LLU 73

“Oppa is going to get married soon. Because you like babies so much.”

“…Is that so.”

I just smiled and let it pass. Marriage. To me, it was a word as distant as a planet whose name I didn’t even know, completely disconnected from my life.

Words like dating or marriage—things that anyone on an ordinary trajectory would naturally think of—were simply words that had nothing to do with me.

In fact, it was closer to consciously pushing them away. Not because they were empty shells of words, but because they were words that brought me pain. There was no way someone like me could meet anyone, date normally, and get married.

After running away from Choi Junghan, while climbing onto the so-called “normal life” track, I had to acknowledge one fact.

Earning my share of living expenses through work, attending university and taking classes, making friends like Yeon-i and Joo-hyun, doing assignments together or eating meals together. That this was exactly the limit line of the “normal life” I could manage.

Even this might just be an imitation of being normal. Seeing how just the single word “marriage” could plunge me into such bitterness. Hadn’t I stayed up all last night again, only finally collapsing into sleep at dawn after turning it blue and red?

“Huh? Joo-hyun’s here.”

“Hi, oppa! Kim Yeon-i, hi!”

“You’re late again. Pay the late fee.”

“Ah, just let it slide this one time.”

Watching Joo-hyun panting heavily after running like crazy and Yeon-i teasing him like that, I gave a small smile. Because the lively energy of these kids suddenly felt so fresh and nice to look at. Unlike me, a plant quietly withering in the shade.

“Oppa, thanks for the coffee.”

“Yeah. You ran so hard you must be hot—catch your breath.”

“See, oppa always lets him off easy, so he’s always late.”

“Hey, Kim Yeon-i. Just try being late next time. I’ll chew you out the same way.”

The two of them burst into loud laughter—giggle giggle—as if something was so amusing, and while watching them I picked up my coffee. The three of us walked toward the promised place together; our footsteps felt both light and heavy at the same time.

We finished all the assignments, ate an early dinner together with Yeon-i and Joo-hyun, and then parted ways. When I’m alone I usually just cook something simple at home or make do with a triangle kimbap, but having a proper meal after a long time felt good in its own way.

Today’s tutoring session also ended safely. I left the student’s house and boarded the bus heading toward my neighborhood. My one-room place is located near the school.

I sat in the corner of a two-person seat and put my earphones in. I gazed out the window and let my body sway with the motion of the bus. The bus door opened, and a couple got on and sat down in front of me.

Soon the bus started moving. The woman comfortably rested her head on the man’s shoulder. Even though I knew it was rude, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from their backs.

Just sitting side by side like that. That was all. Yet even without any particular contact, a stable intimacy emanated between the two of them. Inside the rattling, shaking bus, among the tired passengers each wrapped up in their daily routines. Only those two, leaning against each other and warmly coloring one another, stood firm.

I slowly blinked my eyelids. With every breath in and out, I felt some emotion forming in prickly clusters inside my chest. I only realized, after getting off the bus, that the name of that emotion was loneliness.

I walked from the stop toward home. Tap tap, my footsteps echoed through the empty alley. Light from the streetlamps settled over the dark scenery. With every step I took, the prickly thing inside my chest swayed more and more noisily.

Suddenly I stopped walking. Because I could no longer endure it.

‘Don’t turn your head. This is what you wanted, isn’t it.’

The sensation of the hand that had firmly gripped and pinned both my wrists when I went wild trying to claw at his face. The moment his chillingly cold body temperature grew hot because of me. The strength that subdued me so I couldn’t move an inch, while at the same time freeing me from being trapped in the dark name called loneliness.

Choi Junghan’s kiss that let me breathe while I was slowly drowning beneath black water.

‘You know I’m not going anywhere without you.’

The low, quiet voice endlessly echoed inside my chest, stirring the prickly clusters that had formed there.

I wanted to cover my ears. I wanted to scrape out his voice that rippled and churned inside my chest. If I could carve it out with a knife, I would have done it that way.

“…Son of a fucking bitch.”

A rough, scraping voice curses him. The futile, crumb-like curses then echo back toward me like an aftersound.

