Commendation award 1

Author Lee Jang-wook

• Published Nov 1, 2015 5:40 PM KST
• Updated Nov 1, 2015 5:40 PM KST

Lee Jang-wook's "More than Half of Haruo" translated by Jung Sl-in

More than Half of Haruo

-1-

My Japanese friend’s name is Takahashi Haruo. Unusually for a Japanese person, he was very fond of traveling, and as a result, had friends all over the world. In his own words: I, Haruo, have more friends overseas than in Japan.

He said he had never actually tried to count them, but I'm sure he's right. In any given year, he spends more time overseas than in Japan. And when he’s back in his home country, he lives a dead life. He meets no one and does nothing. Of course, this wasn’t his intention―things always just turned out that way. And as he became like a deep-sea fish or a sea turtle, he would suddenly take off overseas. This was Takahashi Haruo's way of life, he explained.

Then how do you feed yourself, I asked. How do you finance your travels?

My questions were quickly proven silly. His answer was, traveling is my job and my livelihood.

What he said was true. When I visited his homepage, I saw banner ads from famous multinational corporations. I even saw in a corner an ad from the foreign-based company I worked at. I was a part of its marketing coordination team―a misleadingly impressive name for a team that managed joint promotions for the few branches we had across the country―for a short time by that point. But there was a chance that I could eventually be reassigned overseas. That was what I was hoping for.

Haruo's homepage, run in English, presented a series of travelogues. His stories seemed to be quite popular, seen by all kinds of readers from all over the world. Ten thousand pageviews were the norm for his posts, and some of them had over a hundred thousand pageviews in total. Thanks to his readership, his writings were featured on a variety of magazines from many different countries. He said that he had even published several books. And that at some point, his travels had gone from being his hobby to being his job.

I visited his homepage often to practice my English. Most of Haruo's sentences were simple, and I had little difficulty with his vocabulary. It might be strange to say, but it was easier because English was a foreign language to both Haruo and to myself.

His writings weren’t the kind that conveyed information about traveling. I mean that they weren't the type to suggest a mussel dish at an open-air cafe in Paris, say that in St. Petersburg the Russian Museum was better than the Hermitage Museum, or recommend an evening on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. And there was nothing to the effect of how things were like this or that in comparison to Japan. He neither introduced tourist destinations nor wrote particularly as a Japanese person. But his writings weren’t flavorful essays or intellectual and emotional travelogues, either. They had no color or taste, to the point that I couldn’t tell why they were so popular. But amazingly enough, even as I thought that way, I found myself losing myself in reading his posts. It was like he’d cast a medieval spell on his words.

In reality, all he did was expose his own actions though words and photos. ‘Exposure’ didn't mean he laid bare his personal life for pleasure. To be more accurate, he put into words the natural way he lived in the places he was at. It didn't seem to matter where, whether it was Times Square in New York or a secluded alleyway in Chiang Khong. In Times Square, he lived like a New Yorker, and in Chiang Khong, like a born-and-raised Thai person. That’s right. Haruo traveled in a way that could only be described as ‘living’. If you could call it traveling to begin with, of course.

Anyway, though he must have encountered new and unfamiliar things, Haruo didn't seem to care very much about them. At most, he said he got the feeling of suddenly losing sense of where he was. A traveler with no interest in the alien―it sounded about as nonsensical as a bus driver finding wonder in the routine sights he drove through every day.

That was what I thought, but Haruo said that some of his readers really ended up becoming his ‘friends’. Some friends he knew only through online exchanges, but they happened to be living in his travel destinations, so they met in person. Other friends met him on the road, later visiting his homepage and contacting him.

And as for us―me and her―we were in the latter category. I mean that it was after we met him on our travels that we went to his homepage and became readers.

-2-

Our encounter with Haruo was several years ago on a sleeper train from Delhi to Varanasi. She and I had just left on a trip together for the first―and, as it turned out, last―time. And it was a trip overseas, at that.

She was actually quite accustomed to being abroad, but I was not. At the time, I was a sweatpant-clad college graduate preparing to find work, living with a TOEIC study guide glued to my arm. Though until my high school years I dreamt of becoming a pilot, I had gone overseas a grand total of once, on a trip to China. And, of all things, as part of the neighborhood seniors’ group tour planned by my father. A man must go out and see the wide world, he stated as the reason for sticking me with the elders on their trip. At the time, he didn't tell me that that would be his first time on an airplane. All I did out in that so-called ‘center of the world’ was listen to the guide's dull explanations at the health food store and pick up and put down products, only to pick them up and put them down again.

