Mother
Yoon Sujin
Yeon-a and Jiwoo excitedly packed my clothes and went looking for a staff member to pay.
Eventually we found one and brought the clothes to the register.
—Beep, beep, beep, beep.
The prices that kept popping up were alarming.
Every single item scanned was well over a hundred thousand won.
I couldn’t understand how scraps of fabric could possibly cost that much.
“Y-Yeon-a… it’s too expensive… You really don’t have to buy them for me.”
“Our Suhyun needs to look pretty so she can charm some boys.”
“Uuu… I don’t even have anyone I like.”
I mumbled the words and awkwardly lowered my head. From beside me, Jiwoo whispered that she hoped I would never get a boyfriend for the rest of my life.
“Our sister is far too precious… I feel like something terrible would happen if we ever broke up.”
“…R-Really?”
“Well, if someone truly special comes along, I guess it can’t be helped.”
Jiwoo gently patted my head as she spoke. I barely managed to keep my eyes from closing at her touch and forced myself to look straight ahead at the register where Yeon-a was paying.
The total came to 650,000 won.
—Sweater (Orange): 150,000 won
—Mini Skirt (Black): 100,000 won
—Short-sleeve Shirt (White): 50,000 won
—Long Skirt (Khaki): 150,000 won
—Cardigan (Black): 200,000 won
“Hic…!”
It was a huge amount. Worried that Yeon-a might feel uncomfortable, I glanced at her face, but she was smiling brightly as she held out her card.
Then she handed me the clothes, now neatly packed inside a gift box.
“Ta-da. Since it’s a present, I had them put it in a box.”
“…Yeon-a, the price is really high. Are you sure this is okay?”
My hands trembled as I accepted the white gift box. It felt heavy in my palms. Part of it was my lack of strength, but I also knew exactly how much weight this gift carried.
650,000 won.
“S-Six hundred and fifty thousand won… how many lives is that…?”
“Stop measuring things in lives…!”
“Unnie…!”
Yeon-a and Jiwoo both tried to stop me. Not knowing how else to express my gratitude, I simply pulled them both into a tight hug and whispered, “Thank you.”
“…Thank you for being so good to me, you two.”
Today was, without a doubt, the best day of my life. Thinking that, I hugged them even tighter. The staff members were watching us with warm smiles when something caught my eye behind a distant pillar—a distinctive hair color.
Black and red, two-toned.
It wasn’t a common shade. Aside from myself, the only person I knew who had hair like that was—
“…M-Mom…?”
Mother.
Just hearing the name made my stomach churn. It was the name of someone who was nothing but pretense.
* * *
While Suhyun and the girls were happily shopping for clothes, a woman in the corner froze in place.
“…S-Suhyun…?”
She was in her forties now. Yet there, laughing brightly, was the daughter she had abandoned and fled from when she herself was only in her twenties.
Her name was Yoon Sujin—the mother of Yoo Suhyun, Yoo Jiwoo, and Yoo Minwoo.
Thinking she might have seen wrong, Sujin pressed herself against the pillar and peeked out again.
“…It’s Suhyun. The girl with brown hair next to her… must be Jiwoo.”
She murmured the words, eyes reddening.
Impregnated at eighteen by Suhyun’s father, she had endured daily violence, given birth to her first child at nineteen, and then twice more after that. To Sujin, Suhyun and the other children were both the scars of her past and her only reason to keep going. As an orphan herself, the only people she had to lean on were her own children.
Her chest ached.
‘She’s still… wearing the hairstyle I used to do for her.’
Suhyun still wore the round dumpling buns Sujin had styled for her when she was little. The sight made tears threaten to spill over.
She wanted nothing more than to run to her children right then and there. But she couldn’t. Guilt held her back, and fear came first.
So Sujin simply hid in the shadow of the pillar, holding her breath in case even the smallest sound escaped her. She had worked so hard to earn money, desperately wanting to hold her children in her arms again. Yet now she had to let them go once more, and all she could do was wipe away her tears.
‘Mom is sorry… Mom is… sorry.’
After sending away her aching fingers, Sujin stood dazed against the pillar for a moment before hurrying back toward the restaurant where she worked.
* * *
After wandering around the department store for a while, we circled back toward the air conditioner section, looking for something decent.
“This one looks good. It’s small and doesn’t use much electricity.”
“Then should we get this one, Unnie?”
