Fiction Short Story
Hyung
They weren’t shaped in the same image he had of the older Korean boys Jacob had not seen since he left, these hyungs who towered over Jacob still.
More than anything that year in third grade, Jacob Cho wanted a sibling, more specifically an older brother. His parents laughed at Jacob when he asked for one, saying they had a restaurant to run; how he cried and stomped down the stairs after they picked him up from his grandparents’ apartment. Jacob prayed every night as his grandmother instructed, but he didn’t know that he would be answered, put to the test, and fall back to his knees in the face of Elijah.
Jacob liked Taekwondo, where he was introduced to the oldest Korean boys he ever met, some in high school and college, most of them having advanced from purple to blue belt, as far as brown. It was his grandfather’s idea to enroll Jacob in classes at Beretania Park. The master was an old friend, and his grandson needed to toughen up. Jacob ran as fast as he could around the fences during warm up to impress the older Korean boys. Sabum-nim had them run barefoot and showed them his own calloused heels, how his feet were sturdy and hard as rock.
Jacob did his best to stretch, toes gripping the chain-link as he pictured a jump kick as high as the older Korean boys, whose legs were long and as tall as Jacob. He didn’t mind getting lightly punched and kicked around the day they trained in pads. One day his grandfather was late to pick Jacob up after practice, and he waited there on the courts crying. Sabum-nim took Jacob to his home and gave him a Melona bar while they waited together. When Hal-Abeoji arrived and saw Jacob’s pink face, nose dripping, all three of them looked at each other and realized maybe he was too soft.
Always crying like a girl. Hal-Abeoji scoffed in the car, which smelled like beer and fresh cigarette smoke. Jacob rolled down the window and hugged his knees, feeling heavy as he sank into shame—a feeble boat in Hal-Abeoji’s storm, struck each time his grandfather hissed between teeth. Why couldn’t he act like strong boy? At the time of his quitting, Jacob had received his yellow belt and stopped short of orange, and Sabum-nim instructed the older boys to stand in a circle around Jacob and hoist him up to throw him in the air. Jacob felt warm in their embrace, surrounded by their wide chests and round shoulders he gripped to get ready, hands cupping his feet before they launched him into the sky and he came back down hard on the court, everyone having stepped away to see how he would land on his own.
His ankles were sore for weeks.
*
Like the beaded cross keychain fastened to her purse, Jacob dangled from Halmoni’s side when she took him to the church on Palama Street right under the H-1 freeway. She brought him along ever since he was a toddler, when Jacob’s parents were far too busy to come along. Jacob had never been around so many Korean people—and finally, kids his own age. He was surprised to learn it was actually a Samoan church, the First Samoan Assembly of God, while the Korean pastor and his congregation were granted permission to share the same space. Jacob liked to walk by the chapel and listen to the Samoan congregation singing. Some hymnals sounded familiar. It didn’t make sense to Jacob that the Samoan and Korean churches kept separate when they worshipped under the same freeway. He wondered how they came to the agreement, and if it had been the other way around, whether the Korean congregation would have been so accommodating.
The first time Halmoni brought him there, Jacob thought it was the church itself holding up the freeway, not the pillars which had little ledges where Jacob and the other kids liked to sit or shuffle around as if they were scaling the side of buildings. The same fear he had of the freeway, one day falling and squashing the church and him along with it, Jacob would have for God, his grandmother, and their sheer enormity in his life then.
It was impossible to see the sky but churchgoers still spent so much time talking about a heaven somewhere in the clouds, a lifetime of worship and good behavior when Jacob knew all it took were his strong hyungs to send him flying.
On Sunday evenings, the congregation met in a house the church rented in Kalihi, where the pastor led worship while the Samoan church held their service. Church members bringing family to Hawaiʻi from South Korea slept at the Kalihi house. It was Samuel and Noah’s idea to line the designated playroom, doubling futons on the floor to create a ring for a tag team match between the pastor’s kids and Jacob and Isaac.
By default, Samuel and Noah were model children, Halmoni thought, and having friends who had a Moksanim for a dad meant Jacob could do good spending time with them. The church boys preferred wrestling to Taekwondo, Samuel and Noah quitting not long after Jacob. They made championship belts out of cardboard, awarded by age when the four of them were only months apart. The church boys collided in a way they couldn’t at Taekwondo while taking a rigid stance, practicing good form. Pillows became chairs, and Jacob bounced off the walls pretending they were ropes, careful about noise or groaning too loud when he got slammed.
The church boys melded together, detached; eyes meeting at the same level, their arms soft and smooth, like his own, squeeze them hard enough and Jacob could grab bone. Like Jacob, Isaac was a small boy, new to the church as it grew with each family leaving South Korea for Hawaiʻi. Jacob never looked up to Samuel or Noah in the way Halmoni wished: They weren’t shaped in the same image he had of the older Korean boys Jacob had not seen since he left, these hyungs who towered over Jacob still.
