Hearing the footfalls, Yoseb lifted his head, then laid it back down again on the straw pillow.
Hansu placed two enormous crates in front of him, then sat down on the thick slab of wood by the pallet, which was being used as a bench. Despite his well-tailored suit and highly polished leather brogues, Hansu appeared at ease in the barn, indifferent to the harsh smells of the animals and the cold drafts.
Yoseb said, “You’re the father of the boy, aren’t you?”
Hansu studied the man’s scarred face, the ragged edges of a once-sloping jawline. Yoseb’s right ear was now a tight bud of a flower, folding into itself.
“That’s why you do all this,” Yoseb said.
“Noa is my son,” Hansu said.
“We owe you a debt—something we may never be able to repay.”
Hansu raised his eyebrows but said nothing. It was always better to say less.
“But you have no business being around him. My brother gave the child a name. He should never know anything else.”
“I can give him a name, too.”
“He has a name. It’s wrong to do this to the boy.”
Yoseb frowned; the smallest movement hurt. Noa had his younger brother’s mannerisms—from the way he spoke in Isak’s measured cadences to the way he ate his meals in modest bites, chewing neatly. He behaved exactly like Isak. Whenever Noa had any time to spare, he would take his old exercise books from school and practice writing, though no one told him to do so. Yoseb would never have believed that this yakuza was Noa’s biological father except that the upper half of Noa’s face was virtually a mirror image of Hansu’s. In time, Noa would see this. He had not mentioned it to Kyunghee, but even if she had guessed at the truth herself, she would have kept her suspicions from Yoseb to protect Sunja, who was closer to her than a sister.
“You don’t have a son,” Yoseb said, taking another guess.
“Your brother was kind to help Sunja, but I would’ve taken care of her and my son.”
“She must not have wanted that.”
“I’d offered to take care of her, but she didn’t want to be my wife in Korea. Because I have a Japanese wife in Osaka.”
Lying on his back, Yoseb stared at the barn roof. Jagged slats of light broke through the beams. Column slivers of dust floated upward in diagonal lines. Before the fire, he had never noticed such small things; also, he had never hated anyone. Though he shouldn’t, Yoseb hated this man—his expensive clothes, flashy shoes, his unchecked confidence, reeking of a devilish invulnerability. He hated him for not being in pain. He had no right to claim his brother’s child.
Hansu could see Yoseb’s anger.
“She wanted me to go, so I left at first, planning to come back. When I returned, she was gone. Already married. To your brother.”
Yoseb didn’t know what to believe. He had learned almost nothing about Sunja from Isak, who had seemed to believe that Noa’s origins were best forgotten.
“You should leave Noa alone. He has a family. After the war, we’ll do everything possible to repay you.”
Hansu folded his arms close to his chest and smiled before speaking.
“You son of a bitch, I paid. I paid for your life. I paid for everyone’s life. Everyone would be dead without me.”
Yoseb shifted to his side a little and winced from the pain. Sometimes he felt like he was still on fire.
“Did Sunja tell you?” Hansu asked.
“Just look at the child’s face. It doesn’t make sense for anyone to go through all this trouble, and I know you’re not some sort of saint. I know what you are—”
Hansu laughed out loud. It was almost out of respect for Yoseb’s directness.
“We’re going back home,” Yoseb said, and closed his eyes.
“Pyongyang’s controlled by the Russians, and the Americans are in charge of Busan. You want to go back to that?”
“It’s not going to be like that forever,” Yoseb said.
“You’ll starve there.”
“I’m done with Japan.”
“And how will you go back to Pyongyang or Busan? You can’t even walk down the length of this farm.”
“The company owes me my wages. When I’m well enough, I’ll go back to Nagasaki to collect my pay.”
“When’s the last time you read a newspaper?” Hansu pulled out a sheaf of Korean and Japanese newspapers he’d brought for Kim from the crates. He put the stack beside Yoseb’s pallet.
Yoseb glanced at the papers but refused to pick them up.
“There’s no money for you.” Hansu spoke to him slowly as if Yoseb were a child. “The company will never pay you. Never. There are no records for your work, and you can’t prove it. The government wants nothing more than for every poor Korean to go back, but it won’t give you the fare or a sen for your troubles. Ha.”