Old Resentments
My room is still exactly as it was.
On top of that, it had clearly been cleaned on a regular basis, ready for a son who might return home at any moment. The rooms of his two younger siblings, Serena and Christopher, were no different.
They really didn't have to go to all this trouble.
Despite the thought, a smile spread deep across his face. Having somewhere to return to had always been a quiet comfort to him. He lay down on the bed for a moment and stared blankly at the ceiling.
When Yoon Jay was around fifteen, his father, Henry Jenkins, had cautiously called him aside to say that there was someone he wanted to marry — and asked for his blessing, apologizing as he did.
He'd been keeping the relationship a secret, he explained, because he knew how fragile Jay's state of mind was at the time.
"Could I meet her?"
"Of course."
Yoon Jay wasn't hurt in the slightest — he was genuinely glad. His father, who had cherished him so dearly, was gaining another source of happiness. Besides, if his father had decided she was worth marrying, then she had to be a wonderful person. He was certain of it.
And his prediction proved right. Three years passed between gaining his new family and his enlistment — long if you called it long, short if you called it short — but his parents did their absolute best for him, a boy who shared none of their blood.
Honestly, if he had to pick the fondest memory of his life, he would choose that period without hesitation.
"Hello. We just moved in next door yesterday, so I thought I'd stop by and say hi."
"Oh, how kind of you. This is our eldest son."
"Hello. And is that your daughter behind you?"
"Yes. That's Emily. Say hello, sweetheart."
"...Why is that person the only one who's different?"
"Emily!"
Even though Henry Jenkins had poured so much care into him, the shadows of his Yoon Jae-hee days still lingered back then.
The guilt that his family had fallen apart because of him. His biological mother, who had come to America seemingly without reason and died there. The way he looked so unlike the rest of his family, obvious to anyone who saw them together. Feeling like his place in the household was floating loose and unanchored, he filled out an enlistment application.
I just kept running away, didn't I.
He remembered his younger siblings crying and wailing, begging him not to go, and his heart grew heavy for no good reason.
Seeking a change of mood, he turned on his phone. His fellow firefighters had left message after message, lamenting why he had to leave so soon, and he replied to each one in turn.
Then he visited the online community Yoon Do-jun had told him about, and found his own name being tossed back and forth at that very moment.
He'd heard that awards season always brought this kind of chatter, but there was certainly more of it than he'd expected.
Though it's a bit ambiguous for me, honestly.
Back in his Yoon Jae-hee days, he hadn't just won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival — he'd swept a whole series of international festivals.
With that kind of worldwide recognition, the domestic award committees, who had initially only intended to hand him a modest newcomer's trophy, grew self-conscious and ended up giving him major awards instead. But Director Lee Young-chang had accepted them on his behalf and delivered the trophies to him later, so he'd never gotten a precise accounting of which awards he'd won where.
Can they even call me a newcomer?
He'd heard that some ceremonies split their prizes between the television and film divisions... He'd have to ask Han Jin-woo about that later.
He drifted off for a brief nap, then woke to a commotion coming from downstairs. Looking outside, he saw that his father had brought his younger siblings over. Yoon Jay headed straight down.
"Hyung!"
"Hey, it's been a while. How's school?"
"I'm dying from all the coursework."
Christopher Jenkins, his younger brother by nine years, had been in and out of hospitals so often as a child that his early years were a blur of illness. Perhaps because of that, once he was finally discharged he threw himself into his studies and made it into medical school.
"It's so good to see you all again after so long! Honey! Is the meat done yet?"
"Not yet!"
"I'll help."
"Sit down."
"I want to, really."
Amid the bustle of a warm family meal coming together, Yoon Jay stepped out onto the terrace and stood across from his father.
"What brings you out here?"
"It's been a while since we grilled together, that's all."
Henry Jenkins tried to hide his smile behind a show of gruff dignity, but there was no fooling Yoon Jay's eyes. Being with his children again after so long clearly put him in high spirits.
"You know, I noticed something earlier. Your car's engine sounds off."
"I thought so too. Would you take a look at it with me later?"
"Gladly."
Henry clapped Jay heartily on the back. The once-small, once-fragile boy had grown into such a fine young man — nothing made him prouder.
"Jay, Chris. When you have a moment, could you two fix the roof? Your father threw his back out, you see."
