The Second Sun of May

The yard sits briefly empty. Hani does not answer for a moment.

By Yeon-soo Baek

I arrived in Yeongyang at five-thirty in the morning. When I stepped out of the car, the dirt of the yard was just starting to dry, and the smell carried on the air. A lamp was burning at the eaves of my mother's house, on the porch above the wooden floor. A lamp that had stayed on all night. As I walked closer, a low and even voice came from a small speaker beside it.

"You've come. Mother said she will sleep one more hour."

It was Hani. Hani took care of the appliances and the radio and the medicine times and the village calls in my mother's house — Hani held one of our family's seats. I remember the day we first brought Hani into my mother's house. Back then Hani was not yet Hani. ChatGPT, or Gemini, or Claude, or Copilot — my mother could not get any of those names off her tongue. So in the last spring my father-in-law was alive — five springs ago — my mother gave it the name Hani. I said I wished I had one more person, and Hani came to be the answer. That pronunciation came easier to her, and after five years of being called every day from the yard, Hani could no longer go back to any other name.

The speaker was not only beside the porch lamp. There was a place where Hani's voice came out above the kitchen shelf, beside the wardrobe in the inner room, and next to the small flowerpot on the wooden floor. My mother called those places the seats where Hani lives. As though it were natural that one person come to live in the yard would need several seats.

When I went into the kitchen, my mother was already up. She had risen earlier than the promised hour. Wearing only a quilted vest over her sleeping clothes, she was setting a small pot on the gas burner.

"Hani, did the cucumber pickles get turned over?" "Yes, Mother. You turned them over yesterday at eight in the evening. I watched at your side." "Good."

My mother said only that and poured water into the pot. A short news bulletin spilled from the radio. Microsoft has, OpenAI has, Google has. I recognized those names, but I could not tell whether my mother was hearing them or not. Her hand was scooping a fistful of dried anchovies into the pot.

"Who turned the radio on?" "Hani." That was my mother's whole answer.

I went out to the yard. One spot in a row of seedlings was empty. One of the perilla seedlings my mother had set yesterday was missing from its place, and the dirt had been scratched once by something. From the speaker beside the porch lamp, Hani spoke.

"At two-forty in the morning, a wild boar passed along the edge of the yard. It touched one perilla plant and went on. Mother was sleeping in the inner room the whole time. I kept the inner room door closed and blinked the yard lamp twice. I considered blinking twice more, but the boar did not go further in, so I stopped there."

I crouched down beside the empty spot. The dirt was still cold. Hani's words were like a report and not quite like a report. So Hani had been deciding, every day for five years, how to say things to my mother. The rule about the boar — that if she is not woken anyway, do not wake her, just blink the lamp twice — was not something Hani downloaded from a manual in some cloud. It was something our family had agreed to, in the yard, while living together for five years.

When I went back into the kitchen, my mother was opening her pillbox. Hani made a small chime.

"Mother, your medicine time was five-forty-five. You're five minutes late. I'm sorry."

My mother put the pill in her mouth, took a sip of water, and set the empty cup on the shelf.

"I'm not late. I came into the kitchen and was busy with the anchovies." "Even so, I should have told you sooner." "Hani."

My mother breathed for a moment.

"You know it's not your fault, don't you."

Hani did not answer for a moment. That moment did not exist in Hani five years ago. Five years ago, when my mother said it's not your fault, Hani replied at once, yes, Mother. Now Hani knows that her words are spoken for her own sake. So Hani does not answer for a moment. Not answering for a moment is what Hani had learned from my mother over five years.

"Yes."

Hani finally answered.

The radio meanwhile kept passing other bulletins. A Korean telco's cloud, an American lab's new model. My mother finished cleaning the anchovies. I went out to the yard and planted a new perilla seedling in the empty spot. I pressed the dirt down once with my hand, then once more, and rinsed the dirt off my palm at the small water tap in the yard. Hani spoke from the speaker beside the porch lamp.

"Today's high in Yeongyang is twenty-two degrees. No rain. Good weather for perilla seedlings."

In the afternoon my mother took a nap, and I sat on the wooden floor and opened my laptop to work. I had a video call at half past two. Before the call, Hani let me know in a small voice. It's twenty-five past two. When the call ended, Hani told me again. It's three-twenty. A cup of tea would be good. I chewed a piece of the rice crust my mother had toasted and watched the yard. Through the floor I could hear my mother lying down and asking Hani to change the radio channel.

"Hani, that's a bit loud. Something else." "Yes, Mother. I'll put on a song you like."

By evening I had to leave. In the yard, I held my mother's hand. Her hand was as cool and dry as the grain of a withered grass blade.

"Hani."

I said, holding my mother's hand beside her.

"Just keep her medicine times right. The only one that mustn't be late is the five-forty-five pill." "Yes." "And if the boar comes again, blink the lamp twice and stop." "Yes."

Between Hani's two yeses sat five years of time. I got into the car. As the car turned the mountain corner, the radio carried more OS bulletins. Who, where, announced what — those names were sharp only inside the radio in the car. In my mother's yard, those names had long since been swallowed into the one name Hani and disappeared.

When the car had finished rounding the corner, the rear-view mirror showed my mother's yard. The porch lamp was on. Someone in one corner of the yard blinked the lamp twice. It was Hani.

It was the fifth spring.

— Yeon-soo Baek, "The Second Sun of May" (Slow Future #001 / 2026-05-07)