Diamond Dust Novel - Chapter 2

The fish market was bustling with preparations for the evening boats that would soon dock. Auctions were already underway near the few fishing boats that had arrived early. Perhaps because the weather had warmed, quite a few tourists were visible. Even the shops selling ice and cooler boxes were lively.

I sat perched on a low concrete bollard, raised for tying up boats, near the end of the pier leading to the breakwater, and looked out at the sea.

Boats returning to the harbor after a day’s labor began to appear one by one from the distant sea. These were the boats that had gone out fishing at dawn.

A gust of sea breeze brought with it the smell of the ocean. As the sun set and the weather quickly turned chilly, I hunched my shoulders, shoving my hands into the pockets of my light jacket.

Hyung had gone out on a boat with Grandpa and my uncle today. If Hyung hadn’t been on the boat, I almost certainly wouldn’t have come out to the harbor to wait for their return.

My uncle, Hyung’s father, and our Grandpa had been pressuring Hyung to take up fishing. This seemed to have started when Hyung was in middle school, even before I moved here.

I was granted an exemption, but Hyung was not. Having occasionally gone onto the boats to run errands since he was in late elementary school, Hyung was already fully equipped with the skills of a fisherman, capable of pulling his own weight by the time I arrived.

However, Hyung viewed it as nothing more than temporary assistance for his struggling grandfather and father; he had no intention of becoming a fisherman himself.

But as if they had only been waiting for his discharge, Grandpa and my uncle were now pushing him more stubbornly than ever. The adults’ consensus was that since he’d finished his military service, it was time for him to settle down securely.

Hyung was only twenty-three.

He had been resisting by refusing to board a boat at all after his discharge, fearing it would be interpreted as, or lead them to expect, that he planned to continue fishing indefinitely. Yet, today, he went out to sea.

Morae’s phone had been off all day.

Grandpa’s boat came into view. It was a small, used fishing boat, bought with borrowed money from various sources. Small enough that three sturdy men, Grandpa, my uncle, and Hyung were enough to operate it.

The spot where I was sitting was our boat’s designated dock. I made eye contact with Hyung, who was standing at the bow, preparing to dock.

I caught the rope Hyung threw and wrapped it around the bollard. Hyung smirked at my clumsy attempt to secure the rope. The knot in my chest, which had been tight with worry all day, loosened a bit, confirmed that nothing too serious had happened if he was able to laugh at me.

In an instant, the catch was transferred to the fish market right next to the harbor, and a staff member from the fisheries cooperative, wearing a red hat, blew a whistle to summon the auctioneers. The time from the boat docking to the catch being sold to the highest bidder felt like less than ten minutes. Everyone involved was a professional.

Even without Grandpa or my uncle instructing him, as soon as the auction was over, Hyung loaded the goods onto a handcart with an oxygen tank and began delivery to the raw-fish restaurant that had bought them.

I was tracing Hyung’s broad back with my eyes when I suddenly turned my gaze away, sensing a shift in the surrounding atmosphere.

“Old man, come see me for a moment.”

It was Morae’s father.

‘Mr. Im,’ who addressed Grandpa, a man of his father’s generation without greeting and abruptly demanded to see him with a scowl, turned his back and walked ahead before Grandpa could even respond.

Aside from outsiders, there was no one buying, selling, or transporting fish in this market who didn’t owe the Mister money. The adults always said that. Whether it was an exaggeration or not, it wasn’t entirely baseless, and our family also owed the Mister money.

Grandpa and the Mister walked through the glances of people who were pretending not to look, leaving the fish market and rounding the corner of the fisheries cooperative building. Once the two had completely disappeared from view, the murmuring around us returned to its original tone.

Only my uncle couldn’t take his eyes off the meaningful implication left by their already departed tracks.

From under the brim of his deeply pulled-down hat, which no amount of washing could rid of the fishy smell, my uncle’s eyes, deeply wrinkled for his age, stared at the spot where the two had vanished, then started moving his hands again.

