I Couldn't Tell You Who It Was

There was one more reason why Yeonseon was special to me.

Yeonseon was someone I could love without feeling guilty.

My grandmother accepted everything I said when I was younger. She was the only adult and only understanding person on whom I could rely when I was a child. However, after my mother’s death, I became a guilty criminal to my grandmother.

She cared for me deeply, but rather than warmth and peace from her affection, I felt punishment at first. The more she showed her love for me, tears kept streaming from my eyes and my heart was in such excruciating agony. I couldn’t look my grandmother in the eyes, and I felt so miserable when I was alone with her that I always avoided being together with her.

I wanted to go to a middle school with dormitories. Only then would I not see my grandmother anymore. Every time I was at my grandmother’s house, I remembered my black-eyed mother who, after she died, floated around my grandmother. The torrent of guilt made me feel like I could shrivel to death.

Not long after I entered middle school, my grandmother passed away. I didn’t know what exactly happened, but apparently, she was attacked by a wild animal when she went to the back of the mountains to collect raspberries.

When I heard the news, I rushed to the hospital. However, I was too late and all I could see was my grandmother’s pale cadaver.

Instead of being able to hear the last breath of my grandmother, I was left with the basket of raspberries that she left behind. According to her last words, she had picked the berries to give to me, her grandchild, so my uncles gave me the basket. I hugged the basket and cried for a long time.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—I apologized again and again to an ambiguous subject. I thought that everything was my fault.

I couldn’t eat a single raspberry. My uncle clicked his tongue, saying that the berries would go bad at that rate, but couldn’t say anything else. I collected the seeds from the rotten berries and carried them around in a glass vial.

I didn’t know before, but my grandmother was worried for me. Believing that I would be left alone in the world, she took out an insurance policy. The beneficiary of the life insurance was me. It seemed like she took it out in case something happened to her and she died.

Thanks to that, I didn’t need to go to an orphanage. My uncles and their wives split the insurance money and raised me while taking turns.

“The glass vial. Where is it now?” Yeonseon asked when he heard the story of my grandmother. He really wanted to see the glass bottle. He was curious as to whether it was still intact and if I still carried it around. I thought he was weird for asking such things.

“I don’t have it,” I answered, and he was greatly disappointed.

“Why not?”

“When I was going to school, the kid who bullied me dumped my entire bag in the incinerator. Everything inside was burned to ashes.” That was why even though that classmate changed as if he was shedding all his past sins and became kind to me, I cursed at him and avoided him. Even if he threw himself off the rooftop because of me, I could never forgive him. There were too many things he did before he became good that made me reject him.

I could never forget what Yeonseon mumbled after. “Oh… So that was why you got so mad.” I was the one who was digging up memories long buried, but he said that as if he was reminiscing his past.

For a moment, I tried to recall whether I told Yeonseon that I was an outcast. Then, I thought that maybe I did tell him. Yeonseon wanted to know a lot about me, and I answered most things honestly when I could.

Yeonseon looked so happy as he got to know me, step by step, that it pulled my heartstrings.

Yeonseon grasped my hand tightly and whispered, “It’s all right, Haeseo. I’ll give you lots of things from now on. I’ll give you things that you’ll like so that you won’t be in pain whenever you think of the glass vial.”

Just as he said he would, he gave me many things: mini bouquets, an animal-eared headband, a green colored pencil, a dolphin eraser, a small jam jar, matching gold rings, chocolate wrapped in pretty packaging, perfume, candy that tasted refreshing in your throat, bellflower root tea, a golden tumbler, a cute glass cup, gloves, socks, scarves, and many other things. He would pick up anything he could lay his hands on, saying that he picked it up on the way because it reminded him of me.

That was why I couldn’t bear to tell him that what my grandmother gave me was precious to me because she was the one who gave it to me. How could I tell him that? He just wanted me to forget those painful memories and replace them with happy and delightful memories of things that he gifted to me.

I thought he was so lovable for studying and memorizing everything about me.

“Thank you.” What else could I say but those words?

“I love you.” When I told him that, Yeonseon laughed like he was on top of the world and kissed me.

That was how it was.