It amused Jacob to play hurt, to pretend the blows were far worse. He enjoyed jumping when signaled, hands around his neck, behind his back, hoisted by Samuel and Noah in a double chokeslam knocking the wind of him. Enough motion could make the whole playroom hot. Despite this, Jacob used any moment he could to grab them, and hold on, pulling and shaping the church boys into a singular entity, one worthy of his worship, maybe. Isaac reached out to Jacob from the futon’s edge to get tagged in, to save the match from being lost. Jacob crawled by the strength still left in his hand, fingers stretching to touch Issac’s, hanging in the air inches away.
They weren’t shaped in the same image he had of the older Korean boys Jacob had not seen since he left, these hyungs who towered over Jacob still. The church kids rotated among their own homes, Jacob often going to Samuel and Noah’s to play Street Fighter on their Super Nintendo until Samonim, their mom, took a hammer to the church bus’s tail light in protest, furious that her Sunday school kids wouldn’t stop talking about video games and not Jesus. They needed to make drawings, and by apology Jacob drew his best depiction of the crucifixion to make Samonim happy: the silhouette of three crosses on mounds of dirt against a sunset. A symbol without the violence. Samonim praised the drawing, saying she found it serene. Jacob was generally disturbed by the number of stories there were about God’s children being left to die, left alone. He colored the sky red. He remembered the story for God’s wrath, how God typically made himself known this way. If going to church taught him anything—how terrifying it was to fall out of anyone’s favor.
*
Jacob still felt uncomfortable at church, like he didn’t belong there, especially when he caught looks from the Samoan congregation; while they were probably chuckling about the small Korean boy, who curiously wore a leather vest every time they saw him, this time waddling after his friends like a duck on ice; and likewise Jacob was drawn to the lavalavas wrapped around the waists of the older men, though the boys wore them too. Jacob felt shy for staring at their hips, in the same way he pined after blue Taekwondo belts, having since become his favorite color. Jacob thought they all made an odd picture, a game of picking out something that wasn’t quite right. He thought they all had the answer.
One of the men whistled and called Jacob over. Jacob was already sweating for having fallen behind in their race around the whole church area: Isaac leading with a new Razor scooter with green apple wheels, both Noah and Samuel in new roller skates, Jacob borrowing Noah’s old skates a few sizes too big. He meandered to where the men were sitting, worried he was somehow in trouble.
The man who called him over handed Jacob a fan. He mimed fanning his own face, and then behind him, joking that it would help Jacob go faster.
At first, he felt embarrassed, blushing, but then Jacob smiled and understood, hiccupping a chuckle.
Jacob thanked him for the fan with a bow, and they laughed about that too.
When Jacob got to the storage room at the back of the chapel, everyone was already wearing shoes. He was late to their evening Sunday school meeting. With a poster board propped next to Samonim’s knee, they sat around her in the storage room and sang songs, lyrics transcribed herself, letters doubled over—the boldest lines bled into the next page. Nearing the door, Jacob slipped by hitting his foot on a parking block. He fell forward and felt a sting that sent his whole leg flaring in pain. Jacob looked up with gravel pressed into his palm.
A new kid stood above him. Jacob nearly slipped again trying to get up. Samonim asked if he was okay. She wanted to introduce him to Elijah, a fifth grader who would be joining the church. He looked down at his knee, scraped and slowly bleeding down his shin. He was tall like the Taekwondo boys, hair shiny with pomade, a toothpick nodding as Elijah grinned with all his teeth. Elijah already had Jacob’s fan, and it was appropriate for Jacob to meet him this way first, reaching for it and feeling more hurt when Elijah snapped the fan up over his head and asked Jacob, already knowing the answer as Jacob reached higher: Is baby going to cry?
Elijah eventually gave it back and knuckled Jacob’s head, his torso hard against Jacob’s hands as he tried to push Elijah away.
*
I guess he’s your Hyung, Halmoni told Jacob.
Not unlike God, a Hyung was there to watch over you. The church ladies liked to comment on how adult and handsome Elijah was for his age. Light freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose and under big eyes that could cause Jacob to still, waiting to see what tone or emotion towered behind Elijah that day, like a large shadow cast against a building, cackling around the corner—it followed Jacob as he started to fear Elijah. As the eldest, Elijah became the de facto leader of the group and picked on Jacob as a part of the recurring agenda.
