Perhaps because it was a weekday and the weather was foul, there were only three or four cars parked. The surroundings were so silent that the sound of the drizzle settling over the forest was distinct. A man who looked to be around Liu’s age heard the car and opened the door of the office to look out. Standing on the threshold, he said gruffly that the bouquet couldn’t be left at the columbarium. Liu reassured the man, saying he planned to take it back with him. The man looked Liu up and down with a wary gaze before disappearing back into the office.
Liu started walking up the slope behind the parking lot. The road leading to the columbarium building was well-paved, but visitors were not allowed to drive up.
The columbarium building was nestled in a cozy spot, as if enveloped by the forest. Like the parking lot below, the area around the building was desolate and silent.
He needlessly brushed a hand over the chest of his coat, then climbed the gleaming granite steps and entered the building.
The whispering voices of visitors could be heard. Only their voices, not their figures, were present. And even then, they seemed to be very few.
He found the section Yeehyeon had told him about and walked slowly down the corridor between the large wooden cabinets that held the urns. The entire wall by the entrance was made of windows to let in natural light, but even with the lights on, a dimness lingered inside. It was probably because of the weather.
Finding the memorial niche was not difficult, as the sections were as well-marked as in a library.
The sound of Liu’s proper dress shoes on the floor gradually slowed to a complete stop.
“……”
After confirming the name engraved on the small memorial plaque next to the urn, the muscles in Liu’s jaw tensed.
Liu wet his lower lip with his tongue. Then, he politely held the bouquet he had brought in both hands over his lower abdomen. His head kept bowing as if a heavy weight were attached to his forehead. His emotions churned as if he were standing on the deck of a ship.
He was flustered, not expecting to feel such turmoil in front of the memorial plaque of a woman he had never actually met, even if she was Yeehyeon’s mother. He couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause of his surging emotions.
It was likely not due to direct mourning for the deceased, but rather to a sense of pity, empathy, and guilt for all that Yeehyeon had to go through since her death.
He had never dared to bring up Yeehyeon’s mother in front of him, afraid that it would be like touching a wound that had not healed and was still bleeding, but there was someone he feared confessing the Changing to more than Chief Han or Suki Kim. Even if that person was now ashes, silent among countless other urns, it was still the same.
Clenching his jaw to compose his contorting expression, Liu took an uneven breath.
“Happy birthday.”
A confession seeking forgiveness and a promise for the future. Swallowing it all, that was the only thing he could manage to say.
There were no weeds to pull, no food to set out and bow to, so the visit would probably be over quickly—that’s what Chief Han had said on the phone. But by the time he turned to leave, still holding the Jana roses that had decorated his proposal to Yeehyeon, more than thirty minutes had passed.
When he stepped outside the building, the rain was still sprinkling down. Liu let out a long breath as he looked down at the fog-shrouded forest just ahead. He desperately craved a cigarette. He had been refraining from smoking since he woke up, not wanting to seem insincere.
His feet wouldn’t readily move. He stood under the concrete awning like someone with lingering attachments, his gaze fixed on the silent, rainy scenery. Someone was approaching at a fast pace up the slope Liu had just walked.
The man with a backpack was striding with large steps, not using an umbrella. The man’s movements, the only dynamic thing in the vicinity, felt exceptionally conspicuous.
When the man was close enough for Liu to make out his features, Liu, who had been standing at an angle, straightened his posture. A frown formed between his brows. The man who climbed the stairs without even thinking to brush off the raindrops that had settled on the shoulders of his jumper, even after stepping under the awning, was Yeehyeon’s father.
For a moment, a crack appeared in the man’s eyes. Liu instinctively knew that he had been recognized as well. But their gazes clashed for only an instant. Without even slowing his pace, Yeehyeon’s father walked right past Liu.
It took about thirty minutes for him to come back out.
Even though he himself had stayed for nearly an hour, Liu couldn’t imagine what the man was doing inside for so long, where there was so little one was permitted to do. But he waited patiently, holding his ground.
It wasn’t to say anything in particular or to hear anything. But for some reason, he didn’t want to turn away and pretend not to know. It wasn’t out of pity or courtesy. If he had to define it, it was closer to the opposite.
