In Constant Stars
03 -- s i l e n c e

“And where have you been?”

My father had already bellowed it before Zelo even got the chance to close the door. I softly took a few steps down the stairs and peeked down silently, making sure I wouldn’t be seen. I saw Zelo standing in front of the door, grasping his skateboard with his right hand. My father hated the thing. He liked to nag to me about it endlessly. ‘What exactly went through your head when you bought that stupid thing for him?’ and ‘You basically corrupted him, you know that?’ I’d learnt over time not to care. Zelo was the best thing to happen to this family and he deserved to have what he loved.

Unconsciously, this had become some kind of routine. The frequency of Zelo returning just in time for dinner had grown rapidly, until he stopped coming home for dinner at least twice a week to instead accept the invitations for meals at his friends’ places. My mother and I didn’t really mind. After all, for the rest of the week he’d still be around. My father, however, found it unacceptable.

Zelo didn’t look surprised. Though our father was standing in front of him, probably looking his utmost furious, my little brother had grown oddly accustomed to this situation. I knew he didn’t get a kick out of disobeying, unlike some other rebellious teenagers, because Zelo had always been a good kid. Yes, he could be mischievous and he could take things too far sometimes, but he meant no harm, ever.

“Jongup’s,” he answered simply. “His mum said I had no choice but to stay over for dinner because she’d cooked for me too.”

“You could have at least told us, Junhong.”

This was a crucial point in the whole routine. Depending on whether Zelo was willing to be reasonable and whether my father was especially aggravated or not, I would have to make up my mind if I needed to step in or not. The only reason for me not to interfere was because my father would sometimes become even angrier at Zelo though I was the one who chose to come in between them. I was rushing down the stairs when Zelo rolled his eyes – a move of his that I’d seen coming by the way he leaned on his other leg and released a deep, exasperated breath he’d been holding.

“He called before you got home,” I said breathlessly before any of them got the chance to start a fight. We’d had far too many fights during the past month, all of which were about subjects that just didn’t matter and weren’t worth destroying our family over.

My father was intent on picking on Zelo. I had no clue why, but he disapproved of everything his son did. I’d rather he picked on me instead because Zelo was genuinely a good kid. He didn’t agree with my point of view. That moment he merely looked at me in a slightly tired and frustrated way, which wasn’t half as bad as the way he often looked at my younger brother. “So why didn’t you tell him that he should’ve politely declined and have dinner at home instead?”

“Jongup is Zelo’s best friend. Can’t he spend some time over there now and then? You never say anything when I go to Heeyoung’s place.” I countered, carefully trying to hide my equal frustration with him.

It was ever so slightly, but it became apparent that I was very close to crossing a border when my father narrowed his eyes just a tiny bit. Instantly, his voice’s volume had diminished into a soft but definitely threatening tone: “How long are you planning on giving him everything and anything he wants?”

Zelo had stepped forward and nudged me with his arm, telling me to step aside and let him get scolded. I wasn’t going to let him. He hadn’t done anything wrong.

“How long are you planning to criticise him for everything he likes and the people he likes to be around?” I bit back in return, not caring about being a pacifist anymore. He had no right to be so superficially judgmental, especially not towards his own son. “Do you honestly think that Yongguk and all those other boys are going to make Zelo some gangster? Just because Zelo has grown up and has come to find his own things he likes doesn’t mean that he’s the delinquent you like to paint him to be. He’s my brother… He’s your own son!”

Silence. My mother was standing at the entrance to the living room, silently watching her husband’s reaction. By now she knew better than to interfere, something I had yet to learn. At that time she already knew something that I would only find out later: we were already so broken, there was no point in trying to fix anything anymore.

My father seemed at a loss of words that it made me feel anxious. Had I really crossed the line? From the corner of my eye I saw Zelo looking at him in the same stricken way I probably did. Had our father ever backed down from an argument? He liked having the last word. He was always to be right. We just had to accept that, but this time it was different. He shook his head once and again.

And then he turned around, saying in a voice so quiet that one could have easily mistaken it for silence: “You don’t understand.” And from that point, that was all we ever got from him. Only silence.

Just like how most parents are, mine were a pairing consisting of one talkative parent and one not-so talkative parent. My mom was very used to doing all the chit-chat, were it reading us a bedtime story or negotiating with shop managers or doing the friendly 'how are you?' talks with neighbours. My father usually only had a decorative function as the other parental figure and liked to utter as many words as the lamppost around the corner could, unless it was to reprimand any of us. Until at a certain point he stopped talking to us altogether.

