6) Gradation
It was a day when pure white snow covered the world. A biting cold that froze hands and feet raged everywhere. Whenever he breathed, pale white puffs of breath spilled repeatedly from his mouth.
“Run away right now. This is your only chance.”
“Then what about you, noona? What are you going to do?”
“I’ll take care of myself. Stop dawdling and go, quickly!”
The urgent voice pierced sharply into his ears, and at the same time a strong force shoved his back. Seok-ho barely managed to regain his balance as he nearly fell forward and hurriedly turned around.
The distorted face of the woman looking at him scattered into the air like hazy smoke. At the same time, the snow-covered world suddenly transformed into a pitch-black space without a single trace of light.
Everything around him turned dark. It felt as though he had been left completely alone in a remote place where not a single living thing existed.
“Noona!”
Startled, Seok-ho spun around and shouted. But no reply or sign of anyone returned to him. Only his own voice echoed hollowly through the empty air.
“Noona!”
Searching for the person who had vanished, Seok-ho began walking forward aimlessly. A chilling fear rose from deep within his lower abdomen. A strange pressure, as if he would never escape this place forever, consumed young Seok-ho’s mind.
His steps gradually quickened until they eventually turned into a desperate sprint. His breath rose all the way to his throat, but Seok-ho did not stop. Without direction, he ran forward blindly.
Then suddenly, a hand that seemed to appear out of nowhere grabbed his shoulder.
“…Hhk!”
At the same moment, Seok-ho gasped sharply and snapped his eyes open.
The light from a streetlamp forced its way through the barely closed curtains and stretched long beside the bed.
Swallowing dryly, his Adam’s apple bobbing, Seok-ho moved his hand to cover his chest. He had just woken up from sleep, yet his heart pounded rapidly—thump, thump—as if he had truly been running.
In the dim space, he stared at the faintly visible ceiling. The moment he realized that everything had been a dream, relief washed over him.
He was no longer there.
That place was nothing more than a fragment of a distant past.
Countless years had already passed since that repeating day, yet the memory remained like trauma—like scars left by the claws of a great beast.
Around this time of year, he always had this dream. Even when he acted as if he had forgotten, when a certain day arrived, the memory buried at the very bottom suddenly sprang out as if mocking him.
As though sending a signal to remember where his roots lay, it endlessly stretched out its grasp to seize his ankle.
Seok-ho slowly raised his heavy body. He turned on his phone and checked the time. With a blinding glow, the numbers pierced into his vision.
4 a.m.
It had not even been a full hour since he had fallen asleep.
His body was drenched in sweat, sticky and uncomfortable. Leaving the bed, he immediately went into the bathroom, stripped off all his clothes, and turned on the cold water.
Water as cold as ice fell onto the crown of his head. The kind of temperature that could freeze even his brain.
Seok-ho stood there for quite some time, letting the stream of water pour over him.
After cooling his burning head, he left the bathroom wearing only his pants. The sweat that had clung unpleasantly to his body had been washed away cleanly, yet something sticky still remained inside him, keeping his nerves on edge.
Seok-ho went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of cold water. The cold liquid that moistened his dry throat gathered sharply at the center of his chest.
“Hyung.”
At that moment, someone called out.
Seok-ho turned around.
Kang-woo, dressed in pajamas, stood there with a disheveled appearance, looking at him.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?”
His face still clung with drowsiness, and his voice was thick with sleep. It seemed he had woken up after hearing the noise coming from the living room while he had been deeply asleep.
The moment Seok-ho faced Kang-woo, he felt an unexpected sense of relief.
It was strange. Just realizing that there was someone else in this house besides himself allowed him to breathe a little easier.
Seok-ho silently stared at Kang-woo.
All he had to say was that he had woken up because he was thirsty. That would have been enough. Yet somehow today, he didn’t feel like pretending everything was fine and brushing it off.
Perhaps sensing that feeling, Kang-woo broke the endless silence and spoke again.
“You can’t sleep?”
A faint trace of worry flickered across his gentle eyes. But Seok-ho still said nothing. His mouth would not open, as if it had been locked shut.
“Did you have a bad dream?”
Kang-woo slowly approached Seok-ho.
One step. Then another.
Each step was extremely cautious. It almost created the illusion of a weak human approaching a wild mountain beast that might suddenly turn feral at any moment.
But Kim Kang-woo did not stop halfway.
He walked straight up to Seok-ho and met his gaze. Soon, a hand with a slightly lukewarm temperature touched his forehead.
“…You don’t have a fever.”
With a careful expression, Kang-woo murmured as if speaking to himself after checking his temperature.
That was when Seok-ho moved.
He grabbed Kang-woo’s wrist and slowly pulled it downward. It was an extremely impulsive and sudden action.
When the hand reached the height of his chest, the movement stopped.
With his arm caught midair, Kang-woo quietly looked at Seok-ho.
The heat from the fingers gripping his wrist burned against Kang-woo’s skin. His mouth began to dry, and time seemed to pass slowly.
How long had they stood like that?
“If you can’t sleep… should I sing you a lullaby?”
Kang-woo suddenly made an unexpected suggestion.
“…A lullaby?”
At the absurd proposal, a breathy laugh escaped Seok-ho’s lips. The tense air that had been like walking on thin ice shattered instantly.
Whether he realized it or not, Kim Kang-woo occasionally said the strangest things.
Seok-ho himself was fairly quiet and often heard that people couldn’t tell what he was thinking. But now that he had someone like that right in front of him, he could somewhat understand how those people must have felt when they looked at him.