“……”
The man must have seen Liu’s back on his way out, but this time too, he passed Liu and went down the stairs. It was as expected. Liu quietly followed him, maintaining a distance of about ten or fifteen steps.
At the fork in the road that split into the parking lot and the access road, Liu grabbed the man’s upper arm and blocked his path. The man’s eyes, which he was now facing directly up close for the first time, were certainly hazy, as if he had turned his back on the world. They were the kind of eyes that seemed to look through Liu standing before him, staring at something behind.
“I’ll give you a ride. Please get in.”
“……”
The man’s gaze dropped to the bouquet of Jana roses in Liu’s hand. Until the man walked over to the car and stood there, the two of them faced off in the light rain, with the thicket, its color so dark it was almost black from the moisture, as their backdrop.
He hadn’t expected his offer to be accepted. But there was no reason to be flustered either. After placing the bouquet in the back seat, Liu started the car. As if the silence was contagious, Liu also kept his mouth firmly shut until they arrived at the village, about a thirty-minute drive in a different direction from the hotel. He had no desire to make pleasantries to win the man’s favor or to ease the atmosphere.
While driving along the coastal road with the East Sea to their left, the man clutched his backpack and stared out at the gray sea and sky.
Only when the alley with the shark family mural, where he had once parked and waited to meet Yeehyeon, came into view did Liu slow down and open his mouth.
“I went to the columbarium… at Yeehyeon’s request.”
The sea had long since disappeared from view, but the man’s gaze remained stubbornly fixed out the car window.
“Yeehyeon, he’s doing well there. He’s healthy, working diligently on his art, and receiving recognition for it.”
Yeehyeon periodically contacted his uncle and aunt, but Liu deliberately delivered the news about Yeehyeon himself to imply that he was still in a relationship with him.
The man turned his head to look down at the backpack on his lap. His eyelids were blinking rapidly.
The two were silent again for a long while. Only the invisible sea asserted its presence with the sound of its waves. He didn’t get out, even though Liu said nothing to hold him back, and Liu didn’t ask him to leave, even though he stayed put.
Liu, who had been gripping the top of the steering wheel, tightened his hold. Enduring this place and the man sitting beside him was more painful than he had thought. Releasing the lip he had been chewing, he spoke as if sighing.
“He’ll probably… become an Omega before the year is out.”
“……”
The man’s gaze turned to Liu. Liu met his gaze directly.
The man’s pupils and irises were, of course, normal. Nevertheless, Liu thought his eyes resembled his own white eyes after the Changing. His eyes, which had been like an empty void, blinked, showing a reaction.
Are you worried because you’re his father after all?
A vicious impulse to sneer stirred within him. The skin of Liu’s face twitched briefly with the effort of suppressing it.
Liu knew that Yeehyeon had told the man about the Changing. But now, he didn’t feel the same guilty sense of intimidation he had felt in front of the urn. He knew it was audacious of him, considering what he had done to Yeehyeon, but he felt a boiling anger toward the man instead. It was an anger that resembled self-hatred.
While he shuddered at the thought of the hurt and shock the man in front of him had inflicted on Yeehyeon, he was also unsure if he could have handled it any better had he been in the same situation. The thought of losing Yeehyeon. No, of having him taken away. The thought of Yeehyeon disappearing one day… In that hellfire, what on earth could give him the strength to live on?
His own pettiness in being unable to grant this man the same forgiveness he had received from Yeehyeon was perhaps due to the sameness he saw between the man and himself.
Feeling a strong urge to smoke again, Liu was the first to look away. As he unclenched his empty fist and wiped his face, the man unzipped the backpack he had been clutching so preciously.
Taking out a 16-panel-sized sketchbook, the man shook it in front of Liu’s face as if to say, hurry up and take it. The man, who was as static as if he had sunk into the deep sea, would sometimes shatter the balance with sudden, violent movements.
Liu took the notebook, taken aback.
“……”
Sketches and studies using pencil, oil-based colored pencils, and markers densely filled every page of Kent paper. Liu’s lips parted, but he couldn’t make a sound.
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