이 포스팅은 쿠팡 파트너스 활동의 일환으로, 이에 따른 일정액의 수수료를 제공받습니다.
Christmas Eve in Seoul was not quiet.
This was something he had known in his previous life but had stopped noticing—the way familiarity converted the remarkable into the unremarkable, so that by fifty he would not have thought to note that Christmas Eve in this city was, uniquely, louder than Christmas Day. The couples, mostly—the specific Korean social grammar that had made December twenty-fourth a couples’ occasion, which meant the streets were full of a particular kind of anticipatory energy and the chicken-and-pizza delivery apps were overwhelmed and the apartment buildings had a different texture of light in their windows, warmer and more deliberate than the ordinary Tuesday evening.
He had lived in large apartments in his previous life, the kind where you could not hear your neighbors’ specific conversations, only the general evidence of their presence. The apartment in Mangwon was not that kind. He could hear, from his room, most of what happened in the kitchen.
This was how he knew what he knew by nine o’clock on December twenty-fourth.
The afternoon had been ordinary. Sooa made tteok for no particular reason except that she had wanted to make tteok, and the apartment filled with the specific smell of rice cake being prepared, which was a holiday smell without being specifically a Christmas smell—a Korean winter smell, which was its own category. Dongshik had come home at noon having canceled the afternoon rehearsal, which was not unusual for December twenty-fourth, and had spent the afternoon in the apartment with the particular restlessness of someone who had canceled the rehearsal and was not entirely sure what to do with himself.
He had spent the day in his room. Not alone-alone—the door open, the sounds of the apartment coming in, his parents moving through the afternoon. He read. He did the drawing he’d been doing since the year-end party: not the house-with-deliberate-wrong-lines, but something else, the tape marks from the rehearsal room reproduced from memory, the rectangle of the stage space with the center line and the downstage edge. He had been drawing stage plans the way other children drew houses and animals. He didn’t know why.
At some point in the afternoon his father appeared at his door.
“Mwo hae?” (What are you doing?)
He held up the drawing. Stage marks.
His father looked at it. The look lasted longer than it would have if it had been a house. “Yeong-seup sil?” (Rehearsal room?) He had recognized the tape configuration.
“Eung.” (Yeah.)
His father came in and looked at the drawing more closely—the specific way he looked at something he found interesting, which was: completely, without the partial attention that adults often gave children’s drawings. He looked at it. Then: “Yeo-gi-neun dal-la.” (This part is different.) He pointed at the downstage mark. “Gong-yeon-jang ma-da dal-la. I geo-neun yo-gi-ye-seo.” (Every theater’s different. This one’s from our space.)
“Al-a-yo.” (I know.) He had drawn it from memory. He’d known.
His father set the drawing down on the desk. “Eom-ma ga tteok man-deu-reo.” (Mama’s making tteok.) The announcement without the question—the you-should-come invitation.
They went to the kitchen.
The evening began at six, approximately. Not the evening as a formal thing—just the point at which the light outside went completely and the apartment’s interior lights took over and the day became something different. Sooa had made the tteok and something else—a soup, because December—and the three of them ate at seven the way they always ate at seven, except that the apartment had the Christmas Eve texture to it, the slightly-different-than-usual quality of a holiday that the household observed without making a large occasion of.
They had a small tree. It had been there since the first of December, a tabletop size, on the shelf near the window. It had lights that Sooa had strung on a Tuesday evening while his father was at rehearsal and Woojin was at the kitchen table with a book. The lights were small and warm-colored and had been blinking in their specific rhythm since December first.
He ate his dinner and looked at the tree’s reflection in the window—the small warm blinks, the city dark beyond.
“Oeneul jeo-nyeok-neun joa?” (Good evening today?) Sooa to Dongshik, the question she used sometimes to check the temperature without asking directly.
“Gwaen-chan-a.” (Fine.) His father’s answer, which in this context meant: functional, not particular.
