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Jaebum always thought that Mokpo smells differently every time he visits; and being as observant as he is, he ended up putting it into two categories – summer and autumn.
The summer smell, the one he faintly remembers from those old times he was a young med school graduate with a fresh diploma resting in his hands, was full of salt. It was everywhere, that weird itching feeling that made him unconsciously lick his lips all the time trying out the unfamiliar taste on it – it was in his clothes when he would wake up for work; it was in his hair when he would brush it with his tired fingers after falling asleep in that tiny office of his countless of times. It was etched in the pavement that used to lead to the beach. The beach itself reeked of salt every time Jaebum would collapse on the sand.
And, of course, the autumn smell, the one he still remembers from his last day in Mokpo before moving to Seoul for good; the one that hits his nose in a welcoming punch when he gets off the bus in the bus station that Friday evening. It smells like a wet pavement after a long rain, the weird and heavy metallic smell sneaking its way into Jaebum’s nose, somehow reminding of blood even. Usually, Jaebum wouldn’t use words like “scary and unsettling” to describe a smell, but it’s exactly that – it’s scary and unsettling, especially when he doesn’t know why exactly he’s here, after the initial adventure rush calms down somewhere halfway to the small town – without any roof above his head to protect him from the rain or a place to spend the night at.
So Jaebum just sighs and walks around, trying to remember all the alleyways and narrow streets of the town he was sent to after graduation. It has always seemed ridiculous, the system of having to work in a certain pre-decided hospital after finishing your studies if the government paid your tuition, however, he couldn’t argue much – Mokpo was a small, silent and quite a beautiful town, there wasn’t that much work and the salary was decent as well, he had a free flat for himself with all the taxes paid for him. And to be honest, what else could have he, a twenty-six year old adult, wanted?
The streets are almost empty as expected, it’s already way past eleven in the evening, all the shops closed aside from those few convenience stores scattered in the downtown with their displays so bright and shiny and absolutely not matching the atmosphere. Jaebum sees a few people passing by, some curious stares from the shop owners closing their stores and kiosks for yet another night.
Probably he looks like a lost tourist at the very best case scenario or plainly homeless at the worst, because some of those stares are even pitying, seeing a grown ass man aimlessly wandering around the streets of a town, which is preparing to fall asleep soon, drenched in rain like a puppy only with a thin coat on himself – Seoul’s climate was always milder than this. Nevertheless, no one says a word to him, letting him be as he wishes.
It was like a tradition, a deeply grown-in habit of the people who live here – not minding others, not really caring about who they are and what they want; not paying any attention until something big happens, rushing to places with their own personal errands – but wasn’t something they did on purpose. Mokpo is just like any other town, its people behaving like everywhere else, and sometimes, unfortunately, people don’t have enough time for each other, tormented by their own problems a bit too much to notice that something’s off. And actually, it reminds Jaebum of himself, back when Choi Youngjae was his patient.
Honestly speaking, Jaebum thought he finally can do this after seven long years, he knows that he didn’t do everything he could to save the guy – he always could’ve paid more attention, asked even more questions, notice more signs. But he was too busy going through newspapers, through various job ads, ready to jump into every opportunity to run away to a bigger city, to embark bigger adventures. At the very first moment they met, he didn’t really care about Youngjae that much, the latter was just another patient that he was told not to get attached to. However, in the end, it was the silence of Youngjae’s that lured Jaebum in, that made him angrily stubborn and helpless later.
There was something magical about the way Youngjae was silent.
Jaebum doesn’t really feel how his feet start bringing him to the direction he isn’t aware of remembering – he was there only a few times years ago, but it seems like riding a bicycle, the motion learned for the rest of his life, muscles subconsciously remembering everything as soon as he gets a thought about it.
It’s not far from the downtown, nothing in Mokpo is far, however, Jaebum finds it hard to walk because of the never ending rain that seems to be holding him back, getting in his eyes, ears and hair and behind the collar, as if the weather itself is determined to physically get into in his way. But he’s a pretty stubborn man by nature, fighting those annoying streaks of water and moving forward.
It doesn’t take long, twenty minutes and he’s there, standing in front of a building with eyes widened in surprise, stunned by how time can change things so fast. What was once “Choi’s guesthouse”, a three story building with strong white walls, shiny windows and always open doors to welcome every crazy traveler even in the middle of the night, now is a shabby place, with its walls dyed in an ugly grey shade, broken windows with cold autumn wind howling through the holes and doors so broken it feels like they’re going to fall off any second. And the sign, sprayed with black paint among all the graffiti, “out of business”.
Jaebum doesn’t even know why he’s so surprised, because he had no prior expectations, ready to accept everything as it is; he has no idea what happened not only to Youngjae, but his entire family as well. He’s aware of the fact that the patient has a sister and a brother that never visited, the one who escaped from Mokpo before any of them did and never looked back, and even if he wants to search for them, to finally put the pieces of this puzzle together, he has no idea where to start from.
