the middle of the world
They’d told him that this is what he would’ve wanted. He isn’t sure if that’s true.
The keys are abandoned on one of the tables, having been used just a few moments prior to unlock the door. A lone clock ticks in the spare few minutes that have passed by, yet every second feels like the stretch of a long hour and it’s quiet. Has been quiet since Choi Hyungil’s body had been reduced to ashes and cast into the still waters of the Yeongsan, where he had once grown up along the river banks.
Later that night, his only son had counted out the amount of time that has passed between the tip of his thumb and each crease of his fingers. Eight years, if you considered the moment of the separation that he left Korea for good; over ten if you start from the day his memory began to fade, face first before the rest began to get eaten away—leaving behind just the quivering shape of his silhouette.
All of this is now are swept up in static, plunged into a sea of white noise, figures no longer meaning anything to him. They had been worlds apart, across a period that felt like lifetimes magnified, and yet it had been when he had cradled his very remains that he felt his father’s absence the most.
It’s this revelation that nearly breaks him into two.
Outside, thunder cracks across the sky in a deafening boom. Rain falls down in heavy sheets. He runs a hand slowly over the book laid out beside him—a file of accounting records—as though the pages would leave him traces of a man that’s long gone, but to no avail. He sets it back on the shelf, swallows down a breath.
The sound of the door swinging open has his eyes darting to the front. “The restaurant’s close—” He starts, but the sight cuts him off, right where the pulse begins, renders him dead silent. For the figure before him is a man whose sharpness mirrors his own—biting, unmistakable.
They’d also told him that lightning never strikes the same place time. He wishes this time that was true.
For a moment, he doesn’t dare to speak. When he does, he keeps the emotions on lock, strangling tight, and he appears to be unaffected.
“Taewook.”
A light pause.
“It’s been awhile.”