She received this. Ate. “Ga-neul mae ju-neun geo-ya?” (Are you going next week?)
He felt the slight change in the question—not in her voice, which was neutral, but in what the question was carrying. Next week was the last rehearsal week of the year, the one before the holiday break that 맨발 극단 took in the last week of December.
“A-ma-do.” (Probably.) His father’s answer with the specific quality of a probably that was actually less certain than probably—a probably that had something underneath it.
That, he noted. That is the thing from the gym.
Nobody said anything else about it. The conversation moved to the tteok, which was good, and whether there was more soup, and something Sooa had seen on her way home earlier. The dinner ended. Woojin helped bring plates to the sink the way he always helped. His father washed. Sooa dried. The familiar division, the familiar sounds of the kitchen’s end-of-meal.
He went to his room at eight-thirty. He left the door open.
At nine, the conversation in the kitchen began.
Not an argument—he registered this immediately, because arguments had a different sound, a different temperature of voice. This was the other kind of conversation, the kind that was low and careful and continuous, the kind that happened when something needed to be addressed and both people knew it and had been waiting for the right moment and had decided the right moment was now, after the child was in bed.
He was not in bed. He was lying on top of it, book in hand, door open.
He did not move. He did not make sounds. He had been six years old for almost seven years and he knew the acoustics of this apartment with complete precision: from his bed, with the door open and the kitchen sounds unimpeded, he could hear approximately seventy percent of what was said in the kitchen if both speakers were audible. The remaining thirty percent was inference.
He listened.
“…geun-il-i ji-na-neun geo-ya?” (…is it just passing?)
His father’s voice, lower: “Mo-reu-ge-seo. Min-su-ga—” (I don’t know. Minsu—) And then something lost in the percentage.
“…eu-ma-na na-ppa?” (…how bad?)
“Gu-wol-bu-teo.” (Since September.) A pause. “Sa-mu-sil im-dae-ryo-ga ol-la-gat-go, dae-gwan-do.” (The office rent went up, and attendance too.) The and-attendance-too with the specific inflection of something going the wrong direction. “Ji-nan-bun-gi-e se-pyeon-i—” (Last quarter three shows—) Lost.
“…eo-tteo-ke hal geo-ya?” (…what are you going to do?)
His father’s pause. Long enough to count.
“Mo-reu-ge-sseo. ” (I don’t know.) Then, quieter: “Jeo-do gat-i mo-reu-neun geot gat-a. Min-su-do, Ju-yeon-i-do.” (I think they also don’t know. Minsu, Juyeon too.)
“Hae-che-ha-myeon?” (If it dissolves?)
Another pause. He could hear the sound of something being set down—a cup, probably. “Geu-leo-ke dwaen-da-go saeng-gak-an geon a-ni-ya.” (I don’t think it’ll come to that.) But the tone: I don’t want to think it will, which is different from thinking it won’t.
“Geu-raen-de man-yak-e?” (But if it does?)
“…Gwaen-chan-a.” (…It’ll be fine.) The gwaen-chan-a that was not the gwaen-chan-a of actual fineness but the gwaen-chan-a of I am choosing to end this line of the conversation because I don’t have an answer.
Sooa’s voice: something he couldn’t catch. Soft.
Then his father: “Al-a. Al-a.” (I know. I know.) The doubled al-a of someone receiving something they already knew and were receiving again.
Silence. Not the silence of the conversation ending—the silence of a conversation deciding where to go next.
He lay on the bed and looked at the ceiling and held the information he had.
맨발 극단. Since September. Rent up, attendance down. Three shows last quarter something—three shows something wrong. Minsu and Juyeon and his father and the others in the rented room on the third floor with the green wall, twelve years of working there, and the thing that was starting.
He had understood this in the gym after the year-end party. He had not known the specifics. Now he knew some of the specifics. Not all—thirty percent was inference—but enough.
Twelve years, he thought.
