WELCOME HOME, NAM BORA.
our town hall archives show she is an outsider and a YELLOW CREEK resident, living on MOUNTAIN ROAD NO. 600, and she is currently a LEGAL COUNSEL.
🡒 ready to access her files? read on below ...
bora is the apple that fell from the tree, never far enough. her childhood as a single child to a young, struggling couple in a big city straddled the line between middle class aspirations and the threat of poverty. things got better with time, she remembers little of the worst of it - the times of despair and struggle only exist in her mind as memories her mother would recount on quiet nights in, when the liquor cabinet was open, fingerprints tracing the coat of dust.
she looks at old pictures of her parents like they're posters for a movie she'd watched dozens of times. the beautiful ingenue running away from the countryside with great ambitions, the dazzling big city smooth talker, carrying the world in empty pockets. he'd never heard of where she was from, and she'd spent her life daydreaming of meeting someone like him. a romance that burns bright and fast, that leaves scars. she was smiling bright for their courthouse wedding photo, a thin bouquet of white roses hiding her bulging stomach. her father's smile seemed to take a lot more effort, the wedding marking the first time he'd met his newfound son-in law.
bora's own memories feel like stories she tells herself, sometimes. her early teenage years in incheon are colored in the nostalgic longing for carelessness. money was no longer a daily problem, she didn't have trouble at school, she was as well-liked by her peers as a teenager can reasonably aspire to be. she entertained the idea of medical school, she could even dream of snu legacy. until it rained, and then poured. bora was fifteen when her father started being investigated for fraud, their assets were frozen, three lives lost to the judicial system as they were previously lived. but her mother's contempt focused on the other woman he'd been showering in gifts for three years by the point an indictment would lead to the uncovering of the affair.
that was the first time she returned to her roots in gaenari, in a bus crossing the peninsula southward in the dead of the night. she was shushing their crying cat in the carrier on her lap, ignoring the dirty looks of strangers fluttering in and out of sleep. her mother spoke about four sentences the entire trip, their phones turned off. she hadn't known what new life waited for her in the small town, but finding a man of means in her estranged grandfather was a surprise. in gaenari, his wealth could afford to maintain a seizable estate with a big house that was kept in good shape despite its age. bora had always judged her mother as an incorrigible materialist, but she was discovering in her a woman who would choose struggling out of poverty to a lavish small town life.
her most vivid memory from the two years she spents in gaenari is her cat running out of the house. she still remembers the cat sitting still on the porch as the sunset cooled off into a soft purple haze, and suddenly jumping off. she remembers running after her, watching her blend with the dried autumn folliage before disappearing completely into the woods. she remembers looking for her all night, and then all week and then every weekend, sporadically walking into the woods when walking home from school. she thinks she saw her once, when she was looking out her bedroom window and a marked calico shape prawling in the morning caught her eye, but it was another few hours of fruitless chasing. the cat never came back.
by the time bora graduated high school, her mother had already left gaenari. it was another of an escalating sequence of fights she didn't understand and found herself struggling to care. after she moves to busan for university, she doesn't see much of her parents at all, which she chooses to view as a sign of the times. her grandfather sends her emails she finds herself rereading during quiet nights in, as well as money she feels guilty accepting.
eventually, every screaming pain fades into a distant echo, and bora settles into adulthood. what once seemed like life or death eventually becomes inconsequential, and shedding skins every winter seems like routine. for both jobs and boyfriends, a sequence of failures eventually lead to comparative stability. occasionally she wonders if she's living the life her mother had been desperate for when she ran away from gaenari in her own youth, and whether the warmth the thought brings is a simmer or a boil. then she picks up a phonecall from her grandfather's attorney, extending her his condolences as he informs her of his passing.
apple trees blur past her windows as bora drives across the peninsula, fingers wrapped tight around the wheel. her mind is clouded by memories fading from her grasp and a sense of dread that she struggles to place. maybe she's feeling what her mother felt on that bus ride. maybe home can be quicksand, swallowing you faster the more you struggle.
