#Tae's POV.
Seventh grade brought changes, all right, but the biggest one didn't happen at school — it happened at home. Hal-abeoji (Grandfather) Hobi (Jung Hoseok) came to live with us.
At first, it was kind of weird because none of us really knew him. Except for eomma, of course. And even though he's spent the past year and a half trying to convince us he's a great guy, from what I can tell, the thing he likes to do best is stare out the front room window. There's not much to see out there except the Jeons' front yard, but you can find him there day or night, sitting in the big easy chair they moved in with him, staring out the window.
Okay, so he also reads Harper Lee novels and the newspapers, does crossword puzzles, and tracks his stocks, but those things are all distractions. Given no one to justify it to, the man would stare out the window until he fell asleep. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It just seems so … boring.
Papa says he stares like that because he misses Grandma, but that's not something Hal-abeoji had ever discussed with me. As a matter of fact, he never discussed much of anything with me until a few months ago when he read about Jungkook in the newspaper.
Now, Jeon Jungkook did not wind up on the front page of The Chosun Ilbo and in The Korean Times newspaper for being an eighth-grade Einstein, as you might suspect. No, my, he got front-page coverage because he refused to climb out of a sycamore tree.
Not that I could tell a sycamore from a maple or a birch for that matter, but Jungkook, of course, knew what kind of tree it was and passed that knowledge along to every creature in his wake.
So this tree, this sycamore tree, was up the hill on a vacant lot on Samcheongdong-gil Road and it was massive. Massive and ugly. It was twisted and gnarled and bent, and I kept expecting the thing to blow over in the wind.
One day last year I'd finally had enough of him yakking about that stupid tree. I came right out and told him that it was not a magnificent sycamore, it was, in reality, the ugliest tree known to man. And you know what he said? He said I was visually challenged. Visually challenged! This is from the boy who lives in a house that's the scourge of the neighborhood. They've got bushes growing over windows, weeds sticking out all over the place, and a barnyard's worth of animals running wild. I'm talking about dogs, cats, chickens, even snakes. I swear to God, his brothers have a boa constrictor in their room. They dragged me in there when I was about ten and made me watch it eat a rat. A live, beady-eyed rat. They held that rodent up by its tail and gulped, the boa swallowed it whole. That snake gave me nightmares for a month.
Anyway, normally I wouldn't care about someone's yard, but the Jeons' mess bugged my dad big-time, and he channeled his frustration into our yard. He said it was our neighborly duty to show them what a yard's supposed to look like. So while Yeonjun and Beomgyu are busy plumping up their boa, I'm having to mow and edge our yard, then sweep the walkways and gutter, which is going a little overboard, if you ask me.
And you'd think Jungkook's dad—who's a big, strong, bricklaying dude — would fix the place up, but no. According to my Papa, he spends all his free time painting. His landscapes don't seem like anything special to me, but judging by his price tags, he thinks of quite a lot of them. We see them every year at the Seoul Fair, and my parents always say the same thing: "The world would have more beauty in it if he'd fix up the yard instead."
Papa and Jungkook's Papa do talk some. I think my Papa feels sorry for Mrs. Jeon — he says he (jm) married a dreamer, and because of that, one of the two of them will always be unhappy.
Whatever. Maybe Jungkook's aesthetic sensibilities have been permanently screwed up by his father and none of this is his fault, but Jungkook has always thought that that sycamore tree was God's gift to our little corner of the universe.
Back in the third and fourth grades he used to clown around with her brothers in the branches or peel big chunks of bark off so they could slide down the crook in its trunk. It seemed like they were playing in it whenever my Papa took us somewhere in the car. Jungkook would be swinging from the branches, ready to fall and break every bone in his body, while we were waiting at the stoplight, and my Papa would shake his head and say, "Don't you ever climb that tree like that, do you hear me, Taehyung? I never want to see you doing that! You either, Jennie. That is much too dangerous."
My sister would roll her eyes and say, "As if," while I'd slump beneath the window and pray for the light to change before Jungkook squealed my name for the world to hear.
I did try to climb it once in the fifth grade. It was the day after Jungkook had rescued my kite from its mutant toy-eating foliage. He climbed miles up to get my kite, and when he came down, he was actually very cool about it. He didn't hold my kite hostage and stuck his lips out like I was afraid he might. He just handed it over and then backed away.
I was relieved, but I also felt like a weenie. When I'd seen where my kite was trapped, I was sure it was a goner. Not Jungkook. He scrambled up and got it down in no time. Man, it was embarrassing.
So I made a mental picture of how high he'd climbed, and the next day I set off to outdo him by at least two branches. I made it past the crook, up a few limbs, and then — just to see how I was doing — I looked down.
Mis-take! It felt like I was on top of the Empire State Building without a bungee. I tried looking up to where my kite had been, but it was hopeless. I was indeed a tree-climbing weenie.
Then junior high started and my dream of a Jungkook-free existence shattered. I had to take the bus, and you-know-who did, too. There were about eight kids all together at our bus stop, which created a buffer zone, but it was no comfort zone. Jungkook always tried to stand beside me or talk to me, or in some other way mortify me.