He thought of his father on the Saturday bus with the script in his jacket pocket and the lines going through him. He thought of the rehearsal room, the tape on the floor, the specific smell of it. He thought of 분식집 on the second floor, the 떡볶이 his father ordered without looking at the menu.
Twelve years, and now: since September.
He turned over on the bed. The book was still in his hand, unread for the last twenty minutes. He set it on the nightstand.
Through the wall: his parents had moved from the kitchen to the living room. The conversation continued in the lower register, not for him.
The Christmas tree’s lights were blinking in their pattern in the other room.
He lay in the dark and thought about what twelve years was.
In his previous life, twelve years had been: the gap between his first major role and his first industry award, or the gap between his marriage and his wife leaving, or approximately one-ninth of the life he’d had. Things that had felt like a long time when they were happening and looked, from the end of a hundred years, like the width of a hand.
In this life, twelve years was twice what he had lived. Twelve years ago he had not existed.
And appa has been in that room for twelve years, he thought. With Cho Minsu and Kwon Juyeon and the tape on the floor and the green wall. Twelve years of the right amount of air in the right places.
He didn’t know what happened to a person if the thing they had spent twelve years building came apart. He knew abstractly—he had watched it happen in his previous life, to other people, the dissolution of companies and partnerships and the careers that depended on them. He knew what it looked like from the outside.
He did not know, from the inside, what it felt like to be his father in September, October, November, December, carrying the thing the play required while also carrying the other thing—the rent, the attendance, the three shows in the last quarter—carrying both of them without letting either one collapse.
He is still doing it correctly, he thought. He came to the gym this morning. He watched me do the year-end play. He saw the three seconds. And under all of that the other thing was going, and he didn’t let it into his face.
That is the performance I couldn’t see.
At nine forty-five his father appeared at the door.
Not unexpected. He had heard the footsteps in the hall.
“Ja?” (Sleeping?) He could see that Woojin was not sleeping. He asked anyway.
“A-ni-yo.” (No.)
His father came in. Sat on the edge of the bed the way he had been sitting on the living room floor for the August lessons—the floor posture, the serious-things posture. He was not performing anything. His face was the face of someone who had just had a difficult conversation and was now on the other side of it.
“Deul-yeoss-eo?” (Did you hear?)
He considered lying. He was capable of lying—had been capable since he could speak, the calibration available whenever it was needed. He considered it for two seconds and decided against it.
“Jo-geum-yo.” (A little.)
His father nodded. Not surprised. He had probably known Woojin would hear—the apartment’s acoustics were no secret—and had had the conversation anyway, which meant the conversation had been more necessary than the privacy had been.
“Meo-raesseo?” (Were you worried?)
He thought about this honestly. Was he worried?
“Appa-ga gwaen-chan-eun-ji. ” (Whether appa is okay.) The specific thing he was worried about. Not the 극단 in the abstract—his father, specifically.
“Na-neun gwaen-chan-a.” (I’m fine.) His father said it with the gwaen-chan-a that was closer to actual fineness than the one in the kitchen—the one that had his name attached to it, which made it more specific and therefore more probably true.
“Geu-raen-de gwaen-chan-ji-an-eun geo-yo.” (But something is not okay.) He said it without challenge—just the observation. Both things can be true.
His father looked at him. The long look.
“Eung.” (Yeah.) Simply. Both things are true.
They sat for a moment. The Christmas lights from the living room making a small blink of warm color against the hallway wall, the rhythm of it.
“Duel da mat-neun geo-ya?” (Both are true at the same time?) He had said this in August, to his father’s contradiction about the audience. Both can be true.
“Geu-ryeo,” his father said. (They can.) The slight smile of someone recognizing a callback. “Gwaen-chan-a, geu-raen-de ddo gwaen-chan-ji an-a.” (Fine, and also not fine.) He said it without performance—the actual condition, stated.
