The Secret Garden
I was utterly sick of it now.
“I’m staying at Grandma’s house from now on.”
The rain fell with a chilling sound. Mom stood alone beneath her umbrella, staring at me as I stood in the downpour.
If your daughter is getting soaked, shouldn’t you at least share the umbrella?
The thought came reflexively, and I let out a bitter, silent laugh at how absurd it was. When had Mom ever held an umbrella over me?
“What are you planning to do all by yourself in that creepy old house that looks haunted?”
Her eyes behind the glasses were ice-cold.
A house that looks haunted?
For once, I was grateful my hands were empty. If I’d been holding my phone, I would have hurled it without hesitation.
“A house that looks haunted? Do you even know where you’re standing before you open your mouth, Mom?”
I screamed like a petulant child. I could feel passersby turning to stare, but neither Mom nor I would give them the satisfaction of looking away. We were both too stubborn.
I shouted loud enough for the whole street to hear.
“How can you say that at Grandma’s funeral? She hasn’t even been gone an hour and you’re already calling her house haunted! Are you really my mother? Are you even human?”
She was the kind of person who had never once brought an umbrella to school on a rainy day throughout my entire life.
Even so, I had told myself it was fine. She was busy. After all, our mom was the famous top lecturer Oh Su-hee.
She had never attended a single entrance ceremony—from elementary school all the way to university.
Back then I had thought even a top lecturer could have made time, but I had grown used to it. I could endure that much.
And more than anything, I had Grandma. Every time Mom abandoned me to polish her glittering career, Grandma had been there to hold me and comfort me.
She always used to say the same thing.
“Your mother’s heart is just too tender, that’s all. She’s still a good child. She loves you more than anything.”
I had believed her.
Mom loves me. She’s just busy. She doesn’t apologize because her heart is too weak—if she let me see her break down, she might never recover.
That was how I had explained it to myself all these years.
But after Grandma died, I watched Mom drift in and out of the three-day funeral, signing papers, paying bills, and vanishing again. That was when I finally understood.
Grandma had told a gentle lie.
Mom didn’t love me. She hadn’t loved Grandma either. Love was something Mom simply didn’t know how to feel.
She was the kind of person who could stand beneath her own umbrella while her despairing daughter screamed in the rain.
“I’d rather we didn’t contact each other for a while.”
“Why? Worried you won’t have money to live on if we cut ties forever?”
Mom’s sneer left me speechless.
I looked her straight in the eyes. Tears were pouring down my face, but she didn’t seem to notice.
Maybe it was the rain. Or maybe even on a bright sunny day, Mom would have worn that exact expression.
A face so poisonous that not even a needle could draw blood.
“Fine. Let’s just never see each other again.”
I didn’t even want to call her Mom anymore.
I turned my back and walked away with heavy steps. They had told me the bus from here would take me back to the funeral hall.
Good. Mom had come in her own car, so she would leave in her own car. I wouldn’t have to look at her again.
It was Grandma who had died, yet it felt like I was saying goodbye to Mom forever.
Getting to Grandma’s house was harder than I expected.
I was soaked to the skin. People muttered when I boarded the bus to the funeral hall, and the stares on the subway were anything but kind.
I knew acting on raw emotion always came at a steep price, yet sometimes I still couldn’t control myself.
Cursing myself the whole way, I finally reached Grandma’s house long after darkness had fallen.
Walking down an unlit country road in the rain was genuinely terrifying.
My mind kept conjuring images of serial killers. I kept glancing over my shoulder.
Grandma’s house was in the countryside of Gyeonggi Province. It was quiet, yet close to the subway station. She must have chosen the location thinking I would visit often.
Even so, the walk from the station still took a full thirty minutes. Still, at least it was reachable by subway.
The moment I stepped inside, I opened my backpack and checked the envelopes. Condolence money.
At the funeral I had been too dazed and too alone to count them.
Thankfully my friends had taken turns sitting with me for the full three days, greeting every visitor.
But I was the only chief mourner. I couldn’t leave the parlor even for a moment.
Mom had been the one to pay the funeral expenses. Before we left for the burial site I had tried to give her all the condolence money.
“Keep it. Or throw it away. Whatever you want,”
she had said, refusing to even touch the envelopes. Then she had climbed into her own car while I boarded the funeral bus.