So he turns around, checking out the time as the brightness of his phone screen is burning his eyes in the middle of the night. He’s determined to leave the place with the first bus, running from his past yet again, even after given this chance, because he has no idea what to do with it. And naturally, the last place to bid the last farewell to is the beach.
It’s such an important piece in all the stories that were tangled together in one huge knot – Youngjae’s, Jaebum’s and even Jinyoung’s – and it’s probably the only place here that hasn’t changed much over the years. Everything looks and feels the same – the sand is the same, its familiar yellow color feeling somewhat calming under the moonlight; waves are crashing into the shore in the same angry and aggressive way Jaebum always remembered them to. Wind is playing with his hair and he feels that he’s slightly shaking, being sure that he’ll have at least a cold tomorrow. But then again, he doesn’t really care, eyes fixed on something, on yet another coincidence of his life that doesn’t feel like a coincidence at all anymore.
There’s someone sitting on the cold and wet sand, just with a lot thicker clothing than Jaebum’s, and the latter sits down next to the familiar figure, sighing like he would’ve found a long lost friend whom his soul was yearning to see so, so much, even though he doesn’t know what they were exactly – long lost, yes; friends? Not exactly.
The man by his side doesn’t react at all at first, then he turns his head a bit and Jaebum thinks it feels like a very weird dream, a horrifying trippy hallucination, when Choi Youngjae lets out a slight smile; a warm one, but also knowing, as if he was waiting.
And then, another miraculous thing happens, Youngjae opens his mouth. His words are a mere whisper almost blown away by the harsh coastal wind, a very raw and rough sound, like a sandpaper brushing against wood, but they’re very clear nevertheless. “It’s been a long while, Jaebum.”
It indeed is – seven years is a lot and Youngjae doesn’t remind anything of that twenty-three year old guy who was sitting in Jaebum’s office like a lifeless rag, with a stare that wasn’t focusing on anything except from the invisible void in front of him, lips always moving as if he was desperately trying to let out any kind of sound, however, it never echoed through the room and he would cry; Youngjae would always cry in soundless screams, lean fingers scratching his neck as if trying to dig out his voice from there with Jaebum helplessly looking down at his knees, feeling his heart weirdly clutching in pity and sadness.
This Youngjae feels more or less familiar, but something about him is different. Jaebum can’t see the younger’s face clearly due to all the darkness that’s surrounding them, but there are a few noticeable lines marking their way on Youngjae’s face, the same lines that come from suffering, agony and worry; his skin is tanner than Jaebum remembers it being. And this Youngjae is finally smiling, even though his voice is more silent than wind and the raindrops hitting their faces.
“I was waiting for you to come back.” Youngjae says, not looking at him, focusing on the surface of the sea, which is glimmering in various colors due to full moon shining right above it. “Didn’t expect to see you for a few upcoming years yet, though. Thought you won’t have the courage, hyung.”
“You— You knew I was going to come?” Jaebum asks, surprised and a bit terrified of the way his former patient addresses him, because there’s something hidden in that hyung, something that’s making him feel scared. But at the same time, he stops searching for an explanation, with so many things happening with no other explanation than fate.
Youngjae only smiles yet again, nodding in confirmation. “You were always like that – it was always hard for you to let go of things, so eventually, you had to come back. I don’t know why though, maybe you still feel guilty about what happened to me, maybe you’re just curious. And here you are, hundreds of kilometers away from your home on ungodly hours of a Friday night.”
“There was this student in my class… His name is Park Jinyoung.” Jaebum suddenly blurts out, not even realizing it, as if some weird force is sucking those words out of his lips. “He’s a musical theater major and suddenly left me a bus ticket to Mokpo blabbering something about coincidences. It felt so surreal, for the bigger part of the trip I thought he wasn’t even real, just a ghost or a hallucination.”
“Do you think he was real?” Youngjae’s question is simple, yet meaning so much.
It takes a while for Jaebum to come up with an answer, but eventually he slowly nods, feeling the rain water splashing onto his face. “Yes… I think he was.”
“If you think so, then he must be real. In the end, we all choose what to believe in.”
“You can speak again.” Jaebum says instead of anything else, as if foolishly noticing it only now. “How… How did that happen?”
“Vocal therapy, years of it. They didn’t really believe that something good will come out of it and neither did I, but they managed to,” Youngjae’s words get cut off by a terrible cough that’s shaking his entire body as if he’s about to cough his lungs up. “They managed to restore bits of it, not without nasty side effects though. But wasn’t most of my life just a series of side effects?”
“Youngjae—“ Jaebum doesn’t know what he’s about to say, desperately trying to postpone the moment of talking about all the shit that went down years ago, but the younger doesn’t seem like he’s about to listen.
