Notes:
Chiin (치인) – A designation/classification in this universe (appears to be the recessive/omega-like role)
Geumín (금인) – A designation/classification in this universe (appears to be the dominant/alpha-like role)
Anin (안인) – Normal humans without special traits
He left home on graduation day. Clutching a bouquet of flowers, wearing a duffle coat and checkered scarf, he sat at the bus stop and cried. Not because he’d failed to get into college, nor because he’d spent his graduation alone.
He’d taken photos with his friends. Someone had brought a Polaroid camera, so he’d gotten a few pictures too. His parents said they’d greet his homeroom teacher and then go to a Chinese restaurant afterward. They’d said they’d made a reservation three months in advance at a place that was hard to book. Would they still go there knowing he’d disappeared, or not…?
Sobbing miserably at the stop, his cheeks flushed red. Most people probably wouldn’t become adults in such a painful way. They’d probably become adults in a daze as the year passed. Yunoh had hoped for the same.
He took a city bus to the terminal and bought a ticket. He hadn’t even decided where to go. His hands trembled as he held out the money, terrified. After handing over cash and receiving the ticket, he adjusted his bag, heavy not with textbooks but with luggage.
At the bus waiting area, banners flapped in the wind—full of arguments from people who wanted the terminal relocated and those who didn’t. The holes punched to keep them from flying away seemed pointless. In the bitter cold under a cold wave warning, Yunoh curled up endlessly.
He regretted it. But there was no other way besides not leaving. The moment he became an adult, his entire life was scheduled to disappear.
He could have packaged it nicely to fit appearances. He could have resigned himself with plausible fatalism. Or he could have lived like a fool with his eyes and ears covered. But Yunoh couldn’t bring himself to do that. He had no sense and was stupid.
He was sorry to his parents. But at the same time, he resented them. They were among those most delighted by Yunoh’s fate.
*’Yunoh-ya. You’re becoming an adult now, aren’t you nervous?’*
That nerve-wracking future had no place for his own will. Rather, it seemed certain that his family was more excited about it than he was. They were looking at something behind Yunoh. Their hazy gaze, blurred like fog, passed through his body creating a single form behind Yunoh. An existence whose face and name he himself didn’t know.
*’…What if I say I don’t want to? What if I say I want to do something else?’*
His mother hurriedly shushed him, worried that grandmother might hear Yunoh’s impudent words. But his always sharp grandmother had already heard what Yunoh said. Instead of scolding him harshly as usual, she said this:
*’No matter how much you refuse, when you’re faced with your pair, you won’t be able to think of anything. You’ll realize this is fate and submit to it.’*
What is that? What’s a pair and what’s submission? It’s disgusting. If that’s really fate, then why am I scared of that future and wish it wouldn’t come…?
When he first heard about this thing called a pair that he didn’t even know, even at his young age Yunoh felt overwhelming emotions he couldn’t handle. According to his grandmother’s words, thinking of his pair should make him feel longing or excitement or anticipation, but whenever that happened, Yunoh was seized by emotions he couldn’t understand at all. Only after he grew a bit older did he realize they were hatred, resentment, and fear.
Why did he feel such things?
But what was certain was that to Kim Yunoh, his pair was an existence that made him realize hatred, resentment, and fear of unfathomable depth at too young an age. And that didn’t fade even as he aged and time passed. Like a seed planted in his navel from birth, it grew with him while eating away at him.
I hate them…. He resented his pair whose face he didn’t know, for reasons he didn’t know. He didn’t want to meet them. Rather than becoming pairs, he’d rather remain strangers forever, never knowing each other. In this life and the next…. At the very edge of the emotions that whirled through his chest like a dry typhoon, something even more incomprehensible occasionally surfaced, but before he could discover and understand it, Yunoh avoided it every time.
As if tearing through his thoughts, the door of the bus Yunoh needed to take opened. He heard the announcement that passengers heading to the destination should board now. Not many people moved, and even those who did moved slowly and sluggishly. Yunoh slowly bowed his head. The ticket he gripped tightly in both hands trembled. Not from the cold. It was because the life he’d chosen terrified him. Yunoh slowly rose from his seat.
“Student.”
After just three steps, someone stopped him. He shouldn’t have. He almost turned around without realizing it and gave up right then and there.
“You left your bouquet behind. Isn’t it yours, student? It’s so pretty, what will you do if you leave it? What a waste.”
Yunoh received the bouquet. The same bouquet, received for the second time. The sentiment was different.
“Thank you.”
When he answered in a fading voice, the person patted Yunoh’s forearm with their hand.
“Congratulations.”
It might have been said noticing his graduation, or maybe not. Either way, it was enough to redden Yunoh’s already loose tear ducts. Yunoh lifted his head. His pale-colored eyelashes blinked stickily.
