PROLOGUE

The first Wednesday in every month was a Perfectly Awful Day-a day to be awaited with dread, endured with courage and forgotten with haste. Every floor must be spotless, every chair dustless, and every bed without a wrinkle. Ninety-seven squirming little orphans must be scrubbed and combed and buttoned into freshly starched pants; and all ninety-seven reminded of their manners and told to say “Yes, sunbae,” or “No, ajhussi,”, whenever a Trustee spoke.

                It was a depressing time, and for poor Kim Hyun Jae, who was the oldest orphan, had to bear the brunt of it. But this particular first Wednesday, like its predecessors, was drawing up to a close. Hyun Jae escaped from the kitchen were she was helping making juk (porridge) for the orphanage’s guests (as it was a particularly chilly day) and went upstairs to do her regular work. Her special charge was room F, where eleven little tots, ages four to seven, occupied eleven little cots set in a row. Hyun Jae assembled her charges, straightened their rumpled shirts, wiped their noses, and started them in an orderly and  and willing line toward the dining-room to engage themselves for a blessed half-hour with leftover juk and kimchi.

                Then she dropped down on the window seat and leaned throbbing temples against the cool glass. She had been on her feet since five that morning, doing everybody’s bidding, scolded and hurried by a nervous matron. Mrs. Han, behind the scenes, did not always maintain that calm and pompous dignity with which she faced an audience of Trustees and Lady visitors. Hyun Jae gazed out across a board stretch of frozen lawn, beyond the tall iron paling that marked the confines of the orphanage, down undulating ridges sprinkled with country estates, to the spires of the village rising from the midst of bare trees.

                The day was ended—quite successfully, so far as she knew. The Trustees and the visiting committee had made their rounds, and read their reports, and drank their tea, and now were hurrying home to their own cheerful firesides, to forget about their bothersome little charges for another month.

                Hyun Jae leaned forward watching with curiosity—and a touch of wistfulness—the stream of cars and vans that rolled out of the orphanages gats. In imagination she followed first one car then another to the big houses dotted along the hillside. She pictured herself in a fur coat, and a velvet hat trimmed with feathers, and bug-eyed shades, leaning back against the seat and nonchalantly murmuring “home” to the driver. But on the doorstep of her home, the picture grew blurred.

                Hyun Jae had an imagination—an imagination, Mrs. Han told her, that would get her into trouble is she didn’t take car—but keen as it was, it could not carry her beyond the front proch of the houses she would enter. Poor eager, adventurous, little Hyun Jae, in all her nineteen years, had never stepped inside an ordinary house; she could not picture the daily routine of those other human beings who carried on their lives undisturbed by orphans:

Noona Kim Hyun Jae!

You are wan-ted

In the of-fice

And I think you’d

Better hurry up!

                Tommy Park, who had joined the choir, came singing up the stairs and down the corridor, his chant growing louder as he approached room F. Hyun Jae wrenched herself from the window and refaced the troubles of life.

                “Who wants me?” She cut into Tommy’s chant and with a note of sharp anxiety.

Mrs. Han in the office

And I think she’s mad

Ah-a-men!

                Tommy piously intoned, his accent was not entirely malicious. Even the most hardened little orphan felt sympathy for an erring sister who was summoned to the office to face an annoyed matron; and Tommy liked Hyun Jae even if she did sometimes jerk him by the arm and nearly scrubbed his nose off.

                Hyun Jae went without comment, but with the two parallel lines on her brow. What could have gone wrong, she wondered. Were the sandwiches not thin enough, the juk too runny? Had a lady visitor seen the hole in Susie Lee’s stocking? Had one of the cherubic little babies in her own Room F insulted a Trustee?

                The long lower hall had not been lighted, as she came downstairs, a last Trustee stood, on the point of departure, in the open door that led to porch. Hyun Jae caught only a fleeting impression of the man—and the impression consisted entirely of tallness. He had raised his arm gracefully over toward a white Mitsubishi Montero in the carved drive. As it sprang into action and approached, head on for an instant, the glaring headlights threw his shadow sharply against the wall inside.

                The shadow pictured grotesquely elongated legs and arms that ran along the floor and up the wall of the corridor. It looked, for all the world, like a huge, wavering daddy-long-legs.

                Hyun Jae’s anxious frown gave place to quick laughter. She was by nature a sunny soul, and had always snatched the tiniest excuse to be amused. If one could derive any sort of entertainment out of the oppressive fact of a Trustee, it was something unexpected to be good. She advanced quite cheered by the tiny episode, and present a smiling face to Mrs. Han. To her surprise the matron was also, if not exactly smiling at least appreciably affable; she wore an expression almost as pleasant as the one she donned for visitors.

                “Sit down Hyuna Jae, I have something to say to you.” Hyuna Jae dropped intot he nearest chair and wated with a touch of breathlessness. A car flashed past the window; Mrs. Han glared after it.

                “Did you notice the gentleman who has just gone?”

                “I saw his back.”

                “He is one of our most influential Trustees, and has given large sums of money towards the orphanage’s support. I am not at liberty to mention his name; he expressively stipulated that he was to remain unknown.”

