Chapter 2.4

Walking a few more minutes along the winding path, she arrived at a small yard and the annex used as quarters for the live-in staff. Guarding the dark yard were a crookedly placed blue spruce tree and a pagoda tree.  

All the perfectly shaped and beautiful trees adorned the front of the mansion, so the ones here were trees with some kind of flaw. Next to the golden pagoda tree, whose branches had thinned significantly due to a long-ago pest infestation, a young pagoda tree extended its yellow trunk.  

Su-eon noticed a faint light seeping out from the workshop attached to the annex. A gray-haired man sat on a low plastic chair, swiftly and skillfully tying bundles of twigs that had piled up on the floor. His hands moved deftly, like those of a master who had spent a lifetime perfecting his craft.  

Su-eon sat on the wooden bench, silently observing the hunched back of the man immersed in his labor. Inside the folding doors, which were wide open, a large fan spun relentlessly, while a small radio on the shelf played the song <The Camellia Lady>.  

<Countless nights I cannot measure, consumed by the pain that carves my heart…> 

Moths chasing the light flew toward the lamp and clung to it in clusters.  

Su-eon thought they resembled her. Her father had never let go of her, even for a moment, when she was a baby. Thus, her world began while clinging to his back.  

“Su-eon…?”  

The man, who had been straightening his hunched back and looking outside, spotted Su-eon and immediately jumped up, running toward her.  

{When did you get here, my princess!} 

His surprised face was filled with joy. Su-eon smiled brightly, lightly touching her thumb and pinky finger together before pulling her hand back toward her side.  

“Just now.”  

{You should’ve called me.}  

His clumsy voice followed half a beat behind the excited signs he made. Su-eon responded slowly and clearly, alternating between spoken words and sign language.  

“I couldn’t. You looked busy.”  

{I’m not busy. Come in quickly, or the mosquitoes will bite you.}  

Seon-tae removed his work gloves and gently pushed Su-eon toward the inside. Turning the fan’s head in her direction, Su-eon silently gazed at her father’s sweat-soaked face.  

“Mute Ji.” That’s what people called him, and Su-eon was his daughter. She was a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults). She had never seen her mother. Her mother, who was not disabled, had left right after giving birth to Su-eon. Her father had raised her alone.  

“Hot…, right? Just…wait…”  

“It’s okay, Dad. Take your time.”  

Perhaps too preoccupied to notice Su-eon’s signing, Seon-tae busily dusted off the dirt-covered sofa and seated her before closing the folding doors completely and turning on the air conditioner.  

Before becoming hearing-impaired due to an accident, her father had been born into a wealthy rural family and had even studied abroad in England. However, he injured his ears while playing soccer there and had to return to Korea. Her grandmother sold land and cattle to try to cure her son. He underwent numerous surgeries, but the restoration of his lost hearing was minimal. Meanwhile, the family’s fortunes declined.  

After her grandfather passed away, her grandmother became the head of the family, and the only thing left to her was her son, who had become disabled. The daughter had left, saying she was tired of how the family only cared for her brother. The son, who had once been the pride of her grandmother since his birth, was no longer a source of pride.

Su-eon had never heard much about her mother either. Her grandmother only referred to her as a despicable woman who had abandoned even her own child. After spending the rest of her life caring for her disabled son, her grandmother, feeling relieved once Su-eon learned to walk and talk, moved back to the countryside. From that moment on, Su-eon had to become the bridge between her father and the world.

At the bank, at the supermarket, even during parent-teacher conferences at school, Su-eon had to sit between her father and others to interpret their words. She grew up in a state of confusion, unsure whether she was still a child or already an adult.

When Su-eon was around eight years old, she followed her father to Chairwoman Wang’s house. Her father worked in the vast mansion, managing the trees and flowers while raising Su-eon. He worked diligently every day, as if to show his loyalty to Chairwoman Wang for taking him and his daughter in.

Seon-tae, who had fitted himself with a hearing aid just to hear his daughter’s voice a little better, finally lowered the radio volume and sat down in front of Su-eon.

{Did you eat?}  

“Of course, what time do you think it is?”  

{What did you eat?}  

“Meat.”  

{Good job, my princess. You love meat, don’t you?}  

With a childlike innocence, he smiled, placing his thumb against the tip of his nose and extending it upward. Seon-tae, who didn’t have a congenital disability, had been able to communicate using spoken words. However, as he aged, his speech had gradually deteriorated, and now he could only speak with slurred pronunciation. Perhaps because of this, he had stopped speaking in public at some point and communicated solely through sign language.  

