."
Min Taegi knew perfectly well that muttering to himself was strange. Fortunately or unfortunately, he wasn't the only one acting strange tonight. His wife was sitting in the living room, staring into space. Dain, the eldest, and Dajeong, the youngest, both seemed busy with their own lives. She wanted to reach out and ask whether the girls were all right, but she couldn't. Asking "Your brother just got elected — how do you feel?" was a little awkward in its own right. It also nagged at her that they had declared, loud and clear, that Seojun could never possibly win.
"Pyeon Seongyeop, that man... why on earth didn't he go to the hospital?"
While Min Taegi was cursing the late Pyeon Seongyeop with hollow bitterness, the vote-count broadcast called Min Seojun's name again.
Judging by the way they talked, the broadcasters were a rotten lot too. Youngest ever. Overwhelming victory. Instead of parading those words around, shouldn't they be raising concerns — that a candidate thrown together as hastily as Min Seojun, a candidate constitutionally incapable of looking after city governance, was about to be elected? If the broadcasters buried themselves in nothing but results, who exactly was going to look after the citizens' lives? The lives of 250,000 Maesan citizens mattered enormously.
'Those broadcaster bastards are all the same!'
Min Taegi switched off the television in a fit of irritation. In his eyes the situation was plainly alarming, yet everyone seemed determined to look away. And the impatience kept gnawing at him: that the son he had written off as the least of his children — the one he had denied support to in the name of rational judgment — had climbed to success on nothing but luck. That he had landed a far better seat than the daughters they had raised with desperate, backbreaking effort. He could not bring himself to accept it.
"If I'd known Seojun would turn out like this, I'd probably have..."
Min Taegi clamped his mouth shut before the ugly words could get out. There was no one to curse him for it. It was, after all, nothing more than the meaningless muttering of a civil servant with retirement staring him in the face.
At the same hour, Kim Jeongran sat alone on the living room sofa. The election broadcast was on, but she wasn't really watching it. Whenever her son's face appeared, something creaked, and she spared the screen a brief glance — that was about the extent of it.
Min Seojun. The son she had kept at a polite distance for the better part of a lifetime. And yet he was a child she had carried and birthed, a son she had raised with such... devotion, and she could not fathom why watching him on the screen felt so unbearable.
She needed someone to talk to. With her husband shut up in his room, muttering to himself, she had texted her eldest daughter.
Her daughter had a point. She and Seojun had never been close the way ordinary parents and children were. She couldn't even remember the last time she had cooked him a proper meal at home. But they were still family. At the very least, they were not strangers.
It wasn't as if she didn't understand why Seojun was sulking. But carrying that ancient grievance in his chest all these years — really, now. Besides, her son was not the only one who had been hurt. When Seojun had abruptly aired their painful family history at the televised debate, she had been floored. Of course he had done it for the campaign, but everything had ended well now, so wasn't it time to scrape the residue out?
"A grown son ought to know the pleasure of being sweet to his parents first, once in a while."
In Kim Jeongran's view, that was not too much to ask of a fully grown son. Don't stay chained to the past; everything had worked out, so couldn't he be a little generous about it... At the very least, there had been no need to block their calls. If Seojun had shown even a scrap of courtesy, her husband would not be holed up sulking the way he was now, and the youngest, with a major tournament ahead of her, could devote herself to golf without dark thoughts creeping in. It wasn't simply a matter of taking care of the family — it would have been good for the son, too. Family was, after all, a bond that could not be cut. And Seojun was a politician now, a man who had to mind how things looked to others.
'He's my own child, but he really is a cold one.'
Kim Jeongran was in the middle of another deep sigh when her husband Min Taegi, who had been buried in his room, came quietly walking out. His face was as dark as she'd expected. She watched him with a knotted heart and offered him the seat beside her.
"Wasn't that the right call at the time?"
Her husband came out with something absurd, wearing the expression of a fool.
"You know it as well as I do. When Dain was in her second year of elementary school, she brought home a prize from that Sungkyunkwan University competition. Did Seojun ever manage anything like that? Honestly, no. He couldn't match half of what his own sister did. We pushed the children who showed promise a little ahead of the rest — and back then, that was the right judgment."
Kim Jeongran said nothing. What was she supposed to say to a man dredging up elementary school now, of all times?
Min Taegi stood stiffly for a moment, then lowered himself into the seat beside her. The living room was dark, the lights still off. Husband and wife stared at the television, shoulder to shoulder.
"Dain's father, I think Seojun will come around sooner or later. When he does, apologize — even if it's just for form."
"Mm."
Seen from any angle, it was a grotesque tableau. Their son, Min Seojun, was one of the central figures of this local election. By all rights the two of them should have been shrieking with happiness beneath a downpour of congratulations — returning the relatives' envy-tinged compliments with practiced grace, doing a little bragging about their child in front of school and workplace acquaintances. Instead, there was not a single soul in the world to whom the couple could boast of their son's success.
"Did you try calling Seojun?"
"He still hasn't unblocked me. It rings once or twice, then goes straight to voicemail."
"..."
"He must just be busy."
Then midnight arrived. In most districts the count had climbed past forty percent. With so many contested races, plenty of outcomes had yet to take shape.
The winner's mark appeared beside Min Seojun's face at an unusually early hour. Naturally, the fastest call in the capital region. Not the fastest in the nation — a county mayor down in Jeolla had won on 83 percent of the vote. Still, Maesan was such a high-profile district that a brief commentary followed. The buzz around the liver-transplant scar Mayor-elect Min Seojun had revealed at the televised debate, his sincerity where his family was concerned, the magnanimous course he had steered in flagging and warning about his rival Pyeon Seongyeop's failing health, the meticulous data-driven pledges and the restrained campaign he had run from start to finish... The verdicts were, on the whole, favorable.
"Dain's father. Seojun won."
"Yeah."
"This is a good thing, isn't it?"
"..."
Their son was mayor. This was the moment to rejoice, and neither of them could manage a smile.
"It is a good thing... isn't it?"
All they could do was stare blankly through the screen at Min Seojun, garland around his neck, giving his victory interview. That was the full extent of what they were capable of.