“Hyungjoo-ya! It’s Mom, Mom’s here! Baby! Open your eyes!”
Seongho, who had emerged after breaking the glass of the big room on the opposite side of the small room, was holding Hyungjoo in his arms.
He was wrapped in the wet blanket that Seongho had entered with.
As soon as Seongho brought the child out, firefighters rushed over, and after CPR and artificial respiration, the child coughed.
“Aigo, thank goodness! Hyungjoo is alive, Hyungjoo’s mom! Hyungjoo is alive!”
The child, who had been coughing until his face turned red, finally burst into tears.
Hyungjoo’s mom, who hugged the crying child, finally shed tears of relief.
People clapped their hands and cheered for the child’s safety.
Hyungjoo had only suffered relatively minor burns.
Everyone agreed it was a miracle.
But the fire was not yet out.
The firefighters, who had been delayed because of the difficulty of entering the narrow alley, were doing their best to extinguish the fire.
In the middle of the chaos, a mixture of people’s shouts, siren sounds, and the sound of gushing water, Kangeun was sitting on the ground.
But Kangeun couldn’t hear any of it.
“…Dad.”
Kangeun’s wet eyes wavered.
She called out to Seongho, who had collapsed with his skin burnt red and black, and repeatedly
reached out her hand and pulled it back.
Seongho, who couldn’t even open his eyes properly as if in pain, was lying in Hyungjoo’s yard, taking short, shallow breaths.
“Dad, sob, Dad…”
“…Eun-ah.”
“Dad, Dad.”
“It wasn’t, me…”
His small, raspy voice was hoarse.
It was even harder to understand because of the continuous coughing.
It was hard to find Kangeun’s father’s face in his face, which was horribly crushed by the fire.
Only the bristly beard confirmed that it was indeed the father Kangeun had seen this morning.
“Dad, don’t talk. Don’t talk.”
“The factory… fire… I didn’t set it… The cat… the cat, had kittens…”
It was what Seongho had said several times when he was being investigated by the police as a suspect in the blanket factory fire.
He had repeatedly told the police that he had been snooping around the corner of the blanket factory to give food and water to a stray cat that had given birth.
Each time, he had been reprimanded, with people asking what kind of drunkard in the world would worry about a stray cat in the neighborhood going hungry, and telling him to stop talking nonsense.
He was the one who had made the neighborhood people frown by getting into fights here and there while drunk, and even rolling in his own vomit on the street.
No one believed Seongho’s words.
“Dad, don’t talk. Huh?”
“Kangeun-ah… Dad…”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“…Dad is sorry.”
“Sob, heuk…”
“Our… Eun-ie only suffered… Hyoseon and I… promised… We promised to raise you well…”
Kangeun shook her head and cried.
Seongho’s clothes were half-burnt, and his hands and arms were cooked and mottled.
Kangeun couldn’t even bring herself to touch his skin, which was crushed, distorted, and swollen red from the burns, afraid that it would hurt.
“Why, why my dad, why isn’t the ambulance here? Huh? Ahjussi! Save my dad. Ahjussi!”
Kangeun, who was sitting by Seongho’s side, grabbed the pants of a person standing nearby and
shouted.
The ground was all wet from the water being sprayed from the dispatched fire truck.
Kangeun, who was trembling but couldn’t even think of finding and putting on her shoes, scraped the water on the ground and wiped her father’s hands.
Kangeun, who had been endlessly rubbing Seongho’s hands, muttering to him to get clean, to get well, that all these wounds she was seeing would be fine after being washed, suddenly lifted her head.
Then she frantically scanned her surroundings.
Kangeun’s eyes were desperate as she searched for someone to save her from this terrible nightmare.
But no one came forward.
Nothing was offered to her.
People just glanced at her from a safe distance, then avoided her eyes and clicked their tongues.
There were also people who shook their heads and wiped their tears.
In the end, Kangeun’s gaze returned to Seongho.
“Dad, Dad. Dad, look at me. Huh?”
“…Eun-ah.”
“Dad, look at me. Huh? Dad, can you hear me? The ambulance will be here soon. Just wait a little longer. Huh?”
“…sorry. Dad is… sorry…”
Kangeun called out to her father with all her might, as she couldn’t lose the only person left by her side.
She begged Seongho to look at her, to listen to her, but Seongho’s voice was now so faint that she couldn’t hear it unless she put her ear close to his mouth.
Kangeun bent down and shouted into Seongho’s ear.
She checked his heartbeat, watched his shallow breaths, and finally buried her face in his heaving chest and cried.
“No. Dad, I’m okay. I’m not having a hard time. I’m sorry for getting angry. I’m sorry for what I said.”
“…our daughter, sorry…”
“Dad, can you hear me? If you just hold on a little longer, if you just hold on a little longer, the ambulance will…!”
As if wanting to stroke the cheek of the sobbing Kangeun, Seongho’s fingers twitched, but then they fell to the ground with a thud.