She was different. After all, she had become a flight attendant for the foreign-based N Airlines, a company with routes all over the world. Though my dream was to become a pilot, I was set to become an office worker who stared into a computer screen with bloodshot eyes. Though her dream was to become a stable civil servant, she was set to become a stewardess working nine thousand kilometers in the air. She had only just been employed, but she would go on to traverse the Americas and other destinations. Her future was bright. What I mean is that her life was worthy of staying at hotels in America at a per diem.

So it's this huge chunk of metal, and it can fly anywhere. This heavy chunk of metal can go back and forth between places that not even feathers can reach, she said, giving me her impression of her first flight. Excitement was written on her face. That's a pretty romantic thought, I almost sneered, but she continued without taking note of how I felt.

I ride an airplane all night and fly off to a faraway city. Then I spend time at a hotel there and come back. That's the kind of life it is. By the time I arrive at the skyscrapers across the sea, it's already two days later even though I’ve only flown for twenty hours. When I come back, it's the opposite. It's only two hours later even though I’ve flown for a whole twenty hours. It's like slipping time into my pocket and taking it back out again.

She spoke, fascinated, as she sipped her freshly brewed coffee. And that day, for the first time since we met, we parted ways without drinking.

She also knew that my dream was to become a pilot. When I was younger, I collected Hasegawa model kits and the Phantom series by Academy, and I took it for granted that I would go on to enroll in an aviation school. Of course, my family did not object, either. The problem was my eyesight, which took a sudden nosedive when I was in high school and forced me to wear glasses. It was grounds for disqualification. But I did not give up on my dreams. I begged my parents and received LASIK eye surgery.

And with that, my dreams scattered like sea foam. I found out later that the eye surgery was fatal to my dreams. At my physical examination, the doctor said this to me. An airplane is a machine that not only moves forward, backward, left, and right, but also ascends and descends. A pilot has to withstand sharp shifts in gravity. But LASIK surgery involves clipping the corneas. In conclusion? A sudden increase in air pressure could make your vision go hazy. In the worst-case scenario, your eyeballs themselves could burst.

I pictured my eyes bursting in the middle of the sky. I pictured it more times than I could count. I fly through the clouds, and suddenly encounter a large hurricane. The plane begins to shake violently in every direction. And without warning, the plane is sucked into the eye of the storm. Inside it is absolutely calm. And in that stillness, my eyes suddenly burst with a pop. My vision cuts off. It doesn't go dark―I mean it disappears altogether. It was then I learned that sometimes, imagination could kill dreams. After repeatedly playing the scene over in my mind with a blanket over my head, I was able to give up on my dream without regrets.

But even now, stepping into the airport for a business trip stirs up a strange feeling in me. In the airport, everyone pulls along a couple of bags as big as they are, leaving for or returning from some faraway place. Wearing my suit, as I receive my boarding pass, check in my luggage, line up for departure proceedings, and stare into the air… I find myself gripped by strangely idle thoughts. How are all destinations in the world born? Is it not that destinations need people, instead of people needing destinations? Instead of it being that humans depart and return, isn’t it more like places of departure and return pass humans back and forth amongst themselves? Thoughts that could have come straight out of a Western book of maxims with a garish cover. So, I was the one to suggest this trip to her.

The train was quite messy. Although it was a sleeper train, its design was open rather than coupé-style. Beds were set up on two levels against either side of the car. There was filth all over the floor, and the smell of rotting fruit permeated the air. She and I did not pay it any mind, however, as we took in the sights, alternating between looking out the window and watching the interior of the car. It was midwinter when we left Korea, but here in India it's early fall, she mumbled, stating the obvious. That's the Earth for you, I responded with an equally obvious statement. It really is, she said with a nod. Passing by the windows during the day were the nostalgic sights of the countryside, the kind you might find in any country. And of course, passing by the windows at night was pitch-black darkness, the kind you might find in any country.

