Jungkook's POV

What is a home? 

I've been turning this over in my head ever since the big yellow machine came and ate ours.

​Some people, the ones who drive the very silent, clean cars, might say a home is something with a door that locks and windows that keep the rain out. They might say it has a roof and walls painted a certain colour.

​But for a long time, home for me was just a small, slanted room that smelled of old spice and the cheap disinfectant that Mina-noona used to scrub the floor with a rag. It was a place where, even when Father was in his bad mood—his soju mood—the air was at least still and predictable. It was a patch of floor where I could hide my one good marble.

​Now, I think a home is just a place where you don’t have to keep one eye open.

We are under the big flyover now. The one that the rich people use to hurry past us without seeing us. This isn't a home. This is just a place where we are less cold than we would be in the open field.

​The Government people called our home ugly. They said it ‘hampered the beautification of the city.’ I had to ask Mina-noona what 'hampered' meant. She said it means ‘getting in the way.’ So, our house was getting in the way of a beautiful view for the rich people.

​It makes me wonder if I am also ugly. I can’t wash my face properly here. I have a smudge of dirt on my knee that has been there for three days. Does my face get in the way of a beautiful view, too?

Last night, the cold was so sharp it felt like little tiny knives poking through my blanket. I couldn't sleep.

​Mina-noona was shivering beside me. I could hear her small, quick breaths, the sound of her trying not to cough. Her hand, when I touched it, felt like a stone pulled out of the river in winter.

​I whispered to her, "Noona, why did they do it? Why did the Government take our place?"

​She sighed. It was a tired sound, not an angry one. A sound that had forgotten how to fight.

​"They just did, Kook-ah. They always do. They have the power and the machines."

​"But who gave them the power? Who said they could break our things?"

​She turned and looked at me. The streetlight caught her face, and her eyes looked huge and sad. "The Government, Kook-ah, is just big, well-dressed robbery."

​I thought about that word: robbery. It’s a clean word, but the feeling it gives you is very dirty. 

It feels like the cold hand of the man who pushed me away all the time — like my father.

​"So," I asked, trying to work it out in my twelve-year-old brain, which is mostly filled with hunger and simple numbers, "if the Government is the robber... why doesn't anyone stop them? You told me stealing is bad, Noona."

​She gave me a quiet, dry laugh. "When we steal a bit of wood for a fire, we go to jail, Kook-ah. When they steal a whole street of slums, they call it tax and build that slum street into a shopping place for the rich. Robbery is the norm."

​That was a strange, terrible thought. 

The normal thing is to take what is not yours, if you are big enough.

I imagined climbing onto the rooftops of those shiny buildings. I imagined looking down at everyone and taking what I wanted. Food first, maybe some water, maybe even a place to sleep that didn’t smell like rats and river. And then… then maybe I could look at the city differently. Maybe I could understand it.

​I watched a rat scuttle right past us. It was a very big rat, plump and quick. It knew exactly where to go. It was not shivering.

​I thought: That rat is a very successful robber. It robbed the very little place under the bridge we have.

​I held Mina-noona’s hand very tight. I felt something hard settle in my chest, heavy and true.

If the world was robbing, then… if I became a robber, I could fight it. Right? 

I made a plan in my head. One day, I would steal. From the people who had everything. From the fat cats who didn’t see us crawling in the dust. I would take their rice, their meat, their warmth. And then… my sister would eat until her cheeks were full, and my stomach wouldn’t hurt anymore, and maybe… maybe the rats wouldn’t bother me.

​"I will become a robber, Noona."

​She didn't move.

​"I will be a big one. The biggest. Like the Government. I will learn how to talk clean and walk straight. I will learn their big words, so they don’t stop me."

​My mind raced ahead, faster than I can run, faster than the cars on the bridge. I saw a picture. A beautiful, glorious picture that felt warm.

​"I will rob the big, white houses with the lights always on. I will find a place with a refrigerator that hums, and I will take everything. I won't spend the money on bad liquid like Father does. I will buy you a mountain of food, Noona. Enough bread to stack to the ceiling. Warm, soft, smelling of butter."

​I imagined her face then, not tired, but full. I wanted to wipe the coldness out of her fingers forever.

