“I can handle moving this to the fish market, so you can go now.”
“But… there’s a lot.”
“We’ve been doing this together our whole lives. You think we’ll be helpless just because you’re not here to lend a hand?”
His uncle chuckled as if Yeehyeon had said something silly and ruffled the back of his hair. After an awkward laugh, Yeehyeon was the first to jump onto the pier, catching the rope his uncle threw and tying it securely to a concrete pillar. Having done it for a few days, his form had become a little more decent, but the rope still stung when it scraped against his soft palms.
It was a good season for travel, so despite it being a weekday, a fair number of tourists had gathered, making the area around the pier more crowded than usual. Even the rough sounds of fishermen, hurrying to move their catch to the market and grumbling at tourists to get out of the way as they tried to take photos against the romantic evening sea, melted into the fabric of the pier. A vitality and a raw, tenacious obsession with life that he had never felt even in the overflowing metropolis of Seoul thrashed about everywhere like freshly caught creatures.
As he walked with his father through the middle of the fish market and out of the pier, Yeehyeon suddenly realized that he didn’t dislike this place as much as he’d thought. Perhaps he was even closer to liking it.
While one might click their tongue and point fingers at a person who courts a passive death by falling into ennui or lethargy, it was not in human nature to rashly condemn the desperate struggle to live.
It was better to throw oneself desperately into the fray than to let go and step back to save some worthless pride. It wasn’t wretchedness, but a desperation for life, and that was the very thing—the intense, vibrant color of a living life—that he had craved in the colorless silence.
Wasn’t it because he was so sick of the silence, because he wanted to create even a hairline crack in the hollow peace where nothing ever happened, that he had decided to leave this place, to leave his father’s side?
Seeing it with that thought in mind, every corner his gaze touched looked different than before. The fish market, which had seemed like a dreary, sludgy mudflat reeking of fish, now came to him as a fresh stimulus that pierced his lungs and eyes. The expressions of the people, which had seemed merely rough and gruff, were also varied and intense. People who screamed as if standing under a collapsing sky, then laughed as if they didn’t have a care in the world.
This place is the same. It must be me who has changed and come back.
Walking a step ahead of his father, Yeehyeon let out a silent, bitter smile. As he wove through the bustling crowd, his eyes and his feet suddenly stopped.
It was Mr. Lim, talking with the head of the co-op, whom Yeehyeon also knew by face, with his usual serious expression.
He, too, spotted Yeehyeon and, fixing his gaze over the co-op head’s shoulder, briefly narrowed his eyes.
Just as Liu had said, he was quiet. He must have heard the news of Yeehyeon’s return, yet for days, he had made no move. Yeehyeon, for his part, hadn’t paid him any particular attention either. Compared to the pain of what he was going through now, any concern about Mr. Lim was laughable. Even if he were to threaten him physically, there was nothing to be afraid of. No, if anything, if he tried to mess with him now, Yeehyeon felt he might just think, Perfect, I was looking for someone to take this out on, and scream and lunge at him, daring him to try.
Staring back at the unmoving Yeehyeon with a bitter look, Mr. Lim was the first to avert his gaze, taking the co-op head with him as he left.
“Let’s go, Father.”
Yeehyeon, too, nudged the back of his father, who had come to stand beside him, and they left the fish market.
It was his third day here.
On the pretext of being bored, Yeehyeon had followed his father out to sea for all three days, and upon returning to land, he would go for a walk with him before dinner. It was more like Yeehyeon trailing behind his father on his walk, and his father never waited for the lagging Yeehyeon or looked back to check the distance, just walked on in silence. But in that, there was definitely a crack that hadn’t been there before, a fine hairline fracture, a sign of change. His father being out on the pier today could be considered a part of that.
His father crossed the center of the village and, without resting, moved his feet toward the southern hill where Mr. Lim’s house and other fine villas and mansions were located, the opposite direction from the northern village where his grandfather’s house was.
With both hands shoved deep into his jumper pockets and his head bowed, paying no attention to anything, not even bothering to appreciate the scenery, his father focused solely on the act of walking, conquering the steep ascent that would take a leisurely walker a good hour in just thirty minutes.
Thanks to its location on much higher ground than the northern village near the port, the top of the southern hill had a wide-open view. But none of the village residents were ‘idle’ enough to come all the way up here to appreciate the ‘sickening’ sea.
Four or five benches were placed unceremoniously around the railing that ran along the cliff’s edge for tourists. His father, who had scrambled to the cliff’s edge as if following a voice calling him from somewhere, would sit on one of those benches and stare blankly for as little as thirty minutes to as long as an hour.
