“T-Tae-san!”

Mom was the first one out through the door of the inner room.

Her face was flushed, and the look on it said she was thoroughly furious.

My mom is good and soft-hearted.

She had a great deal of anger in her, swallowed and swallowed again all these years.

“Mom. Is something wrong? Aren’t you frying jeon? Oh~ my uncles and my youngest aunt are here for the first time in a while.”

I played it brazen.

I could feel the stares pouring onto me.

I turned my head.

“Have you all been well? I was starting to think I’d forget your faces. Hahaha.”

I squared my shoulders too.

The holidays I remember from the past were not exactly pleasant ones.

The scenes these people made every time they came were horrible.

They used the inner room like it was their own.

My room was taken from me too, of course.

My shabby things were smashed or lost in my cousins’ hands.

Not one of them ever said sorry, or asked to be understood.

Back then I put up with it.

I’m the eldest grandson of this house.

If it hadn’t been for the grandmother who loved me terribly for being the eldest grandson, I would have shouted them out of the place on the spot.

They were the children of the grandmother I loved, so I put up with it.

But the world has changed.

It’s a world where even brothers and sisters get cut off when they go past what is owed between human beings.

My father’s brothers and sisters, who were too much by anybody’s reckoning.

“What’s this! If you’ve come, you bow the way you’re supposed to! What kind of way is that to talk! Do your elders look like a joke to you!”

“Eldest oppa, why on earth is Tae-san so insolent? Is one little dip of the head supposed to be a greeting?”

My first uncle, Jang Dae-cheol, who runs his own business, dressed me down sternly.

My youngest aunt yapped away like a skylark.

They were my father’s brothers and sister, and their faces had turned nasty.

Everybody’s here except the eldest aunt.

The eldest aunt, proud as she is, at least counted as a human being.

The youngest aunt, who had come here instead of going to her husband’s family, had greed stuck all over her face in layers.

My heavyset second uncle scowled.

My third uncle, who works as a civil servant for the city of Seoul, actually glared at me.

Haah~ look at these people.

“Come on, what’s got into all of you. People who didn’t even come on the memorial day for their own parents are going to make a point of manners? That’s not good business ethics~.”

I delivered one pointed fact with a bone in it.

My father had his eyes closed and said nothing.

He was the one having the worst time of it in that room.

That’s what the position of eldest son in a family is.

He was the highest elder in the room, and the position asked him for reason on his face instead of feeling.

“Wh-What!”

“Why, you little—”

“Oh my. Where did he learn that insolent mouth? Did he learn it from our sister-in-law?”

Every one of them stared at me with their faces flushed red.

“Mom, where are the twins?”

“They went out to meet their friends.”

Good.

I didn’t want the twins, young as they are, seeing grown-ups at their ugliest.

I’m the eldest grandson of this house whichever way you look at it.

This is the share of it I have to bear.

“Are you ignoring what an elder says to you!”

My scrawny third uncle kicked himself up off the floor.

“Elder? Is there any elder in this house other than my father?”

This is a family that needs one good stirring.

Money aside, family should not behave like this.

They should have served my father, their eldest brother, with every courtesy.

He’s the man who went out and worked for a wage in place of a sick grandfather, and kept his younger brothers and sisters fed.

“You little bastard!!!”

Whoosh!

A hand came flying.

This… here comes the family trainwreck again.

Thock!

I’m not a man who gets hit by a youngest uncle a lot shorter than me.

A question of values, the kind that came up in Hanguk University’s essay exam.

If getting hit would have made this family run right, I’d have stood there and let it land.

But our family needed a cleaning operation — one good turning-over and a rebuild.

“Y-You dare to grab an elder’s hand!”

“Is an elder who slaps a grown nephew an elder? I was raised well and never once hit at home~ and now a man who has never given me so much as pocket money is going to hit me because he’s an elder? If I get hit, an assault report goes in immediately~ you don’t know that my lawyer is a former senior prosecutor, do you?”

“…”

At the words assault report, every one of their faces went pale.

They seemed to be realizing only now that I had grown up.

“Tae-san, that’s enough.”

“Yes, Father.”

On a day like this I couldn’t call him Dad.

I had to raise the authority of my father, the eldest son.

“Hyung! Is it all right to raise that boy so wild!”

“Oppa!!! Look at the state of this family! What has our eldest sister-in-law been doing? How did she raise a delinquent like that!”

“That’s enough out of all of you.”

My father issued a first warning.

“Enough of what! A boy with manners like that needs a sharp education!”

“That’s right! Standing up to his own uncle!”

“The end of days, the end of days…”

They still hadn’t come to their senses.

It’s the classic chronic defect of character: they can’t look at what they have turned into, so they blame everybody else.

I watched them quietly.

“I said that’s enough!!!”

And then my father’s roar burst out of him.

Oh! Father, you’re the best!

It was the first time my father had ever shouted in front of his brothers and sister, and it was strange to see, and it was magnificent.

It rang so loud the whole house shook with it.

The roar of a sleeping tiger.

“B-Brother…”

“Not brother — call me hyungnim!”

“…”

“O-Oppa, why are you like this. You’re frightening me.”

“Youngest, I raised you wrong. Our parents doted on you for being the late-born child, and I went along with it. But looking at the way you behave, I can’t face our ancestors or the Kim family you married into. A married daughter belongs to another house, they say, but seeing all the ancestors of our Jang family take the blame because of you alone, this brother’s heart is breaking…”

Hear, hear!

