Do you have someone you like?
That question kept lingering in my head.
On one hand, I thought, it’s not strange. Yeah, it’s not strange. Five years have passed, after all.
No matter where she’s been, what she’s been doing, or who she’s grown to like, it’s all within the realm of possibility.
Even if she hadn’t been able to forget about me in that time, it wouldn’t be odd either. We were close, after all. But that didn’t mean we were in a relationship.
No, even if we had been in a relationship, would that have changed anything?
To her, I was already someone who no longer existed. Someone living can’t keep clinging to the memory of someone who’s gone forever.
And yet, I couldn’t help but feel incredibly confused.
Because in all the time I’d spent with her, she had never shown any sign of liking someone.
Yeah, it’s been two months since I came back to her side. Of course, two months isn’t a very long time—not when compared to five years. I know that better than anyone.
Two months is far too short to understand what kind of life the people left behind have lived.
And yet… during that short time, I had spent nearly every moment with her except for one day a week. If there was someone she liked…
The “someone I like” she mentioned she must mean it in a romantic sense, right? If so, how could she go an entire weekday without contacting that person even once? If she truly liked someone, wouldn’t it be natural for her to show it at least occasionally?
It didn’t make sense. It was strange.
The timing of her words was strange too. Why now, of all times?
…My heart pounded in my chest.
Part of me was resigned and understanding. Another part was filled with doubt.
And yet, in the space left between those two, a faint “possibility” began to rise.
Something soft, warm, and hazy—
—but at the same time, a voice inside me said, This isn’t right.
Just imagining it filled me with guilt, and the fact that I could even hope for something like this made me question myself. How could I?
It was a thought so shameful, so ugly, that I could barely face it.
She was still looking at me.
Her eyes were slightly red.
She stared at me with a faintly bloodshot gaze, her appearance a little disheveled.
It was as if she was just waiting for me to say something.
“……”
“……”
For a while, we just stared at each other in silence.
Could she tell what I was thinking? Did she have any idea about the thoughts running through my head right now?
I had no clue what she was thinking. Not knowing made my heart race even faster.
Was it lucky that no customers came in during that time? Or was it unlucky?
“Are you… going to meet the person you like?” I barely managed to ask.
“Yeah.”
She nodded, her response calm and steady. Her face, however, looked like she was on the verge of breaking into tears again.
“With me.”
“Yeah.”
Her gaze shifted slightly as she spoke. It seemed like she was looking at her smartphone.
13:36
Friday, October 21st
That’s what the screen displayed. Was she checking the time?
“If…”
I swallowed hard and continued speaking.
“If I say I won’t go with you, what will you do?”
“I’ll go alone,” she replied.
My heart was still pounding like crazy.
She was saying she’d go, even if I wasn’t there. Without me.
“But then, what about the bakery…?”
“…I’ll have to close it while I’m gone. I can’t just leave you here alone. I’ll let Ga-young know in advance, too.”
“……”
Her determination seemed unshakable. She was absolutely set on going to see that person today, no matter what.
My mind was still a mess. I didn’t even know who this person she liked was. Could it be someone I knew? No, even if it were someone I used to know, they wouldn’t be the same person I remember. From her perspective, it’d be someone I was meeting for the first time today.
And yet, she wanted me to go with her.
…
The thought that had been lingering at the back of my mind was becoming clearer.
And with that clarity came fear.
I was afraid. But—
“…Alright.”
Even though I was afraid, I had the feeling that refusing her wasn’t the right thing to do. For so many reasons.
“……”
She watched me in silence for a moment after I answered. Then, a small smile formed on her lips as she replied.
“Thank you.”
*
It seemed like the person my sister “liked” was quite far away.
We quickly changed clothes and tidied up the store. Although there were still plenty of unsold loaves of bread, my sister cleaned up without hesitation and closed the shop.
Then she pulled out a sheet of A4 paper and stuck it to the locked store door.
“Due to personal circumstances, we will be closed this afternoon.”
Surprisingly enough, not a single customer came by during that time.
It was almost strange to think that there could be so few customers at this time of day.
Perhaps, like when I first came across this shop, a series of coincidences had overlapped in some meaningful way.
Neither my sister nor I had a car.
I had left this world before I could even think about getting a driver’s license, and as for my sister, I wasn’t sure why she didn’t have one yet. Maybe she did, for all I knew.
Even if she had a license, though, it’s not easy for someone young to drive their own car around.
Or maybe there was some other reason.
We took the subway.
The train ran for quite a while without us needing to transfer. It moved from underground sections to above-ground ones.
The sky was still clear.
In another sense, it felt dry barren, almost.
Unlike looking outside from the shop, the view of the outdoors from the train in the middle of the day seemed bleak in many ways.
Maybe it was because it was still work hours, and there weren’t many people roaming the streets.
The trees were bare, exposing their branches, and there were hardly any cars on the road.
At some point, empty fields started to appear.
……Ah.
Come to think of it, Chuseok has long passed, hasn’t it?
It must have passed after I came here.
Even while working, I found my sense of time was all out of sorts.
Well, since I had been working even on Chuseok, it’s no wonder I might have forgotten about it.
I didn’t have a “hometown” to go back to anyway.
It seems like we’ve crossed the border out of Seoul.
Now that I think about it, my sister and I had never traveled outside of Seoul before.
There was a time when we promised to go together someday.
But that promise was never fulfilled.
This was the first time I had gone so far with my sister, but my heart wasn’t racing with excitement.
She was silently looking out the window.
Her eyes didn’t waver.
It felt like she was looking at something farther away than the scenery outside.
Her reddened eyelids and bloodshot eyes had returned to normal.
In those eyes was a firm resolve.
As if she was staring at something she needed to overcome.
“……”
Those eyes… they scared me a little.
*
When I stepped off the subway, I found myself in a small town.
At first glance, it looked almost indistinguishable from the city center of Seoul.
However, the buildings that seemed to have been constructed just a few years ago, the wide roads, and the sparse cars parked along them gave off an oddly unfamiliar vibe.
Individually, nothing seemed out of place, but when seen as a whole, it felt like, This isn’t how this place was originally meant to be.
Was it because of the straight, unbending roads? Perhaps this was a newly developed area.
A city where old neighborhoods and new developments were flattened and rebuilt from scratch or perhaps it was constructed from the ground up, with lines drawn across empty fields to create the roads.
Looking at the large apartment complexes in the distance, I couldn’t help but feel like that might be the case.
“This way.”
My sister took my hand and gently guided me down a side road, just like when she used to take me out to play when we were kids.
Her grip wasn’t strong enough to drag me along, but I followed her absentmindedly, a blank expression on my face.
Large buildings lined the streets, but there didn’t seem to be many people around. Maybe it would get busier after work hours.
As I silently followed her, the once-imposing buildings gradually began to shrink in size. The wide, straight roads also started to narrow and curve.
The flat ground slowly turned into a slope, and in the distance, I could see a single building come into view.
The building perched on the gentle hill looked quite large. It was a white building with a much calmer design compared to the shopping centers we had passed earlier. In front of the building was a spacious parking lot.
Despite it being a weekday afternoon, there were quite a few cars parked there not enough to make it feel crowded, though.
“This is it.”
“…Oh.”
And I was at a loss for words.
The area around the building was much quieter than the streets we had walked before. The air itself felt heavy.
The faces of the people passing by were somber. Their hurried footsteps were muted, as if they were intentionally softening their steps. Among them, some were dressed entirely in black, from their tops to their pants.
Columbarium.
That word was written on the building’s entrance.
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