The starlight seemed to be reflected in Ha Yeon’s dark eyes behind her glasses.

“Elder brother… did you know that I’ve liked you since the first time I saw you?”

“… Oh, really? I didn’t know….”

Hyun Woo’s heart fluttered at her confession, but he tried to act nonchalant.

“Using elder brother’s arm as a pillow, looking at the stars in the sky, and listening to a live Boston Symphony performance…. It’s like a dream.”

“I feel like it’s the first time in my life having a moment like this too. I’ve always lived such a busy life….”

After the performance ended, the highlight of the Independence Day event, the fireworks, began along with the Boston Pops performance.

As the colorful fireworks adorned the summer sky with the sweet July live music, exclamations from the people and gestures trying to capture memories with their cell phones could be seen here and there.

“Elder brother, since it’s a special occasion for us, shall we take a selfie?”

“…Sure.”

“Since elder brother’s arm is long, you take it.”

Ha Yeon handed her cell phone to Hyun Woo and posed, bringing her face close to his.

Hyun Woo set the automatic timer to 3 seconds and stretched out his arm to take a selfie, but Ha Yeon turned her face and kissed him on the cheek.

Hyun Woo was startled, and that expression was captured exactly in the photo.

Looking at the taken photo, Ha Yeon smiled and said,

“Elder brother, I wanted to remember our July 4th forever.”

Hyun Woo gathered some courage and kissed Ha Yeon as she spoke like that.

Sounds of fireworks bursting in the summer sky and the sweet live music of the Boston Pops spread in between, as the two closed their eyes and searched for each other’s lips.

Hyun Woo’s lips found Ha Yeon’s small but plump lips, feeling her upper lip and then finding her lower lip again, like fireworks bursting in the sky with long tails trailing down.

Perhaps because the music adorning the summer night was so sweet, or the fireworks exploding in the sky were spreading love hormones all around, the two were lost for a while searching for each other’s lips.

“Elder brother, I’m so happy to have my first kiss with you.”

“….”

Hyun Woo couldn’t say anything in response to Ha Yeon’s confession.

He felt sorry for her, but for him, the first kiss, the first everything, was all with So Hee.

It would be nice if Hyun Woo could tell Ha Yeon that she was the first in his life in response to her confession, but Hyun Woo didn’t regret his love with So Hee.

She was such a beautiful and lovely woman, and the two shared the same miserable fate like a pair of chopsticks in life.

Although Hyun Woo opened Pandora’s box of money and success temptations and left So Hee’s pure love to come to the US, he never regretted the time he loved her.

Like Act 3, Scene 4 of a play, Hyun Woo thought his life and love were just one act ending and a new act beginning.

Ha Yeon’s first kiss was met with silence from Hyun Woo. Without saying anything more, she sat up and silently watched the fireworks adorning the night sky.

That night, he couldn’t imagine what Ha Yeon’s reaction meant and what big changes it would lead to in the future.

*****

While he enjoyed his new life in the US and walked step by step towards a bright future, I was spending a painful time at the university hospital.

In May, I reported my pregnancy to the head nurse of the circulatory ward. Even when I was working at the hospital, I didn’t know that the gazes and gossip of my colleagues would give me such great pain in my life.

With my tall height of 168cm, fair skin, long straight hair, and beauty resembling my mother, I often heard jealous remarks from friends and colleagues at school and at the hospital.

There were times when someone I thought I was close with would gossip about me behind my back.

The fact that I, an unmarried woman, became pregnant spread through the workplace by someone’s mouth, and people’s gazes began to pierce my heart like arrows of sarcasm and criticism.

“She looks so innocent, but she must have seduced some pure bachelor doctor.”

“That’s right. They say a quiet cat climbs the kitchen range first, and that saying fits perfectly.”

“A complete reversal. I knew it!”

The gazes of caregivers, nursing assistants, and nurses trying to throw stones at me as I fell, thinking of me as a corrupt woman, appeared here and there.

The gazes of the male doctors also seemed to linger on my belly, so I had to look at the ground when I encountered them in the hallway.

I wanted to become strong and confident, but reality wasn’t easy.

As June and July passed and my body shape changed, their sharp gazes dug into my eyes more and more painfully like the summer sunlight.

I only told the head nurse about my pregnancy, but I couldn’t pinpoint the source of the rumors since I inquired about maternity leave and parental leave at the hospital’s general affairs department.

The head nurse was like the ghost in “The Phantom of the Opera,” always hiding her true self behind a mask, making it impossible to know her true thoughts.

Whenever she met me, she would ask about my health and kindly smile, telling me to prepare well for childbirth.

I was physically and mentally struggling, but I couldn’t change hospitals.

I had to complete six months of work to apply for parental leave and return after giving birth.

I couldn’t quit because I needed money to raise the child.

I thought I should apply for pre-birth leave about a month before my due date.

The gazes of my fellow nurses weren’t favorable either.

It was clear that if the hospital didn’t provide a replacement, the burden would fall on my fellow nurses due to the absence of a new nurse who got pregnant out of wedlock just a few months after joining.

On a day when I returned home exhausted after work, for the first time, I resented my father who passed away earlier from a car accident.

