TIN 140

Everyone needed to know now that this play was fake. Joo Do-hwa, and even me who foolishly returned to this island. Everything was just a stupid illusion, so there was no point in holding on.

“I’ll go ahead.”

Leaving behind the dazed Lee Yuna, I walked back the way I came. Following this path to the beach, I should find the messily docked boat. Whether I could board it again, well, that I wasn’t so sure about.

Limping, stumbling, my body tilted to the right with each step. My knees kept buckling, but I didn’t have the strength left to straighten them. Just managing not to fall was the best I could manage for now.

“…”

Lee Yuna followed me silently. I could sense her presence following at an awkward distance, but I didn’t bother looking back. The conversation was over anyway, and on this small island, all paths led to the same place.

The beach wasn’t far. How long did I stumble along? When I came to my senses, the open sea spread out before me. The beach, which would normally shimmer with golden ripples, looked desolate under the cloudy sky.

“…Do you have somewhere to go?”

Lee Yuna finally spoke up casually. She sidled up next to me and looked up at me with deeply furrowed brows.

“If not, I could let you stay with me for a while?”

“…”

The wind slipped through my lips. Lately, there seem to be many people offering me a place to stay, I thought.

“I didn’t know you were such a charitable person.”

“Well, just…”

Despite my words that could have been taken as sarcasm, Lee Yuna shrugged her shoulders without showing any offense. Her pale eyes gazed at me steadily.

“If we part ways now, I feel like there won’t be a next time.”

It was a sharp intuition, but also obvious. Of course, there shouldn’t be a next time. If there were to be another meeting with Lee Yuna, it would mean all the choices I was about to make from now on had gone wrong.

“You’ve been like that  ever since you were at Joo Do-hwa’s house. Like someone who would flow away at any given moment…”

She drew waves in the air with her index finger. The gesture felt familiar, and so did her next words.

“The ocean flows everywhere, you know.”

Her smiling face held a hint of playfulness. At the same time, I recalled a kind voice I had heard before.

‘Seawater flows everywhere.’

She was saying the same thing as Lingling.

Come to think of it, she said she escaped from Oceans. Though I knew it was already too late, I regretted not asking what happened. Of course, I wouldn’t have that chance anymore.

“I’m not even really the ocean.”

“Well, that’s true…”

Lee Yuna’s expression softened at my casual response. I looked around the wide beach and asked her.

“Where is your boat, Yuna?”

“Over on that side. Close to here.”

The direction Lee Yuna pointed to was at the diagonal edge from where we were. Though perfectly hidden from view, it shouldn’t be far.

“Then hurry and go. It might rain soon.”

When I pointed at the heavily clouded sky, Lee Yuna lifted her head to look with me. Judging by the ominous wind, raindrops would fall before long.

“…”

Yet Lee Yuna couldn’t readily take a step. She usually wasn’t one to meddle this much. I wonder what had gotten into her today.

Having no other choice in the matter, I carefully broached the subject.

“Remember what you said before? About telling you if I needed anything?”

Was it the day before I left Joo Do-hwa’s house? Lee Yuna had suddenly visited and made that offer. Saying she wanted to repay me for taking the hit for her and to tell her if I needed anything.

“Of course, I remember. Why? Do you need something?”

Lee Yuna answered readily, as if finally understanding. She probably thought I would ask for something financial. But I pointed toward where her boat was and said.

“Never mind about such things. Just go ahead first. I’ll leave later.”

“…”

She raised an eyebrow sharply. Though her face was clearly full of displeasure, I didn’t mind.

“I don’t want to let you know where I’m going. After all, you are Joo Do-hwa’s fiancée.”

I knew Lee Yuna wouldn’t tell Joo Do-hwa about me. Not for my sake, but for her own welfare. If she only reported seeing me without capturing me, it wouldn’t get a good reaction. Besides, Lee Yuna would probably find it more entertaining to watch Joo Do-hwa searching without knowing about my whereabouts.

“You can stay if you don’t mind being homeless.”

While homelessness was my daily life, it would be different for Lee Yuna. Someone clearly raised in comfort—what would she do if the sea route was blocked?

“…Alright.”

Finally, Lee Yuna nodded with a sullen face. Though her response seemed reluctant, it was fine as long as she kept her word.