I don’t know whether I want to resent Choi Junghan for spouting that absurd nonsense about never leaving me, or whether I want to resent myself for secretly keeping those words hidden somewhere deep inside and suddenly pulling them out on days like this.

I cannot escape from a certain pathetic thought that is disgusting even to acknowledge. The thought that while I abandoned him, I was also abandoned by him.

It’s ridiculous nonsense. I fought endlessly and as a result I survived. Leaving Choi Junghan behind at the movie theater was an act of will to live, nothing more than a natural step toward a human-like life.

Above all, he was the invader who ruined and stole my entire life. Whether I abandoned him or was abandoned by him—none of that matters at all.

What matters is only the fact that Choi Junghan and I are now separated. The fact that he can no longer interfere in my life.

And yet.

Lost, childish whining endlessly multiplies inside my chest. I suffer from phantom pain like someone who has lost part of their body. The person who tormented me is gone now, yet instead of rejoicing in his absence or growing accustomed to the life I built alone, I hurt like this, not knowing what to do.

I scolded myself dozens, hundreds of times that this was pain without substance. After the blue-and-red nights repeated and finally left not a single intact spot on my calves, forearms, or thighs, I harshly blamed myself.

Do you want to go back to that house? Do you want to live tied up like a dog again, with your ego castrated, as a slave? I berated myself. No, I shake my head—I don’t want to live like that anymore.

Yet the childish, lost whining eventually boils up secretly inside my chest again. And once more it drags me into the blue-and-red night, making me search for blank spaces on white skin.

Then inevitably I end up drawing lines there and ruining them. As if taking revenge on the self that drove me to the edge of the cliff. As if taking revenge on Choi Junghan, who choked me and beat me while at the same time treating me with precious, tender care.

‘It’s okay. Good boy.’

Only the invader who trampled me could soothe that childish whining. Only the lullaby he gently patted into my chest and poured into my ear could wipe away my tears.

The fragile appearance I had pretended in order to bring Choi Junghan down—perhaps it was one of the fragments of myself that even I hadn’t known existed for twenty years.

I had hoped tonight would be peaceful, but it seemed unlikely. On days when Choi Junghan’s voice came back so clearly, my unconscious inevitably wanted to recall that night.

I walked heavily toward home again. But not long after, my steps stopped once more. Beneath the streetlamp, I saw two familiar yet unfamiliar silhouettes.

“…Oon-i…?”

What pierced my ears was my mother’s voice.

The slender silhouette abruptly halted. Facing the woman holding the hand of the toddling baby. Even though her back was turned, it felt as if her hardened expression was vividly right in front of my eyes.

The three of them stood like that for a long while. From the back of Pioon quietly gazing at the baby and his mother, no noticeable trembling could be read.

How long did it last? In the end, Oon opened the door of that old, small house and let the two of them inside.

Junghan sat in the car and watched emotionlessly as the three of them entered the worn one-room officetel building. His gaze never left the spot where the three had stood.

Right after Pioon ran away from him, Junghan had immediately found the boy.

The kid really ran around diligently here and there. Starting from Daejeon, he went farther and farther south, then suddenly moved his residence to Gangwon-do. One day he boldly came up near the capital area, then in an instant went back down to the south. Even when he stayed long in one place, it was only a month or two at most.

Finally, when Oon settled here and put down roots, Junghan bought out the floors above and below and next to the boy’s shabby room, installed wiretapping devices, and connected them all. He figured out Pioon’s schedule, infiltrated the house when the boy was out, installed tiny cameras everywhere, and attached bugs to frequently used belongings.

In that way, he placed every single movement of the boy in the palm of his hand and watched and listened. What he ate, who he met, how he scraped together a worn-out, shabby daily life. How he walked around outside with a normal face, yet did what kinds of things once he came home—Junghan watched it all in detail.

The boy’s daily life without him was so messy it made him laugh bitterly. Pioon, who used to only put expensive things in his mouth when he was with him, now frequently filled his stomach with convenience-store trash.

