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Chapter 4…
Class 1-1
My mother and father believed that the reason their business had been thriving ever since I was born was entirely thanks to the good fortune I had been born with. The shaman lady’s words, when she called me a child who brought good fortune, must have sounded like a divine revelation to my parents, who were utterly devoted to superstitions.
I inherited my large, round eyes, like glass candy, from my mother, and my fair skin and brown hair from my father. When I was little and knew nothing about the world, I was so adorable that even looking at pictures of myself now made me want to pinch my own cheeks. As I grew older, my father’s dormant genes began to emerge, and the cuteness of my childhood gradually disappeared. Still, when my parents reminisced about my younger days, saying I had looked like a fairy or a rabbit, they weren’t entirely wrong.
“Princess Eundam! Look over here!”
My father’s doting behavior was so excessive that the entire neighborhood knew about it. Even the story of how he went to such lengths to send me to the only private kindergarten in Bongjang-dong at the time would take three days and four nights to tell.
On the day of the kindergarten recital, my father rented a professional camera and filmed me. He became something of a legend among his friends.
Anyone who heard this might say that I was so spoiled by good fortune that I didn’t even know how grateful I should be. They might say that having parents who devoted themselves so wholeheartedly to their daughter was a rare blessing.
But just as a coin has a front, it also has a back.
“Eundam! Make a V!”
On the day I started elementary school, my parents showed up wearing gold jewelry from head to toe because they didn’t want me to feel intimidated on my first day. They started taking pictures of me right from the school entrance.
By then, I had already been diagnosed with two conditions before graduating from kindergarten.
One was Princess Syndrome.
The other was Main Character Syndrome.
“Mom, am I pretty?”
“Of course! Our Eundam is the prettiest girl in the world.”
When I look at the photographs from my elementary school entrance ceremony through the eyes of my adult self, I’m so shocked that all I can do is blink.
My hair was tied into two pigtails with enormous white ribbons that looked like something straight out of a cartoon. I wore a pink fur scarf and a coat in an even deeper shade of crimson. The combination was downright ridiculous.
It was only one day, when I happened to come across an old photograph taken in front of the school gate, that I realized something.
The day my life as the bored but dazzling princess of Bongjang-dong ended was also the day I began starring in a cruel fairy tale.
“Suyeong, I’m sorry. We were a little late because we had to take pictures of our Eundam.”
“It’s okay, Yeongju. We just got here, too. Oh, right. This is my son.”
Before the entrance ceremony officially began, my mother called my father and me over, saying there was someone she wanted to introduce us to.
It was a friend who had lived in America for a long time because of her husband. My mother had been so excited, saying they had been best friends during middle and high school.
Aunt Suyeong, who had moved to Bongjang-dong at my mother’s persistent urging, had always struck me as having the image of a wealthy housewife or a villain from a television drama.
She spoke in a casual, gentle manner, but when we first met, her eyes had felt cold as they scanned me from head to toe.
I had been skipping along while holding my father’s hand when I was startled once by Aunt Suyeong’s intense first impression, and then again by the boy standing beside her.
I was the only grandchild on both my mother’s and father’s sides of the family. Until that age, I had believed there wasn’t a single adult in the world who disliked me.
I was at the stage where I believed that anyone who disliked someone as precious and lovely as a princess like me was simply a bad person. Just as my parents said, I was a kind-hearted girl who was gracious enough to overlook their behavior.
“Here you are! This is my daughter, Eundam. Isn’t she much prettier in person than in the pictures?”
Perhaps Aunt Suyeong had been surprised by my appearance, which looked so fresh and sweet that I seemed as though I’d taste like strawberry milk if someone licked me.
The moment she heard I was the daughter, the tension in her eyes relaxed. She smiled and greeted me.
“She really is. Just like you said, Yeongju. She looks like a little princess.”
I still don’t quite understand how someone’s gaze could be so cold one moment and suddenly turn warm the next.
But I liked being called a princess, so I placed my hands over my belly and gave her an affected little greeting.
“Hello. You look like a princess, too, ma’am.”
When Princess Syndrome and Main Character Syndrome combine, they give birth to a new form of madness called Empress Syndrome.
It means treating people kindly with the mindset of a ruler governing her subjects. In return, you get praised as a mature and well-mannered child.
For a child, it was quite a clever strategy. Of course, adults could probably see right through such cunning little tricks.
My parents were proud of me for behaving that way, but if there was anyone I wanted to blame first, it was myself. I was the one who had become addicted to such trivial praise and gone out of my way to do things I didn’t even need to do.
“Eundam speaks so sweetly, too. Our Junjae isn’t very good with words.”
I had never been particularly shy, and I loved situations where I could meet other children my age.
At kindergarten, most of the children treated me like their older sister and followed me around like I was the leader of the group. Even the teachers would subtly suggest that I should be given an important role in the annual recital because I could solve difficult problems with ease and always knew how to say pretty things.
