It was a very hot summer day like today. When I visited Seoul, a friend drove a Volvo and dropped me off near the Colt statue at the three-way intersection in Itaewon. Why did she, who always hung out with me until the evening, asked me to break up with her in broad daylight? I waved my hand in regret and tried to make eye contact with her. She ignored my gaze, gave me a stern look, made a U-turn, and disappeared.
In school, we were best friends. We were always together. Whenever we were hungry, we would run to a Chinese restaurant, and if she ordered jajangmyeon, I would order jjamppong, and we would share it. The last time I saw her, we shared jjamppong and jajangmyeon in Dongjak-dong, where she lived, and parted ways. I didn't realize it would be the last time I would see her. Her coldness was so eerie that I didn't ask her why.
The other two encounters in my life were also in broad daylight when the sun was pouring. "Let's go home," he said with an annoyed look on his face. I broke up with him and went down the hot downhill slowly as if I would collapse. It was clear that this was the "last meeting." Another encounter was around 3 p.m., also in the blazing sun. I looked back at him three times as he turned and walked away, and he looked back at me twice. The last time I looked back, he shook his head in annoyance and disappeared around the corner and out of my sight. My heart ached with the sadness of another 'last meeting'. All three people never met again. Perhaps the heartache under the scorching sun was so vivid that even if they were given the chance to meet again, it would be for final closure.
Maybe that's why, standing under the sizzling sun, I can hear the pain pounding on my bones as if parting with someone is starting. Sadness slowly penetrates the whole body. At that time, I wore a bikini swimsuit and tan. It must be because I wanted to forget the separation under the hot sun, becoming a different species, not myself with the tanned skin. I haven't done it this summer since I got a tan on the equator last April. Just as children stop doing what they were doing when the time comes, so I was going to keep doing the addiction to tanning until it came over me naturally, but suddenly this summer I don't want to do it anymore. The friends who parted ways under the hot sun were forgotten as if they had disappeared into the fog, and the suntan stopped, and time took care of it.
In Camus' novel The Stranger, the main character, Meursault, says that the reason why he killed an Arab was 'because of the hot sun'. Wouldn't it be that people made up and lied in order to adapt well to human relationships, but then erupted because people could no longer hide the anger that was hidden in their heart under the scorching sun?
I'm afraid to meet people on such a hot summer day. This is because the joy of meeting can also surge for a while and pour out all of my heart to the other person. If I miss a person, I'd rather sit at a local bar, look around the guests, and enjoy the solitude in the crowd. I ordered Guinness beer. I drank it all the way. It's bitter. I feel relieved.
No comments:
Post a Comment