# Chapter 47
I sat on a park bench watching people pass by. Perhaps because it was the weekend, people were overflowing everywhere, and despite the not-so-warm weather, many were sitting on the cold grass talking to each other.
By chance, I occupied a corner of the bench and was drinking coffee when someone sat beside me.
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
It was Oliver, whom I had arranged to meet.
While Woosang was out for work, I contacted Oliver and made an appointment. I had tried to avoid meeting him, but it seemed unavoidable. When Oliver received my contact, he seemed almost desperate that I’d reached out, but I decided not to worry about that.
I put my now-cold coffee down under the bench and directed my gaze to the ground as well. Already my hands and feet were ice-cold from the tension.
After a moment of silence, he opened his mouth.
“If you thought you had nothing to do with me, you would have either met me much sooner or ignored me completely. Whatever the case, thank you for meeting me.”
“…”
I wasn’t used to his unusually calm tone, but I felt I didn’t have to make up words intentionally either.
I was feeling uncomfortable with the prolonged silence when he stood up and looked at me.
“Shall we walk for a bit?”
Following him, I tried to distract my mind. The noisy surroundings seemed to make me even more sensitive, but it was bearable.
“When I was young, I lived in a rural town in Quebec. Most people there only spoke French, so I naturally used French too… But after moving away, I had no occasions to use it at all.”
“…”
“How was it for you?”
His confident words made me think a lot. He seemed to have already confirmed that I had lived in Quebec.
When I remained silent, Oliver also kept his mouth shut to match me. Various thoughts came to mind, but they were all jumbled up and couldn’t easily come out of my mouth.
“At first, I didn’t recognize you either. Your name was different… and you looked quite different from my memory. But as we talked, I began to remember.”
“What…”
“Your manner of speaking. And ever since before, when you fall into thought, you torment your fingertips like that. You still have that habit.”
I stopped in place, watching him mention a habit I wasn’t aware of. Absentmindedly, I shifted my gaze to my fingertips and rubbed my dry fingerprints again.
He looked at me with a pitiful expression. Not understanding that expression, I frowned deeply.
No one knew about my past. The only ones who remembered me, ‘Hund’ and my parents, passed away long ago, and even Woosang didn’t fully know about me. This wasn’t just because I wanted to hide it, but because I myself didn’t fully remember my past.
All I could remember were endless screams and white snow. That’s all that remained with me. Also, there was the reason that a long time had passed, enough for memories to fade. But the small, intense fragments from that time still followed me.
“Do you happen to remember my name?”
“…Sorry. Actually, I don’t remember your name. But I do know it’s different from the one you’re using now.”
At those words, a small sense of relief spread through my body. Although he spoke as if he knew everything about me, he didn’t actually know everything.
Then what did this outsider want to say? I didn’t want to hear any messy emotions other than clear statements.
“What do you want to say?”
After hesitating for a while, he carefully continued.
“…Actually, I saw everything you did back then.”
“…”
“Of course, it might be called self-defense… but that’s not what I want to mention. I was just concerned for a long time after seeing the news that you had gone missing.”
“Even though I was very young, I remember it clearly.” His words struck my ears strongly.
What I did. What did I do back then? At that time, I was a nobody. So naturally, I didn’t remember.
When I was around 10, my parents passed away, and led by ‘Hund’s’ hand, I spent my days digging soil in some unknown rural area of France. Occasionally, looking at people who came in as corpses, I would roughly estimate that I would soon become like them.
Come to think of it, my intact memories only remained from after I came to France. So I had nothing left of what I had done before that. And I never even wanted to remember.
A sense of discordance suddenly overwhelmed me.
I thought it didn’t matter, but questions began to arise one by one after Oliver’s words. Now that I think about it, why did ‘Hund’ take me to France?
For what reason did he become a foreigner with me?
“After that incident, police and reporters flooded our house. Since only our family lived near your house. So we had to flee… I’m sorry.”
“What are you talking about?”
“But still! I never told anyone your secret. Really.”
He began to get excited on his own, not listening to my words. It was a very different image from the Oliver I had seen so far.
Secret. My head spun at the puzzling word. There’s no way I had secrets at that age. I was suspicious of him claiming to know a secret, yet I didn’t want to hear anymore.
It felt like if I continued to listen to his story, it would really become irreversible.
‘I should stop.’
And yet, a forgotten corner of my memory screamed for the cut-out part from that time to be returned.
My head was spinning.
Come to think of it, even though no one called my name, I hadn’t forgotten my real name.