I had resolved not to cry again, but in the darkness, tears naturally flowed down the grooves of my eyes, and the endlessly flowing tears created paths on my face like valleys.

When my mother, who had finished cleaning the building, found the tear-stained paths on my face as I had fallen asleep in the dark, there were repeated days of crying together.

It was just as hard for my mother.

As she entered her 50s, my mother’s stamina declined, and above all, the sense of self-reproach from the debt left by my father that wouldn’t decrease no matter how hard she tried kept growing.

Even when I suggested filing for personal bankruptcy, my mother said we should consider the feelings of the people who lent us money and that she absolutely couldn’t do that due to her conscience, enduring the difficult reality.

The world seemed to make honest people suffer while those who schemed and exploited others’ pain lived well.

At 18 weeks of pregnancy, I went to the obstetrics and gynecology hospital again for a checkup.

My waist had thickened by 5cm compared to the last checkup, and the baby was growing healthily.

The doctor explained the image shown on the ultrasound screen.

The baby’s clearly visible face, nose shape, jawline, eye shape, and ear shape moved me, and eyebrows seemed visible in the eyes.

“The baby’s height takes after the mother and is quite tall. It’s about 22cm now. The development status is very good. At the third checkup in three months, I’ll definitely tell you whether it’s a daughter or a son.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Since you’re a nurse, you’re managing your weight well now, but please maintain a good balance of protein, fat, and carbohydrate nutrients. What the mother eats is the baby’s nutrition.”

“Yes. I’ll make sure to eat well.”

I felt sorry to the baby in my belly as I left the hospital.

There were many days when I would just have some cereal with milk in the morning before leaving for work, and while working at the hospital, there were many days when I would eat lunch hastily due to busy work.

There were days when I fell asleep waiting for my mother, who often returned home later from cleaning buildings, and there were many days when I skipped meals because I had no appetite due to the tiring hospital work.

Some days, I would forcefully shove spoonfuls of rice into my mouth, thinking of the baby.

But hearing that the child was still growing well made me so grateful.

I stopped by the supermarket and bought two pounds of pork belly.

I thought I should have a small party tonight for myself, the baby, and my mother who had endured well, and I headed home with renewed strength.

*****

In late August, before the fall semester began, the area near the school in Boston was moving season for apartments, so there were lines of moving trucks.

In the R-district slum where Hyun Woo lived, without such movement, the same routine of quiet mornings and noisy nights repeated every day.

Perhaps people he passed by on the street had gotten used to seeing Hyun Woo, as some black people would greet him, saying, “Hello?” as they passed by.

Hyun Woo also had to take three courses per week starting from September when the fall semester began, and he had to invest more time in research, so he was spending August with a new determination.

What Hyun Woo felt after coming to Harvard University, called the world’s best, was that geniuses in the world were few and far between.

The professors and students at Harvard Medical School were all tremendous hard workers, and the time they poured into academics and research was tremendous.

The saying, “Not all hardworking people can succeed, but among successful people, there are none who don’t work hard,” resonated deeply during the past six months of his life at Harvard.

Contact with So Hee had been completely cut off since May.

He had call rejection set up, but there wasn’t a single email either.

Hyun Woo sometimes wondered how So Hee was doing, but he believed she would be working well at the hospital and enduring the difficult reality.

After the first kiss on Independence Day, he became a bit more comfortable with Ha Yeon.

Apart from his daily routine of going back and forth between the lab and home on weekdays, the only time Hyun Woo spent a weekend day with Ha Yeon was his life.

Unable to break Ha Yeon’s stubbornness about wanting to visit the apartment where Hyun Woo lived, he had no choice but to confess where he lived, and upon hearing that, Ha Yeon was greatly shocked.

Among the suburbs of Boston, the notoriety of the R-district was well known to Bostonians, like Harlem in New York, so it was a neighborhood people rarely entered even during the day.

She seemed to find it unbelievable that the man she shared her first kiss with, a Harvard Medical School doctoral student at that, was living in an old apartment in the slums.

“Elder brother, I’ll move you to an apartment near Harvard Medical School. It’s too dangerous.”

“Ha Yeon, I have money too.”

“Then… why are you living in such a dangerous place?”

“I’m just sleeping there. I don’t go out in the pitch-dark night either.”

“Still… elder brother, it’s too dangerous.”

Hyun Woo didn’t tell her the story of being threatened with a gun by a robber and having his money stolen, thinking it would shock Ha Yeon even more.

“It’s a neighborhood where the same people live, so I’m used to it now and it’s okay.”

Sometimes when dinner ended late at her apartment, she would invite him to sleep over, but Hyun Woo couldn’t do that.

On such days, instead of entering the black alleys of the R-district where people were high on drugs and alcohol, he would go to the lab and stay up all night.

On the last weekend of August, Ha Yeon, who said she had prepared a special meal, invited Hyun Woo to her house. She prepared bulgogi and tofu kimchi stew, and also took out a bottle of wine on the table.

“Elder brother, today is the last Saturday before the fall semester, so let’s have a drink?”

“Sure.”

“Elder brother… listen to what I’m about to say without misunderstanding.”

.

.

.

“…What is it?”