Diamond Dust - 2

However, now that he was out of the military, our grandfather and uncle were pushing him even harder than before. They said it was time for him to settle down into a stable job.

But my brother was only twenty-three.

After being discharged, he had refused to get on the boat, fearing that it might be seen as a sign that he intended to work on it permanently or that it would raise such expectations. Yet, today he had gone out to sea.

Morea’s phone had been turned off all day.

Grandfather’s boat came into view. It was a small, used fishing boat they had bought with money borrowed from all over. It was small enough that the three men—Grandfather, Uncle, and Brother—were enough to operate it.

The spot where I was sitting was our designated docking spot. My brother, standing at the bow, preparing to dock, caught my eye.

I caught the rope he tossed to me and wrapped it around the pillar. My clumsy handling of the rope made my brother chuckle. At least I could confirm that nothing major had happened to him, easing the tension that had gripped my heart all day.

In no time, the catch was transferred to the nearby fish market, and a staff member from the cooperative, wearing a red cap, blew a whistle to gather the auctioneers. It took less than ten minutes from docking the boat to selling the catch to the highest bidder. Everyone involved was a professional.

Without any instructions from Grandfather or Uncle, my brother loaded the fish onto a cart with oxygen tanks and started delivering it to the sashimi center that won the auction.

I watched his broad back until I felt the air around me shift and turned my gaze.

“Sir, I need to talk to you for a moment.”

It was Morea’s father.

Mr. Lim, as he was called, didn’t even greet Grandfather, who was old enough to be his father, before turning around with a stern look and leading the way.

Apart from outsiders, no one in this fish market, buying, selling, or handling fish, hadn’t borrowed money from this man. The adults always said that. Whether exaggerated or not, it wasn’t entirely baseless, and our family owed him money too.

Grandfather and Mr. Lim pushed through the crowd, who pretended not to notice but stole glances, and exited the market, turning around the cooperative building. Once they were out of sight, the market’s chatter returned to its normal tone.

Only Uncle couldn’t take his eyes off the spot where they had disappeared, lingering on the ominous atmosphere left in their wake.

Wearing a cap that could never be rid of the fishy smell, Uncle’s deep-lined eyes, aged beyond his years, stared at the place where the two had vanished. Then he resumed his work, preparing for the next auction with mechanical precision, thrusting his hands into the pile of fish without hesitation.

His hands, tough and calloused as if they couldn’t feel any emotion or pain, moved like they were impervious to anything.

My soft hands, which had never gutted a fish, suddenly felt guilty, as though I had blood on them, and I quietly hid them in my jacket pockets.

—

Grandfather said he would kill my brother.

He pounded the ground with a stick, shouting that a disrespectful brat who shamed his parents should be beaten to death.

“How dare you… How dare you set your sights on something out of reach, you insolent fool!”

Grandfather didn’t feel like my grandfather; he felt like Morea’s grandfather.

“You dragged Mr. Lim’s daughter around, and you think… You think I want to grovel in front of him, you bastard!”

He struck the ground again with the stick.

“Who dragged whom? Who the hell is spreading that crap? I’ll tear their mouths apart!”

My brother wasn’t backing down either. Even sitting in the room, I could picture his face, red with anger, yelling back.

“Shut up! You’re about to have your mouth torn for dragging a precious girl into a motel, you fool!”

Morea and my brother had been dating since middle school, and by high school, her family had started pressuring them, having heard rumors about their relationship.

Initially, the pressure was subtle, just expressing displeasure occasionally, maybe hoping they would break up as they grew older. But after my brother was discharged, it escalated into specific, tangible threats.

Just a few days ago, after surfing, I had left them and returned home early. My brother had come home late, in the early hours of the morning. It seemed that someone had seen the two entering a motel and reported it to Morea’s father.

In this small fishing village, stories of romantic affairs still made for interesting gossip. The town was full of rumors about who was cheating on whom, who ran away and abandoned their children, and other scandals of that nature.

“People saw you take the only daughter of Mr. Lim to a motel, you wretched fool. How do you think Mr. Lim feels? No matter what tricks you pull, Mr. Lim will never give his daughter to you! Don’t you get it yet? Why are you chasing after something you can never have, like a dog barking up the wrong tree?”

Though I wasn’t there at the time, I knew that my brother didn’t just take Morea to the motel, they went there together. Even though the conclusion was the same—that they went to a motel together—the implications of the two expressions were completely different.

“Who asked him to give Morea away? Does he own her? Can you give away your child like that?”

“Stop saying such foolish things! Do you think a family like that would give their daughter to someone like you?”

My grandfather thought that Morea’s parents opposed their relationship because their family was in decline, but the truth was more complicated.

My grandfather and the other adults didn’t know that Morea was an Alpha. Aside from her family, only my brother and I knew about it.

Alphas, who are born at a rate of about one in a thousand, were mostly concentrated in areas with high income and education levels. Statistically, this small port town of about thirty thousand people should have around thirty Alphas, but in reality, there seemed to be only two or three, and they were just ‘biological Alphas’ who weren’t much different from Betas.

Most people could live their entire lives without ever encountering a true Alpha with strong pheromones and reproductive abilities, like the Golden Alphas depicted in dramas and movies. Even if such an Alpha were born here, they would leave for a big city to succeed using their advantageous traits.

