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  There was heavy silence between us. I waited for Gon to speak while the clock ticked. Slowly, he whispered, “What was she like?”

  It took me a while to understand his question.

  “You’ve met her. Although only once,” he said.

  I went back through my memory. A room filled with flowers, her ashen face. I could see Gon’s face reflected in hers, though I hadn’t known back then.

  “She looked like you.”

  “I saw her pictures but I couldn’t see the resemblance,” Gon scoffed. But then he asked, “Which part?” He looked straight at me with glaring eyes. I superimposed my memory of her face on his.

  “The eyes. The outline of your face. The way you smile. Your eyes drooping at the corners when you smile, making dimples.”

  “Shit . . .” He looked away. “But she saw you and thought you were me.”

  “Anybody would do the same in her shoes.”

  “But she must’ve tried to find her features in your face.”

  “What she said to me was meant for you.”

  “What—what were her last words?”

  “She just hugged me. Very tight.”

  Gon shook his head. Then as if he could hardly get the words out, he whispered, “Was it warm? Her arms . . .”

  “Yes, very warm.”

  His shoulders, which had been hunched and still, gradually sank. His face turned wrinkly like a deflated balloon. His head slowly hanging low, his knees buckled. His body was shaking, his head sunk down against his chest. There was no sound, but I knew he was crying. I looked down at him, saying nothing. I felt like I’d become uselessly taller.

  47

  We hung out together all throughout summer vacation. On hot summer nights, so humid that my skin got sticky, Gon would lie on a bench in front of the bookstore and tell me stories about himself. But I wonder if there is any point writing down those stories here. Gon had simply lived his life. An abandoned, battered life, one you could almost describe as filthy, for fifteen years. I wanted to tell him that fate was just throwing dice, but I didn’t. They were nothing more than some pointless words I’d read in a book.

  Gon was the simplest and the most transparent person I’d met in my life. Even a dunce like me could see through his mind. He often said, We have to be tougher in this tough world. That was the conclusion that his life had led him to.

  We couldn’t possibly resemble each other. I was too numb and Gon didn’t admit he was vulnerable. He just pretended to be strong.

  People said there was no way to understand Gon. I didn’t agree with them. It’s just that nobody ever tried to see through him.

  * * *

  I remember Mom clutching my hand tight when we used to take walks. She never let go of my hand. Sometimes when I tried to wriggle my hand free because she gripped it so hard, she’d shoot me a look, telling me to hold on tight. She said families walk hand in hand. Granny would hold my other hand. I have never been abandoned by anyone. Even though my brain was a mess, what kept my soul whole was the warmth of the hands holding mine on both sides.

  48

  Every now and then I thought of the songs Mom used to sing to me. She had a bubbly voice when she spoke but her voice turned deep when she sang. It reminded me of the whale humming from a documentary I once saw, or just a breeze of wind or the sound of sea waves from afar. But her voice that once filled my ears was starting to fade. Soon I might forget her voice entirely. Everything I had known was beginning to fade away from me.

  Part Three

  49

  Dora. Dora was exactly the polar opposite of Gon. If Gon tried to teach me pain, guilt, and agony, Dora taught me flowers and scents, breezes and dreams. They were like songs I heard for the first time. Dora knew how to sing the songs everybody knew, in an entirely different way.

  50

  A new semester began. The campus looked the same, yet different. Changes were subtle, like the leaves turning darker. But the scent was clearly different. The kids gave off a stronger smell as the season ripened. Summer was pushing hard toward its end. Butterflies slowly disappeared and dead cicadas littered the ground.

  As fall came early, something strange happened to me as well. Something hard to describe, something you could hardly call a change. Everything I’d known seemed different, and all the words I spat out with ease wandered awkwardly at the tip of my tongue.

