Family Gathering (Reality)
"…Mother's coming?"
If Father had been the emblem of fear in my life, Mother was my refuge.
Whenever something was hard, or something hurt, she was always the first to notice and the first to comfort me. In a way, she was the very force that let me keep going. If I had survived Father's brutal lessons under that roof, it was mostly because she was there.
She hadn't always been beside me, though. Once I was old enough, she returned to the entertainment world, and it was around then—back in middle school—that I started running with a bad crowd. That was how vast a thing a mother was to me, and how precious.
As far as I knew, she ought to have been overseas on a shoot around now, gone for a good while. I hadn't expected it to already be over.
"Yeah. We'll have to leave around seven, so you should start getting ready."
Seven. A little under an hour left. That was going to be tight.
"Okay. Got it."
I tossed my brother a half-answer and headed for my room. I was pretty sure I'd come downstairs to fetch something… it probably wasn't important. What mattered now was how little time I had. I needed to hurry—and it was Mother, whom I hadn't seen in ages. If I was going to see her, I ought to look as ready as I could.
The gloom sitting on me eased. No—more than eased. Energy welled up through my whole body, enough that I caught myself humming without meaning to.
"Hm-hm-hmm~ ♪"
Getting ready didn't take long. Washing, drying my hair—I'd grown used to all of it. Even putting on underwear, I could manage with a practiced hand now. At first I hadn't known how to fasten a hook. This much, I could fairly call remarkable progress.
"Eunha, if you go out dressed like that, won't you be cold? You ought to put something else on…"
"Oh, I'm all right."
What I had on was the same as two months ago, when I'd gone to be fitted for a school uniform: a black mock-neck, navy jeans, and a cardigan in place of a coat. Father's overprotectiveness meant I almost never went out except to go to school, and school meant the uniform, no exceptions. This outfit, worn two months ago when I'd only just become a girl and knew nothing about women's clothes, had been the best choice I could make. The students hadn't whispered about it, so there didn't seem to be anything wrong with the fashion. The safest option, in other words.
"Still, you caught a cold…"
"I'm all right, really. If anything, isn't it worse to keep standing out here?"
"True enough. Come on, then. Let's go."
At Father's word, my brother and I climbed into the back seat. The front was for Mother and Father. She was coming straight from the airport, so we were to meet her at the restaurant.
"Dad's driving?"
"Of course. It's a family gathering."
No Driver Kwon, and none of the chauffeur who usually took Father's car—just Father in the driver's seat, and a car that held no one but us. The drivers were getting off early without working, so it was probably better for them anyway.
"Seat belts, all of you."
"Okaaay."
"Yes."
The engine turned over, and we pulled out toward wherever we were going. This car was nice, though. Hardly any sway at all. Better than mine? …Probably.
After about thirty minutes on the road, we arrived. The destination was a Korean restaurant in Sinsa-dong, Gangnam, famous enough to be listed in the Michelin guide. The name… what was it. Garyeon, wasn't it?
"All right. Everyone out."
I fought down the carsickness that never tired of tormenting me and hurried out of the car.
"You all right?"
"Eunha, are you okay?"
I was clutching a throbbing head, and Father and my brother watched me with worried eyes. This much, though, was fine. Even in my pro days I'd suffered from this nausea every time I went to a venue. On the bad days I'd ridden alone in the director's car, because it had a better ride than the nine-seater the players and coaches used.
"I'm okay. Please don't worry so much, Dad."
I'd lived through carsickness often enough that it felt ordinary, and by now I was used to it.
"Your mother… still not here, I see. She never does keep an appointment…"
The rest was muttered too quietly to catch easily, but my hearing was sharp enough that I heard it anyway. Better to pretend I hadn't. It wasn't as if this were the first or second day Father and Mother had been like this.
"Eunha, you go in first. The evening's still cold."
The spring wind blowing in at night still felt nothing but chilly. People say Korea has four seasons—that's a lie. It goes from freezing to scorching. Isn't it really just summer and winter?
"Yes, I understand."
Part of me wanted to wait here for Mother and go in with her, but I was afraid the body aches that were finally improving would get worse, so I hurried inside. If it were only me, it would be fine. If my health slipped, though, I'd be a burden on the teammates waiting on me for the match, and I had to be careful about that.
I opened the door, and a woman on staff standing at the entrance came over.
"The Chairman Choi party? I'll show you in."
"Ah… yes."
It had to be a popular place, and yet it was quiet. The parking lot I'd seen getting out of the car had been so empty it was practically wide open. Strange. On a weekend like today, it ought to have been fully booked.
"It's really quiet, though. Is the soundproofing that good…?"
Unable to sit on the question, I asked the staff woman right in front of me.
"…Pardon?"
She looked at me as if she couldn't imagine how I didn't know. A person can not know something. Don't look at me like that.
Only her next words let me understand why she'd looked at me that way.
"Ah—Chairman Choi reserved all of Garyeon for today."
"…My dad did?"
He'd rented the restaurant itself, and no guests were coming but us, so of course it was quiet. Would a man who'd driven himself just to spend time with family want to go somewhere packed with people? Renting a place this hard to book—and an entire weekend seating at that—would take a great deal of money, but—
"This is the room. Please enjoy your time."
To my father, who ran a company anyone you stopped on the street would recognize, it wasn't a great deal of money at all.
"Oh…"
The room she led us to was the largest of the ones I'd glimpsed walking down the hall. The interior was the cleanest, too—hanok in feeling, you might say, traditional and classic at the same time.
