He grabbed me by the waist and pulled me back. An icicle broke off above where I’d been standing and shattered on the ground. He kept his hand on my waist. The nuns opened the doors and the perfume of incense wafted out into the rain.

SEOLLAL CAME at last. I made tteokguk for the guest house and walked over to let Kerrand know and to tell him it was a holiday, everything would be closed. He said Park had already told him, but thanked me anyway. He’d stocked up on instant noodles from the convenience store.

“Why do you never try my cooking?” I said, smarting from another refusal.

“I don’t like spicy food,” he said, seeming surprised at being asked to explain himself.

“My tteokguk isn’t spicy.”

He shrugged, he’d try it next time. I forced a smile. I looked over at his desk, Kerrand stood aside to let me in.

Some of the drawings were in pencil, others in ink. Kerrand drew his character with the assurance that comes from knowing the strokes by heart, being able to manipulate the forms with closed eyes. The hero arriving in a town. I recognized the hotels in Sokcho. The frontier was a scribble of barbed wire. The cave with the Buddhas. He’d lifted them from my world and planted them in his imaginary one, in shades of gray.

“You never use color?”

“I don’t see the point.”

I frowned, dubious. Sokcho was so colorful. He pointed to a scene of a snowy mountaintop with the sun high overhead. A few lines showing the outlines of the rocks, that was all. The rest of the page was blank.

“What matters is the light. It shapes what you see.”

Looking again, I realized I didn’t see the ink. All I saw was the white space between the lines, the light absorbed by the paper, the snow bursting off the page, real enough to touch. Like a Chinese ideogram. I scanned other panels. The frames seemed to distort and blur, as though the main character was struggling to break free of their confines. Time expanded.

“How do you know when a story is done?”

Kerrand came closer to the desk.

“My character reaches a point when I know he has a life of his own. I can let him go.”

The room was so small, he had to stand close to me. I could feel the heat of his body. I asked him why his hero was an archaeologist. He seemed to find this amusing.

“People must ask you that all the time.”

He smiled, no they didn’t. Then he started to talk about the history of comic books, the rise of European artists after the two world wars, the appearance of characters that had influenced him, Philéomon, Jonathan, Corto Maltese. Travelers. Loners.

“I would have preferred my character to be a sailor. But that was impossible, what with Corto Maltese.”

I shrugged.

“I’ve never heard of him. I don’t see why there couldn’t be more than one seafaring hero.”