Wooyoung woke up feeling like a thousand daggers was pierced into his skull. The pain was so infiltrating that he seemed to have lost the ability to move at all. It even physically hurt to think, and to remember.

He had been on his way to another meeting with the publishers. He had serious issues with the latest draft that they had edited, and wanted to iron it out. As someone who had spent his lifetime writing, and now used his skills as a living, Wooyoung was an extremely particular author, and sometimes regarded as an unpleasant one to work with. He had sold his life to books and writing, preferring to immerse himself in the worlds and dreams that he wove masterfully, rather than paying attention to the one he lived in.

A call from his publishers informing him about the impossibility of his changing the edits, an agitated argument and a slip of judgement later, the last thing Wooyoung remember seeing was the glaring headlights of another car. Now, here he was, lying on a hospital bed, it seemed. Though he couldn’t even open his eyes, Wooyoung could smell the sharp stench of disinfectant, could hear the steady beeping of a machine that was probably connected to his arm.

It took him a few days before the pain in his head subsided enough such that he was able to twitch his finger. The hospital staff noticed, and guided him along. The next thing he did was to try opening his eyes.

Was he still dreaming?

The world remained a pitch-black darkness in front of him, even though his brain told him that his eyelids were open. It took him only a few seconds before an unprecedented panick rose like a balloon in him. He mustered enough strength to move his head to and fro, and to weakly flail his arms. The nurses restrained him but gently. They closed his eyelids, and tied a blindfold made of gauze around his eyes. Somehow, with his eyelids closed, seeing the same darkness didn’t strike so much fear into his soul, though it merely took a backseat and lingered.

It took him yet another few more days before he could eat by mouth, and then more time before he could talk.

“My eyes…” he croaked hoarsely. He heard the doctor sigh.

“Your accident left a trauma on your brain, Mr Jang. It disrupted your ocular nerves, leading to your current blindness.”

Blindness. How casually the doctor threw the word around, when it meant the inevitable destruction of the only world Wooyoung had ever known. He sat on the bed motionless, trying to school the emotions that was threatening to burst through.

“Can it… be cured…?” Wooyoung choked out.

“The ocular nerves was disrupted but not severed. It’s too delicate an area for corrective surgery. It’s very hard to say whether or not your blindness is permanent or temporary, and I dare not make any promises.”

Wooyoung felt the tears soak the bandage wrapped around his eyes as he hunched over. The doctor, feeling a little awkward after delivering this news, retreated out of the room, leaving Wooyoung alone to this untimely revelation. Without sight, he wouldn’t be able to read anymore, much less write. There was Braille, of course, but would it be the same as what he had always been used to? What was he going to do as a living now? The doctor had almost as good as announced a death sentence.

His publishers came to visit him, and were alarmed at the news of this possibly permanent loss of vision. Though they didn’t say it, and though he could not see them, Wooyoung could tell that they were already deciding what to do with him, now that he would become as good as deadwood on their roster of authors. It didn’t matter about his fame, or how much he had sold with the novels he had written – it didn’t matter if he couldn’t produce anymore.

Besides his publishers, Wooyoung had no other visitors. His family didn’t live here anymore, and he had always been too much of a recluse to have many friends. It didn’t matter though. Wooyoung didn’t need anyone to see him in this condition right now. He felt a sudden disinterest in everything, in eating, in exercising, in recovering, in life. It didn’t matter anymore what happened to him in this hospital, if he was going to remain blind. The black darkness that now made up his whole world was consuming him.

No more books, no more reading, ran Wooyoung’s thoughts as he lay on the bed one night. I’d still have all these fantasies in my head, but I’ll never be able to share them with people. No more writing, no more typing. He contemplated how easy it was for everything he had to crumble so quickly into nothingness. Sometimes, he even contemplated ending the life that now held no more meaning for him, but something always drew him back. He was afraid, and he was angry at his own cowardice. He had used to think that he was on the pinnacle of things, producing bestseller after bestseller, respected for his creativity and his art, but now he suddenly wondered if he was really all that he had thought himself to be.

