-2-
Alcohol. Look at me drinking again. Even in his not-quite-right state of mind, he could tell he had almost said something unnecessary.
-Hyung. You didn’t drink, did you?
Having noticed something strange from Bunhong’s inconsistent reactions, that guy interrogated him like he was cross-examining.
-Where are you right now?
When no answer came back, Hanbit urgently asked again like someone being chased by something.
Do you feel those emotions too? Though he didn’t say it out loud, because Lee Hanbit’s desperate-looking attitude was amusing, Bunhong let out a small sneer.
Then through the side mirror, his eyes met with himself in the reflection. In the darkness, only one corner of his expressionless face’s mouth was turned up.
That hypocritical face he’d been looking at all along while pretending to be a normal person. That ambiguous smile. That awkward expression where he could neither laugh nor cry.
The miserable sight of not being able to properly choose any one thing was so ridiculous that laughter burst out naturally.
“I had exactly one drink. Just had one drink… don’t get angry.”
-I asked where you are!
Was it because his head was ringing from the loud shout? Bunhong, who had been swaying for a moment, heard the honking from behind and hurriedly started the car again.
“So noisy.”
-Hyung. Please.
“Don’t… pretend to be nice…!”
He gritted his teeth. He didn’t know where or at what point he got angry, but he was just mad. It was unfamiliar that there was someone acting like they were worried about him, and it was also disgusting that it had to be Lee Hanbit, so he was suffering.
And after hearing no sound for a while, he thought the call had ended. At some point, he turned up the volume on the music flowing from the radio to maximum.
-I had a dream… it was a nightmare.
Even amid the symphony reaching its climax, only that guy’s voice came through clearly.
So what. Should I comfort you? Along with his increasingly slurred pronunciation and a migraine hitting him like being struck with a hammer, tired Bunhong leaned his back against the seat and looked outside the car window.
Looking at the cars speeding along the road, he suddenly remembered that he had nowhere to go.
Ah. Actually, he was drunk and unable to make any rational judgments. Like someone whose frontal lobe had been cut out, through his hazy vision, it seemed like a sign saying something road had passed by.
-There, hyung, hyung got into an accident!
It was obvious he was hesitating before speaking with a trembling voice. Come to think of it, judging by how his voice was cracked, it seemed like he had just woken up not too long ago.
An accident. It was so absurd that he naturally let out a hollow laugh. There were often times when he thought it would be better if he just really died rather than living like this. Then could it end, all of this disgusting everything.
-So where are you, hyung?
The small murmuring sounds heard along with Hanbit’s voice through the cell phone gradually grew louder. ‘You appeared right at twelve o’clock. How touching?’, ‘Hey! Lee Hanbit! Happy birthday!’, ‘Should we sing the birthday song?’ They were familiar voices.
Suddenly feeling like the alcohol was hitting him hard, he laughed limply and hiccupped. That guy asked back. Hyung?
Actually, he had lost his reason long ago. Only instinct remained, and the vague impulse to ‘escape’ dominated Bunhong’s body and mind.
The numbers on the dashboard soared, and despite the navigation’s warning to be careful of speeding, the car’s speed didn’t decrease.
While he was focused on driving like that for a while, suddenly something swooshed across his field of vision from the front.
The moment he turned the steering wheel to avoid it, even through his drunkenness, he could tell he had made a mistake. Cold sweat was flowing, and his back was already damp.
Screech- An unpleasant noise was heard, and though he didn’t know what he had crashed into, the moment he hit something, the impact with that dull weight made it impossible to breathe for an instant.
“Ugh…”
His ribs must have broken and pierced his lung. Every time he barely managed to exhale, he could vividly feel the pain of swallowing thorns.
Cough. When he struggled to spit out whatever was blocking his throat, unlike before, a fishy scent lingered at the tip of his nose. It was the smell of blood.
-Hyung!!
Kim Bunhong suddenly realized instinctively that now, this moment, was his last. He could vividly feel all the senses in his body dying.
At the same time, countless emotions and relationships that had collapsed helplessly without completing their form in his life began to flash by like a revolving lantern.
* * *
The first was memory. Memory about the parents who gave birth to him.
‘Mom and Dad are going on a trip.’
