XXV

A week later when Yongsun walks into the infirmary, this is what she sees: Wheein sitting cross-legged on the cot with a paintbrush in hand and nurse Ahn Hyejin beside her. Wheein’s prosthetic arm is on the sheets, covered by intricate yellow lines and small pink magnolias.

«Yongsun! Look!» Wheein exclaims, dropping the paintbrush and lifting up the prosthetic arm, for Yongsun to see, «what do you think?» Wheein asks with a bright smile on her face. Yongsun gazes at the arm with watery eyes, wanting to reach out and run her fingertip along the lines of yellow paint.

There is a yearn, a most terrible yearn: Yongsun wants to touch it, to feel the hard cold steel that has been haunting her, she wants to weigh it in her hands, move the metal muscles, hear it squeak and rattle. However, Yongsun does not reach out, can not give in to the fantastic details that draw her close because that would mean the destruction of her own theory which clearly states that everything in-between the end and the beginning is an illusion (it must be a lie), but Wheein, sitting on the cot holding a prosthetic arm, has never been a clearer picture.

Yongsun leaves the infirmary after having checked to see how the prosthetic limb fits. She thinks: in this world of mechanics and madness there are two types of people, creators and destroyers. Wheein is a creator that takes the results of violent things, cold things, and turns them into something nice.