He didn’t know whether he had fallen asleep or not as such depressing thoughts ran through his head – sleeping or wakefulness meant little to him anymore, when all he saw in either state was the same aggravating nothingness. A heat started within him, growing rapidly into something almost like a scorching fire underneath his skin. His head became lighter and lighter, and he tried to throw off his blanket. Wooyoung couldn’t stop shivering, though he felt hot all over. He felt the beads of sweat trickle down his forehead. Wooyoung vaguely held out a hand to press the bell for a nurse, but only succeeded in knocking over an empty water jug on his bedside table. He collapsed, defeated and feverish on his bed, wondering if he might die like this without anyone realising till the morning.

There was a sudden warmth on his face – a different kind of warmth. It took away the devilish heat inside of him, and offered some kind of relief. Between his half-awake state and his feverish brain, Wooyoung was barely master enough of his senses to be entirely aware of what was going on. He felt the warmth move to his forehead, as if feeling for his temperature, and then it seemed to his hair. He wanted the warmth to stay – it seemed to take away some of his temperature.

“Help is coming,” he heard a voice say, but it felt like he was hearing it from a distance. He couldn’t tell who the voice was. He wasn’t even sure if his brain was making it up. “You’ll be all right soon.” The disembodied voice and the warmth faded away, and Wooyoung sunk back into his pillows again, but calmer this time. He faded in and out of consciousness for the rest of the night, such that everything else seemed as much like a dream as this encounter.

When the morning came, his fever broke and Wooyoung woke up, feeling the need to change his clothes, which were soaked through with his sweat from the previous night. The now-warm cooling pad on his forehead, and the taste of remnant medicines on his tongue was the only evidence that help had been called for him last night, though he could barely remember or distinguish it from his dreams. As he changed, he wondered how the nurses had known to come. Had he not failed to press the nurse bell button? Or had he actually did, but remembered wrongly? But it doesn’t matter, anyway.

That night, Wooyoung continued to drift in and out of sleep, now less disturbed by his feverish dreams. But this time, he had the same dream again. He felt once again that warmth on his face, now a pleasant sensation when he wasn’t having a fever, and heard that voice from last night. It wasn’t much clearer than before, and Wooyoung could barely make out most of what the voice said, but it soothed him. He wondered if this was a product of his brain, as a defence mechanism to compensate for the fever of last night. The dream lasted longer than it had the previous night, but when the warmth and the voice faded away as it did, Wooyoung felt the reluctance of abruptly ending a good dream.

The dream seemed to be a recurring one. Night after night, he felt the same warmth on his face, on his hair, and heard the same muffled voice. Every night, it made him feel more soothed than before, and less agitated about his present condition. The darkness seemed less delibitating. Was it his brain’s way of dealing with the mental trauma? Though Wooyoung had no complaints about the recurrent nature of the dream, he began to have suspicions. Some nights, he felt himself floating nearer the brink of consciousness, where dreams usually fade into wakeful reality, but even then the warmth and voice had not faded.

Perhaps, Wooyoung thought, there was no harm in staying up the whole night. At the worst, it merely meant that he forewent the happy dream one time. He thought about it the whole day, and was glad it gave him something to think about other than the feeling of emptiness he felt when he opened his eyes and saw nothing. When night came, he grew more and more excited, wondering if perhaps his suspicions would be right, and if his dream wasn’t really a dream. But what if nothing happened? He would have to swallow his disappointment then.

Wooyoung lay on his pillows as he always did, and closed his eyes underneath the gauze blindfold as he always did. In other words, he pretended to be sleeping. The ticking of the clock in his hospital room sounded louder than it had ever been. Every footfall outside his room renewed his anxiety. He tossed and turned in his dark room. At the very least, he thought, he had no trouble warding off sleep in the state of excitement he was in. Depressive thoughts lay underneath the surface, but he thought merely of this experiment he had embarked on, and it quelled them.

Almost half the night passed and nothing happened. The ticking of the clock had subsided into a monotonous background sound. He had grown immune to hearing footfalls outside his door. Wooyoung began to feel the soreness of disappointment. Perhaps it had really all been his dreams after all. He couldn’t tell what time it was, but it felt like an eternity that he had lay there waiting. Sleep was beginning to claim him now, as he felt himself losing slip of his consciousness. It’s all a dream, Wooyoung, he told himself, you were just too imaginative thinking it might have been real.