Interior aside, what I wanted first was to drink some cold water and drive off the dizziness of this wretched carsickness. I picked up the water glass on the table, already set with utensils and side plates, and drank in a rush—
"Hot!"
…It was warm water.
I got a pitcher of cold water from the staff, wet my throat, and was scrolling a community board on my phone, waiting for the rest of the family, when—
"Oh, you're here?"
Father was back at last, with only my brother beside him.
"Where's Mom?"
"She'll be a little later, so she said to go in and start eating."
Whether he'd grown tired of waiting or not, Father's face was quite dark. Well, it was the first family gathering in years, and she was late. Of course he'd be in a bad mood. I knew how busy Mother's work was, but Father was a man sensitive to promises and to rules.
…For the sake of things between them, maybe this was when I ought to step in.
"Dad, you must have been cold. Have some of this."
I offered him the cup of hot water at his place.
"Mm. Thank you."
The gloom that had been on his face a moment ago brightened all at once, as if it had never been there. This was Father Capture Pattern No. 2, revised edition: worry about him, then look after him. Heh. Eunha carry.
While I was soothing him, several of the staff came in carrying a ridiculous number of plates. It was a Korean restaurant, so of course there would be a lot of dishes. They wished us a pleasant meal, quietly shut the door, and left. My brother and I waited in silence until Father picked up his utensils.
"Your mother will be a little late, so let's start."
"All right~."
"Yes."
Watching my brother and Father begin the meal in quiet, I picked up my chopsticks as well. Korean food. My palate had been addicted to the housekeeper's S-rank cooking for a long time now. Could this satisfy someone like me?
…It was good.
Garyeon, sure enough, was a house that lived up to a Michelin name. We were eating in silence, simply enjoying it, when the tap of heels sounded beyond the door, and the door slid open, soft.
Silence came into the room with the sound of it opening, and through that silence a woman's voice.
"Oh my, am I terribly late?"
A voice as bewitching and charming as a fox casting a spell. I didn't need to be told who it belonged to.
"Mom?"
At last, Mother had arrived.
How could that be the face of a woman with a twenty-seven-year-old son? Our family's genetics were cheating, plain and simple. Even granting an actress's upkeep, she looked far too young to be a woman whose age started with a five. Maybe… her thirties?
"It's been so long, everyone~ Have you been well?"
"Yes, Mother."
"Y-yes… M-Mother."
The first time I'd seen my own face after becoming a girl, something about it had felt familiar. Looking at Mother's face again, I thought I understood why. The photos from before her wedding that I'd glimpsed long ago—Mother in her twenties—looked far too much like my face now.
If my brother, the son, took after Father, then I, the daughter, had come to take after Mother… When I'd been a boy, people said I resembled Father more, so the theory was probably right.
"You're late."
Father spoke in a cold voice, his face expressionless. But we, his family, could tell that a quiet hurt was folded underneath.
"Oh, the traffic was terrible. Go a little easy on me."
Of course Mother knew it too.
"You always—"
"Now, now~ Don't be like that. It's been so long since we've seen each other."
"…"
Being cut off mid-sentence was one of the things Father hated. He only looked at Mother, displeased, and said nothing more. Even that frightening, strict father softened a great deal in front of her.
Someone else might see him as nothing but a husband living under his wife's thumb. Either way, the two of them loved each other, so it hardly seemed to matter. Busy as both of them were, they never once missed an anniversary or each other's birthday, and they prepared something for the occasion every year. More than twenty years of marriage had passed, and a few years more, and that still hadn't changed.
"Mother, you're here."
"My boy~ Do you know how much Mommy missed you? Why don't you ever text me~"
"I… I did, at least once a day—"
"My boy! Why are the circles under your eyes so dark! Your father worked you to the bone again, didn't he!"
"Ah… no, it was work I had to—"
"Even so, take it easy. Mommy can't bear to watch her handsome boy's face go to ruin!"
With Mother's arrival, the quiet table filled with talk in no time. Meals in our house had always been solemn and silent. A taciturn father, a brother who was his spitting image, and me on top of that, with a talent for conversation hovering near zero—there was simply no way a conversation could start. That atmosphere, though, was overturned completely by a single person. Mother.
"Our daughter~ Don't you have anything to say to Mommy?"
I was sunk in the thought when the ambush landed.
"Sorry?"
The same thought I'd had when I faced Father after becoming a girl. What kind of relationship did I, the daughter, have with Mom? My relationship with Father as a son and my relationship with him as a daughter had been a hundred and eighty degrees apart, so my relationship with Mother might have changed from when I'd been a son, too.
"I, um… that is…"
Mother came quietly closer. And then—
"Not a single call to Mommy! I'm hurt, my girl~"
She pulled me into a tight hug.
Even after I'd become a daughter, my relationship with Mother was the same.
"…Yes."
With Mother added in, the table grew properly noisy, and at last the mood fit the words a family dinner out.
"Eating dinner together like this isn't bad at all. How about a trip next weekend?"
"Won't you be busy with your work?"
Mother had never given up her dream, as an actress, of breaking into Hollywood. That was why she had debuted in the industry again after having me and Eunseo. For that, she shouldn't have had time to spare…
"Oh, don't worry about that."
She smiled as if a weight had lifted.
"I'm going to quit. Acting."
For an instant, someone else's image laid itself over Mother.
"I'm retiring. I am."
The figure of a pro gamer who had declared his retirement in the interview after a semifinal exit.
Pro gamer Choi Eunha. Which is to say—
My past self.