him or anyone else to hear me, “How does everyone stand it?” Dahn’s and Miru’s faces came to mind.
“They can’t stand it,” he said, “and that’s why they form barricades, throw paving bricks, and run away only to get caught and arrested. What they can’t stand is the fact thatnothing ever gets better. Nothing has changed since last year. It’s as if time has stopped.”
“What do you hope will happen?” I asked.
“I just want something to change. Nothing ever changes no matter how hard we fight, so we become lethargic. Sometimes I find myself wishing that someone would steal all the books, just take them all, every last one, even from the libraries. I wish the schools would close so that no one could go, not even if they wanted to. Everything is the same. It only feels like time is passing, and only the characters change. We are torn apart and chased around. We fight back and get chased some more … We all stare at the walls and complain of loneliness. All we have to do is turn around, but instead we keep our faces to the walls. It’s depressing to think that this will never change. Things were no different last spring, either.”
I listened without saying anything.
“If I hadn’t met you,” he said, “I might not be able to tell the difference between this day last year and today.”
Then he mumbled under his breath, “So … let’s remember this day forever.” I wanted to see his face. I wanted to see what he looked like when he said those words, because the lethargy that he was feeling was mine, too. Maybe we had exaggerated the meaning of our chance encounter that day in an attempt to dispel that lethargy. I took my arm from around his neck and ran my hand over his cheek. Then, one by one, I felt his forehead, his nose, the groove under his nose, his lips, his chin, his ears. Then his eyebrows. He let me touch him.
When I ran my fingers over his eyes, he stopped walking. It must have been hard for him to keep moving forward.
“Yoon.” He had never called me by just my first name before. “I never thought I would see you out in the streets. They were fighting dirty today—both the demonstrators and the riot cops. I got separated from my group and was starting to get scared when suddenly there you were. I couldn’t stop rubbing my eyes in disbelief. Why did you come out today?” He sounded heavyhearted.
“I didn’t want to go home early. I was trying to take the longest route home, and then this happened to me.”
I thought of the typewriter sitting on my desk in my empty room. The clacking of the keys echoed in my ears. There are times when I am grateful for the fact of not being asked why. He did not ask why I didn’t want to go home. I wouldn’t have known how to answer if he had. He took a deep breath and exhaled. I felt his chest rise and fall. I pulled my hand away from his face and rubbed the corners of my stinging eyes. Each time he breathed, my chest and stomach clenched. That tightness also came with the piquant joy of seeing the ocean for the first time, of rising at the crack of dawn in winter and discovering the courtyard white with snow, of scraping a fingernail in disbelief over a grapevine where green tendrils flush with spring curl out of a dried-up and lifeless plant, of looking down at the pink fingernails of a young child. Like seeing white cumulous clouds in a summer sky, or peeling back the skin on a sweet peach and taking a bite, or walking along a forest path and absentmindedly picking up a pinecone to discover the inside packed with white pine nuts.
I hugged him tighter. The scent of his body was right under my nose. It was mixed with the smell of tear gas.
“Do you demonstrate every day?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer.
“Is that why you haven’t been to class?”
“Every morning, I open my eyes and I ask myself: Should I go to school, or should I go demonstrate? I can’t sit still in class, but it’s the same when I’m out in the
“They can’t stand it,” he said, “and that’s why they form barricades, throw paving bricks, and run away only to get caught and arrested. What they can’t stand is the fact thatnothing ever gets better. Nothing has changed since last year. It’s as if time has stopped.”
“What do you hope will happen?” I asked.
“I just want something to change. Nothing ever changes no matter how hard we fight, so we become lethargic. Sometimes I find myself wishing that someone would steal all the books, just take them all, every last one, even from the libraries. I wish the schools would close so that no one could go, not even if they wanted to. Everything is the same. It only feels like time is passing, and only the characters change. We are torn apart and chased around. We fight back and get chased some more … We all stare at the walls and complain of loneliness. All we have to do is turn around, but instead we keep our faces to the walls. It’s depressing to think that this will never change. Things were no different last spring, either.”
I listened without saying anything.
“If I hadn’t met you,” he said, “I might not be able to tell the difference between this day last year and today.”
Then he mumbled under his breath, “So … let’s remember this day forever.” I wanted to see his face. I wanted to see what he looked like when he said those words, because the lethargy that he was feeling was mine, too. Maybe we had exaggerated the meaning of our chance encounter that day in an attempt to dispel that lethargy. I took my arm from around his neck and ran my hand over his cheek. Then, one by one, I felt his forehead, his nose, the groove under his nose, his lips, his chin, his ears. Then his eyebrows. He let me touch him.
When I ran my fingers over his eyes, he stopped walking. It must have been hard for him to keep moving forward.
“Yoon.” He had never called me by just my first name before. “I never thought I would see you out in the streets. They were fighting dirty today—both the demonstrators and the riot cops. I got separated from my group and was starting to get scared when suddenly there you were. I couldn’t stop rubbing my eyes in disbelief. Why did you come out today?” He sounded heavyhearted.
“I didn’t want to go home early. I was trying to take the longest route home, and then this happened to me.”
I thought of the typewriter sitting on my desk in my empty room. The clacking of the keys echoed in my ears. There are times when I am grateful for the fact of not being asked why. He did not ask why I didn’t want to go home. I wouldn’t have known how to answer if he had. He took a deep breath and exhaled. I felt his chest rise and fall. I pulled my hand away from his face and rubbed the corners of my stinging eyes. Each time he breathed, my chest and stomach clenched. That tightness also came with the piquant joy of seeing the ocean for the first time, of rising at the crack of dawn in winter and discovering the courtyard white with snow, of scraping a fingernail in disbelief over a grapevine where green tendrils flush with spring curl out of a dried-up and lifeless plant, of looking down at the pink fingernails of a young child. Like seeing white cumulous clouds in a summer sky, or peeling back the skin on a sweet peach and taking a bite, or walking along a forest path and absentmindedly picking up a pinecone to discover the inside packed with white pine nuts.
I hugged him tighter. The scent of his body was right under my nose. It was mixed with the smell of tear gas.
“Do you demonstrate every day?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer.
“Is that why you haven’t been to class?”
“Every morning, I open my eyes and I ask myself: Should I go to school, or should I go demonstrate? I can’t sit still in class, but it’s the same when I’m out in the
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