The Seed of All Misfortune
They say the day I was born, a vicious rain was coming down so hard you couldn't see two steps ahead.
Right up until my birth, my parents had lived a reasonably comfortable life. Then came a sudden business bankruptcy, and before I had even turned two, we moved into a semi-basement flat, half of it sunk below street level.
Even with the wallpaper breathing out a musty odor, that semi-basement was the only home we had—and the following spring, it burned to the ground. The fire, they said, had no identifiable cause.
My father vanished without warning one dawn, and my mother strapped me—still too young to walk—onto her back and went out looking for work.
We settled into a back room of the shop where she'd found a job. The business had done brisk trade right up until my mother and I moved in; after that, the customers thinned out a little more with every passing day.
By the time my mother—driven from shop to shop as though evicted—had lived through the same experience three times, one shopkeeper who pitied her introduced her to a shaman she knew.
The moment the shaman laid eyes on my mother, she began to weep in sorrow, and then she shouted that the child had to be abandoned at once.
My mother said she could never forget the shaman's face, seized by terror. And I remember the flat, steady voice in which she told me that she had loved me too much—so much that all she could do was run outside, pretending not to have heard.
She loved me.
To be precise, she loved me for five years.
And so, in the winter I turned six, my mother left me at a park near an orphanage and disappeared.
The orphanage was, even by a six-year-old's judgment, a decent enough place. The Director took my grime-caked hands in hers without a flicker of hesitation, washed me clean, and dressed me in neatly pressed clothes.
Then, in less than a month, a couple appeared who wanted to adopt me. Through the mandated visitation period, they came to see me wearing bright faces every single time. The day I left the orphanage holding their hands, I received a new name—Lee Jaehee—and two brothers.
The following year, the household held a funeral for its firstborn son. Half a year after that, the day following the second son's admission to the hospital, I came back to the orphanage.
My name was Lee Yeonjae again.
"Have a great winter break, Yeonjae!"
"Yeah. You too, Haeun."
When I answered Park Haeun—red scarf wound up to her chin—with a smile, the faces of the girls standing behind her flushed scarlet. Before I knew it, Haeun herself was wearing a face the same color as her scarf; she whispered something to her friends and filed out of the classroom. "He's gorgeous... the absolute best!" and "That smile is insane, I'm actually dead" reached me, faint but crystal clear, and I desperately pretended I hadn't heard a word.
A great deal had changed over the past three months. The biggest change was the way the other kids treated me. The same children who used to avert their eyes for fear of meeting mine, or handled me like something unpleasant they'd stepped in, had turned unmistakably warmer.
Behind it all was Park Haeun, whose social circles seemed to span the entire school, telling my story for me at every opportunity. She described the incident—the one where I'd been hurt in her place—with such passion that her force and fervor brought to mind a presidential candidate on the campaign trail. Afterward, the girls began watching me with curiosity glinting in their eyes. A few of the boys who were close with Haeun even shuffled up, looking sheepish, to ask if I wanted to kick a ball around with them.
"Ah... it's nice of you to ask, but I'm not really any good at soccer."
"That's fine, you don't have to be good. Those guys are all crap anyway."
"What'd you say? That a self-introduction?"
Amid the light jeering, the boys laughing and bantering in front of me could not have looked more awkward.
Of course, the one who deserved the most credit for this transformation was someone else entirely: Angae.
Angae was still helping me keep misfortune at bay. According to Angae, human beings can't normally see it, much less speak with it. The black space, too, is an unknown realm that doesn't exist in the human world—to boil it down to the essentials, I can only meet Angae when I cross over in an unconscious state.
In practice, ever since the field trip, there hadn't been a single accident serious enough to draw blood. I suspect that as the kids saw the frequency of accidents objectively shrinking before their eyes, their wariness of me quietly faded along with it.
But there were still plenty of cases where misfortune was hard to dodge. Cases like Park Haeun's, where the misfortune factors passed to someone else through touch. Unlike the events that unfolded around me, the route of transfer couldn't be traced with any precision, which made them difficult to avoid. I did my best to handle things so that no accident happened at all, but when that proved impossible, the answer was simple: watch closely, step in, and make sure I was the one who got hurt.
Ever since the performance assessment a while back, my seatmate—who had been acting noticeably friendlier toward me—had come up to chat. During that assessment, we'd been grouped onto the same team, and I'd taken the impact of a toppled mountain of practice balls in their place; ever since, they sought me out first more often than not. When they asked if I wanted to come along to a PC room and I told them I had an appointment, they backed off, unable to hide their disappointment.
I have never once been to a PC room. I am curious...
But if we spent more time together and a misfortune factor passed to them, it would be a disaster. Above all, I really did have an appointment—with the Director. I wouldn't be late, but just in case, I quickened my pace.
"Director, you called for me— Oh. Teacher Lee Sihyun, you're here."
"Hello, Yeonjae. Did the closing ceremony go all right?"
"Yes, ma'am. Have you had lunch?"
"What time do you think it is? Of course I have."
I had gone straight to the Director's office upon arriving at the orphanage. I knocked and stepped inside, but the Director wasn't there—only Teacher Lee Sihyun. She seemed to be trying not to let it show, but an awkwardness bled through the way she couldn't quite meet my eyes. Her cheeks never lifted; only the corners of her mouth turned up. It was the classic smile people wear when they're uncomfortable, and the faint tremor of the muscles beneath it reached me so vividly that I found it a little hard to breathe.
