Chapter 40 : Little light

The sunset draped itself across the long building walls.

The heat of the sweltering day still lingered on the asphalt, the hot air clinging close to the ground.

The sky still looked hazy somehow,

and the city was slowly cooling down, as if exhaling a hot breath.

I was sitting at a small cafe on the street.

To create a coincidence.

Sitting still, waiting for someone.

With their favorite chocolate prepared.

Silently clutching my phone.

“I’m really, really tired?”

“Physically? Mentally?”

The phone conversation from that day surfaced in my mind.

Today, too, I sent a photo without fail. I didn’t know if it would be comforting, but I hoped it would give them strength, even just a little.

I held the iced coffee with half-melted ice in my hand.

I tilted the cup.

The lukewarm coffee brushed against the tip of my tongue.

A vague mix of bitter and sweet, leaving an indistinct sensation.

I don’t like coffee with melted ice.

When I first drink it, it’s suitably cold and cleanly bitter,

but now it remains at a lukewarm temperature, leaving only a blurry taste in my mouth.

But I can’t make it cold again.

I can only drink it as it is, or throw it away.

I quietly closed my mouth.

My fingertips brushed against the surface of the cup.

Moist droplets clung to it.

The ice, slowly melting in the hot air, dampened the surface of the cup,

and lukewarm water trickled down my fingers.

Slowly,the cold memory disappeared, leaving only a trace.

I quietly held the cup.

The once-cool ice was no longer there,

and the feel of the cup against my palm held a lukewarm temperature.

I didn’t want to throw it away, so I chose to drink it.

As I tilted the glass, the coffee touched my tongue.

Still a vague temperature. A vague taste.

The bitterness remained, but it was different from the clean bitterness of the beginning.

The diluted sweetness, dulled by the melted ice, was faintly mixed in.

The aftertaste was blurry. Unlike the beginning, it was watered down.

Just like I am now.

It should be cooling down,

but there’s a lingering warmth.

I definitely drank something,

but I can’t remember the exact taste.

The droplets that touched my fingertips slowly trickled down.

A sensation that was neither hot nor cold passed over the back of my hand and disappeared.

I put the cup

down.

A small droplet fell onto the table.

A trace that would soon dry up.

Something disappearing without a trace.

A hubbub of voices reached my ears.

Inside the cafe, the staff was cleaning up,

and outside, the voices of people passing by, calling out to each other, flowed lightly.

In the summer evening air,

the voices of strangers and unfamiliar emotions were floating around.

I sometimes feel this

way.

Like everything is sinking, and only I am floating.

People naturally find their place,

but I feel like I’m awkwardly floating, as if I’ve been cut out of paper.

On some days,

on the contrary,

I sometimes feel like I’m slowly sinking.

Either way, it always leads to the same conclusion.

I put the cup down.

The coldness of the coffee that lingered on my fingertips quickly disappeared.

I quietly raised my camera.

The street scene seen through the lens was somewhat dreamlike.

The walls of the buildings, turning golden in the sunlight,

and the figures half-hidden in the darkness below.

The silhouettes of people walking somewhere,

and light conversations floating in the air.

Light and shadow.

People blurring in between.

Faces passing by without making eye contact.

Even if I were to get lost and buried in this-

No one would look for me.

Even while thinking that,

I pressed the shutter again.

The cafe was quiet.

The slowly turning blades of the ceiling fan,

the music flowing from the small speaker,

and, unlike outside, the calmly settled air.

And the subtly spreading scent of coffee.

A small sound was heard from beyond the glass wall.

Tap. Tap.

I reflexively raised my head.

Beyond the glass wall,

under the red sunset light,

someone was lightly tapping on the glass with their fingertips.

It was Jian.

She was looking at me without saying anything.

She didn’t open her mouth,

nor did she gesture.

She simply tapped on the glass quietly, as if knocking.

I tried to read her expression.

But-

My own reflection was superimposed on the glass.

In the glass, reflected in the sunset light,

my face and her face were overlapping.

The world outside,

and the silence inside the cafe were touching.

The glass created a boundary.

I was inside the cafe,

she was out there.

I was in the cool air,

she was standing in the still-hot evening air.

She still didn’t say anything.

She was just looking at me.

That gaze,

lingered strangely long.

I thought for a moment,

that I should take a picture of this scene.

But–

My hand wouldn’t move.

I couldn’t press the shutter.

A photograph captures a moment, but at the same time, it makes the moment pass.

Just as everything changes when you close your eyes and open them, taking a picture turns the ‘present’ into the past.

So I quietly looked at her.

My eyes blinked instead of the camera.

Her and me, reflected in the glass wall.

The gazes overlapped,

light and shadow mixed,

and for a moment, I couldn’t tell where she ended and where I began.

Tap.

She tapped on the glass once more.

Only then,

did I quietly put down the camera.

Beyond the glass,

she was looking at me with the same expression.

I took a sip of the remaining coffee.

The cold coffee already tasted like nothing.

I put the

cup down on the table and slowly got up:

from

my seat.

As soon as I opened the glass door,

an air completely different from the cool air inside the cafe enveloped my face.

A humid evening breeze,

the lazy air unique to summer, flowing slowly.

Streetlights were turning on one by one, and under their light, shadows stretched out long, then quietly scattered with people’s movements.