From the driver’s seat, Manager Oppa had looked at me with pity in his eyes and offered a small nod.
I barely managed to bow back. I was so furious with Mom for everything that even greeting her acquaintances had been difficult.
“Where’s your mother?”
“She’s not here.”
“Oh dear… Teacher Oh at it again… You’re her daughter, right? Buy yourself something delicious with this, okay?”
None of Mom’s acquaintances seemed surprised she was absent. They simply looked at me with sympathy.
Many of them slipped me spending money. I was less interested in the cash than in how they knew my mother.
But the only person who could have answered that question had never shown up at the funeral.
I started counting the money, then stopped when the total began to frighten me. It had already passed fifty million won. Was I really allowed to keep all of it?
I turned on my phone to ask Mom, then immediately turned it off again. I didn’t want to contact her for this.
The fact that she had brought up money at the very end only made it worse.
In the end I left the phone dark and counted every bill in silence. That night I learned that money carries a stronger smell than I had ever realized.
The total came to 86.75 million won.
I deposited every last won into a bank in the city center.
The walk to the bank with that much cash was the most terrifying part. No one knew I was carrying 86.75 million won, yet my hands still shook.
After I finished the deposit, the wave of relief was so strong I couldn’t leave right away. I sat inside the bank for a long time, waiting for my trembling heart to calm.
When I finally stepped outside, an even bigger problem waited.
I hadn’t noticed on the way in because of my nerves, but the August sun was brutally hot. Grandma’s house was thirty minutes from the city.
I was going to die. A sigh escaped before I could stop it.
I bought an ice cream at the supermarket, stuck it in my mouth, and walked. Somehow I made it back to Grandma’s house.
My mouth was sweet from the ice cream and my skin was sticky with sweat.
I showered, changed into pajamas, and took a bottle of cold water from the fridge. As I drank, I glanced through the kitchen window at Grandma’s garden.
Was it a garden or a yard? It wasn’t large, but she had decorated it with exquisite, delicate charm.
No matter where she lived, Grandma had always made a garden. She used to enjoy tea time there with me when I was little.
When the sunlight was gentle, the two of us would sit together, sip our tea, and gaze at the flowers. In those moments the whole world felt as warm as that garden.
The garden was still exactly as she had left it.
Strangely, I still couldn’t feel that she was really gone.
It seemed as if the moment I stepped outside, Grandma would come out carrying a tray. She would smile and say it was cocoa, the kind our little dog loved.
I couldn’t believe those days would never return.
In the hot summer she used to make lemonade often. Sure enough, her fridge still held lemon syrup and sparkling water.
I mixed a glass, then headed for the back door. My personal slippers waited there in neat rows.
I slipped them on, stepped outside, and sat on the iron chair to wait for her. If I sat here long enough, surely she would come.
She didn’t.
“Grandma.”
I called out, certain she would answer.
There was only silence.
Tears fell. I knew it was pathetic, but I didn’t know what else to do.
This was the first time someone I loved had died. And that person had loved me more than anyone else in the world.
Perhaps the only one who ever had.
What was I supposed to do now?
My heart felt too heavy, so I wandered through the garden. When I reached Grandma’s vegetable patch I suddenly laughed.
The patch was enclosed by a wooden fence only fifteen centimeters high. The ridiculous part was the tiny door attached to one side.
Who would ever open a door in a fifteen-centimeter fence?
I had never opened it before. Only once.
“Why did you even put this here, Grandma?”
I had tried to open it, and Grandma had slapped the back of my hand.
“It’s there for decoration! If you touch it wrong, you’ll break it!”
She had refused to let me open it.
Our grandma had always cared about style more than she let on.
I crouched in front of the fence, remembering that day, then reached out and opened the little door. There was no one left to stop me.
I stepped through.
The moment both feet were inside the patch, my vision flashed white.
Suddenly the world flipped.
I stood in an endless plain of vivid green. Strong wind swept across it, bending the grass low. When I looked up, the sky stretched impossibly high, nothing like the one I knew.
Turning around, I saw a forest.
The trees grew so thick and dark that even in daylight the depths remained hidden.
Grandma’s house was nowhere to be seen.
Where was I?
My mind went blank.