LLU 71

He was like a born hunter. From the very beginning, Choi Junghan had targeted me, and for several years there had not been a single time when I had not fallen into one of the various traps he had set. He enjoyed watching me struggle desperately with heavy metal clamped around my ankle. Again and again, and again.

Perhaps the reason Choi Junghan had tirelessly accepted my attempts to screw him over and escape for all those years was to teach me helplessness and implant it in me. To make me believe that I could never get away from him. As a result, I had never once succeeded in escaping from him.

So even if Choi Junghan appeared in front of me right now, in a way I would not be surprised. As if I had expected such a reaction from him. While hurling curses at him, I would cast a resigned look. I would be locked back in his space, and I would begin preparing yet another attempt—how many times now, I could no longer count…

However.

‘I’ll enjoy it.’

Why, just this once, did I feel that Choi Junghan might not come after me?

When I handed him the cola cup, my entire body had been tense to the point that all the blood seemed to drain from me. I had tried to act calm, but there was no way Choi Junghan had not noticed my agitation… Only now did that thought occur to me.

The hand that silently accepted the cup I had handed over so stiffly. The gaze that stared fixedly at me without a single word of questioning. The profile that drank the beverage calmly without hesitation. And…

The unnameable emotion that had tinged his voice when he asked, ‘Are you really going?’

Had he deliberately chosen not to catch me?

While lying awake all night in the middle of the now-quiet jjimjilbang after the TV was turned off, that thought never left my mind.

No answer came to the question that kept repeating. Instead, one additional question attached itself at the end.

Why had Choi Junghan let me go?

Until the lights in the quiet jjimjilbang—where only snoring echoed—began turning on one by one, the question continued, but I could not find an answer.

Could this also be one of his traps?

Was it all a lie that he had taken the sleeping pills and fallen asleep? Right now, perhaps Choi Junghan had me placed on the palm of his hand and was enjoying watching me wander around like this.

It could be possible. Painful memories resurfaced. When I had rushed to my mother’s hospital to escape from him, when I had fled far away to meet Kim Junwoo—each time, without fail, Choi Junghan had appeared before me.

No matter what method I used to run away, he had always come to “pick me up” without missing a single time. So perhaps this too was all included in his calculations…

But.

If the ill-fated connection with Choi Junghan had truly ended like this.

Perhaps he had grown tired as well. It was entirely possible. It could not be said that the long, tenacious time we had been entangled had not been draining for him either.

If, in the moment he began to feel burdened by his crumbling daily life, he had read my intention to escape and therefore simply let me act according to plan…

That would be an uncharacteristically passive method for Choi Junghan. The man I knew had never, not for a single moment, failed to make an active decision in every aspect. If my existence had become bothersome or annoying to him, he would have killed and erased me rather than take sleeping pills himself just to let me go. That would not have been like him.

But separate from the fact that I hated him, Choi Junghan loved me, so perhaps it could be considered an exception.

In truth, that was the path I most hoped for at this very moment. If that were the case, then both he and I could finally reclaim our own lives.

Suddenly, the time spent with him felt like an eternity. I felt as exhausted as if I had lived an entire lifetime together with him.

When I thought about it rationally, it had only been about two years. The time during which Choi Junghan and I had become so viciously entangled. Yet every horrific sensation and pain I had experienced with him would never be forgotten, even if I lived another lifetime from now on.

Was it because those times had been so desperate and intense? The hours spent with him had burned into me like marks scorched by fire—vivid and indelible. Those traces were overwhelmingly large and deep within me.

If I now had to begin cutting out memories that had already rotted so extensively… then what should I fill that empty space with?

What kind of adult had I dreamed of becoming before I met Choi Junghan? How had I wanted to live?

The dreams I had held with a swelling chest at nineteen were now so thickly covered in dust and so severely faded that I could no longer recognize them. I was still only a young man barely over twenty, yet I already felt as weary as an eighty-year-old man.

Why, how, really… The questions that came in scattered bursts did not save me; instead they piled up neatly in my mind and interrogated me. I could not give a clear answer to any of them.

Then at some point my eyes slowly closed. My exhausted body could hold out no longer and fell into a short, deep sleep.

After sleeping for a few hours, I gathered my clothes, got dressed, and left the jjimjilbang.

Under the bright sunlight, I wandered aimlessly with nowhere to go. There was no particular place I needed to be, no one I needed to meet. After walking for a long while, I saw a gukbap restaurant and bought breakfast there.

At a convenience store I bought a cup of coffee to drink and purchased toiletries to brush my teeth. After that, I simply walked to digest my full stomach.

