CHAPTER 4

Tokyo, 2014

It was maybe the screeching of the door against the marbled floor. Or maybe it was just the sudden raising of a noise within the usual dead silence surrounding his moments at the museum. Whatever it was, it brought Jiyong back to present with a jump, one hand still clenched as if it was still holding dirt and mud and rain, the ones he had been holding in his memories.

The policeman, Youngbae, was standing there, leaning over the doorframe carrying two cups of coffee on each hand and a tired, knowing smile tugging from his lips.

“I was feeling tired and only guessed you probably were too. So, I took the freedom to buy you a cup of coffee,” he said, walking inside the gallery room. His eyes kept coming back and forth from one painting at the walls to another; and yet his eyebrows remained frowned as if trying to conceal the amazement evident in his treacherous eyes. He approached to the place Jiyong was sat at, and giving one of the cups to Jiyong’s stretched hand, he sat by his side and sighed.

Jiyong made a face, expecting the customary annoying comment about the greatness of the art, an unanswerable question, or a critique; the last ones being the worst. But Youngbae stood silent, taking small silent sips of coffee, while studying the painting in front of them with stubborn eyes. He probably didn’t know. Jiyong stared at the newcomer profile by his side. Didn’t even realize how meaningful that kind of silence was for him. He missed it, deeply. Heavy pounds rose from inside his chest and he bit his lower lip. He might also fear it too, he acknowledged, when a few drops of sweat slid from the back of his neck. He feared the memories that came with it.

After a couple of minutes, Youngbae placed the cup over the wood of the bench with a soft thud and sighed again.

“I wonder why I can’t find anything,” he complained with a low chuckle. His hair fell in front of his eyes, covering his expression and therefore making it impossible for Jiyong to read his face.

“Anything?” Jiyong asked, puzzled. His eyes followed the direction the man’s eyes had been staring at before, to the painting of the mountains and the river.

“Yes. I can’t find anything to explain the sadness so evident in the majority of these paintings,” Youngbae said, glancing around at the rest of the art hanging from the walls. Then he raised his shoulders and laughed quietly staring at his hands, in a way so shy and unusual to the way Jiyong had pictured Youngbae’s personality to be. “Is not like one can actually know what an artist thinks when doing their work... right?” he asked with a sardonic smile appearing on his face and raised his eyes to Jiyong. “But this paintings-” he pointed at the one in front of them, “-they get you, still, to be curious in a daunting way.”

Jiyong opened and closed his mouth, unable to explain, to justify. A bitter taste overcame his mouth. Because if anything, all the explanations he had ready to be told where his own and only his. Thinking backwards, all the moments spent inside those four walls were sad in a way he could only comprehend. He gulped when that realization hit him and stood quiet.

“I mean,” Youngbae kept talking, his eyes glued to the front unaware of the terror shining out of Jiyong’s eyes, “Landscapes. Simple landscapes and yet all I can feel when looking at them is sadness,” he sighed defeated and held his chin between his palms, quirking one side of his face, thoughtful.

“What is it that you see?” Jiyong finally asked, when he found the strength to vocalize something. Youngbae peered at him quickly out of the corner of his eye and then hid his face once more under the tuft of his hair. Though his lips remained visible and they tightened in that way Jiyong’s also did when he was unsure of revealing something. Jiyong shifted uneasy in the bench when the silence stretched for too long.

“Well,” Youngbae started finally, “I remember telling you I am from a place from the South,” he glanced at him quickly and then looked at his hands, which were wringing up and down the cup of coffee over his lap.

“You did,” Jiyong nodded.

“It is stupid, really,” he cleared his throat and looked at the ceiling. The marks under his eyes became more noticeable with the sudden light, “I see my grandmother,” he confessed and laughed, the corner of his eyes crinkling. “We used to go out and harvest the strawberries during the winter. You see that sky right there,” he pointed at one of the farthest paintings with a blue sky completely free of clouds, “It looks just as how the winter sky in my town was. So ice-blue you felt cold just by looking up.”

“Where is she now?”

Youngbae eyes, though, remained fixed at the painting of that sky and he only jerked back to stare at Jiyong when the last hawked to get his attention.

“Who?” he asked confused and blinked two times.

“Your grandmother. Where is she?”

“Oh! She is still there at Sanagochi. With my older brother,” Youngbae answered with a slight smile.

“You have an older brother?” Jiyong’s eyebrows rose, “I have a younger sister. She is at Hong Kong now studying fashion,” Jiyong let out with a satisfied smile, and then proceeded to talk about her sister’s multiple talents and dreams, and the way she loved styling her hair in weird and unusual ways. Youngbae listened to all of it with a knowing grin on his face.

“Last time I talked with her she was planning to travel to America. Everyone seems to want to escape to America recently,” Jiyong said, shaking his head.

“My brother speaks too a lot about America. I guess it is the fact it seems so far away from here,” Youngbae shrugged, but his fingers clenched tightly around the mug between his hands.

“What do you mean?”

“Well far away means in some way detaching, escaping. Who does not like the idea of going places far away from the things we only know? The mystery of what we will find… The possibility of finding a better life, good surprises, more fulfilling experiences. My brother talks about those things a lot.”

“Curiosity,” Jiyong interrupted with a sigh.

“Excuse me?” Youngbae asked, frowning.

“I said curiosity. He is curious,”

“I believe so. Or he is just tired. Who knows?” Youngbae frowned and the weight of his worries became noticeable in the sudden slump of his shoulders.

Jiyong reached with one hand, a hesitant one, and placed it over the other’s shoulder. Youngbae looked at the hand, then at Jiyong’s face and then at the floor. Jiyong wasn’t one to touch anymore, one to give comfort and yet he stared surprised at his own movements, unable to stop himself.

“What are you doing here all by your own?” he softly asked.

“How do you know I am by my own?” Youngbae grimaced, but his cracking voice gave everything away.

Jiyong shrugged and a playful smile tugged his lips, “A lucky guess. You remind me of myself.”

Youngbae chuckled and shook his head still looking at the floor. But his posture relaxed and that was enough for Jiyong. He didn’t get an answer back but it didn’t seem necessary for neither of them. Both knew. The similarities were hanging around them like remainders. And Jiyong ran her hand up and down Youngbae’s back unsure of who exactly was comforting whom.

“My brother is unable to walk. We were trying to climb one of the trees around our house. He was so confident of himself, he always was. They say confidence can be dangerous, but we were kids and we didn’t know about those things,” Youngbae sighed and ran a hand over his face, “He fell right in front of my eyes and then he never walked again. And now I am here because the money grandma earns by selling strawberries isn’t enough to p