The playroom exploded in fire when he made his entrance to the ring; effectively securing all of the championship belts, Elijah was unstoppable. Jacob flinched at his voice, at the quick steps his direction, the flicks to his head and ears getting red, shoulders and thighs made purple and familiar by Elijah’s fists, kidneys ringing with pain to the point where Jacob had to plead stop. One day Elijah showed everyone how hard his knuckles were by punching the parking lot pavement. Perhaps hyung called Elijah back to the role, and Jacob learned he could not say it without some kind of yearning. The first time it surprised them both.
Hyung, did it hurt?
I guess he’s your Hyung, Halmoni told Jacob. Elijah looked puzzled, amused. He laughed in the bad way which was sudden, a laugh to oneself that backed Jacob up and shrank him while the laughter filled Elijah up with something mean.
Of course, it fucking hurt, dummy. Like your face. Did it hurt when you fell on your ugly fucking face, dumbshit?
It hurt Jacob’s feelings, of course. But he was always drawn to the corner of Elijah’s lips, his eyes fixed on the dimple forming there when Elijah grinned, when Jacob knew Elijah would break into the same assurance, how he was just kidding, stop being such a fag about it. Elijah would wrap his arm around Jacob, slap his shoulder, a squeeze to the back of Jacob’s neck to make him jump. Jacob liked Elijah when he got like this but knew he couldn’t have him one way without the other; just like his own fear, it was new for Jacob to learn how this too could feel like excitement.
Unlike the rest of them, Elijah didn’t come to church every Sunday or the regular meetings outside of church.
It relieved Jacob to be free of his presence, for a while.
But weeks went by and Jacob couldn’t help but turn around with the feeling that buckled his knee, that Elijah was right there waiting for him. Sometimes he wished for him, even in the middle of the night when Jacob got up for a glass of water, as if this could be enough to extinguish the demons Samonim and Halmoni warned Jacob about that kept returning to his thoughts in the dark.
Elijah wouldn’t be scared and could probably scare them off instead.
In one of their matches, Elijah slammed two cans of Coke together and drank them both. Foam running down his neck, it made the whole playroom sticky. Elijah could be mean, but he could also be funny. Jacob caught on and emulated Elijah long enough for his bruises to yellow with no new ones to show.
Jacob listened to Elijah and did what he was asked—or dared. Like taking a few bills from the tithing envelope taped to the wall at Samuel and Noah’s place. It didn’t make sense to Jacob that the pastor’s own kids had to pay tithes to the church, convinced by Elijah how the money collected in the velvet baskets would come back to them anyway.
His pounding heart, the thrill, Jacob felt a surge of something new running through him. With the two ten-dollar bills, Elijah bought them snacks at the convenience store across the street from the church. He used change to buy a shiny sticker, a souped-up car that Elijah gave to Jacob since he didn’t get the one he wanted. Jacob bought a lime green sticky hand that worked best on the balcony sliding doors, Hal-Abeoji still outside and too buzzed to mind Jacob practicing his aim. Jacob joked with Elijah that he could use it to kill flies or snatch up whatever he wanted, more money; until it stopped working, the hand picking up all these small, unforeseen things.
The last time Jacob saw him, Elijah dared Jacob and Isaac to play chicken while they sat in the back of the church van, having boarded early before Samonim drove everyone home. Jacob was cornered, Isaac sitting next to him with Elijah blocking the aisle. Isaac squealed, Jacob coaxed to move closer as Samuel and Noah groaned. At the sudden push to the back his head, Jacob closed his eyes upon impact, a bright pop—their lips meeting first—followed by their foreheads.
When the light cleared from his vision, Jacob mistook who was before him—who he imagined was there instead. Isaac stretched a sleeve to wipe his lips. Jacob blushed, surprised to realize his mistake, the dizziness lasting from that moment as he wondered when Elijah would come back.
Jacob closed his eyes upon impact, a bright pop—their lips meeting first—followed by their foreheads. *
Elijah lived downtown in Kukui Plaza: two gray buildings connected by a private park the size of a block on the third floor. It was nothing like the narrow street-level park in front of the entrance where Hal-Abeoji dropped them off, a small area behind the fire station, lined with dead grass and benches slept on that Halmoni pointed out to warn Jacob about drugs, the people who used them, and where they’d end up. Jacob and Elijah mostly spent time at the pool.
The church women gathered under the pergola held up by columns of stone, an area that connected to a walkway and bridge leading over a pond attached to a small waterfall. Jacob liked to climb onto the rocks bordering the pond. He saw maintenance workers making regular rounds tending to plants and manicuring lawns. Sometimes Jacob forgot they were three stories in the air, and when he walked to the edges of the park and looked over to the street, it suddenly felt wrong as he imagined the park had been lifted off the ground so it couldn’t be reached, reserved for no one else but tenants and their guests.