I passed countless cars and people with calm indifference. Watching my body move endlessly forward, my chest suddenly swelled with emotion. Until I could truly realize that I had finally escaped the heavy metal binding my ankle and the long chains that had restricted my movements, I walked and walked.

Euphoria and emptiness rode a roller coaster inside me. The boundless freedom given to me brought both a sense of lightness and anxiety at the same time. At one moment I wanted to scream and run around wildly; not long after, I felt so sad that I wanted to collapse right there and cry. The feeling of being completely unable to grasp anything was confusing and frightening.

I tried hard to soothe myself. It was probably a natural phenomenon. Having been confined in his house for so long, both body and mind would take a great deal of time to recover.

That process would not be smooth. Even as I rejoiced in the freedom given to me now, I would continue to feel anxious. On some days I would be grateful that I could live a whole life free from him; on some nights I would be unable to forget the memories of staying in Choi Junghan’s house and would lie awake until dawn.

But it was okay.

I would eventually adapt.

“Welcome.”

My aimless footsteps stopped in front of a familiar barbershop sign. It was a place similar to the men’s barbershops I used to go to in my neighborhood before meeting Choi Junghan. Since Choi Junghan had always taken me only to the upscale shops he frequented, seeing a sign like this felt like it had been ages.

I bowed my head politely to the owner, who looked cheerful and easygoing. Following his guidance, I sat in the chair.

“I’d like a haircut, please.”

“How would you like it done?”

How would you like it done. The elegant way the designers at those shops used to ask—Choi Junghan would always tell them exactly what he wanted. Objectively, the results were never bad. He had extremely exacting and delicate aesthetic standards.

“Just make it neat. Trim the back too, please.”

Saying the same thing I had always said since my student days, I gave a faint smile. My face, stiffened for far too long, seemed to have completely forgotten how to smile and twitched wildly. Even though my smile must have looked awkward, the owner shouted “Okay!” in a hearty voice and placed the scissors to my hair without hesitation.

Snip snip. The sound of hair being cut was cheerful. With dazed eyes, I watched in the mirror as my appearance was skillfully trimmed under those capable hands.

Plop, plop. They fell beneath the chair. The years of dark, stagnant time, pain, and hatred. From the finely scattered hair on the floor, it felt as though the smell of tears and blood rose up. In that moment, a familiar voice rang unexpectedly in my ears.

Over the rough hand of the owner holding the scissors, the refined hand of a designer overlapped like an illusion. Choi Junghan had always kept his eyes fixed on me while I was getting my hair cut. Even though he might have been handling his phone or working, he would fix his gaze solely on me until the designer said, “All done.”

‘It suits you well.’

And without fail, he would say that. Even when I openly slapped his hand away in front of the designer and ignored his words, Choi Junghan would always speak in that same tone and voice.

Suddenly my throat tightened. Plop, plop. After blinking twice, the pooled tears fell in streams down my cheeks. To the me in the mirror who was crying while getting a haircut, I asked inwardly.

Why are you crying?

After blinking once more, tears rolled down my cheeks again.

…I don’t know.

The me in the mirror answered.

The me who was crying while recalling Choi Junghan’s voice looked like a complete stranger. Yet I showed no expression. I did not hate the me in the mirror enough to want to kill him for being so pathetic and infuriating, nor did I feel pity.

I just felt unfamiliar. As if it were not me at all.

“There we go, all done. Like it?”

As if unaware that I had been crying, the owner asked while brushing the back of my head with a sponge. Then he smiled at me through the mirror.

Pretending not to know either, I wiped my tears with the back of my hand, nodded, and said “Yes.” Then I looked at myself in the mirror once more.

Before I knew it, I had returned to my nineteen-year-old self. The one who had walked through the old neighborhood wearing a school uniform with a backpack slung over my shoulder. The one who had buried my head in workbooks and studied late into the night for my dreams. The one who had occasionally met Kim Junwoo, eaten tteokbokki, and applied medicine to his wounded body. The one who had lived in a small house with just my mother…

Yet at the same time, he was no longer me. I could never go back to that time. Even if I went to that neighborhood now, there was no longer a home for me; I could not contact Kim Junwoo; and I could not meet my mother either.

Above all, the me from back then had been overlaid by the twenty-something me. Overlaid by the me who had been consumed by the existence called Choi Junghan.

…So that person is not me.

As I squeezed shampoo onto my head and turned on the water, tears poured out again. While sobbing so hard my shoulders shook, I washed my hair with trembling hands.

The fear that I might never be able to find the lost me again kept making me weak. Under the endlessly cold water pouring over my head, I cried a great deal.