“Comrade Seok Chun, look who’s here. She’s been wandering around in the rain looking for you and your son. The whole family is together now. Wait a second, I should prepare a better dinner for this joyous event.”
The judge tried to be humorous, but it did not seem to break the austere atmosphere in the room. Jeong Jin Wu took the apron down from the wall and wrapped it around himself.
Seok Chun, motionless and irresolute, did not know what to do or say. Sun Hee sat beside Ho Nam and began to change him into the dry clothes that she had brought with her in the bag.
She struggled to put his shirt on. Ho Nam’s head jostled inside the shirt, trying to find its way out. Then she struggled to pull his arms out through the sleeves. When Seok Chun squatted to hold the child, Sun Hee swatted his hands away with a ferocity reflective of the couple’s relationship.
When she finally managed to put the clothes on Ho Nam, he opened his haggard eyes. He glanced at his parents and then looked at Jeong Jin Wu. He remembered what had happened, and his eyes regained their luster.
As soon as Sun Hee grabbed Ho Nam and pulled him into her arms, Judge Jeong Jin Wu reprimanded her in the same way he had at his office.
“Comrade Sun Hee, let the child go. Take him home after he has eaten.”
She realized that the law supported her son’s welfare more than hers, and she cowered before the judge’s sharp words.
Jeong Jin Wu prepared dinner for the blameless child of the contentious couple.
Ho Nam looked to his parents for permission to eat, but they were motionless. He then looked at Jeong Jin Wu, the gray-haired man who had carried him to this place on his back and had shown his generous nature. That very man was kindly urging him to eat. Ho Nam began to devour his dinner like a child starved for food and affection. When he saw tears rolling down his mother’s face and his father’s misty eyes, he put his spoon down gently. “I’m full. Thank you for dinner, mister,” Ho Nam said.
“Thank you very much,” said Sun Hee to Jeong Jin Wu, as she rose from the floor.
Was it about her son, or something else? thought the judge.
Sun Hee went to her son, but Seok Chun grabbed him first.
Ho Nam appeared to be accustomed to this kind of behavior from his parents. He did not say anything and hopped on his father’s back.
The judge was not a relative or a friend, and it was out of the ordinary to invite the family over to his house and offer this kind of hospitality. The three left the judge’s apartment. Jeong Jin Wu went downstairs to the first floor to bid them farewell.
Ho Nam waved goodbye to Jeong Jin Wu. Seok Chun mumbled something to Ho Nam, but Jeong Jin Wu could not make out what he was saying because of the rain gushing down the apartment drainpipes.
The family faded into the dark, rainy void. Indistinctly, Jeong Jin Wu saw Sun Hee holding her umbrella over her son and her husband. It was most likely to prevent Ho Nam from getting wet again, but in any case, the family was walking together under one umbrella.
The rain continued to pour down. A cold gust of wind suddenly blew rain into Jeong Jin Wu’s face.
Jeong Jin Wu stared solemnly into the empty night. Seok Chun and his marital problems left a grim cloud behind. Jeong Jin Wu felt like the cold rain was afflicting his soul. Although the three were walking under one umbrella in the rain, they still got wet. Jeong Jin Wu could not ignore the haunting concern he had for the couple.
In the apartment building across the street, myriad lights shone through the windows. Jeong Jin Wu imagined that a husband, just returned home from work, was probably greeting his wife, and the children were probably throwing themselves at their father. A family should at the very least live like that, conversing with one another and sharing their emotions affectionately together like a peaceful stream flowing with no obstacles in its way.
The rain came down harder. The water from the drainpipes beat on the metal sheets, making a noise that hurt his ears.
The rain rolled down his face, dripped down his neck and into his shirt.
The weather was getting chillier as a cold front was coming in from China.
Jeong Jin Wu remembered his wife.
It must be hailing or snowing in the high altitudes of Yeonsudeok. The ground might have thawed out during the day, but it will freeze again by dawn. She took only a light sweater. She really didn’t have to go. The farmers there are more than capable of taking care of the vegetables.
Suddenly, Jeong Jin Wu felt the presence of another person. He turned around.
By the stairs, a woman with a thick old sweater lingered with an umbrella in her hand. It was the wife of the coal miner who lived on the second floor. She was well into her forties but looked younger. She was a schoolteacher at the local middle school, and everyone in the apartment complex called her by her occupation.
She would always wait for her husband by the front gate of the apartment building at this time of the evening. She would wait to greet her husband, but there were plenty of times when her husband would enter the apartment building through the back gate without her knowing. Her husband enjoyed drinking. He would drink either at the local bar or at a friend’s house. When he would get drunk, he would not cause a ruckus or do anything else to disturb the neighbors. He would go to sleep quietly without saying a word. He truly loved his wife and never fought with her at home. They appeared to be happily married, but the wife worried about his addiction to alcohol, while he cared little for his deteriorating health.
The schoolteacher had many other things to worry about and mounds of work to do for the school. Updating and preparing for her lessons and proctoring students’ math diagnostic tests were some of her responsibilities along with being a homeroom teacher, modeling good behavior, grading, and disciplining the students. There were so many things that added to her daily duties as a teacher, but at the end of the day, she would treat her husband as tenderly as she did her students. No, she probably loved her students more than her husband. The schoolteacher was still as pure-hearted as she had been before she got married.
The schoolteacher spent her energy on her students, which did not allow her any time to experience the wonderment of falling in love. She never had a chance to receive the kind of love a child in a normal family would receive because her parents had been killed by the Americans during the Korean War. At a young age, she was deprived of the love of her parents and engulfed by the cruelty and terror of the world. She had no family, no relatives, no friends to whom she could turn. Solitude, fear, and melancholy were her only friends. She had been naked to the bitter wind of misfortune, but when she was brought to an orphanage, she was clothed with love and care. She learned that collectivity supersedes individual desire and ambition. The notion of “self,” or “my future,” or “my ambitions” did not exist in her life.
She became a schoolteacher at the age of twenty, and since then, she had devoted her life to the country that had raised her. She found a new identity in her occupation, and she made her classroom her new home. She considered her students’ future as her future, which was to become loyal citizens of the country. She used every cent of her salary for her students, for her teaching materials, and even for her sick students who could not afford to buy medication.
When the schoolteacher turned twenty-nine, someone introduced her to a coal miner. They met only a couple of times. She did not pry too much into the coal miner’s past or his upbringing. She only desired a husband who would understand her passion for teaching. The coal miner promised that she could continue working as a teacher, which pleased her greatly. They got married soon thereafter.