I Tamed the First Rank Chapter 62
- HoshiMiya
- May 18
- 7 min read
<Dad, who is this kid?>
<He’s my relative’s kid, so I’m leaving him at our house for a while.>
<Ah, I’m a high school student now, so what if he makes a fuss?>
<He’s a good kid, so he’ll be quiet.>
The kid easily blurted out the “dad and mom” that they had rejected.
The house was a bit cramped for a family of six, but the kid wore neater clothes and ate delicious meals than when he was at the daycare. That was the end of it.
The couple, who both worked, were busy, and the kids, who were in the middle of puberty, didn’t pay much attention to the kid.
<There are a lot of dangerous things outside, so don’t come out of the room. Okay?>
When the couple went to work and the kids went to school, the kid was left alone in the room. He watched TV behind a locked door, ate, used the attached bathroom, drew in a sketchbook, read storybooks, and took a nap. Then, one of the family members came home.
The child was lonely even though he had better clothes and food than when he was in the orphanage.
<Could you please give me a high chair and a plate for the child here?>
<Do you want to have that?>
The evening we went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant with the family. The couple asked the child a favor, and on the way back, they asked the child who kept glancing at the hamster in the pet shop window. It was the only attention the couple gave him.
[You can tame the hamster.]
[Would you like to tame it?]
He nodded without even knowing what it was.
The names were just fancy names he had seen on TV and in storybooks. Unlike the child who spent most of the day in a small room, the names of the cool warriors and princes who went on adventures, met fairies, made friends, and saved the world. They hoped that the hamster, locked in a small cage, would be able to fly in the wide world, unlike them.
The couple adopted the child because they were aiming for a special supply for multiple children. The couple who won the lottery they wanted, sold it illegally at a premium, and immigrated overseas.
As they were boarding the plane, the child was looking up at the high wall that he thought he would never see again.
The teacher found the child who had been standing in front of the daycare center for a long time. 1-se did not come with him. The least the couple could show the child was that they did not abandon him and instead left him with someone.
The child became Kim Yoo-shin again.
<I knew there was something off about those people.>
The director frowned when she saw the child who returned after a few months. That was all she did.
The director still did not pay attention to the children, and the other children who envied the children who were adopted teased them harshly, saying that their parents had abandoned them.
The child realized that he had been abandoned twice.
The child who had been abandoned twice became lonelier, quieter, and more docile. Maybe he didn’t like me from the beginning because I didn’t listen. I shouldn’t have called him daddy and mommy from the beginning.
1-se who was sold from a pet shop was not in good health. Not long after being separated from the child who had given her emotional stability, 1-se quietly closed her eyes, searching for her invisible master. That night, when their souls were cut off, the child hid alone in the bathroom and cried quietly for a long time.
And the next day.
The child met her with ugly eyes that were swollen from crying all night.
<So you're Yoo-shin? It's really nice to meet you! I'm a Kim too. The scary-looking man here is my husband, and he's also a Kim. We already have something in common, right? It's good to have the most common last name in Korea, isn't it? Haha.>
Mother.
My mother, whom I should never have met.
The late Kim Ji-won, the late Kim Jeong-hoon.
Aged 36.
Hyeon Gyu-ha furrowed his brows slightly in front of the photo of the old woman affectionately taken with the young couple. In Yoo-shin smiled bitterly, thinking he knew why.
"My grandmother won't like me putting my picture in it."
"Why? Even if you’re adopted, aren’t you her grandson?"
"Grandmother thinks that my parents passed away because of me. And it's not entirely wrong. So, I don't come to see my parents on their death anniversary. I might run into my grandmother.”
The funeral home of the couple who died at the same time was decorated with miniatures of the foods they liked when they were alive and firefighter supplies. There was also a small dried flower in the corner, but Inyushin didn’t bring anything.
