MM Ch 1

PR by neji

One year ago. Winter.

Blood oozed out of the half-cooked steak. I assume that this restaurant was chosen because it aligned with my meat-loving mother’s taste in food. Whether it was food or things, my mother never hesitated to get what she wanted. Because I had the opposite disposition, she always criticized me in frustration. Like a person who hadn’t yet realized that no matter what I chose, the results would never satisfy her.

“It seems that the rascal is running a bit late.”

The man with the gold-rimmed glasses sitting next to my mother quietly opened his mouth as he looked at his phone. The man was of average height with a slightly skinny frame. His appearance didn’t leave any particular impression. There seemed to be many men like him everywhere, and he was just an average man who blended into a crowd.

His thin, timid lips made him look a bit geeky when they were closed. He was very different from the types of men my mother had been with in the past.

My mother told me that he was a professor of language and literature at K University. Among all the men she’s dated until now, none of them had shown her any respect. Even her most recent ex who was eleven years her junior spoke to her in an informal tone.

“He’s an athlete. He should be resting on the weekends, so maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to call him out and bother him.”

My mother’s brows slightly furrowed as she spoke apologetically.

“Even if he’s busy, how could he be late on such an important day…”

Professor Lee brought the phone up to his ear.

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

Guided by the waiter, a tall man entered the room. I had been cutting my steak into small pieces due to the awkwardness, but my head automatically went up at his entrance. He was wearing a baseball cap with a baseball team logo embroidered in white on the front.

Seeing him in real life, I couldn’t believe that he was the same age as me. His wide shoulders, his lean frame… His mere physique surpassed that of any boy my age. Not only that, his height of 190 centimeters dwarfed the waiter as they stood side by side, making the waiter look like a young child.

His body didn’t look bulky. It actually looked quite slim. His proportions drew everyone’s eyes whenever he stood up.

“What happened?”

“I took a taxi, but the roads were packed. Ah, hello. Nice to meet you.”

After replying to his father, he politely nodded his head to my mother who sat next to the professor. The rest of us were dressed in formal wear, and he was the only one dressed casually in a hooded sweatshirt. However, instead of looking shabby, he looked relaxed and confident.

“Welcome. I’m glad to meet you.”

My mom answered him in a delighted, graceful voice. Professor Lee stretched out his hand to the seat next to mine.

“Sit down for now. Take off your hat.”

“Yes, sir.”

He obediently nodded and took off his cap. Then he raised his hand and lightly swept back his hair. He looked in my direction, and our eyes met.

The moment I saw the face of the Korean delegate champion swimmer and last year’s gold medalist at the Summer Olympics, I froze with the fork and knife in my hands, frowning like an idiot.

My heart thumped loudly in my chest. Unable to endure the loneliness between marriages, my mother continually dragged celebrities home. However, this was the first time I was left speechless. My stomach churned as my heart raced, the blood flowing through my veins at a startling speed.

Seeing Lee Kyuwol in the flesh with my own eyes, I realized just how extraordinary he looked.

Everyone knew that Lee Kyuwol, a swimmer who represented Korea in the Olympics, was of mixed blood. Professor Lee had met a local woman while studying abroad in Germany and married her before giving birth to their son. His wife had long passed away. Seeing someone like him draped in the Korean flag as a gold medal was hung around his neck was a particularly strange sight to behold because he did not look completely Korean.

The press had continuously released reports that his favorite food was stir-fried spicy pork and spinach soybean paste stew. On his free days, he liked to go to PC cafés with his friends and play games all day. They stressed that he was no different from the other Korean boys his age, constantly identifying him as ‘Korean’ any chance they could.

One year ago, because he was the beautiful swimming hero who raised the nation’s prestige, various news portals were flooded with news about him. Therefore, I was aware of what his face looked like before today.

However, seeing him in person, I came to realize that Lee Kyuwol’s aura was a lot more powerful than what I’d seen in the photos. His nose was a lot taller and sharper than I thought. His distinct facial features, his pale skin that made him look almost aristocratic, and his red lips.

His jet black hair, a color that was surprisingly similar to my own, did nothing to ease the mysterious aura surrounding him. Rather than being on the sports news channels where announcers were making a loud fuss, his looks made him seem more suitable for movie screens. I could see why the Olympic channel had a sudden boost in viewership during the 800m freestyle swimming finals in which he’d won first place.

His most unique feature was his long, almond-shaped eyes. More specifically, the color of his eyes. They were gray mixed in with a wisp of blue. When those eyes turned to me, I felt as if he had cracked my head open and was reading every thought that passed through my brain. I couldn’t stop those emotions from bubbling up to the surface of my face. 