At the time, Dad was a travel writer and Mom was a publishing company employee. Getting young Bunhong out of the car, they spoke affectionately to their son.
‘How many nights?’
Bunhong, who was only five years old, opened his eyes wide and sucked on his fingers. Even though he was young enough to pronounce ‘nights’ as ‘cheeks’, this scene was most clearly and distinctly imprinted in the child’s memory.
Actually, looking back now, he can’t properly remember his parents’ faces. They’re hazy like fog.
‘Hmm. About twenty nights?’
This was when he couldn’t properly count numbers yet. When counting numbers, he always used his fingers, so he couldn’t go beyond ten.
He feels Dad’s touch lifting up his small body as he puffs his cheeks and pouts his lips.
From him, who briefly kissed his cheek and put him down, came the scent of cool skin lotion.
‘Mother. We’ll be back. Please take good care of Bunhong.’
Due to circumstances, he had to stay at Grandmother’s house for a while, but since there hadn’t been much interaction before this, this was the first time Bunhong was properly meeting her.
The occasional coughing mixed with phlegm heard from beyond the threshold let him know someone was inside the house.
Creak.
His gaze was drawn to the silhouette walking out after opening the inner room door. It was a face with a straight back that looked stern somehow.
“Obviously going to do something useless again…”
Clicking her tongue at something that didn’t please her, she turned around coldly. Looking at her back and then turning his head, Dad entered Bunhong’s field of vision with an awkward smile.
Gradually getting farther away, endlessly chasing the rear end of the car becoming a dot, he was reassured by the presence of the crescent moon that seemed to follow them. By the time that moon becomes full and round, won’t Mom and Dad and even Grandmother all be laughing together?
Wait.
I’m waiting.
The child counts to ten. He’s young enough to believe that promises must be kept firmly.
One. Two. Three…
The child who was weak with numbers counted to five and then forgot. In the end, he counts from the beginning again. Even after repeating this twice, three times, his parents didn’t return.
Grandmother still seemed displeased about something. She always frowned and gave him rice mixed with beans that Bunhong hated at every meal. The child couldn’t bring himself to spit it out and read the mood.
Fingers. Even without words, she pointed it out with cold glances. Startled, he quickly took the finger he was sucking out of his mouth.
“If you’re done eating, put it away in the sink.”
Everything used goes back to its place. Footsteps in the house should be quiet without sound, and so on. After spending days following the rules he had become accustomed to, night would come again.
There was no television at Grandmother’s house, so he couldn’t watch the cartoons he used to watch at home. Instead, there was a radio, and after brushing his teeth and washing his face, rolling around on the blanket spread on the floor, the play would begin with tuning the frequency.
Then, eventually, voices of people he didn’t know could be heard.
‘……’
Various noises mixed with crackling static. The fluorescent light that seemed about to go out at any moment, the neatly applied white wallpaper, and the cool evening air filling the space.
The sound of crickets chirping could be heard from beyond the window, and cats cried all night. When he closed his eyes buried deep in the blankets and felt all of this, all those sensations would become one scent and reach the tip of his nose.
In young Bunhong’s imagination, he thought they were trapped inside the radio. So he vaguely thought they were in the same situation as himself.
Around that time, something unknown kept growing in his heart, and the more it grew, rather than filling his empty heart, he felt like that space was expanding even more.
It was later that he learned that hollow feeling was loneliness.
Every time he turned the radio frequency, he kept meeting people just like himself, so he defined them as ‘friends’. They would share stories they couldn’t tell others by borrowing the power of anonymity, or sometimes play songs.
Some friends spoke so fast that he had to concentrate all his attention not to miss anything, and sometimes they spoke in languages he didn’t understand, so there were many times he couldn’t comprehend.
But songs were different. They consisted of sentences arranged with precise and short words, mainly containing stories about eternal love and happiness, and even if they were in foreign languages, depending on the singer’s tone, he could know with his heart rather than his head what story this person was telling and what emotions they were feeling.
Just, everything.
It was magic that made him feel like he was communicating together just by humming along to the lyrics.
“Don’t cry, I’m always with you…”
Waiting without promise. The child who had been waiting for those who wouldn’t come had become old enough to enter school.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
