Chapter 31 – Brother’s Reminiscence – The Story of Me and My Brother
When I was a kid, I don’t even remember how old I was, I raised a hamster.
Their names are Hamzzi and Suzzi. The two small lives rolled meaninglessly on a treadmill in a small cage.
Life so small and fragile. They were so small lives that would die if you touched them just a little, or if you took your hands off them just a little bit.
I couldn’t stand it because it was lovely. This little life trembling in my hands, this little life that would die with just a little effort.
One day, Suzi died.
Just by pressing my back with my fingers, Suzi struggled and died.
Okay. I killed it I harmed that little life without any guilt.
Hamzzi, ignorant of anything, gnawed at the dead Suzzi. It was the moment when the culprit who killed Suzi became Hamzzi.
None of my family suspected me. He didn’t seem to have imagined that the cute youngest would do such a cruel thing.
Seeing Su Chi with only half of her body left, So-Young’s sister, who always pretended to be strong, cried. Overnight. She had never seen her sister cry so much. It seemed that the death of that small life had become a big wound for her sister.
But to me, that death was a joy. The joy of controlling one life with my own hands. In my short life of only a few years, Suzi’s death was the biggest stimulus.
Left alone, Hamjji died shortly after. Was he lonely? Maybe it’s because her sister and her family didn’t take good care of the ham-chi who killed Su-zi.
Even when Hamzi died, her sister did not cry as much as when Suzzi died. Rather, Hamzi, who killed Suzi, died, and she seemed to feel relieved inside.
Poor hamster. Not even pitiful I will believe in your innocence.
After two hamsters died, we stopped having pets in our house.
My sister begged the dog or cat several times, but her mom and dad wouldn’t listen.
Dogs and cats don’t live as long as humans anyway. It may have been her parents’ decision to think of her older sister who would be hurt again if she left first.
But for me, it was just a pity. I had long since forgotten the joy I felt when Suzi died, and I needed a little more stimulation. A new scapegoat was needed.
Then one day, unexpected luck came.
“It’s a smile. It’s my brother. My older brother.”
“Brother?”
At my mother’s words, I tilted my head. An older brother who comes after a younger brother?
But the moment I saw that little life rolling her eyes anxiously as her mother grabbed her by the wrist, I fell in love.
“Hello, brother!”
Brother.
Looking at my brother, I thought of the long-dead Hamzzi and Suzzi. Hamsters who were confined to small cages and worked hard on the treadmill.
To me, the existence of an older brother was a weak and small existence that could be crushed. At the same time, he was also a unique being struggling to live.
However, my brother went much more hands than the hamster. My brother was overly afraid of everything in the world.
And it was the same for me. Why was he so afraid of his little and cute brother?
It took a full year for my brother to accept me. The amount of devotion I gave to my brother during that one year is beyond words.
“Mi, smile, smile,”
“Huh? Brother why?”
“Thank you.”
I can’t remember why my brother thanked me at that time. But I remember the joy I felt when my brother called my name for the first time.
If the emotions I felt when Suzie died were about being electrocuted, the emotions I felt at this time were about being struck by lightning. I don’t know why, but it was an emotional moment for me.
After my brother gave me permission, my hobby became listening to his heartbeat.
When I hugged my brother and put my ear to his chest, my fragile heart was beating hard. If I thought I could make this heart stop at any time, that beat felt sweeter to me than any other music.
It was around that time that my mom and dad divorced. My mom looked at me with joy and my dad looked at me with displeasure. Eventually, one day, after a big fight between mom and dad, dad left the house. Me, my mom, and my sister unilaterally ostracized my dad, so it might be more accurate to say that I was kicked out rather than leaving the house.
After that, Dad was divorced by his mother along with an affair scandal.
It doesn’t matter what happened to the missing father. Because my brother is important now.
My lovely, lovely brother. Watching him struggle for his life, he felt the urge to trample it several times.
However, it was an act like the fairy tale I read a while ago about cutting the belly of the goose that lays the golden eggs. If you act on the impulse of the moment, the pleasure of a lifetime is gone.
I persevered. To taste the best moments, the best bliss.
With that little heart beating hard, my brother grew up quickly. My older brother has grown much taller and cooler than me. By the time I entered school, I couldn’t find the weak image of my childhood.
However, his weak heart remained the same. My brother was still a coward, and he was clumsy in dealing with people.
His brother’s wounds had not healed. And his new wounds were growing more and more.
When you turn 8, you have to go to school. And my older brother was a student subject to special education due to autism.
My brother had the choice of going to a special school, a special class at a regular school, or a regular class at a regular school.
No, it’s not my brother’s choice. To be precise, it was the choice of his mother, his guardian.
Mom wanted her brother to live with normal students and grow up to be normal. So my brother went to school in a regular class at a regular school.
I don’t know what he wanted. But I wonder if he was at least different from his mother’s thoughts.
As a result, her mother’s choices were not very good. Not everything went as well as her mother thought. More than anything, she said the mother failed to consider the innate cruelty of her children.