To be exact, he couldn’t bring anything. If his grandmother found out, she would be angry. Inyushin, who couldn’t leave any traces of himself, quietly bowed his head in front of the urn.
Beside him, Hyeon Gyu-ha looked at the photo again with his frowning eyebrows. The date the couple died was 14 years ago in the summer. That date seemed strangely familiar.
A couple where at least one of them was a firefighter and the summer of 14 years ago.
Before he could think about the meaning, In Yoo-shin raised his head. The child’s eyes, which looked nothing like his parents, were filled with a cold determination, so Hyeong Gyu-ha wished that the time of silence would last forever.
Hyeon Gyu-ha, who is most sensitive to In Yoo-shin's emotions, is the only one who understands In Yoo-shin's emotions. Even though he intuitively feels that In Yoo-shin's emotions that he has understood are the exact opposite of his own, he has no choice but to follow.
"There's a walking path behind you. Should we walk?"
However, he wanted to delay that time even a little, so he suggested it while walking ahead.
"I thought you were brought by your parents to Kaesong."
"I lived in Seoul before I moved to Dalgasa Orphanage. I've never been outside of the orphanage and my adopted home, so I have almost no memories of Seoul.
That's why I consider Kaesong my hometown."
"Why did you move all the way to Kaesong?"
"That's a bit ridiculous..."
In Yoo-shin scratched his head as he walked along the trail.
"The orphanage I was in when I was young was one of the places where gangsters disguised themselves as money launderers. It was discovered, so the director went to prison, and although it was not closed, the size of the orphanage was greatly reduced, so the children had to be sent to other places. Most orphanages in Seoul were full, so children went all over the country, but I was lucky because I moved to Kaesong, which was nearby."
"They're ridiculous people who use orphanages for money laundering."
"But thanks to that, the orphanage never ran out of money, so I think it wasn't bad to live there."
Even Hyeon Gyu-ha, who had been to several orphanages, found it laughable to hear this.
In Yoo-shin sat down on a bench in the middle of the walking path, and Hyeon Gyu-ha had to sit next to him.
“Gyu-ha-ssi.”
In Yoo-shin carefully placed the words he had practiced many times for today on the tip of his tongue.
“Will you listen to my story?”
And perhaps, Hyeon Gyu-ha also vaguely guessed what he was going to say. He roughly rubbed his face and slumped his shoulders.
“If I say I won’t listen, you’ll be embarrassed, right?”
“…I guess so.”
“I’ll listen to anything. Tell me anything.”
In Yoo-shin calmly moved his lips, trying not to look at Hyeon Gyu-ha’s face or his feelings displayed in the status window.
From the very first moment he was abandoned.
“It was winter, but I was abandoned in front of a daycare center. The teacher who was coming back from the mart said that he barely saw the back of a woman running away. There was a facility with a baby box installed 30 minutes away, but I guess the mother who gave birth to me didn’t have the presence of mind to go there….”
***
Unlike the middle-aged couples who looked around as if they were evaluating things, Kim Ji-won and Kim Jeong-hoon often visited their children while doing volunteer work. Sometimes, they would only visit one of them because the other person was busy.
The reason why the couple visited the daycare center regularly and looked for one child is obvious. The children were very envious, but the child could not enjoy or look forward to their visits.
They were scared.
They were afraid that they would be abandoned again.
The child could not even make eye contact properly, kept his mouth shut no matter what was said, and always had a defensive attitude, so the teachers were worried. The child was deeply hurt after being abandoned once. They tried to soothe him so that he would not be hurt again on his second chance, but the child could not raise his head at all.
Kim Ji-won and Kim Jeong-hoon did not care. The more the child cowered, the more correct and warm voices greeted the child. The child was still scared and timid about going to see them, but the warm voice lingered in his ears for a long time even while he was lying in bed.
When he started to speak a few words, the child learned something new.
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Credits:
Translator: Hoshi Miya
Editor/Proofreader: Editor M, eteryl
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