Going around with younger girls and giving them easy smiles, tutoring big, dark, smelly kids—all of it displeased him equally. The urge to “clean” it all up rose for the first time in a long while.

But above all, what tested Junghan’s patience the most was the boy’s persistent habit of hurting himself.

The sight of the boy who had run away so fiercely yet ultimately couldn’t escape him, and who stubbornly tried to forget him, was both pathetic and tear-jerking. On days when that boy looked especially infuriating, the resolution he had made on their last day at the movie theater wavered.

If he suddenly burst onto the scene, took away the knife, dragged him by the wrist, and put him in the car.

If he locked him up by force, just like the moment years ago when he first brought the boy into his house.

That would actually be the easiest solution. Snatching up one poor boy with nowhere to go, making him disappear as if he never existed, erasing him from the world—that was something Junghan could do with his eyes closed.

But Junghan knew. If he repeated the same pattern as before, the result would be no different from before. On the surface he looked fine, but inside Oon was already broken beyond repair; now he could no longer endure such methods and would shatter with a crunching sound.

So Junghan strictly followed the rules he had set for himself.

He suppressed the impulse to appear in front of the boy. The thought of grabbing those ever-thinning wrists every day and dragging him away, shoving all kinds of precious food into his mouth. The desire to tear his clothes apart and push himself into that familiar hot place. The strong urge to embrace the boy who couldn’t bear the loneliness and was crying desperately and soothe him until he fell asleep—he endured them all.

Yet at the same time, hearing Oon’s voice calling his name while spitting curses made Junghan tremble with ecstasy. In the quiet dawn when the whole world was asleep, watching through the window the child who stayed awake late, writhing while thinking of him, he couldn’t suppress the aching hardness below.

The boy struggled so hard yet ultimately failed to live while forgetting him—it was infuriating and pathetic. Nevertheless, the repeated failure to forget him was maddeningly satisfying.

Watching him endlessly hurt himself sometimes made Junghan want to kill him with his own hands, yet when he heard the crying voice calling his name, he felt an intense ecstasy he had never experienced anywhere else.

In this way, the contact between Oon and himself produced only enormous contradictions and chaos. That was the essence of the relationship between them. They constantly collided and created endless irony. Hadn’t he himself felt various whirlpools from the chaos Oon brought?

Even though his life, which had drawn an absolutely straight, unyielding line, was now greatly shaken by the boy and swept around in all directions, Junghan liked the contradictions Oon brought him.

Only when he was intensely caught up in those contradictions did every single cell breathe fully and sensitively, savoring life. Only Pioon—that boy alone—could awaken such a sensation in Junghan.

And he was convinced it was the same for the boy.

When caught in the whirlpool of the storm, Oon only calmed down under his touch. Only while listening to the lullaby he sang could the boy soften the sharp thorns he had wrapped around himself and fall asleep. Even while trying so hard to push him away, the one pulling him with the strongest force was the boy himself.

He was glad. For the contradictions blooming because of him in Oon. The sight of the boy falling into confusion that could only be resolved by one person—Choi Junghan—was dazzlingly beautiful.

He wanted to keep watching, keep observing, keep holding and kneading him in his hands. He wanted to preserve that fragile yet desperate appearance that only he could create, taxidermy it, and hang it in his own space.

However, while he himself was enraptured by the contradictions created between him and the boy, Pioon was different. The boy kept trying to hurt himself.

Whenever there seemed to be any movement toward giving up on life, Junghan immediately intervened to stop it, but even after collapsing and falling hundreds of times, Oon never once tried to kill himself. Flashy and precarious like scattering petals, yet his vitality was like a giant tree. Truly worthy of the existence Junghan had once tried to strangle.

While the boy desperately endured his own life like that, Junghan patiently waited with perseverance for the time to ripen.

He hoped the boy would realize. No matter how much he struggled, he could not escape the three syllables of his name. And that, of his own will, the boy would return to him.

It took exactly one year. On the day when the boy’s sobbing voice, while harming himself, mixed Junghan’s name more than thirty times, Junghan became convinced.

Now the time had come.