And then he started climbing. The boy is in the seventh grade, and he's climbing a tree — way, way up in a tree. And why does he do it? So he can yell down at us that the bus is five! Four! Three blocks away!
Blow-by-blow traffic watch from a tree — what every kid in junior high feels like hearing first thing in the morning.
He tried to get me to come up there with him, too. "Hyungie, come on! You won't believe the colors! It's absolutely magnificent! Hyungie, you've got to come up here!"
Yeah, I could just hear it: "Taehyung and Jungkook sitting in a tree…" Was I ever going to leave the second grade behind?
One morning I was specifically not looking up when out of nowhere he swung down from a branch and practically knocked me over. Heart attack! I dropped my backpack and wrenched my neck, and that did it. I refused to wait under that tree with that maniac monkey on the loose anymore. I started leaving the house at the very last minute. I made up my own waiting spot, and when I saw the bus pull up, I'd truck up the hill and get on board.
No Jungkook, no problem.
And that, my friend, took care of the rest of seventh grade and almost all of eighth, too, until one day a few months ago.
That's when I heard a commotion up the hill and could see some big trucks parked up on Samcheongdong-gil Road, where the bus pulls in. There were some men shouting stuff up at Jungkook, who was, of course, five stories up in the tree.
All the other kids started to gather under the tree, too, and I could hear them telling him he had to come down. He was fine — that was obvious to anyone with a pair of ears — but I couldn't figure out what they were all arguing about.
I trucked up the hill, and as I got closer and saw what the men were holding, I figured out in a hurry what was making Jungkook refuse to come out of the tree.
Chain saws.
Don't get me wrong here, okay? The tree was an ugly mutant tangle of gnarly branches. The boy arguing with those men was Jungkook — the world's peskiest, bossiest, most know-it-all male. But all of a sudden my stomach completely bailed on me. Jungkook loved that tree. Stupid as it was, he loved that tree, and cutting it down would be like cutting out his heart.
Everyone tried to talk him down. Even me. But he said he wasn't coming down, not ever, and then he tried to talk us up.
"Taehyungie Hyung, please! Come up here with me. They won't cut it down if we're all up here!"
For a second I considered it. But then the bus arrived and I talked myself out of it. It wasn't my tree, and even though he acted like it was, it wasn't Jungkook's, either.
We boarded the bus and left him behind, but school was pretty much a waste. I couldn't seem to stop thinking about Jungkook. Was he still up in the tree?
Were they going to arrest him?
When the bus dropped us off that afternoon, Jungkook was gone and so was half the tree. The top branches, the place my kite had been stuck, his favorite perch — they were all gone.
We watched them work for a little while, the chainsaws gunning at full throttle, smoking as they chewed through the wood. The tree looked lopsided and naked, and after a few minutes, I had to get out of there. It was like watching someone dismember a body, and for the first time in ages, I felt like crying. Crying. Over a stupid tree that I hated.
I went home and tried to shake it off, but I kept wondering, Should I have gone up the tree with him? Would it have done any good?
I thought about calling Jungkook to tell him I was sorry they'd cut it down, but I didn't. It would've been too, I don't know, weird.
He didn't show up at the bus stop the next morning and didn't ride the bus home that afternoon, either.
Then that night, right before dinner, my Hal-abeoji summoned me into the front room. He didn't call me as I was walking by — that would have bordered on friendliness. What he did was talk to my mother, who talked to me. "I don't know what it's about, honey," he (jin) said. "Maybe he's just ready to get to know you a little better."
Great. The man had a year and a half to get acquainted, and he chooses now to get to know me. But I couldn't exactly blow him off.
My Hal-abeoji is a big man with a slightly scooped nose and greased-back salt-and-pepper hair. He lives in house slippers and a sports coat, and I've never seen a whisker on him. They grow, but he shaves them off like three times a day. It's a real recreational activity for him.
Besides his meaty nose, he's also got big meaty hands. I suppose you'd notice his hands regardless, but what makes you realize just how beefy they are is his wedding ring. That thing's never going to come off, and even though my Papa says that's how it should be, I think he ought to get it cut off. Another few pounds and that ring's going to amputate his finger.
When I went in to see him, those big hands of his were woven together, resting on the newspaper in his lap. I said, "Hal-abeoji? You wanted to see me?"
"Have a seat, son."
Son? Half the time he didn't seem to know who I was, and now suddenly I was "son"? I sat in the chair opposite him and waited.
"Tell me about your friend Jungkook."
"Jungkook? he's not exactly my friend…!"
"Why is that?" he asked. Calmly. Like he had prior knowledge.
I started to justify it, then stopped myself and asked, "Why do you want to know?"
He opened the paper and pressed down the crease, and that's when I realized that Jungkook had made the front page of The Chosun Ilbo & the Korean Times. There was a huge picture of him in the tree, surrounded by a fire brigade and policemen, and then some smaller photos I couldn't make out very well. "Can I see that?"