Jian and I were walking side by side.

As if it were natural, we were already walking together like that.

A little further, a longer way around.

We walked, stretching out the time.

The sound of cars in the distance,

the faint laughter of people echoing from the end of the alley,

and our own quiet rhythm cutting through the space between.

I felt like I was walking with a thin film between us and the world.

“Are you coming from practice?”

“Yeah. The competition isn’t far off.”

Her voice was as calm as usual,

but there was a quiet tension mixed in.

“Are you nervous?”

“Of course.”

She said, as if sighing.

“I feel like I’m being pickled in salt right now.”

..What’s that?”

“It means I’m that nervous.”

I chuckled.

“You’ll do well.”

She looked at me for a moment, then shrugged.

“I hope so.”  

But, contrary to her words, she was subtly clenching and unclenching her fist.

I quietly watched that movement, then took a step closer.

And I took Jian’s hand.

At that moment,

I felt her hand stiffen slightly.

“Relax your hand a little.”

“Hey! What are you doing?”

She flinched, flustered.

But instead of answering,

I slowly unfolded her clenched fist with my palm.

She glared at me, her body tense,

but I didn’t care and lightly pressed her palm.

“Look.”

11

……At what?”

“If you press here, it feels a little calming.”

I gently pressed the center of her palm with my thumb.

“R-really?”

She stared blankly at her hand.

I subtly let go of her hand and took a step back again.

“Anyway-

“I continued, pretending to be nonchalant.

“You must be really nervous. Your hand is sweating…”

As I wiped my hand on my pants, Jian’s face turned redder and redder.

I was worried she might explode.

Thwack.

“Cough.”

Jian glared at me, hiding her hands behind her back as if embarrassed.

But her expression seemed more relaxed than before. That was a relief.

Her pace quickened, as if she were embarrassed. Even so, she glanced back little by little to match my speed.

Again, we walked without a word, listening to each other’s footsteps.

It wasn’t awkward or boring, even without any special words.

Her footsteps spread through my heart more comfortably than a song.

She stopped walking.

Only then,did I follow her gaze and look at something.

The sky, which had already darkened. A night sky that was too dark to be called evening anymore.

The streetlights along the road.

The light was not constant.

It flickered briefly,

then turned back on.

And ―

it flickered again, as if shaking.

We stopped walking beneath it.

We quietly watched the broken streetlight.

The flickering light spread across the road and then disappeared, repeating the cycle.

“So, what about you? Are you nervous too?”

Brightening,

darkening.

And I,

said as if it were nothing.

“……Sometimes I want to disappear.”

It was a lie.

It wasn’t that I wanted to disappear,

but that I was afraid of disappearing.

Just, sometimes.

The feeling that no one would look for me.

The feeling that even if I disappeared,

no one would notice.

When I put down the lens,

there were times when I couldn’t even tell if I existed within it.

I have always,

been capturing the world.

But where exactly-

am I?

That’s why there are times when I want to disappear.

Before something more accumulates, before I go too deep, before I get too wet, there are times when I want to run away.

At that moment.

Flicker-

The streetlight went out completely.

Blackout.

All the shadows on the road disappeared.

The air sank heavily.

It was dark.

I quietly swallowed.

It was strange.

I was definitely standing here-

but I felt like I had disappeared.

“……Dohyun.”

Jian’s voice was heard from a close distance.

I didn’t answer.

I just stood still.

In the darkness, do I exist?

Am I here, right now?

At that moment-

A faint light appeared before my eyes.

I reflexively blinked.

Illumination magic.

Jian turned on a small light.

She hung that light on the tip of her finger, and slowly shone the light into the darkness.

As if-

like someone looking for something in the darkness.

For a moment, that sight felt somewhat unfamiliar.

She was looking for me.

She really was looking for me.

Jian slowly shines the light on me. She looks at me instead of answering.

Then she slowly opened her mouth.

Her tone was slightly angry.

“Why don’t you answer when I call you?”

I quietly lowered my gaze.

“I don’t know.”

“I need you to answer so I know where you are. How can I find you if you don’t say a word?”

A beat late, I bit my lip slightly.

“…..I guess. I guess so.”

A deep,

self-deprecating smile appeared on my face.

“I didn’t know that.”

Even in the darkness,

I could feel Jian staring at me.

I slowly exhaled.

The fact that if I don’t answer myself,

no one might be able to find me.

That simple truth-

I think I know it now.

In the middle of the dark road.

The small light spreading from Jian’s fingertip was shining on me.

I was standing precariously in that small light.

But it wasn’t bad.

A light that swayed precariously, wobbling this way and that, like walking a tightrope.

Even so, I was standing and hadn’t fallen yet.

That light sparked a small memory.

A bus running quietly.

The last stop, reached after endlessly waiting while sitting on that bus.

A small building I entered by chance.

A girl crying alone in that building.

I sat silently next to the girl, and the girl turned her head and looked at me.

For the first time, the only one to do so.

The small light that slowly glowed from the girl’s fingertips.

The small light rising from that girl’s hand and the light rising from Jian’s hand now seemed to overlap.

“Then I’ll call you from now on.”

Gazing into Lee Jian’s wavering eyes, which seemed to hold the flickering firelight, he spoke.

He offered a gentle smile and then shyly uttered the words.

“Say, ‘Jian-‘