He interrupts, with a gentle but somehow strict gesture telling Jaebum to allow him to talk. “You know, this whole time Jinyoung was here, it felt like swimming in the ocean. You feel like you belong there, you’re one with the waves and the warmth of the water; your body moves in sync with the ocean and you swim around trying to stay afloat. But then one day, you get tired and you start to feel like you’re about to drown, so you swim back to land and when you get back there, you feel so heavy because you’ve lost touch with gravity for so long. You collapse on the sand as you try to find balance again and when your feet finally finds it, you stand up and look at the horizon for one last time. And no matter how beautiful the sea was and how good it made you feel… You realize it was never yours for you to keep.”
Jaebum listens to these words in awe, concentrating on every sound as if he’s afraid of the wind scattering the syllables that Youngjae worked so hard to form with his lips. He never thought that one could compare a person, even though fictional, with sea like that, but maybe that’s another charm of Youngjae’s – the fact that everything in his life started and ended with sea, making this entire monologue so possible and flawlessly logical.
“Maybe…” Jaebum finally manages to collect his thoughts to softly voice them out. “Maybe it wasn’t for you to keep, because it wasn’t where you belong? You had to get rid of that unhealthy image of Jinyoung and move on, lick your wounds and fight, trying to heal.”
“Image of Jinyoung.” Youngjae says, but his rough voice sounds incredulous and bitter. “His eyes could always speak better than his lips. His eyes could tell a story, thousands of them if you wished, you just had to know how to read them.”
And then Jaebum understands, to his own horror, that this story has never ended. Jinyoung is still alive in Youngjae’s head and there’s nothing he can do about it. It’s not like he has the right to wrestle a relatively okay thirty year old guy into treatment, when he doesn’t want to let go of his sickness. But still, panic inevitably strikes in his body, making him mumbled out a feverish, “He’s not real, Youngjae. His eyes can’t tell anything, because he’s not real. He’s not here, wake up.”
Youngjae’s face is bright with a smile, looking Jaebum right in the eyes with his dark gaze, the smile so light and even understanding, like a parent would look at their child who’s endearingly talking nonsense. “But I saw him in front of my eyes, how can he not be real, Jaebum? I know that he’s not here now, I’m not that crazy, but sometimes I just miss him, you know? He was like sea and sometimes, when I’m standing here with the wind blowing into my face and all the kids are trying to avoid me because I’m that crazy mute guy, I feel like I’m moving with the waves. And sometimes I dream of diving into that cold and dark water, but then… But then I realize that my feet were meant for land and not cut out for the sea.”
“Some people are simply made to climb trees instead of swimming, or hike hills,” Jaebum says. “Or just run really fast. You have to let go, Youngjae, this had to stop years ago.”
Youngjae nods, but his eyes, now looking at the bright yellow stars above them, seem incredibly sad and longing again.
“I have to let go,” he agrees. “But sometimes, I still find myself waking up at the beach again.”
Jaebum doesn’t remember much of what they talked about later, or whether they talked about something at all. They spent the remainder of the night just like that, like two close friends looking at horizon, waiting for the sun to rise and take all the darkness away. At some point rain stops, and it feels like Jaebum fell asleep, because a few hours later he opens his eyes only to feel his head resting on the wet sand, muscles sore from the uncomfortable position.
There’s no sign of Youngjae around, but Jaebum thinks he sees a figure exiting the beach and turning around with a wide smile, waving like sending off a family member or a very precious friend at least, and he smiles back with a sigh.
It still feels surreal, like a very vivid dream and he actually can’t tell that it wasn’t one, but he decides to trust Youngjae’s words. If he thinks that it’s real, it’s must’ve been real.
His phone rings in his coat pocket, a familiar number flashing on the screen and Jaebum isn’t sure whether he wants to pick up, but in the end he does. It’s one of his colleagues he was working with right after graduation. The guy does know that Jaebum isn’t working as a doctor anymore, but he also knows that his license is still valid and asks if Jaebum, by any chance, wants to join him and a few other specialists in a new psychology center they are planning to open.
Honestly, he’s scared, scared of putting on that white doctor’s coat again, because being a teacher is so much safer, not allowing to make any terminal mistakes. But then again, he faintly remembers Youngjae’s words, whispered last night, just before Jaebum’s eyes closed for sleep.
Just like it’s natural for you to find gravity when you stand up, it’s natural for you to let go and find your true purpose in life again. The sea is the sea, and you’re just… You.
“I’ll be back in Seoul this evening, we can discuss all the details then.” He finally says, finishing the conversation.
For a while he just sits there trying to fight the sleepiness, knowing that the bus for Seoul is leaving after half an hour, but he’s not in a rush – he looks at the horizon for one last time before standing up, letting the sea reflect in his eyes.
The sun is rising and for a split second it seems like they all are going to be okay.