Episode 1

In September of 2007, Jeongguk has just barely turned ten years old. In September of 2007, his mother passes away.

Orphan. This is what that makes him. Technically, he has a father. Realistically, his father doesn’t know he has him. Jeongguk doesn’t quite understand what the system is, but it sounds all big, governmental and, frankly, scary. If it weren’t for people telling him that he was going in the system, though, perhaps it could have sounded cool. The system.

The System. Sounds like something out of an action film, and currently, at the vulnerable age of ten, that is his genre of choice, favorite movies necessitate a large dosage of action. The System. He imagines spies when he hears it, doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t let fantasies run too wild in his head, because he starts picturing the bad guys as well and he doesn’t know how to fight them without his mother.

The System.

It’s him that’s going in it. Him. Alone. Without his mother. He’s always had his mother. His mother has always held his hand whenever he needed it, at the dentist, when he had to get shots done, when he watched that horror movie he wasn’t supposed to and she was marginally angry, but she still let him sleep next to her because he was scared.

He doesn’t really understand death. But he knows it means she will no longer be there. Like it was with his grandfather. He died and he was no longer there. When a person dies, Jeongguk knows, they become a memory. They become as virtual as the movies he watches, conceptual, they join the fantasies in his head as a figment of his imagination. They still exist, if he thinks of them, they do. But they can say nothing new, do nothing new. They can no longer hold his hand.

The lady smiles at him and he doesn’t know what she means to gain out of it, however it does anything but put him at ease. She speaks to him in a voice he is not dumb enough to think is her natural one, but he doesn’t tell her to stop. He doesn’t tell her anything. He doesn’t speak. For three days straight he says nothing. 

It annoys the woman who takes him in. A foster home for boys, that’s what he’s taken to. Currently there are six more of him there, of orphans, he’s told. He’s an orphan now. That means he doesn’t have a mother and a father anymore. Most of the boys there, most of the orphans, are around his age. The lady explains all this to him with that same voice and that same smile. When she hasn’t taken it off her lips for two days straight, it starts to border on creepy, like it was in that one movie he wasn’t supposed to watch but he did. His mother isn’t there to hold his hand this time when the grinning lady’s lips pull and her shiny teeth bare with a sparkling glint. 

Dinner is when he is supposed to meet everyone. People he is apparently going to live with before they find him an actual home. This is temporary, the grinning lady promises as she steers the wheel, but Mrs. Park will do anything to make him feel comfortable.

Quite frankly, Mrs. Park does not at all make him feel comfortable. Her palm is very wide and her fingers are short but big and he does not at all want to hold her hand.

Not that she offers. 

Without introductions, he is put at a table with six other boys and this woman and he already feels she hates him. She has asked him seventeen questions. He has been counting. He counts, sometimes. He’s answered none. Zero. Still, she puts him at the table. Some other boy places the food in front of him, in a ceramic patterned plate that is chipped off at one side. He isn’t exactly hungry, but his mother would want him to eat, so he does. He stares down at the plate and eats. 

The house he is in is big, but it isn’t huge. It’s old. The floor is authentic wood and it makes a very distinctive creaking noise when people step. All eight inhabitants eat together. The tables are two, pressed together, and the chairs they sit on aren’t a set. They’re different. Jeongguk wants one with a cushion, but he doesn’t get one, and he certainly isn’t about to ask for it, so he settles on hard outdoor McDonald’s metal and struggles not to move too much, because it makes sounds. The boys are not loud, but they aren’t quiet either. The noise of their presence is like a buzz to him. It’s unintelligible to his ears, just a noise, perpetual and humming, a very solid presence in his senses. 

Senses. He sees bland food, tastes bland food, smells a myriad of indistinct scents, touches the rigid metal of a rusting fork, hears the sound of those boys. 

Jeongguk stays there for two days before they find him an aunt.

He stays there for two days and yet he still manages to miss it, or rather, him. He manages to miss him. The him who sits across from him on the table, watching him with wide, glazed eyes. His face is round, cheeks full and his hair is cut wrong and crooked over his forehead. The him has a pout on his lips when he chews. His lips pucker up, press together as his teeth move over whatever he’s stuffed puffy cheeks with. He’s barely blinking and Jeongguk wants to tell him to look away, he can almost feel the glassy gaze on him.

The eyes make him wary when Jeongguk himself is gnawing down food. The first bite makes him aggravatingly aware of his hunger. As he swallows and food slips down in his stomach, he feels it shift, bowels growl and suddenly he wants to maul it all, no matter how it tastes of nothing other than the overwhelming salt of soy sauce. 

All the boys eat fast, shoveling down food, directly into their throats. Some of them fail to even chew. The boy in front of him is slow. He savors the food in his mouth. His lips smack a bit with it, it’s almost noisy, but the chewing doesn’t bother Jeongguk. The incessant looking does.

He raises his own eyes to him under bangs several times, peaks at him to question with a gaze why this ceaseless observation is necessary, but the boy simply remains—shameless and staring. Jeongguk cannot hold his eyes for too long, meets them for barely seconds before he stirs his chin down brusquely, hair falling over his forehead and he remains focused on the food in his broken plate. 

Chores. Mrs. Park explains to him about chores first thing after dinner. He has to do his part for this household, she instructs most sternly, looking at him nearly haughty over a raised chin and a long nose. And to teach him the importance of chores she assigns to him dish duty that very night. Some other boy carries the dishes from the table to the sink. He has to wash. 

He nods when she speaks, but he stands helpless and confused before the sink as the others pile out of the room, chatter erupting as their mouths are no longer full of food. There is something so very lonely about it all. He thinks he didn’t feel as lonely when he was alone the past three days. Today when all the others speak and he stands, mute and perplexed, unfamiliar, the stranger to these strangers, he feels the solitude blur into harsh loneliness.

He used to help his mother with the dishes, yet a sink was never as intimidating. He stares ahead with his lids stretched to the very corner. His mouth quivers. It’s ridiculous. He’s not really a crier, he has hardly cried during his first ten years of life, and he has not shed a tear since the death of his mother. His sadness is poignant, perhaps too much to be channeled into just salty water. But right now he simply cannot find the detergent and he has to ask where it is, but he can’t and he doesn’t think he has ever felt so helpless before, so utterly helpless and he knew neither loneliness nor helplessness before and his whole chin is trembling with his need to just break down, but he holds it.

He holds it until a hand pushes at him gently. Long, thin fingers touch at his shoulder. They allow him to flinch as he turns, blinks away moisture as his gaze finds the boy from across the table. He says nothing, just permits his hand to gently suggest he moves away. The boy pushes him until he frees the space in front of the sink, and squats before it. He opens a drawer underneath it, takes out the detergent Jeongguk desperately needs and straightens on his feet.

“Here,” he says, stretching his hand forward. Big eyes blink at him. The boy has an inch or two on him certainly. Tall, he’s tall. He’s incredibly skinny, bony and tan, the bone of his wrist protrudes as he holds it out towards him.  

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