Yeonjun, his face pale, ran through the crowd to find Soobin. Pushing his way through the crowd, he found Soobin standing still.
“Subin!!”
Yeonjun screamed loudly. At the call of her name, Soobin flinched and turned around. Her face contorted as she met Yeonjun's eyes.
“Brother…what should I do…?”
Yeonjun ran over and hugged Soobin. Soobin whimpered, her throat tight.
“I… am now… an orphan…”
Soobin finally sank down. Yeonjun joined her and hugged her tighter.
“…I was an orphan from the beginning.”
Yeonjun spoke calmly. Soobin cried so hard she almost choked. Yeonjun barely managed to help Soobin out. After crying her heart out, her once pale face had become even paler, and her eyes, blank and unfocused, were a glimmer of black. Soobin staggered and collapsed as soon as she entered the front door.
“Where are you going…?”
Soobin asked Yeonjun, who was leaving the house again. His voice was shaking violently, as if an earthquake had struck. Yeonjun stared at Soobin for a moment. A person who lost the person they most relied on and loved felt like a child abandoned to the world. Yeonjun bit his lip.
“…I need to let Father rest in peace.”
“Let’s go together.”
“No, stay here. The martial law troops are all spread out.”
Yeonjun dragged his wobbly legs out onto the street. From the front pocket of his stylish, dirt-stained jeans, he pulled out a small, crumpled wad of paper. A photo taken when he entered Yonsei University was staring at him with a rather delighted gaze. Beneath it were some trivial phrases: a reward for capturing and turning him over to the nearest military unit… That part was torn, or missing. The "Wanted" written above his photo, which looked like a fairly upstanding citizen, felt strangely unfamiliar. And the source of the wanted poster was obvious.
“Where is the taxi driver from earlier?”
Yeonjun faced Soobin's father, covered in a white sheet. The two of them shared a strange resemblance. And Yeonjun could easily guess that his father and I would be the same. Yeonjun looked at Soobin's father for a moment, then covered him again. It felt like he'd seen Soobin's future. It was terrifying. In a hospital room where the dead were gathered, Yeonjun touched Seungcheol's hand, which had already grown cold. He felt guilty for holding it. He let go. Seungcheol's hand fell limply. Yeonjun watched Soobin's father walk to the crematorium. It didn't take long for a 70-kilogram man to weigh 2.7 kilograms. Yeonjun cradled the urn in his arms.
"came?"
"here."
Yeonjun held out the urn. Soobin accepted it with blank eyes.
“Should I make dinner? Are you going to Grandma Jang’s supermarket today?”
"no."
Yeonjun felt a lump forming in his throat. His voice, trying to speak calmly, trembled and crackled, coming out in a thousand different ways. Soobin sensed something strange. Yeonjun's tightly clenched hands were trembling, and his expression, precariously on the verge of contortion, bore the same sadness as Soobin's.
“Grandma Jang, you can’t go to the supermarket anymore.”
forever.
For some reason, Soobin had bought a large beer and brought it over. "Drink first," Soobin said, downing it. The glass, the size of Soobin's hand, emptied in an instant. "Drink first," Yeonjun said. Soobin, unconcerned, poured more beer into the already empty glass.
“What was your relationship?”
“With who?”
“This is Grandma Jang.”
Grandma Jang couldn't be placed in the urn. A martial law truck had taken her away. Yeonjun sipped his beer, thinking of the grandmother he'd lost right before his eyes.
“Can I talk about this?”
“What can I say and what can’t I say? That’s not like you.”
“I did that because I was afraid you would hate me.”
Soobin set down his beer glass with a clank. Does that matter?
“…My grandmother. Grandmother Jang.”
Soobin gaped. "I'm sobering up now," he said, stroking his cheek.
"My father... even I think he was a bit of an unfilial son. He put my grandmother in a nursing home when she developed dementia, even though he had so much money. I felt so bad for her ever since I was little. When she lost almost all her memory, my father just kicked her out of the nursing home. He bought that supermarket with my own money. My grandmother's dream was to own a supermarket. My father, that son of a bitch, he told me to stay away from Seoul and do whatever I wanted... My grandmother didn't even remember me."
Yeonjun hesitated for a moment. Soobin watched him quietly as his mouth opened and closed countless times.
“My father was a soldier who killed people.”
Yeonjun looked up. The blue regimental uniform hung proudly. Soobin poured Yeonjun more beer. It had taken him a long time to say those words.
“So instead of my father killing people, I wanted to save people.”
The Fed finally sobbed.
“At least now I know what to do.”
As her sobs subsided, Soobin spoke. Her father kept appearing before her eyes. Memories of him driving a bright yellow taxi and saying his dream was to be a taxi driver, of him telling her not to come to the parent-teacher conference because it was embarrassing to have a taxi-driving dad, and of him embracing her more warmly than anyone else, flooded Soobin's mind.
“As the famous Hammurabi said, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
Well then, a gun is a gun.