XOXO, Miss Minnie - Chapter 55
CHAPTER 55
The living room fell into silence for a moment. It was the first time Taejun had shared personal information. Minhee had many things she wanted to know about Taejun, but she hesitated to ask personal questions, afraid he might think she was crossing a line. After all, they were just practice partners bound by a contract, not lovers.
Minhee took another sip of whiskey. The liquor burned down her esophagus and made her whole body burn.
‘I hope I don’t get drunk and start babbling again.’
Sure enough, to fill the awkward silence, Minhee began rambling whatever came to her mind.
“When I first came to the States, I briefly lived in Atlanta, then moved to Hilton Head Island after my mom passed away. There are hardly any Asians there, so I couldn’t really get into any trouble. Someone even tattled to my dad that they saw me watching a movie with a boy at the mall.”
“A boyfriend?”
“No, just a classmate. We happened to be sitting next to each other at the movie theater.”
Rambling on with unnecessary TMI, Minhee glanced at Taejun out of the corner of her eye. He was leaning back, eyes down, tipping his whisky glass to his lips.
His bangs slightly covered his forehead, concealing scars that ran across his eyebrows, and his straight nose seemed to almost touch the thin whiskey glass.
‘Is it just my imagination, or did his lips, tinged with whiskey, curl up a bit?’
There was something slightly different about Taejun’s mood today. Maybe it was the alcohol, but the sharp, weighty aura he usually had when he entered a room seemed to have faded a bit. Instead, a strange tension made Minhee’s heart race.
‘What kind of person are you Baek Taejun? I’m so curious.’
Minhee stole a glance at Taejun, observing his slightly relaxed demeanor, and finally gathered the courage to speak.
“What about you, Taejun? When did you come to America? Have you been living in New York the whole time? How have you adapted to life in America? I wasn’t very good at it when I first came here, and I always said I wanted to go back to Korea. Oh, Luca mentioned you served in the military… When did your parents… Oh! Sorry. I had too many questions. You can ignore the last one.”
“…”
Taejun’s deep and intense gaze briefly locked onto Minhee’s eyes.
‘He doesn’t seem inclined to talk about his story.’
Taejun slowly spoke up.
“Even if you listen, it’ll be boring and uninteresting.”
Minhee shook her head vigorously. Then she picked what she considered the safest question to ask again.
“That’s not true. I’m curious. When did you come to the United States, Taejun?”
Taejun picked up his whiskey glass and swirled it around. The sound of ice clinking echoed. Minhee, who had been holding her breath and waiting anxiously while looking at Taejun for a while, awkwardly turned her head. Then, just as she was about to change the subject.
“I came here when I was 9. Settled in a small town near Boston.
Taejun’s voice, a nice low, resonant bass, spoke dryly as if he were telling someone else’s
“I adapted pretty well. For the first 2 years or so, everyone in my family was happy…….”
As Minhee pulled the loose end of the tangled thread, which she thought had stiffened into a mess, it began to unravel on its own accord.
When Taejun was about 8 years old, a documentary crew came to Korea to film him for a program about child prodigies worldwide. It was then that he met Professor Steven Silverman, a neuroscientist, who proposed Taejun’s study in the United States.
His father was thrilled. But his mother opposed sending a young Taejun alone. So his father decided to move the whole family. Looking back now, his father seemed to have little attachment to the land where he was born and raised.
Upon arriving in the United States, Taejun underwent a simple test and was admitted to a gifted school affiliated with a university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
There, Taejun discovered his talents not only in photographic memory but also in mathematics, physics, and engineering. After a couple of months, his English became fluent, and he met his first peers who understood what he was saying without explanation.
Children who attend gifted schools often have significantly poorer language and social skills compared to their brain development, but Taejun was evaluated as having a balanced development in all areas at the time and was called an “all-arounder.”
“My brother got a girlfriend as soon as he entered school and I remember him practicing driving behind my mom’s back with the intention of getting his license as soon as he turned 16.”
Taejun stared into the distance, as if digging up memories from a long time ago.
“My father got a job at a company introduced by Professor Silverman, and my mother planted Korean vegetables in the small backyard. As for me… I felt interested in going to school for the first time in my life. Around two years after immigrating, my father was laid off from his job.”