Jacob no longer hung onto the edges of the pool to brave the deep end. He grew a little taller and could hold his breath underwater, not as long as Elijah challenged him. It made Jacob shy to take off his shirt the first time they swam and see Elijah do the same. Where Jacob looked soft, his chest and stomach like one smooth surface, Elijah was cut sharp, his abs flexing when he laughed at Jacob and pointed at his crouch, accusing Jacob of having a boner. The Velcro in Jacob’s swim shorts curved into a bulge. He didn’t know what Elijah meant and denied it.
Whatever, fag, Elijah said before lifting Jacob up by the armpits and throwing him back into the pool.
They wrestled in the shallow end and used the border of the pool as top rope. They faked their punches and turned them into slaps, Jacob’s head hot with each blow only to cool back down in the water. With some finishing moves Jacob liked knowing Elijah would go down with him. Elijah inspired trouble in Jacob, the want for trouble like the coin he swam for at the bottom of the pool’s dark blue, searching until he needed another breath. He would go back and forth no matter how many times it took, ready to dive again at another toss.
For fun, Elijah and Jacob clapped off beat during worship, made faces at each other while everyone else prayed, and Jacob was the one that clipped Isaac’s heel to make him trip into the pan of marinating galbi when the church met for a sermon on beatitudes, and to barbeque, at Kapiʻolani Park by the tennis courts. Thank God Isaac didn’t dive right into the open grill, Samonim said to the sky. He could’ve burned his face, Halmoni said, shaking her head at the ground.
As recourse, they agreed to send Jacob and Elijah to Korean school on Saturdays. On the first day, a paper football hit Seonsaengnim in the face.
Jacob felt lightheaded, the blood draining from his arms. Elijah bet that Jacob would let his down first.
He shouted gooooallll , adding more time. Jacob thought he would pass out, but it beat going back to work.
Toward the end of class they sang hymns in Korean, and Jacob knew he wouldn’t remember anything of Korean this summer, which he would come to regret as he got older. Jacob glanced at Elijah across the table as they sang. Elijah was just mouthing the words, pretending to read off the booklet. Elijah let his tongue slip out, purple like the candy slipped to Jacob under the desk. Jacob tried to tear the wrapper quietly. He faked a yawn to put it in his mouth.
Seonsaengnim noticed and told Jacob to spit it out right there in her bare hand. He didn’t know how to answer her.
Jacob didn’t know why, but he just had to have it right then.
*
As the last measure, they were supposed to get baptized together at Magic Island. Halmoni told Jacob he was first baptized as a baby with a scoop of water. When Jacob asked her why that wasn’t enough, she said he was older now. It needed to be more official. Even then, Jacob felt like he was being punished.
Jacob stood next to Moksanim on the sand, praying with a hand on Jacob’s head before they walked into the water, though Moksanim would pray again for him when they were waist-deep, and again when they walked out dripping. Jacob was embarrassed they chose Ala Moana Beach for the baptism, though the church frequented there and tasked the boys to hand out fliers on salvation to strangers. Jacob was wearing his dobok, without the belt, since it was the closest thing to a white robe.
He kept his eyes open and waited for Elijah.
They were nearing sunset, the sky draining pink and orange into the horizon beyond the waves spraying over the wall of rock enclosing the lagoon. Most of the elders at church were present also wearing white. Jacob followed Moksanim to the shore.
He turned around once he heard shouting: Elijah was far behind them at the beach entrance, his mom pulling him by the arm. He was in regular clothes, a black shirt and baggy jeans.
Elijah’s mom yelled that he was embarrassing them both. Elijah didn’t care.
He didn’t want to go through with the stupid baptism.
He stopped struggling for a second. Everyone believed Elijah would ease up and walk onto the beach, make the right choice. He saw Jacob there, water lapping at his ankles. Jacob remained still, thinking about how much colder the water would get. He wanted to raise his hand to wave.
Elijah’s face was blank, as if he was about to say something. He broke free and ran in the opposite direction. His mom chased after him. Moksanim sighed and proceeded into the water, his robe floating on the surface.
Moksanim held Jacob behind the back with one hand and put another on Jacob’s forehead. With sudden force, he pushed Jacob into the water. Afterward, Jacob could stand in front of the church reborn, cleansed of sin. Jacob knew right then he would never see Elijah again. Moksanim held Jacob down, a hand to his chest. Halmoni would tell him it was for the better since Elijah was a bad boy and Jacob could’ve been too. He should’ve called after him. If Elijah said anything, maybe Jacob would have done the same. All he needed was a signal. A smile, like a reward for the coin bursting through the surface first; Elijah, back-lit by the sun, offering to help Jacob out—Elijah could also let go. His outline looked traced in gold.
Hyung almost sounded like an old name, one that would catch Jacob off guard when someone else called him: Jacob gasped when he came up for air.