“Junjae. You should greet your mother’s friend, too.”
Cha Junjae was the first person to make me feel humiliated in my short life, which had until then been painted entirely with compliments and affection.
Back then, whenever I heard the word foreign country, I immediately thought of America. So the appearance of a boy from that imaginary land of wealth stirred up a new kind of excitement.
He held his pale face high, even fairer than mine, despite the fact that I had secretly used my mother’s sunscreen.
His eyes showed no interest. His lips offered no admiration.
Looking at his face, which showed not even the slightest excitement about the entrance ceremony, made me feel as though I had swallowed a fish bone.
A sharp, unfamiliar pain pierced my young heart for the very first time.
“Eundam and Junjae are in the same class, right?”
“Isn’t this fate? It’s such a good thing you two moved here.”
Who could have imagined that the son of my mother’s friend, who had lived in America because of her husband, would become someone I would meet so dramatically upon their return to Korea—and that our connection would last for well over twenty years?
“Before we begin the entrance ceremony, we ask all the parents in attendance to proceed to the back of the playground…”
An announcement came over the loudspeaker. My parents and Aunt Suyeong sent us off with smiles on their faces.
The announcement continued, instructing the new students to walk toward the flags beneath which their classes would gather.
I was just about to set off in search of the Class 1 flag, whose location I had heard about so many times that I practically had calluses in my ears, when a pair of hurriedly approaching pointed heels grabbed my shoulder.
“Eundam.”
“Yes?”
Aunt Suyeong had run over with her hair flying. Sweat and desperation were mixed together on her face.
I had wanted to be the first person to reach my class flag, so I bit my lip, feeling a little impatient.
“I’m sorry, but could you look after our Junjae? You’re in the same class, after all.”
As Aunt Suyeong spoke, she hurriedly gestured behind her.
That was when Cha Junjae, who had been standing there absentmindedly as though the entrance ceremony had nothing to do with him, finally began to move.
With a tense expression, Aunt Suyeong gave me one last earnest request.
“I’m counting on you.”
Why had I suddenly wanted to refuse?
I had heard requests like that countless times since I was little. Perhaps because adults believed their children would benefit from becoming friends with someone as sociable as me, some of them even offered me snacks and asked me to get along with their children.
Thanks to those adults practically bowing and scraping before me, I had always felt confident and proud. I thought it was a mutually beneficial arrangement.
But the emotion I felt that day had a completely different root.
“Yes, I’ll take good care of him.”
“Thank you. Let’s go eat something delicious after the ceremony. I’ll be waiting over there with your parents.”
“Okay!”
Cha Junjae was so absorbed in listening to whatever his mother was saying that he seemed completely oblivious to his surroundings.
Even in the early years of elementary school, Cha Junjae was always like that.
Absentminded yet cold, and at the same time possessing a sharpness that seemed far beyond what a boy his age should have had.
Under Aunt Suyeong’s watchful eye, I took Cha Junjae’s hand.
He flinched, clenching and then loosening his fingers before looking at me with somewhat sharp eyes.
“I’m Eundam. Song Eundam. We’re in the same class, so let’s go together.”
Cha Junjae merely stared at me without answering.
But whether he responded or not, I wanted to be the first to reach the class flag, so I grabbed his hand and ran.
At first, Cha Junjae hesitated as he followed me. But after nearly being left behind several times, he began to pick up the pace.
From Class 1 to Class 10, the black-haired heads of the children attending the entrance ceremony crowded together like bean sprouts crammed into a basket.
I squeezed through the packed crowd, ran, shoved my way forward, and raced toward one goal alone: securing a spot in the very front row.
The Class 1 flag was blue.
I pushed past the children gathered in little clusters and finally reached the front row I had wanted so badly.
I had accomplished my first goal.
I stood at attention beneath the flag fluttering in the wind.
At the same time, I remembered that I had brought someone along with me.
“Oh, right.”
Cha Junjae, whose physical stamina was terrible for an elementary school student, was still panting heavily.
Having secured my victory, I let go of his hand with a smug expression.
“Junjae.”
“You can stand here.”
I pulled him by the shoulder and moved him into the row behind me.
Cha Junjae followed obediently, wearing an expression as blank as a fool’s.
I silently applauded his innocence and willingness to listen.
He wasn’t as impressive as I had thought.
The presence of the thorn that had been painfully pricking my heart began to fade.
A naive little boy like him was no match for me.
I wonder what might have changed if I hadn’t let my guard down that day.
It was only much later that I realized the name of the thorn I had swallowed the moment I first saw Cha Junjae.
Jealousy.
I had always been the one who made others feel jealous. I had never once experienced jealousy myself.
Well, who knows?
Considering how painfully vivid the memory of the smile I wore beneath that blue Class 1 flag still is, perhaps I haven’t managed to get rid of the thorn I swallowed that day after all.