They said my father was elected village head this year, and his way with words had come a long way with it.

Under my father’s scolding, every one of them shut their mouths.

I had never seen my father like this.

I let go of my youngest uncle’s wrist too.

“Tae-san, you apologize to your uncles and your aunt too.”

“Yes, sir! Father!”

Apologizing is nothing at all.

Work in the world long enough and you meet cases far more rotten than this.

Pride doesn’t put food in your mouth.

All you have to do is not lose your self-respect as a human being, right to the end.

“To my uncles and my youngest aunt, the eldest grandson of this Jang family deeply apologizes for his disrespectful words and behavior.”

I bent from the waist, low, and gave them the apology.

I put the weight on the eldest grandson of this Jang family.

Whatever anybody says, I was the head-house grandson.

The eldest grandson is no root running off the side into a collateral branch; he was the center of the family.

My words carried a different weight.

“Ahem…”

“Hrk…”

My uncles swallowed on dry throats.

These are men who know exactly what happens the moment they refuse the eldest grandson’s apology.

The moment they set themselves against me, their tie to this family is over.

Families and relatives may be coming apart everywhere, but the culture of the house is not going to disappear in the Republic of Korea.

And I’m not the one who needs something here.

“What are you all doing. When someone below you apologizes, you show the bearing of a generous elder!”

The world is full of grown-ups who got to be grown without ever getting an education.

Our family was the same.

A grandfather who was sick much of the time and a grandmother who was nothing but kind ruined their children.

My father, the country boy who was cowed by having no money, had straightened his back at last.

The eldest son of the family had raised his voice.

“S-Sorry, Tae-san. Your uncles showed you a poor face today.”

“Tae-san, your aunt is sorry too.”

“Not at all. Your nephew fell far short.”

My father’s authority left all of them cowed.

The house had changed.

That alone should have tipped my uncles and my aunt off.

A change in the house means a change in the culture of that house.

They had carried on in the old habit, treating my parents as nothing, and they got a hard lesson for it.

The thick floor cushion my father was sitting on meant exactly that.

If they had looked at the household goods my mother’s hand had lifted a whole class, they would have known to watch their mouths.

“Everyone, sit.”

“Yes…, hyungnim.”

My father’s brothers and sister sat down in front of him.

I knelt behind him.

“Until now, through my own want of virtue, I did not stop you behaving as though nobody else existed. Guilty of failing to raise this family up as the eldest son, I failed to wake my younger brothers and sister out of their ignorance. Guilty of failing to teach you, who dare to come empty-handed to the head house of the clan at the holiday, I cannot face our ancestors.”

My father’s voice rang out, full and deep.

Every one of them held their breath.

The sleeping tiger was awake, so it was only right that the wolves and the foxes made themselves small.

“But from this point on, things will be different!”

My father’s proclamation.

“…”

Every one of them shut their mouths and listened.

“First. At the holidays and on the joint memorial day for our parents, attendance is required! And any of you who does not bring his wife and his children with him will not come into this house!”

The first article my father laid down was a radical one.

The fact is I had almost forgotten the faces of my aunts by marriage and my cousins.

“Second. Any of you who fails to keep his dignity as an elder of this family will get the switch!”

Ohh! Father, this one’s radical too!

“Third. Your eldest brother’s wife is the pillar of the Jang family. If your wives or any of you commit a discourtesy toward her…, you will never set foot in our house again! Do you understand!”

My father had a great deal stored up in him too.

It was a warning to my aunts by marriage, who had nothing themselves and still treated my mother as nothing.

“You grew up in the same house as I did, but this house is, plainly, the space where the eldest grandson’s family of the Jang house lives. You will not come and go as you please without courtesy! Tae-san, the eldest grandson of this family, is fully grown. Any elder who does not set an example…, will be cast out of the family.”

My father’s face was stern.

Not one of them could raise a flag against it.

“Have you all understood what I said?”

“Yes…, hyungnim.”

“So-hui, why is there no answer from you!”

“Y-Yes, I understand. Oraboni.”

That is the kind of position the eldest brother’s seat is.

However old they get, a look and a word from him move younger brothers and sisters who are grown and have families of their own.

Of course, that authority…

“Do Dae-cheol and So-hui need money?”

“Yes? Yes! Hyungnim. A chicken place that’s doing well in the neighborhood has come up cheap. If you could put in a little of the money to take it over…, this younger brother will live hard and make it work!”

“Oraboni! Just help me with the balance on the apartment. I’ll pay you back on time with interest, I swear.”

“Hyungnim…, I need to replace my taxi too…, help me out, just a little.”

“And what does Dae-sang want?”

“Eldest hyungnim, I…”

My father’s brothers and sister spoke up with what they wanted.

Every one of them had a purpose in coming.

I didn’t hold it against them.

I never expected a perfect turning over of new leaves out of these people in the first place.

“Talk it over with Tae-san.”

“What? W-With Tae-san?”

“What does that mean…”

“Don’t you understand what it means? I’m busy with the farm work, so I’ve entrusted this family’s finances to Tae-san. So talk it over with the eldest grandson of our family~.”

Ah! Father! Father!

My adorable father, catching my eye and squeezing one eye shut in a wink!

He had carried his son on his back and enjoyed the full run of playing the eldest son of the house all by himself.

And he had shoved the whole cleanup onto me.

Only then did I realize it.

That set against my father, I am short on the mess-line years of life — far, far too short!

(End of Chapter 46)