After Story 171

After Story 171

His oldest memory was when he was playing with sand on the playground. He piled sand that had gotten wet from the rain on top of his hand and slowly pulled his hand out before smoothening the dome shape. He competed with his friends, whom he could no longer remember if he was close to or not, about who could make the bigger cave.

They were all so focused on making the cave that some of them would cry if it collapsed while they were making it. Eventually, one or two people started to leave after getting called by their mothers.

It was when he was the only one behind, watching over all the caves without owners.

“Aren’t you going home?”

He raised his head at the unfamiliar voice. He couldn’t remember the figures of his friends, but he could remember the face of that lady clearly. He couldn’t possibly forget. It was the first day he saw ‘that.’

* * *

“Do you see anything on mommy’s shoulder?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“No, I can’t see anything.”

“You’re sure, right?”

“Right.”

Changsik lied. There was definitely ‘that’ on his mother’s left shoulder. However, he said that he couldn’t see it. It was what he decided to say ever since he turned seven.

He realized that everyone would be uncomfortable with him saying the truth.

At first, he was uneasy that he was different from everyone else. When he got older and started wearing a school uniform, he had more interest than unease.

Maybe I have special powers. Maybe I’ll become a hero in comic books.

Then when he no longer had to wear a school uniform and became a college student, ‘that’ was neither an element of unease nor something special.

He just thought of it as a special kind of disorder that did not hinder everyday life. He did not tell anyone about it. He saw it, but he pretended he didn’t see it.

He never gained nor lost anything because of ‘that’.

The number ‘0’, or perhaps the alphabet ‘O’, or even the Korean letter ‘ㅇ’ — it could be any of them or something else entirely. Just because he saw a meaningless circle didn’t mean that something big happened in his life.

* * *

“Did you watch yesterday’s episode of ‘Today’s Mystery’?”

“The one with shamans in it?”

“The way I see it, it must be real.”

“You’re quite amazing, looking for ghosts in college. Did you get admitted through gambling?”

“Hey! Have you ever seen a ghost?”

“No.”

“Then how can you be so sure that they don’t exist?”

“Here, look. Actually, I’m superman. No wait, I guess it makes me supergirl. Anyway, I can fly through the sky and shoot laser beams from my eyes.”

“What kind of nonsense is that?”

“Ghosts make sense, but not supermen?”

“This and that are different.”

“They’re the same, isn’t that right, Changsik?”

The two people chatting in front of him looked his way at the same time. Changsik stuffed some potato fries in his mouth and responded,

“There may be ghosts or there may not be.”

“Hey! How do ghosts make any sense? If there’s something spiritual, it would’ve been scientifically proven a long time ago.”

The other person, who was pro-ghosts, spoke,

“Science couldn’t even fully grasp the human brain. Ghosts might be some kind of scientific phenomenon happening at the atomic level, right?”

“If the tens of thousands of measuring instruments that modern science created cannot see it, then it just doesn’t exist. Even if it does exist, it doesn’t exist if we can’t see it.”

“But air exists when you can’t see it.”

“Air has been scientifically proven, even its composition, but with ghosts, there’s not even a piece of counterevidence of its non-existence, much less proof of its existence. It’s the same as supermen, you know?”

Seeing the two friends discussing heatedly in front of him, Changsik looked at the ‘0’ on top of their shoulders.

Was that science or ghosts? As he had watched it from a young age, he would feel disappointed if he didn’t see anything at this point.

“Hey, Ahn Changsik, you make the conclusion. Do ghosts exist or not?”

Changsik stood up with the tray that only had the empty burger wrap.

“What if they exist and what if they don’t? It doesn’t really matter.”

After throwing away the trash on the tray and returning it, he left the fast food restaurant.

Whenever he looked at the faces of the people coming his way, he also saw the symbol on their shoulders. All of them were shaped like ‘0’.

All he saw was the same symbol, and even during his military service, he had never seen anyone with a different symbol. Once, he tried to find the meaning behind that symbol, but it was to no avail.

The decisive event that made him lose interest in the symbol occurred three years ago when he stared at the face of a man coming his way and got beaten up.

Ever since then, he just treated it as some kind of disorder of his pupils.

It never really bothered him, so he didn’t go to the hospital either. When he first discovered the symbol when he was young, he spoke about it innocently and had to visit the hospital a lot.

He would probably confess he had this ‘ability’ to his children around the time he dies; he could actually see what they couldn’t.

What would his children think? They would probably think that he was in the terminal stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

He glanced at his friends following him before looking ahead of him again, when,

He saw ‘something else’ among the crowd of people pouring out of the train station because it was rush hour.

Among the red ‘0’s floating above everyone’s shoulders was a ‘1’ that clearly proved that it was different.

This was the first time it happened in his life. He slowly turned his head around to look for the person with the ‘1.’

As the crowd was tightly packed, it wasn’t easy to find where ‘1’ went.

“Hey! Where are you going!”

He waved his hand at his friends calling out to him from behind and chased the ‘1.’ The people scattered after stepping on the pavement, and he eventually managed to find the owner of ‘1.’

It was a woman in her fifties wearing cool sunglasses. Changsik stood next to the lady.

Why was this person different? That symbol was a ‘1’. This was the moment he realized that the identity of the symbol he could not figure out for the past 20 years was a number.

The traffic signal changed. The lady was all laughs as she was on the phone.

Her high-pitched voice suppressed all the noise around her, and not minding the gazes of others, she kept talking into the phone while showing off her loud voice.

Changsik followed the lady to the other side of the road. His mouth was itching to say something. However, there was nothing he could ask. What would he ask?

Ma’am, there’s a red number 1 on your shoulder, what do you think it could be? — Asking her if she knew ‘the way’ sounded like a better question.