‘Ichen.’
Who called my name back then?
When I was young, because no one called my name, I couldn’t bear the excitement whenever someone called me.
I had such feelings.
I lifted my head and exchanged a long look with Oliver, who had stopped. He, looking as confused as I was, opened his mouth.
***
“Hey, Ichen. Are you only wearing a T-shirt today too?”
“Yes.”
Oliver said, looking at me. Though it was April, this place was covered in snow everywhere. I couldn’t remember where I heard it, but they said in other countries flowers bloom in April.
But having never left this village until I was 9, that story sounded absurd.
“Please wear some clothes! Doesn’t your mom buy you clothes?”
“Does your mom buy you clothes?”
Looking at him with surprised eyes, Oliver jumped as if he’d heard something strange and offered me one of his gloves.
“Oh, never mind. At least wear this.”
I took the warm-looking glove and put it on my hand. Even though it was small, it definitely seemed to ward off the cold. A short-sleeved shirt with one mitten. To anyone, it would look like I had stolen one glove.
Oliver, who lived a 20-minute walk from our house, occasionally came near our house to play with me. Having no friends, I liked it, but on the other hand, he felt unfamiliar, like a completely different being.
Every time we met, Oliver would badmouth his friends from school and complain about the food his mother prepared. All these stories were unfamiliar to me, and while awkward, they were interesting.
“By the way, when I told my mom about you, she said not to play with you anymore.”
“Really? So you won’t play with me anymore?”
“…No. But I probably can’t come as often as I do now.”
I see. I murmured with a regretful heart, and Oliver, after remaining silent, took off the other glove and offered it to me. While accepting it readily, I wondered why.
“Why are you giving this to me?”
“I don’t know. I just want to. Give it back to me later.”
“Okay.”
Oliver looked around and got up from where he was sitting. He seemed about to go home. As I stared at him blankly, he sighed.
“How are you going to manage, liking me this much?”
“I don’t.”
“What do you mean, you don’t? You always make a disappointed face. I’ll come again, so take care until then.”
“Alright.”
Had I made a disappointed face? I couldn’t tell, but I also waved my hand to Oliver, who was waving at me.
Certainly, after he left, the park looked strangely wider and darker. I wasn’t sure if I felt disappointed, but I did want to be with Oliver.
But since his parents disliked me, I might not be able to talk to Oliver anymore.
It was frustrating that a corner of my heart ached. I tapped my chest a few times with the gloves Oliver had given me, and the stuffiness improved from earlier.
As I ran with the gloves on both hands, my palms were very warm. It seemed much warmer than our house, which had no heating.
When I arrived home and tried to open the door with my gloved hands, it didn’t work well. But not wanting to take them off, I struggled for a while before finally managing to open the door. Ah, as expected, the house was much colder than these small gloves.
Creak.
I carefully closed the door, which made a loud noise from old age, and quickly went up to the second floor.
I hid my body inside the blanket, which was somewhat warm compared to the ice-cold floor.
This was because on days like this, when I spent time outside and came back, my parents would often get angry, saying I was being noisy.
“Cold…”
This sensation felt unfamiliar since I usually didn’t think about being cold. Pondering why, it seemed to be because of the gloves Oliver had given me.
Somehow afraid of the sensation of warmth, I quickly took off the gloves and hid them under the bed.
If you embrace some warmth, you might continue to be greedy afterward. I already knew that I shouldn’t covet what belongs to others. It would be no different from stealing.
Just then, as if noticing that I had returned, my mother started shouting, kicking the door with all her might.
“Didn’t I tell you not to go outside!”
Anticipating this, I had already moved the desk in front of the door.
Bang!
Of course, my mother, not caring about such things, knocked on the door as if to break it.
It seemed I would need to go out tomorrow as well. Even if it was cold, I preferred the quiet snowy field to this noisy world.
‘I wish winter would never end.’
Contrary to Oliver, who said he disliked winter, I had such a selfish thought. Imagining the white snowy field, my stifled heart seemed to ease a bit.
It’s okay. I muttered to myself for comfort. Thinking that way, my mind definitely seemed to calm down.
Someday, when I became an adult, I wanted to leave this house. I wanted to go to school like Oliver, wear thick clothes too. Would the school be filled with kind people like Oliver?
Just thinking about it cleared my head. If I could live such a life, I could endure living curled up in a space like this. Definitely.
My tingling heart pounded as if broken again today. The unknown pain persisted.
