지금, 당신이 어디에 있든 (Now, Wherever You Are)

III

Wednesday marked one month in this quarantined camp. So today it's one month and three days since we arrived. Didn't take long for Dae Su to find a spot that allowed us to jump over the wall unseen and leave the camp, of course Dae Su would find a way to break the rules. The surprise was discovering that Joon Yeong had been the one to spot this place. He had always been a follower of rules.

"It took an apocalypse to make Joon Yeong stop being so uptight," Wu Jin joked once.

Since the discovery, twice had they jumped over the wall, all of them together. At other times they would go alone, or in pairs. They each needed their moments of intimacy in the improvised memorial they set on a tree they came across on their way to the camp that was in a place with a direct view to their school.

I was the one who went the most often. I liked to go there and spend a couple of hours sitting by the tree and enjoying the cool air.

"Do you know what I saw today, Mom?" I said to the tree. "On the memorial wall we have at the camp. A piece of paper with a quote. It was that song you used to sing to me. 'Flowing water covers my ankles and takes away my painful memories.' It's a beautiful lyric, I think. I miss listening to you singing it to me. I know you'd like to see it on the memorial wall, you loved going to the beach, right? Or rivers, lakes, whatever, pretty much anywhere where there's water, basically." I remembered the stories my Mom would tell me of her youth and about how she would love to go to the beach, or to a river, or to a lake, and swim for hours. "On Jo wouldn't like it very much, though, I figure. She was never very fond of the beach. She was afraid of the riptide. Once I asked her about rivers and lakes and she said they were even worse, because there were millions of creatures there that we didn't know of, and that they could enter our bodies and make us sick. That's not true, is it? You've always been fine swimming. Well, maybe she'd still like the quote. Maybe she still will, if she's still alive and if we meet again. Do you think that's likely to happen, Mom? I really don't know. I don't wanna abandon hope, but you taught me that the gone ones shouldn't prevent me from living and taking care of the ones who are still around us. You said that after Dad was gone. So I don't wanna not take care of those who are still around me."

I paused for a moment, like I was hesitant to tell my Mom what I was about to say.

"Su Hyeok has not been feeling very well lately. Of course he won't ask for help or even admit he needs it. He's too stubborn, always putting others first. But even he gave up pretending he's not unwell. I don't know what to do, Mom. How did you help Dad when he needed it?"

A breeze blew and agitated the paper notes hanging from the tree. That made me remember one time, when I was around twelve, when a friend from school and I had a fight over something silly. When I got home, I told all about it to my Mom.

"Well, Cheong San, I won't tell you what to do," she said, "at your age you won't listen, you'll say I'm old and don't know anything. But I'll tell you about a time me and a friend from school fought when we were around your age now.

"She was mad at me about I don't remember what, so I took a piece of paper and wrote a contract."

"A contract?" I asked.

"Yes, a contract. I wrote 'We swear we'll always be friends and every time we fight, we have to listen to what the other has to say and try to not be mad as fast as possible.' And we both signed it. I said to her, 'Now we have a legal obligation.'"

"And did it work? Did you stop fighting?" I asked.

"Oh we fought all the time! Each fight about something more stupid and silly than the last one. But every time I would hand her the piece of paper and remind her about her 'legal obligation.' When the fights were silly, she would stop being mad immediately. Well, usually."