If I had to be precise, I still had my foot in the successor position, and if I said I would reclaim it, Grandfather and Father would definitely support me. But to be honest, I didn’t want to return to Haebam. Because I knew that if it wasn’t power I had obtained myself, it would collapse easily like this. I wanted to return to Chiwon’s side on my own feet.
After thinking for a long while about my words, Chanhyeong took out his cell phone from his pocket and held it out to me. It was an old cell phone that showed signs of long use.
“If you find our hyung, please contact me for sure. I’ll never change my number, so please.”
Hugging the bear doll tightly, the child also stared at me until I nodded.
“I’ll definitely find Chiwon and bring him to you guys.”
“……”
“So take good care of the bear doll.”
“Okay. Please definitely bring our oppa back……”
The child’s eyes welled up. Leaving behind Chanhyeong who was looking at me while holding the bear doll, gripping tightly both the cell phone and the child’s hand, I left the orphanage.
The house that Father’s friend had looked at was in a small, quiet village. Even though it wasn’t that far from Brussels, it had a peaceful atmosphere. It was quiet and ordinary, so tourists didn’t visit often either. Grandfather, Father, and Mother liked the house very much.
I was scheduled to transfer to an international school in the fall, and until then I decided to focus on learning Dutch, French, and English. Mother, who knew French, learned confectionery from a nearby neighbor, and Grandfather took up a hobby of tending the garden. Father was busy doing business with Father’s friend who had helped him get a business permit, but he seemed happy to have something he could do.
My parents and Grandfather seemed to adapt quickly. A comfortable and quiet village, a family that had found stability—within that, I was the only one isolated alone. I was anxious and uneasy and couldn’t sleep. Sometimes my head or chest area hurt. Seeing me continuously losing weight, my parents worried that perhaps I wasn’t adapting well, but the cause was different.
Having constantly doubted the sensations I was feeling, when my life had settled in, I went to a pheromone center alone. Unexpectedly, there was an Asian doctor at the center, and the receptionist at the center, seeing me who was Asian, assigned that doctor to me. Since they were only of Asian descent and not Korean, we ultimately had to converse in English.
“Can you imprint even without having sex?”
Those were the words I gave to the doctor who asked what brought me in.
Imprinting was like an instinct. There was no way not to know. I had imprinted on Chiwon. The insomnia and anxiety symptoms I had thought were just due to stress were side effects that appeared from being separated from the person I had imprinted on. However, imprinting was something that formed between an alpha and omega during sex. So there was no way I could have imprinted on Chiwon.
The doctor who heard my words shuffled through documents for a while, then asked about my recent physical condition. I mentioned the insomnia, anxiety symptoms, and headaches without reason, and the doctor showed me a clipped research paper. It was in Dutch so I couldn’t understand most of it, but I could read the title in English right away.
‘Imaginary Imprinting.’
“There are too few precedents and not many properly reported cases, so there isn’t much that’s been revealed. However, if we look for commonalities among those few cases, it was a relationship between an alpha and omega, and they experienced a sudden separation before properly forming an imprint. In the reported cases, except for two people, symptoms appeared when one of the lovers suddenly died.”
“Are you saying the body mistakes it even though imprinting didn’t happen?”
“As I said earlier, there isn’t much that’s been revealed. So opinions are divided, but rather than the body making a mistake, I think the imprinting was incompletely formed. Even if mental imprinting has occurred, physically it hasn’t connected yet. Looking at your medical records, you’ve experienced abnormal heat. 90% of imaginary imprinting patients have experience with abnormal heat. The fact that your recent physical condition has been poor also matches the side effects of imprinting. It seems it’s definitely imaginary imprinting.”
The doctor said that like regular imprinting, there was no treatment for imaginary imprinting except meeting the other person. I nodded silently.
“Usually people would be more than surprised, but Kim Eorin-ssi, you’re not very surprised.”
Someone had said this. That imprinting was a shackle you place on yourself at the extreme end of love. To continuously love someone, to love them.
“……I’m not sure.”
Even if only halfway, I had imprinted on Chiwon. Whether that fact gave me comfort or pushed me further to rock bottom, I didn’t know.
Since all I did all day was learn languages, my language skills improved quickly. As I stayed holed up inside the house only studying, Grandfather tried somehow to drag me out into the sunlight. After he caught me taking sleeping pills, he sent me outside the house telling me to at least walk around the village once a day.
That day too, I was walking around blankly like that. The sleeping pills did help me fall asleep, but my head was always heavy so I couldn’t feel like I had slept deeply. I was walking while enduring a faint headache when something beyond the glass window caught my eye.