The door clicked softly open. From a dull dormant state, Wooyoung’s every senses sharpened as he strained himself to hear more. Had he imagined the click again now? There was a pause that seemed to stretch for too long a time, before another click of the door shutting. Wooyoung could barely keep still now – someone was definitely in his room. It most definitely wasn’t a nurse, because they let themselves in hurriedly, did what they had to do and left just as swiftly. The way the door had opened, however, seemed as if the person had the leisure to try to be as soft as possible, in order not to disturb Wooyoung’s sleep.

Wooyoung lay still, trying to maintain his breathing, hoping that it wouldn’t give him away. He heard footsteps approaching his bed, but they were so slow and soft that he barely made them out even in a completely quiet room. Who was this mysterious person? There was another silence, but Wooyoung felt the presence nearer to him now, as if the person was bending over to see if he was sleeping. It took every ounce of effort to maintain as comfortable and expressionless a face that Wooyoung could muster.

And then, Wooyoung felt it again. That warmth that had soothed him during his fever, that he had felt every night since then, but now the sensation was sharpened by wakefulness. He now felt the soft finger tips that brushed his skin along with it, transferring the warmth of the palm onto his cheek. The touch was light, as if the person didn’t want to wake him up, but it was just as soothing as it had always been. Another hand touched his hair softly.

“How’ve you been?” came the voice in a delicate whisper. Wooyoung almost lost his countenance then. The voice was the same as that in his dream, except that it was even more gentle than he remembered, now that he could hear it clearly.

“Have you been recovering well?” the person asked. “Your temperature doesn’t seem to be going up anymore, so I guess you’ve been eating your medicines.”

Wooyoung allowed the person to continue talking in his soft whisper, feeling that same soothing effect that it had on him as always. The anxiety he had felt earlier had all but disappeared, and though he was awake, he lay completely silent and restful on the bed, listening to the person’s voice. He felt like he could not get enough of it.

After what seemed like a long time, the person suddenly announced that he had to go. Wooyoung almost fidgeted in alarm, reluctant to let this presence leave. As the person touched his face for one last time, Wooyoung made a quick grab for the person’s wrist and pressed the person’s hand against his face.

“Don’t go,” Wooyoung said. Even as he said so, he felt the coldness of the person’s wrist, and the tremors that ran through it. The person tried desperately to pull away, but Wooyoung’s hand was almost fully functional by now and he had enough strength to resist the person’s struggles. After a few minutes, the person’s struggles ceased and he rested his palm on Wooyoung’s cheek, it with his thumb.

“You were awake?” he asked. Wooyoung could hear the shame in his voice, as he nodded slowly. “I’m very sorry to disturb you.”

“Don’t be,” Wooyoung smiled, relaxing his grip on the person’s wrist. “I appreciate your concern, and it really gives me a lot of comfort, even though I’m always asleep when you’re here.”

“Why were you awake today then?” asked the person. Wooyoung let go of his wrist, though the person did not withdraw his hand from Wooyoung’s cheek.

“I wanted to know if you were real and not just a dream.”

The person stayed silent at this.

“Would you come again tomorrow night?” Wooyoung asked hopefully. The person withdrew his hand from Wooyoung.

After a while, he replied, “If you want.”

“What’s your name?”

The person didn’t answer. There was an absolute silence in the room, and the next thing Wooyoung heard was a hurried goodbye, before the door clicked open and shut.

Wooyoung had worried that he might have scared the person off, but keeping to his word, the person appeared again the night after. And the night after that, and then after that. Instead of sleeping, Wooyoung would stay up until the person came, and they’d talk. Wooyoung never realised how nice it was to have someone to talk to. He had remained reclusive and alone for so long, and had been so satisfied with his lifestyle he had never thought of experiencing a different kind.

“Why did you think about ending your life?” asked the person one day, after Wooyoung had confided that he had felt depressed and almost suicidal after he found out he was now blind.

“I’m a writer, and a pretty successful one too. My passion in life is reading and books, and I sustain myself with writing. Without my vision, now I can’t do any of that. What else can I do?”

“I know you’re a writer. Everyone knows who you are, once they hear your name. But it feels like what you love is not writing, but in sharing your imagination in all its glory with people.”

Wooyoung was silent, struck by this suggestion.

“Even if you can’t write, why don’t you do something else that achieves that same effect?” The person continued. “What about dictating and asking someone to write it down for you? Better yet, what about story-telling? You’d still be doing the same thing, just not writing it down in a book form.”

