“What?”
“If Yeoul imprinted on me, and if he left home without knowing that, Uncle—”
“Seonjae, I got it. I got it, so calm down.”
As soon as we arrived at the parking lot, Uncle started the car. Even though I got right in the car, I couldn’t know the destination. Because we don’t know where Han Yeoul is now. Still, we had to go first, anywhere. Wherever it was, we had to move. Without doing so, I was anxious to the point I couldn’t stand it.
In case Yeoul was in pain. In case he was suffering in pain alone because he imprinted on me.
“Actually Seonjae, I just got a call from that island where Yeoul was last seen.”
Uncle Irang said while heading to Pine Furniture headquarters.
“While you were at the hospital, I told the Chairman and had a helicopter on standby. Let’s go first. Let’s go and check again, and if he’s not there, let’s look again. And if he’s still not there, let’s look again. Uncle will search with you until the end. I’ll definitely find Yeoul for you. So Seonjae, you’re not alone. You know that, right?”
“……”
Uncle squeezed my hand as I said nothing.
His warm heart was transmitted through my hand trembling with anxiety. Even in the midst of that, I kept praying and praying inside.
Please…… please let Yeoul not have imprinted on me, let him not be suffering alone.
The place where Yeoul stayed last, or rather, until just before I went looking for him, was a small island where fewer than ten households lived. A remote place that ordinary people wouldn’t even know existed unless they inquired and searched for it.
When I heard that Yeoul was here, I was literally out of my mind and busy looking for traces of Yeoul. Because I thought I could really meet Yeoul this time, or if not, I thought I could at least see Yeoul’s back, I searched for traces of Yeoul with my eyes blazing like that.
This time too, Yeoul wasn’t there, and I cried pathetically.
How can this be? How can Yeoul do this to me…….
I was confident. That I could find Han Yeoul anywhere in the world, even with my eyes closed, but I was arrogant. As much as I was confident that I knew Han Yeoul well, no, I knew much less about Han Yeoul than that.
How can I know nothing at all?
Around that point, I got confused. What I know—is it Han Yeoul, or is it myself thinking I know Han Yeoul?
The helicopter dropped off Uncle Irang and me and went back to the mainland. Uncle Irang and I would look for traces of Yeoul here, and a few days later we’d go to the mainland and join the dedicated team looking for Yeoul. Anyway, I needed to find some clue, so I needed time to organize my thoughts on what I’d missed.
Home was painful.
Staying alone in the house filled entirely with the time I spent with Yeoul was like being trapped in a prison without bars. Everything was in its place, but Yeoul was the only thing missing. I wasn’t strong enough to endure and withstand that.
I now know for certain that nothing in my daily life functions properly when Han Yeoul is absent from it.
I’d never even imagined what life would be like without Han Yeoul in it. I’d thought the only thing that could separate us was “death,” yet here was our house without Han Yeoul.
I couldn’t bear watching “our house” gradually becoming “my house.”
That’s why I despise the places Yeoul stayed after abandoning our home. He must know what it means to me to see the places he stayed after leaving the nest we built together, yet whenever Yeoul left, he always left something in the room—something that would let me know Han Yeoul had been in that room.
One very Han Yeoul-like object in a room that was utterly unlike Han Yeoul. With that object, I could confirm that it was Han Yeoul who had stayed in that room. Otherwise, I would never have accepted it.
Because I went looking each time thinking, There’s no way my Yeoul would be in a place like this.
How could he be so cruel?
The earphones we secretly shared in high school, each wearing one side while secretly listening to music behind the teacher’s back; the keyrings we each picked out for each other on our first date; the well-worn fountain pen; even the piercings we got together on the first day we decided to date, holding hands tightly.
Han Yeoul left behind objects imbued with memories and escaped from those places one step ahead of me. As if discarding those memories for me who arrived too late.
I went back to the room where Yeoul had stayed and slowly examined it. Until now, I’d never gone back to the places Yeoul had left. When I missed finding Yeoul, I was too busy predicting and chasing his next move to think about tracing his past whereabouts.
But today, I had no choice but to do so, and somehow it felt like I had to.
Since I had no idea where Yeoul had gone, all I could do was trace his marks in his room, and I had to do at least that to survive.
“Seonjae. I’ve arranged a separate room for you…”
“……”
Uncle Irang said nothing more and simply closed the door quietly as he left. I could hear people murmuring outside, but I just lay there motionless, tracing the marks Yeoul had left behind.
When the commotion outside subsided, I could hear the sound of waves in the distance. Strangely, even though the house was quite far from the ocean, I could continuously hear the sound of waves lapping. Was it because this place was surrounded by water on all sides? What had Han Yeoul been thinking in a place like this, submerged in water?
I’d never imagined it before. Han Yeoul and the ocean…
When we were eleven years old, on that summer vacation we took together, Han Yeoul had fallen into the ocean. As children, we were absorbed in collecting shells that appeared when we dug in the sand, glass shards worn smooth and shining like pebbles, and dried-up starfish-like things, putting them in a basket. They weren’t anything special, but things you couldn’t easily see in the city seemed special, and as we collected them one by one, it became a competition.
Actually, rather than a competition, I wanted to show off.
—Look at my shells. I collected a lot, right? I’m pretty amazing.
Like that.
Even back then, I was shorter than Han Yeoul and smaller in build, so when I said I would protect him, Han Yeoul would snort. Even though I was far behind physically, I wanted to show Han Yeoul that I had ability. I wanted him to acknowledge that I was someone who was good at everything.
Everything… Is it not good when your greed is excessive?
Whether then or now, my tendency to immerse myself excessively was the same, so I didn’t notice at all that Yeoul was being swept away by the seawater. Even when the waves pulled Yeoul in several times, making him flail and unable to even call for help as they fed him saltwater, I was so preoccupied with the treasure hunt before my eyes that I knew nothing.
Much later, feeling proud of what I’d collected, I raised my head to see how much Yeoul had gathered, and only then did I realize Yeoul had fallen into the ocean. Swept far away, Yeoul was barely clinging to a rock, trembling violently.
I wanted to go save him, but at the time I wasn’t good enough at swimming to break through the ocean’s rough waves to reach that rocky island, and all I could do was cry until the adults came.
It was the first day I realized what a pathetic and incapable human being I was. Intoxicated by the achievements before my eyes, I failed to protect what was truly important. I didn’t even have the ability to protect it.
After that day, I developed tremendous skill at ocean swimming—enough that no one could beat me—but Yeoul came to dislike the ocean. He didn’t really show it, but I could tell when I was beside him. Yeoul became tense when he saw the ocean.
That’s why I was quite surprised when he chose the Maldives as our honeymoon destination.
“Will you be okay?”
“Hm?”
“This place… it’s an island.”
“So what?”
I could tell from his wavering eyes alone that Han Yeoul, pretending to be fine with that bright smile, was pushing himself. It wasn’t even a place we needed to force ourselves to go to, so wondering why he’d go that far, I was looking into other places when Yeoul said something like this:
“I really want to go. You and I have been to many places, but we haven’t really been to the ocean. You like ocean swimming. You look cool when you swim… And this place is pretty just to look at, so wouldn’t it be nice to go at least once?”
As I still hesitated, Han Yeoul drove in the final nail with a smile and said with a rather serious expression:
“This place… they say it’s gradually sinking.”
