Chapter 22: The Language of the Past

“Sc-scared. Oh, Mom. G-get up. Huh?”

As her vision blurred again with fresh tears, Yeosu hastily wiped her eyes, afraid she would miss her mother’s lips.

Cheche’s lips moved. The faint breaths that escaped were clearer than before. Yeosu, seeing her throat move, quickly brought her ear closer. Swish, swish, her exhaled breaths finally formed meaning.

‘Li-ve…’

It was a scratchy, unclear resonance, but it was conveyed nonetheless. Yeosu slowly raised her head and looked down at Cheche’s face.

She no longer moved her eyelids. Her eyes, staring into space, were filled with sorrow.

Yeosu slowly traced Cheche’s face, from her blood-caked forehead to her straight nose, which she loved because it resembled her own, to her mother’s lips, which she never let out of her sight. She gently caressed her mother’s cheeks, which were all torn and bumpy, as if applying ointment.

Hot tears streamed down the back of Cheche’s hand, which was so rough that it was a wonder how she had endured until now.

Slowly, carefully. She simply took in her mother’s face with her eyes.

“I intended to hit the back of her head.”

“Ah… ugh.”

“Such useful individuals have gone away, so I can’t let them die gently.”

“Hmph… ugh…”

The terrifying scene she had witnessed, lying flat behind the sand dune, flickered before Yeosu’s eyes. It wouldn’t disappear no matter how hard she tried to erase it. The man’s uniform, vividly etched in her mind. The mark of Juseong on his chest.

Finally, Yeosu collapsed into her mother’s embrace and let out a scream. The absence of a beating heart deepened her sorrow endlessly.

“Uwaaah! Ah! Ahhh, aah!”

She desperately hugged her mother’s still warm neck. As if sensing that if she let go now, she would be gone forever, she cried and cried until she fainted.

Yeosu first went to the exchange with her mother when she was 6 years old. The area around the incinerator was a place where child trafficking tacitly occurred. Therefore, due to Cheche’s constant caution, that day became her first outing.

Girls digging for stones, men wrestling over a strange can, a middle-aged woman kneading cookie dough. The exchange, which she saw for the first time, was so noisy and crowded that her eyes widened.

Yeosu tightly held her mother’s hand and kept looking back. The people, frowning or shouting for all sorts of reasons, were endlessly fascinating.

She wanted to go closer and see, but as if knowing her desire, Cheche squeezed Yeosu’s hand tightly.

Yeosu reluctantly turned her head forward and diligently followed her mother. Cheche quickly scanned the exchange, then headed towards a truck that had become deserted after all its goods were sold.

There, a man who seemed the most peculiar among all the peculiar people was lowering the cargo compartment shutter. Yeosu learned for the first time that day that a person could deliberately pierce holes in their face and attach all sorts of metal objects.

She later learned from her mother that the man belonged to a group called ‘Wanderers,’ who traveled around outside the incinerator, procuring goods that refugees needed.

Just by listening, he seemed like a considerate person who took on arduous tasks, but in reality, he was a crooked merchant who sold goods at exorbitant prices.

Cheche sought him out that day to check on an item she had ordered three months prior. In her bag was jerky made from ‘real meat,’ which Yeosu had never tasted before.

‘Goods.’

Cheche opened her lips wide. So wide that even the Wanderer, who didn’t have much focus, could read her lips. Then the Wanderer threw a black bag he took from the cargo compartment towards Cheche.

“Because of this, I searched every ruined place a racehorse might go to. I finally found something called a ‘library’ just as a tire punctured.”

Yeosu didn’t know the word ‘library.’ Even the Wanderer speaking seemed to not fully understand it. Only Cheche nodded as if she understood.

She squatted down and untied the bag. Then, she casually looked around and began to rummage through the contents of the bag.

Yeosu glanced over her mother’s shoulder into the bag. There was a bundle of papers, similar in texture to the flyers that had fallen from the airship.

There were about ten or more of them. Now that she thought about it, she had seen similar things when she was 5 years old, that is, a year ago.

