o n e;

I was five when Chorong first stepped her foot into my house. Her father had to leave for an urgent business trip, and he had no choice but to ask for my parents’ help to mind his daughter since it was too late at night to call for a babysitter. They live only two houses away, but I rarely saw them, even Chorong who went to the same kindergarten as me. Her father is a single parent. From what I overheard from my parents talking, his wife passed away soon after Chorong was born.

“Won’t she cry when she wakes up later and find you’re gone?” my mother asked him after she took Chorong from his back.

“I hate to say this, but she’s used to it,” he replied with a sad tone.

I remembered seeing Chorong from afar during recess. We were in different classes, so we never really talked to each other despite living on the same street. Whenever I saw her during the break, she would always be playing catch with the boys instead hanging with the girls. She was always the tomboy one.

Despite her boyish attitude, for some reason I cannot understand, I had always felt this urge to protect her. Like every time I saw her tripped down and skinned her knees, I would leave whatever I was doing and ran towards her. I never got to her though. Halfway, someone else would come. Someone else would always be faster than me.

I think that was the main reason why I practiced so hard at running and eventually joined the athletic team later in school. As a result of my rigorous training, I finally became the best runner of the school. Whenever I ran, the image of Chorong’s scraped knee would come to my mind and the memory of me failing to be the first to reach her would haunt me, and I would sprint as hard as I could. More often than not, somebody had to stop me after passing the finishing line.

Of course, I never told her that. Even after she started taking up hapkido, I still had the impulse of wanting to shield her from not just the ground, but all the things in the world that could hurt her.

When Chorong first came to my house, she was asleep. Her father carried her on his back all the way from their house. Since there was no extra room in our home, she slept on my bed. I remember staying up that night to watch her angelic face as she dozed off peacefully, until my mother came in and scolded me for not sleeping.

From that moment on, I realized that I wanted to be by her side till as long as I could.

We quickly became friends after that. Her visits to our household became more frequent as the time passed, even if her parents were at home. We walked to and from school together, and she would always drop by and spend some hours in my house before finally going back to hers. Not that I complain, but sometimes his father would jokingly said I’ve kidnapped his daughter.

We were an inseparable pair, until another boy came along. Myungsoo and his mother moved into our neighbourhood three years later. They live next to Chorong’s house. Like her father, Myungsoo’s mother is a single parent. I think that was why they bonded so well. They all know the feeling of missing someone in their lives; a feeling that I never understood.

Unlike the two of us, Myungsoo was a fragile child. He was always sick and could not participate in any tiring activities, like sports. “He has a bad heart,” his mother told us one day, which confused me because he is the sweetest child I had ever met. But being just an eight-year-old then, I didn’t know better.

Since we were two boys and one girl, people generally would think that Myungsoo and I were Chorong’s guardian angels. But in reality, Myungsoo was the one being safeguarded. Every morning, Chorong would wait for him outside his house before coming to mine, and together we would take off to school. It’s the same afterwards. She would walk him back to his house after having lunch at my place.

There were times that I felt envious of Myungsoo. He received more attention and love from everyone because he was weak. People would praise him for the smallest thing he did. Wherever we go, his name would be the first to be called out.

“Myungsoo yah, have you eaten?”

“Myungsoo yah, was the walk tiring?”

“Myungsoo yah,”

“Myungsoo yah,”

There was another reason for my jealousy. His birthday was just 10 days away from Chorong’s, and a year apart.