It’s September. You haven’t forgotten our promise. . . have you?

 

I tilted my head in confusion at this random, cryptic message from H.

Our promise? What sort of promise had we made? Figuring the message was meant for someone else and H had gotten the chat windows or contact names mixed up, I pretended I hadn’t seen it to give H the chance to clear things up.

If H said: Sorry, wrong person,

I’d reply: No worries, I didn’t even see what it said!

The idea being that it was probably best to feign ignorance.

But a moment later, when I remembered the promise H was referring to, I paused. Opening my calendar app and seeing the date, September 1, reminded me that we’d agreed to do something together around this time.

Last September, I had taken part in a workshop H was holding at a tiny bookstore in downtown Seoul. The workshop was called A Diary of September. When I asked about the flyer posted inside the bookshop calling for participants to join a month-long journaling session, the bookstore owner eagerly invited me to join. I found out later that the owner was none other than H, the workshop organizer. H admitted to being a little embarrassed that no one else had signed up so far and asked if I’d be all right if it was just the two of us. Likely worried I might feel pressured or run away, H insisted that it would be simple and walked me through the three rules of keeping a diary.

 

First, write by hand. (You can type on the computer first, then transcribe.)

Second, write every day. (Binge writing works, too.)

Third, write anything. (It’s OK if it’s not exactly a diary entry.)

 

H and I kept our diaries for that entire month. We wrote them separately and at the same time in tandem, as the whole premise of the exercise was to share in the sense that we were writing during the same period of time. There was even time to swap and read each other’s diaries planned for the end of the month. Because we were essentially writing with an awareness of our reader, I hadn’t known how honest we could be, but since what we wrote didn’t necessarily have to be true, the sincerity didn’t feel forced.

On the last day of the month, as promised, we met up again and slowly, silently read through each other’s Septembers. The workshop ended with the creation of a fourth rule: to never voice our thoughts or opinions about what we had read.

Once we finished all the planned activities for the day, I was getting ready to head home when H asked if I wanted to do this again the following September. Though we hadn’t spoken much about it, we both could tell that this time had stirred something within us. Honestly, the reason I’d been such a willing participant may have been because I’d known deep down this would happen. I can’t go into detail here, but reading H’s diary, I was struck by the thought that we both seemed to have had days where we felt as though we had to at least get these entries out right away or else. I barely managed to contain my emotions for fear of upsetting H, but there were certain sentences where I could feel something hot welling up suddenly at the back of my throat.

As we made earnest plans for the following year, I asked H about the timing. Why September? With twelve months in a year, it wasn’t like this was the only month you could keep a diary.

H told me there was a part in Oh Eun’s poem “One Year” that read: “In September I try to get a firm grip on my mind / but try as I might my mind is the one thing I’ll never grasp.”

Amazed that I’d remembered those lines so vividly even as I’d completely forgotten our promise, I sent H a reply. Thinking all the while how weirdly fitting it was that she hadn’t said a word for months only to carefully broach the subject now that September was here again.

 

Of course not! I’m going to start today. Are we meeting up on the last day of the month this time, too?

 

*

 

I went to the hospital to fill a prescription for my blood pressure medication and ended up with a new medication tacked on. Suspicious about the change, especially as I hadn’t had any other tests done, I asked the doctor what the new medication was for and was told that it was the first and only drug of its kind that could be used to treat my chronic illness, so I should give it a try. The drug had initially been used to treat a different disease but had gotten approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety in early August and could now be administered to patients like me starting from September.

On the bus back to the office, I looked up the name of the drug and its side effects. The information was no different from what I’d heard at the hospital and the pharmacy, but seeing it in print made it feel more real somehow, which in turn made me antsy. Very common side effects included hypoglycemia, with dizziness and lumbar pain also commonly reported. There were instructions to consume water frequently to dilute the amount of glucose present in the urine. I normally didn’t drink a lot of water, so this might prove to be yet another positive change for my body. But as always, when one thing gets better, another gets worse.

The new medication came in yellow, diamond-shaped tablets. My blood pressure medication being white, at least I knew I wouldn’t mix them up and overdose.

 



*

 

I had been drawn to Water once upon a time. Though he often asked who would like someone as unremarkable as him—and this wasn’t just him whining but a conclusion drawn from a long history of rejections recorded in his body and mind—I didn’t think Water was as unattractive a person as he made himself out to be. His small, round forehead and plain features had a cute charm to them, and his polite yet somewhat timid attitude weirdly came across as tenderhearted.

But I quickly sorted out my feelings for him. The more I learned about his lifestyle, the more certain I felt that not only was I ill-equipped to handle his type, but that he was also incapable of managing a steady, monogamous relationship. Water wanted people who could lust after him without the assumption that a relationship would follow, and those people were relatively easy to come by, almost sure to be found coming and going from particular kinds of places, such as love motels, DVD rooms, bathrooms. These were, for the most part, clandestine spots shared only within the gay community, places where those with no choice but to resign themselves to the risks gathered and then dispersed.