It might have been when we were just passing the Sitapur area. Someone began to clean the filth on the floor of the car. He had been sitting quietly amongst people who were sleeping or idly passing the time, but he suddenly stood up, brought a broom and a mop from somewhere, and began to clean the passenger car floor, even gently spraying water on it from time to time. He was a young man of average height and slender build. Anyone could see that he was not a train employee. After all, he was wearing a very plain outfit―a pair of old cotton pants and a baggy grey T-shirt.

What's that man doing? She asked, gesturing at him with her chin. The other passengers were also giving the man strange looks. The man was smiling, even saying hello to the passengers, as he continued to clean. It was only when he drew near that we realized he was not Indian.

The man came over to my spot and asked me to lift my feet. It was a chance for me to naturally strike up a conversation with him, but the English that left my lips was,

What are you doing?

The man raised his head, looked at me, and answered matter-of-factly.

I am cleaning.

At his uninteresting answer, I asked again.

I mean to say, why are you cleaning?

I emphasized the 'you'. The man looked at me blankly as he replied.

Why should I not clean?

The man also emphasized the 'I'. Dumbfounded, I burst into empty laughter. She joined in the conversation.

This is India, and of all places, we are on a sleeper train. Most trains in India pull old, messy cars. This is natural. This in and of itself is a part of India. You are a passenger, not a railroad employee, and so we think that you have no need to clean the car.

After hearing her words―which bordered on being a speech―the man innocently flashed a warm smile. What he said next caught me rather off-guard.

Let's be friends, you and I.

That was our first meeting with Haruo.

Afterwards, we did indeed become friends. Because after we looked at Haruo's face, she and I looked at one another and also flashed warm smiles. With the kind of faces that showed even we didn't quite know why we were smiling.

-3-

Haruo gathered his things and came over to our spot. We talked all night long on that train, as though we were old friends. It was a little strange that we didn't feel at all awkward despite this being our first meeting, but Haruo blended with us naturally, as though he were made of air. To elaborate, she and I were on this side, and the people and the scenery were on the other. This side and that side can look at one another, but there's something like an impenetrable glass wall between them. We observe the world across the glass, and the other side exacts payment from us in one way or another, whether in travel or tourism. But in the midst of that space, Haruo slips in and blurs the boundary. The glass wall disappears all of a sudden, and the outside air rushes in. That's what it was like.

Having arrived in early-morning Varanasi, we unpacked in the same guesthouse. We drank Indian beer together at an open-air cafe, wandered the bazaars where motorcycle-driven rickshaws zoomed past, and sat on the ghats―stairs along the Ganges―talking about this and that. Haruo was as carefree as though he'd been traveling with us from the beginning, and she and I also considered his company perfectly natural.

It was only later that I realized this was a peculiar talent of Haruo's. When I chatted with Haruo over beer, I found myself forgetting that I was speaking in a foreign language. When I wandered the bazaar with Haruo, I almost fell under the impression that I was walking with an old friend―someone I'd known even longer than her. I said this to her, leaving out the last part, but she also expressed her agreement.

But it wasn't as though Haruo latched on to us all the while. You could say that Haruo also had his own way of traveling. He disappeared often. Sometimes he wandered somewhere all night long and returned in the morning, dog-tired and spent. Other times, he borrowed a motorcycle-driven rickshaw from somewhere and rode it by himself through the dusty countryside roads. He even brought in some strangers to the guesthouse to drink chai with them, calling them his Indian friends. Hardly anyone could imagine that there was a Japanese person in the midst of the Indians sitting in a circle.

Haruo acted naturally, as though there was no one around him to be self-conscious of. And at times, it looked as though Haruo was no longer Haruo. Once, while passing through a bazaar near the guesthouse, we stopped to watch a merchant selling Indian accessories. It was because we suddenly thought that this man looked familiar somehow. A moment later, she and I were floored. The man selling accessories at a stall in the busy marketplace was none other than Haruo. He so casually told us he was selling goods he received from an Indian friend that we almost got the impression that Haruo was born and raised in this very place.

You are different from the Japanese people I know, I once said to Haruo. Haruo looked at me stupidly and replied, you are also different from the Koreans I know. Along with a flash of his usual warm smile. It sounded like he was saying that what I said was only natural. Maybe it was also only natural that she would chime in to chide me for holding such stereotypes. She was talking about how I'd said something like 'unusually for a Japanese person, Haruo is fond of traveling'. Then again, since I used that phrase to begin this piece, I don’t think I could have really argued with her.

