I'll Be Right There Read Free

hand around my wrist and pulled me towardhim; I let him put his arms around me. He pulled my hand down to his crotch and said, “You can have this, too.” He sounded so serious that I couldn’t help but laugh. With one hand on his notebook and the other on his crotch, I felt a strange sadness wash over me, and I whispered in his ear, “Can we go somewhere farther away?” But I knew there was nowhere else.
    Who can foresee the days that are yet to come?
    The future rushes in and all we can do is take our memories and move forward with them. Memory keeps only what it wants. Images from memories are sprinkled throughout our lives, but that does not mean we must believe that our own or other people’s memories are of things that really happened. When someone stubbornly insists that they saw something with their own eyes, I take it as a statement mixed with wishful thinking. As what they want to believe. Yet as imperfect as memories are, whenever I am faced with one, I cannot help getting lost in thought. Especially when that memory reminds me of what it felt like to be always out of place and always a step behind. Why was it so hard for me to open my eyes every morning, why was I so afraid to form a relationship with anyone, and why was I nevertheless able to break down my walls and find him?
    In my first year of college, I used to stare at the front gate of the university every morning and debate whether or not to go inside. Often, I would turn around and walk back down the hill I had just climbed. Even now, I cannot say what was wrong with me. For three months, during the end of my nineteenth year and the start of my twentieth, I kept the windowof the small room in the apartment where I lived with my older newlywed cousin covered with black construction paper. It was only a single sheet, but it turned the room as dark as night. In that darkness, I left the light on and passed the time reading. There was no reason for it. I just had nothing else to do and nothing I wanted to do. I read an entire sixty-volume literature anthology, in order, each volume of which contained over twenty short stories printed in letters smaller than sesame seeds. When I finished, I looked out the window to discover it was March. When I think about it now, it seems so long ago. To think that in the happy home of two newlyweds there was a room that was kept as black as night! When I came out of that room, it was to attend the matriculation ceremony at the university, which was the freest place I had ever experienced in this city. Now Professor Yoon is in the hospital, Myungsuh is out there living a life that has nothing to do with me, and there is another whom I will never see again. But had I not met them where and when I did, how could I have made it through those days?
    I watched the snowflakes grow heavier and collected my thoughts. I reminded myself that the only reason he had called after eight years was to tell me Professor Yoon was dying. I muttered to myself not to lose sight of that. First and foremost, I needed to get to the hospital. We are always crossing and recrossing each other’s paths whether we realize it or not. Long-forgotten memories kept cropping up and surprising me, like pulling on the stalk of a potato plant after the rain and seeing endless clusters of potatoes pop out ofthe soil. Even if I never thought of him or heard from him again, the fact that we had connected with each other, however briefly, still made me sad.
    He broke the silence. I held the receiver, unable to say a word as he told me about Professor Yoon. Then he asked, “Can I come over?”
    At this hour?
    I thought it was over between us, but he asked it so casually: Can I come over? How long had it been since I last heard those words? Back when we were together, he used to say those words to me all the time over the phone. Can I come over? He would even call from phone booths to say, I’m on my way . Whether rainy, windy, cloudy, or clear, each day