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‘What’s your dream?’
Cha Do-hyun asked one day toward the very end of winter.
It was the day we had headed to a bookstore to buy new workbooks before moving up to second year of high school. The large bookstore was decorated with furniture unified in paulownia wood and artificial vine leaves placed here and there, creating an overall atmosphere that evoked a forest.
I flipped through the newly released workbooks with next year’s number stamped on their covers and replied.
‘Dream?’
‘Yeah. Dream.’
I didn’t answer right away, of course. There was a mountain of workbooks in front of me that needed looking through first.
I picked up the most eye-catching volume from the neatly lined-up workbooks and opened it. Though it might be more accurate to say I flipped through it in a quick, breezy way rather than actually reading it — but anyway, that’s what I did.
When choosing workbooks, I always went through them like this. This one’s all flashy cover and no substance. This one’s packed with past exam questions but the advanced problems are all recycled. That sort of thing.
‘I’m going to get into Seoul National University.’
After flipping through maybe two volumes like that, I finally offered a leisurely answer. Hearing it, Cha Do-hyun asked back.
‘How is getting into Seoul National a dream?’
‘It’s a dream. All exam students across the country have pretty much the same one.’
‘And what are you going to do once you get in?’
‘Attend classes, I suppose.’
‘Other than that. What do you want to do that you need Seoul National for?’
Cha Do-hyun’s questions were relentless. Only then did I snap the fifth workbook I’d been flipping through shut with a loud clap.
‘I’ve never thought about it.’
It was an answer I’d given with genuine consideration, yet Cha Do-hyun squinted one eye as though he’d heard something he wished he hadn’t. I must look like some kind of hopeless case through Cha Do-hyun’s eyes.
I set down the workbook I was holding and looked up at Cha Do-hyun.
‘But there is something.’
‘What is it.’
‘If I get into as prestigious a university as possible… I thought it might make it a lot easier for someone to find me, if they ever tried to look.’
‘…….’
‘Though it might not, of course.’
Having added that, I went back to flipping through the sixth workbook. Cha Do-hyun stood beside me, glancing at the workbooks I’d already gone through, and asked again.
‘Is it something you absolutely have to do?’
In asking that, Cha Do-hyun didn’t say ‘Is that about your father?’ I took my eyes off the workbook at the sound of Cha Do-hyun’s voice — which carried a studied indifference. My gaze drifted off the workbook and stayed in the air for a few seconds.
Does something that is truly absolute even exist in this world? Looking at people who give life lectures in front of live audiences on YouTube, they often use expressions like you must do this — but when you actually stop and think it through, the majority of those things were things you didn’t really need to do at all.
Successful people point to a path and say you have to walk it to become like them. It might seem like all you’d need to do is walk the exact same road they walked — but the reality is different.
Even if you adopt the same habits, dedicate the same hours to studying, and copy their routines exactly, they can never become that successful person. Because they are not that successful person. And so in the formula for success, the concept of must does not truly exist.
But the concept of must that stands in opposition to the success formula was a little different. The must that exists not for one’s own success but for another person’s pain — the question of whether that concept even exists didn’t really matter.
It was simply something that had to be done. Not a concept that existed because it existed, but one that was created into existence out of necessity.
And so I answered: yeah.
Cha Do-hyun asked again.
‘Why?’
I shifted my gaze from the empty air to Cha Do-hyun.
‘Because that person abandoned you.’
At some point Cha Do-hyun had stopped looking at the workbooks and was quietly looking down at me instead. The black beanie on Cha Do-hyun’s head caught my eye.
I looked at Cha Do-hyun’s black beanie, then at the grey muffler wrapped around his neck, then back at Cha Do-hyun again. Thinking, with fresh awareness, how very dark Cha Do-hyun’s eyes were, I opened my mouth.
‘I don’t really know.’
Saying that, I quietly watched for Cha Do-hyun’s reaction. Because I was worried he might furrow his brow again this time.
But Cha Do-hyun was still looking down at me quietly. As though waiting for some other thing inside me that had yet to come out. I thought for a moment, then added.
‘It’s just — you know how it is. That anxiety you get when everyone else has something and you’re the only one who doesn’t. It’s not like I’m planning to cling to them and sob if we meet again, I just want to ask. Why was I the one who had to grow up without the ordinary things other people get to have.’
‘…….’
‘They’re the one who abandoned me, so I feel like they might know the answer.’
And I’m also curious what kind of expression they’d have when they saw me again.
I swallowed the words I hadn’t said aloud and turned my eyes back to the workbooks. Then Cha Do-hyun, who had been staring fixedly at me, asked.
‘Is that spite?’
Spite, is it. I dropped my gaze at the question — one I had never once thought through properly. I looked at the neatly lined-up workbooks, but this time I didn’t open any of them. I simply stared at their bright, varied covers.
The first time I was abandoned by my father was when I was six years old. In truth, both my mother and my father had left me — but the difference between the two was that my mother left because she died of illness, while my father left after letting me languish in violence. He simply walked away.
It was a long time ago, and afterward I was lucky enough to meet a kind director and was raised in an orphanage — but people are fundamentally self-serving by nature, and tend to remember the bad things far better than the good.
A dark single room. Dust piled in every corner from never once being properly cleaned. And bottles of alcohol always rolling around on the floor. I lowered my gaze as those images came back to me.
It probably is spite. I was clearly wishing misfortune on him. But it wasn’t in the raw, unrefined form you’d see in revenge dramas or films.
It wasn’t as though I wanted us to become family again when we met. I just wanted to see his face once — see how he’d been living, after abandoning me like that.
Cha Do-hyun could never understand feelings like these, no matter what.
This quiet feeling of being pooled in one place, like a straw drifting on the surface of a still lake. This rotting emotion that had been curdling inside me alone ever since I first clearly understood what it meant to not have a family.
‘Looking at you sometimes, you’re like a moth that hurtles recklessly toward any flame it sees.’
Cha Do-hyun had been watching me in silence for a long moment before speaking, as if with a sigh. Just as the mildly grating words were making me furrow my brow, Cha Do-hyun added more.
‘You charge in senselessly even knowing full well you’ll get hurt. And in the end you always lose a wing.’
‘…….’
‘So I’m always worried about you.’
I looked back at Cha Do-hyun one more time. My eyes met Cha Do-hyun’s — he wasn’t smiling. Dark, deep eyes. Whenever I held that gaze steadily, I always had the sensation that something inside me was being pierced clean through.
I felt a prickling at my skin as I listened to Cha Do-hyun’s voice continue.
‘Because I have a feeling it’ll end up being me who heals that broken wing.’
Is he saying I’m a nuisance because I’m reckless? That question surfaced in my mind after hearing Cha Do-hyun’s enigmatic words — but I couldn’t bring myself to say it aloud in the end.
Because the bittersweet smile resting at the corner of Cha Do-hyun’s lips looked unusually vivid.
