Chapter 6: She Was (3)
Sixth chapter.
I was four years old.
If you asked what had happened over that one year, the answer was simple: a great deal had happened.
Leo, my fourth older brother, had died.
The little boy who had been only one year older than my own body was gone.
The cause was food poisoning.
He had eaten sprouted potatoes, and after days of crying that his stomach hurt, he had finally died.
For us, living in a ramshackle shack, the summer monsoon rains were a curse.
The summer sky had nothing to do but pour out endless rain, and in the brief chill that followed, an unwelcome guest had come to take one of my siblings away.
Maybe the trouble was that the sacks of potatoes we had set on the damp floorboards had been given the perfect conditions to sprout.
The potatoes we had been rationing had sprouted before we knew it, and even though we understood they could be dangerous, we still had to eat them.
We cut away the sprouts and boiled them anyway.
Someone might have asked why we would eat sprouted potatoes at all, but only those who had everything could afford to say that.
If all you wanted was not to starve, then even something that might kill you had to be swallowed in a hurry.
That was why he died.
That was all there was to it.
After the fourth child died, Mother held back her tears and went back out to the fields as if nothing had happened.
If she stayed home, drowning in grief, the rain would ruin the rice paddies and fields, and in the end the house would only fill with more corpses.
To Mother, the lives of her children who were still breathing mattered more than the sorrow of the one who had already gone.
But the children—my siblings—clung to the body of the dead fourth child and howled in grief.
“Leo... sniff. Leo, hyung is sorry... sob, hic...”
Luca, the eldest, seemed to feel guilty as he quietly cried. He couldn’t even follow Mother out to the fields, and instead broke down like that.
“D-don’t lie...! Leo, stop playing around and get up already... Why are you keeping your eyes closed, sniff...”
The second child trembled, unlike himself, and stroked the dead fourth child’s face. The shocked expression on the usually carefree, bright boy was painful to see.
“Hic...! Leo, get up... Open your eyes, sniff, waaah... I’m sorry, I’m sorry, sniff...”
Of them all, Sophia grieved the most.
It showed in the way she clung tightly to the body and wailed.
She had loved her little brother, who was only one year younger than her, so perhaps it was only natural—but the sight of her was so raw it made everyone else’s hearts ache even more.
Yes.
Sophia looked just like me.
Not that there had been the smell of blood, but I had once held you as you died and cried out in despair.
My own self seemed to overlap with hers.
When someone precious died, it really was that heartbreaking.
I, too, let a single tear fall in silence.
I had thought of him as if he were almost a stranger, and yet the fact that the child I had lived with for years was gone made tears spill from my eyes.
That evening, everyone knew why the fourth child had died.
Even so, we ate potatoes quietly.
The long, long monsoon finally came to an end before we knew it.
The rain that had poured down for days disappeared, leaving behind only the corpse of a small child, as though nothing at all had happened.
Mother and my siblings cried over the death again and again, but in the end they stood back up and focused on what they had to do.
They had no choice.
The death of one child was everyone’s sorrow, but it was not sorrow enough to take everyone’s life with it.
You could collapse under grief, but it was still less painful than collapsing from hunger.
We knew the cruelty of winter.
We knew the bitterness of porridge boiled from tree bark because there was nothing else to eat, and we knew the harsh taste of digging up some nameless root from frozen earth.
And we knew that if each of us failed to do our part, that was the future waiting for us.
Still, this winter would be a little easier.
With even the second child now gone to help with the work, Sophia called out to me in the empty house.
“Aria, could you bring me three potatoes... no, just two?”
Sadly, there was one fewer mouth to feed.
********
In summer, green leaves fluttered through the mountain valley, and all sorts of flowers bloomed beneath them.
Even though the heat of midsummer had arrived, and people were sagging under it, trees, grass, and flowers only seemed to welcome it by dressing themselves in brighter colors.
They were a beauty that stood firm even against the pounding rain.
Once the monsoon ended, that scenery took on even more green under the sunlight, and Sophia and I climbed the valley while looking around us.
“Aria, you know which flowers or wild greens are edible, right?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then let’s split up a little and look. But don’t go too far, okay?”