Again, Wooyoung was silent. He had never thought about things that way. He had felt upset about losing his writing skills because now all the stories he could make up in his mind would now go to waste. He had never had the clarity of mind to think about what alternative ways he could go about still practising his art, without the use of his vision.

Before the person left that night, Wooyoung tried again. “We’ve been talking for so many nights now. Could you at least tell me your name?”

The person did not answer. After a long while, he only said, “It doesn’t matter,” before he left the room.

The next morning, Wooyoung woke up irritated by the sunlight streaming into his room. He asked the nurse why hadn’t the curtains been closed the night before, when after a stunned silence, the nurse replied that his curtains had never been closed since it shouldn’t have made a difference to him - if he was blind.

The doctor came in briskly and began to unwrap the gauze blindfold from his eyes. Wooyoung could barely keep himself trembling from excitement. When he opened his eyes, it was like looking at things through a blackened smoke screen. He could barely see anything, but most importantly, he could see. Though all he could make out were vague and blur silhouettes, but at least now, his world wasn’t just a single piece of darkness anymore.

He couldn’t wait to tell the person about it. He sat eagerly in his bed for half the night, but the person did not come. He waited until dawn broke, and still, the person did not come. Feeling more surprised than disappointed, Wooyoung explained it away to himself. Maybe the person had gotten caught up in something over the night, and had not been able to get away. He had never missed a night’s chat with Wooyoung before. That night, surely, the person would come again.

But he didn’t. Even when Wooyoung fell asleep waiting, there was no comforting dream, no warmth or soothing voice that he could feel or hear. He began to grow frustrated and angry, even though his vision was making slow but significant improvements. Why did the person stay away? More importantly, why had he refused to tell Wooyoung anything about himself such that it made it difficult for Wooyoung to track him now that he was gone?

The doctor expressed high hopes that he would be able to recover his full vision soon, and then to be discharged. His vision had come back so much that he was now able to dress himself, bathe himself and eat by himself. The blackened smoke screen in front of his eyes seem to clear bit by bit every day, till now he could see and make out actual colours. He was happy for his recovery progress, but he could not enjoy it fully. Wooyoung asked the nurses again and again, if there was any male staff that was attached to his room, or was seen going in and out, but they always answered in the negative.

With some delight, the doctor finally announced to him a discharge date, by which they hope that he would be able to make a full recovery at home. It was like an ultimatum – Wooyoung had to find the person again before he was discharged, or he might lose him forever. He asked and asked, not even just the nurses but even the doctors now. He went out of his room by himself, trying to see if he could spot his mysterious visitor by himself, or ask the other staff if they had seen any such person. None had any significant impression, but the hospital was always full of staff walking to and fro and entering hospital rooms, it was hard to be sure.

The date drew closer and closer to that of his discharge. Wooyoung’s anxiety peaked, as he desperately went as much around the hospital as he was allowed, trying to find the person. “Where are you?” he whispered desperately as he went around the hospital. He still allowed himself to hope that the person might one night come in to his room again, but he never did. Sometimes, he’d dream of the warmth and the voice again, whereupon he’d forcefully wake himself up to catch hold of the person – but it had always turned out to be truly just a dream in the end.

There was one last examination that he had to go through before he could leave – his eye exam. In the doctor’s clinic, he administered an eye drop to each of Wooyoung’s eyes, explaining that its purpose was to enlarge his retina to facilitate examination. The eye drops needed time to work, and during the time of its effect, Wooyoung’s recovering eyes would be extremely sensitive to any form of light. The doctor tied the gauze blindfold around his eyes once more, and left Wooyoung alone inside the clinic room with the lights turned off.

Wooyoung sat on the chair, feeling upset and resigned. He had to admit that he had been crying himself to sleep for the past few nights, realizing how fruitless was his search for the person. He had simply disappeared, and Wooyoung was never to see him again, not even to tell him how he felt. He did not understand why the person insisted on being so mysterious, and why he had begun to avoid Wooyoung from the moment he began to regain his vision back.

The door slid open. Wooyoung assumed it was the doctor, but then as the footsteps grew closer, his heart almost stopped. He couldn’t see anything now, but his temporary period of blindness had taught him how to differentiate the person’s footsteps from every other. Before he could say anything, he felt the person’s hands carressing his face in that familiar manner that he had always been. Wooyoung raised his hand to rip off the gauze covering his eyes, but the person forcefully pressed the gauze down.