“Hi.”

He flashed me a smile as he walked towards me. I knew that he was talking to me, but my words in response would not leave my mouth, so I merely nodded and quickly looked away.

He sat down in the seat next to mine and casually took off his baseball cap before placing it on the corner of the table.

As he sat down, I realized that he must have just showered because I caught a whiff of his body wash mixed with the unique smell of chlorine that comes from a swimming pool. Although it was intimidating to sit so close to him that I could smell his skin, I felt that this was a lot better than sitting across from him. If that had been the case, I would have had to meet his eyes.

“About the man I’m marrying this time… He has a son.”

“…So?”

“His name is Lee Kyuwol. You’ve heard of him, right?”

 Before I even met him, I already disliked him. And it wasn’t just because of the way my mom’s voice filled with excitement as she told me her news.

“The swimmer who… won a medal at the Olympics?”

A long time ago, after a Korean swimmer won a gold medal in the 400m freestyle at the Olympics for the very first time, no one else in Korea had been able to beat his record. And now, more than a decade later, Lee Kyuwol had beaten this record as a two-time Olympic gold medalist. He was truly an amazing athlete.

“That’s right. With this marriage, my wedding will be in the spotlight again. I was told that he’s the same age as you, so you’ll be joining us for dinner next week. Start preparing for it.”

However, hearing that I’d get involved with the Olympic champion who shook the entire nation last summer was not good news to me at all.

Whenever I read a headline that had to do with Lee Kyuwol, I was always overcome with the feeling of defeat. It was something that was too humiliating to tell anyone, and if they heard it, they’d laugh at me. However, it was still the truth. Whenever I read about his heroic tales, seeing as how he was the same age as me, I couldn’t help but compare his bright life with mine. Whenever this happened, I was filled with a sense of loss. 

Of course, there were plenty of people who had accomplished extraordinary things at my age. There were more who did it at an age younger than mine. I could easily point to idol singers who looked like dolls as crowds of fans followed behind them or talented actors who also had the beauty to bring them to stardom.

However, I never felt this way about them. The reason why I felt this particular way about Lee Kyuwol was not because I didn’t know how to swim or that I had a childhood trauma of being swept away by a wave to the point that I could not even bear to be near any large body of water to this day.

It was because of the way he would grin whenever he checked the scoreboard after finishing his swim.

Because my environment would change frequently when I was a child, one could say that I was wary of people or that I was very used to reading people’s expressions. And whenever I looked into Lee Kyuwol’s eyes, for a brief moment, I saw a flash of boredom.

It was completely different from the attitude I’d expect to see from an athlete who had beaten the world record by 0.35 seconds or an Olympic gold medalist. He received praise for keeping a cool, steady head, not being swayed by mass media. However, to me, he merely seemed arrogant and haughty.

Whenever I saw his empty gray eyes, I didn’t see any gratitude for reaping the rewards of his hard work and good luck.

The media continued to show repeats of his winning performance over and over again, and every time I saw his empty gray eyes, I’d bite my lips due to my sense of inferiority. As I watched him swim so freely in the water, surrounded by cheering fans, I realized for the first time in my life that I could dislike a stranger I had never met before.

“Wow. Our athlete Lee Kyuwol looks a lot more handsome in person.”

My mom, who was sitting across from me, spoke in a sweet whisper. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from him, and her gaze was filled with excitement.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

His curt but polite reply did not sound particularly interested in her remark. As I listened to his steady voice, I wondered just how many people had said the same words to him before.

Lee Kyuwol had a god-given talent, but he was also very handsome. Sitting next to him, I felt like an extra in his movie. I had braced myself for this meeting, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was merely a speck of dust floating in the air.

Now that I met Lee Kyuwol in real life, I could see that he had a very intense aura that was quite overwhelming. Sitting next to him, I became insignificant and small.

“Omo, how can anyone who takes one look at you guess that you are a high school student? Seeing you in real life, my heart can’t help but race like one of your young fangirls.”

My mother’s fussing was also part of the reason why I wanted to crawl into a hole and hide. Professor Lee merely adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose as he sat next to her, but I felt that I could understand how he was feeling.

My mother gave birth to me when she was my age, but due to her genetics and the care she had taken into maintaining her looks, she still looked beautiful despite her age. I knew what it was like when she used her feminine charm to hunt for men. And now, sitting next to the man she was to marry, I also knew that she was doing her best to rein in those instincts when she interacted with his son.

“Geez, I’m getting silly with age, aren’t I?”

My mother lowered her dense eyelashes as she whispered.

Please stop it, Mom.