"Honey, why would you go and say that?"
"Of course we will."
After a short round of meal prep, the whole family gathered around a single table, laughing and trading updates on their lives.
"Oh, right! Hyung, there's something I've been dying to ask you."
"What is it?"
"Well, I was watching N-flix, and — hold on a sec."
Chris pulled up a screenshot he'd saved earlier. Thanks to one massively successful title, Korean dramas were enjoying a worldwide boom.
"This is you, isn't it?"
What Chris showed him was the thumbnail for Along Along — a poster of Prince Mu-hwi with his sword drawn. It had been sitting in his most-watched ranking of Korean dramas lately.
"Jay, is that you?"
"Seriously, is that really you, hyung?"
"Oh my."
Chris pulled up MyTube and played a scene from Along Along. Watching Yoon Jay sweep through the sword-fighting choreography on screen, the whole family turned to stare at him in astonishment.
"Huh..."
"I was going to bring this up first, actually. There's a student at my school who knows about you."
"How would anyone know me? I've barely been in the media for any time at all."
"K-pop is huge right now, remember?"
Serena, who had always taken a keen interest in Korea as "her brother's country," had been patiently listening to her classmates chatter about K-pop — and when one of them showed her a video of their favorite idol, there he was, the real older brother. It was apparently a clip from his appearance on Manager's Daily Life.
"So... something like that happened, did it?"
His parents were even more stunned. All they'd been told was that their son had met his half-siblings in Korea and started something new. And suddenly he was an actor?
"I did tell you I'd started a new job. Well — this is it."
"If Serena and Chris hadn't caught it, you probably would've just let it slide again, huh."
"No, I was planning to tell you two as well."
Maria's expression turned sour the moment she looked at Yoon Jay on the screen. She shot to her feet and cried out:
"When exactly were you planning to tell us?!"
"Mom?"
"When were you ever going to mention it first?"
"..."
"Jay, I am your mother! Maybe you don't think of me that way, but—"
Mid-outburst, Maria caught herself, realizing she was ruining a perfectly happy occasion, and swallowed hard.
"I'm... I'm sorry."
"Mom."
She surely had her reasons for being angry. Yoon Jay rose quickly and gently caught the wrist of his mother, who was about to flee the room.
"Mom. I'd like to hear why you felt that way."
Maria turned away, her eyes gone so red they looked ready to spill over at any moment.
"Jay. You were... you were such a fine boy."
The day she met Yoon Jay was still vivid in her memory.
"What if he hates me?"
"He's a good boy. I'm sure you'll like him the moment you meet."
If Henry had raised him, she could trust it — but back then, she believed herself to be a woman with baggage.
A divorcée who had barely escaped her husband's violence, dragging two children behind her — one of them sickly, no less. Would that boy really be able to think of her as family?
"Hello. Is it all right if I call you Mom?"
There had never been a reason to resent him, and he was the kind of child who simply couldn't be resented. If anything, it was the way he tiptoed around her, careful not to make his new stepmother uncomfortable, that moved her.
"You called me Mom right away, didn't you — as if you weren't the least bit put off by a stranger who'd suddenly appeared in your life."
"That was..."
He had thought it only natural. His father was happy, and he was glad to have a new mother and younger siblings. Maria had never once treated him differently from her own children — if anything, there were times she looked after him even more carefully than them.
But Maria shook her head and told him to just hear her out first.
"That's exactly what the problem was — we got too comfortable. You were, you were so self-possessed, and we were so busy just getting by that we stopped paying attention. That's what I keep wondering — was that it?"
"..."
"You drove Serena to school without being asked. Whenever anything happened at the hospital, you were the first one there, playing Chris's guardian. Didn't you?"
They'd been too busy making ends meet to tell him to stop, she said, and that had always weighed on her. Yoon Jay, at that age, had seemed less like a boy and more like a fully grown adult — and she suspected they had, without meaning to, simply leaned on that.
"Um..."
Yoon Jay opened his mouth to respond, then pressed his lips shut. Looking after his younger siblings in return for the love his parents gave him was hardly a burden — but honestly, there was a part of it that traced back to his childhood trauma.
I've already broken one family. If I do all this, will it keep this happy home from falling apart too? That was what he had thought.