Eventually, the lady disappeared from his sight. It was the first time he saw the number 1. However, nothing had changed aside from the fact that he had discovered a new symbol. The meaning behind it was still a mystery.

“What are you doing? Who was that woman for you to follow her like you’re in a trance?”

When he looked back, he saw his friends, who followed him across the road.

“No, it’s nothing.”

“You’re okay, right?”

Changsik turned around to look at the road that the lady went down before speaking,

“Actually, I was wondering if she was the lady who lived above me when I was young. She really looked after me a lot.”

“Really? Then you should’ve talked to her.”

“I saw her from up close and saw that she wasn’t the same person.”

“Sometimes, you look like you’re staring at something strange, you know? You can actually see ghosts, can’t you?”

Changsik smiled and shook his head. 0 and 1 — those seemed far-fetched from any kind of ghosts. Machine code and ghosts, these two seemed completely unrelated without any point of contact.

Having returned home, Changsik took a shower and thought about the lady with the 1 on her shoulder that he saw during the day. In a world filled with 0s, a 1 meant something special.

What was that woman? What did 0 mean, and what did 1 mean?

He thought he had lost interest and didn’t have any attachments anymore, but his head was filled with the symbols like the time he was in middle school.

Just as he was agonizing over a problem that he could not solve, his sister came to his room.

To their parents, she was a proud daughter of the family who passed the test for a civil servant at the young age of 25, and to Changsik, she was a thankful family member who gave him pocket money from time to time.

“You should really clean up a little. Even pigs would freak out at the sight of this place.”

“This is on the cleaner side.”

Instead of his parents, who lived in the countryside, his sister looked out for him a lot.

When they were young, they were quick to get into fights, but as they got older, they became closer instead.

Changsik looked at the number zero on top of his sister’s shoulder. It was naturally a zero. His curiosity towards the number 1 deepened.

“I saw that someone was moving in next door.”

“At this hour?”

Moving in at 8 in the evening, huh?

“Looks like he doesn’t have much luggage. He seemed to be carrying it all by himself.”

“You sound quite attentive.”

“He’s quite the looker, and he has a good physique too. Above all, he was really polite. He greeted me when I came across him on the way up, saying that he was moving in today. He looked really kind.”

After seeing off his sister, who said she was leaving, Changsik looked at the door of the apartment next to his.

As this was a one-room room that had a frequent change of tenants, he had never gotten close to his neighbors. Though it was doubtful whether living next door would mean they would get close in an era like this.

The lights were turned on. Music started flowing out. He could hear a singing voice following the music before turning quiet as though the person realized that he was making too much noise.

Changsik was relieved to see that this person seemed to know the etiquette. He wished for this man he didn’t know the name of to be a quiet person as he returned to his house.

* * *

It was the number 4. It turned out that the world of numbers didn’t just contain 0 and 1, but numbers above that as well.

Changsik followed the man who had a 4 on his shoulder. The man walked down a familiar path.

When the man eventually stopped, Changsik widened his eyes. It was the villa that he lived in.

He quickened his steps and entered the building before the door closed, following the man walking past the glass door.

“Hello,” the man greeted him with a bright smile.

This was the first time he had received a greeting from someone else while living here, other than from the landlord who lived on the 5th floor.

Changsik awkwardly bowed back.

“Do you live here?” asked the man.

“Yes.”

“I moved here a week ago. Are you a college student?”

“Yes.”

“You’re quite good-looking. You must be quite popular with the girls.”

The man flattered him. Just as it was about to become awkward from the lack of conversation, the man walked up the stairs. Room 301 was the man’s house.

“So you lived right next to me. You should say hello the next time we meet.”

The man smiled and went into his house. Just like his sister said, he was really polite. Usually, when people living in the same villa came across each other, they would smile awkwardly or pretend they didn’t see anyone.

Changsik closed the door and thought back to the man. It wasn’t a 0 nor a 1, but a 4. What could it be?

* * *

“Attending a trial?” Changsik asked his friend.

It was that friend who believed that ghosts existed. Next to him was the science girl that always hung out with him.

“They say an evil spirit gets attached to someone who commits murder.”

“You’re going to watch a trial just because you want to see that?”

“In Korea, trials are fundamentally public, meaning there’s no problem with going and watching.”

What a passion. A trial was something he had never been to before.

Eventually, he decided to go with him. He would’ve hesitated if the application process was tedious, but he accepted when he heard that he could just go.

* * *

“She’s not picking up? Mom, you’re clearly overly worried. I’m sure she’s busy. Right, she’ll call you when it’s time, so don’t worry so much.”

His mother became more and more worried about her children every day, even though she had been very lenient in raising them when they were young.

Changsik smiled and left his house. Today was the day he was attending the trial that he promised his friends he would go see with them a month ago.

On his way out, he came across the man living next door. Just as he was about to greet him, he saw something different from usual.

The number 5.

“Going on a date?”

“Not really a date. Just an appointment.”

“Have fun.”

From 4 to 5. The number had increased by one. What could this mean? He was curious, but his appointment came first.

He met up with his friends and went to Songjung Court. They were able to attend the trial without any complicated process. It was a murder trial.

“It makes me nervous.”

“Me too.”

Just as he was waiting while listening to his friends, he saw the figure of the defendant.

At that moment, Changsik froze. Among the numerous zeros in the court was an eye-catching 1.

There was the number 1 on the left shoulder of the defendant.

* * *

Maru grabbed his pants and looked at the actor playing the defendant. He expressed the state of his thoughts becoming paralyzed and not being able to do anything with quite a lot of detail.

His mouth was slightly gaping and his eyes were fixed. In a situation where the surrounding noise became extremely distant, an okay sign shook his head.

“Nice expression, Maru.”

He listened to Producer Cha’s voice and stood up from his seat.

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