On Loneliness (2)
The ceiling looked brighter than usual when I opened my eyes. The light told me I hadn’t woken at dawn today. In the corner of the kitchen, the electric kettle and toaster sat in silence. Normally they would have been humming busily, but this morning I didn’t want to hear even those mechanical sounds. I simply surrendered my body to the shower’s stream and began the day without a sound.
The season was seeping deeper into its chill. The air had changed, announcing that autumn had arrived. It made my heart feel strangely cold. The cliché “autumn blues” seemed written exactly for me right now.
When I stepped outside, fallen leaves crunched beneath my feet. The darkened ginkgo and maple leaves had painted the entire street. I adjusted my bag strap, pulled out my phone, and checked the time. Since I’d left earlier than usual, there was no need to rush.
By the time I reached the campus main gate, the crisp morning air brushed the tip of my nose. The rustle of wind through leaves, the distant footsteps of students. I walked slowly, steadying my breathing. Amid all that noise, I felt my own presence shrinking smaller and smaller.
Inside the lecture hall, I found an empty seat. The room was already buzzing with chatter, but I shut my ears to it and stared only at my book and laptop screen. Sunlight grazed the windows, casting faint rays. It was Capstone Design class. I opened my laptop, but my hands paused for a moment.
The professor’s voice slowly filled the room.
He flipped through a few slides and continued.
I gave a small nod. My head understood, but my heart refused to follow. I was a fourth-year student about to graduate—could I really pull all of this off? I hadn’t even drawn up the blueprint for my own heart yet.
Every time the diagrams on the board changed, the clatter of keyboards echoed from every direction. The professor spoke again.
Understanding people. Those words struck my heart in a strange way. I couldn’t even understand myself, and here I was, lost and wandering.
The students beside me were absorbed in their screens, but I felt like someone standing one step removed from it all. The sound of typing, the projector fan, the thin breaths of the classroom… The room was full of noise, yet inside me was only emptiness.
Collaboration, design, documentation. After graduation I’d face problems far bigger than these. Would I be able to keep from losing myself in the middle of it all?
When class ended, students trickled out one by one. The scrape of chairs and desks pushed against the remaining air. I stood, slipped my laptop into my bag, and let out a long breath. Cold air sank deep into my lungs. I’d learned something today, but my heart remained unfilled.
“Hey, what are you doing about your project team?”
Jeong Chan-uk. One of the few friends I had in this unfamiliar city was suddenly standing beside me.
“I don’t know… Have you decided?”
“Am I you? If you join us it’d be perfect.” Chan-uk slung his bag over his shoulder and grinned confidently. “I’m tight with the TA hyung. He knows you can code. Come to our team. Let’s ride the easy route together.”
“Are you serious?”
The offer caught me off guard. Me? All I’d done was stay up nights and pour in two or three times more hours than anyone else. Did I even have strengths? Had I ever possessed such a thing?
“Yeah. There’s no one who works as hard as you. If the project flops, you’ll end up repeating your senior year. Trust this hyung, yeah?”
“…Alright. Got it.”
For a moment, the thought that I wasn’t completely alone flickered through me. Building something with someone else. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad…?
“Hey, then let’s grab food.”
“What are we eating?”
“Spicy pork or pork cutlet?”
“…Okay.”
The guy had stuck to the same menu since freshman year. Today, that stubborn familiarity felt welcome.
The school cafeteria was noisy. I ran into a few classmates and exchanged brief greetings. Then came the question that slipped out naturally.
“What are you doing after graduation? I’m probably going to grad school.”
“Dude, volunteering to be a slave. I’m taking the coding test soon.”
It was an ordinary conversation, but my heart froze in that instant. I still hadn’t decided on anything. I was afraid that once I spoke the words aloud, the emptiness would only grow deeper.
“I’m… still thinking about it.”
That was the only answer I could give. Chan-uk glanced at me and smoothly changed the subject.
“Let’s talk about that later and eat first. Food’s getting cold.”
I was grateful for his small consideration, yet I hated how pathetic I looked trying to avoid reality. Lunch tasted good. But I wasn’t sure the food sliding down my throat would digest properly. Maybe that familiar flavor I’d known since freshman year had simply let me forget the bitter taste of reality for a little while.
