In the meantime, maybe I can sleep.
Right here, in the open air?
Right here, by the tarn?
Right here, by the cherry tree?
‘Binnaaa!’ they shout.
‘Coming, coming… .’
Chapter 3 – And it was pitch dark.
‘This is where we’ll live, dear,’ my mother mumbled with a weak, strained smile.
I looked at her incredulously. She was pale, broken, and unsure of herself, doubting she did the right thing by leaving my father. She was not sure that this battered two-room apartment in a two-story old house that slanted slightly to the left would be better for her and her daughter than at home, there, at home.
‘I can’t believe it’s true.’ The silence jarred on my ears. I was not used to this. I was sixteen, and this was my last year of school. And I would spend it in this blissful silence? I did not believe it.
‘And yet it’s true, my dear.’ My mother put her arm around my shoulders and added, ‘No one else will hurt you anymore. You’re perfectly safe here.’
‘I’m so tired….’ I muttered, putting a million meanings into the phrase.
‘I know.’ My mother’s eyes filled with tears. ‘But everything will be all right now! We’ll live like queens, right?’
I smiled, more out of solidarity.
‘Yes! Yes,’ said she. ‘I’m going to go find some stores, buy us something… delicious to… celebrate… that we’re… alone now… without your father… .’
‘Mom.’
‘Alone now… ’
‘Mom.’
‘Okay, Binna. All right, we’ll get through it. Mom’s just a little scared, you know? I’ll go look for some stores and buy us something—’
‘Delicious to celebrate. Yes, mom, you already said that.’ It hurt to look at her.
‘Yes, that’s it. I will find us some goodies. And you stay in the house. At home, that is. I’ll be right back.’ And she ran out of the house as fast as she could so as not to cry in my presence.
I entered the sparsely furnished room that was meant to be my home and, for the first time in years…
It was pitch dark…
Chapter 4 – Stultifying effect of love.
Whether by my own will or against it, a girl has to meet the “bad guy,” who would determine what slope her life would go down if she falls in love with him.
And here I was, Binna Lee, a sixteen-year-old nerd without a single friend of my free will, standing and gazing with infatuated eyes at the local “celebrity” – the bad guy named Dae-jung. The bad one without quotation, because the everyday life of this popular, handsome young lad comprised conflicts at school, loitering about the streets with friends as dubious as himself, with mandatory alcohol drinking and getting involved in fights.