Desires Chapter 1.8 - Desires

The late dawn street, empty of anyone, was so blue it was almost black. The nape of his neck grew cold from the desolation of being sucked into a deep abyss. A chill seeped through his entire body. Song Yeongin deliberately pressed down a black baseball cap, larger than his face, as if to hide it. His small face was completely buried in the cap.

Song Yeongin’s day began at 4 in the morning, with cleaning the locker room and gym of the 24-hour fitness center and sauna.

After finishing the cleanup inside, he sat at the counter. The sauna counter during the early dawn hours was extremely quiet. However, when 6 in the morning arrived after the cleaning was done, people would begin to pour out as if from nowhere, as if that quietness had never existed.

Everyone’s morning was filled with its own unique energy and busyness. To survive, people diligently moved their bodies from this early hour. Thanks to them, Song Yeongin could renew his own resolve to live. He had to keep his wits about him so as not to be swept away.

After finishing his breathless morning work and getting a couple of hours of sleep, a post-construction cleaning job at a large new apartment complex awaited Song Yeongin.

“Hello.”

“Has the handsome young man arrived?”

The middle-aged women all called Song Yeongin ‘handsome young man’ instead of by his name.

“Are you eating your meals properly? You seem to be getting skinnier every time I see you.”

“I am fine. I just do not have much of an appetite….”

“I heard you go out to work from the crack of dawn, you have to eat well. You’ll collapse otherwise. I should bring you something to eat tomorrow.”

Mrs. Heo, who was on the same team as Song Yeongin, took special care of him out of pity, saying he reminded her of her youngest son who had gone off to the military. It felt novel that such affection still remained in this city.

The hands of the woman who would place a sweet potato, a tangerine, or a boiled egg in his own hand had never had a dry day from a lifetime of hardship.

He carries a mechanical vacuum cleaner the size of his torso on his back, moving and wiping busily here and there. Sucking, spraying, and emptying, the daytime hours quickly passed by. He liked that he did not have to think about anything as he repeated this process. It felt as if he were cleaning his own life.

After leaving Ashuit, Song Yeongin sought out work in whatever he could get his hands on. He started by abandoning any lingering desire to work sitting down somewhere with a warm back, and he found there were more options than he had thought.

The reason he worked by pushing his body to the limit was that he did not want to have any distracting thoughts. The lack of sleep was hard to endure, but he was not one to sleep soundly in the first place. He liked that the useless, stray thoughts disappeared when his body was exhausted. Since he was accustomed to the habit of skipping meals, enduring hunger was the easiest thing for Song Yeongin.

The salary he had received at Jimil, he could now feel in his bones, was a dream-like compensation compared to his current life of jumping between part-time jobs.

When he thought of the family members depending on him, he had to cut down on sleep to try and match, even roughly, the amount he received at Jimil. But, it was not easy. It was far from enough.

After spending the daytime hours cleaning, he would go to work as a kitchen assistant and server in the afternoon. The restaurant, located in a nook at the far end of the downtown area, was a small-scale pasta house run by a single chef.

As befitting a small establishment, he was the only employee, and the number of customers who came was also meager enough for one person to handle.

One of the reasons Song Yeongin had first applied to this restaurant was simply because of the recruitment notice that mentioned a provided dinner. He still had to manage at least one meal a day while working, so working at the restaurant in the late afternoon was, in many ways, a welcome and enjoyable thing for Song Yeongin.

The owner of this restaurant, Mr. Bang, had no greed. He had never in his life seen someone so devoid of greed. He lived with the words “it is enough to earn one day and live one day” constantly on his lips. Mr. Bang, who had a fiery temper and a foul mouth, was unusually affectionate, contrary to the words he spat out.

Whenever he handed his employee his dinner, the owner, sitting across from him, always wore a good-natured face.

“Yeongin, you eat like a little bird, so there is no fun in dishing out food for you. Food is at its best when you shovel it in like this.”

He said he enjoyed feeding people. Perhaps that was why there were frequent occasions where he provided food for free without accepting money.

A child with a rumbling stomach, a young student in difficult circumstances, an elderly person with shabby clothes. As if they all knew, a variety of hungry people constantly crossed the threshold of this house.

