* * *
I watched Hyunoh’s retreating back.
I focused on the sound of his footsteps growing distant.
When Hyunoh’s presence completely disappeared, I closed my eyes tightly.
“You need to live.”
Those words stayed with me for a long time.
You need to live…
Shortly after, the ambulance arrived.
I was half-conscious.
They put me on a stretcher, and I think the whole school watched the ambulance through the windows.
The kids’ voices buzzed in my ears.
Regardless, my body was taken to the hospital by the ambulance.
What happened next is blurry.
I received treatment, my mom came, and I think she cried.
My whole body was bruised, and my ribs were broken.
They said I needed to be hospitalized.
I was given an IV and fell asleep as if I had passed out.
When I came to, my dad was there too.
He asked me a bunch of questions angrily.
What happened?
Who hit you?
Have you been bullied?
I didn’t say anything.
After a while, my homeroom teacher visited.
He asked the same questions as my dad.
Again, I stayed silent.
My mom kept crying and repeating that we should transfer schools.
Everything was a mess.
Would anything change if I spoke up?
Would Park Jungsoo stop tormenting me?
Would he get the punishment he deserved?
Maybe. But maybe not.
I wanted no one to know about my humiliation.
More than punishing Park Jungsoo, that was what I wanted right now.
I kept avoiding answers and asked my homeroom teacher one thing.
“Teacher, which class is Hyunoh in?”
My teacher looked puzzled.
“Chanyi, did Hyunoh bully you?”
“No. Hyunoh found me and called 119.”
I missed Hyunoh.
I wanted to properly thank him.
At that time, I was lying in a hospital bed, thinking only about Hyunoh.
Whenever the horrible things that Park Jungsoo did came to mind, I covered it all with memories of Hyunoh. He was like a sweet painkiller.
“Hyunoh transferred.”
“What?”
Upon hearing the teacher’s words, I suddenly felt my stomach twist.
“Transferred? Why?”
“Well, there must be some reason for him.”
“What about his contact information? I must thank him…”
The teacher gave me Hyunoh’s phone number.
I called immediately. It said the number didn’t exist.
“Teacher, it says it’s the wrong number. It doesn’t exist.”
I felt like I was suffocating. The teacher, puzzled, tilted his head.
“That can’t be. We could reach him with that number just recently. Why would it suddenly not work?”
“Where did Hyunoh transfer to?”
Desperately, I grabbed the teacher’s hand.
“I think it was Masan…”
“Masan?”
To me, at nineteen, anywhere outside Seoul felt so far away.
Masan?
It was a place I had never been to, where I knew no one.
Why would Hyunoh be there?
After the teacher left, my mom patted my cheek and whispered apologies, suggesting again that we transfer.
Until just a moment ago, I had stubbornly refused to transfer, but now there was no need.
Hyunoh was gone.
He had left.
My recovering body quickly worsened.
For the first time, I lay bedridden for several days with the flu.
My fever soared, and my lips became rough like sandpaper.
I didn’t want to eat anything.
My mom cried, and my dad, after getting angry, went back to work in China.
I felt like I was dying.
Amidst the flames, I groped, seeking only Hyunoh.
Anyway, I must live.
Hyunoh’s voice buzzed in my ears.
In my hazy mind, I held onto that single thought. I would get better and go find Hyunoh.
I would go to Masan.
By the time I had recovered, it was already after March.
My mom had completed all the transfer paperwork. I went to a school where neither Park Jungsoo nor Hyunoh were.
Sometime later, I called the school where I heard Hyunoh had transferred.
“Is there a student named Kim Hyunoh at your school?”
“There’s no student by that name.”
I used my saved pocket money to go down to Masan for the weekend.
Masan was a bigger city than I had expected. No matter how much I wandered the streets, I couldn’t find Hyunoh.
I cried all the way back on the train to Seoul.
Now I knew what this feeling was.
Why I had followed his face with my eyes the moment I first saw him.
Why I dreamed of him every night.
Why I felt so miserable every time I woke from those dreams.
Why I wanted to die now that he was gone.
Even as I told myself I must live, I kept wondering how I could go on without him.
I already loved Hyunoh.
But he disappeared as if he had never existed in this world.
So much so that I wondered if Kim Hyunoh was just an illusion I had created.
Every time my heart crumbled, I called his name again.
Kim Hyunoh.
So I wouldn’t forget.
Like chewing on hard grains of rice, deliberately and thoroughly.
With each syllable of his name, I made a vow.
If I ever met him again, I would return the unprovoked salvation he had given me.
I would love him, even if he didn’t love me back.
* * *
*Summary page is only available for login users. Non-users can view the chapters on the chapter list.*