What exactly went on inside this guy’s head?
The tension that had been stretched tight suddenly loosened.
Even funnier was the fact that Kang-woo’s ridiculous suggestion wasn’t actually bad. The bait tossed before him was rather tempting.
“Come here.”
Perhaps taking the silence as agreement, Kang-woo grabbed Seok-ho’s arm and pulled him.
Seok-ho obediently followed the tug that guided him along.
“Lie down.”
Kim Kang-woo stopped in front of the bed and gave the instruction, but Seok-ho didn’t move.
His body felt sluggish, as if his brain had melted.
Someone else might have grown irritated by such an uncooperative attitude, but Kang-woo simply scrunched his nose slightly and said nothing.
He quietly moved and personally laid Seok-ho down on the bed. As if that wasn’t enough, he even pulled the blanket up carefully to cover him up to the neck.
Seok-ho found Kang-woo’s actions interesting and simply let him do as he pleased.
Next, Kim Kang-woo knelt down on the floor. Because of that, their eye levels became roughly the same.
“When I couldn’t sleep as a kid, the lady who used to take care of me would pat my chest like this and sing me a lullaby.”
Kang-woo whispered as his hand moved in a steady rhythm.
Soon, a clumsy lullaby began.
“Sleep, sleep, our baby…”
He had mentioned a lullaby, but Seok-ho had not expected him to actually sing it. And not just any lullaby, but the classic kind a mother might sing to a newborn baby. It was so absurd that Seok-ho couldn’t even laugh.
Instead, he simply observed Kang-woo quietly.
He stared straight at the young man’s face, which was as serious as could be.
The small lips moving slightly as they sang, the straight and modest nose, the eyes with faint double eyelids, and the long eyelashes fluttering each time those eyes blinked.
In the darkness, Kang-woo looked unusually clear, and Seok-ho watched him intently, as if afraid of missing even a moment.
“Sleeping so well, our baby…”
The singing was just as terrible as always, yet the lullaby sung in that soft, gentle voice was surprisingly effective.
The lingering unpleasant mood gradually calmed down.
The voice lingering by his ears like tinnitus, and the sticky emotions that had clung tightly to him, all vanished without a trace.
Suddenly, Seok-ho tightly grabbed Kang-woo’s arm. Then he pulled Kang-woo up onto the bed.
It didn’t take much strength. The light body came up easily.
Seok-ho faced the startled pale face. Because of the sudden change in position, the softly continuing song abruptly stopped.
“Keep going.”
The command fell.
Kang-woo, who had ended up lying beside Seok-ho, quickly regained his composure, true to his easygoing nature. With a hand patting Seok-ho’s shoulder, the lullaby resumed.
“Front yard dog, don’t bark. Back yard dog, don’t bark. Our baby has fallen asleep…”
The lullaby, which seemed like it might break but never quite did, continued long after Seok-ho had completely closed his eyes.
***
Kang-woo sat on the sofa, leaning deeply into the soft backrest.
Naturally, Seok-ho from earlier that dawn lingered in his mind. The image of him, somehow deeply sunken, would not leave Kang-woo’s thoughts.
Seok-ho had always been quiet, but his atmosphere had definitely been different from usual.
Kang-woo was certain of it. He didn’t know why, though.
“…Did something happen?”
Just yesterday evening, he had seemed perfectly fine. Even during dinner, Seok-ho had looked exactly the same as always.
But when Kang-woo woke up after hearing movement in the living room at dawn, something about him had subtly changed.
When Kang-woo first found Seok-ho standing alone in the kitchen with the lights still off, he had honestly been at a loss for where to put his eyes.
The large bare upper body, without any clothes, was dimly illuminated by the faint moonlight of dawn.
The black tattoo that began on his arm stretched across his chest, asserting its presence.
But the hesitation lasted only for a moment. Kang-woo slowly approached Seok-ho.
There was only one reason. He raised his hand and touched his forehead, wondering if he might be sick. But the skin he touched held no heat, and the face he saw up close looked far too normal to belong to someone who was ill.
Then Seok-ho grabbed his arm. Because it was so sudden, Kang-woo had no choice but to be startled. But he couldn’t simply shake off Seok-ho’s hand. The long, thick fingers were extremely hot—unlike the lukewarm forehead.
From that moment on, Kang-woo’s heart began beating a little faster.
And when Seok-ho pulled him up onto the bed in the bedroom, it felt like his heart might drop straight to the floor.
The black eyes right in front of him shone darker than usual as they looked at Kang-woo.
Thump. Thump.
The sound of his own heartbeat made his head spin.
He probably just thought squatting there looked uncomfortable. It must have been nothing more than a meaningless action to him.
Gripping his wildly beating chest with difficulty, Kang-woo forced himself to focus on the lullaby.
Only after repeating the same tune several times—about ten minutes later—did Seok-ho finally fall asleep.
The eyelashes densely set on his closed eyelids were just as dark as his eyebrows.
How often would someone get the chance to see Seok-ho’s face this close?
Kang-woo didn’t refuse such a rare opportunity.
While watching Seok-ho, who had fallen asleep breathing evenly, he must have eventually drifted off himself. And when he opened his eyes again, Seok-ho was gone.
Judging by the fact that the car keys on the nightstand were also missing, it seemed he had left early for work.
Kang-woo briefly considered sending him a text message. But soon he abandoned the idea. He didn’t want to do anything that might remind him of what had happened at dawn.
