Happiness Is Not a Clean Thing (8)
Meanwhile, at that same hour—the set.
"Is that Mr. ___...?"
"Oh my. It is, isn't it?"
"Good lord. That ___..."
People drifting about and enjoying the set dinner stopped in their tracks now and then. They had come upon a sight so unexpected it was almost shocking. Even Seo Yeon-ju's eyes went perfectly round.
...What is he doing?
That ___ was asleep in a chair, head tipped back against it.
He had always been regarded as a man without a single opening, so the shock landed hard on all of them—but they understood soon enough. The shoots of late had been nothing ordinary. If anything, it was a wonder he had held out this long.
But ___ was not sleeping because his body was tired. It was only that, at last, the snag in his heart had come loose, and so he could finally rest.
Hwoooooo—
And now, in the present, ___ was dreaming.
Hwoooooo—
...This place again.
___'s first impression was a plain one. The wind was keen enough to cut the skin, and fat snowflakes fell from the sky to pile, soft and thick, along the road. Before he quite knew it, he was standing there once more—at the entrance of the bathhouse where he had been abandoned.
"It's your fault! Mom isn't coming because of you!"
"..."
"I said it's your fault! You!"
His past self was exactly the same. The siblings were still fighting.
No—the older brother was the only one pouring out his rage. The fact that their mother wasn't coming terrified him past all bearing.
But.
Then something unexpected happened.
"...Huh?"
The siblings had spotted ___.
Only then did ___ notice how this dream differed from the last. This time, it seemed, the siblings could perceive him too.
They looked up at ___ with wide eyes.
"Wh-what? When did you show up?"
"Who are you...?"
Faces faintly afraid. Fair enough. The difference in height alone was staggering, and ___ knew perfectly well that his own looks ran sharp.
"I'm..."
___ started to introduce himself, then stopped short. He nearly told them their mother would never come back—and stopped that, too. Another thought had come to him.
Wait. If this is a dream...
Wasn't he omnipotent here? Couldn't he do anything at all?
The moment he recognized that, there was something he badly wanted to do. The ___ standing here now had become a person capable of knowing what he wanted, and the place, as it happened, was a dream—a place where he could do whatever he set his mind to.
Should I let these kids meet their mom?
No. He shook his head almost at once.
That wasn't the right answer. It wasn't what he wanted, either. He had no wish to hand the siblings a counterfeit happiness in the first place.
What would satisfy him, he felt, was the thing he held in his heart. He had the sense that this, and only this, was what he had to do.
And so ___ began.
"Are you waiting for your parents?"
The children nodded.
"Must be cold. Lonely, too. Scary, too."
"..."
The children nodded once more. Purely.
"It's cold out here. How about waiting inside the bathhouse?"
"We can't. Mom's coming soon..."
This time the children shook their heads.
___ wondered for a moment whether there was another way, and then a good thought came to him. A moment later he held hand warmers in both hands. He had only wished for them, and the wish came true.
___ pressed them into the children's hands.
"Then hold these, at least. Your hands must be freezing."
"Uh...?"
The children looked startled, but they didn't refuse. The cold was far too savage to turn down a stranger's kindness out of hand—savage past the point of endurance.
How much time passed after that?
___ handed the children warmers again and again, and even conjured something like a roasted-chestnut vendor's cap to set upon their heads. And still, through all of it, their mother never once appeared.
More time passed.
Suddenly the siblings spoke to ___.
"Um..."
"Yeah. Need a hand warmer?"
"No. It isn't that..."
His younger self hesitated, watching ___'s face, and then opened his mouth.
"...Why are you still here?"
A question asked out of gratitude that someone would stay with them—and yet the voice was thick with unease.
___ read the intent behind it with perfect clarity. Even as guilt made his younger self want to send ___ away, he kept turning the matter over for a practical reason. The moment ___ left, the hand warmers and the snacks would stop.
And so ___ did nothing but quietly produce fish-shaped pastries, hot in his hands.
"I've got something I'm waiting for, too."
"Oh—so that was it...!"
At that, the siblings' faces eased in earnest.
Children are just that simple. Believe he was staying because of them, and the weight would have no bottom; decide that ___ had an errand of his own, and they felt light again.
A long while passed after that as well.
Unlike in the past, the siblings could endure for far longer, because they were waiting alongside ___. There was warmth, and there was food, and ___ had even given them a proper tent to sleep in.