As he prepared for the next auction with mechanical movements, my uncle’s hands, which unhesitatingly plunged into the pile of fish, were tough and thick, as if incapable of feeling any emotion or pain.

My soft hands, which had never gutted a fish, suddenly felt guilty, like hands that had stabbed a person and smeared blood, and I subtly hid them in my jacket pockets.

***

Grandpa threatened to kill Hyung.

He slammed the ground with a pole set up in the yard, screaming that anyone who got ahead of themselves and brought shame on their parents’ faces deserved to be beaten to death.

“How dare a wretch like you… Where do you think you can reach, where!”

Grandpa sounded less like Seo Yihan’s grandfather and more like Im Morae’s grandfather.

“You took the daughter of Mr. Im’s family and… where have you been dragging her in and out of? Did you want to see this old grandfather bowing and scraping to Mr. Im like a criminal, you bastard!”

The pole sharply struck the ground again.

“Who dragged who? Who the hell is spreading that kind of talk? I’ll tear his mouth out!”

Hyung was not submissive either. Even sitting inside, I could picture his face, flushed and screaming.

“Can’t you shut up? You’re the one who’s going to have his mouth torn out for taking a high-born girl to a motel, you fool!”

Morae and Hyung had been dating since middle school, and around high school, Morae’s family, upon hearing the rumors, had begun to put pressure on them.

That pressure, which had occasionally shown disapproval, perhaps thinking they were young and would eventually break up, slowly changed its nature to concrete, practical threats after Hyung’s discharge.

A few days ago, after surfing, I’d gone home first, and Hyung had returned late in the morning. Someone must have seen them entering the motel then and told Morae’s father.

In a small fishing village like this, such romantic tales were still interesting gossip. The village was full of rumors like who was having an affair with whom, and who ran away, abandoning their children.

“People saw you, a wretch like you, taking his only daughter to a motel… How do you think Mr. Im feels, you wretched boy? No matter how much you kick and thrash, Mr. Im will never give his daughter to you! Don’t you get that yet? Why are you chasing a chicken you’re never going to catch, when it’s obvious you’ll just end up like a stray dog looking at the roof!”

I wasn’t there, but I knew without seeing that it wasn’t Hyung who took Morae, but the two of them who went together. The conclusion that the two went to a motel might be the same, but the two expressions inherently carried completely different meanings.

“Who asked that Mister for Morae? Is Morae his property? Can he just give his own child away to someone else!”

“Stop talking such nonsense! Do you really think a family like theirs would hand their child over to nobody like you?!”

Grandpa thought the reason Morae’s parents opposed them was because of the difference in family fortunes, but the reality was a little more complicated than that.

Grandpa and the other adults didn’t know Morae was an Alpha. Apart from Morae’s family, the only people in this village who knew she was an Alpha were Hyung and I.

Alphas, who accounted for about one in 1,000 people in the domestic population, were mostly concentrated in areas with high income and education levels. According to statistics, there should be about 30 Alphas in this small port village of about 30,000 people, but there seemed to be only two or three at most. Even they were just ‘biological Alphas,’ barely distinguishable from Betas.

Most people would go their entire lives without ever seeing an Alpha with powerful pheromones and high fertility, the kind depicted as ‘Golden Alphas’ in dramas and movies. Even if such an Alpha were born here, they would usually leave for a big city to capitalize on their advantages.

In a small fishing village like this, where the Beta population was overwhelming and the average age was high, Alphas and Omegas weren’t viewed favorably. The discrimination against female Alphas and male Omegas was especially severe. To them, female Alphas and male Omegas were nothing more than repulsive mutants.

This was why Morae’s family had hidden the fact that she was an Alpha.

I didn’t know the extent of her Alpha power or the specifics of female Alpha reproductive functions, but it was difficult for her to conceive with a male Beta. It was practically impossible.

Because of this, Morae’s family opposed her meeting Hyung, a male Beta. And if she ever suggested pairing with a female Omega, someone in the family would likely threaten suicide.

It’s not that I completely couldn’t fathom their feelings as a family who wished for her to live a ‘smooth, unremarkable life in the eyes of others.’