It was a bear doll with warm-looking beige fur tied with a red and green striped ribbon. The moment I saw that doll, I stopped in place and looked beyond the glass window for a long time. Although it looked completely different from the one I had given Chiwon, somehow I couldn’t take my eyes off it. And that bear doll became the first thing I bought after coming to Belgium.
Coming out of the store, when I held the bear doll in my arms and stood under the sunlight, for a moment I had the illusion that it smelled like wood. For that moment at least, I felt like the loneliness and anxiety that had been gnawing at me disappeared. The fluffy bear doll smiling with its arms spread out fit perfectly in my arms.
That night, for the first time, I was able to fall asleep without sleeping pills. Chiwon’s face that appeared in my dream was vivid.
After that, whenever I saw a bear doll, I would buy it and sit it in my room. My parents looked at me curiously as I collected bear dolls that I had never been interested in before, but after I started collecting bear dolls, as I became noticeably more stable, they even bought me bear dolls occasionally.
I kept the imaginary imprinting a secret from my parents and Grandfather. I knew they were still bearing guilt when looking at me, so if I told them about the imaginary imprinting, they would definitely be more heartbroken.
I read Chiwon’s text countless times a day. I really liked you, Eorin-ah. Those nine letters were embedded in my chest. It ached and burned so painfully that on sleepless nights, I would sometimes just keep that text on and stare at it all night.
Names were truly tender things. I hadn’t known because I’d never had occasion to mull over someone’s name, but it was true. Chiwon’s name made such a lovely sound. My name that Chiwon called too. However, since I had come to Belgium where there were no Koreans and it was unlikely I would hear Chiwon’s name, I would often lie alone in my room calling Chiwon’s name.
I endured like that. The pheromone center doctor I went to again after receiving a diagnosis to come periodically said at my words that my body had gotten better, ‘Imaginary imprinting is a mental problem to begin with, and collecting bear dolls seems to have helped relieve the stress from separation from the imprinting partner.’ They also added that compared to actual imprinting side effects, the side effects of imaginary imprinting weren’t that serious.
What tormented me most was actually that part. Rather than sleepless nights, I found it harder to endure that my days were becoming peaceful. The fact that I was okay when I wasn’t okay drove me crazy.
Even though you’re not by my side, I’m breathing perfectly fine, so why can’t I erase you? Why do okay days make me struggle more? The questions went round and round.
At this rate, it really seemed like I might become okay even without Chiwon. I became frightened with a start. And when I realized myself having such thoughts, I recalled again the words that imprinting was a shackle.
Two years was long. During that time, I became able to speak French fluently, and I grew taller. And Grandfather, whose heart wasn’t good, quietly passed away one day while sleeping. Just as he had said he was happy to find a good village and be able to rest comfortably at the end of his fierce life, Grandfather’s final moments were with a smiling face. After deliberating, my parents notified Uncle that Grandfather had passed away after holding Grandfather’s funeral. There was no reply from Uncle.
When my room became so full of bear dolls that there was no longer even a place to put more, graduation approached. To my parents who were talking about university, I brought up the words I had kept postponing.
“I’m going back to Korea.”
“Eorin-ah!”
“I’ve been thinking about it all along. I’ll go to a university in Korea for college.”
“……Then are you perhaps going back to Haebam-.”
“No, I’m not returning to Haebam. When I left, I told Jaeui clearly. That I would never return to Haebam.”
“Then why?”
“There’s someone I need to find. I have things I need to say after finding them.”
At my words, my parents made alarmed expressions. They seemed to remember how I had searched for someone like crazy for a while when we left for Belgium.
“……If you find them, will you come back?”
“No. Probably not.”
“Why? It was fine here too, Eorin-ah. Peacefully……”
“Mother. Father.”
“……”
“You know. On the day I left, I left everything there.”
When I realized that the things I thought I was holding were all illusions, all I had left was Chiwon. I had to reclaim Chiwon, my everything.
“It’ll be difficult to become exactly like back then. Because too much has changed. But I can’t give up.”
“Eorin-ah……”
After being silent for a while, my parents eventually nodded. As soon as I received my diploma, I immediately bought a plane ticket. And I sent a text to Chanhyeong, who would have become the age I was when Chiwon and I met.
[Going to Korea.]
Chanhyeong’s reply was also short.
[Please.]
Because the timing didn’t match, I submitted university applications a year later than others, and I ran without a moment to breathe. I did everything I could to enter society quickly. I had only one goal. To gain power. So that even if I found Chiwon again, Chiwon wouldn’t be shaken, to become solid.
Perhaps because three years had passed, almost no one remembered me. The bus stop incident still remained as a shock, but fortunately there were no more such incidents. It became known through word of mouth at school and drew some attention, but that was all.
