A Boy: Part I

This is a story about my friend Keum.

When I met him, he lived in one of Chinatown's notorious basement apartments, where he shared a small room with 23 other illegal aliens, mostly from Mainland China. It was one of those time-share-places. There were three shifts; you could be in the room only for 8 hours. There were no beds but eight dirty mattresses. A small bathroom with a shower was shared.
Almost all of them worked in Chinatown's restaurants as waiters and bus boys.
They worked 15 - 16 hours a day, everyday with no weekends, hoping someday they could pay the money they owed to the human-transporters, and get a green card, bring their families, raise their children in America and become rich...

It was Saturday morning 5 o'clock, I was dead tired from working all night at my studio preparing one of my client's presentation. I took a cab to Chinatown's my favorite congee place on Bowery Street. When I got there, the place was empty except number of waiters playing cards on the round table at the corner. One of the waiters came after I sat down at a small table by the window and poured a cup of hot Woolong tea and a menu. Without looking the menu, I ordered two of my favorite dishes of the place; a bowl of congee with thousand-year-egg, and a sizzling plate of fried turnip cake with minced pork.

Maybe I ate too fast, or maybe I was too tired.
I was dreaming some strange dream when someone shook my shoulders.
First I didn't know where I was then I realized that person was the waiter who served me the food.
Out of embarrassment, and out of still-dreaming-state I apologized in Korean, loudly. And the waiter spoke back in Korean!
I was very surprised because in Chinatown, there's no way that you work in Chinese restaurant unless you are Chinese. So I thought he was a Chinese who speaks Korean. But when I asked how he could speak perfect Korean, he whispered that he was Korean. While he was cleaning the table, we talked and I found out he was single, never married, 32 years old, and had worked there for over two years. I felt sorry for him and left a large tip when I paid.

Since then whenever I want to have a bowl congee or authentic dim sum, I went there, sometimes with my wife and friends and talked with that young Korean man.
At least twice a week.

We became friends.

Five years went by. And this is what I could gather from what he had told me during those five years.
(We never had a chance to have 'formal' conversations; I was always a customer, and he was always a waiter and he had other tables to attend as you can imagine.)

He was born in Incheon, Kyung Gi Province, a seaport about 40 miles from Capital of Korea, Seoul.
His father was a fisherman, an alcoholic, a gambler and a womanizer. Keum saw his father only twice.
The first time was when Keum graduated elementary school; A strange man gave him an English dictionary as a gift after the graduation ceremony. He smelled alcohol. Keum's mother didn't say a word, grabbed Keum's hand and walked away. Keum looked back after a few steps, but he was gone already. Later mother told Keum that he was Keum's father.
The second time was when his father was found dead on the boat he had worked. The police asked Keum's mother to identify the body, Keum went with his mother. The man's face looked strangely peaceful and Keum thought he was a handsome man. Keum didn't cry. The police never found out the cause of the death of that unimportant, poor, fisherman.
Keum's mother was a very quiet woman. She never raised her voice or got angry over anything. She ran a small seafood restaurant by the Bay, and the restaurant was busy with local businessmen and tourists. Mother was too busy to attend Keum, her only son, Keum learned to be left alone from very early age. Keum didn't have many friends. After school, he stopped by the school library borrowed a book or two, went home, to his room where his mom left some food for him on a small wooden table, one of only two furniture in the room; the other only furniture was an old wardrobe his mom received as a wedding gift form her parents.
After finished eating, he washed dishes, and read books. He read any books he could get. By the time he was nine, at fourth grade, he had read almost all books in the library. The librarian, Mrs Paik, became very fond of this small book craze child and tried to talk to the boy, but the child never spoke a word to her until one day the library ran out of books.
In a very shy voice, the boy asked her if there were any more books he could borrow, and she answered no. And she said except her private collections but they were not for rent. She showed the boy the books of her own. They were rare old books she had collected since she was in high school, and they were indeed genuine old books from Yi dynasty, many of them were over hundred years old.
Most of them were written in Chinese, only few were in old Korean. She showed one very interesting looking book with lots of diagrams and patterns of round blacks and whites, where he found they looked familiar to him somehow. But he couldn't remember where he saw the shape before until that night at home sat down to eat the food his mother prepared for him. The small wooden table his mom used for dinner table had the exact shape and same lines in those diagrams.
Next day when he went to the library, Mrs Paik, the librarian handed him a handmade book which she copied and bind. That was the very first baduk book he had read. He didn't know it, but the book was actually a life and death problem books written by a baduk master during Yi dynasty. The author known as master Lee was an aide to Yeonsan Kun(1476 - 1506 AD), the most notorious King, and master Lee was sentenced to death by drinking poison when the coup d’état replaced Yeonsan kun with his step brother, and the new King Joong Jong.

The book didn't make no sense to the boy first, unlike other books he had read, it took a long time to understand even the very first few pages. But since he had no other books to borrow or read, he kept reading it. The book had 428 pages in total and had two diagrams of life and death problems on each page.
There was supposed to be a separate book of answers, but never found, Mrs Paik said when the boy asked for it. He kept reading and reading. The book became only friend of his for next two years.