M 127

“Brigadier General.” 

The raspy call, barely a proper sound, scattered helplessly in his mouth. Though he couldn’t have missed it, Ki Tae-jeong didn’t ask why he called him. Usually, he would have scolded him for being frustrating… No, lately he might have even brightened up, asking why he called him first.

With each blink, a different version of Ki Tae-jeong flashed by.

The warehouse filled with waste water, the fake office plastered with cheap furniture, the 1-Hwan shelter they ran through flames, the sports car that flew through the sky, the windowless bunker, the kiss they shared in his shabby quarters, Ki Tae-jeong’s enormous black and white official residence, the greenhouse of the glass-built government building, a quiet afternoon picking apples together, the grand hospital built like a temple and the cold floor of the Ministry of Defense building, the musty smell inside the container where he curled up, the old inn room in the 2-Hwan, the oil-stained beach of the 2-Hwan and the blinding white lights, and…

The man’s voice calling him in each of those moments piled up like a tower. As time passed, his once authoritative tone gradually softened. He wondered why he spoke like that, and warm feelings began to overlay the crude teasing that had brought tears to his eyes. By the end, it was so hot it felt like it would burn up, impossible to ignore.

Sehwa closed his eyes tightly and reopened them, trying to shake off the persistent afterimages. The man standing before him was still that man, Ki Tae-jeong.

Despite having not flinched even after drinking strong medicine, the man before him looked like someone who had died and come back to life several times. Pale, sunken eyes, a jawline sharpened as if chiseled… At some point, the man who had started calling him “Lee Sehwa” instead of “baby” pierced his insides with his jet-black gaze.

Ki Tae-jeong’s touch traveled from his forehead to his temple, his cheek, and finally to the tip of his chin before falling away. The cigarette scent that had once enveloped him like armor was now completely gone.

“….”

Ki Tae-jeong kept sifting through the layers of sentences piled up inside him, wanting to say something more to Sehwa. But no matter how much he sorted through them, when he pushed away all the shabby modifiers stuck to them, all that remained was that one word: sorry.

He had lied to Sehwa again. Saying he’d show his face often on the news? Impossible. His name would only be mentioned in the media if the country’s airspace was breached and an invasion began. Perhaps if he met with an unfortunate accident, there might be a brief obituary… But realistically, both were impossible, so Sehwa wouldn’t be upset by encountering his face in any way.

But if he said he was returning to the battlefield, and that he’d be choosing only the most dangerous places, Sehwa would surely cry. He had just started to show his edge towards him, to refuse him, to voice his own opinions in his own way… He didn’t want to make it impossible for him to hate him freely. So he had to act as nonchalantly as possible, as if it were nothing.

A sandy breeze fluttered over Sehwa’s shoes, which he should have given him long ago. Ki Tae-jeong bent down again, making a hand visor over them. With his back to the sea, he tried to prevent anything from settling on the feet of the precious person he would soon have to leave.

On the day they first met, Sehwa had come walking, splashing through dirty puddles, and seemed to have noticed something, shrinking slightly. Back then, instead of asking if he was okay, he had mocked him, asking if he was that famous flower. Now, as he was leaving, he wanted to prevent even the sand of the beach from touching his feet. He wanted him to know that he now cherished him dearly…

Part of the pile of firewood, its ends starting to wear down, collapsed with a clatter. As if that sound were a signal flare, a faint engine noise cutting through the silence could be heard from far away. It seemed General Oh Seon-ran had arrived.

“Forget all the nasty things I said… Live well.”

“….”

“Be happy, with the child.”

Though it wasn’t raining, round droplets fell heavily onto Ki Tae-jeong’s crown, the toe of Sehwa’s shoe, and the white sand. Ki Tae-jeong stubbornly pretended not to notice and kept stroking Sehwa’s new shoes.

The roaring sound grew too loud to ignore. Only then did Ki Tae-jeong raise his head, as if he had made up his mind.

Sehwa’s slender, drooping neck was trembling finely.

The sorrowful face of the person he loved, stained with various emotions, the one he had ruined.

“Don’t get hurt anymore.”

Even knowing that he probably couldn’t see him properly through his tears, Ki Tae-jeong forced a faint smile. He wanted to be remembered like this, not as the ogre-like face that had spewed harsh words and put a leash on him.

The car door opened, and the sound of military boots scraping the ground in unison was heard.

This was truly the last moment. Ki Tae-jeong let go of Sehwa’s shoes and slowly stood up.

