CH 142

As if yearning for something to hold, Yoonshin’s hand covered Sehun’s hand that had wound itself around Yoonshin’s waist. He waited for the right timing as they silently exchanged warmth, but surprisingly, Sehun spoke up first. “He wasn’t blood-related—just a boy who looked up to me. Our situations were similar. We both lived in small one-rooms in the same small town, and although our parents didn’t live with us, they were alive somewhere on this earth, so we both couldn’t go to an orphanage. They said it wasn’t allowed, legally.”

“Can I ask why he died?” Yoonshin asked.

“From bodily injury.”

Put crudely, he had died after being assaulted.

Yoonshin gasped sharply, then he turned his head slightly to look at the other. “By who?”

“Probably the neighborhood thugs, but the town didn’t have a lot of surveillance cameras around. The incident happened in the middle of the night, so there were no witnesses. The police didn’t investigate properly because he was a kid with no parents. I was also young at the time. There was a body but no killer.”

Sehun didn’t know who exactly the perpetrator was. Yoonshin felt at times that death was not equal to everyone. He didn’t have too many experiences, but he could tell the difference at least. While on one hand there were people like his father whose death was mourned by many, there were also lives that were extinguished miserably without a known cause.

Their silence added to the solitude of the landscape. Their breathing was their only movement in this deserted space. The frosty wind blew, the unclean river trickled downstream, and the gust from the cars zooming behind them filled the emptiness around them.

At the center of it all, Sehun said calmly, his steady voice as tranquil as the flow of water and so resigned that it was almost sad, “No place accepted the bones of a child who was already dead. I thought about sending him to the cemetery for unclaimed bodies, but I was told I couldn’t if his parents were still alive. I couldn’t keep his urn anywhere, so I scattered his ashes here. I heard people saying that it was illegal, so I couldn’t spread it without shame. I was scared, so I did it without anyone knowing, alone at night.”

“…”

“My childhood home is quite far from here. I walked as fast as I could late at night, but it probably took around five or six hours. I spread his ashes in a hurry. It was so late at night, and I was so out of my mind that I’m not sure where exactly I scattered him. Just, hereabouts? I regretted it after earning a lot of money. After all, I couldn’t gather what I scattered into the water. I should have stored his ashes for longer.”

Now, he was probably carried downstream somewhere. The eyes that were staring at the river were still.

His calm and unaffected voice was lonelier than anything else Yoonshin had heard from the older man. Heart-wrenched, Yoonshin gazed at Sehun’s profile before he turned his head. He quietly watched the profluent river carrying itself pompously and peacefully as it always had. The faint scattering of light glistened on the surface of the river, inconsiderate to tragedy.

The thought about resting in a place like this felt overwhelmingly forlorn. All the molecules of water on the surface and subsurface had long forgotten the past. Perhaps the short, scrawny trees and the gravel under their feet remembered and mourned that night with Sehun. To shoulder the duty of remembrance all by himself for a long time was a very lonesome task.

“You have a sentimental side, surprisingly. Do you come here to commemorate your brother every year?”