                Hyun Jae’s eyes widened slightly; she was not accustomed to being summoned to the office to discuss the eccentricities of Trustees with the Matron.

                “This gentleman has taken an interest in several of our boys. You remember Park Jong Hwa and Jeremy Lee? They were both sent through university by Mr.—er—this Trustee, and both have repaid with hard work and success the money that was so generously expended. Other payment the gentleman does not wish. Heretofore his philanthropies have been directed solely toward the boys. I have never been able to interest him in the slightest degree in any of the girls in the institution, no matter how deserving. He does not, I may tell you, care for girls.”

                “No ma’am, “ Hyun Jae murmured, since some reply seemed to be expected at this point.

                “Today at the regular meeting, the question of your future was brought up.”

                Mrs. Han allowed a moment of silence to feel, and then resumed in a slow, placid manner extremely trying to her hearer’s suddenly, tightened nerves.

                “Usually, as you know, the children are not kept after they are seventeen, but an exception was made in your case. You had finished our school at fifteen and having done so well in your studies—not always, I must say, in your conduct—it was determined to let you go in the village high school. Now you are finishing that, and of course the orphanage cannot be responsible any longer for your support. As it is, you have had two years more than most.”

                Mrs. Han overlooked the fact that Hyun Jae had worked hard for her board during those two years, that the convenience of the orphanage had come first, and her education second; that on days like the present, she was kept home to scrub.

                “As I say, the question of your future was brought up and your record was discussed—thoroughly discussed.”

                Mrs. Han brought accusing eyes to bear upon the prisoner in the dock, and the prisoner looked guilty because it seemed to be expected—not because she could remember any strikingly black pages in her record.

                “Of course the usual disposition of one in your place would be to put in a position where you could begin to work, but you have done well in school in certain branches; it seemed that your work in music has been brilliant. Miss Oh, who is on our visiting committee, is also on the school board; she has been talking with your music teacher and made a speech in your favour. She also showed your performance of an original piece in this year’s play entitled: “Blue Wednesday”. “

                Hyun Jae’s guilty expression this time was not assumed. The performance the matron was talking about was a piece Hyun Jae had composed for the piano (one of the only things she could count as a personal achievement). And were she to be honest, it was a particularly bittersweet piece, that nobody, not even Mrs. Han, who is not musical in any sense, would interpret it wrongly.

                Hence the guilty expression.

                “It seemed to me that you showed little gratitude in holding up to ridicule the institution that has done so much for you. Had you not managed to be tasteful in that piece, I doubt if you would have been forgiven. But fortunately, for you, Mr.—that is the gentleman who has just gone—is not only a lover of music, but appears to have quite an interest in new talents. On the strength of that impertinent piece, he has offered to take you to Shinwa University.”

                “University?” Hyun Jae’s eyes grew big.

                Mrs. Han nodded.

                “He waited to discuss the terms with me. They are unusual. The gentleman, I may say, is eccentric. He believes that you have originality, and his is planning to educate you in the field of music.”

                “A musician?” Hyun Jae’s mind was numbed. She could only repeat Mrs. Han’s words.

                “That is his wish. Whether anything will come out of it, the future will show. He is giving you a very liberal allowance, almost, for a girl who has never had any experience in taking care of money, too liberal. But he planned the matter in detail, and I did not feel free to make any suggestions. You are to remain here through the summer, and Miss Oh has kindly offered to superintend your outfit. Your  board and tuition will be paid directly to the college, and you will receive in addition during the four years you are there, an allowance of 100,000 won a month. This will enable you to enter on the same standing as the other students. The money will be sent to you by the gentleman’s staff once a month, and in return you shall write an email of acknowledgement once a month. That is—you are not to thank him for the money; he doesn’t care to have that mentioned, but are to write an email telling of the progress in your studies and the details of your daily life. Just such an email you would write to your parents if they were living.

                “You shall send the emails to [email protected]. The gentleman’s name is most certainly not John Smith, but he prefers to remain unknown. To you he will never be anything but John Smith. Since you have no family with whom to correspond, he desires you to write in this way; also he wishes to monitor your progress. He will never answer your emails, nor in the slightest particular take any notice of them, he detests anything to do with computers, and does not wish you to become a burden. If any point should ever arise where an answer is imperative—such as in the event of your being expelled, which I trust will not happen—you may correspond with Mr. Smith’s staff. “

“These monthly emails are absolutely obligatory on your part; they are the only payment that Mr. Smith requires, so you must be as punctual in sending them as though it were a bill that you were paying. I hope that they will always be respectful in tone, and will reflect credit on your training. You must remember you are writing to a Trustee.”

Hyun Jae’s eyes longingly sought the door. Her head was in a whirl of excitement, and she wished only to escape from Mrs. Han’s lectures, and think. She rose and took a tentative step backwards. Mrs. Han detained her with a gesture.

“I trust that you are properly grateful for this rare good fortune that has befallen you? Not many girls in your position ever have an opportunity to rise in the world. You must always remember…”

“I—yes, ma’am, thank you. I think, if that’s all, I must go and sew a patch on Tommy Park’s pants.”

The door closed behind her and Mrs. Han watched it with a dropped jaw, her lecture cut in midair.