Almond(30)

I didn’t know the answer. Gon lowered his head for a while before he said, “Do you know why I kept coming to see you?”

“No.”

“Two reasons. For one, you didn’t judge me the way other kids do, thanks to your special brain. Though, it’s also thanks to that special brain, I killed a butterfly for nothing. My second reason is . . .” He grinned a little before he continued. “I wanted to ask you something. But fuck, I couldn’t bring myself to ask . . .”

There was heavy silence between us. I waited for Gon to speak while the clock ticked. Slowly, he whispered, “What was she like?”

It took me a while to understand his question.

“You’ve met her. Although only once,” he said.

I went back through my memory. A room filled with flowers, her ashen face. I could see Gon’s face reflected in hers, though I hadn’t known back then.

“She looked like you.”

“I saw her pictures but I couldn’t see the resemblance,” Gon scoffed. But then he asked, “Which part?” He looked straight at me with glaring eyes. I superimposed my memory of her face on his.

“The eyes. The outline of your face. The way you smile. Your eyes drooping at the corners when you smile, making dimples.”

“Shit . . .” He looked away. “But she saw you and thought you were me.”

“Anybody would do the same in her shoes.”

“But she must’ve tried to find her features in your face.”

“What she said to me was meant for you.”

“What—what were her last words?”

“She just hugged me. Very tight.”

Gon shook his head. Then as if he could hardly get the words out, he whispered, “Was it warm? Her arms . . .”

“Yes, very warm.”

His shoulders, which had been hunched and still, gradually sank. His face turned wrinkly like a deflated balloon. His head slowly hanging low, his knees buckled. His body was shaking, his head sunk down against his chest. There was no sound, but I knew he was crying. I looked down at him, saying nothing. I felt like I’d become uselessly taller.





47


We hung out together all throughout summer vacation. On hot summer nights, so humid that my skin got sticky, Gon would lie on a bench in front of the bookstore and tell me stories about himself. But I wonder if there is any point writing down those stories here. Gon had simply lived his life. An abandoned, battered life, one you could almost describe as filthy, for fifteen years. I wanted to tell him that fate was just throwing dice, but I didn’t. They were nothing more than some pointless words I’d read in a book.

Gon was the simplest and the most transparent person I’d met in my life. Even a dunce like me could see through his mind. He often said, We have to be tougher in this tough world. That was the conclusion that his life had led him to.

We couldn’t possibly resemble each other. I was too numb and Gon didn’t admit he was vulnerable. He just pretended to be strong.

People said there was no way to understand Gon. I didn’t agree with them. It’s just that nobody ever tried to see through him.

*

I remember Mom clutching my hand tight when we used to take walks. She never let go of my hand. Sometimes when I tried to wriggle my hand free because she gripped it so hard, she’d shoot me a look, telling me to hold on tight. She said families walk hand in hand. Granny would hold my other hand. I have never been abandoned by anyone. Even though my brain was a mess, what kept my soul whole was the warmth of the hands holding mine on both sides.





48


Every now and then I thought of the songs Mom used to sing to me. She had a bubbly voice when she spoke but her voice turned deep when she sang. It reminded me of the whale humming from a documentary I once saw, or just a breeze of wind or the sound of sea waves from afar. But her voice that once filled my ears was starting to fade. Soon I might forget her voice entirely. Everything I had known was beginning to fade away from me.





Part Three





49


Dora. Dora was exactly the polar opposite of Gon. If Gon tried to teach me pain, guilt, and agony, Dora taught me flowers and scents, breezes and dreams. They were like songs I heard for the first time. Dora knew how to sing the songs everybody knew, in an entirely different way.





50


A new semester began. The campus looked the same, yet different. Changes were subtle, like the leaves turning darker. But the scent was clearly different. The kids gave off a stronger smell as the season ripened. Summer was pushing hard toward its end. Butterflies slowly disappeared and dead cicadas littered the ground.

As fall came early, something strange happened to me as well. Something hard to describe, something you could hardly call a change. Everything I’d known seemed different, and all the words I spat out with ease wandered awkwardly at the tip of my tongue.

It was on a Sunday afternoon when I was watching a K-pop show on TV. A five-member girl group was giving a speech for topping the charts for the first time since their debut three years earlier. The girls, who looked around my age, were jumping with joy, in short skirts and tops that barely covered their breasts. Trembling, the leader of the group thanked their manager, their boss, their record label’s staff and stylists, and their fan club. She rattled off all these names like a rapid fire, so fast as if she’d rehearsed the speech a thousand times over. Finally, she finished with a cliché, delivered half crying.