“Haha.”

As I silently begged her to stop, Lee Kyuwol laughed quietly next to me. With my mouth tightly closed, I bit the inside of my cheek. I did not want to look at his face.

I don’t know why it’s my fate to feel so embarrassed. For a woman who went through men with such alarming speed, I never understood why the final destination of all of her relationships was always marriage.

“We’re going to become a family now, so please speak comfortably.”

His laughing voice was steady. His polite words were overflowing with confidence. I felt like the meat I was chewing on was stuck in my throat.

“And you are still very beautiful, Mother.”

Something flinched deep within my chest. Five minutes hadn’t even passed since he’d met this woman, but he was calling her ‘Mother’. His behavior combined with my sense of inferiority transformed into complete revulsion. I did not have the stomach to call an unfamiliar man my father.

His father’s expression did not change as he sipped his glass of wine, but I felt that he was satisfied with his son’s behavior. It seemed that this made up for his being forty-five minutes late. My mother laughed gracefully.

“Look at how friendly he is! It seems that all the media praise regarding Lee Kyuwol’s character was not empty at all.”

“Not at all. It’s complete flattery.”

“I think it’s very similar to Professor Lee’s character.”

“Alright. Now that everyone’s here, let’s eat.”

I felt like the three of them had all agreed to follow a script and act out this scene. The only one who couldn’t seem to play along was me.

“What did you say your name was again?”

Because I was so lost in thought, I didn’t even hear the question he asked me. When my mother called out my name, I flinched and dropped my knife onto the plate.

“I heard we’re the same age. Let’s get along.”

He smiled and held his hand up to me. His large, clean hand didn’t shake at all as he waited for me to take it.

“Okay.”

Instead of shaking his hand, I gave him a curt answer with a voice so soft that it was barely discernible. My sweaty palm clenched around my knife. His hand remained floating in the air, but this was the best I could do due to my timid nature.

I did not plan on getting along with him. I did not want to perform in this play that everyone seemed to be in. My acting skills weren’t as good as theirs. I did not want to take his hand and brazenly shake it like an idiot.

Lee Kyuwol’s floating hand slightly clenched before coming down and resting on top of the table.

Tap.

Tap.

I ignored his index finger tapping on the surface of the table and put a piece of the now cold meat into my mouth.

“Ah, one more thing…”

Tap.

Lee Kyuwol’s finger suddenly froze.

“To be more specific, Dayoung is technically Mother’s little sister, so…”

Lee Kyuwol spoke as if he’d just thought of this. Meanwhile, my brow slowly furrowed into a frown. I could taste the faint stench of blood coming from the piece of meat in my mouth. With my face looking down on my plate, my eyes turned to him and glared.

“Should I call you ‘Aunt’ instead?”

Lee Kyuwol looked at me and flashed me a gentle smile. My eyes lingered over the crescent shape of his lips before moving up to his eyes that held hidden malice. And that’s when I knew that this was his revenge on me for rejecting his handshake. Although it wasn’t cold, goosebumps rose along my skin.

“I think that will be a bit awkward.”

He looked straight at me, and his gaze was beautiful and confident. God of controlling his own mental state. He didn’t even frown despite a shoulder injury and finished the competition. The sports analysts praised him for his strong, upright personality. I hadn’t even met him for a full hour, and I knew that they had gotten it all wrong.

When I realized that the things I felt by watching him on the screen were in fact true, I couldn’t even commend myself for my perceptiveness. His attack was too vulgar. There was no doubt that Lee Kyuwol was a twisted individual.

Otherwise, he would not have so casually said such a thing for the world to see. Especially not right in front of me and my mother.

“Geez, of course that’s too awkward.”

My teeth clenched on the piece of meat in my mouth as I tried to force it down my throat, but my mother’s brazen voice pierced my ears.

“I’d like the two of you to get along like friends and siblings. My late mother gave birth to her very late in her years, so I’ve raised her like my own daughter. Sometimes, I truly feel like she is.”

Bile rose in my throat. Was there anyone at this table that believed her? If anyone typed her name, Jung Misook, on the internet, they’d see all sorts of search results. Jung Misook adultery. Jung Misook childbirth. Jung Misook teenage nudes. Jung Misook daughter.

My biological mother, legally my sister, was now proceeding with her fourth marriage to a university professor. It looked like I’d be lumped into the same family as a national Olympic swimmer and his father whom I met for the first time today. 

The food that had not digested inside my stomach began to burn. I couldn’t take this anymore.

“…Excuse me for a moment.”

* * *

“Once you turn twenty¹, live as you’d like.”