  It was on a Sunday afternoon when I was watching a K-pop show on TV. A five-member girl group was giving a speech for topping the charts for the first time since their debut three years earlier. The girls, who looked around my age, were jumping with joy, in short skirts and tops that barely covered their breasts. Trembling, the leader of the group thanked their manager, their boss, their record label’s staff and stylists, and their fan club. She rattled off all these names like a rapid fire, so fast as if she’d rehearsed the speech a thousand times over. Finally, she finished with a cliché, delivered half crying.

  “Thank you for all your support. What a beautiful night! We love you so much!”

  I’ve seen such speeches countless times, thanks to Mom, who loved watching K-pop music shows. But for some reason, on that particular day, it made me wonder. Can the word “love” be thrown around so casually like that?

  I thought of books by Goethe and Shakespeare, whose characters often resorted to death in their desperate search for love. I thought of the people I saw on the news who were obsessed with and even abusive to their loved ones because they thought they weren’t loved anymore. I also thought of the stories of people who forgave the unforgivable after hearing just three words: “I love you.”

  From what I understood, love was an extreme idea. A word that seemed to force something undefinable into the prison of letters. But the word was used so easily, so often. People spoke of love so casually, just to mean the slightest pleasure or thanks.

  When I shared these thoughts with Gon, he shrugged them away with a Pah. “Are you really asking me what love is?”

  “I’m not asking you to define the idea. I just want to hear what you think.”

  “You think I know? I don’t know either. That might be the one thing we have in common.” Gon giggled before glaring. Changing expressions in a split second was his thing.

  “You had your mom and grandma, though. They must’ve given you plenty of love. Why you askin’ me?” he snapped, his voice turning bitter. He ruffled his hair from the back of his neck to the top of his head. “I don’t give a damn about love. Not that I would mind experiencing it. The love between man and woman, you know.”

  He grabbed a pen and started capping and uncapping it repeatedly. The pen went in and out and in and out of the cap.

  “That’s what you do every night,” I said.

  “Wow, this asshole knows how to make a joke? I’m impressed. But that ain’t love between man and woman. It’s loving by myself.” Gon jokingly hit the back of my head. It didn’t hurt. He put his face close to mine.

  “Do you even know what love between a man and woman is, kid?”

  “I know the purpose.”

  “Yeah? What is it?” Gon asked, amused.

  “Reproduction. It’s the selfish gene prompting our instincts to—” Before I could finish my sentence, Gon slapped the back of my head again. This time it hurt.

  “You stupid asshole. You know, you’re stupid because you know too much. Now, listen carefully to what your big bro is about to tell you.”

  “I’m older. My birthday is before yours.”

  “Can you cut the jokes?”

  “I’m not joking, it’s the truth—”

  “Shut up, asshole.” Laughing, and another flick on the head, which I dodged. “Huh, nice move.”

  “Can you go back to where you were?” I said.

  Gon cleared his throat. “I think love is bullshit, pretending to be all grand and everlasting and everything. It’s all a bluff. I’d rather be tough, none of that soft shit.”

  “Tough?”

  �
��Yeah, tough. Strong. I’d choose to be the one hurting rather than getting hurt. Like Steel Wire.”

  Steel Wire. Gon had told me about him a couple times before, but I could never get used to the name. I recoiled a little. I felt like I was about to hear things I wished I’d never heard.

  “Now, he’s strong. I mean very. I want to be like him,” Gon said, as something flickered in his eyes.

  * * *

  Anyway, it seemed pointless to expect any real serious answer from Gon. But asking Dr. Shim seemed somehow out of the blue to him.

  There was this day when Mom asked a question to Granny, who was carefully writing hanja for love, 愛.

  “Mom, do you even know what that character means?”

  “Of course!” Granny glared at Mom, then in a deep low voice, she said, “Love.”

  “What does love mean?” Mom asked mischievously.

  “To discover beauty.”

  After Granny wrote the top part of the character 愛, then the middle part, 心 (meaning “heart”), she said, “These three dots are us. This one’s mine, this one’s yours, this one’s his!” Mom’s eyes teared up but she turned and went back to the kitchen.

