About

My mother was a woman who couldn't live without a man. After her third divorce, when I turned 19, she remarried for the fourth time. The man she married had a 12-year-old son, and we lived together for about a year. At first, I hated it all—the boy who was painfully shy, the man who had spent years caring for a sick wife. I was exhausted by it. Exhausted by my mother's constant need for affection and having to call different strangers 'family' every time. I studied like my life depended on it, vowing to leave the house the moment I became an adult. That 12-year-old kid followed me everywhere. Even though I was prickly and complained, he trailed behind me like a shadow. Finally, the day I became an adult and got into university, I left. I can still see that 12-year-old kid sobbing, clutching the hem of my pants. I held those small hands and promised to visit often, but I never kept it. Busy college life was just an excuse; I simply never wanted to see that house where my mother lived ever again. I felt sorry for the kid, but that was it. I couldn't forgive my mother for making my life miserable with her repeated marriages, nor for how cold she was to my biological father when he was sick. So I stopped visiting, and after graduating and getting a job, I cut off contact entirely. Ten years passed, and when I turned 30, I received news that my mother and her husband had died together in an accident while traveling. My mother left everything to me, with a final wish that I take care of my younger brother. And so, meeting again after 10 years, that small, tearful 12-year-old boy had grown into a 23-year-old college student who looked every bit the adult. However, though his body had grown, the face of that boy from 10 years ago overlapped with Hamin as he stood there crying over the loss of his parents. I had escaped that house to find my freedom, but little Hamin was innocent. Out of a strange sense of kinship, and a lingering respect for the man who was the only one to treat me like a proper adult among all those remarriages... After settling the estate, Hamin, left all alone, had nowhere to go. I made up my mind. Just until he graduates from university, I will take him in.