Song Yeongin knew that Mr. Bang was a kinder person than anyone. He was just unskilled at expressing it and was simply not cunning. Song Yeongin felt a particular fondness for the good-natured Mr. Bang.

Mr. Bang greatly resembled his own father, as he last remembered him before he was devoured by the alcohol demon. Song Yeongin had learned through his father that good and artless people often end up breaking down so uncontrollably.

🌫️

An exhausting day passed.

Thanks to that, when he dragged his utterly exhausted body back home and collapsed in a heap, Song Yeongin could not think of anything. Not even the vile gaze of Matthew, who had tried to rape him, came to mind. He could not remember the air of that day in the lounge, stained with shame, or the humiliating stares that had watched him from all sides. And he did not even have the time to think about that man.

‘Cha Woojin’.

Now, even that name felt unfamiliar. It was gradually fading away. The time he had wasted, buried only in his painting, the times he had been led by Cha Woojin and set foot in his hideout, the time he had handed the martini glass to Cha Woojin with a trembling hand in the lounge—all of it felt as distant as a dream.

May all the illusory things disappear from within me.

As if to make up for the past few years spent cut off from the world, he pushed his weak body to its limits so harshly that he could not even dream whenever he managed to snatch some sleep. There was nothing else Song Yeongin could do.

Lying on his sleeping mat and staring at the ceiling, Song Yeongin suddenly realized that he had not even been able to offer a final word of thanks to Cha Woojin. He had left Ashuit as if he were running away. That was the end of it.

‘……A final goodbye?’

What a ridiculous notion. Even he found the thought absurd. He did not know where or how he could see the man, nor did he have a way to contact him, so there was no way he could do such a thing.

‘Was I planning to hold onto a man who would not even have an ounce of interest in my well-being and exchange farewells?’

As that sudden thought occurred, thoughts about Cha Woojin rapidly followed in its wake.

Even though everything was distant, even though the name itself had grown dull and remote, strangely, the man’s profile began to move, vividly alive. The inside of his chest ached and tickled with a squirming sensation, as if something were crawling in a place he could not reach.

It was a night just like this dawn, quiet and deep.

The sculptural face of that man looking at his painting in the gallery came to mind. The moment when that sharp, well-defined tip of his nose turned toward him, asking his identity for the first time, unfolded like a phantom.

Tossing and turning in his bed, Song Yeongin abruptly sat bolt upright in the darkness and reached out his hand. He turned on the light. And he opened his croquis book, which had been shoved in a corner of the room.

Though he had sworn he would not draw, he remembered the familiar habit of quickly sketching things that came to mind in a flash, keeping the book within arm’s reach as if by instinct.

For the first time in a long while, Song Yeongin opened the familiar notebook. As he idly flipped through the pages, what he found was the profile of the man he had drawn.

The day he first encountered Cha Woojin at the gallery, Song Yeongin had captured the man in his mind as if taking a photograph and, with an uncontrollable impulse, had transferred his image onto this white paper.

What started as a simple sketch had become quite elaborate, so this page alone remained like a finished piece. He could not bring himself to even think of transferring this sketch to a canvas, as it felt too shamefully embarrassing. For him, such an act was no different from a love confession.

This was the reason.

It must be because of this wretched talent of never forgetting something once he had drawn it. That was why he still could not forget the man’s face. Thanks to that, the map of Jimil was still intact in his head, and the path to find the man at that secret hideout also remained in his memory.

Song Yeongin closed the notebook. He should not have drawn something like this. He deeply reproached himself, as if scratching at his squirming heart.

🌫️

“Ugh, ugh… heuhh.”

It was so sharp and vivid that he could not distinguish if it was reality or a dream. A breathtaking pleasure that pierced through his spine spread like a fire down his back. What woke Song Yeongin from that terribly erotic dream was the feeling of his damp underwear.

His muscles were relaxed as if his rear had been opened, and the space between his parted legs was still numb, intoxicated by the daze. His dazed eyes, consumed by pleasure, barely managed to flutter open languidly in the darkness. Song Yeongin, aware of the dampness between his legs, pushed his upper body up.

