Shin hye checked again his temperature. He looked cooler, and seemed to sleep more peacefully. She sighed in relief and rubbed a bit her 'stiff shoulders. She had barely slept, waking often to check how he was,  and changing often the wet cloth on his forehead. The pills she had used on him, had not taken effect at first, so she had preferred to watch over him, in case there was need to take him to the hospital.
 

She had seen him fidget restlessly in that sleep far for being peaceful.

She heard him muttering unintelligible words ... sometimes he woke up with a start,  grabbing her wrist hard enough to hurt her, while she had  tried to give him relief dabbing him with that cloth. His eyes had looked at her with ferocity, not recognizing her in the delirium from fever, in that state somewhere between waking and deep sleep ... more than once she had been afraid.

What tormented him?
 

That was a question that was becoming to be her own little obsession ... she knew so little about him, about his life. He was not  a man who loved to talk ... probably he didn't want to entrust those memory to anyone … those memory that,  Shin hye was certain, were persecuting him.
 

She had heard stories about him, the fact that he had followed that woman, cutting off with his father …  the fact that many women had remained  victims of his charm and his badness ... someone said that many people were afraid of him, he succeeded in holding in his own hands, a dense amount of secrets, which had allowed him to be feared and hated by all the high society of Seoul ... but distinguish what was true from the mere rumor, it was not easy.
 

Even Min Jung seemed not aware of what had happened to him while he was overseas ... but she also  agreed that the man who had returned after four years, was someone else ... someone who seemed folded on himself, crushed by hatred ... and by guilt.
 

She thought about that path she was facing ... a path that seemed increasingly steep and strenuous.
 

At age 22 you don't have to find yourself dealing with the painful past of someone ... you should love and be loved with all the spontaneity and joy of youth ... she didn't know much about life, she had experienced so little and saw even less , but still she was catapulted into that dark abyss of things that  was not sure to fully understand.
 

His breath was regular at that moment, and she allowed herself to close her eyes, a bit discouraged. It was probably the result of that sleepless night, It was as if she had suddenly fallen in a harsh reality, tearing the fog of her illusions ... of her romantic and naïve convictions  ...
 

He would ever talked to her about that past?
 

She would be able to understand it? …  she, who  had always looked at the world with vibrant happiness, would be able to understand those dark feelings that weighed upon the soul of this man? He certainly would not help in that deed ... in fact she was going to fight on several fronts ... him, his secrets and the world around ... it was too much for a young girl like her?
 

The coward side of her, screamed  to run away ... to avoid plunging into that gloomy place ...  avoiding all those upcoming  problems with her father and  with the world in general ... always ready to point the finger and judge ... and also she would have avoided to getting hurt ... very badly.
 

She got up from the bed, avoiding making noise and wake him up. She needed to keep her mind busy and think later ... at that point she would not be able to sleep. She went to take a shower, and,  not wanting to disturb his sleep  , put on his t-shirt, founded on the near chair, feeling his scent  in it … and for a moment she felt embraced by him ... that feeling of fullness and euphoria was something she could not prevent to feel.
 

It was five o'clock in the morning, and the sun still had difficulty to light up the sky.
 

She went into the living room and made her eyes wander around, not knowing what to do ... that room was very impersonal. There were no pictures on the walls ... anything that spoke about the man who lived there.

Everything was bare, the kitchen tidy and intact, as if it were never used.
 

Tempted  by curiosity, she approached one of the two closed doors.

She knew it was wrong to snoop in someone else's home, but her instinct and the eager desire of some answer, pushed her to go further.
 

One of the two doors led to a nearly empty room ... the other one, instead, led to a library.
 

When she entered there, she percived around her the scent of him, mingling with the smell of books. A huge library occupied the walls, extending for almost the entire perimeter of the room.
 

In front of it there was a big chair with a low table, while near the glass-door that opened onto a small balcony, was positioned a solid wood’ desk.
 

Shin hye knew she had get the point ... that room talked about him ... about his sleepless nights in that chair, or overstraining for work on that desk ... her meditative gaze turned to the paintings that were on the walls. They were mainly reproductions of Daly’ works, and maybe someone else she didn't know.
 

She focused her attention again on the library ... it contained everything ... different genres, sometimes conflicting  ... talking about a man with varied tastes, curious and bright.
 

Shin hye smiled at the thought, feeling lighten the tension and the negativity from before. She ran her eyes over titles, thinking that, after all, she could read some books ... until her eyes were struck by something .
 

It looked like a notebook, it was like a discordant note, setting in that ordered tide of books.
She instinctively took it, the worn and consumed cover with her fingertips.
Finally she had in her hand, the keys that would have led her on a journey to an unknown land ... that would give her clues on the right path to follow, in that rich world full of devastation.
 