In the afternoon I opened my laptop in a corner of the library. Even though I was stuck, it was still a desperate attempt to do something. In the blinking cursor on the screen, countless choices and if-statements overlapped.
Where am I supposed to go from here…
The closer graduation came, the farther away the future felt. Only the presence of books, notes, and the sound of keyboard typing barely held my today together.
When I left the library, the sun was already tilting westward. The moment I pushed open the glass door, cold wind brushed my face. The campus was steeped in deepening autumn. The sky glowed orange like an old film.
On the lawn in front of the student center, someone was laughing brightly while taking photos. That laughter rode the wind and spread far into the distance.
Why am I always alone?
The thought had just crossed my mind when my phone vibrated in my pocket.
“Yes, Gomo. Hello.”
“Oh, Seung-ho~ Have you been well? Sorry for calling out of the blue. Do you have a moment to talk?”
“Of course, I’m free!”
Her familiar voice warmly filled my ear. It was a small variation slipping into my repetitive days.
She asked about school, how close I was to graduating. Even in those ordinary greetings, my heart strangely found rest.
“Oh, right… Seung-ho. Do you remember the dog at my house by any chance?”
Som. At that name, memories like soft spring light flickered through my mind.
During my first semester of college, whenever I felt lost in this unfamiliar city, I would often visit Gomo’s house after she told me, “Come anytime if it gets hard.” About a year ago, the day I opened the front door as usual, the savory smell of doenjang stew greeted me along with a white ball of fur that came racing out.
“Oh my, Som! Did that scare you? Seung-ho, come here. This is Som.”
“Hello…”
“She’s a little shy with strangers, but she’ll warm up quickly. She doesn’t bite.”
Just as Gomo said, the little one only circled around me, sniffing curiously, without barking. That afternoon, while I sat awkwardly on the living room sofa, Gomo carefully placed Som in my arms. At first the puppy was so tense she wouldn’t move, but soon she curled into a tight ball on my lap and fell fast asleep, breathing softly.
That was the moment. Pure warmth that wanted nothing in return. The weight of a small life that demanded no payment. More powerfully than any comforting words, that sensation melted away the frozen corner of my heart that had been locked tight with anxiety in this strange city. The peace of that moment still felt vivid.
“Seung-ho? Are you still there?”
“Ah… Yes. Of course I remember Som.”
“These days I have to leave the house often… I was wondering if you could look after her for a while…”
Gomo’s careful request continued. For a second, the image of my empty studio apartment flashed before my eyes. A space where only the cold sounds of machines and my own breathing existed. The thought of a living warmth sharing that space felt far too unrealistic.
“That’s… I think it might be difficult right now. I’m sorry…”
In the end, what came out of my mouth was refusal. Taking responsibility for someone else was now a weight too heavy to carry with just the name “student.”
“Aigoo, I asked so suddenly—what’s there to be sorry about? It’s fine, really. You seem busy these days, so just call me if you think of it.”
The call ended with ordinary encouragement and well-wishes. But even after we hung up, the warm weight I had just remembered refused to fade. On the contrary, it felt even more vivid against the cold, empty air.
My fingertips groped at the empty space, as if searching for the soft texture of that fur, for that warmth.
On the way home, streetlights began turning on one by one. Ginkgo leaves swept across the sidewalk in the wind. It felt like they were mirroring my own shaken heart. I needed an excuse. An excuse to escape this crushing loneliness, even for a little while. Couldn’t a lonely person sometimes long for the warmth of another living being?
My steps grew slower and slower until I finally stopped at the entrance of the alley. The thought of someone’s warmth, the breath of a living creature, kept rising in my mind. That small weight I had felt on my lap might be exactly what I needed most right now.
When I reached my front door, I took out my phone. I kept opening and closing the messaging app. For some reason my fingers hesitated. It’s just… I’m only going to see her face. I muttered the excuse to myself.
After hesitating a moment, I finally typed a single sentence.
My finger hovered over the send button, then slowly moved downward. That’s right. I just talked to her on the phone after so long. It’s perfectly natural for a nephew to visit and say hello. I frantically piled on dozens of reasons. All the while, I desperately ignored the real reason: that I was unbearably, desperately longing to feel that small warmth once more.
Because the warmth from a year ago felt like the only spark capable of melting this frozen version of me.