This was also why Zelo and I hadn't been surprised that, when our father left, he had done it silently. He didn't bother leaving us a note, dropping us any hints beforehand or calling us shortly after his departure. When I'd been the first to come back home from school, the house was clean and orderly, not the kind of place where a hurricane of a departure had just taken place. The only odd thing, of which I only found a slight explanation later on, was the fact that the CD player had been repeating a song called 'Hanamizuki' by Itoto Yoh, a Japanese song when I came home. This had been especially odd because our father had been trying to avoid anything Japanese, including our mother, for the past two years. But when I understood the words that the singer sang and what my father had been trying to convey, I decided not to tell my mom about the musical hint he had dropped.

He’d left and taken away more than the money that had been saved up for my college fees. Though it was without explanation of why he’d removed me of my only gateway to further education without worries, the thing that bothered me the most was that he’d left without any reason, leaving for all three of us to wonder why. My mother had given up on looking for him after a month of no notice.

In some way, I suppose, we should have seen it coming. Our family hadn’t become dysfunctional overnight because my father had left. It had been for a while, ever since we stopped talking to each other and, eventually, stopped treating each other like family. My father suddenly leaving and going somewhere probably far, far away had only made it more obvious to the outside.

That was how it should have been. Really, there wasn’t so much that had changed. Indeed, we were now less well off than before. Though we weren’t going to be kicked out of our house, we did struggle with financial problems. My mother spent all of her time awake at her work as a communications advisor, telling companies how they could do the best PR and whatnot. She drove it so far that she sometimes fell asleep there, then woke up and went on working. She was good at it, so her boss didn’t complain about her overtime hours, but it was blatantly obvious that something was going horribly wrong with her. In the end, it didn’t pay fantastically, but her salary along with the savings we still had left were enough to pay for our monthly bills and Zelo’s and my tuition fees.

However, there wasn’t enough money for my college fees. And that was why I’d taken it upon myself to start working part-time jobs. I started with delivering newspapers every morning, but it was awful work and the pay didn’t live up to the energy I put into it. I quit after two months when my aunt suggested working in the food service industry, saying that most restaurants and bars in Japan paid very well. I assumed the same would be the case in Korea and it was. I started working at The French Fry and, well, we all know what happened to that.

That wasn’t the problem, not really. I didn’t particularly care that I had to start working. I wasn’t a princess; I didn’t want to live a pampered life in luxury without having the chance to prove what I was worth. Moreover, I thought it was only right for me to work for my own education. On the surface it seemed that having a part-time job that hogged a big part of my time was the biggest problem. It really wasn’t. Instead, it was something else entirely.

Out of the worries that my father’s departure had brought along, the biggest was Zelo. During the month after it happened, he hardly left the house. He went to school, at least, but other than that he didn’t go out to play like he did excessively before anything happened. He didn’t leave his room unless necessary. When he did, he never talked. He was like a zombie and though I knew he did it because he blamed himself for what happened, I never managed to say the right thing to convince him that it wasn’t his fault. It was engraved into his mind as a stone hard fact. ‘It’s my fault that our family is ruined. It’s my fault that Dad left. It’s my fault that Mum is never home anymore.’

Until one day he changed again. Like a switch had been turned. As if he’d woken up from a month-long slumber. But not in the way I’d hoped to see him change. He didn’t become his old self. He was still careless, still walked around like he owned everything and he went back to spending his time on the streets, skateboarding, playing soccer and dancing. But he didn’t look at me, ever, unless it was a fleeting glance that revealed blatant guilt and shame. He didn’t talk to me, didn’t tell me about his problems with school or some kids who made him feel annoyed anymore. He didn’t accept anything from me, were it a simple gesture like cooking for him or money to buy something nice for himself.

It was like I’d lost my mother and my little brother the very same moment my father had left.

Family? What a joke.

The worst part was that my father would never know what he'd done. By the time I'd see him again - if I'd ever see him again - all the feelings of insecurity, anxiety and mentally being shattered to pieces would be washed away and all that was left would be hatred, because hatred was easy and the least hurtful to any of us. He would never know how broken and afraid he'd left Zelo. He wouldn’t get to hear how his departure hadn’t left just a void in our lives, but that it had taken away so much more from us.

He had made me grow up. The moment he'd left, something inside of me broke and caused for reality to hit me hard. So hard to the point that I'd grown up in an instant.

