Taesung
Seoul. There are two things I know about this city.
Firstly, it's the capital of South Korea.
Secondly, it's my hometown.
That's all I know about the city. I don't know its convoluted streets, cultural traditions or chaotic history. I'm also not familiar with its fast and restless pace of life. I don't know the difficult language and I can't read the signs on buildings. Apart from the fact, that I was born heere, the only thing that connects me to this place, is my birth name, which I have never used before.
Jo Taesung.
It feels foreign to me - it sounds like someone else's name. It's the name of someone I could have been, but never became.
My parents divorced, when I was less than a year old. I don't know why they separated - my mother never spoke to me about my father. She never did. Whenever I asked about him, she dismissed me with cold, harsh words. She always said the same cold thing in an unpleasantly sharp tone - This man was not worth mentioning. He doesn't deserve to be known.
My father stayed in Korea, and one day, my mother simply took me and fled across the ocean to the States with me, where she started her new life with a clean slate. In a whole new world. I was almost a year old at that time. She soon found a new husband — Samuel Harris, a man with carefully combed hair, a neatly groomed beard, and an exaggeratedly kind smile — and I took his surname at her request. With this, the last thin thread of my original name, was lost. From then on, everyone called me Jake Harris.
I hate that name. I don't want to bear the name of a man, who was never my father nor be part of his façade of family happiness. That's also why I never called Samuel anything, but Harris. It annoyed him, but it made me feel good.
After five years of living in the States, my mother gave birth to Harris's twin sons — Phillip and Thomas — and from then on, I felt like a fifth wheel. I suddenly ceased to exist for either of them. I had become a superfluous shadow.
The twins came first, of course, because they were Harris's own children. He thought, I was just a brat. A liability, a bastard belonging to another man. As the eldest child, I was responsible for looking after my mother and the twins, because she was busy and exhausted from taking care of them.
When the twins started school, I had to look after them. I had to walk with them to and from school, as if I were their nanny. If anything happened to them, it was always my fault. Every scratch, every tear.
One day, Phillip and Thomas got into a fight at school. In a fit of rage, Thomas pushed Phillip, who broke his arm in the fall. Harris didn't even question me at all, he believed his two sons, when they claimed, that I had violently pulled them apart, knocking Phillip to the ground in the process. They're the rude, spoilt brats, not me.
This was the first time, that Harris had laid a hand on me. He lost his nerve and hit me in the face, out of the blue. I've had a scar there ever since. On my eyebrow. I tried to talk to my mother about the incident, but instead of understanding, we ended up arguing. It was a pretty heated argument, during which we yelled at each other and my mother said things to me that I never wanted to hear. In the heat of the moment, I told her that I hated her and forced her to tell me about my real father. I eventually got the information, but at what cost?
A few months after we argued, my mother became seriously ill. Initially, it seemed like a common cold, but she gradually became weaker and weaker. She spent days in bed, looking pale and exhausted. A year later, she died of cancer. It was a year of pain and regret. Harris eventually blamed me for her death too, as if I were the poison that had cut her life short. This was the second time, he had laid a hand on me. At the time, I had just turned eighteen and was finishing high school. I thought I'd had enough by that point.
When I was accepted to the college I was applied to, I had the opportunity to leave. This was the result of hard work, tedious preparation and maybe a little luck. I packed my things and moved into the dorms. For the first time, I experienced a glimmer of freedom.
I started taking a taekwondo class, wanting to gain the strength and ability to defend myself, if I ever encountered someone like Harris again. I got my black belt.
I found a part-time job at a café near the dorms, that smelled of fresh bread and cinnamon. I earned enough to support myself and, throughout my time at university, I devoted myself to finding my biological father, as well as to teaching at the school.
I longed to meet him, but it was difficult. After my mother died, the only thing I could find among her belongings, was an old, crumpled photo of him. A smiling man in a suit, with black hair and deep eyes. I knew his name and that he had stayed in Seoul, Korea, but that was pretty much all I knew about him.
How am I supposed to find someone, I don't know? Who has a surname shared by one in five people in a city of millions like Seoul?
I graduated with a degree in business and economics, a subject I chose more with my head, than my heart. So I took a full-time position at a coffee shop. I'd rather be surrounded by coffee machines and quiet music, than be stuck in an office full of charts and spreadsheets.
One day, Philippe, my younger half-brother, appeared in the doorway of the café. I was surprised, because we had never been close. He was carrying a message for me. My biological father wanted to speak to me. He had somehow found my mother's phone number - I had no idea, they had ever been in contact. After all these years of my mother refusing to tell me anything about my father, this news came as quite a shock. My heart leapt at the news. My father wants to meet me!
One day, I decided to pack my bags and catch a flight to Korea. Having lived in America all my life, I travelled to a foreign country and city, looking for a blood relative. I was hoping to salvage at least one relationship with a biological parent.
I was completely lost, at Seoul airport. It took me half an hour to find the exit. Everyone I asked for directions, spoke to me in a language, that looked like scattered coffee beans on a piece of paper.
I finally arrived at the hotel, where I dropped off my luggage, changed my clothes and made my way to my father's house. It seemed to be a small, shabby building in a neighbourhood, that I wouldn't even enter during the day, let alone now in the evening. The neighbourhood had a gloomy, almost ghostly feel to it, with narrow streets, broken street lamps, graffiti-coverd walls, and restless shadows. The place sent shivers down my spine and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I walked closer to the house. It was unassuming and old, with small shutters.
I took a deep breath and knocked on the door. I hear movement behind the door, followed by footsteps and the click of the door handle. A moment later, the door swung open. I blinked in surprise.
... ༺༻ ...
BLOOD DEBT (피의 빚)