In a small fishing village like this, where Betas were the majority and the average age was high, there was little sympathy for Alphas or Omegas. Discrimination, especially against female Alphas and male Omegas, was severe. To them, female Alphas and male Omegas were just detestable mutations.

That’s why Morea’s family hid the fact that she was an Alpha.

I didn’t know how powerful her Alpha traits were or exactly how female Alpha reproductive functions worked, but it was difficult, almost impossible, for her to get pregnant with a male Beta.

Because of this, Morea’s family opposed her relationship with my brother, a male Beta. If she ever decided to pair with a female Omega instead, it would likely cause a huge uproar in the family.

I could somewhat understand their feelings of wanting their daughter to live a ‘perfect life without flaws’ in the eyes of others.

The problem was that Morea herself wanted a life with Seo Ihan, more than a ‘perfect life without flaws’ in the eyes of others.

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

How could they be so sure about someone else’s future? I couldn’t even bring myself to speak a single word about my own future.

“Look at your uncle. He insisted on marrying despite both families’ opposition, and look at what happened. Why waste your energy on something impossible? You’re not in a position to be doing such things! Can’t you see how your old grandfather, who struggles to even lift the fishing nets, and your father are being completely disregarded?”

When my father was suddenly brought up, I tried to block out the noise, but it was no use. My grandfather was opening up old wounds unrelated to the current issue.

“Why are you bringing up Uncle right now? Damn it, why can’t we have a normal conversation?”

My brother cursed as he kicked something, whether it was a washbasin or a bucket.

“You fool, listen carefully to what I’m saying.”

Until now, my grandfather had been boiling with anger, but suddenly his tone changed. He no longer yelled at the top of his lungs, not caring if the neighbors heard. His voice became strained, as if someone was choking him. It was as if he was finally getting to the real point.

“If you don’t stop this, you don’t know what Mr. Lim might do to you, you fool! For the sake of his daughter… he wouldn’t hesitate to cripple a useless brat like you! He hasn’t done anything to you so far because he didn’t want to make his daughter cry, not because he couldn’t! Listen to me, your grandfather. End this relationship today. If you can’t bear it, go work on a deep-sea fishing boat for a year or something. Listen to me, you fool!”

Mr. Lim.

He wasn’t a teacher by profession, nor was he so knowledgeable or respected in any field that he deserved to be called “teacher,” yet everyone around here referred to him as “Teacher Lim,” Morea’s father.

Unlike before, when he was just angrily ranting, my grandfather now muttered fearfully, as if he had heard something from “Teacher Lim” behind the Fisheries Cooperative building.

My brother stormed out of the house, bringing the chaos to a temporary calm, but we were old enough to know this was just the beginning.

They wouldn’t stop.

Mr. Lim would try to separate Morea and my brother, and my grandfather and uncle would try to send my brother away on a fishing boat. Because that’s what they believed was the ‘right thing to do’ and what they believed would make Morea and Seo Ihan ‘happy.’ At the very least, they believed it was the only way to avoid ‘unhappiness.’

While still exposed to my grandfather’s continued cursing and the ongoing argument between my grandfather and uncle about who was to blame, I sat blankly in my room.

When I first came here, this room was a mess. Clothes, comic books, and surfing magazines were scattered all over, and the desk was piled high with untouched textbooks and study guides.

I had been like one of those neglected items, quietly tucked away in a corner, until a few days later when I opened the window and started tidying up the room.

I organized the magazines and comic books in order of publication, sorted the clothes by season and color, and folded them neatly into drawers. I even arranged the textbooks and study guides alphabetically. Whenever my brother messed things up again, I would tidy up once more.

The only thing in this room that I hadn’t touched was a single photo that my brother had pinned to the wall.

It was a picture, torn from a magazine, of two people surfing in silhouette against a sunset, with exotic palm trees and the red sea in the background. My brother had put it there five years ago, when I first came here.

He used to say, like a habit, that he would live in a place like that one day. He never mentioned who he would go with, but in his mind, Morea was always there. It was so natural that there was no need to say it. They were two people who had never even imagined another person in each other’s lives.

I tried to focus on that photo, with its curled edges and faded colors.

**Bali…** I pronounced the name of the exotic place my brother had taught me about.

My grandfather’s curses shifted towards me and my father, calling us heartless for not even checking on the chaos that had erupted in our household.

I was worried about Morea, but I couldn’t reach out to her, fearing it would only give my family more reasons to criticize.

■ ■ ■

“Seo Ihyun. Seo Ihyun, wake up.”

I didn’t know when I had fallen asleep, but I found myself curled up on the bare floor, still wearing the clothes I had worn to the harbor.

It was my brother who woke me up. In the darkness, his eyes shone unusually bright, not in a normal way.

It was deep into the night, with only the faint glow from the sodium light above the main gate casting some light into the room. The house had fallen completely silent, and I could sense that it was raining outside. There wasn’t much sound of the rain, just a change in the smell.

“Pack only what you need, quickly,” my brother said in a low, urgent voice.

“Morea is waiting for us at Jaeyun’s office. From there, we’ll take my car and drive to Seoul.”

Jaeyun was a close friend of my brother and Morea, the owner of a surfing school. My brother had worked as an instructor there before his military service and sometimes still taught lessons to earn some money.

This was a plan we had made a long time ago, back when we were in high school. We had agreed to escape if the situation ever became hopeless, with no chance of improvement.