And technically, Haruo wasn't even a typical Japanese person. His grandfather was American, and his mother an ethnic Okinawan. By Okinawa, she said, do you mean those islands near Taiwan? The Ry?ky? Islands?

Haruo nodded. They say that Okinawans can't be called Japanese, but they can't not be called Japanese, either, she mumbled to herself. What Haruo said jokingly then was this.

That is to say, more than half of Haruo is a somehow different Haruo.

Haruo, who was born and raised in Okinawa, faced all kinds of difficulties after moving to his uncle's house in Tokyo. First, his parents got divorced immediately after his move. He was ostracized at school. For Haruo, quiet and visually somewhat different from other Japanese people, there was nothing tougher than adjusting to the world of the classroom. On top of that, he failed the entrance exam for the college he had applied to.

Haruo said that he’d left his uncle's home and left on an aimless journey. It was a 'suicide journey' of sorts. It was because I had no passion for life and no particular aversion to death, Haruo explained.

Having decided to spend all the money he had saved on one journey before he died, Haruo thought that―appropriately for a young man in despair―he wanted to go to the North Pole. But because of several problems, including financial limitations, he settled for nearby Korea. It was a route where he would start off at Busan, visit Seoul, Chuncheon, Sokcho, and return to Busan again via National Route 7.

According to Haruo, he felt something peculiar on the first day of his trip. Staying at a back-alley guesthouse in Busan―which, she corrected, was probably a motel or an inn―Haruo fell into a longer and deeper sleep than ever before. When he woke up, he found himself in an unfamiliar room. He had slept so long that it felt as though he had shed layers of lives. That morning, Haruo, who had been lying with his eyes on the ceiling, got up as though emerging from the depths of the sea. He opened the window and looked down at the noisy street. He saw faint sunbeams and countless cars passing by, and cold air mixed with exhaust fumes rushed inside. Ah, Haruo let out a short moan. Somehow, the world had become new.

When he went out into the streets for breakfast, he had a trifling but curious experience. A young woman approaching from the other end of the street asked him,

By any chance, do you believe in Tao?

Haruo blankly stared at the woman. Wearing an expression that said he had no idea if he did or not, Haruo found himself flashing her a warm smile. The woman, looking at his face, followed suit, flashing a warm smile as well. That was enough. It felt as though, for some reason, they no longer had need for words.

Walking past the woman, Haruo was suddenly struck by an uncanny thought. He realized that the woman had not been speaking in English. And of course, she was not speaking Japanese, either. From her pronunciation―which Haruo said he could recall clearly―she was, without a doubt, speaking Korean. The only Korean words he knew were kimchi, bulgogi, and the greeting anyeonghaseyo, Haruo added.

After this encounter, as he walked through the cold air drifting the streets, Haruo realized that, strangely enough, his desire to die had vanished. This is how he put it. That is to say, maybe it was a moment when my existence was shifted by five centimeters into another world. Or maybe I really had come to an understanding of Tao. Believe it or not, Haruo said earnestly, this really did happen on the winter streets of Nampodong, Busan.

-4-

It was the night before we were scheduled to leave Varanasi. We sat in a room in the guesthouse and drank. We were drinking the wine Haruo had brought. In a way very typical of tourists, she and I talked about India and the Ganges river. How present-day India was a combination of the mystique of the Ganges and the IT industry, or how George Harrison must have sat on the riverbank, thinking of his own death. Bland stuff. Haruo just smiled agreeably now and then.

I must have dozed off for a bit. The darkness was deep. I felt as though I was submerged deep in the water. It was probably between two to four in the morning. I was lying on my bed, at the very spot where I had been drinking.

Echoing in the dark was the distant sound of her and Haruo talking. It felt like words spoken underwater. I squinted open my heavy eyelids. She and Haruo came into view. A faint light seeping in through the window cast soft silhouettes of them. They were sitting side-by-side, gently holding hands and talking. So natural they looked together, as though they had been lovers for a very long time.

This was the landscape of night, darkness, and the water’s subsurface where a frail heart beat ever-so-faintly, I thought to myself. She and Haruo looked so cozy and serene that I couldn't even show that I was awake.

Once again, I became like a fish sinking into sleep.

The next morning, the sky was heavily overcast. We decided to go out to the Ganges River one last time.

