Mr. Do wasn’t the best teacher but I did my best to learn as quickly as I could anyways so I wouldn’t be a burden. He often forgot what he had taught me, and would reteach me things he had taught before while also expecting me to know things I hadn’t been taught yet. Sometimes on a busy day he lost his temper with my awkwardness or my inexperience and would yell at me over the smallest mistakes. But he never raised a hand towards me and for that I was grateful. I never made the same mistake twice.

Months passed. I never ended up going back to school. I figured that it was far too late to try to salvage my grades and that going to university like my brother was a hopeless dream for me. I often thought about him, but every time I did, my thoughts would inevitably slide towards our last conversation, where I had acted as an agent for my dad to ask him for money. The abruptness of his leaving the phone call and the guilt I felt at putting him in the spot in front of his friends left a painful mar in our relationship.

Eventually I got the courage to try to talk to him again. After all, he was still the only brother I had, and the good memories still outweighed the bad. I asked Mr. Do to borrow his phone during lunch break (I didn’t care to try to call at home again) and dialed his number. After so many calls I knew it by heart.

I waited nervously but to my surprise it was picked up instantly. “H-hello! Hyung, it’s-“

The voice on the other end of the line wasn’t my brother’s. “… the phone number you have tried to reach has been disconnected. Please hang up and try your call again.” My blood ran cold. Perhaps I had misdialed. It had been a while, after all.

I hung up and redialed, taking care to slowly punch in each number to ensure I didn’t make any mistakes. Again I got the stiff, automatic answer. I put the phone down, stunned. It wasn’t possible that I had forgotten the number. I’d dialed it so many times before. I gave it one last try, and as the automaton voice apologized to me again, reality set in. This wasn’t Taejun’s number anymore.

I inhaled a shaky breath and tried to rationalize. Maybe he had lost his cellphone. Maybe there was an issue with the cell service. Maybe he was serving his draft. That answer soothed me the most. It was the most probable answer. He was that age. Maybe they didn’t let you take cell phones into the military?

I walked out of the office. Mr. Do grinned. “How did your call with your brother go?” He asked. He had also been encouraging me to try to talk with him again. The look on my face must have given him an answer. “Maybe he’s busy right now.” He gave me a comforting pat on the back. “Come on, help me with this tire here.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him Taejun’s number wasn’t working anymore. Work helped to distract me, but that only lasted until the end of the day.

That night I asked my mother if Taejun ever contacted her. She gave me a surprised look. “I thought you were still talking to him.” She handed me a rag to wipe the table down with and I took it and started on the task. “He sent a letter a month ago. He said he was fulfilling his draft.”

I was relieved. So he was in the military. That was probably why his number had changed. Despite my relief, an irritated little voice in my head asked why he hadn’t reached out to leave his new contact information.

“Oh.” I looked up at my mother. “Did he leave any contact information?”

My mother shook her head. “No, he didn’t. But his number should still be the same, right? You told me it was a cellphone.”

Well that crushed any last hope I had of Taejun’s disappearance. So he really had decided to shake me off too. Just like he shook off our parents. I felt angry again. I asked him one time for money in the two years (three now) he had been gone. And he knew it was because my father had forced me to. And just like that he had cut me from his life.

I helped my mother with some more chores then went for a walk to clear my head. Despite the cool light of the stars and moon beaming down on me, I didn’t return home any less angry than when I had left.

Time continued to pass as steadily as ever. I worked out a system for my earnings. The majority went to my father, or my mother if he wasn’t home. I kept a little back. Some of that I would secretly slip to my mother for her to hide. The rest I hid myself.

It had taken me a while to find a good hiding spot for my emergency stash. I needed my parents to help me open a bank account, and if I did, they would know that I was keeping money from them. So I had to hide it. Digging a hole felt silly, and besides, we didn’t own any land, so I’d have to bury it in someone else’s garden or a park, and it would be hard to hide a hole that kept being dug up and refilled every two weeks. At first I kept it in a lockbox under a pile of rubbish and old building material in the alley of our apartment. But as the amount inside increased, I became more and more worried that someone would find it and I’d lose everything I had saved until now.

Eventually I shared this concern with my boss, Mr. Do. He was shocked. “Good god, you’ve been hiding your money in an alley?” he cried. “Why don’t you just keep it in your room like a normal person?”

“I don’t have my own room,” I said, embarrassed. The next confession was even more embarrassing. “And my father searches the house all the time to see if my mother is hiding any.”

Mr. Do was quiet. “The more I hear about your life, the more I feel for you. That father of yours…” he cut himself off before he could say something rude. “I’ve got an idea, why don’t you keep it here? You could keep it in your locker.”

One of the walls of Mr. Do’s garage was lined with lockers for his employees to use. Most people kept coveralls or a change of clothes in there so they didn’t get their clothes covered in motor oil stains. All my clothes were basically stained rags at this point, so I hadn’t bothered and my locker had been empty this whole time. I hadn’t even really thought of it as mine.

It was a good idea, so I did so. If anyone else noticed the contents of my locker, they didn’t say anything. We were all friendly with each other at the shop, and I felt like I could trust them.

I had been working at the shop for a year and a half now. One day Mr. Do called me over. He was standing next to a beater of a car.

“Jae, how old are you now? Seventeen, right?”

I nodded; my birthday had just passed a few weeks ago.

He patted the roof of the car. “Get in. It’s downright strange to have a mechanic in my shop who can fix a car but doesn’t know how to drive.”

I grinned. Of course, my dad didn’t have a car, and I’d never gone to driving school, but I’d always longed to learn even though it wasn’t likely that I would have one any time soon either. I tried not to run over too eagerly.

My excitement peaked as I sat down in the driver's seat for the first time in my life. Reverently, I touched the steering wheel. When Mr. Do made no sound of discouragement, I boldly gripped both sides of the wheel. The view from the driver's seat was different from the perspective I was used to. We were lower to the ground, and the lines painted on the road angled fiercely away from us. I imagined cruising between them, watching the road fall away under and behind the car, taking me far away in a minute or two. In my eagerness, I pulled at the wheel impatiently like a child playing with a toy wheel. This wheel was locked solidly, however, because the car hadn’t started. I sheepishly reached for the start button.

Mr. Do laughed. “Hold up. This may be a beater car but let’s not send it to the scrapyard before you even learn anything. Before you start, let me talk you over the controls.” He walked me through the various buttons and levers. I knew what they were; during my time in the shop, I’d already worked on them. But there were things that working at the shop hadn’t taught me, like how to swivel your foot between the brake and the gas pedals, and to always remember to flick the turn signal before you turned. “Though truth be told, Jae, half the bastards on the road never do. But those are the guys who bring us business, eh?”

We laughed. I felt strangely touched at this scene. It was definitely a fatherly thing for him to teach me how to drive. Teaching me how to fix a car was too, but in the setting of his shop, it was a much more teacherly experience. He had no reason to teach me to drive, yet he had decided to take time out of his day to do so. At no small risk, either. Sitting in the passenger seat of a first time driver was a nerve wracking experience for anyone, father or not.

“Do Hoon-nim,” I said softly. For some reason I wanted to share the sentimental moment I was feeling. “You’ve been a better father to me than my real one.” I felt flustered and embarrassed and immediately regretted saying so. He might not have ever thought of me as a son, just an employee.