I think that for a while now, using the medium of writing, I’ve tried to prove over and over again in many other stories I’ve written that the relationship between Gyu-ho and me was something so special to us that no one could take it away from us, that it was 100 percent real. Using all kinds of other methods to create Gyu-ho and write him as other characters, I’ve tried to show the relationship we had and the time we spent together as complete as they were, but the more I try, the further I get from him and the emotions I had back then. My efforts become something fainter and more distanced from the truth. The made-up Gyu-ho in my writing got hurt or died many times, and is always resurrected, as if love saves his life—whereas the real Gyu-ho lives and breathes and keeps moving on. The greater the gap between the two becomes, the harder it gets to endure it. I’ve tried and tried for a long time, but it’s only made me realize more clearly than ever that all I have left is a handful of empty words scattering away and leaving me behind as I sit here, scribbling. My shoulders hunched forward, a deep frown on my face, the world so small that I can hear my own breathing.

◊

The lantern we sent up that day did not go far. The moment it made it past the breakwaters, it caught fire and spewed black smoke over the water before crashing into some faraway waves. Some of the people around us started laughing. Smiling, the woman in the red lipstick commented that there must’ve been a hole somewhere in the paper. I looked back and forth between the other lanterns that were flying far away and the spot that ours had fallen into. I stared at it for a long time. The other people started to move on, going their own way. Gyu-ho also turned and walked away, but I couldn’t get myself to leave. It was unbelievable to me that my wish had fizzled.

I’d started writing so many things on that lantern, fixing my life many times. To succeed in my diet, to win the apartment lottery, to have a Porsche Cayenne, to have a bestselling debut . . . None of them was what I really wished for, so I crossed all the words out. That was how the lantern ended up with a hole, I bet.

In the end, I left just two syllables on the lantern.

Gyu-ho.

My only wish.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

Already, my second published book.