​"Then," I finished, my voice thick with all the simple, desperate love I have for her, "we will have a house, and no yellow machine will ever dare to come near us. Because I will be bigger than the machine. I will be the boss of the beautiful view."

​She squeezed my hand back, just once. Her grip was weaker than mine, but it was enough.

​I lay there for a long time, looking up at the cracks in the cement above us. The cracks looked like the veins on a big, sleeping monster. 

I thought about that as rats scuttled across our blanket again. Hunger gnawed, thirst pinched, and my stomach growled like it was arguing with me. I was too small. I was twelve.

I don't know how to read the big words on the newspapers. But I know this: to survive, I must become what I fear.

I closed my eyes and hummed the song we made up that night, just my sister and I. 

I would survive. 

I would steal if I had to.

I would feed my sister.

And one day… one day… the world would notice the boy under the bridge.

I don’t remember when I fell asleep. Maybe it was when a rat nuzzled my shoulder, maybe when hunger finally pressed me down like a heavy stone. My dreams were filled with bread, coins, and the bright, terrifying city. 

—-

[The next day]

The bridge is cold, yes, and the rats are too bold, but Mina-noona was wrong. Lying under a concrete flyover is not the worst thing that has happened to us.

​The worst thing is the smell of the garbage dump where I work.

If home is a place where you don't have to keep one eye open, then the dump is the opposite of home. It is a place where you must keep both eyes wide and your nose burning.

The dump sits near the airport. It is a vast, grey land of other people’s waste. The smoke here is thick and sour. It just smells like rot.

We are garbage sorters.

​I do not have shoes. My feet are flat and wide, and the skin is tough like the old leather belt Father used to hit with. But even tough skin cries when it steps on broken glass or the sharp spine of a discarded fish. My feet always hurt. They ache with the cold in the morning and they throb with the tiny, sharp pains from the cuts that are always trying and failing to heal.

​I spend hours in the mounds. Just sorting. Separate the plastic bottle that can be sold for 2 won from the cardboard box that can be sold for 3 won. My fingers are no longer smooth. They are all cracks, especially around the nails. They bleed a little bit every day. The blood is the only warm thing that comes from my body when I am working.

Sometimes, they light the waste on fire to make more room. The smoke is yellow and thick and it gets into my lungs and makes me cough until my stomach hurts. When I cough like that, I feel like I am breathing the city’s anger.

​But then I look up. And that is when the worst kind of pain comes.

​The airport is close enough that we can see the fences. We can see the big, silver birds that roar into the sky. They don’t just fly; they climb. They go straight up, very fast, leaving a thin white scratch behind them in the blue.

​I don't know where they go. I don't know what it feels like to be so high up that you can’t smell the rotting food and the burnt plastic.

​I just stare at them until my neck stiffens. They look so clean. They don't have smudges of dirt on their knees or cracked hands. They are beautiful, sharp things that do not have to worry about rats.

​I have an idea about them. A silly idea, Mina-noona says.

​"One day," I said to the other boys today, pointing a stained finger at the sky where a big one was banking, "I will be on one of those."

​Minho, who is fifteen and acts like he’s fifty, laughed. It was a loud, ugly sound that made me feel small. Jae, who has a home with a tin roof that leaks less than everyone else's, sneered.

​"Look at Mr. Big Dreamer," Minho said, kicking a rotten cabbage heart near my foot. "No pennies in pocket, no food on the plate, but sir here wants to sit with the rich people. You can't even afford a pair of cheap sandals, Kook-ah. What are you going to pay with? A used syringe?"

His words don't hurt as much as the cold does, but they make my ears burn.

​"I will," I insisted, pulling my torn collar up higher. "I will get on one. And I’ll be the boss of it."

​Minho’s face twisted up, amused. "How? Are you going to sing a song for the pilot? You can’t read the signs on the airport wall, you idiot."

​I didn’t know how to explain the idea that felt so clear and solid in my head. I didn't know the words for power or destiny. I just knew the idea of robbery.

​"I will become a big robber," I told them fiercely, my voice shaking a little bit from hunger, not fear. "Bigger than the Government! I told Mina-noona. And when I am that big, I will rob so well, that the plane—" I pointed again, even though the silver bird was already a small, distant glint— "will fly or land on my will."