“Jeo-do geu-raet-eo-yo.” (I’m the same way.) He said it before he’d decided to say it. Not planned—just: true.
His father looked at him.
“Gwaen-chan-a-yo, geu-raen-de ddo gwaen-chan-ji-an-a-yo.” (I’m fine, and also not fine.) He said it about himself—about the three seconds at the year-end play, about the observer that left and returned, about the knowing-too-much and the learning-to-unknow, about being six years old and having a hundred years of knowledge that made being six the hardest role. Not all of that—the surface of it. Fine and not fine.
His father sat on the edge of his bed and received this.
“Geu-geo-ya,” he said. (That’s it.) Not that’s the thing about you—that’s the thing. The universal condition, named. Fine and not fine, at the same time, always. “Geu-ge—sa-neun geo-ya.” (That’s—living.)
The Christmas tree lights in the other room.
The city doing its Christmas Eve work outside.
“Ja-la,” his father said. (Sleep.) He stood up. He adjusted the blanket, the parent gesture—the covering that children received without asking for it. “Ga-eum-e ne-ga a-ppa-rang ga-do dae-ya.” (You can come with appa again sometime.) Meaning: the rehearsal room. Meaning: I want to bring you back.
“Ne.” (Yes.) Then: “Appa.“
“Eung.“
“I geo—gwaen-chan-a-jil geo-ya.” (This—it’ll be okay.) The 극단. The thing from September. He said it not as reassurance—he didn’t know if it would be okay. He said it because it was what he had, and what he had was the observation that his father had been carrying two things at once for three months and was still standing in this room.
His father looked at him. The look that did not have a category.
“Geurae,” he said. (Right.) He turned off the light. “Ja-la.” (Sleep well.)
He left the door slightly open—the way it was always left—and his footsteps went back down the hall toward the living room where Sooa was, and the conversation that still had more to say.
He lay in the dark and looked at the ceiling and listened to the apartment settle around him.
The Christmas tree lights were visible from here if he tilted his head—a slice of warm blink through the open door, the rhythm of it unchanged. The city outside was doing what it did on Christmas Eve, the particular sound of it, different from a Tuesday.
Fine and not fine, he thought. At the same time. Always.
He thought of his father in the rehearsal room on the Saturday, doing everything he had. He thought of the space between the lines that Kwon Juyeon had been trying to find—the place where the air went. He thought of his father carrying the older brother’s interior life in his hands while also, underneath, carrying the September thing, the rent and the attendance and what Cho Minsu had said.
He was still doing it correctly, he thought. Even with the other thing. He was still finding the air.
He thought of thirty seconds in a December courtyard, running, the observer gone.
He thought of three seconds at the year-end play, the calibration failing, the real thing coming through briefly before the professional management returned.
He thought of his father saying: better than yesterday. The only honest unit of measurement.
Better than yesterday, he thought. That is what next year is.
He was six years old, and February was coming, and after February was March, and after March was elementary school, and the city outside was full of couples on Christmas Eve because that was what Seoul did with December twenty-fourth, and in the apartment his parents were talking in the living room in the low voices of two people who had been through things together and were going through another thing together now.
He was, he found, not afraid.
This surprised him slightly—the not-afraid. He had the information, the fragments from the kitchen, the weight of what twelve years of building could look like from the inside when it started to be in question. He had the historical knowledge of his previous life, the knowledge of what these kinds of crises could become. He had all of that.
And he was not afraid.
Because he is still doing it correctly, he thought again. The air is still going where it goes. And that is—sufficient. That is what you have. And it is sufficient.
Outside, a sound: someone on the street below, a brief laugh, the Christmas Eve street doing its thing. And then the ordinary Seoul quiet that was never quite quiet, just the particular frequency of a city at rest.
The lights blinked.
He closed his eyes.
Merry Christmas, he thought, to nobody in particular, to the ceiling, to the city outside, to the year that was almost done.
Better than yesterday.
He slept.