I used to be a dreamer; I used to wish for my life to be perfect.

He ruined me.

I ruined me.

When I got downstairs to have breakfast the next morning, Zelo had already left. It wasn’t unusual for him to be up and gone before I was, because he often had morning practice for soccer which started at ungodly hours. It was a miracle that he’d managed to keep it up for almost a year already, but he loved the sport too much to give it up for an hour or two of sleep. He was a goalie, which worked fine for him because he was tall. Apparently he had an amazing reaction speed, but I frankly didn’t understand soccer well enough to be able to tell anyone that.

I picked up a notebook he’d left behind on the kitchen table that was still open with freshly scrawled notes here and there. I wondered if he had perhaps forgotten it, so I put it into my own bag and decided I’d give it to him after his morning practice was done. Whether he’d actually talk to me or accept it normally was a question that haunted me, but the only option, ever, was for me to suppress it and live on.

It turned out that he did have an English test that day, as I saw Jongup studying and muttering English words he was memorising while entering the school building. It was still long before the bell marking the beginning of our first class would ring and Jongup was usually quite late, so it surprised me a bit. I didn’t know him well though, so I didn’t say anything. He didn’t notice me; his eyes were solely focused on his book. It was a miracle he could still walk without tripping over or bumping into anything.

“Choi Junhong!” the coach called for me. He was a stout man with rough and deep wrinkles all over his face. Word had it that, though he seemed friendly in the corridors of school, he was a true Spartan sport coach. He’d be strict, scream at his players from the top of his lungs and when any of them broke his rules of conduct, the punishment wasn’t to be taken lightly. “Choi Junhong, you quit that right now and come here!”

I watched as Zelo stopped with his practice drill that involved him sitting in the goal and getting up from that position to catch a ball that would be tossed towards him. It was a special goalie drill and pride swelled up in me to know that he was good enough to have a moment of training especially aimed for him to improve his skills.

Zelo was panting when he reached us. The coach went back to the other players, amongst whom were Daehyun, who I knew played as a forward, and Youngjae, a midfielder. Maybe some kind of miracle had happened, because Zelo then opened his mouth to ask: “What is it?”

It didn’t sound unfriendly and that was important, because despite the distance he’d put between us, he was never unfriendly or hateful.

I held out his notebook. “You left this on the kitchen table. I figured you might need it today.”

He stared at it with big, relieved eyes, saying: “I needed it before the test, actually. I forgot to review this part of the vocabulary…”

And the familiar silence settled back in. The coach’s sharp whistle sounded in the background before he barked something in his harsh tone. Zelo was sweating. Little droplets on his forehead were slowly drifting down his temple. A part of me wanted to reach out with a handkerchief to wipe it away, but it would be a stupid move because 1) the sweat would return anyway and 2) Zelo would realise what was happening and he’d go back to not talking to me again.

“I’ll just leave it on the bench for you.”

“Nah, just give it to me. Practice is over anyway.”

Huh. I looked behind him and realised that the coach’s last whistle had indeed been a mark for the end of the training. The players were done stretching and had each started to walk towards the changing rooms. The coach was still talking to a junior player on the team and didn’t seem to mind that Zelo had missed the ending of the practice session.

“Okay, here you go. Good luck on your test,” I said with an encouraging smile.

“Thanks.”

He didn’t really smile back, but if the way one end of his lips had slightly tugged up was an indication, we had suddenly gone in the right direction. A part of me didn’t want to let go of the fact that he hadn’t eaten dinner last night, but a bigger part was ecstatic with the way he was showing signs of his old self again. Signs of the old Zelo I loved so much.

I nodded to him and turned around to leave. Grey clouds were hovering above us, threatening to spill their contents of salty and sour tears over us. It made our surroundings look bleak and it confirmed that it was autumn again.

“Ew, you’re sweaty. Don’t do that!”

I instinctively turned to look for the source of the giggles and the squealing. It was strange how I hadn’t noticed a girl on the front row of the bleachers of our soccer fields wearing a guy’s jacket over her shoulders, shielding her from the cold. Her hair was long and straight, so perfectly feminine that I probably wasn’t the first to admire her good looks. I recognised her as Kim Jinae, the girl who sat behind me in English and my partner for the project for extra credit.

More importantly, I was focused on watching the guy she was with. He was tugging at her hand, a big grin plastered on his face. With his deep, yet oddly clear voice, he teased: “Aww, no kiss?”

Well.

What the hell?

Jung Daehyun already had a girlfriend.