  And there it was, the symbol 愛, with the three dots of our family. Back then I had no idea what “discovering beauty” meant.

  But, lately, one face did come to mind.

  51

  Lee Dora. I pictured what I knew of her. An image of her running came to mind. Galloping like a gazelle or a zebra. Actually, no, those aren’t appropriate similes. She was just Dora. Running Dora. Her silver eyeglasses being tossed on the ground. Her slender arms and legs whipping through the air. The sun glinting on her glasses. A cloud of dust in her wake. Her fair-skinned fingers setting the glasses back on her nose as soon as she finished her race. That’s everything I knew about her.

  52

  On the first day of school, I stood at the back of the auditorium where the boring opening ceremony was taking place. I sneaked out into the hallway when I heard a sound. I turned to see a girl standing at the end of the hallway. She tucked her shoulder-length hair behind her ears, tapping the ground with the tip of her toes. She must’ve thought no one was looking because she started doing some kind of warm-up. She stretched out her arms and legs and hopped three times before sprinting across the hallway. Panting, she stopped right in front of me and our eyes met. For five seconds at least. That was Dora.

  Her glasses had a thick, matte silver-gray frame with round lenses. The lenses were thin and had so many scratches that reflected the sunlight, making her eyes hard to see.

  Dora wasn’t like everyone else. She didn’t react to every little thing like other kids did. She was calm, so calm that she sometimes struck me as a very old woman. It wasn’t just that she was smarter or more mature. She was just a little different.

  Dora had missed a lot of school that spring. When she did come to school, she often left early without taking any supplementary or evening classes. That’s why she hadn’t seen the incident between Gon and me. In fact, she didn’t seem to care what went on around her at all. She always sat in the far corner of the classroom with her earphones in. Someone said she was preparing to transfer to another high school, one with a track team. But she ended up staying at ours. I barely saw her talk from then on. Even in class, she would only stare at the school field outside the window, like a caged leopard.

  I did see her without glasses once. It was during the spring Field Day. Dora had been selected as our class representative in the 200-meter dash. Her skinny figure didn’t give off much of an athletic impression as she stood ready at the starting line, which was, coincidentally, right in front me.

  On your mark! Dora throws her glasses down and touches the ground. Get set. Just then, I see her eyes. Her eyes, slanted at the corners. Her eyelashes full and long. Her pupils radiating a light brown hue. Go! Dora starts running. Her slender yet strong legs push against the ground with a cloud of dust, retreating farther. She is faster than anyone else. She is like the wind. A powerful yet light wind. She finishes the lap in a flash. She passes the finish line and, right before she stops, she snaps the glasses and puts them back on her nose, her mysterious eyes vanishing behind them.

  Dora was usually surrounded by people and ate with a group. The groups weren’t always the same. She wasn’t a loner but she wasn’t necessarily attached to certain friends, either. She didn’t seem to care who she ate with or who she walked home with. Sometimes she was by herself. Still, she wasn’t bullied and never looked out of place. She seemed like someone who could exist on her own.

  53

  Mom opened her eyes. After nine months in bed. The doctors said there was no need to be excited. Just because Mom had opened her eyes didn’t mean she had come back. They said it was not unlike the urine tube filling up on its own. She still needed to be turned over every two hours or so with the tube attached. When she was awake, though, her eyes would rest on the ceiling, blinking. Her pupils even seemed to move, however weakly.

  Mom was a person who could find constellations even from a dizzy wallpaper. Look, doesn’t the ladle shape here look like the Big Dipper? There’s Cassiopeia. That’s the Great Bear. Let’s find the Little Bear. Then Granny would say, “If you’re so crazy about the stars, why don’t you fetch a bowl of water and pray to the moon goddess!” I could almost hear her saucy voice. When I went to visit Granny’s grave later, it was covered with weeds. I thought of Mom’s and Granny’s laughter, like distant echoes.