“……”
His lips twitched but in the end he said nothing. He nodded and turned to board the bus.
The bus was warm with the heater turned on early. His frozen fingertips and cheeks tingled as they thawed. Just as Yunoh was about to doze off, he urgently stood up the next moment.
“Wait a moment.”
Then after getting off the bus, he turned off his still-ringing phone and put it in the trash can. His trembling breath was white like frost. He exhaled deeply until his sternum sank heavily downward, then boarded the bus again.
His body was hot from the heater blasting strongly enough to be suffocating, but his heart was cold. The dry winter without even snow was so arid it dried even his tears. Yunoh clasped his hands together tightly with his itchy fingers. In the bag he held contained his diploma, clothes, all his assets from withdrawing all the money he’d saved, photos taken with friends. In the seat beside him that hadn’t been reserved sat the bouquet.
He’d become a full adult, but fear preceded anticipation. A fate like a swamp pulled at him like shackles and he kept floundering wanting to escape from it—how far could he really get? How long could he keep this up? How long… must he do this?
“We’ll be departing now. We’ll get you safely to your destination.”
The driver quickly rattled off his greeting. Then sat in the driver’s seat and closed the door. The moment the wheels rolled, Yunoh startled violently like someone waking from a nightmare. He gasped and pressed his hand against the window. The words “please stop” came to the tip of his tongue but he suppressed them.
This was the first time he was being stubborn. It might be the last. Even if it meant being cast out onto the cold ground knowing nothing and on his own, it was his own way of struggling. Stubbornness inflated his gestures. Whatever this thing called a pair was, let them try to find him. Let them try to catch him. When caught, whether he really wouldn’t be able to think of anything and would just become powerless, he was curious too….
* * *
They said this place once had nothing but rice paddies and fields. In a place where the tallest building was just a 19-story apartment, now high-rise apartments tall enough to make 25 stories feel modest were being built one after another. Next to high-rise apartments were even taller high-rise apartments, and next to those even taller apartments were being constructed. Thanks to that, Yunoh wouldn’t starve to death.
“Yunoh-ya. Bring out the spicy stir-fried pork.”
“Yes.”
Yunoh wiped his wet hands on his apron and entered the kitchen. Boss Park’s packed lunch business that had started in a container had now expanded from a mobile container into a Korean buffet restaurant operating in a proper building. With construction site workers flowing in endlessly, Boss Park and his wife’s not-too-bad cooking skills, and MSG added in, the business grew day by day. Boss Park already owned four Korean buffet restaurants.
At one of them, the one Boss Park directly operated, Yunoh had been working for nearly two years now. A full year and a half, two years if counting by calendar years. In that time, Yunoh’s baby fat had also disappeared.
An environment that forced precociousness brought Yunoh an indescribable atmosphere. Boss Park thought this was dangerous and didn’t let Yunoh go outside. So from 11:30 AM to 2:30 PM, while crowds rushed in in shifts, all Yunoh did inside the kitchen was prep ingredients or wash dishes. He only moved through the dining hall before the crowds came.
“Hurry and move that, then you eat inside too.”
Boss Park shook off his hands covered with onion peels and nodded. He was already rummaging in his pockets as if his mouth was getting dry. The pot-lid-like hand searching through his pockets for cigarettes had only four fingers.
*’Just because I don’t have a pinky finger doesn’t mean I can’t make three meals a day, does it?’*
A nonsensical joke. So unfunny it was actually somewhat disgusting, a joke only he could laugh at. When Yunoh first heard it, he frowned and Boss Park grumbled, ‘This punk doesn’t even laugh.’
All Yunoh knew about Boss Park’s past was that after visiting the big house, he’d lost a finger, and thanks to that, he’d washed his hands clean and started a food business. Yunoh didn’t ask about Boss Park’s past and Boss Park didn’t ask about Yunoh’s past. That’s why Yunoh liked this place.
“Yunoh-ya. Come here. I made japchae rice.”
Boss Park’s wife was generous. It was also her role to always tell Yunoh, who had a small stomach or a small appetite, that he needed to eat more, that food energy was most important.
As soon as he arrived in the morning, she stir-fried julienned carrots to extract the oil, then stir-fried blanched spinach together. She preferred a slightly firm texture so she took out the glass noodles early, mixed them with the stir-fried vegetables in her special soy sauce, then sprinkled sesame seeds on top to complete the glossy japchae. After cutting the japchae with kitchen scissors and mixing it with freshly cooked rice, sprinkling more sesame oil on top, the savory smell filled the kitchen.
She’d said Boss Park’s wife’s family farmed in the countryside. Thanks to that they could always get good sesame seeds and red pepper powder, but he remembered them whispering secretly that they should only eat those themselves. The fact that Yunoh himself was included in that “we” made him smile for the first time in a while.
“I’ll eat well.”