“Oh…….”
Minhee, who had been listening intently to Taejun without even breathing, let out a small sigh.
“When the company’s financial situation became difficult, foreign employees who needed work visas or permanent residence sponsors were the first to be laid off. It’s a common occurrence.”
Yet, Taejun spoke calmly.
“My father, unable to find another job for a while, pooled all the money he had to start a coin laundry business with someone. But they were swindled and lost all the money.”
After taking a sip of whiskey, Taejun paused for a moment.
“My father told us not to worry, that he would handle everything. And he ran around busily trying to catch the swindler. My mother got a job as a cashier at a nearby mart without my father knowing.”
Taejun thought this was a typical story even in ordinary immigrant families. It wasn’t anything special because it was too common.
Immigrant parents sacrifice themselves, taking on menial jobs they never had in Korea, and pouring everything they have into their children’s education so that their grown children can enter “mainstream society” in the United States.
In the end, the hardships of immigration are justified by the parents’ self-selected choice. But the real tragedy came later.
“My mother took the bus on her first day of work and got involved in a four-car collision on the highway, killing her on the spot.”
Minhee sharply inhaled, bringing her hand to her mouth.
Taejun’s father suffered because of his sense of responsibility and pride as the head of the family. Unable to bear the suffering of his family due to his own wrong decisions, he repeatedly discouraged his wife from going to work.
On the day of the accident, his mother, secretly going to work without his father’s knowledge, took the bus instead of the car. And she met with an accident.
“My dad…… loved my mom dearly, I could see it even in my young eyes.”
Taejun took a deep breath. Whenever he thought about his family, it felt like there was a lump in his chest, squeezing tight. Even now, the reason why he was telling Minhee his childhood stories among so many people was becoming vague. Taejun just spewed out the long-held grudges like squeezing out pus.
His father, who had nothing, an orphan from birth, often thanked his well-raised mother in an ordinary household for marrying him.
There were times when the towering presence of the father seemed comically like a dog wagging its tail around the mother, desperately craving her affection.
Even in front of them, their children, he would constantly profess his love, saying, ‘I can’t live without you, Yoojin. You’re more important than the kids. I love you, Yoojin.’
At his mother’s funeral, his father cried like a child and then lost consciousness. To Taejun, that memory was strangely vivid.
‘If I hadn’t been scammed… if you hadn’t… I killed you. A well-raised person like you married someone like me and suffered like this. It’s all because of me! How can I live without you… I’m sorry, Yoojin…’
Taejun and his brother hugged each other in shock and cried. Their father had broken down in an instant, and he was no longer the adult they could rely on. Instead of mourning his mother’s death, the change in his father brought even greater fear to Taejun.
They sold the car, sold everything that could fetch money, and moved to a one-room apartment in the Lawrence neighborhood, one of the worst slums in the city. The place reeked of cannabis even in broad daylight, and at night, the sound of someone fighting or breaking something was loud.
Taejun dropped out of the gifted school and transferred to the local public elementary school, where the kids grew up fast. Boys were following the neighborhood gangs by the age of twelve, and girls were selling their bodies for money.
Even the teachers were afraid of the students, hastily filling class time and fleeing the classroom as soon as the bell rang. Despite this, the school was a refuge for Taejun, a place where he could have a proper meal.
His father gave up searching for the swindler and locked himself in his room, eating and drinking nothing but alcohol until his face turned ashen.
When his older brother was at home, they could at least manage to scrape together some dinner using food stamps for low-income families. With a six-year age gap, his brother had become a high school senior and stubbornly refused to transfer schools. Instead, he rode the bus for over an hour every day to his high school in the Boston suburbs.
On a sweltering late summer day without air conditioning, his brother handed him his ID and all the money he had earned from summer jobs. He was leaving for college in New York State on a scholarship.
‘Taejun, you’re growing up now, so don’t skip meals. I’m sorry for leaving you behind. I’m really sorry…’
His eyes were red and he ruffled Taejun’s hair.
‘Just endure for six months. I’ll work hard to save money during that time so we can live together starting from the spring semester.’