Although we weren't walking with any particular place in mind, we found ourselves stopping at the burning ghats. Burning ghats are a sort of cremation area. Firewood is piled up on stone altars between staircases, and beside them, bodies wrapped in cloth wait their turn. The firewood was already alight on one side of us.

We walked along the area of the ghats. Black specks of ashes flew by us on the wind. They scattered haphazardly, some landing on our heads and shoulders. She and I were soon to go back to Delhi and take a flight bound for Incheon. Haruo said that he was planning to go to Nepal from Varanasi and go down all the way to Bangladesh. He added that he would return to Japan from somewhere in Bangladesh, and that in two or so months, he would travel through Cuba and South America before heading to North America. That was when he told us that when he was in Japan, he lived a 'dead life'.

Behind the burning ghats, bodies wrapped in cloth were lying on carts stopped here and there. And on them, droplets of rain began to fall. The cloths were growing damp. I stared as the contours of the body on the cart next to me began to grow distinct. The curves of the chest and waist, and the thin shape of the legs began to surface on the orange cloth. It must have been the body of a young woman. I could not take my eyes off that shape. Not until she glanced at me and curled up slightly, whispering, it's cold today.

A cold mist wafted over the waters. The windchill was unbelievably low for a morning in India. It felt as though ice had been scattered into the air. Only a few Indians were in the river, meditating or lightly washing themselves.

The opposite bank looked desolate. It was covered in sand, with not a person or a house in sight. It was the owner of the guesthouse who told us that it was called the 'Land of Death'. He explained that this was because the ashes left over from the cremations on the ghats all flowed in that direction.

She and I sat on the steps, and as rain fell upon us droplet by droplet, gazed at the river and the opposite bank. I don't think we were thinking of anything in particular at the time. We were just watching the ashes floating on the surface of the water. Or maybe the ashes were watching us.

Something came into our view at that moment. It was floating in the river, and upon closer inspection, we saw that it was a man's head. The man was floating down the river with just his head above the surface. At first we thought he was a corpse, but from the sight of him occasionally raising his arms and seemingly paddling through the water, it became clear that he was swimming. It was, without a doubt, a backstroke.

We had seen the occasional swimmer there, but a backstroke on a cold, rainy morning? It did not take long for our blank expressions to crumble. The man swimming there was none other than Haruo. Haruo, who had again disappeared from our side without us noticing, was there in the water.

He was floating along the river, his head above the water and his eyes on the sky as he did intermittent strokes. 'Floating' was the only way to express his pace. Perhaps he intended to reach the opposite bank. On the surface of the water around Haruo were white ashes left behind by burnt corpses, drifting in formless forms. We absently watched this sight of Haruo as we sat on the ghats.

She murmured,

Haruo… he's floating away.

I also responded with a mumble, but the words that left my mouth confused even me.

It’s because... After all, that's more than half of Haruo.

She turned and looked at me. My voice must have sounded slightly sullen to her.

-5-

After coming back to Korea, I visited Haruo's homepage and began to read through his unorthodox travelogues. I remember being drawn in with an almost gluttonous passion.

Haruo was introducing me and her as 'friends' he met in India. This was neither with disinterest nor excessive affection. It felt like he neither treated us as objects to be described nor as the protagonists of his stories. She and I were simply breathing alive in his writings. Even as he passed through Kathmandu and went all the way to Chittagong, Haruo did not marvel at the bleak and distant landscapes. He was recording the minutest of details, things about what he and the people he met on his travels did or what he thought when he ate certain foods. Some time later, as he showcased some Cuban tunes, he described it as though it were just another piece of music. And even as he described a mugging he witnessed in the streets of Mexico, he wrote as though it had taken place somewhere in Narita. But strangely enough, the image that surfaced in my mind from all of his writings was the sight of Haruo floating on the Ganges along with the ashes.

Time passed quickly. My visits to Haruo’s homepage grew noticeably infrequent. That’s how things change with time, I told myself, but to be more accurate, I was no longer very interested in his writings. Haruo was living in so many different places, but the impressions I got from his words grew fewer and fewer.

Even that mysterious addiction I felt as I read his writings grew faint. It must be because sentiment and focus, too, live through cycles of birth and extinguishment, I thought. This was probably why. The reason she and I parted ways.