Even then, Cheche had brought such things from the exchange. But in the end, perhaps they weren’t what she wanted, as they were thrown into the brazier a few days later to be used as firewood.

Yeosu still couldn’t understand why her mother would so easily burn such precious things, bought at such a high price.

‘Surely she’s not going to use them as firewood today too?’
As she was thinking various thoughts, Cheche stood up and handed the jerky to the Wanderer.

“Surely it’s not monster meat, is it? If it’s strange, I’ll throw it away immediately.”

The Wanderer looked at Cheche suspiciously, then bit off the end of a piece of jerky. His face, which had been deeply furrowed as he chewed, suddenly relaxed. Finally, he swallowed and snorted.

“It’s bat meat. There’s still some poison, but the taste isn’t bad.”

It meant he was satisfied with the goods. When the Wanderer nodded, Cheche put the black bag into her satchel.

“Next time, you’ll have to bring raw meat. I want to try something called steak, like the upper-class gentlemen.”

Was there food even the Wanderer hadn’t tasted? He put the rest of the jerky into his mouth and climbed into the truck.

The mother and daughter returned to their makeshift home, crudely made of gray tarpaulin. No sooner had the tent been closed than Cheche took out the books from the black bag and put them into the brazier.

Yeosu, looking at the papers starting to burn black, frowned as if it was all a waste. After throwing enough books into the brazier to fill it, only one book remained in front of Yeosu.

‘Huh? Wasn’t she going to throw them all away?’ This was the first time this had happened. Yeosu’s heart pounded. Could this be the item her mother had searched so desperately for?

“Mom. Is this a secret map?”

Yeosu, her eyes sparkling, tugged at her mother’s clothes and asked. Her pronunciation was clear and crisp, unlike her age.

Until this point, Yeosu never interrupted or stammered. Since she started babbling, she had greeted guests to the shelter on behalf of her mute mother. She was quite confident in learning and speaking languages.

Cheche, instead of answering, opened the book in front of Yeosu. Turning the scorched cover, yellowish but intact papers appeared inside. And they were densely covered with writing.

Yeosu grimaced the moment she saw it. It was a continuous sequence of spellings she had been rigorously taught by her mother.

“The boy is wearing a hat. Do I have to learn that strange drawing again?”

It wasn’t a drawing, it was spelling. But when Yeosu saw characters like ‘옷’ (ot, clothes), ‘훗’ (hut, an onomatopoeia for a light laugh), or ‘붓’ (but, brush), she always felt they looked like drawings rather than letters.

This was even more so because their appearance was completely different from the common language she had already mastered reading and writing at the age of 4.

At 6 years old, Yeosu understood the structure of these characters and could read sequences of them. So much so that sometimes she would accidentally speak them instead of the common language.

For example, she would say ‘water glass’ instead of ‘tet,’ confusing guests. Besides that, ‘cooking,’ ‘sound,’ ‘sky,’ ‘blanket’… Yeosu admitted that while the characters were funny, their pronunciation was beautiful.

But now, after having perfectly learned the common language, she had to write and read another language. It was a problem.

Even now, she often made mistakes with neighbors, and soon she would be known as a fool who couldn’t even speak properly. That would shatter her pride, especially since she was already shorter than her peers.

Whether she knew her feelings or not, Cheche deliberated for a long time and wrote a reply. Fortunately, it was in the common language.

[Yeosu. Someday, when Earth returns to our embrace, if no one knows the language born on this land, can we still call that land ‘Earth’?]

Cheche occasionally spoke words whose meaning was unclear. However, Yeosu knew that she was the only one to whom her mother spoke such words.

Yeosu’s eyes darted around, thinking with her small head. After much hesitation, she finally answered.

“…No. By then, there will be no one to call it ‘Earth,’ so ‘Earth’ will become another planet.”

Her mother said that originally, there were many names for ‘Earth’ on this land. If they all disappeared, ‘Earth,’ having lost its name, would become a completely different planet, just as it was now called ‘Colonial Earth.’