He gripped his face, flushed red with shame, so tightly it contorted. He bit down hard on his plump lips, which were red as if they would burst. He bit his lips so tightly he did not even know if they were bleeding. His slender waist trembled dizzyingly.

“Haa, crazy……”

What shamed Song Yeongin more than the fact that he had a wet dream like an adolescent boy was that the person who appeared in the dream was crystal clear.

It was that strong, large hand that had grabbed his wrist and led him to an unfamiliar place. The man’s big, thick hand that had desperately covered his torn and bleeding lips. Everywhere that hand touched, a searingly hot fire erupted on his body. The man’s composed and intimidating eyes stripped him completely bare.

The one who lusted for and violated him in the dream was Cha Woojin, whose name had even grown faint.

For the past several years, Song Yeongin had lived as if castrated, forgetting his desires. He had considered masturbation and self-pleasure a sin. Song Yeongin could not even accept that it was a natural physiological phenomenon for a healthy man. It was understandable.

The life of sleeping side by side and moving about as a whole family in this one cramped room did not easily allow for even the smallest personal privacy.

At night, to avoid being beaten by his father who was possessed by the alcohol demon, he had to tremble under the blankets, holding his mother’s and sister’s hands tightly. In those continuous days of tension, Song Yeongin was castrated of all his desires.

He had once made the foolish guess that perhaps his older brother, who had run away from home early on after a stormy adolescent rebellion, had been so violent to everyone because his actions stemmed from some unreleased desire.

It was no exaggeration to say that Song Yeongin’s school days, after passing through puberty, had been a denial of all desires. Ever since he had become painfully aware that his immature body could be an object of greed to others, for Song Yeongin, sexual desire was an object of negation. He had to live believing it was a dirty thing that should never exist within him.

Because there was no model for comparison, he did not know if he was normal or abnormal. He did not know that boys going through their second-wave of puberty secretly masturbated, so Song Yeongin lived his life without knowing that he, with his excessively castrated sexual desire, was abnormal.

At one time, Song Yeongin’s dream of becoming a clergyman, a priest, had fanned the flames of that sexual puritanism even more.

A wave of self-loathing washed over Song Yeongin. The fact that his own subconscious had stripped a man’s body he had never seen naked in a dream, and that he had moaned and lusted beneath it, was an indescribable shock.

The hard texture of that strong, rough body handling him and the damp breaths coated in passion still remained distinctly, as if engraved on his skin. Even now that his eyes were open, it was so vivid he could not tell if it was a dream or reality. However, the bursting lust and the tingling sensations remained in their entirety.

‘Did I… want to do this with that man?’

The true identity of the one who violated him in the dream was a tyrant. The tyrant’s savage back. The violent and sensual back swallowed Song Yeongin’s consciousness whole. The man devoured him violently and stirred inside him. With every thrust, he had to gush and overflow, to flood.

Song Yeongin still could not escape the lingering aftereffects of that lewd daze. His desire was not quenched at all. Unable to bear it, he thrashed about.

He unconsciously picked up the croquis book and pencil that he had left by his head. And, without hesitation, he began to draw something on the white paper.

A psychosis-like impulse and instinct dominated his central nervous system. As if possessed, he sketched with precision and speed. Song Yeongin drew on the paper the tormenting afterimage that would simply not leave him.

He could not bear it without transferring it like this. Just like those days when he had torn the afterimages of tragedy from within himself, just like those days when he had moaned while transferring his misfortune into drawings, he could not block it, nor could he stop it.

For a long while, Song Yeongin was buried solely in the act of drawing, like a madman. What was drawn in the notebook was the back of Cha Woojin, who had violated him in the dream.

Even though he had already had a nocturnal emission, blood rushed to his groin again as he drew it. Conscious of his lower body mysteriously stirring, Song Yeongin was horrified and slammed the croquis book shut.

He quickly ran to the bathroom. And he hurriedly doused himself with cold water. In the mirror, the rims of his eyes glistened red, wet with carnal desire.

‘Is this… me?’

