Ding

Among the many books Morae nuna had collected, there was a work by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. He had often borrowed whatever he felt like reading from her back then, regardless of genre or content — any well-regarded book was nothing more than a way to kill time. Now, he could no longer remember what had led him to choose that particular one, unpolished as it was and riddled with mistranslations.

At the time, reading had been a mechanical act — filling envelopes of time with words until they were full, setting them aside, then opening the next one and filling it again. The elegance of the prose, whether the sentences flowed — those things hadn't mattered to him then.

Even so, within that unfriendly translation — one he had to read haltingly and slow, as though struggling through a French original despite the words being in his own language — there had been sentences worth claiming as his own.

"The giver of a gift must not hope to receive equivalent value in return, nor should they desire for it to remain in the recipient's memory. Nor should they preserve it within themselves as a symbol of sacrifice for the other."

Back then, reading that passage, Yeehyeon had thought of Morae and Yeehan.

Outwardly, he had eaten normally, slept, gone to school, done his military service — had lived quietly without causing trouble. The adults in the family had accepted him as an untroubled child. In reality, he had been nothing more than mechanically performing each assigned task.

When exam schedules were announced, he prepared diligently — not out of any desire for high scores. He had never rebelled after going through "that incident" — not because he was the deep, resilient child the adults believed him to be, the one who had fortunately overcome everything.

He had simply been making his inner self numb, so as not to feel the full force of shock and confusion, resentment and grief. A state where human desire and emotion were completely dehydrated — incapable of genuine laughter or genuine anger — was akin to a quiet death. A passive death.

Keeping such a person close, without being consumed by their numbness, was harder than one might think. The light and energy they provided — allowing him to hold on to the fact of being alive, even in that state — couldn't have sprung from nowhere on its own.

Even if his father had turned away from him along with the rest of the world, the world had not entirely turned away from him. At least Morae and Yeehan had been there.

That, precisely, was the gift.

A gift that perfectly met the conditions Derrida described: expecting nothing in return, not even hoping to be remembered.

In the same conversation about that book, Morae nuna had also mentioned another of Derrida's definitions.

"If one forgives only what is forgivable, the very concept of forgiveness disappears. Forgiveness is precisely forgiving the unforgivable."

Sitting on the worn sofa of the regular repair shop while a simple part was replaced on the motorcycle, drinking the barley tea the owner had set out for them, Yeehyeon had thought of his father.

If he had possessed the maturity to forgive what was unforgivable... he wouldn't have needed to protect himself by numbing his emotions. He couldn't forgive, and he didn't know how, so he had simply tried to become numb to that too.

Making the surface of his heart hard enough that he wouldn't look at his father with wet eyes, wouldn't waste his emotions on cutting words — being able to look at his father with nothing at all, the way you'd look at a washbasin beside the tap or a broom in the corner of the yard. That had been the best Yeehyeon could do back then.

Inside the taxi slowly climbing the slope toward Phantom, Yeehyeon looked out at the Samcheong-dong streets lit with warm lights in the gathering dusk, and this time he thought about Liu.

Was what he had done unforgivable?

The same as his father's silence?

For Yeehyeon, who had moved to a fishing village the moment he finished middle school and had lived in a narrow, monotonous world with almost no one beyond Morae and Yeehan, Phantom had been a whole new world — vibrant and glamorous and unpredictable, and yet a place where passion and respect for art genuinely coexisted.

The feeling he had carried in the taxi leaving Phantom on that very first day, when he had followed Manager Han to help prepare for an exhibition — it was still vivid. An unreal sensation, as if turning the car around would reveal nothing but overgrown weeds where Gallery Phantom had been. Or the dazed, disoriented feeling of waking from a dream that had felt too real.

Back then, behind that strangely skewed sense of reality, Yeehyeon had been feeling a deep want. He wanted Phantom to be real. To remain exactly where it was.

As proof that even if you block the light to keep it dark and withhold the water to let it wither, light will inevitably seep into a human heart and moisture will soak through — and one day, desire will grow — Yeehyeon had steadily cultivated that desire ever since.

On the night he had hyperventilated because of Alienation, he hadn't refused Liu's touch when he climbed onto the bed. He had clearly expressed his desire — that he wanted Liu's kisses and sex and knotting only with him. Not with anyone else.

And Liu... had been pursuing his own desire through me. Because there's no guarantee that the object of your desire will desire you back in the same way.

Yeehyeon scoffed at himself for having cautiously, optimistically believed that this time — this time — it would finally flower and bear fruit. For having invited words like "the future" and "hope" and "overcoming." He shifted his gaze to the street outside the window.

The street, lined with cafes and trendy shops, was alive even on a Monday evening with people trying to hold on to the brief autumn air. Yeehyeon watched each face passing by — faces he had unconsciously always assumed were Beta — and watched them as if they were the faces of old friends. Then the Phantom building came into view. He clenched his empty, sweat-damp hands hard against his thighs.