"Actually, I......have a younger brother that I lost 15 years ago."
Eun-seo stammered and told him about her situation.
"At that time, my younger brother, Eun-ho, was six years old. My mother didn't take care of her health while searching for him and passed away five years later. Now, I am looking for him alone.
It's a heartbreaking story, sure, but it is that kind of story you have to tell to get sympathy. In short, it sounds like a common story, which makes Eun-seo nervous.
"He was a smart kid for his age, and he remembers the streets of the neighborhood, so I think there's a chance he'll remember it and come looking for me one day."
A normal person would feel sorry for her or at least pretend to but Kwon Seung-ju asked with an unchanged expression.
"What makes you think that someone who hasn't come back for 15 years will return if you wait another year?"
"There are reasons. But if she said that to a man whose whole body was armored with reason and coldness, she would surely be laughed at.
So, Eun-seo could only say this.
"I need time to collect my thoughts. I'd like to wait another year, thinking it's the last time."
Eun-seo bowed her head deeply again. The ends of her hair touched the table.
"So please postpone it for just one year. Please."
I know it's a lot to ask, after all I have been living there for the past 15 years. But then again, I've lived in this house for 15 years, so it shouldn't be too hard to let her live for another year.
You can laugh at my shamelessness.
It's okay to feel like you're giving money to a beggar.
Pity is okay, anything is okay, just one more year.
A voice like an ice pick fell on Eun-seo's head as she waited impatiently for an answer.
"Let me give you some advice."
When she looked up, he was speaking with his arms crossed.
"Nothing so foolish as wasting your life waiting for someone who won't come back."
The coldness that flowed from his perfect lips seemed to freeze Eun-seo's heart.
"When will he come back? If he did, you'll have to do well and do this or do that for him. From morning till night you'll wait for him in vain...In fact, he doesn't even want to come back."
The last words sounded unusually excited, but before she could think of a reason, he had regained his usual coolness.
"If he wanted to come back, he would have by now."
"....."
"If he's not back by now, he's probably dead."
The words turned into a huge hammer and smashed into Eun-seo's head. Tinnitus rang in her ears and her mind was dazed.
"I understand your intentions, and I will not accept them. Is there anything else?"
Without waiting for an answer, he returned to his seat, picked up the phone and spoke to his secretary.
"The meeting is over."
As if to say, "Get her out of here right now."
*
Eun-seo staggered back home.
The late autumn day in early November was not long. Though she had left work early, the glass walls surrounding the great hall were already dazzling in the setting sun as she stepped into the courtyard.
The old renovated hanok was always beautiful in its own way, even when the sun went down, when it's snowed, or raining. I've lived in it for 15 years now, five years when my mother was alive and ten years since she died, and sometimes I find myself staring at it in fascination.
But today she didn't feel like it, so she sat down on the small veranda that connected the symmetrical small rooms and looked around the yard with tired eyes.
Eun-seo sighed when she realized that everything she could see now would be gone in three months.
The old house had its share of problems, but I'd never bothered to call the landlord and ask for repairs. She was afraid that if she bothered them, they would ask me to leave. As it turned out, there wasn't a corner of the apartment that Eun-seo hadn't touched.
The glass wall surrounding the main hall was too old to keep out the cold wind. It was only last year, after years of saving money, that I replaced it with insulated glass.
During the rainy season last summer, one side of the eaves collapsed significantly. All my summer bonuses were lost due to the repairs.
Where the reading table used to be, she removed the glass, put down a wooden deck, and a table with a sunshade was placed.
When the glass was being replaced, the owner of the renovation company told me that he had some leftover materials from another contractor's interior work, so she impulsively grabbed them.
She thought it would be nice to go out and have a cup of coffee when the weather was nice, but she felt guilty for some reason after decorating, so she never took the time to enjoy it.
And....
Eun-seo's eyes fell on the large apple tree that stood tall in the middle of the yard.
Her mother, who had left home alone one day to go to Busan to see the Yonghan shaman, returned the next day with a radiant face.
(T/N: Shamanism is a religious practice. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritual energies into the physical world for the purpose of healing, divination, or to aid human beings in some other way.)
[Eun-seo, our Eun-ho is alive. He'll come back!!!]
Eun-seo was in middle school at the time. Although she didn't really believe the shaman's words, she was happy to see her mother's face, which was always filled with tears and really hoped that she was right.
[She told me to plant an apple tree seedling in the yard, and that when the tree grew big enough to bear fruit, Eun-ho would come back.]
She bought a sapling that day, planted it, and took great care of it. She gave it plenty of fertilizer, picked out every bug with tweezers, shaded it in the summer so it wouldn't dry out, and dressed it in the winter so it wouldn't freeze to death.
Even when she died without seeing it bear fruit, she asked for the tree, not Eun-ho, until her last moments.
[Tree...Eunseo?]
To my mother, the two things probably meant the same thing.
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