​It was a beautiful, simple thought: if the biggest robbers control the things that are beautiful, then I must become the biggest robber.

​Minho and Jae just exchanged a look. A superior, cold look that said I was not worth talking to.

​"Go back to your rotting food, street dog," Minho grunted, shoving me hard. "The municipal van will be here soon. Move!"

​Jae, the one with the tin roof, added, "At least I have a house to go to, even if it’s a slum. You have nothing but concrete and a crazy dream, Kook."

​I stumbled a few steps. They looked so proud when they said they had their slum houses. They looked like kings with crowns of rust. I looked back at them, standing over their tiny piles of scrap, and an innocent scoff escaped me.

​A slum house.

​My brain, which has no idea about savings accounts or degrees or careers, thought very simply: that ain’t anything so huge.

​The thing I am dreaming of is a mountain of bread for Mina-noona and a plane that does what I tell it. A leaky room is just a leaky room.

​They pushed me again, harder this time.

​My feet slid back to the garbage. The smoke was coming up in a thin, dizzying stream. I dropped to my knees, pushing my hands back into the cold, sticky waste. The hunger was a constant, sharp pain in my middle, making it hard to think straight. But I kept sorting.

​One day, I will be the one who decides which way the silver bird turns.

The garbage sorting is finished by noon. Then comes the second job: sitting.

​Minho, the one who thinks he’s so wise because he’s fifteen, told me about it. “You’re ugly and smelly, Kook-ah, but you’ve got the face of a good, sad dog. You need to use it.”

​He showed me how to put on the black glasses. They are sunglasses, bent a little, that I found near the discarded parts of an old car. When I put them on, the whole world turns into a dark, blurry gray. I can see through them perfectly, but they hide my eyes.

​“Look straight ahead,” Minho instructed, adjusting the glasses so they sat wrong on my nose. “Don’t blink. Don’t look at the money. Just look like you’re waiting for God to take you.”

​It felt like another kind of robbery. I am not blind. I can see the dust motes dancing in the sunlight and the color of the gum stuck to the road. It feels wrong to steal pity, which is a fragile, soft thing. Stealing bread is honest; stealing sadness feels like cheating.

​But Mina-noona had only half a bowl of rice soup this morning. So, I sit.

​It works better than being honest. When I just sat and held out my hand, people walked past me, pulling their collars higher. When I sit with the black glass mask over my eyes, their steps slow down. They drop heavy coins into my rusty tin cup.

​People pity the blind man, I thought. They do not pity the hungry boy. So, I pretend to be the blind man. I have more money in two hours than I had in two days of sorting. It’s a very strange, cold lesson: the world pays you better for pretending to be broken than for trying to fix yourself.

The world is sadist. 

The people who walk on the bridge are all hurried, but some are different. They are pale and tall, and they speak a language that sounds like stones clicking together. They are foreigners. They wear the cleanest clothes, and they always smell of perfume and a clean, sharp scent that I think must be money.

​Sometimes, they stop at my tin cup. They don't give coins. They look down at me—the fake blind boy—and their faces look pinched with anger, as if my being there has spoiled the day they bought.

​I started to learn their stone-clicking language this way.

​One man, wearing shiny brown shoes that hadn't seen a speck of dust, stopped and poked my ribs with the tip of his expensive umbrella. It didn't hurt much, but the surprise made me flinch.

​"Look at this filthy little beggar. Sitting right here," he said, and the stone-clicking word was filthy.

​His woman, who had red lips like a flower, bent down closer. She didn't look sad. She looked angry, as if I had personally wronged her.

​"He's a damn street rat," she hissed, and the word for 'street rat' was sharp and metallic. She saw the glasses were slightly crooked. She knocked the tin cup from my lap with her hand, and the few heavy coins rolled away under the traffic noise.

​Then she kicked my foot. Hard. Right on the cut that had opened up yesterday. It hurt so much I almost cried out, but I remembered the glasses. I must not move.

​"Get lost," the man said, shoving my shoulder, and the words for 'get lost' felt like a cold puddle being poured over me.

​They walked away, their clean shoes clicking on the concrete. I stayed still until I heard their voices fade. I didn't cry about the pain or the lost coins. I was too busy keeping the new words in my head.