"Parents don't need to know everything about their children. But you — you were always like that! You hardly ever talked about yourself, and then one day you announced you were enlisting, without so much as a proper discussion with us... That's... that's what made me angry."
"..."
"Not angry at you. At myself!"
It had happened so suddenly that he couldn't even stop her. She wanted to do it, so what could he say? He wasn't her real son, after all.
Maria admitted that even now, whenever anyone in uniform came anywhere near the house, her heart would pound with anxiety.
What if bad news about her son arrived before she'd managed to give him enough love?
"Every time you act like that, all I can think about is everything I never gave you..."
"Honey."
Because those things kept coming back to her, she had never once thrown obstacles in Jay's path — only cheered him on and supported whatever he chose to do. And yet, she said, some part of her had always wished he would trust her enough to lean on her.
The time they'd spent together was short, but perhaps that was simply what parents could do — she had sensed, at least faintly, the mask Yoon Jay wore. What was he hiding, that he kept everyone at arm's length? And because she suspected the reason lay with her, it didn't sit well with her at all.
"Ah..."
Yoon Jay stared blankly at his mother, now wrapped in his father's arms. Whatever dissonance his mother had been carrying, his father and siblings must have felt it too.
"You were hurt because you felt I was keeping you at a distance."
"No, that was my fault."
"No, it wasn't. It's just... it's probably because of my childhood."
No more running. No more looking away. Just as his father had helped him soften his terror of cameras, it was time to face his conflicts head-on and work through them.
"By the way — do you like movies?"
"Good heavens. That boy is you?"
"Yes."
The Child was an old film by now, and like most older films, it was available on the major streaming platforms. The family sat together in the living room and watched Yoon Jay's screen debut.
"Did you know about this?"
"I... didn't."
Henry felt a flicker of resentment toward Jay's late biological mother.
All he'd ever been told was that the boy had done a bit of acting in Korea, gotten hurt, and come away with a fear of cameras. Never once had it been mentioned that he'd starred in a film like this.
"Wow... there's so much when I search his name."
"Youngest Best Actor winner in Cannes history?!"
And he'd won a pile of awards on top of that? One of the world's three great film festivals? Henry was floored. Still — shouldn't I have known? Why is he only telling us this now?
"You kept all this hidden all this time."
"There were reasons."
"Then let's hear those reasons now."
Pouring out his heart wasn't something he was used to. He hesitated a little — and then, in a level voice, told them the story of his childhood.
How he'd appeared in a remarkable film, and how it had brought unwanted eyes down on him, leaving a scar that never faded. How he'd even wondered, at times, whether his birth parents' divorce had somehow been his fault.
"Son, that was never your fault."
"I know."
And so, he explained, when his new mother and siblings came into his life, he had walked on eggshells so as not to break this family the way he believed he'd broken the last one. He'd been too happy to risk losing it — and all of that had simply looked, from the outside, like distance.
By the time he had told them everything, the sun was going down.
"I only hid it because I didn't want you to worry. There was no other reason."
"...I see."
"Thank you for telling us, son."
Having heard the whole story, Henry's sense of betrayal over his son's secrets had long since melted away. Maria quietly dabbed away her tears.
"Whatever you do, always remember — you are our son."
"And I never forget that you two are my parents."
After a long, tight embrace with his parents, he turned to look at his two younger siblings, sprawled across the sofa.
"And what about you two? Anything you want to say?"
"Mom's just about due for menopause, that's all."
"That's it?"
Serena and Chris answered with practiced nonchalance.
"Honestly? I was a little resentful. It stung when you suddenly went off to the army."
"Same here. I figured even if we couldn't understand it, it would've been nice if you'd just told us something — anything..."
There had been a twinge of hurt, true. But Yoon Jay had given them so much, as an older brother in every sense that mattered, that all they could do was smile.
He'd told them now, and that was enough.
"Besides, you being my brother doesn't change one bit."
"Right. Me neither."
At his siblings' answers, Yoon Jay broke into a bright, unguarded smile.
And so, with the old grudges within the family laid to rest, they grew closer than ever and enjoyed the rest of his leave together. The days of his remaining vacation slipped past far too quickly.
"All right! Hop in! I'll get you to the airport safe and sound!"
Having said his goodbyes to the family, he stepped outside to find — sure enough — Manager Gong already waiting there for him. He really did come. Yoon Jay let out a wry little laugh.