Though he had started following his father with the thought that he had to throw something out there, at first, Yeehyeon just sat quietly, watching his father’s profile.
But he soon realized. Perhaps his father was the most suitable person to confide in.
Not only would he never repeat what he heard to anyone, but a person who wouldn’t judge no matter what they heard was the kind of person everyone wanted to talk to.
From his arrival in Seoul to the present, omitting some parts and elaborating on others, Yeehyeon began to talk, rambling, until his father was the first to get up from his seat.
Outwardly, there was no reaction, but inside, he wondered what his father was thinking. At first, he couldn’t pick up speed, busy choosing and discarding words… but after confirming his father showed no reaction even to the story of him falling for a Golden Alpha, for a man, he was able to be a little bolder.
The story of meeting Chief Han again, and the story of Yuni and Juhan’s sparkle. The encounter with ‘Isolation’ at Liu’s house, the Hong Kong business trip that led him to meet Suki Kim, the story of Liu helping Morae and Yeehan escape… Yesterday, he had talked about the trip to Chicago and Boston.
Sometimes… he would have dreams that he yearned for more poignantly than his actual experiences in reality. As one usually does when retracing such dreams, Yeehyeon had spoken of Liu with a happy smile.
His confident ease that shone among people, the pitiful confusion he showed after abandoning that ease to use violence for his sake, and, though he had barely managed to hold onto his reason and turn him down… the talk of marriage, which had made his heart drop.
Back then, what was on his mind when he spoke of marriage?
What was clear was that it was a desperate choice, the kind a person would come up with while embracing a massive, unmanageable problem, one far more tangled than he had guessed at the time.
Watching his father’s profile as he gazed at the distant sea, which grew darker as the sun sank behind the mountains at their backs, Yeehyeon slowly clenched his fists on his thighs. Today was the day to talk about what came after. The evening sea breeze shook his whole body relentlessly. His jumper flapped, and his hair flew about wildly.
“Right now, I’m giving you a burden, Father.”
“……”
“The stories, the weights I have to carry alone… I’m pushing them onto you. Because I resent you, and I want you to feel heavy… and have a hard time, too.”
“……”
“Still, that’s… better than sharing nothing at all, isn’t it?”
He had given up on talking to his father, thinking he would be tormented if he didn’t get a response… but once he started talking, it wasn’t as painful as he’d thought. So much so that he wondered why he had been so afraid.
Looking at his unreacting father, Yeehyeon wet his lips with his tongue.
“Even if I say that I…”
His voice trembled.
“Am turning into an Omega… still, you won’t say anything?”
His father’s gaze, which had been on the distant sea, moved closer to the waves crashing against the rocks below the cliff, but there was no other reaction. Facing his father’s silence, his mind grew calmer. Pressing his right palm meaninglessly against his thigh, Yeehyeon scoffed at himself.
“They say I’m half Omega. In other words, half of me isn’t an Omega. Half is Beta, and the other half isn’t Beta…”
His own words felt like sophistry, and Yeehyeon let out another weak chuckle.
The fact that he had crossed the sea before him and gone to another continent with him, every memory and emotion of the moments they had shared… it all felt like a preposterous lie he had come to believe after indulging too deeply in his imagination. It felt like no one would believe him.
This time, it was Yeehyeon’s eyes, not his father’s, that turned to the horizon at the far edge of the sea.
“He said it, Father…”
“……”
“The person I… fell in love with… for the first time in my life…”
His vision was slowly blurring. He lifted his chin to keep the pooling tears from falling, but he couldn’t erase the tremor in his voice.
He tried to be calm but couldn’t, and anger flared at the thought of his face, but that wasn’t all. If it had only been anger, if the coldness of not wanting to see his face anymore had been the only clear conclusion… he felt it would have been less agonizing.
“I… don’t know what I should do.”
Without any explanation or excuse, as if even looking at him was a sin, he had cautiously traced his face, his eyes, and as if humbly surrendering to a great truth, had barely, arduously managed to utter that one phrase, ‘I love you.’ His expression and voice were unforgettable.
“I want to forgive him… but I can’t forgive him… I can’t forgive him, but I want to forgive him… so I don’t know what I should do.”
The reality that he was confessing his most desperate need for forgiveness to the person he could forgive the least, the person he had separated from himself with a wall of the most solid silence, felt absurd somehow… but this time, he couldn’t even manage a scoff.
With his unreacting father beside him, Yeehyeon closed his eyes. Because he had tilted his head back, the teardrops trickled toward his temples, toward his ears. The tears that had been scalding hot near his eyes had already grown cold by the time they reached his ears.
○
Leave a Reply