This was something my mother always told me. Whenever she said this, I felt that this wasn’t something she had the right to say since she was the one who starred in an art film as a teenager where she came on camera in the nude and ended up sleeping with the director and giving birth to me. I sneered at her in my heart.

After she filmed the movie and gave birth to me, she went on stage at the awards ceremony, her face still swollen due to her postpartum symptoms, and she received her Best Actress award. This was her first and best accomplishment as an actress to this day.

Whether it was because she hadn’t been able to graduate high school because of her low attendance or that she hadn’t been able to overcome her trauma as a teenage actress in an adult film, my mother constantly pressed me to graduate high school.

Before adding on that everything I do after becoming an adult would be my responsibility.

“I want to live my life comfortably from now on, Dayoung.”

The day she told me that her fourth marriage would be to Professor Lee, she started her announcement with this sentence. Even though my mother had said this to me many times before, I felt that I already knew what she was going to say after this.

It wasn’t that shocking anymore. I used to live with my late maternal grandmother when she was still alive, and she always claimed that her daughter, who looked identical to my philandering maternal grandfather, seemed to live the same life as her late husband. She’d click her tongue and claim that after disgracing the family to its ruin, she’d end up losing her life due to some bastard with a pair of balls and a cock.

She swept back my hair with her hands that smelled like food and warned me that I must never follow the same path as my mother. She’d always tell me that instead of spending time in front of a mirror and trying to adjust my looks, I should focus on studying.

When I was in fifth grade, I mourned the death of my grandmother, and I ended up living with my biological mother, whose face I was only used to seeing on the television screen.

At the time, she had just gotten out of a three-year marriage with a classmate from her elementary school and was preparing to get remarried to a man who owned a lot of real estate. The first memory of my mother that I had when I entered her house that night was that of her fighting with him.

I had a feeling that the fight was about me and my sudden appearance. My mother asked why she was at fault. She shouted out that she was a victim, too. Various home goods shattered and rolled on the floor.

When I heard my mother screaming that she was going to die, I confined myself in a room and trembled in fear as I called the police. When the police arrived in the middle of the night, she claimed that she had had a little too much to drink and had fallen down as she waved her hands. Once the police left, she slapped my cheek with brutal force and told me that I did something unnecessary. Even though the left part of her lip was bleeding from being hit by her husband.

The next day, she covered up the bruises with makeup and placed me down in front of her. As she puffed out a cloud of cigarette smoke, she told me that this marriage must never fail, almost like she was saying the lines in a movie.

However, despite her declaration, she ended up getting a divorce six months later. This was because the man who hit my mother whenever he had too much to drink ended up having an affair with a caddy at the golf resort he frequented. My mother could endure getting hit, but if the man had an affair with a woman she deemed beneath her, she could not accept it.

Although my mother’s marriages were always plastered all over the news, her third marriage happened quietly, unlike her first and second. This could have been because public interest in her remarriages had waned at this point in time. Or it could be because with age, my mother’s popularity and demand as an actress had also decreased. I felt that it was because of both of these reasons.

My mother’s new husband was eleven years her junior and eight years my senior. He was an amateur model and a part-time trainer at my mother’s gym.

His charming country accent made an impression, and he didn’t have any talent in making money. However, their love-life was very sweet and gentle. Whenever my mother got drunk, he’d always cook her some bean sprout soup the following morning. He’d often use his exceptional massage skills to massage her shoulders.

Proud of his sculpted muscles, he’d always go shirtless around the house. Dealing with hormones in the middle of my adolescence, he would always catch my eye, but his naive smile that seemed to verge on being a symptom of a mental disability always seemed to offset any attraction I might have had.

Even though I was prickly due to what I had experienced with my mother’s abusive ex-husband, I couldn’t help it. However, he still approached me in a friendly manner. Even though he seemed to be an idiot, because of his kind nature, I couldn’t help but start to feel more kindly towards him as a human. As expected, he treated me like a little sister due to our age gap. He’d tell me to go out and buy whatever I wanted and sneak me some money behind my mother’s back. It was probably a portion of the allowance he received from my mother.

Two years passed by in peace, but the three of us reached a turning point by pure chance.

That day, I was sitting on the sofa, fighting with my laptop over a lost file. Like any other day, he approached me and flopped down beside me, placing his chin on my shoulder.

“What is it? Is something not working?”

For some unknown reason, my body suddenly grew warm and tensed up. Because of his warmer body temperature, he’d be almost completely naked in the summertime. 

Although nothing was different from any other day, the moment his bare skin touched mine, my neck stiffened, and it felt like ants were crawling up to the top of my head. Something felt strange. My face flushed, and my heart raced as if I were doing something wrong.

