“Mom, wait for me.”
The deepest memory I have of him begins with those words.
One day, not wanting to go home at all, I took a different path on my way back from school.
Even though I didn’t have anywhere to go, I wandered through the cold streets, aimlessly.
But I quickly ran out of places that interested me.
There was no place in the residential area near where I lived, a neighborhood built for those who worked in the city, exhausted all day, walking back home under the dark night sky, only to fall into bed with their faces buried in the blankets.
There was no way a young middle school student like me could find anything to catch my attention there.
Even if there was, I certainly didn’t have money to spend.
In the end, all I could do was wander around alleys filled with villas that had been around for at least 20 years, with red-brick houses scattered here and there, before heading back to one of those houses.
I couldn’t help but wonder if my mom and dad were fighting again today.
Thinking about it made the already cold winter wind feel like it was seeping all the way to my bones.
Not everyone who lived in this neighborhood was unhappy, but I couldn’t understand why that unhappiness had to come to me.
I wanted to escape, but I didn’t have the ability or the money to do so.
I was too young.
Shivering, I returned home only to find a child crouching in front of the gate to our house.
The child, sniffling, was bundled up in clothes that were old and worn.
Despite trying to layer up, the clothes were frayed in places, and through the worn fabric, the cold wind probably blew right through without resistance.
The child was shaking slightly.
Wearing a pair of homemade mittens with strings around the wrists, as if they had been picked by hand, the child seemed to be waiting for someone.
I didn’t recognize the child.
“…..Who are you?”
My voice, when I asked, was surprisingly cold.
After speaking, I was startled by my own tone and quickly closed my mouth, but the words I had already spoken couldn’t be taken back.
The child stared up at me.
Fortunately, there seemed to be no real emotion in their eyes.
After a brief moment, the child spoke.
“Mom.”
“What?”
I asked, confused, wondering if they were speaking to me, but the child answered simply.
“Mom, wait for me.”
That was when the child finally finished speaking.
“Ah…”
I felt a bit embarrassed by how surprised I was by the word “Mom.”
It was a relief in a way that my face was already red from the cold, so I didn’t have to worry about being caught.
Not getting a response from me, the child lowered their head and continued waiting.
It seemed like waiting for their mom was the only thing on their mind.
“……”
For a moment, I wondered if I should say something, but then thought, “What’s the point?” and let out a small sigh.
As I passed by the child to head inside, I suddenly heard a loud crash.
The sound came from the direction of my house.
Then, I heard a woman scream, followed by a man shouting.
“……”
It was the usual sound of my mom and dad fighting.
For a moment, I stayed still, then, without realizing it, looked down at the child sitting next to me.
The child, startled, turned their body to look in the direction of the noise.
The sounds continued.
“……”
In the end, I gave up on going inside and crouched down next to the child.
“Are you waiting for someone too?”
The child asked me.
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
“…Mom and Dad.”
I answered in a small voice.
In the middle of winter, on a night when the sun had set and the sky had turned completely dark, we sat there side by side under the orange streetlights, waiting together for a long while.
It wasn’t until a few days later that I realized that the child, who I had thought was much younger than me because of their small frame, was only three years younger than I was.
*
The reason I said that to him was actually because I couldn’t think of a proper reason.
The day I put a thousand-won bill in the Salvation Army kettle… it was just an impulsive act.
I wanted to look a bit cool in front of that child, who was younger than me and could only gaze up at me endlessly. Honestly, I regretted it as soon as I put it in. With a thousand won, you can do quite a lot. At the very least, wouldn’t it have been better to buy a bag of snacks and share it?
“Why do you help people like that?”
When the question came, I didn’t have a proper answer.
I didn’t have a younger sibling, but sometimes my friends told me that little kids can be quite a nuisance. Of course, this kid had never really bothered me.
In fact, he always looked weaker than kids his age, to the point where I started worrying about him.
But still, he was a kid. If he kept asking “Why?” like other kids, I wouldn’t have an answer. After all, I was only three years older than him.
No matter how much I took care of him, a middle schooler is still just a kid.
But as I looked at him, always gazing up at me, I felt like I had to answer.
What should I say?
“…It’s just this kind of world.”
The answer I could give was such a pathetic excuse.
It had no logic, and it wasn’t convincing in the slightest. It wasn’t even really an “answer”; it was just a strange thing to say.
“This kind of world?”
But the innocent child took my words literally.
He kept staring at me, and before I knew it, my face was turning bright red.
“Yeah, this kind of world…”
Hurry up.
Quickly, come up with some reason to attach to it, my mind urged, but no matter how hard I tried, my head was no help. There was no proper answer coming.
“This kind of world, so… it’s good to help each other out…”
In the end, that was the best I could come up with.
It wasn’t really an explanation, there was no logic to it, it didn’t make sense in any way. It was just empty words.
But the child, after staring at me for a while, smiled brightly.
“I see.”
And he understood, all by himself.
Then, out of nowhere, he took his hand out of his pocket.
In his hand was a 500-won coin.
“Ah…..”
Before I could even stop him, the child put the 500-won coin into the Salvation Army kettle.
And then he looked up at me and smiled again.
I couldn’t say anything else to him.
*
It seemed that the words made quite an impression on him, because he repeated them several times. And, true to those words, he grew up to be just as he was.
A kind person, always showing goodness through action, not just words.
At some point, I started to be drawn to him. He acted and spoke as if I was guiding him, but it wasn’t like that at all.
Since he had been so kind from his childhood, it was probably because he had heard my meaningless words and genuinely lived by them, right up until the very end.
Until the very end. Yes, until the very end.
“So, you see, helping each other out is… good…”
That’s why I was so surprised when ‘Shihyun’ said those words.
She hadn’t spent her childhood with me, nor had we known each other for long, so it was surprising that she would say such things by chance.
But this time, he didn’t.
At least, not this time. He was being honest.
“I just… feel like I’ve become a better person when I help people here…”
Without any pretension.
“I’m just a nobody, but when I help someone, it feels like I’ve become someone useful, even if just for a moment… so that’s why I’m here.”
That’s what I was able to say.
…I think I was able to say it thanks to Shihyun.
What started as a pretentious act of kindness continued because I thought Shihyun was watching me. And gradually, I began to understand why I was doing this.
Helping someone also helped me.
There were times when it was hard, and times when I wanted to stop.
But in the midst of it all…
Just for a moment, I could feel that I was making a difference in someone’s life.
“Is it… not such a big reason?”
At my words, Shihyun fell into thought.
Was she the kind of person who thought it was just natural to help others? Someone who gives kindness because it’s just good to help each other out?
I hoped she wasn’t like that.
“No.”
“…..”
After hearing my words, Shihyun shook her head.
“But I still think it’s amazing.”
Then, she gave a small smile.
“Just thinking of helping someone is already enough to be amazing.”
“…..”
I quietly looked at Shihyun’s face.
She was different from the person I knew. She didn’t look like him in any way. At least not in terms of appearance.
But as I looked at that smiling face, why did I feel like I was reminded of him?
Why, when I saw that expression, those gestures, and heard those words…
Did I start to think, ‘Would Shihyun have said that too?’
“…Thank you.”
Not knowing how else to respond, I simply gave a short reply.