One day, she called me out. She was standing in front of my office, pulling along a double-level suitcase and looking as though she had just stepped off the plane. With her hands folded in front of her on the handle of the suitcase, she stood still and looked at me.

As I approached her, step by step, I felt as though something was passing through my heart. Maybe it was a single gust of empty wind, or the final leaf falling from an aged tree. I understood from this that my relationship with her was now a thing of the past. It seemed that she felt the same. That day, as our eyes met in the midst of dinner, we simultaneously put on awkward smiles. It felt as though a fallen angel sitting between us was placing heavy stones on each of our expressions. When the stones fell, our smiles began to briefly resurface. Then, the impish angel would place another heavy stone. I tried to mimic the warm smile Haruo used to flash, but it didn't really work.

I thought to myself, this is just another part of everyday life. So it's okay. It's not going to affect me in the least right now. I’m going to leave, go home and sleep, go to work tomorrow, and nothing will happen. Indulging myself with such incongruous thoughts, I let time pass as I sat across from her. We both said nothing, like a giraffe and a pelican sitting together.

The next evening, she called me. And she told me about the American she had begun dating recently. It sounded like she was describing how she learned a new instrument or a new language. She said that it just happened naturally before she knew it, as they worked at the same airline. That she didn't know if this was the reason for―or the result of―our breakup, she said with a laugh. I nodded with my ear pressed against the phone.

Life must float along all of a sudden, without warning. Around that time, I grew close to an intern working at the same company. Our relationship had progressed into a very typical romance. It was not long afterwards that we invited my father, who lived alone in my hometown, and rushed through a frenetic wedding ceremony. Just like on an impulsive journey, it felt like everything was passing by me in a flash. Our marriage did not go so smoothly. I constantly made excuses to be away from home, and my wife could not tolerate me in that state. It felt like more than half of me was living somewhere else. She must have felt the same way.

Though I dreamed of being placed overseas, I was never promoted out of coordinating local agencies. That was understandable, since our mother company in America was staggering and even the Korean office was beginning to cut jobs and restructure the management system. I thought things weren't going as I wanted, but to be honest, I didn't even know what it was that I wanted. It felt as though causes and effects were being haphazardly swirled together. My wife and I didn't make it through a year before we ended up agreeing to a divorce. And it seemed that misfortune attracted even more misfortune, as my father passed away in the midst of our finalizing the process.

My father died in his house back home. This was probably a small, humble joy of his. He had closed his eyes in his own place―a place he was rooted to all his life. Of the local seniors who went on that trip to China all those years ago, only a few were still around. Part of it was because more than half of them had passed away, but it was also because of the resort that popped up in the area. I heard that some local elders who owned land there made good money off the deal and went into the city. On the other hand, many other locals, including my father, held demonstrations opposing the construction of the resort, thus creating a division between them. Afterwards, City Hall and the resort lobbied a few times and made the demonstrations a moot point. Time changed many things in the blink of an eye. My hometown was still my hometown, but it was a place I had no more attachment to.

The three-day funeral was a simple affair. People I knew who lived nearby came to mourn; some of my closer co-workers came down to drink with me; I purchased a plot in a private cemetery where I laid my father; I cleaned up his belongings after the funeral; I lodged a notice of death, and…

As I put my father's little house and his useless vegetable patch up for sale at a local realtor, the agent―who was a friend of my father―reminisced about him. He added that he was all the more pained by my father’s death because my father, that healthy man, had collapsed and just regained consciousness as though he were fine. My friend, what is this place? Is this really my hometown? Where's the place I was born and raised? Where did it go? The real estate agent recalled my father's words, tut-tutting as he stared off into the air. It's a comfort, at least, that he passed away in his hometown.

I politely said goodbye to him and left the office. This was probably the last time I would see an old friend of my father’s. Once the house and the vegetable patch were sold, I would take care of matters by telephone and fax.

In my father's room, I spread my father's bedding and lay there, spending my final night in my hometown. I looked up at the ceiling and its ancient wallpaper, and counted the iris patterns one by one. I counted to about fifty irises, and when I lost count, I started over from the beginning. I counted to about two hundred irises, and when I lost count, I started over from the beginning. I counted to about five hundred irises, and when I lost count, I started over from the beginning.