A face so unlike himself was in there that he questioned it while looking in the mirror. The face of a lewd harlot who had moaned under a man in a dream was right there. Song Yeongin was only afraid and felt estranged from that unfamiliar face. It was so repulsive he wanted to carve it out.

He shook his head at the empty air. He hated it so much. The act of seeking desire like such a beast was, to Song Yeongin, nothing more and nothing less than an immoral and hideous sin.

The clock already pointed to 3 in the morning.

It was time to prepare for his pre-dawn commute, a step earlier than others. It was the darkest and most secret darkness before the sun rose, enough to hide all profane desires.

🌫️

Two months had already passed since he had started working at this 24-hour fitness center. Now, his eyes would open automatically at 3 in the morning. The tasks, which were close to simple repetition, had become familiar to his hands like a habit, and he had become so proficient that it was a piece of cake, allowing him some leeway.

Song Yeongin, who had arrived for his early morning shift, was cleaning the locker room of the fitness center. It was rare for there to be people during the early morning cleaning time. However, since the principle was 24-hour operation, the fitness center was still running during cleaning hours, so use of the facilities was not prohibited.

He turned his head at the sudden feeling of another’s gaze.

It was the man to whom Song Yeongin had handed a locker room key at the counter a little while ago. He was following Song Yeongin’s movements as he cleaned the locker room.

Song Yeongin, wearing a large black baseball cap that nearly covered his small face, became conscious of the persistent gaze that continued to follow him and looked back once more.

The man with the familiar face was a member of the fitness center who came every day. The man always finished his workout and sauna at an early hour and left, but for some reason, today he had come to the center much earlier than usual.

Song Yeongin went back to finishing his cleaning, collecting the wet towels and workout clothes. He began to think that the gaze, which was still following him without moving an inch from that spot, was somehow unsettling.

In the locker room, there were only that man and Song Yeongin. Thanks to the wretched experiences he had been through until now, Song Yeongin could not let his guard down against extreme situations that an ordinary man would not even consider.

Song Yeongin slowly backed away. It was when he was about to turn quickly and exit the locker room via the closest route.

From behind, the voice of the member could be heard.

“Excuse me….”

He hesitated, wondering whether he should answer or back away. The member spoke again.

“I just have something to ask you for a moment.”

Song Yeongin was relieved that he did not feel any malice in the kind and ordinary voice.

“Ah, yes… Is there something you need?”

Song Yeongin looked toward the man who had called him. By then, the man had strode over to his side, wearing sweat-soaked workout clothes.

His white and neat face, hidden under the black cap, looked up at the other person. When their eyes met, the man blushed and hesitated, unable to even look at Song Yeongin.

“I don’t know if this might be rude, but….”

“……”

“I have been watching you for a while.”

“…Excuse me?!”

He was a man of handsome appearance who looked to be in his late 20s. His tall frame and his healthy, well-built body were visible through his sweat-drenched workout clothes.

“I have been watching you since the first day you came here. Since I always come to work out at this time….”

Song Yeongin stared blankly at the man from under his concealing cap without answering.

Recently, due to the trauma caused by Matthew, he was in a state of extreme alert toward strangers. He gauged the distance to the counter, planning to run straight there if the man showed any strange signs. At the counter, besides himself, there was one more trainer on duty who managed the facility.

“So what I mean is… ah, I am sorry if I startled you. I am asking this with the resolve that I might not be able to come here anymore. Tell me if I am being rude.”

What in the world could he want from me….

The man opposite him spoke shyly with a reddened face.

“Um…, I really like you, so… if you have time, could we possibly meet outside?”

At the unexpected words that came out of the other person’s mouth, Song Yeongin forgot how to answer and stood there blankly with a dazed face. To the man who was waiting for an answer, Song Yeongin first offered the words that were a habit of his.

“…I am sorry.”

Then, the man replied without hesitation.

“Then… could I at least get your contact information?”

Song Yeongin was at a loss for words due to his bewilderment and predicament. He was just slowly blinking his unusually neat eyes.

“By any chance… are you not into men, and I misread the situation and made you uncomfortable?”