“Don’t worry.”
But there was no time to savor the scenery.
Unlike the days when I had climbed the mountain with you, now it was only to solve the problem of hunger.
That was a story of the past now.
You and I used to climb the mountain before the summer monsoon began, or after it ended, just to see the wild summer flowers blooming there.
We laughed together when we climbed the verdant mountain and saw tiny flowers blooming by the path, saying even the smallest blossoms were beautiful.
When we drank cool water in the shade made by the leaves and ate the gimbap we had wrapped up for a snack, I used to feel as though there was nothing in the world to envy.
And when we reached the summit and looked out over the riot of colors blooming far in the distance, the sunlight shining behind you was dazzling whenever our eyes met.
Now that I thought about it, they had been trivial things, but perhaps they had been happy because I had been with you.
I had been amazed that something so small could make me happy, and I had once believed that as long as you were by my side, I could be happy for an entire lifetime.
Half of my life belonged to you.
That was what I had thought.
And those thoughts were scattered by Sophia’s voice.
That voice, carrying a little excitement and joy, rolled into my ear.
“A-Aria! There are so many flowers here! Come quickly!”
“...Okay, I’m coming.”
I walked toward where she was calling from, and Sophia was smiling brightly among the blooming flowers.
“There are so many flowers here! Let’s pick a lot of these! If we bring back just these flowers, we’ll be able to eat our fill tonight!”
“...”
The mouth that had cried the saddest when the fourth child died was now curved in a smile.
Even in her shabby clothes, Sophia turning in circles in the flower field was lovely to behold.
Perhaps it was because she had finally been able to smile again.
I thought it was a relief.
Only last week, she had been hiding to wipe away her tears in secret.
She had been the child who muttered the fourth child’s name even in her sleep on late nights.
So I must have thought Sophia would break.
Just as I had nearly done after losing you, I thought she, too, would collapse beneath the grief of never being able to see someone precious again.
And yet, she was stronger than I had imagined.
Unlike me, who was now holding on through something close to madness.
Thinking that, I went to her side, and together we picked out flowers that looked clean enough to eat and put them into the basket.
After that, we wandered through the mountain for quite a long time.
We searched here and there, digging up flowers and wild greens.
Whenever we grew tired, we hid in the shade of the trees and waved our palms briskly to cool ourselves down.
There was no water to drink, let alone a bottle to carry it in, so there was nothing to do but fan ourselves and endure the heat.
And so, until the sun set and dusk settled over the mountain, we kept gathering flowers and wild greens.
We plucked the different edible plants that could only be seen in summer and filled the basket with them, and when Sophia dug up a plump dandelion, she smiled as if she were truly happy.
“Aria, let’s head back now. If we stay any longer, it’ll get dark and we’ll lose our way.”
“...All right, let’s do that.”
Sophia and I set off toward the village.
How long had we been walking?
I heard Sophia, who had been walking ahead of me, mutter under her breath.
“Waaah... it’s really pretty...”
At her voice, I lifted my head from the ground.
Everything we had seen so far had been flowers, so I wondered what she thought was so beautiful that she had stopped.
And then, in my field of view—
“Ah...”
I saw hibiscus in full bloom, bright enough to deserve such a dramatic reaction.
“Aria! Maybe these flowers are edible too! Let’s pick a few!”
Sophia dashed off between the flower beds in high spirits, and I stared at the blossoms from a distance, my whole body jolting.
The flower I loved most.
The bouquet you always gave me.
The beautiful flower that dyed summer red.
Red like your blood.
Forcing those thoughts away, I steadied my breathing.
I closed my eyes to calm my wildly racing heart, but the familiar scent of hibiscus pierced my nose.
The feeling that had twisted when I looked at the sunset, the emotions that had only barely settled, kept spilling back out through the familiar scenery and scent.
So I clenched my teeth and followed Sophia, breaking off the hibiscus blossoms.
I put the flowers into the basket we had brought.
I packed them in as full as I could, pressing them down tight.
Beside Sophia, who was smiling at the thought of being able to eat a whole pile of flowers, I silently shed tears as I picked them.
It was a fragrant scent.
It was a beautiful scene I would have loved.
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