I still kept in contact with her. Not my wife, but her―the one who was a flight attendant. Once, we met up for dinner for the first time in a long time. Of all the days, it just happened to be the day that we first began dating. That day so long ago, in a bar filled with voices flying everywhere, talking with her while feeling like a man who had never held a conversation in his life.

I said 'it just happened to be the day', but maybe we both remembered the date and met up while claiming it was a coincidence. Celebrating an anniversary even though we aren’t going to get back together. Just like a couple of freaks. I don’t know who started first, but we spat out words like that and simultaneously burst out into laughter. The kiwi dressing on the salad must have been a little sour―she grimaced slightly. I asked her as a joke,

What's it like up in the sky? Is it a good place?

She answered in a surprisingly crestfallen tone, mumbling with her gaze on the table.

Being in the sky… it's lonely. When I look out the window, I don’t see any traffic lights. And it's not like I can wave at the clouds coming at me.

She continued as though muttering to herself.

The only things in the sky are people. The people I'm supposed to serve.

I retorted teasingly,

An airplane flies at nine hundred kilometers an hour. You're supposed to serve juice and water and meals in that machine that moves six times faster than one of Sun Dong-yeol's pitches. Don't tell me you didn't know that when you started your job?

A tired smile rose to her lips, and faded. It was about then that she suddenly brought up Haruo.

I saw Haruo.

Haruo? Haruo… Oh, Haruo.

When the name Haruo escaped her lips, I exclaimed out loud in recognition. From the depths of a bog of memories filled with waterweed, algae, and garbage, the name glided up to the surface. Not only had it been quite some time since our trip to India, but my life had changed so much since then. It almost felt apt to call him an 'old friend'.

Her story was a rather surprising one. She said she saw Haruo at the airport in Detroit. No, well, I can't say for sure that it was Haruo, she added, and continued.

She was waiting her turn in the cabin crew line. She was in uniform, clutching that two-level suitcase with her hands folded together. But a small commotion was breaking out in the waiting line next to them, where foreign travelers were waiting for entry procedures.

One man was involved in a quarrel with the airport's security staff. The man was complaining, bellowing occasionally, and two staff members were holding his arms and demanding that he go with them to a questioning room. The man was Asian, wearing a tattered pair of jeans and a brown, loose-fitting wool sweater. From his voice and intonation, he sounded Japanese. But 'unusually for a Japanese person', he was protesting vehemently.

It was when the quarreling man happened to look in her direction that she thought, that's Haruo. The fleeting warm smile that she thought he flashed when their eyes met was perhaps just her imagination, she added.

She explained that in America, travelers could sometimes be subjected to full-body scans. Foreign travelers would be selected at random and taken to a cylinder-shaped scanning room, where they would have to raise their arms like an arrested suspect and have their entire body scanned with something like an X-ray. She said these security measures had been strengthened after 9.11. If a traveler were to refuse, he could even be denied entry to the country.

She said that she was unable to help Haruo, because then airport security staff swarmed around him and took him away to the questioning room. He had crossed the line of simple protest and ended up causing a sort of disturbance, after all. He was probably given a brief background check and put through a refusal of entry process, she added.

Were anniversaries supposed to be such lonely days, I wondered to myself. Outside the restaurant window, it was snowing. As winter was coming to an end, the snowflakes weren't particularly fluffy. Wet snow, wet snow, I mumbled.

She told me about her future plans. She was set to marry the 'Captain' from the same airline company soon, and she was due to settle in Los Angeles. She had already quit working as a flight attendant, and this was it for her life in Korea. It's like I'm going on a long, unending journey, she said. Still, you should come visit sometime, I said halfheartedly with a nod.

As we said goodbye, this was what she told me as though in passing.

Remember how I talked with Haruo all night at the guesthouse in Varanasi?

She spoke with her eyes set on the sky, from which wet snow was falling.

You were watching us, so you probably remember. Do you know what I talked about with him that night?

I also looked up at the sky. The snowflakes were growing thicker.

I told Haruo that he was beautiful.

She said, still looking into the sky as the snow grew heavy.

Haruo flashed me a warm smile then, too. But after that, such a lonely expression appeared on his face.

She said that, seeing his expression, she could not say a word. Night was flowing by in Varanasi. In the stillness of that dark room, Haruo said as though in passing,

What is beautiful… is everything except Haruo.