When she opened it, was shocked by its content ... it was full of handwritings  poems, some in French, and at the end of each of them were the dates and places where they were wrote ​​... most in Paris, but some reported the names of other cities like Prague, Venice, London, Barcelona … and Figueres, explaining with that  his love for Dali’  works.
 

All poems were critical, satirical ... wordplay that crucified all the contradictions of human nature, the hardships of an era ... all brilliantly written, result of a mind accustomed to the deeper understanding of human nature ... all very typical of her Min Ho.
 

Shin hye throw herself on  that big chair, trying to read eagerly as much as she could, amused by his  sarcastic and sometimes obscene words.

She turned the pages one by one, gently, as if it was something precious ... until she reached the last poem in the notebook. She frowned when began to read those verses ... her heart began to pound hard in her chest, not sure why ... what she kept in front of her eyes, bore the shadow of a deep anguish, contrasting  the goliardic tone from  those she had previously read .

Color of Paris.

Tar drip on the crippled roofs,
it falls down the throat of the lost souls,
 

Paris is a path to insanity,
Paris is a dream shattered,
Paris is the hope destroyed.
 

the ended of my Hope,

to being able to ever hear your voice,

to  being able to even hear the sound of you.
 

I would like to found you,

my sweet hope, my rich pearl.
 

I will looking for you in that limbo,
in that river of rowing and traveling souls,

In that switched world,

Where you shine like clear rain,

Where the truth of all this madness is unveiled,
Where there is only pity for this valley of tears never collected 

Paris is my illusion,

Paris is my hole grounded

Paris is my black tar.

-Paris, August 2, 2011

Shin hye' eyes reddened with tears  ... what meant those verses? They seemed to talk about someone who had died, a loss that had shaken him to the core ...  she remembered  that Min Jung had told her that his father had died in the autumn of that year, then the dates didn't match at all.
She was nibbling nervously her lips, looking for answers that did not come … while she was stared blankly on that page, she noticed  a card made ​​of cardboard. She picked it up and turned it over in her fingers ... it seemed a ticket of a French café, with address and  telephone number on it.
 

-Café De Flore. 172, boulevard Saint Germaine-des-Pres -

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

September 2008, the gold

Paris and its many colors ... changing, vivid, bright, lustful ... obscure.
 

Paris takes the shape of yellow ocher in the early fall, which is mixed with the roseate of its poetic sunsets.
 

It’s 'the gold that shines in the eyes of those who see the city for the first time ... it's the gold that spread in his irises  when, newly arrived, opened for the first time the window of his apartament's balcony.
It  was a good compromise between him and Eun Hye, because it was located in a renovated old building, right on the corner of rue de Four and rue de Montfraucon, a few steps from Boulevard Saint Germain, the center of the good life of 'Parisian haute bourgeoisie, due to its countless shops ... but it was also half way to the café Flore and the old Procope ... places that had greeted the mornings of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and the heated debates  between Voltaire and Robespierre, the dinners of Hugo, Balzac and many others.
And he was infinitely excited, ready to trample on that holy ground.
 

The gold in the eyes of a 22 year old boy ... who measure his steps, blessing every single inch walked, wandering  around enchanted in the Jardin du Luxembourg ... that gets lost in the beauty of the fountain of Medici , in front of the Palace, that seems like those from his favorite books.
 

Happy as ever to be in adoration under the bust of Baudelaire.
 

Although  he was studying economics, his love for literature grew naturally out of proportion. Many of his new French friends for that, called him the sensible economist. They were students of literature and philosophy from the Sorbonne, and they liked to exchange opinions in the heart of the Latin district, surrounded by the scent of croissants with cream and coffee, made by all those small bistros.
 

He started to throw down few verses as well, but keeping them to himself , not wanting that the  criticism of his friends strangled his inspiration ... it was weird ... for the first time in his life he felt insecure about something, and this made the notebook on which he left his thoughts, even more valuable.
 

The gold that shone in the walls of the small streets that led to the Quai de Montebello, where he could reach out and touch an infinite number of used books of bouquinistes ... wandering among the ancient copies of the early works of Balzac and Verlaine, under the imposing and majestic shade of Notre Dame.
 

The Gold bronzed of his crazy night with Eun Hye, swirling around  in Paris by night, always up and mysterious, which lured their palates, exposing its deepest jewelry.
 

