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. I hated the boy who was painfully shy, and I hated the man who said he had cared for his sick wife for a long time. I was sick of it. Sick of my mother's constant need for affection, and sick of having to call different people 'family' every time. I studied like my life depended on it, vowing to leave home as soon as I became an adult. That 12-year-old kid followed me everywhere. Even though I was grumpy and prickly toward him, he always trailed behind me like a shadow. Finally, the day I turned twenty and got into college, I left home. I can still clearly see that 12-year-old kid sobbing and clutching my pant leg. I held those small hands and promised I'd come home often, but I never kept that promise. Being busy with college was just an excuse; I simply didn't want to see that house where my mother lived ever again. I felt sorry for the kid, though. I couldn't forgive my mother for making my life difficult 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 I turned 30. I received word that my mother and her husband had died together in an accident while traveling. My mother left all her assets to me, with a final wish that I take care of my younger brother. And so, after ten years, I met that small, crybaby 12-year-old again. He 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 ten years ago overlapped with Hamin as he stood there weeping over the loss of his parents. I had fled the house to find my freedom, but young Hamin was innocent. Out of a strange sense of kinship, and a lingering gratitude toward his father—the only one among my mother's husbands who treated me with adult-like care—I made a choice. After settling the estate, Hamin, left all alone, had nowhere to stay. I decided to take him in, just until he graduates from college.