The hand lying on the wet ground did not move after that.
Suddenly, the surrounding noise subsided.
A bone-chilling cold washed over her.
In the silence, Kangeun quietly blinked her eyes and held Seongho’s scorched hand.
“Dad…?”
Kangeun’s lips, her chin, trembled.
“Dad…?”
Thud, it felt as if the world was shaking, and then it turned black.
In the bottomless darkness where nothing could be heard and nothing could be seen, Kangeun reached out her hand.
She grabbed whatever she could and shook it, begging and begging to be pulled out of this hell.
“Dad… Dad!”
In the middle of the deep darkness where not a single ray of light entered, Kangeun was alone.
****
The funeral hall was quiet.
Kangeun was sitting on the floor of the small mourning altar, lost in a daze.
On one side, a few people from the neighborhood were sitting with food, talking in low voices.
Everyone sighed, clicked their tongues, and drank.
Kangeun didn’t know how she had gotten here.
She didn’t know how she had changed her clothes and become the chief mourner.
All she remembered was being led by someone, writing her name with a pen someone gave her, and nodding her head as someone instructed.
When she came to her senses, she was in the spot where she was now sitting.
“Kangeun-ah, hey! Kangeun-ah! We have guests! You need to get up!”
“Aigo… I’m speechless.”
The middle-aged woman’s hoarse voice shook Kangeun several times, but her unfocused eyes did not regain their focus.
“What a pity…”
“Kangeun’s dad must have been right. He denied it so many times at the police station, saying he didn’t do it. Why did people have to catch the wrong person!”
“Well, Kangeun’s dad drank a lot after Kangeun’s mom died, but he wasn’t the type of person to do bad things.”
“I was so surprised when I saw him jump in to save the child even though there was a fire…”
The people wiping their eyes were Kangeun’s neighbors.
“He was a firefighter. He was just too good of a person. He was such a kind person that he was deeply hurt after his wife died, so he suffered for a long time.”
“That’s right. There’s no other man like him. It’s full of guys who get remarried right after their wives die.”
“It’s just pitiful for Kangeun. Aigoo, the poor thing. Aigoo, what a shame…”
“No, but what is Hyungjoo’s mom doing? Shouldn’t she be here, keeping watch?”
“Leave her be. The child is still in the hospital.”
“Didn’t they say Hyungjoo is fine? She should have entrusted him to her parents and come here for a while. Who was it that left the child alone and went out, causing all this trouble? No, why was the child playing with a lighter in the house!”
“That’s what I’m saying. It’s a good thing the fire was put out, what would have happened if it had spread to other houses? Kangeun’s dad is Hyungjoo’s lifesaver, but it’s ridiculous that she hasn’t even shown her face.”
The murmuring words of the neighborhood people passed by Kangeun’s ears, who was wearing mourning clothes with a white pin in her disheveled hair, without any meaning.
She could have scoffed at the people who were now evaluating the father and daughter completely differently from a few days ago, she could have resented them for not listening to her before, but
Kangeun’s expressionless face was just pale.
Kangeun, who had been blinking her eyes quietly, slowly lowered her head.
Her dazed gaze landed on her messy fingertips.
Her fingernails were all black with dirt.
Some were broken and had blood on them.
The moment she confirmed that the black substance in the wrinkles of her fingers that hadn’t been completely washed away was soot.
Tears welled up in her eyes, which stung and her nose tingled as if the black smoke from a few hours ago had enveloped her.
Had she been scratching the wet ground?
It seemed she had also torn at her hair.
She had also begged anyone she could.
She had knelt and crawled on the ground, then trembled and beat her chest.
Then, when the paramedics who were checking on her father lying on the ground loaded him onto a stretcher, covered him with a white sheet, and stood up…
“Heo, huh…”
A part of what was pressing down on her chest pushed up through her blocked insides.
“Heueu… sob…”
The sigh that had painfully escaped through her lips did not even have the form of a proper cry.
“Heu, heo, huh… sob, ha-eup…”
Kangeun, who had been spitting out hot lumps with irregular breaths, finally,
“Euheo… euheong, heueu, kkeuheu…”
She collapsed to the floor, vomiting up the surging sorrow.
She rubbed her face on the old floor and writhed in pain.
“Aigo, there she goes again…”
“Aigoo… She’ll have a double funeral at this rate.”
“Kangeun-ah, you’ll collapse if you keep this up. Huh? Have some water. Huh?”
“You need to stop crying first. Kangeun-ah, get a hold of yourself. You have to be strong. That’s how you can send your father to a good place. Huh?”
The words of comfort and encouragement directed at Kangeun scattered in a distant place far from her consciousness.
The meaningless words uttered by people who had nothing to do with her disappeared without reaching her.
In April, when the double cherry blossoms were in full bloom, Kangeun, who had been trying to endure with gritted teeth, finally collapsed.
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