“Don’t. Your eyes will hurt,” the person said gently. Wooyoung dropped his hand from his eyes, and raised it to touch the person’s face instead.

It was the first time he had actually felt the person’s face. He cupped the person’s face with both of his hands, wanting to engrave every contour on his face into his memory. He wanted to build a mental picture of the person, even if he could not see him. He felt the smallness of his face, the soft hair on his forehead, the big eyes, the straight nose and then, his full lips. The person silently allowed him, although Wooyoung could feel some hotness underneath the person’s eyes and some moisture on his long eyelashes, as if he was on the brink of tears.

“Please don’t leave,” Wooyoung asked, though he could hear the sheer desperation in his voice, mingled with the exasperation of having spent the past couple of weeks searching for the person right in front of him now. “Please… I’ve been looking so hard for you.”

“I’m sorry,” the person said. Wooyoung could hear the slight quiver in his voice. “I have to leave you soon.”

“No!” Wooyoung protested, wrapped his arms around the person’s neck and pulling him into a hug. He could smell the person’s fragrance – like a mixture of rain and leaves. “I won’t let you leave. I’ve been looking for you longer than I even realized. Don’t go.”

The person slowly wrapped his arms around Wooyoung and allowed himself to hug him tightly for a while. In the strength of his embrace, Wooyoung could feel just how much the person himself didn’t want to leave, but yet he let go and pulled away from Wooyoung after a while.

“After you regain your vision,” the person whispered into Wooyoung’s ears. “you will go back to the world that you’re used to. You will go back to the world you belong to. But I cannot follow you there.”

“If you can’t follow me there, then I won’t go back into that world. I don’t need to be an author,” Wooyoung pleaded desperately, his arms still clinging onto the back of the person’s neck. The person chuckled softly but almost bitterly.

“Your being an author isn’t why I can’t follow you. We belong to different worlds, you and I. Even if you quit your job, it’s not going to change that.”

Wooyoung stayed silent, but after a while, he shook his head, feeling the tears soaking that gauze once again. He felt the most urgent desperation he had ever felt, but was at a loss of what to do to convince the person to stay.

“Goodbye, Wooyoung,” the person said softly. Wooyoung raised his face and began to shake his head. The person grabbed both sides of his cheeks with the familiar warmth of his palms, and pressed his warm lips onto Wooyoung’s. It didn’t take him long to register what was going on, as Wooyoung curled his arms around the back of the person’s neck and reciprocated the kiss. It was a slow kiss, both of them wanting to prolong this stolent moment while they could. Even through the kiss, Wooyoung could feel the hot tears from the person’s cheek staining his own.

The person was the one who pulled away first, probably realizing that the doctor might return soon. He gave Wooyoung’s cheek one last , letting his fingers linger reluctantly on his face. “Goodbye,” he whispered painfully. “I love you.”

With a rustle, the person stood up and his warmth disappeared from Wooyoung. Now released, Wooyoung quickly pulled off the gauze from his eyes, and was only in time to see a bright, white light from the door, and a blurry tall silhouette outlined against it. Even through the excruciating light entering his eyes, Wooyoung thought he saw a glimpse of the side profile of the person’s face…
 

-------

Wooyoung looked out of the window at the falling snow. The pleasant whiteness of the scenery cheered him up, even though he felt a familiar mild stinging of his eyes whenever he looked at something too bright. At least he could see at all, he told himself.

“Grandpa, can you teach us how to sing Hark! The Herald Angels Sing for Christmas?” asked one of his grandchildren, a sprightly girl of five. The other, a smaller boy of three, nodded eagerly.

Wooyoung smiled down at both of them and sat down on an arm chair near the fire. “Have you ever seen an angel before?”

His grandchildren shook their heads. “Have you, grandpa?”

Wooyoung sipped his tea and stared into the crackling fire. “I thought I did, many many years ago. Maybe I was mistaken.”

“Tell us, tell us!” his grandchildren clamoured excitedly. Wooyoung beamed at them.

“Then sit over here and be still, it’s time for me to tell stories again,” he said as he set down his cup of tea and began.