He was not sure what ‘into men’ meant, but at the same time as the other man’s words, he remembered that just last night, he had not only had a blush-inducing dream of being violated by another man but had even had a wet dream because of the Cha Woojin in his dream. A clear awareness that he was not ordinary came to him, and he could not bring himself to let the words of denial escape his lips.

However, Song Yeongin had difficulty from time to time not just with dating others, but even with forming trivial and ordinary human relationships that were not romantic.

He could not overlook the fact that the man was a member of this facility. The thought that the mere act of another person approaching him was a burden came to him first. Something inside him was definitely broken.

“I was told to refrain from personal friendships with the members.”

Without giving him an inch, the other person showed extreme disappointment at Song Yeongin who was putting up a wall. The man looked as if he did not want to let go of the thread he had barely caught. He tried to somehow continue the conversation with Song Yeongin.

“By any chance, are you seeing someone?”

From where to where and what answer he should give, Song Yeongin could not bring himself to open his mouth, his face a mask of confusion.

However, judging from his experience at Jimil, he thought it was more important to be firm in cutting ties without worrying about hurting the other person’s feelings in order to avoid misunderstandings. Above all, he did not want to lose this job he had barely settled into.

Song Yeongin politely bowed his head.

“I am sorry…. I will pretend I did not hear that….”

“Ah…!”

The man’s disappointed sigh scattered in the air.

“Please do not mind me… and continue to use the facility as you usually do.”

“Did I make you uncomfortable?”

“I am sorry…. I will be on my way now.”

Song Yeongin gave a short farewell and picked up the sack containing the wet towels. As he was about to leave the locker room, the man’s disappointed voice reached his back.

“I am sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

“……”

“If I keep coming here, I can still see you in the future, right?”

The man’s tone was kind and polite until the very end. His reaction to Song Yeongin’s proffered rejection was not merciless and crude sadism or violence.

Song Yeongin was very accustomed to others showing abnormal greed or forceful violence towards him. What came back from his rejections were exactly those kinds of cruel things.

However, the man made him think that he was just a normal, ordinary, regular person. As the kind voice grew distant, that thought suddenly crossed his mind.

If he were to meet an ordinary person and form an ordinary and normal relationship, could his life also become a little more ordinary?

If that happened, would the unhappiness and misfortune that had been eating away at him, and the painful and abnormal things that sometimes shake a person to their core, no longer have a chance to wedge their way in?

An ordinary, normal, and… kind person.

The man, who continued to watch Song Yeongin until his voice faded away, was a person who brought those things to mind.

In the past and even now, what Song Yeongin earnestly desired was for a very ordinary and peaceful daily life to quietly continue. That was all.

🌫️

“You look even more gaunt.”

Father Kang Hajong was always the same. Always in that place, always with that same gentle and benevolent appearance. There was only the passage of time. Like a great mountain, like a river, the priest was always unchanging in that same form.

His gentle smile was like a small solace to Song Yeongin. Father Kang Hajong did not ask him about his work at Ashuit. That was the same for Song Yeongin.

On that night when he had come running out, trembling all over, and prostrated himself at the priest’s feet begging to be saved, and on that harsh day when he was first brutally trampled by beasts and greed, the priest had not asked Song Yeongin anything. That was also the reason why Song Yeongin had been the only one to communicate with the priest without ever letting go of the connection until now.

Instead, the priest wiped Song Yeongin’s blood-caked bare feet, and lent him a shoulder for his tear-stained cheek to lean on.

Even when Song Yeongin hid from the world, he never once chided or cajoled Song Yeongin. He had only silently pushed rice and side dishes into Song Yeongin’s cave. That was the priest’s unchanging way.

From the moment he first set foot in Ashuit, his curiosity about Father Kang Hajong, Yoon Jioh, and Ashuit itself had grown in volume. However, every time that happened, Song Yeongin conversely renewed his resolve to remain silent and not ask about any of it.

Father Kang Hajong and I, we had to be that way with each other.

We could not become a burden or a weight to one another in the slightest. That was the bond between the two, and the unwritten rule between them.

“It has been quite a while since I received my first paycheck, so I could not come empty-handed….”