Growing close after that was only natural. The siblings chattered at ___ without pause, and ___ didn't mind it, so the talk went on and on.
"Hyung."
"Yeah."
"What do you do, hyung?"
"I'm an actor. I perform in front of cameras."
"Oh...!"
Both siblings' eyes sparkled at once. True enough—an actor was a curious creature even to a full-grown adult. To children, stranger still.
But then—
"Then what kind of person are you, hyung?"
The question that followed was unexpectedly sharp. A child's questions are like that. They feel perfectly pure, and without any context at all, and yet to an adult's ear they always have a cutting edge.
"What kind of person I am..."
The ___ of the past could not have answered a question like this. He would have refused to engage, calling it unworthy of an answer, or tried to correct it outright, insisting the question itself was wrong.
But the ___ of now could answer without difficulty.
"I'm a real pitiful bastard. A pathetic one."
"A pitiful bastard...? A pathetic one...?"
The siblings tilted their heads, as if the words were hard to grasp.
"It's true. A lot of bad things happened to me. This and that."
"I see..."
Young children are surprisingly quick to read a room. They didn't press ___ for anything more. The little sister looked curious, of course, but his younger self covered her mouth and waved her off.
Had something like a week gone by that way?
"Um, hyung."
One day, his younger self called to ___ in a serious voice. His sister slept at their side, breathing soft, gone from the world.
"Yeah. What's wrong?"
"It's just... I think..."
His younger self hesitated a long time, and then said it.
"I think Mom abandoned us..."
___ felt his chest drop.
It was strange. He had been through this more than enough for it to have gone dull, and yet it was this raw. No. No, that wasn't right. This was not something he had lived. It was a possibility he was seeing for the first time.
So ___ didn't feel good about it either. It was not easy to meet the young fear and the young despair on his younger self's face.
He wanted, right this second, to make a mother appear in front of this child. This was a dream. He could simply fashion the shape of their mother and give the siblings their reunion. They would be overjoyed. They would go home wearing the happiest faces in the world.
But he couldn't.
He mustn't.
So he had to endure it.
Even as he felt his heart torn to rags on a thornbush, ___ bore it, and asked, slowly—
"...You think so?"
"Yes. It's already been days, and she hasn't come."
Unexpectedly, his younger self went on with ease.
"Thinking about it, a lot of things were strange. This is a bathhouse in a neighborhood we've never been to. And Mom told us to wash for as long as we could before we came out."
"Mm."
"And she still hasn't come. I think she abandoned us. It only occurs to me now, but sometimes Mom would look at us with tired eyes. I used to think I couldn't tell what that expression was. Now I think I understand what it meant."
"I see."
___ listened quietly to his younger self. Then he asked.
"Is there anything I can do to help?"
"...No."
His younger self shook his head.
"You've already helped us as much as anyone could. And you said you were waiting for something, too. I'm all right now. From here on, I'm going to wander around with my sister."
"From here on? With your sister?"
"Yes. Waiting still, I figured out that nothing changes if we just stay like this. I'm going to try doing something myself."
A fine judgment. And at the same time, it meant a road through hell was opening in front of the siblings.
What could siblings this young possibly do? Day by day they would learn how sharp the world is. Body and heart alike, they would be hurt terribly. They would think of wanting to die.
But there was something the siblings did not know. That these were the very words ___ had been waiting to hear. Quietly, ___ took hold of his younger self's shoulder.
There was something he absolutely had to say to that child. Yes—this was why he had waited all this time without making them a mother. For a conversation with himself, and nothing else.
"It's a good idea. But it won't be easy."
"Even so."
"Even so?"
"Yes. My sister believes in me. So."
"All right..."
___ nodded.
It felt strange, hearing words like these from himself. But he had to set his heart firm. There was still something ___ absolutely had to say, turned toward himself.
And just then, his younger self asked.
"Hyung."
"Yeah."
"You're a wonder, hyung."
"Why?"
"You said you were a pitiful, pathetic person, but that's not how you look to me. I don't really know, but I think you're someone incredible. And more than anything..."
"More than anything?"
"...you look happy."
Happy. That was what his younger self said, looking at ___.
"So I'm curious, hyung."
"Ask."
"Do you think I could be happy someday, too? It's a secret from my sister, but right now I'm so scared, and it's so hard. I think I've turned into that pitiful bastard you talked about. What if I'm unhappy forever?"