That was what Haruo said. At the time, those somehow-parched words felt like very quiet, thin air, preventing her from saying any more. And she said, at that moment, she sensed something peculiar.

Catching wet snowflakes on the palm of her hand, she said quietly,

It felt like a small love just passed through me.

I have one more story to tell about Haruo.

The Korean office I was working at had overcome its troubles some time ago and was on its way to recovery. Although I’d felt powerless for so long, the company was driven to expansion by the iron will of the new chairman, who supposedly had many contacts in the political sphere. The Korean office came to oversee the East Asian and Southeast Asian markets, and a muted note of excitement was running through my workplace.

After joining a project that was started for the strengthening of our foreign operations, I came to head the job of hiring foreign personnel, picking out foreign employees from all over Asia.

To my surprise, I found a Japanese man among the applicants who was very similar to Haruo. The application form he sent via internet said that his name was Hara Kyosuke. But in the photograph, I recognized the arch of Takahashi Haruo's eyes, the shape of his nose, and the curve of his lips. Although the photograph on the application gave a sharper impression, I still could not shake the thought that this had to be Haruo. I was puzzled, but I had no way of confirming his identity. This was because, following the sudden closure of Haruo's homepage, I had no way of knowing his whereabouts and no way of reading his writings.

At the interview, I was able to meet Hara Kyosuke in person. He was wearing a well-cut pinstriped suit and a controlled smile on his lips. It seemed he had a good grasp of courtesy and self-control. He said he had worked as an intern at a small trading company in Japan, and that he had taken a great interest in Korean culture recently because he had begun dating a Korean woman.

Mr. Hara, do you by any chance also go by the name 'Takahashi Haruo'?

I asked. Hara Kyosuke looked at me in confusion, tilting his head, and replied clearly. That his name was Hara Kyosuke, and that he had never heard the name 'Takahashi Haruo' before.

I nodded. At that moment, a smile flashed over Mr. Hara's face.

That night, while drinking alone at home, I looked up Hara Kyosuke's phone number and called him. He seemed to think it strange that the one in charge of his job application had called so late. It was a natural reaction, as it was already past ten in the evening. But I interrogated him regardless.

Mr. Hara, are you really not Takahashi Haruo? A long time ago, you ran a blog about traveling―I mean, about life―and you met me in India.

There was a moment of confused silence. Mr. Hara spoke.

Yes, I did travel to India a long time ago, and I did run a blog. But the blog was not about traveling or life―it was about global trends. Of course, global trends are also things about life, but… In any case, my name is Hara Kyosuke, and I do not know this person called Takahashi Haruo.

Just as Mr. Hara finished, I was seized by a strange fervor and said resolutely,

Of course you aren't. You aren't Takahashi Haruo after all. You must not be Takahashi Haruo. Because even now, Takahashi Haruo should be…

On the other end of the phone, Mr. Hara kept his silence.

…still traveling.

Then, I hung up on him. I raised the glass of strong Chinese liquor and defiantly tipped the wine into my mouth.

Not long afterwards, I quit working at the company.

I had many reasons for doing so. Our project was making little progress, and my team and I were partly responsible. Mounting pressure from the company was breeding friction within the team. And many other reasons.

I handed in my letter of resignation without a particular plan in mind. I had no one to support anyway, so I was free to look for a job elsewhere, or leave Seoul to do something completely different. But my heart would not move in either of those directions.

For days I lay on my bed, letting time pass as I stared up at the arabesque-patterned ceiling. I counted to about three hundred blocks, and when I lost count, I started over from the beginning. I counted to about seven hundred blocks, and when I lost count, I started over from the beginning. I counted to about nine hundred blocks, and when I lost count, I started over from the beginning. And as I counted to a thousand and five hundred blocks, all of a sudden I went on to the internet and bought a ticket for a flight to India.

I wasn't exactly up for just a trip, and I wasn't exactly feeling the urge to discover Tao. If I could put it this way, it just felt like I had to. I would probably go to New Delhi and take a sleeper train to Varanasi. I would sit quietly among the people, who would be sleeping or idly passing the time, and suddenly get up and begin cleaning. And then, someone might strike up a conversation with me and ask,

Do you, by any chance, know Takahashi Haruo?

I would flash a warm smile and reply,

If it's more than half of Haruo,

Maybe.