He folded it up but didn't hand it over. "Why isn't he your friend, tae?"
"Because he's…" I shook my head and said, "You'd have to know Jungkook."
"I'd like to."
"What? Why?"
"Because the boy's got an iron backbone. Why don't you invite him over some time?"
"An iron backbone? Hal-abeoji, you don't understand! That boy is a royal pain. He's a show-off, he's a know-it-all, and he is pushy beyond belief!"
"Is that so?"
"Yes! That's absolutely so! And he's been stalking me since the second grade!"
He frowned, then looked out the window and asked, "They've lived there that long?"
"I think they were all born there!"
He frowned some more before he looked back at me and said, "A boy like that doesn't live next door to everyone, you know."
"Lucky them!"
He studied me, long and hard. I said, "What?" but he didn't flinch. He just kept staring at me, and I couldn't take it — I had to look away.
Keep in mind that this was the first real conversation I'd had with my Hal-abeoji. This was the first time he'd made the effort to talk to me about something besides passing the salt. And does he want to get to know me? No! He wants to know about Jungkook!
I couldn't just stand up and leave, even though that's what I felt like doing. Somehow I knew if I left like that, he'd quit talking to me at all. Even about salt. So I sat there feeling sort of tortured. Was he mad at me? How could he be mad at me? I hadn't done anything wrong!
When I looked up, he was sitting there holding out the newspaper to me. "Read this," he said. "Without prejudice."
I took it, and when he went back to looking out the window, I knew — I'd been dismissed.
By the time I got down to my room, I was mad. I slammed my bedroom door and flopped down on the bed, and after fuming about my sorry excuse for a Hal-abeoji for a while, I shoved the newspaper in the bottom drawer of my desk. Like I needed to know any more about Jungkook.
At dinner, my Papa asked me why I was so sulky, and he kept looking from me to my Hal-abeoji. Hal-abeoji didn't seem to need any salt, which was a good thing because I might have thrown the shaker at him.
My sister and dad were all business as usual, though. Jennie ate about two raisins out of her carrot salad, then peeled the skin and meat off her chicken wing and nibbled gristle off the bone, while my father filled up the airspace talking about office politics and the need for a shakedown in upper management.
No one was listening to him — no one ever does when he gets on one of his if-I-ran-the-circus jags — but for once Papa wasn't even pretending. And for once he wasn't trying to convince Jennie that dinner was delicious either. He just kept eyeing me and Hal-abeoji, trying to pick up on why we were miffed at each other.
Not that he had anything to be miffed at me about. What had I done to him, anyway? Nothing. Nada. But he was, I could tell. And I completely avoided looking at him until about halfway through dinner, when I sneaked a peek.
He was studying me, all right. And even though it wasn't a mean stare or a hard stare, it was, you know, firm. Steady. And it weirded me out. What was his deal?
I didn't look at him again. Or at my mother's. I just went back to eating and pretended to listen to my dad. And the first chance I got, I excused myself and holed up in my room.
I was planning to call my friend Hyungsik like I usually do when I'm bent about something. I even punched in his number, but I don't know. I just hung up.
And later when my Papa came in, I faked like I was sleeping. I haven't done that in years. The whole night was weird like that. I just wanted to be left alone.
•
•
•
Jungkook wasn't at the bus stop the next morning. Or Friday morning. He was at school, but you'd never know it if you didn't actually look. He didn't whip his hand through the air trying to get the teacher to call on him or charge through the halls to get to class. He didn't make unsolicited comments about the teacher's edification or challenge the kids who took cuts in the milk line. He just sat. Quiet.
I told myself I should be glad about it — it was like he wasn't even there, and isn't that what I'd always wanted? But still, I felt bad. About his tree, about how he hurried off to eat by himself in the library at lunch, about how his eyes were red around the edges. I wanted to tell him, Man, I'm sorry about your sycamore tree, but the words never seemed to come out.
By the middle of the next week, they'd finished taking down the tree. They cleared the lot and even tried to pull up the stump, but that sucker would not budge, so they wound up grinding it down into the dirt.
Jungkook still didn't show up at the bus stop, and by the end of the week, I learned from Hyungsik that he was riding a bike. He said he'd seen him on the side of the road twice that week, putting the chain back on the derailleur of a rusty old ten-speed.
I figured he'd be back. It was a long ride out to Seol Junior High, and once he got over the tree, he'd start riding the bus again. I even caught myself looking for him. Not on the lookout, just looking.
Then one day it rained and I thought for sure he'd be up at the bus stop, but no. Hyungsik said he saw him trucking along on his bike in a bright yellow poncho, and in math, I noticed that his pants were still soaked from the knees down.
When math let out, I started to chase after him to tell him that he ought to try riding the bus again, but I stopped myself in the nick of time. What was I thinking? That Jungkook wouldn't take a little friendly concern and completely misinterpret it? Whoa now, buddy, beware! Better to just leave well enough alone.
After all, the last thing I needed was for Jungkook to think I missed him.