The problem was that she herself desired a ‘life with Seo Yihan’ more than a ‘smooth, unremarkable life in the eyes of others.’

The next problem was that her family was certain she would eventually regret her current choice.

To be able to state such a strong conviction and guarantee about someone else’s future, not even their own. I couldn’t even speak a single word about my own future, let alone theirs.

“Look at your own uncle. He went ahead with a marriage that both families opposed, doing exactly what he wanted. Look at the state he’s in now, huh? Why waste your energy on something that won’t work? You’re not lucky enough to be able to waste energy on such things! Don’t you care about your old grandfather and father who struggle to even pull up the nets?”

I covered my ears when my father was suddenly brought up, but it was no use. Grandpa was dredging up other family wounds in a completely unrelated argument.

“Why bring up Uncle here? Damn it, there’s no getting through to you!”

Hyung kicked something, a washbasin or a bucket and cursed.

“You idiot, listen carefully to your grandfather.”

Grandpa’s tone, which had been boiling with rage until now, suddenly changed. Unlike before, when he had screamed at the top of his lungs regardless of the neighbors, his voice was choked, as if someone was gripping his throat. As if this were the real point.

“If you don’t do that, Mr. Im might do something to you, you fool! For his daughter’s sake… he’s the kind of person who wouldn’t bat an eye at making a penniless wretch like you an invalid. The only reason he’s left you alone so far is to avoid making his daughter cry, not because he couldn’t do anything! Listen to your grandfather. Cut off all ties today. If you can’t stand the sight of her, go work on a deep-sea fishing vessel for a year or so. Listen to me, you lowlife!”

Mr. Im.

Morae’s father, who was called ‘Seon-saeng’ (Mister/Teacher) in this area, even though he wasn’t a teacher by profession, nor was he proficient in a field or commanded respect equivalent to one.

This was different from his previous, random outbursts. Grandpa, terrified by what ‘Mr. Im’ had told him behind the fisheries cooperative building, was mumbling like this.

The commotion subsided only after Hyung stormed out of the house, but we were no longer young enough not to know this was just the beginning.

They wouldn’t stop.

Mr. Im would try to separate Morae and Hyung, and Grandpa and my uncle would try to force Hyung onto a boat. Because that’s what they considered ‘the right thing to do’ and the ‘happiness’ of Im Morae and Seo Yihan. Or at least, the way they believed they could avoid ‘unhappiness.’

I sat blankly in the room, exposed to Grandpa’s continued curses and the argument between Grandpa and my uncle as they blamed each other, even after Hyung had bolted out.

When I first came here, this room was a mess. Discarded clothes, comic books, and surfing magazines were scattered everywhere, and reference books and textbooks Hyung never opened were precariously stacked on the low table.

I was sitting quietly in a corner like one of those pieces of clutter, until a few days later, I opened the window and started cleaning the room.

I organized the magazines and comic books by publication order and folded the clothes into drawers, separated by season and color. I also arranged the textbooks and reference books in alphabetical order. If Hyung messed it up, I cleaned it up again.

The only thing in the room I almost never touched was the single photograph Hyung had taped to the wall.

The photograph, showing the silhouettes of two people surfing on a red sea behind an exotic palm tree backlit by the sunset, was barely the size of a fingernail. Torn out of some magazine by Hyung, the picture had occupied that spot since I first arrived here five years ago.

Hyung habitually used to say that one day he’d go live in a place like that. He never specified who he’d be with, but Morae was naturally included in his future. It was a given that needed no separate mention. They were two people who had never for a moment imagined a future where the other wasn’t a part of their life.

I tried hard to concentrate my consciousness on the corner-curled, faded picture.

Bali…. I sounded out the name of the exotic place Hyung had taught me.

Grandpa’s curses shifted to our father and me, calling us heartless people for not even bothering to look outside despite the mess erupting in the family over one of the children, whether it be a son or a nephew.

I worried about Morae, but I couldn’t risk contacting her for fear of giving her family something else to hold against us. I couldn’t send even a single message.