  I barely had customers at the bookstore for quite some time. I still always sat behind the cash register after school but it was pointless to expect any sales. I couldn’t keep living off Dr. Shim’s charity forever. I realized one day that, without my mom and grandmother, the bookstore was like a grave. A grave of books. A grave of forgotten letters. That was when I decided to close down the place.

  I told Dr. Shim I’d like to pack up the bookstore, downsize my belongings, and move to a room in a shared house. He was silent for a while, then instead of asking why, he just nodded.

  * * *

  The school librarian was a senior-class homeroom teacher who taught Korean literature. When I went to the teachers’ lounge, I saw him bowing low to the vice principal, who was grilling him about his class having the lowest scores again on the last mock college exams. When he came back to his desk, his face flushed, I asked if I could donate books to the school library. He nodded absently.

  The hallway was dead silent. The midterm exam season was coming up soon, and no one was making a sound during evening classes. I headed to the library, carrying the box full of books I had left in the corner of the school gymnasium earlier that morning.

  The door slid open with ease. As soon as it did, spirited shouts hit my ears. Haphaphaphap. I walked closer to the shelves and saw a girl in profile. One foot in front, the other foot behind her, she was switching her feet back and forth as she jumped in place. Her strides were quite wide, considering that she was jumping in place. Beads of sweat gathered on her nose, her hair fluttered, and our eyes met. It was Dora.

  “Hi,” I said. It was polite to say hi first in these types of situations. Dora stopped. “I’m here to donate books.” I opened the box, answering a question she hadn’t asked.

  “Just leave it there. I’m sure the librarians will organize the books for you,” she said.

  “Aren’t you a student librarian?”

  “I’m on the track team.”

  “Does our school have an official track team?”

  “Yes, although there’s no teacher in charge and I’m the only member.”

  “Oh.” I slowly put down my half-open box in a corner.

  “Where did you get all these books?”

  I told her about the bookstore. Most of the books I’d brought were test-prep books. As test-prep books went in and out of fashion, outdated ones didn’t sell well unless they were famous.

  “By the way,” I asked, “why are you practicing here and not in th
e gym?”

  Dora had been walking with her hands clasped behind her back when she whipped around. “That place is too exposed. It’s quiet here. Kids barely come here, you know. And I need a basic workout to run faster.”

  People’s eyes light up when they talk about things they love. Dora’s were radiant.

  “What’s the running for?” I wasn’t asking with any specific intention. But her eyes were extinguished at once.

  “Do you know you just asked the question I hate most? I’ve had it enough with my parents asking that.”

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to judge you, I just wanted to know your purpose. Your purpose for running.”

  Dora let out a sigh. “To me, that’s like being asked, Why do you live? Do you live for any purpose? Let’s be honest, we just live because we’re alive. When things are great we’re happy, and when things aren’t, we cry. Same with running. I’ll be happy when I win, I’ll be sad when I don’t. When I feel I haven’t got it, I’ll blame myself or regret starting this in the first place. But then I’ll still run. Just because! Like living life. That’s all!”

  Dora had started out calm but by the end she was almost shouting. I nodded to calm her down.

  “Are your parents persuaded by that?”

  “No, they just laugh at me. They say running is useless—there’s no need for it when I become an adult, other than for rushing to cross the street before the traffic light changes. Funny, right? They tell me I’m no Usain Bolt, so why bother running.” The corners of her mouth drooped.

  “What do your parents want you to do?”

  “No idea. Before, they said if I wanted to be an athlete so much, I should play golf because at least it has a chance of making money. But now, not even that. They just tell me not to embarrass them. It was their choice to have me, but that doesn’t mean that I have to accomplish the missions they’ve set up. They keep threatening me that I’ll regret this, but even if I do regret it, that’s my choice to make. I think I’m just living up to my name. They named me Dora, so I guess I just have to be a dorai, a ‘freak.’”