…In truth, instead of saying sorry, or be happy, or don’t hurt anymore,

He wanted to say

I love you,

Sehwa, I love you.

***

“So we started taking out everything sealed in Z2 and beginning component analysis, and Lieutenant Kim, no, that bastard Kim Seok-cheol, how he struggled…”

General Oh Seon-ran’s voice was incredibly cheerful. It wasn’t that he was truly excited, but he was trying to act bright for Sehwa, who still had tears hanging from his eyes.

“Oh, Sehwa. I heard you once went through checkpoints after spraying tanning spray on your face?”

“…Ah, yes.”

“That spray also came out as evidence, and during the inspection process, we even found a list of high-ranking officials who secretly entered and exited the city using this method. We decided to round them all up. It’ll probably be just a light fine at most, but of all people, Ki…”

General Oh Seon-ran, who was about to mention Ki Tae-jeong’s name without realizing it, stopped abruptly and cleared his throat softly.

“Ahem, anyway… These were people who had never been caught on anything before, so watching them thrash about was quite a sight.”

The massive vehicle slid smoothly out of the port. The familiar streets of the 5-Star were brightly lit in the distance.

General Oh Seon-ran’s car was larger than Ki Tae-jeong’s. The license plate color was slightly different, and the decorations embedded here and there were much more lavish. The engine noise heard from outside was tremendous, but it was just as quiet inside as Ki Tae-jeong’s car…

Ah, didn’t he say he was no longer a Brigadier General but a General now? How high a rank was that, and how great a position?

Sehwa awkwardly placed the glossy bag on his lap and stared blankly out the window. He said after Major General comes Lieutenant General, so the next would be General… Then this car he was riding in might be one of the things Ki Tae-jeong had longed for so much.

“Would you like some water?”

“…Yes, thank you.”

As he moistened his dry lips, ridiculously, tears that he thought had dried up fell. It seemed all the moisture in his body was being used for crying.

Even though he was in a ridiculous outfit with new shoes that didn’t match his hospital gown, General Oh Seon-ran didn’t say anything. He didn’t ask what Sehwa had talked about with Ki Tae-jeong or what they had decided to do from now on… General Oh Seon-ran didn’t ask anything. Without even letting out a light sigh carelessly, he quietly handed over a handkerchief.

Only when the intense crying began to subside did General Oh Seon-ran start rambling about the aftermath of the trial. He said to listen comfortably, as if it were background music.

The villains who had been mentioning him and the baby were in a lot of trouble, and an old man who got excited thinking he could get a piece of the action even threw off his wig… Listening to such light and ridiculous small talk seemed to calm him down a bit.

Sehwa pressed the sleeve of his cardigan against his eyes, thinking about the unfamiliar loss. Wouldn’t anyone cry like this when told it’s the end? So this was… a reflexive, habitual kind of tears? Not because he had any lingering feelings for Ki Tae-jeong…

“I’m sure it doesn’t feel real to you. It doesn’t to me either.”

Judging that Sehwa had calmed down a bit, Oh Seon-ran finally shared his thoughts in a gentle voice.

“For a very long time, I had only one goal. Finding Jin-woo’s child, you… That was my only purpose in life.”

“….”

“You know well how blindly determined I was to achieve it… But truthfully, deep in my heart, I had already given up, thinking I was wrong. There were no clues left, and more than 20 years had passed… Even so, I kept searching through brokers and wandering abroad. Because…”

“….”

“Because without that, if I didn’t at least do that, my life had no meaning.”

General Oh Seon-ran shook his head, saying he had been completely blinded.

“But then, miraculously, I found you. I still wake up and spend a long time… a long time thinking. That day 21 years ago was so vivid, Jin-woo’s face as he cried remembering you still lingers… I can hardly believe that I’ve safely met you…”

“….”

“But you know, even in the midst of joy, I suddenly became anxious about what comes next. I had vaguely promised to help you live well, for Jin-woo’s sake too, if I found his child, but I never had any concrete plans on how to do that…”

General Oh Seon-ran faintly pulled at the corners of his mouth, saying he never thought he could really find Sehwa, that a day would come when he could smile again like this.

“I think it might be similar for you, Sehwa.”

“….”

“Just as I spent time searching for you, you must have lived yearning for something desperately. Wanting to pay off your debts and go to the 1-Star, or, um, wanting to be loved by… Brigadier General Ki Tae-jeong, or wanting to protect your child… Things like that. Of course, there must have been many small wishes that I can’t even guess…”

“….”

