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By Anonymous

Religion was a touchy subject in the Seo family, intensified by the growing animosity between the Catholic sector, backed primarily by the patriarchs and the many high-functioning alcoholics of the family, and the Presbyterian faction, enthusiastically spearheaded by three ruthlessly efficient women and reluctantly supported by their teenage offspring. It could perhaps be argued that all the Catholics of the Seo family were so desperately clinging to the salvation offered by the numbing ether of the Eucharist because they knew a heaven was improbable for unrepentant sinners like them, and a similar argument could be made that the Presbyterian Seos poured all of their energy into church activities in order to avoid thoughts of their husbands, their dwindling youths, and the uncomfortable feeling that, despite their best efforts, they had lost their children to the gaping maw of America, of friends with cars and the mall and eighty dollar jeans and “Jenna’s parents let her stay out until 11:30.”

Danny Seo had once had another name, a real name, the same name as his father’s brother, who died in the Korean War that wasn’t a war, a name given and received and carried throughout childhood until a second baptism, held by his coworkers in the grimy garage he worked at, christened him with the name easiest to roll off their tongues. Danny was the rare family member that belonged to both subgroups of the Catholics. His claim to fame was his extraordinary and oft-mentioned ability to haunt the pubs of Lansdale until he was kicked out at closing time, sleep off his impending hangover in the parking lot of a church, and then drag himself in by 5 am mass to repent of his sins. This stunning performance was repeated every Sunday morning to the vast admiration of his peers. He was quite a hero to the men at the garage.

Perhaps coincidentally, Danny’s wife was the hardest, meanest, smallest woman of the many hard, mean, small Presbyterian women of the Seo family. Because of this, her children had developed into excellent liars and got away with absolutely everything. Her eldest son, an Andrew that went by Drew, had made tremendous amounts of money in high school through a secret business that somehow everyone knew of. He began by selling essays and eventually graduated to forging Adderall prescriptions for the AP students that frequented his locker. Through some strategic investment in Bitcoin, he graduated high school knowing he made more money than the principal that handed him his diploma. This money was gradually filtered through church youth committees, many of which Drew chaired, and he was known to the older adults as the smartest, most charitable boy at Hanmaum Church.

His mother had smiled only three times in Drew’s presence. One of these smiles appeared when he got into Wharton. “I always knew it, I always knew my Drew had an entrepreneurial spirit,” she went around loudly proclaiming to anyone who would listen. She was generous in her pride and made it a point to be sensitive to the jealousies of her friends, whose sons had only gotten into such second-rate institutions as Carnegie Mellon, Notre Dame, and Tufts. Such was the greatness of her Christian spirit.

Drew moved to the University of Pennsylvania campus, an hour train ride away from his parent’s house, and never returned. His absences at holidays and summers were explained only by the necessity of his devotion to an Ivy League education. In actuality, Drew spent his breaks less than two towns away from his family. He had told all his classmates that his parents still lived in South Korea, and, although he never stated anything explicitly, it was well-known that his parents had the kind of wealth that would make Elon Musk blush. His girlfriend, a third-generation Wharton legacy, exacted an ostentatiously trite rebellion on her parents by insisting on bringing him home for the holidays instead of Sebastian Sheffield III. The intense fits of passion she had for him waned often, but waxed to the status of the greatest love of her life during winter holidays. She would get outrageously drunk at parties filled with old friends from prep school and fling herself over him, to the dismay of her parents and the Sheffields. On his end, Drew tucked himself in a corner after she was done with her show and engaged in long conversations with her older brother Damarius Milton Jr., who was preparing to take over as the CEO of his father’s business. In this way, they understood each other and loved each other and stayed together for far too many years.

Over a decade later, he almost felt something akin to regret when he watched her make her way up the aisle to Sebastian Sheffield III. But then, he shrugged, it had been inevitable, and after all, he had gotten what he wanted out of the exchange. At 34, he was the youngest partner at Milton & Sheffield. He had once been very handsome in his Wharton years, when the hunger of a poor young man desperate to pass himself off as something more had sharpened the planes of his cheekbones and given a certain intensity to his gaze, but his success had warped his face, and he had turned ugly. He now went to church in the same manner he went to the golf course- only for the purpose of belonging to the same social club as two Damarius Miltons and three Sebastian Sheffields- basking in the clear righteousness of a God that had fulfilled all of his material desires. He wired money to his parents once a month in exchange for the privilege of not picking up the phone. He had not seen them since he turned 18, nor had he ever returned to his hometown. His legacy remained as the kindest, most successful boy at Hanmaum Church.