Technically, it was Yeon-a and Jiwoo who were doing all the talking and deciding. I had wanted to help pick one too, but my head felt foggy. So I sat alone a little ways off, blankly watching the two of them choose.
‘Mom? Was that really Mom?’
Was the person I saw really our mother? If it was, why couldn’t I stop thinking about her?
“…Even if I found her, there’s nothing I could do.”
I couldn’t take revenge. My body was broken, and my mental state wasn’t exactly great either. Before I started streaming, I had been so far gone that I didn’t even realize how pitiful I was. If I could show my mother that I was living well and successful, maybe she would regret leaving. That would be the closest thing to revenge.
“……”
If that really was our mother… what was I even doing?
I couldn’t take revenge right now anyway. If I went to her now, I would probably just become a laughingstock. She might even think she was right to abandon me.
“……”
My head felt heavy. I had come out to have a good time, but that person had ruined everything.
‘I’ll come back again… I’ll come back and hug you… so don’t hate Mom too much… Will you wait for me, my daughter?’
“…!!”
Suddenly, the last conversation I had with Mom when I was eight years old replayed in my mind. I didn’t want to remember it—I really didn’t—but I missed her cooking.
‘She’s a bad person… She was always a bad person. I endured so much… I believed she would come save me, so I kept enduring…’
Just as tears were about to spill over, Yeon-a and Jiwoo walked over to me.
“Unnie! We picked out an air conditioner. They said installation takes about a day. Congratulations, Unnie. Now you can sleep cool.”
“I paid for half of it. Even so, if Suhyun is my little sister, then she’s basically my sister too.”
Yeon-a grinned as she spoke. She really was an incredibly kind friend.
‘Yeah. Yeon-a went through all this trouble for me… I shouldn’t be depressed.’
Today was supposed to be a day I enjoyed to the fullest, wasn’t it?
“Want to grab something to eat while we wait for the lovebirds?”
“Th-That sounds good… We might get in the way otherwise……”
When I agreed with Yeon-a, Jiwoo nodded and asked if there was anything I wanted to eat.
“…S-Something I want to eat.”
“Pasta? Or Japanese food would be fine too, Unnie.”
“Yeah, I’m fine with whatever Suhyun likes.”
Yeon-a nodded at me as she spoke. A small weight of pressure settled on my shoulders. Still, I wasn’t completely oblivious to kindness, so I started thinking.
‘Something I want to eat……’
Honestly, Western food didn’t appeal to me much. My stomach was weak, so greasy food was hard to digest. I would probably end up nauseous after barely eating anything. So I tried to pick something that would be gentle on my stomach while still being something I liked.
‘Chicken… that would probably make my stomach feel heavy too.’
It tasted good and went down easily, but it was too oily to eat on an empty stomach. Pass.
All the foods I liked in this life had been crossed off the list because chicken was gone. In the end, I dug through my memories from my previous life and worked hard to complete the mission.
“I…! I want to eat gukbap…!”
“Gukbap?”
“…Unnie, did you learn to like gukbap while doing manual labor? I don’t remember us ever eating it together.”
Jiwoo looked at me as she spoke. Yeon-a also looked surprised, as if she had never known I liked gukbap.
‘Of course not. I’ve never talked about my past life, and I never planned to.’
“Th-The construction workers would sometimes buy it for us… They’d say it was good for hangovers the next day after drinking……”
“I see.”
“…Unnie, you ate while working.”
Jiwoo sniffled emotionally. Flustered, I waved my hands and told her not to cry. She immediately stopped and squeezed my hand tightly.
“Let’s go…! Let’s go eat what Unnie likes!”
“O-Okay…!”
“Jiwoo-ssi seems excited that she learned one more thing about Suhyun.”
“Yeah…! I’m in a really good mood right now.”
Jiwoo smiled brightly as she spoke. Realizing once again how precious I was to her, I found myself smiling too.
Anyway, we wandered through the food court and found a gukbap restaurant. Maybe because it wasn’t a busy time, there were no customers inside.
“Looks like they just opened for the day. We’re lucky.”
Yeon-a smiled as she spoke. Holding her hand, Jiwoo and I stepped into the restaurant—and in that instant, my expectations came crashing down.
“Welcome… Oh…!?”
“…!!!”
The employee looked startled. So did I. Because the employee and I looked far too alike.
‘M-Mom…?’
I knew it right away.
That person was my mother.
* * *
Yoon Sujin (Suhyun, Jiwoo, and Minwoo’s mother)
