The memory was still very clear to me now, even after so many years, how I sat at the back seat of Mr. Oh’s car as he drove us to his and mom’s hometown in Gyeonggi-do from Seoul, where he told us we could live with him and his son while we had nowhere to stay at in the meantime. 

Mom’s parents already passed away and what was left of their old home was already sold to someone else on their death and was converted into someone else’s. Mr. Oh was just kind enough to take us in for a while. Anyway, he didn’t have a nagging wife to judge us too. He was, after all, divorced like mom. As I heard from their little talks in our kitchen, previously, his wife was not able to take how busy he was as a doctor that she got so lonely and ran away with a different man she met on her short trips to the bars by the harbor when he was out at hospital duty during unholy hours. That was as far as I managed to overhear, making me pity the old man somehow.

I had opposed of the move out and voiced out my will to stay back in the city when they sat me down in the living room and told me about how Mr. Oh had to go back to Gyeonggi—where he and mom originally came from—because his three month practice as a surgeon in Seoul National University Hospital already finished and he wanted to help mom and I get back on our feet. He had pretty good intentions in dragging us back with him to their hometown, but I was not really happy with the idea of going back with mom where I had never been to.

I knew how fond he was of mom and I, how good he was to us during his short stay in Seoul where mom gave him company whenever he asked to have dinners at these five star restaurants we’d never been to—not even when we were still with my well-earning father (he seldom took us out to dinners and I didn’t understand then why, but I guess I definitely got the picture clearly now as to why), and I had not said anything opposite it, though I could kind of tell, from the way Mr. Oh looked at mom, that he was attracted to her for even the least bit.

If not, then why the heck would he also drag me to those dinners? That was, of course, to get on my good side. He wanted to first get my approval.

I had not judged their relationship as friends or whatever they were, but I just reached the end of my patience when one dinner night they carefully told me about their plan to have us move out of Seoul.

I made sure to shut off the idea in their faces and expressed my unwillingness to join them strongly. But mom was a good arguer. No matter what I said, it didn’t matter to her. I didn’t sound reasonable or right to her.

I could tell that Mr. Oh had sympathized with me then and told mom that if I wanted to stay behind and live with dad, if it was what I think was best for me, it was just okay. But mom would not ever like that idea either. She won the custody on me against dad by hook or crook, and with that pride she had, I knew that she was not going to give me up so easily to dad. She would rather have me forced to come with them and have me hating her for it than letting me stay with my old man. She said that would be a very bad idea, for she didn’t want me to learn from his ‘’.

I didn’t know why mom was so angry at dad’s fiancé, but I was guessing that it had something to do with why they divorced. They didn’t tell me the real reason why they did anyway, they just told me how they could not be together anymore because they had already fallen apart. There was no way of fixing their marriage, they said. And though that hurt me the most, I had accepted it with a nod. I accepted it without argument because back then I was foolish and had no say about things.

This time, I didn’t agree with what they wanted, but was still forced to live with them.

Mr. Oh assured me that I was going to like it in their hometown in Gyeonggi-do, but it was not enough to convince me to want to stay for even a week. That was not home for me. Period.

His house was, as expected, big and expensive. It told of his status and how he was doing well with his profession. I was not easily impressed by material things though. My father earned pretty well before as a literary professor in Kyunghee University, too, and we had a house probably similar in size. Mom, though, was making a huge fuss about his house, saying how grateful she was for taking us in and whatever while having that -eating smile on her face that I wanted to wipe out the moment it appea