___ patted his younger self's shoulder, as if to say it was all right.
"I do know one way of getting closer to happiness."
"...Really? Would you tell me? Please."
"Of course. It's this."
___ looked into his younger self's eyes and said it.
"You live according to the name you were given."
"...Live according to my name?"
Young ___'s brow drew in at once—the face of someone who had just heard a thing he could not understand at all.
"Kid. What's your name?"
"Seonil. Kim Seonil."
"Kim Seonil..."
___ murmured the name over, as if hearing it anew.
Kim Seonil. Seon for good, il for one. Two characters set side by side, and you had Seonil.
___ didn't really know why their mother had given them a name like that. He thought it had probably meant nothing at all. She must have intended, from the very beginning, to abandon the siblings.
And so the thing ___ wanted to tell himself—the thing he wanted to do now, the thing he had to do—was to give his own name a meaning again. So that he might be born once more.
"Seonil."
"Yes, hyung."
"Do you know a little about Chinese characters?"
"...Only a very little."
___ stepped out of the tent and wrote the name with his index finger into the snow-covered ground. Seon, the character for good. And il, the character for one.
"The first character means something good. The one after means one. Following so far?"
"I know those two. I learned them. Doesn't it mean find the one thing you're best at, and just keep doing it? That's how I've been thinking about my name."
His younger self thought for a moment, then went on.
"Oh—does it mean I'll be happy if I find what I'm good at and do it? Thinking of it that way, it almost seems right."
"That's not it."
___ shook his head. What he did best was acting, and finding that and doing it had not made him happy. That was not the point.
"The thing you like most. That's the good in seon."
"The thing I like?"
"Yeah. It means do what you want to do. I know."
At that, his younger self seemed to think long and hard. Then he tilted his head.
"Hyung. But that's weird."
"What is?"
"The thing I like is always different."
His younger self pressed on, undaunted.
"Right now I want to find Mom. When I'm hungry, I want to eat. So a name that says do only the one thing you like most is weird. What I want to do changes all the time."
"So that's how you thought of it. It isn't like that."
"Then what?"
___ took his younger self's hand and guided that small index finger toward the character for one. And he said—
"One at a time."
"One at a time?"
"Yeah. It means take the things you want to do, whenever you want to do them, and do them one by one. From now on, live like that. The way your name says."
"Oh...?"
Every word gains a meaning only once it is given one—and so ___ meant to pour a meaning like that into the name that had stood empty all this time.
Find what you want to do, and do it, one thing at a time. A meaning very small, and very precious, understood only now.
"You know something? Only doing what you want is harder than you'd think."
"Really?"
His younger self made a face as if he couldn't imagine it.
"Yeah. Trying what you want means you might get knocked down, too. And every time, it hurts. Not everything in this world goes the way you mean it to."
"Oh, I understand. The truth is, I don't even know if I can find Mom. Honestly, I'm not sure I can."
"It'd be good if you find her. If you don't, you find the next thing to do, and you do that. That's enough."
"I'll remember."
His younger self's eyes shone, and he traced the characters again and again, working to hold on to what ___ had told him.
And then, all at once—
"Um, hyung."
"Yeah."
"Would it be all right if I asked your name?"
At that, ___ let go of the shoulder he had been holding, rose to his feet, and looked up at the sky.
Snow was still falling, burying the whole world in white.
"My name?"
Bleached.
Even now, while the snow erased the world. Even as his own body, before he knew it, was being covered white. Now he knew for certain.
That a truth kept in the heart cannot be erased. That happiness is not a clean thing, and so it stains—and no storm, however fierce, can easily wipe it away.
And so speaking his own name aloud carried an enormous meaning for him as well. Because now it was a name that meant something.
"My name is..."
The young siblings who had waited without end in front of the bathhouse, only for their mother to come back. A wait of three whole days. Perhaps from that day forward, ___'s time had been stopped all along.
Stopped while he resented his mother. Stopped under the pressure of having to be a parent to his little sister. Stopped while he chased nothing but success. His clock had stayed stopped through all of it.
And all the while, he had never been able to forgive himself for it. Always.
And.
At last.
The man made peace with himself—by giving himself a name.
And so ___ opened his mouth.
Kim Seonil, who had at some point changed back into a young boy, shouted it with a wide, bright smile.
Kim Seonil
Reconciliation
The boy who had at last come into his fourth day finally received a name. A name he would carry all his life, keeping faith with its meaning.