I'll Go On by Hwang Jungeun

Author:Hwang Jungeun
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tilted Axis Press
Published: 2018-09-30T15:55:15+00:00

–

We walk home under the summer moon.

It’s Nana’s second time returning home today, and already close to midnight. She’s weary but sleep eludes her. She feels let down by Sora, and she’s also grateful Sora didn’t stalk off by herself. The human heart is never simple, is it, Nana thinks to herself as she quietly ambles alongside Sora.

Once home, we lay out our wet things on the veranda and head for the kitchen.

There’s an album that belongs to Sora lying open on the kitchen table, with a smattering of small paper flowers, about a dozen or so, scattered next to it. These are flower heads, in fact, having no leaves or stalks, a mix of blooming rainbow pinks and cosmoses.

Aeja made them, Sora says by explanation.

You’ve been to see her then, Nana asks, to which Sora nods, yes. Sora’s cheeks are smooth and clear from the scrub.

It’s how she spends her time these days, apparently, folding paper flowers. When I got there, she was busy making them, Sora says and slides a flower across the table.

Nana shifts the pink blossom around on the tabletop. That’s nice. It’s good to know Aeja’s making something. The wind chime hanging by the window tinkles softly. There’s a paper blossom stuck to the clapper. Sora must have put it there. But the weight’s going to hold down the clapper, there’s bound to be less chiming because of it, I think, as I eye the fake bloom.

Since neither of us can sleep, we switch on the television to postpone going to our separate rooms, before eventually fetching the bedding and settling down to sleep right there on the living room floor. Once the lights are off and we’re tucked under our blankets, the moon shows itself through the wide-open windows. It’s small but luminous, and I follow its slow shift towards the left corner of the window.

What is Moseh ssi like?

Sora’s question is unexpected and I pause to consider my answer.

He’s not much of a talker.

You should invite him over one day, comes the response, but I hesitate.

Could I, I wonder, invite Moseh ssi here, to this house – are my feelings for him sufficient enough to warrant that?

Do I care that much for him?

Yes. I do care for him. My feelings for Moseh ssi may pale in comparison to Aeja’s wholehearted love for Geumju ssi, but Nana does care for Moseh ssi in her own way, and to the degree and density of affection she can muster. He’s a man of few words and lacks charm and guile, but he’s loveable the more you look at him. Still, it’s one thing to find him loveable and quite another to invite him home, Nana’s quite determined on this point. To invite him here and introduce him to Sora is to allow the softest, most tender part of Nana’s world to come into contact with Moseh ssi. It is to open up the world that no outsider apart from Naghi Oraboni has ever had proximity and access to: the world of Geumju ssi’s death and Aeja’s almost-death.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.