CH 14

When I was seven years old… When I met the Child in that huge house.

I wasn’t sure if the adult me was thinking like a regular human being. I lived surrounded by dead people and non-human beings for around 20 years of my life. Naturally, my concept of “death” differed from that of others. As I fell asleep, all I could think about was how much pain Yeonseon must have been in until the moment he died.

Dreams were a good place for escapism. After Yeonseon died, I desperately wished for that house to appear. Unfortunately, for that entire time, my consciousness never once reached that mansion. I only dreamed about my memories with Yeonseon and events that stuck with me from my past.

For most people, when they felt stressed or troubled, they would take a break to travel somewhere peaceful and familiar. But that sort of place didn’t exist for me. My most personal and intimate spaces like my room were filled with the gazes of other beings, making it uncomfortable to stay there.

What kind of comparison could I make? It was like feeling the gaze of all the objects and insects in your room.

The things that watched me would hurt me at the drop of a hat. It was like an impulse, like wanting to pop a soap bubble floating nearby. Their malice was that frivolous, unimportant, and ordinary. However, it affected me critically.

Sometimes, I thought that maybe I was actually in a well-maintained cage or that I was dreaming while still stuck in that big house, unable to escape since my childhood.

When I was younger, I was always afraid of opening my eyes in the morning. I was afraid that I would see that mansion instead of my house when I opened my eyes. I couldn’t even open any rooms readily. I feared that the world beyond the door would be that dark hallway I saw back then.

Perhaps that was why I was attracted to Yeonseon. No matter how familiar the location or the person, Yeonseon was terrified of being left alone with another person. The room that he saw hundreds of times before would suddenly become an unfamiliar place, which in turn, scared Yeonseon. It didn’t matter how much he loved the person in front of him. Regardless of who, Yeonseon’s entire body would shake and he wouldn’t be able to breathe.

Friendliness and familiarity didn’t exist under the condition of “being alone with one other person.” I had a feeling that his incomprehensible anxiety and my internal fears were similar. That was probably why I felt despair when I realized that I could never see Yeonseon again.

To me, Yeonseon was the first comrade I met while adrift in this world.

Yeonseon’s death made me realize several things. Was the world such a place that could change 180 degrees with one person’s death? I would answer yes to that question. Yeonseon’s death gave me waves of loss and dejection countless times.

…Before I could talk more about Yeonseon, I needed to briefly talk about when I was younger. After all, one’s present self was created from the accumulation of past experiences.

When I was younger, I was a strange child who sang every night.

The things that were pulled to my voice went and harassed my mom when I wasn’t singing. Thus, I had to keep singing until the sun rose and they became less active. Alternatively, I had to mumble endlessly like a lunatic. Those things went away only after my voice became hoarse and I could taste a metallic taste in the back of my throat.

Those beings bothered me at first. They bit my hand and kicked my stomach and back with their feet. It hurt. I screamed and cried every time they abused me. It was just after I regained consciousness after my accident, so my mom felt very anxious watching me be like that. After carefully inspecting every corner of my body, she found the marks that those things left on me.

Because of the bite marks and bruises, the first thing my mother thought was that I was being bullied at school. She called every academic institution I attended to grill the teachers about what in the world was going on. However, they had no knowledge whatsoever about my injuries. Instead, my teachers suspected domestic violence and cornered my mom.

My mom was so nonplussed that she cursed at the schools and reported them to the police. Still, nothing was solved. The only thing that was revealed was that the bite marks were not from my mom’s nor any of the students’.

My mother grabbed me and demanded, “What’s going on? Is there someone in this neighborhood who’s bullying you?”

I couldn’t answer her. I had already told her that the people in my room bit me every night. My mom felt frustrated.