… Gold like the sheer pleasure of senses, the one that consumed him, infusing in him new life, but at the same time let him always hungry and never satisfied ... that hungry which drove him to follow Eun hye in her foolish travel ... whims of a fickle woman, who soon grew tired of all ... and him, still unable to give a name to that sense of dissatisfaction, squandered all the money earned with his part-time jobs, to travel with her
 

... the illusory gold, placed in front of a mind that does not want to have answers, that dared not ask questions ...

May 2010, the crimson red
 

Paris becomes crimson red in spring, like the sunsets that disappear behind the Arch of Triumph on the Champs Elysees, like the red lights that lit up the Moulin Rouge in Pigalle district, the heart of the sinful Paris, which had inspired the paintings of Toulouse Lautrec
 

Crimson ... as his fury and jealousy in one of those evenings, when he found himself crossing the Seine, to go on Place Colette, a small square that housed the Theatre de la Comédie Française and the Kiosque des noctambules, made of precious spheres from murano  by Othoniel.
 

Min ho, could never remember the magic of that place, because he was too busy to march straight towards the bright café Le Nemours, and absently stood still in front of its clear glasses.
 

He lit a cigarette , as he saw his woman flirting shamelessly with another man, sensually intertwining her fingers with those of that stranger.
 

In the past few months, his trust in Eun hye wavered  dangerously. He saw her came home later and later, and more and more often ... her excuses seemed to him more and more weak and suspicious.
 

He had started smoking as he tried to think deeply about the person he had stubbornly loved.
 

He had thought that all this  superficiality, that willing to live only in the present without thinking about the future, that avoiding to discuss or exchange views on a deeper level, was due to her dynamic nature … due to her past hard life ...  it took time time, to make her understand what was really important, make her understand that she could trust him.
 

The physical desire was something that had always kept them tied up ... but lately even that bond, for Min Ho, began to be meaningless ... just body that seeks another body, nothing more.
 

All those thoughts that had made him more cold and unfriendly, had their epilogue the previous night.

For him it was another sleepless night, so he decided to get up to get some water, and taking some sleeping pills.

Finally he had managed to get hired by a major marketing company, and if he wanted to continue working, he needed to sleep.

In all the increasingly frequent quarrels with Eun hye, the thing that she often taunted him, was the fact that she was the one whom mainly cared  about all the household expenses ... and for him it was like receiving a punch on his pride.

The truth, however, was that the money he had earned was not enough, simply because she was determined to float in luxury, something that began to disgust him ... basically living with the money of her former husbands, not wanting to dirty her hands with work.

He, who had done nothing but work and study in all that time, understood less and less that idleness ...

 He had always pleaded her, but lately, since he had found that stable job, he felt the need to put something aside ... he wanted to prove to his father that he had become someone ... who had the ability to survive no matter what.

Made even more vigilant by those thoughts, he felt her phone vibrate in her pursue, which was left careless on the couch.

It was four in the morning, and all that cloud of suspicion that now surrounded him, pushed him to open the pursue and pull out that damn phone.

He swallowed hard, and clicked the message with a heavy heart. It was sent from an unknown number.

                             -Can we see at Café Nemours, tomorrow at 7:00? I really
                              need to see you , chérie. Put  your black lingerie, you know

                              how much I love it. -


He was shaken by a sense of inevitability ... it was as if his mind was already aware of everything but,  because of all that he had sacrificed for her, had decided to not accept the harsh truth.

Since when she had cheated on him?

He spend the night on the couch, and the next day he tried to avoid as much as possible to talk to her ... he had to find out what was going on, indeed, had to see it with his own eyes ... to see how big was his failure .. how his father had been right about her.

So it was that, the reason he was in front of that cafe ...  Paris was red crimson like the rage that enveloped him like a cloak ...

He wanted to get in and punching that man, but it was her who deserved his blind rage ... no, she would not have received even that ... he thought, narrowing his cold eyes ... she was going to swallow the bitter taste of his revenge ... he would have returned  to her that misery in which she had dragged him.

It was at that moment, as he watched the two get to a nearby hotel, which began the journey to his dark self ...

Paris is crimson red in the spring, as the salons of Versailles ... like the decay of a luxury now extinct, the result of past eras ... decadent as it was becoming his life ...

July 25, 2011 – The  black coal

Paris is black coal  during the summer, when the temperature gets stuffy, and the heat wraps the city like a hood  ... when the black dot warned residents not to go out during peak hour.

Black as the underground catacombs of Paris ... Les Carriereres de Paris, underground tunnels that inspired Hugo in "les miserables", hosting neatly stacked bones, according to some macabre aesthetic sense.

Black as his heart while he was  looking blankly beyond the windows of the apartment in rue de Four, while he was holding that damn pregnancy test,  accidentally found in the bathroom trash.

He was back in that apartment to recover some things, after yet another fight with Eun Hye ... now he was b