My brother, who was always trembling and couldn’t even answer questions properly, was quickly isolated from school. At least her older sister, So-young, was fine for the two years she was in school, but her older sister, who was 4 years older than her, quickly graduated and moved on to middle school.
After the disappearance of her breakwater as sister So-young, her brother became a direct target of bullying.
Is it human nature to harass and rejoice in life that is smaller and weaker than himself? As if to kill a small hamster, the children bullied their older brother. The innocent cruelty of the children increased the scars on his body and mind.
He is my older brother whom I have cherished and cared for in case it would break.
But as I entered school a year late, all I could do was hold my brother’s hand on the way home from school and bring him home. The only thing my brother asked me to do was to not tell my mother.
According to his brother himself, physical pain is okay because he is used to it, and being hit by an elementary school student is nothing.
But what’s really scary is that it’s causing trouble to my mother and my family.
My brother himself said he was fine, but he ignored the feeling and didn’t want to dig into it.
Some kids made fun of me as I walked home from school holding hands with my older brother. But I didn’t mind. I never let go of my brother’s hand. Even thinking about it now, I think it was a good thing. If I had let go of my hand then, I might not have been able to hold my brother’s hand again.
Then one day.
Her school is turned upside down when her mom finds out about her bullying after seeing her brother come back in the mud.
But that was all.
The school’s position was that punishing simple “Kid pranks” Was too harsh for young children. Besides, there were too many male students involved in the “Prank.” It would have been a much easier solution for the school to make an issue of one brother’s lack of social skills than punishing all those children and sending them out and acknowledging school violence.
In the end, the incident was overturned, and the school did nothing but promise to prevent a recurrence. My brother was clearly a victim of school violence, but there was no perpetrator.
But since then, direct bullying has decreased significantly. The subtle bullying was unavoidable, but at least the visible violence was gone.
And my brother survived the graduation ceremony safely.
On graduation day, my older brother was smiling as if he was happy.
It was the first time for me to see my older brother smiling like a sunflower like that.
“Smile. Thank you.”
“Why are you suddenly like that? Brother?”
“School, thanks to your smile, I was able to not give up. The reason I graduated safely is because of my smile. Thank you.”
“… Oops My brother, it’s not even special. But when I go to middle school, I will have to go alone, what should I do? Will you be okay without me?”
“… Huh. It will be difficult, but I will try to change. I will change so that I will not worry my mother, my sister, or Miso.”
My brother was trying to stand in the world on his own two feet. To me, such an older brother felt like his caterpillar was turning into a butterfly.
“Yes, brother. I will cheer you on!”
As always, I took a commemorative photo while holding my brother’s hand tightly. Her mother with her camera was in tears.
My brother, who became a middle school student, really changed. He started to eat a lot of rice, and he grew taller and bigger. He did every day without skipping even workouts like running, push-ups and sit-ups.
Best of all, as he started practicing the script with his mom, he also fixed his stutter.
He was still very nervous when receiving attention from many people or talking to strangers like when he was presenting, but it was a really big development for his brother.
Seeing my brother’s growth and his willingness to change himself, I thought it would be okay even though neither I nor Soyoung unnie were in middle school.
And in fact, my brother adjusted well to middle school. He also had friends of the same sex and could be said to be much better than he was in elementary school.
But problems always come from unexpected directions.
On a first-year field trip, my brother was gang-raped by female students in the same grade.
The female students forcibly took pictures of her brother by taking off his pants and forced him to ejaculate to take a video. And the girls in the same grade shared videos and photos.
The incident was so sensational that it made the news. It was a problem of a different level from the cute school bullying I suffered when I was in elementary school.
Eight female students directly involved in the incident were forced to transfer.
Punishments such as suspension, volunteer work, and special education were also handed down to about 20 female students who shared photos and videos through chat rooms.
However, such punishment could not erase the wounds inflicted on her brother.
My brother and my family had to suffer from severe aftereffects that were incomparable to those in elementary school.
When my older brother rejected me because my sister and mom were the same woman, I was shocked as if the sky collapsed.
In the end, overcoming that hurdle, our family’s ties became even stronger, but what happened then remains as a memory I never want to go through again.
And in the process, I realized something deep in my heart.
Just like the hamsters that were kept in cages, you have to manage your brother and his surroundings more thoroughly.
In order to do that, my own strength was not enough. It had to be managed more systematically and systematically.
I needed money and manpower at my disposal. Not only in middle school, but also in high school, college, and life after graduation, I needed a steady and stable income.
I decided to become an idol simply because I had a plausible talent.
It was a good thing to use as a stepping stone to start internet broadcasting.
I had no intention of prolonging my idol life. I thought I would quit once I got a certain amount of fame.
However, it took longer than expected to debut and gain popularity, and quitting was not the way I wanted it to be. Maybe I took this too easily.
A setback to the plan created a hole in her ability to fully manage her older brother, who had just entered high school. However, even so, when I heard that his brother had a girlfriend, I doubted my ears and my head. Leaving me, leaving Soyoung unnie, leaving my mother, and making a girlfriend?
The feeling of betrayal I felt at that time could not be expressed in a few words.
