The next day Woohyun skips school. It isn’t hard to convince the maid played along with his ‘sick’ act to deceive father. Typically his father doesn’t even care enough to check if he goes to school in general.

Woohyun’s not sure where his father’s anger came from. For most years, he was a solemn man with a good job and unthreatening demeanor. Mother was soothing and spirited. In a way, it seemed like the two balanced each other out. When he was a kid, Woohyun never talked much. But for his brother, Boohyun, it was a different story. He was cheery and social, he surely took more after their mother. He often wondered if that meant he’d turn out like his father.

Father won’t mention them these days as if their names could cause a rupture in the universe. But Woohyun spends a lot of time remembering and wondering.

Imagining Mom making his lunch. Sneaking an extra snack in with a ‘heart’ note. She would be smiling, her eyes folding and her long wavy hair pulled back. Hyung would visit from time to time when he wasn’t busy with work, maybe bring over his children. Maybe Woohyun’d be the favored uncle who played with them and gave them more treats than their mother would have approved of.

Just maybe.

But there was no possibility of a maybe, he won’t ever be an uncle. His mother won’t ever see him graduate, get married, or have kids of his own. They were gone.

It was well over 10 years ago but in Woohyun’s mind, so present. He woke up in the middle of the night. It was hot, really blisteringly hot. It felt as if all the oxygen had been out and all that remained was thick looming smog.

When he fought his way into the hallway the foundation started to break apart. Fiery planks of wood fell from above, setting everything ablaze. He couldn't find his balance as the house shook. He screamed for his family but no one answers. The only sound that resounds is the crackling of burning wood. Soon enough the smoke was too much and he felt his body going numb. He didn’t know what death was but he assumed this was it. Losing all control of his body, his consciousness, it all went black.

When he woke, the foggy memory of flames faded to the pale walls of a hospital room. He felt alone in a room of strangers in white coats. They spent much of the time scribbling onto their clipboards. Another checked the machine hooked up beside his bed. It took several minutes of conscious thinking until one finally explained everything.

They were still investigating the cause of the fire. With the house in shambles, there wasn't much evidence to go off of but once the residents, his family, were stable they’d further their inspections. He was informed that his mother and brother had also been brought to the hospital but wouldn't tell him where or how they were.

He had assumed they were okay. He was weak and small, so if he had been able to survive then, sure enough, they would have too.

“Your father is on his way”

He wondered where his father had been when he had walked into the hospital room looking totally unscathed. He seemed tired though, looking as if he had taken the residual soot from the fire and rubbed it under the curve of his eyes.

“Where’s mama? Big brother?”

His father shook his head. Disheveling the already mess of his graying hair. The doctors relayed the news of his brother that night. He had suffered critical third-degree burns to his hands, head, and chest as he fought his way through the house to save his brother. Paramedics had found the two passed out on the front lawn. His brother’s small body splayed across Boohyun's arms as the two dipped to the ground.

They’d brought his brother to be treated immediately but the burns had become infected and spread in the time he was left there. With every passing moment, the infection worsened spread to his brain. By dawn the following day, he was declared brain-dead and the next decision was left to their father.

Their father entered Boohyun’s room after hearing the news. It was a single room with no windows. He pulled the curtain to get a better look at his son, but that limp body sunken into the hospital bed seemed estranged. His features had been charred, discolored and misshapen.

He had come to say goodbye but what good is a goodbye to a dead person.

—

Later, news concluded that his mother was cleared of any critical injuries but she was far from okay. With his brother’s death, she gradually lost her mind. The first days she wouldn’t move for hours, staying in his hospital room and staring out the window. After months, she didn’t speak.

At his age, Woohyun couldn’t begin to understand the grief his mother suffered. All he knew was brother was ‘gone’, but to where he did not know. He sat with the idea that Boohyun would return one day.

“Mama, I’m still here.”

She Woohyun’s face a moment but as her pursed lips ripped to a frown, he’d know it was about his brother again.

“You two just look so much alike,” she says wiping away at her eyes “Mama just needs some rest, go on.”

His mother had been beautiful once but this brief period had withered her. Now her newly dulled skin hung limp and dry off her body. Fine lines set in above her brow as she lifted them and those eyes which often found his own in a blank stare were like glazed mirrors.

What the last straw was, everyone was unsure of. She was noticeably saddened by the world around her. She’d stopped eating, bathing, leaving her room. Woohyun had gone a whole week without seeing her. Until she unlocked herself for a single purpose that would stir the already broken family.

That day, after getting home from daycare, father wouldn’t let him see her. Later on, hi distraught father old him, yet again, that someone he loved deeply was ‘gone’.

—

And then as time passed even father grew distant. He wouldn’t see him for long periods of time. He hired Ms. Kim to cover up his lacking effort, but all it did was give him an excuse to never see Woohyun.

His father hit him when he was eight after having asked to play ball. His father had been busy working and the sudden pestering angered him to violence. The first time, he’d brushed it off and told him to go play with the maid but as he kept asking and asking, he slapped him across the face.

Woohyun never asked for anything ever again. In fact, they never spoke. he wouldn't even look at him anymore. He couldn’t understand, He didn't understand, what he did wrong.

The older he got, the more physical his father became. When Woohyun entered high school, his father started drinking and the anger came out like instinct. It got to the point where he would hit Woohyun for no reason but because he was too small and weak to do anything he just had to take it.

Woohyun learned to take care of himself with no other option. He’d been this way for years, not quite an adult but so close. It had him counting down the minutes until he could legally care for himself entirely. He decides, early on, that when high school ends he’d leave for good.