HRB 152 (End)

The two realized at the same time. The time granted to them was now running out.

As if the ground were splitting, their bodies naturally separated, and her son slowly drifted away.

“Jeong-hoon!”

She instinctively flailed her arms to grab her son. But she couldn’t reach him. Her body was blocked as if there was an invisible wall she couldn’t cross.

She desperately pounded on the wall, hoping it would break. But the wall didn’t budge. Nothing in the world felt so resentful.

“Jeong-hoon, Mom is…”

Her voice choked, and she couldn’t speak further. She couldn’t, not at the end, she had to tell him how much she had loved him since the moment he was born, how much she wished for his happiness, but she couldn’t get the words out.

“Yeah, I love you too.”

But as if he knew exactly what she wanted to say, her son answered instead.

“I’m happy now. So…”

Of course, the face that said he was happy was also covered in tears.

“Mom, stop crying now.”

With those words, she woke up from her dream.

A man quietly parked his car in a corner of the underground parking lot and got out. It was a day he was home later than usual. Half of it was forced, and the other half was voluntary. Being busy at work was sometimes a great excuse. To clear his head, to deliberately go home late.

“Hoo.”

The man sighed softly.

He was a father nearing 60.

A father in a peaceful family who had a good relationship with his wife, a successful business, and two sons he raised without envy.

Without any great misfortune or hardship in his life, just thinking about his sons getting married soon and seeing his grandchildren, the sudden death of his second son was something he couldn’t handle at all.

The news reported his son’s story. Every time he had the chance, he would come and go, teasingly nagging about how narrow this place was and whether he was keeping it tidy, and police lines were set up near his son’s store, and the mosaic-covered, blood-soaked interior of the convenience store appeared on the TV screen several times.

Unable to face confirming his dead son’s face, he entrusted that role to his first son. After holding the funeral, cremation, arranging a place in the charnel house, and returning home, no one realized the reality.

He could no longer see his second son.

His son, who only existed in the past called memories, was smiling brightly only in photos.

But what was even more unbearable was not the fact that his son had gone painfully, nor the fact that his memory of seeing his face for the last time was fading.

It was his wife who was suffering much more than that.

After the death of their son, the house was completely devastated. No one could laugh, and his wife felt no desire for life and cried every day.

The room that their second son used whenever he came to the main house was untouched.

For a while, he couldn’t even look in that direction because it hurt his heart every time he saw it, and he kept the door closed rather than not being able to clean it up for fear of even thinking about it.

However, even after a considerable amount of time had passed, his wife would make a fuss if he tried to clean the room even a little, so no one tried to touch the room even after sending their son away.

Did she cry today too? She needs to get up now.

Even when he persuaded her that Jeong-hoon wouldn’t want that, his wife would nod in agreement but eventually break down.

Will she ever be able to get up?

Standing in front of the front door of the house, he pressed the password on the door lock and entered the house.

The house was quiet as always. As if the sun never rose only in his house, the atmosphere of the house, which was always endlessly sinking, had maintained its brightness ever since his son left.

It was definitely like that.

“……?”

Unlike usual, the light was on in the second son’s room near the front door. He rubbed his eyes once, but it was still the same. The door, which had always been tightly closed, was wide open as if it had never been.

He blinked his eyes several times and carefully moved his steps towards it.

Then he saw his wife.

His wife was cleaning the room.

“Honey?”

“Oh, you’re home?”

She greeted him casually and continued to clean their son’s room as if nothing had happened. The bed, from which the sheets had disappeared, and the many items on it were neatly organized in boxes. Those items that she had made a fuss about, telling him never to touch them after their son died.

The room was quite empty, as if she had started cleaning a long time ago.

“Did you have dinner?”

“Uh, no…”

“Then shall we grill some meat for the first time in a while? You haven’t been eating properly these days.”

She said that in a cheerful voice and started opening the closet and taking out a pile of clothes. He pressed his lips tightly as he watched the clothes that didn’t match the season and hadn’t been taken to his place piling up on the bed.

Each item was being organized, and anyone who saw it would think they were moving. Those items were not alive, but they seemed like their foolish hearts and stale regrets about their son.

The coat he had bought in advance to wear at his brother’s wedding, the white shirt that he had been saying he would take to the dry cleaner someday because the stain wouldn’t come off for two years, and the sweatshirt with a character on it that he had nagged him about several times, saying how old are you, fell onto the sheetless bed with a thud.

Clothes that he had seen his son wearing at least once. Some of them were clothes he had bought. His wife, who often went shopping with his son, would have even more clothes that caught her eye.

Indeed, his wife’s touch noticeably slowed down. Her shoulders drooped, unable to hide it with her pretending-to-be-bright voice, and as he began to hear a nasal sound, he turned away, pretending not to notice.

“I’m going to wash up.”

No answer came back.

As her husband walked away, she slowly sat down. The room, which she had been cleaning while crying all day, was quite empty, as if it had been worth spending a whole day.

As if she was organizing her lingering feelings, the more the room was emptied, the more the lingering feelings she couldn’t let go of seemed to disappear, but as soon as she started organizing not only the photos and frames that she hadn’t organized at all, but also her son’s closet, she soon realized that it was an illusion. She couldn’t stop the tears from pouring out.

“……Ha.”

I’m not okay. I wasn’t okay yet. The love I had for him was too deep to let go with just one moment of meeting, so I wasn’t okay yet.

The middle-aged woman, who tried to hold back her tears, took out a wet wipe that she had brought to one side and carefully wiped away the tears that were about to flow down again.

She left the clothes she was organizing on the bed as they were, got up from her seat, and took one of her son’s frames that she had been turning over and hadn’t even thought of touching.

The face smiling brightly in the photo was completely different from the face she saw in her dream, but he was her son whom she had raised for nearly thirty years. There was no way she couldn’t recognize him.

“Stop crying now.”

Her son had definitely said that. He told her not to cry in front of his picture anymore. He told her not to be sad because he had just gone on a long trip.

So she had to do that.

But Jeong-hoon, it’s still hard for Mom.

She hugged the small frame tightly in her arms. It felt like she was hugging her son just a little bit when she did that.

She would miss him for the rest of her life.

She would want to see him for the rest of her life.

She could instinctively tell. That this longing and sadness would be something she couldn’t do anything about for the rest of her life.

When your birthday comes, when your memorial day comes, I’ll cry again.

I’ll struggle, cry, and miss you, remembering every moment from the moment you were born until the day you left.

But even so, I know you’ve gone on a trip.

So now she was okay. Even if someone said it was just a dream, a fantasy created by her subconscious, she believed that the son she met last night was real.

And that wouldn’t really be a simple dream.

So there was only one thing she could wish for.

May your journey be enjoyable and happy.

She stood up again. Although tears were dripping down, the hand that was cleaning her son’s room with an unusually firm touch was much stronger than before.

She finally took down her son’s frame that was hanging on the wall, which she couldn’t bear to look at and had turned over.

“…….”

She stroked her son’s face in the photo, smiling brightly with her hand.

“Take care, son.”

She said her last goodbye, hoping that he would live happily without pain this time.

Hoping that one day, when a lot of time has passed, she will be able to meet him again and hug him then.

〈I Have to Do Business Even After Possessing〉 End