“What about you, Dad? What did you have for dinner?”  

He explained that the housekeeper had made soy milk from fresh black beans and cooked noodles, also frying pancakes to share with the staff. Hearing this, Su-eon extended her thumb in a fist and raised it upward.  

“That sounds delicious. Auntie’s soy milk noodles are the best.”  

{Should I pack some leftover soy milk for you? Do you want to take it?}  

“Now?”  

{Yes, we made a lot, so there’s some left.}  

“No, I already had something better.”  

{Wait here.}  

Watching her father bustling around, eager to give his late-night visitor something, Su-eon spoke.  

“It’s okay, Dad. I’m leaving now.”  

However, her father, having already turned his back, didn’t hear her and went inside. When he returned a short while later, he was holding a Polapo ice cream, frozen fruit juice on a stick.  

“You, like, Polapo.”  

“Did you buy this for me?”  

When Su-eon asked with exaggerated lip movements, her father smiled brightly. Wrapping the frosty ice cream in a towel, he handed it to her.  

“Eat.”  

Su-eon stared blankly at the ice cream she used to suck on as a child while clinging to her father’s back, as if draining the strength from his spine. She peeled off the wrapper and licked the rock-hard, frozen surface of the ice. The sweet and rich grape flavor spread through her mouth, leaving her palate tingling from the cold.  

{Does it taste good?}  

“Yeah, it’s refreshing.”  

Her father smiled with satisfaction.  

{Are you busy? Did you just get off work?}  

“No, I just stopped by for a bit. Did you finish pruning?”  

{Yeah, with the rainy season coming soon, I had to get it done ahead of time.}  

Even outside of the rainy season, taking care of a mansion with over 200 pyeong (approximately 660 square meters) of land alone was no easy task. Although there was a contracted landscaping company, they only visited once a month as a formality.  

“Just let the ones that can’t handle a bit of rain die off, and only raise the strong ones. It’s not like the Chairwoman is here, and there’s no one to look at the flowers morning and night anyway.”  

Chairwoman Wang, who had stepped down from her managerial duties due to old age, was staying in Japan for recovery after undergoing several surgeries.  

Seon-tae looked at his daughter’s curt expression with affectionate eyes, then showed her a photo of flowers he had taken with his phone camera. The picture captured the elegant beauty of zinnias, their pale pink flower stalks just beginning to bloom.  

“Isn’t this beautiful?”  

What’s the point of beauty? Flowers don’t last forever.  

Cherry blossoms, which turned the world white every spring and inspired countless events, would fall within a week. In years like this one, when abnormal weather disrupted their blooming schedule, the falling petals dragged sales down with them. Cherry blossom festivals, cherry blossom packages, cherry blossom promotions. The flower Su-eon hated most was the cherry blossom.  

“I told you, forget about the pretty ones and just grow the strong ones.”  

{Zinnias are strong.}  

“Really?”  

{Yeah, they’re very hardy in the summer, so they bloom all the way into autumn.}  

“Well, I guess that’s why they’re called zinnias, huh.”  

Even as Su-eon responded indifferently, Seon-tae continued flipping through the photos.  

{Come see them when they’re all in bloom. Zinnias bloom in clusters, so when they’re fully bloomed, they’re incredibly beautiful.}  

Seon-tae, who loved flowers, seemed as innocent as a pure-hearted young man. 

Was there anything else he liked as much as flowers? 

Su-eon suddenly grew curious.  

“Who was your first love, Dad? Was it Mom by any chance?”  

{Nope.}  

His unexpected answer caught her off guard.  

“Then who was it?”  

{There was someone—a person as beautiful as a flower.}  

Oh, really? 

Although Su-eon and her father had never had an open conversation about her mother, she had assumed he had loved her mother single-mindedly. Raising one eyebrow slightly, she smirked.  

“Not bad.”

Perhaps taking it as a compliment, Seon-tae shrugged his shoulders and smiled.  

“What kind of flower did she resemble?”  

{Silverleaf.}  

She must have been a graceful and elegant woman. Su-eon imagined leaves with a soft greenish hue and thought about it. Then, suddenly, an impulsive question slipped out.  

“Then what about Mom? What kind of flower did she resemble?”  

Ever since hearing that her mother had abandoned her, Su-eon had never asked about her. It hurt her pride to be curious about someone who had left her behind and never once sought her out as she grew up.  

Sensing this, Seon-tae blinked in surprise, looking flustered.