The Director returned just then. "Oh, Yeonjae's here? I was a bit late getting the drinks ready. You like your tea warm, don't you, Yeonjae?"
"Yes. Thank you."
"And here's yours, Teacher Lee. I brought your milk warmed up."
"Director, I'm not a child anymore..."
The Director set a cup of warm tea in front of me and a mug of heated milk in front of Teacher Sihyun. When Sihyun grumbled about being handed a different cup than usual, the Director's gaze simply settled on her, soft and warm. I'd heard that when Teacher Sihyun was left at the orphanage gate as a newborn, the Director—then the youngest teacher on staff—had raised her with painstaking devotion. No wonder she could look at her like that. The mug of milk seemed to give off a cozy warmth, the kind that spoke of a deep and long attachment.
I glanced sidelong at the tea set out for my share, then looked up at the Director.
"Not having any, Yeonjae?"
"I'll drink it in a little while. Thank you for preparing it."
According to Angae, today I scald the back of my hand on hot water while drinking my tea. If I never attempt to drink it at all, it should be fine.
The Director wore the expression of someone with something weighing on her, so I had to reassure her all over again that I was fine. I expected her to come out with the reason she'd called me, but minutes drifted past and she raised nothing but light small talk. It had been years since I'd sat and talked this long with the Director and Teacher Sihyun, and the strangeness of it left me a little dazed.
"That's for the best. Thank you, Yeonjae."
"It's nothing."
A pause settled over the room.
"Yeonjae. The truth is... we're expecting a visitor next Monday."
"A visitor?"
Even at my question, the Director was slow to open her mouth. A visitor? Who on earth could make the Director hesitate like this? Unwelcome guesses took root and multiplied, each one darker than the last. That was when Teacher Sihyun, who had been watching our faces the whole time, cut in.
"There are people who've sponsored our orphanage for years—it's a company, you see. And among the company's employees, there are a few who are much older and much higher up than the rest."
"Executives, you mean?"
"...Yes! The executives said they wanted to come visit our orphanage. They've supported us for so long—apparently they'd like to come see the children."
It wasn't the bad news I'd been imagining. If anything, it belonged to the category of perfectly ordinary events. Sponsors visiting an orphanage was hardly unheard of—so why had she called me in here alone? The question untangled itself with the words the Director added, her face creased into a frown.
"They said that since it's been a while, they'll be bringing reporters with them."
Ah. That explained it. I nodded.
"I don't mind."
"Huh?"
"You mean they'll want to take photographs, don't you?"
"Oh... right. How did you know?"
"Yeonjae, you're such a sharp boy," Teacher Sihyun added, and I did my best to hide how deflated I felt. I wasn't so young that I needed to hear things like that. Not that I was about to start spouting adolescent nonsense about being all grown up—it was simply embarrassing. Children who grow up in an orphanage develop a certain perceptiveness by a certain age, and with it, the ability to act the part. You can't help noticing, either, that keeping a place like this running costs far more money than anyone would guess.
"I'm fine with it, Director. But are you sure it should be me?"
"Hm? What do you mean?"
"There are plenty of other kids besides me. Sanghoon, for one—he's lively and adorable... um, and he doesn't exactly have a history of sudden accidents."
Silence fell in an instant.
"...Oh, come on—you're lively and incredibly cute yourself! What child could possibly be cuter than you?" Unable to endure the silence a second longer, Teacher Sihyun forced out the brightest voice she could muster.
I hadn't meant to leave her at a loss for words. Feeling sorry, I laughed along with her. And so, somewhere between the silence and the laughter, the star of next week's photo shoot was decided.
And the following Monday, every child in the orphanage stood lined up across the playground.
I wore the cleanest, most presentable things I owned: a white shirt and beige trousers. I'd gone back and forth over whether a sweatshirt might make me look more like a bright, easygoing kid, but it seemed wrong for the occasion, and in the end the shirt won out.
"Whoa. You look different. For a second there I didn't think it was you."
When Choi Sanghoon, standing beside me, tossed out his little joke, I broke into a bright smile, calling up the sentence I'd been turning over in my head all morning.
"Thanks!"
"...?"
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"No, it's just... never mind. Forget it. Don't worry about it."
I gave Sanghoon a puzzled look at his oddly bewildered expression, but at the teacher's call of "Everyone, get ready!" I turned my head forward again.
A luxury sedan glided onto the playground, silent and graceful. From the van that had followed it in, people who looked like staff climbed down. Even then the sedan sat with its engine off, without so much as a tremor. Only after the restless stir among the children had settled did the sedan's door open at last. As if deliberately drawing out the suspense, a foot emerged slowly from within—and even from a distance, the fabric sheathing that ankle was cut with unmistakable precision. Its owner had a face far younger than you'd expect from a senior executive of a company.
Watching him receive the Director's respectful greeting, I took a deep breath and stepped forward.
"Sir, you said you'd like to meet one of our children, didn't you? This is the friend who'll be showing you around today."
"Ah, yes. Nice to meet you. What's your name?"
Beside the Director as she introduced me, I smiled as brightly as I could manage, reciting once more the sentence I had been rehearsing so diligently.
I am Park Haeun. I am bright. I am bold. I am happy.
Eyebrows relaxed just enough to soften and droop; eyes clear and bright; cheekbones lifting, right down to the upper lip that quivered naturally. Mirroring, muscle for muscle, the way Park Haeun's face moved when she smiled, I smiled my brightest.
"Hello! My name is Lee Yeonjae!"