“Stop… Ah, seriously, I said stop…!”

While our bodies were tangled up as we wrestled on top of the sofa, I heard the dull click of the lock as the front door opened.

I still can’t forget the face my mother made when she returned home after finishing her filming project. Her face hardened, and her eyes filled with contempt as if she were looking at a large cockroach.

“Huh, you’re home early, Misook-ssi?”

Even now, I don’t believe my mother’s lover had any perverted intentions towards me. That was why he was able to remain calm as he greeted my mother. Flustered by this situation, I was unable to deal with what was going on right now. 

“M… Mom.”

“Who’s your mom?”

I was not allowed to call her ‘Mom’ when we were in front of other people. However, I was so bewildered that I had broken that rule. As my terrified eyes filled with tears, my mother’s lips snarled as she asked again.

“Who’s your mom? Have you lost your mind?”

“Ey, it’s only us here, so it’s fine. Dayoung, go to your room. Misook-ssi, was work very tiring today?”

Having noticed the strange atmosphere, my mother’s lover raced over to her like a large puppy and did his best to soothe her anger. I could hear them fighting behind the closed door of their bedroom. I wasn’t sure what I had done wrong, but I was overcome with guilt. I returned to my room and chewed on my fingernails.

After that day, my mother stopped caring whether I was in my room or not, whether it was day or night, and she began to cry out like an animal while she had sex.

“Misook-ssi, Dayoung… is still awake… Ugh…!”

“Do you care more about that leech than me?”

Like a female marking her territory on her man, my mother didn’t even hesitate to have sex with him right before my eyes.

When they were having sex in the bathroom in the hallway late at night, I had to hold my bladder and run to the veranda to relieve myself. There were two bathrooms: one in the hallway and one in the master bedroom. However, I would rather die than enter the bedroom where they slept together.

I didn’t want to make my mother have any strange misunderstandings ever again. I bit down on my lips until they bled, hoping to wake up from this horrible nightmare. And I used all my might to try and understand my unpredictable mother.

Because my incompetent maternal grandfather had spent all the family’s money, she debuted as a child actress at a young age and took any role she could get. Whenever she had a fight with my late grandmother, she’d shout that she was the one who paid for her older brother’s studies in the United States. Either way, one could not deny that she had played a large role in supporting the family.

When she was seventeen years old, she didn’t even bother to read the scenario of a certain art film and auditioned to be the female lead. The scene she shot for the audition was a sex scene. The director was almost thirty years her senior, and it wouldn’t have been very difficult for him to manage a very young actress. 

Although opinions were divided on whether to regard the film as art or pornography, it received praise overseas and even received an award. The director and actors were even honored inside the country as well. My mother was too young for her acting career to end.

She was as talented as my incompetent grandfather and had all of his charm. It was only a matter of time before she fell in love with the man who gave her the limitless attention and affection that she hadn’t been able to receive from her parents. 

She grew hopeful with the brave expectation of becoming his wife. Within the girl’s swollen belly grew the seed of the adulterous director. Claiming that he wanted to protect his family, the director abandoned my mother. A few years later, it was revealed that he had molested and raped several newly debuted actresses, and he committed suicide by inhaling carbon monoxide.

As my mother said, I was a stumbling block in her career, and I was a leech she needed to hide. I was the result of one mistake she had made when she was young.

I hated her, but I also pitied her and felt sorry for her. She hadn’t properly matured, and one misbuttoned button had started a chain of events that had twisted her life into what it became.

If it weren’t for me, she could have denied making the mistake with the director. If I weren’t here, she might have been able to be more cautious about the men she was with and lived a better life than she was living now. 

Therefore, just as she said, once I became an adult, I planned to stop being a leech in her life and leave her. She had a young, physically fit man at her side, so I wouldn’t have to worry about her.

However, my mother’s third marriage came to an abrupt end after two years of living together. He ripped away all of my mother’s wealth and possessions and disappeared.

One day, as I walked to the bookstore to buy a workbook, I saw him sitting across from a woman who looked to be similar in age to him at a café by chance. I never told my mother I saw him.

My mother was talking on the phone with a cigarette between her lips. She murmured that she was sick and tired of men in a tired voice. I thought my mother would give up on finding another man due to her lack of luck when it came to them, but she went beyond my expectations once again.

The year I became a senior in high school, she got married again.

The married director, the unemployed elementary school classmate she met at a fan signing event, the rich businessman who sponsored her, the younger man who approached her because of her money… And now, she had picked a university professor with a prominent reputation.

I didn’t know where this strong will had come from, but I couldn’t help but respect it.