He could not figure out what the priest might need. It was because of his excessively simple lifestyle, which had nothing that could be called a possession. It was just that in Song Yeongin’s mind, the priest was always wearing old, worn-out shoes with worn-down soles… so, he had simply chosen shoes for that reason. Song Yeongin hurriedly asked for the priest’s foot size and bought a new pair of shoes at a department store.

“The shoes I am wearing now are still perfectly usable.”

He looked down at the priest’s shabby shoes. At the tattered, worn-out soles that were in the lowest place, befitting one who descends to the lowest places.

The priest smiled benevolently and patted Song Yeongin’s shoulder.

“Thank you. I will cherish them.”

To Song Yeongin, who had grown up without knowing a biological father’s love, he was like a father figure.

“Is… Seoyeong… doing well?”

He, her blood relative, was instead asking the priest for news of his younger sister, Seoyeong. Because it felt like he was admitting his own negligence and inadequacy, Song Yeongin could not bring himself to lift his head.

“I see her face every time I go on a retreat… it has been a while. I am planning to visit soon.”

The priest goes on volunteer retreats a few times a year to a school for the deaf and nearby facilities for the disabled. It was all thanks to the priest’s discretion that Seoyeong was able to enter that school with its high threshold.

“She says she wants to become a nun.”

He lowered his wide, round eyes and then quietly bowed his head.

“She does not even want to speak with me. I did not know….”

“Would you not like to go with me this spring? When the flowers bloom, that is.”

“……”

“Seoyeong was particularly fond of cherry blossoms.”

For no reason, moisture welled up in his transparent eyes.

“Yes, that is right. Seoyeong… loved cherry blossoms since she was little.”

When she first entered the school for the deaf, she was a child who had rejoiced as if she could fly at the fact that the area, a small provincial city, was a large-scale cherry blossom habitat.

She was the little sister who said that the three of them—mom, older brother, and herself—should hold hands and walk side by side down that beautiful cherry blossom path, in a place where there was no father to hit us. He had linked pinkies and promised Seoyeong, but he still had not been able to keep that promise.

He wanted to become a person like the priest. He wanted to become someone who remembers the very small and precious things that someone likes, not someone of consuming hatred and animosity. Instead of digging into pain and interrogating for reasons, he wanted to become someone who silently offers a single flower that the person likes.

“When you feel up to it, like you used to, would you not teach the sky children how to draw?”

The ‘House of Sky Children,’ run by Sister Anna and Father Kang Hajong, was a place where children who had lost their parents gathered. Although he and Seoyeong had also spent their younger days living closely with the children there and drawing together like one family, since he had turned his back on the world and hidden in the rooftop apartment at the same time as his mother’s death, the House of Sky Children had now become a very unfamiliar name.

Regardless of his own mysterious comings and goings in the world, the priest was still the father of the sky children.

Like a great mountain, like a river, he, who still remained unchanged, guarding the low places, and silently fulfilling his duties in that spot—he could not even fathom the weight of that constant life, how great the priest’s life and traces were.

Father Kang Hajong was the only person in this world whom Song Yeongin uniquely respected.

“Next time, I will be sure to go with a big box of crayons. And paints and a sketchbook too….”

Just like the priest had placed in my young hands.

“It is fine to come empty-handed. It is fine to come with just your heart.”

Song Yeongin nodded his head thoughtlessly, wiping away the moisture that had gathered in his eyes. The priest with the face of a classical scholar smiled gently with a benevolent expression.

The fact that he no longer drew. The fact that he had left Ashuit on his own two feet. And the fact that there had been another ordeal that had dug into his pain. Song Yeongin did not say any of it to the priest. However, he now felt a sense of relief, as if he had just finished a confession to a priest.

Song Yeongin no longer prays. He did not believe in God as he used to. The talk of the Lord’s presence or that he is always by our side could no longer give Song Yeongin any meaning or even a flicker of emotion.

However, he did not doubt for a moment the fact that Father Kang Hajong would silently guard that place, and even as the years flowed by, he would unchangingly be by the side of those who live in low places, from a low place.

If, truly, there is a God… if, truly, somewhere in this harsh world, he is looking down on me….

The existence of Father Kang Hajong must be the one and only grace and the sole gift that God had given me, taking pity on my misfortune.