​I had learned English.

​Filthy. Damn street rat. Get lost.

​These were the first three phrases I knew. They were rough, crude words, but they were the language of the successful robbers, the ones who didn’t have to worry about yellow machines.

The coins scattered. They were just pieces of copper and silver, but to me, they were a day of not starving. They were the warm, sweet smell of a single piece of bread. They were more important than the ground I sat on, or the air I breathed.

​The coins had bounced and rolled into the road, the part where the cars drive.

​I didn't think. I just moved.

The metal of a large SUV was rushing past, its tires slick and black, kicking up dirt and wind. The sound was deafening, right next to my head. I could feel the heat from the engine.

​But there was a coin, a heavy fifty-won piece, gleaming near the white line on the road.

​I dropped to my hands and knees, scrambling. My whole body was shaking. I pushed my face into the dirty ground, feeling the small, sharp stones digging into my palms. I swiped the coins as fast as my cracked fingers could grab them.

​One. Two. Three.

​The cars kept rushing. If one tire went just inches to the left, it wouldn't even feel the bump of my head. I knew this. I didn't care.

​My life wasn't worth fifty won. The fifty won was worth my life.

​I reached for the final few. A coin had rolled the farthest, stopping right at the edge of the pedestrian pavement.

​I lunged for it.

​My hand closed over the coin. Just as my fingers secured it, my eyes lifted, and I saw her.

​She was standing right there. The Girl in Blue.

​She hadn't moved. Her mother was a few steps ahead, still talking on a small, shiny phone, looking away. The girl was completely still, watching the coins scatter, watching the dirty boy in the road.

​She was licking a pink popsicle. Slowly. Carelessly. The melting sweetness was running down the side of the wooden stick and dripping onto the concrete right next to her perfect, clean, white sock.

​The coin I was holding had landed precisely next to her right foot.

​I lifted my eyes higher. Behind the pink smear of the melting popsicle, her eyes were huge and brown, staring straight at me. She wasn't sneering like Minho or angry like the foreigners. She looked... curious. Like I was a very strange, small animal she hadn’t seen before.

​I was so close I could smell the perfume of her clothes, which was like flowers that had been kept in a clean room. It mixed with the artificial, sugary smell of her ice cream.

​I held my breath, afraid that if I inhaled too much of her clean air, I would spoil it, and she would disappear.

​For a long moment, the only sound was the distant whirr of the traffic and the wet, quiet sound of her tongue moving over the sweet, pink ice.

​I was a filthy, scraped thing, kneeling in the dirt, clutching my pitiful copper coins. She was a beautiful picture in a blue frame.

Without saying a word, I stuffed the coin into the ragged pocket of my shorts. I scrambled back, pulling my body off the road and back to the curb, suddenly remembering my shame. 

Thank God my glasses hid my too-open and too-hungry eyes. 

I sat back down against the cold wall, trying to control the shaking in my hands. The coins were safe. The life-saving copper was mine.

But the taste of the road dust was still in my mouth, and the image of her pink, melting sweet was burning behind my eyelids. 

​I watch her. It is the easiest thing about my day because my eyes are hidden by the black glasses. I can stare without being scolded.

​She is always eating. That is the thing I watch the most. The way she eats.

​Sometimes it's a popsicle, icy and pink, and she licks it so slowly, as if the cold sweetness will last forever. I can feel the phantom chill in my own throat, which is always dry. Sometimes it is a hot dog, wrapped in a white paper napkin, and the smell—the warm, rich smell of meat and cooked bread—drifts right to me and makes my stomach twist with a painful, jealous clench.

​I don’t hate her. How can I? She has done nothing to me.

​I just watch her, silently, behind the mask of blindness. She does not know there is a dirty boy sitting ten feet away, a boy who learned to speak a foreign language through curse words, a boy whose fingers are cracked and bleeding. A boy whose whole life is just a dream of warm bread.

​I watch her, and I think: That is what the world is supposed to look like.

​She is the silver bird of the ground. Clean, untouchable, and always moving toward a warmer place. I don’t want to steal from her. I just want to understand how she manages to live without the smell of burning garbage on her clothes.

—-