“Some things were achieved, and some remained forever out of reach. I’m indescribably happy to have found you, but sadly, there’s a past time that you can never fill, just like that. Emotions aren’t like bartering; just because you gain something doesn’t mean the empty spaces get filled.”

General Oh Seon-ran’s voice, as he lowered his eyes slightly and muttered, was filled with loneliness.

“But… what can we do, we have to live on.”

“….”

“I’m going to think slowly about it. What efforts I need to make to become a real family with you, not just an adoptive father and son, now that I should return to the country, what duties I can perform here and how I should maintain my position to strengthen this newly built fence, and for me, who has finally achieved my long-cherished wish… in what direction should I move forward…”

“…”

“And I hope that you, Sehwa, will also think about these things.”

General Oh Seon-ran leaned in and patted the back of Sehwa’s trembling hand.

“Whether you liked him or not, your heart must have been full of thoughts about that person… It’s natural to cry and feel empty inside when that suddenly becomes hollow. You don’t need to force yourself to fill that space. You don’t have to.”

Instead of impossible dreams like paying off an absurd amount of debt or wanting to become a person rather than a lower-class citizen. Thinking about what to eat today, or just sleeping soundly because you don’t like this or that, or maybe even going on a sudden trip… General Oh Seon-ran comforted him, saying that from now on, it’s okay to spend each day thinking about such trivial things, and that as time passes, another day will come. It seemed like comfort he was offering to himself as much as to Sehwa.

“I heard that your symbol in the House was March… Is that right?”

Sehwa’s throat felt sore as if he had swallowed glass shards, so he just managed to nod his heavy head.

“When I first heard about it from my subordinate, I thought March was the coolest card.”

A self-deprecating sigh escaped without him realizing. He hadn’t hoped for such grand comfort. March was just a tiny flower petal, casually called sakura, hongdan, or samwol… It was the most humble card in the deck, not at all fitting the name Sehwa, which was given with wishes to grow into an incredibly strong flower.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to… go that far…”

“I’m serious. I don’t know much about hwatu, but it seems like only March has something like a curtain?”

That was true. While other months always had animals or people depicted, March had nothing drawn on it. Behind the blooming flowers, there was just a black curtain hanging. March was a lonely card where not even a shadow of anything living could be found.

“Doesn’t the uncertainty of what’s behind the curtain mean that anything is possible? March is the only one like that, which made me think, ‘This is indeed Jinwoo’s son, no, our son.'”

It was an overly generous interpretation. Sehwa was grateful to General Oh Seon-ran for giving such a wonderful meaning to his nickname, and… ridiculously, tears began to fall again, but for a different reason this time. He didn’t understand himself for crying so much, and it was just tiring… but his tears wouldn’t stop, as if his tear ducts were broken.

“Sehwa, let’s try to live.”

With a voice that made the listener’s heart ache, General Oh Seon-ran pleaded earnestly.

“Don’t try to force yourself to be okay, and don’t try to erase those traces… Let’s just try to live well again.”

“…,Yes.”

Sehwa’s nod, which had been dazed at first, gradually became more pronounced.

General Oh Seon-ran was right. This place would always belong to Ki Tae-jeong. Even if his feelings for him had changed and they could no longer be together, this empty space couldn’t be replaced by someone else. No matter how precious Hae-rim was or how grateful he felt towards General Oh Seon-ran, this wasn’t an area they could fill.

Since he couldn’t turn back time, there was no choice but to stand up on his own. He might have to live with a hole in his heart for a very long time, but at least he should try to wash away the black ashes that had settled inside.

Now that he had Hae-rim, even if he couldn’t be happy himself, he wanted the baby to be happy…

Yes, let’s live.

“I’ll keep… thinking about it, from now on… how…”

“…”

“How to live well, I’m not sure yet, but…”

Eventually, everything will become dull with time. If you endure, things will somehow flow on. So…

Sehwa took several deep breaths and finally collapsed his upper body.

He wanted to distance himself from Ki Tae-jeong. When he asked to hand over all parental rights for the child, it wasn’t just something he said casually. He meant every word.

“I’ll fix it, I’ll change”… He didn’t believe those words at all. From the day he decided to deceive him and run away, their relationship was as good as over.

It was already… a finished relationship.

The faint scent of Ki Tae-jeong’s perfume wafted from the surface of the bag that touched his nose. Inhaling deeply the lingering scent that would soon disappear, Sehwa decided that today would be the last day he would cry.