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“My dad hated bread.”

My older sister said this with a dazed look, resting her chin on her hand.

I quietly listened.

She hardly talked about her parents in front of me, and I could easily guess why.

Every day, without fail, there were shouts. Sounds of something breaking. Someone sobbing. Sometimes the crash was so loud that when I went outside, I’d find the house’s window shattered.

Looking back, my sister and her parents probably weren’t even the real owners of that house. The actual owner of that red-brick house was likely someone else. Yet, perhaps the reason they managed to live there was that the landlord showed considerable indifference. At least they seemed to have paid rent regularly.

In the beginning, a few broken windows would get fixed, but after my sister moved out, they were just taped up haphazardly. She saw that every time she came to our house but just ignored it.

After my sister left home, the frequency of those shouts decreased somewhat, but I could still hear arguments. Up until the last day I lived with my mom.

“That led to some intense fights with mom. She didn’t want to cook, so she’d bring back bread, and dad would insist we needed rice for breakfast… Isn’t that ridiculous? What’s so crucial about that?”

“…….”

To some, it might seem like absurd chatter. In reality, it wasn’t particularly important.

Probably, even the people fighting thought so. They might have wondered, ‘Why are we fighting over this?’

It was just a trigger. In reality, all kinds of accumulated dissatisfaction were poised to explode.

And that would bubble up, leading to a fight…

Yet neither person ever left the house. That was quite difficult even in Seoul. If they tried to move to the countryside, it’d be hard to live comfortably without any connections. In the end, the two of them would have been trapped in that house, unable to do anything or resolve issues, constantly clashing.

“It wasn’t just about bread. All the trivial little things became reasons to argue. In fact, eventually, the reasons for their fights switched entirely.”

“…….”

I couldn’t think of how to respond to my sister’s ramblings.

“I… I hated them both. I just wanted to live like I didn’t exist. So after going to college, I just left. I worked really hard. It’s Seoul, you know? Rent was definitely not cheap.”

To be honest, my sister’s school was actually not that far from our neighborhood. If she wanted to, she could have easily commuted from home. But she simply didn’t want to.

“I wished that every time I went to your house, your mom would be my mom. Always kind and smiling at me, never having fights. That felt great. It didn’t matter if the house was a half-basement or not. If worse came to worst, I’d just work extra hard and move somewhere else. So, I wanted to live like that, but…”

With a blank stare, she gazed out the shop window, looking in the direction of our neighborhood.

“Time passed like that, and I lost you, just stuck at home in a daze until I coincidentally met the pastor. Ultimately, when I baked bread for the first time at this bakery, what do you think I felt?”

“…….”

“I thought of dad. Weird, right?”

My sister turned to me, her face softening into a faint smile.

“The smell of bread was wafting around, and strangely enough, it reminded me of dad. He really didn’t like bread that much.”

Despite saying this, my sister wore a nonchalant expression. But it was hard to imagine the painful emotions lurking beneath that look.

“Well, maybe he didn’t actually hate bread that much. He just couldn’t understand having bread instead of rice for breakfast, or maybe he was saying it just to argue with mom. But when they fought in the morning, it was always over stuff like that. Isn’t that strange?”

“…No, it’s not strange.”

I said it seriously.

“After all, they were people who lived together for a long time…”

“Is that so?”

My sister stared at me thoughtfully.

“I found it strange that you didn’t come to mind first.”

“Eh?”

At her words, I blanked out again.

“We sometimes bought bread from that bakery in front for a thousand won each. Two cream breads and one soboru bread; we’d have one cream bread each on our way back and split the soboru bread. So… every time we ate bread together, I’d think about it. In the far-off future, will we both remember this moment while eating bread again?”

My sister turned her gaze back to the window again.

“But when it came down to it, the first thing that popped into my head was that not-so-great memory.”

“…….”

“I just thought you were dead back then… Well, thinking back, you actually did die. I lived with your mom, but that didn’t mean you’d come back. Maybe that’s why? Now, I find myself thinking of my mom and dad who don’t even live in the same neighborhood. Are they still living together? Have they made up? Are they still fighting? You know, that kind of stuff.”

“Have you not contacted them at all since then?”

“I don’t even know their contact info. When I changed my phone, I didn’t give them my new number, and they didn’t tell me their address when they moved. If my mom and dad’s phone numbers hadn’t changed, maybe I could have contacted them, but… I never checked.”

“…….”

“…Sorry, was that too dark a story?”

My sister tried to lighten the mood with a laugh when I said nothing.

“No, I’m glad you shared that with me. It’s… a story I hadn’t heard before.”

“…Yeah, true.”

My sister let out a light sigh.

“Just. Just thought of it. Today, people greeted us like that. We only barely remember each other’s faces, don’t know names, what we do, if we have family, how we’re living. But we all definitely know we are here.”

My sister said while staring vacantly out the window.

“I don’t even know where the people who gave me life are. That thought crossed my mind.”

And those people didn’t know my sister was dating me or that we promised to marry each other. They might not even know I was dead… No, they might not even know my sister came to my graduation.

Thinking about it, those people had never attended my sister’s graduation either. I couldn’t imagine they would have cared about the son of the family downstairs graduating.

But is that really okay?

That thought didn’t come out loud. My sister couldn’t possibly be okay. No matter how much my mom was like her mom, even if I promised to be together for life, the bond between parents and children can never be replaced.

But I couldn’t say we should go looking for them either.

…When we get married, will we be able to call her parents separately? Would they think we didn’t need to?

They had been people I hadn’t thought much about until now, but hearing my sister say that sparked all sorts of thoughts.

“What about you?”

“Huh?”

Still, given the current situation, it felt a bit awkward to just let it slide, so I asked my sister.

“Do you like bread?”

“Ah.”

Just like the question she had asked me.

“Yeah. I like it.”

“So do I.”

At my answer, my sister smiled softly.

“That’s a relief.”

Once I saw my sister smiling, I could finally take a bite of the bread I had been holding in my hand.

The savory smell of the bread mingling with the sweetness of the soft cream filled my mouth.

It was delicious.

And I thought that at least, as far as bread goes, it seemed like it would still taste good in the future.

*

Thus, dinner time passed by.

After a round of customers came and went, I blankly waited for the next one. Suddenly, I saw someone running towards the bakery outside the window.

The person who came dived in through the bakery’s door without a second thought.

Even though the heater was blasting, the moment the door swung open, a rush of cold air swept through. Fortunately, before I could even feel the chill, the door quickly closed, and I regained the warmth.

“Hello!”

The one who shouted was Ga-young.

Having received our message yesterday, it seemed she came straight over after school ended today.

“Hey.”

“Long time no see.”

Both my sister and I greeted Ga-young with smiles.

Ga-young looked at us with slightly wet eyes and beamed brightly.

With her arrival, our daily routine had come full circle.

It wasn’t the same routine I had before returning to this world, but the one I had created after coming back as ‘me’.

Only after confirming that routine once, did I feel like we had returned home again.

 

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