“Sure you don’t want me to take you to the mainland?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then…”

Lee Yuna sighed heavily and looked at me straight on. Though she still seemed uneasy, she now appeared half-resigned.

“I wish you luck.”

Her hand came to rest on my shoulder. While maintaining eye contact, she patted me lightly and spoke firmly.

“Don’t get caught, no matter what.”

Unlike before, now that I’d come this far, I was confident I wouldn’t be caught. After today, Joo Do-hwa would never find me.

“And speak casually next time we meet. Actually, I’m younger, you know?”

I had guessed as much. She had asked about speaking formally right after hearing my age. There was no need to mention that there wouldn’t be a “next time” for us.

“Take care.”

I put my own sincerity into this conventional farewell. I didn’t know who was driving the boat, but the sea was always dangerous and temperamental. If it really started raining, it would be hard to survive if you weren’t already familiar with the sea.

Not long after Lee Yuna left, I heard an engine sound in the distance. I didn’t need to see it to know it was Lee Yuna’s boat. Unlike the boat I came in, the stable sound suggested she would safely make it back to land without worry.

“…”

Even after seeing Lee Yuna off, I stood there for a long time looking at the sea. The waves surging strongly under the worsening sky were clearly different from what I saw this morning. The sea that had been as blue as that person’s eyes was now pitch black, as if it would swallow everything.

‘Were you here?’

At some point, I could only hear that person’s voice in my ears. That gentle, kind, warm voice mixed with the crashing waves filled my head.

‘Where would I go without you?’

Yeah, where did you go without me? After promising to stay by my side like that.

‘I’ll stay by your side until I die.’

“…Ha.”

A bitter laugh escaped from my lips. So that wasn’t a lie. I had resented her so much, thinking she had abandoned me and made me cross this endless ocean. When longing turned to sorrow, I felt pain as if my insides were being torn apart.

Yoon Ji-soo was dead. Leaving only words of farewell and never to meet again. The message hidden in the letter was clearly from someone foreseeing their death. Even if it wasn’t, she wouldn’t return to my side anyway.

How it happened didn’t matter. I had long since abandoned even the hope of meeting someday. In my dazed mind, only one question remained.

Why did I try to meet her?

What did I want to say when we met?

What was so desperate, what was I searching for so intensely?

Maybe it wasn’t longing but stubbornness. Because everything felt meaningless unless I did this. Because I couldn’t find a reason to live in this world without having a clear goal. Because of the sense of crisis that I might someday be consumed by endless emptiness.

‘Ji-soo mentioned it in passing. That they hoped the child wouldn’t take after her.’

Now the conversation with the old man came to mind. Yeah, why did we have to be like this until the very end? What sin did we commit that you couldn’t even write a letter to me honestly?

‘Our Ji-soo…is your mother, right?’

It became funny now. Not the old man’s question, but my answer to him.

‘No.’

‘…’

‘I don’t know either.’

I still remembered the old man’s expression. That gaze studying me intently, as if trying to gauge my intention.

But for me, it wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t an answer meant to hide something, just words spoken out of genuine confusion.

‘I don’t know…either.’

Was Yoon Ji-soo really the person who gave birth to me? Sometimes even I doubted it. When Joo Do-hwa asked about my relationship with that person, when I met people looking for Yoon Ji-soo’s face in mine, and even after hearing about that person from the old man.

‘…No one ever told me.’

I have no memory of learning the word “mother.” Yoon Ji-soo, that person, never taught me anything. They never told me where this place was, what our relationship was, or even what my name was.

‘I don’t know anything.’

I felt like a fool. That I still didn’t know a word that even six-year-old Joo Do-hwa knew. That I couldn’t even answer questions about our relationship because I had never called her that, never heard it.

‘Then why do you keep looking for that person?’

A hollow laugh kept escaping. As I stared blankly at the sea, the answer I couldn’t give Theo long ago rose to the tip of my tongue. A word too unfamiliar to me, one I had never spoken in my life.

“Because they’re…Mom…”

That’s why I’m looking.

I want to ask if they’re really my mother.

I want to call them that, just once.

I want confirmation that I have a family too, that those memories weren’t just an illusion.