Honestly, thinking back on Water as I knew him then, I find myself wondering. I had somewhat impure intentions toward him at first and later came to listen closely to his stories with a strange curiosity and a sensual pleasure, but that’s because I couldn’t understand why he wanted me to hear them. Whenever we met up, he would confide in me about things like the men he’d encountered fleetingly since I’d seen him last and the emotions, sensations, and thoughts brought about by those encounters. But there was never a moment when I wasn’t judging him, and though this would have already been plain to see from the look in my eyes or on my face, Water, for some reason, always tried to be transparent.

Whatever his true feelings may have been, though, I still regret the words I often said to him back then. They came from a place of genuine concern on my end, and while he fortunately didn’t twist my words or take them the wrong way and get upset, they were much more scheming and had a weightier stigma to them than I had realized.

Can you not? I used to say to him. This is how you’ll end up getting fucked for real.

 

*

 

I was banging my forehead against the rattling window, feeling like a failure and punishing myself for getting lost in thoughts of Water once again, when the golden light of the setting sun came pouring into the bus all at once. An overwhelming heap of sunlight, enough to make me question how such a thing was possible. One by one, sensing that something was strange, other people on the bus began lifting their eyes from their phones to gaze out the window, and the light scattered softly over their tired faces, if only for a moment.

When the warmth that briefly ghosted over my eyelids disappeared, I was struck by this thought.

Let’s take the bus. Let’s skip the subway for September and ride the bus instead. Let’s not stare at our own blank-faced reflection in a dark window, let’s not focus on those doggedly persistent memories of Water, and let’s look instead toward where the light is pointing.

 

*

 

At the start of the year, I decided I would no longer live as a handmaid to art. This decision came after I realized almost all the troubles that had befallen me as of late could be traced back to that damn discipline. I’d believed I was moving through life side by side with art, never doubting for a second that we were on equal footing. but over time I learned that art had already surpassed me long ago, not only getting ahead of me but recklessly deciding where I ought to go next or else narrowing my field of vision as it pleased. I had judged people based on their importance, made use of others’ feelings, and even ended a long-term relationship, all because of art.

When I told Earth about my decision, he said that even without my mentioning it, he’d thought for the longest time I was unhappy because of my novel, and it seemed like he was right. At the end of the day, he said, writing can’t be more important than living. He had a point, but it seemed that he’d misunderstood me; namely, that he’d mistaken the part where I said I wasn’t going to live as a handmaid to art as meaning I was going to quit writing my novel, and I was quick to correct him and say that wasn’t the case. Earth shrugged after appearing to ponder it for a moment and said he wasn’t sure the two aims were compatible. Then, after a beat, he asked,

Why a handmaid of all things? Isn’t that a bit misogynistic?

*

 

Written this way, it may seem as though Earth had never uttered a discriminatory remark in his life, but that’s not true. Not long ago, we were watching a news story about a repeat sex offender who had escaped from prison when Earth thoughtlessly commented,

Better off being gay than living like that.

I froze in sheer disbelief as a cutting silence settled into the space between us, which Earth quickly broke through with a muttered retraction.

I mean, I don’t think so, but realistically speaking, that’s how our society sees it.

I was silent.

Sorry.

What for? You should say sorry to yourself.

Just forget it.

It felt deeply unfair how his words had immediately etched themselves into my memory, made themselves impossible to forget, and I asked myself just how long I could continue to watch the self-hate embedded in Earth’s bones present itself in this way from time to time, in what seemed like his sincere belief that we were a social evil, that our queerness was a serious criminal offense. I wanted to do something about it but often wondered whether there was anything I could do.

Oh, but of course I don’t mean to speak ill of Earth.

 

*

 

There’s this one story I sometimes use as an example to explain to folks the kind of person Earth is. A few years ago, we were on the subway when an older man sat down next to us. From what he was wearing I guessed he was coming back from a hike, and the moment he took a seat, the air around him began to reek with the musty, intermingling stench of alcohol and sweat. I watched for a chance to strike, and as soon as a pair of seats opened up across from us, I moved. I gave Earth a look telling him to hurry and join me. It wasn’t like the new seats were that much more comfortable, but they had to be better than sitting right next to that man.

Still, Earth stayed in his seat. He watched me with obvious discomfort, creasing and relaxing his forehead again and again. Later when we got off the train, I asked him why he’d just sat there, and Earth said that if both of us had gotten up at the same time, that man would have known it was because of him and would have been embarrassed, so Earth decided to tough it out. He didn’t want to humiliate the man. But that guy had been so drunk he could barely keep his eyes open, and even if he had managed to open them, he’d been in no state whatsoever to notice whether someone next to him had gotten up or not. . .

Now that I think about it, there was another time something like this happened. We had been walking around Earth’s neighborhood when he suddenly pulled me into a nearby side street. We had barely walked a few steps down the alleyway when the street opened out again onto the main road, so despite it being my first time in the area, I could clearly tell we were going the long way around. Picking up on my suspicion, Earth explained that for several months now he had been trying to avoid the salon on the main street that he used to go to. He said that if the owner spotted him walking by, she might feel upset. Baffled, I asked him whether switching salons was a big enough deal to warrant all this, and Earth smiled, told me that in the end it was best to do what he had to do for his own peace of mind. Looking at him then, I remember thinking we were patently and unmistakably different people, so I later learned to simply give in.

But lately I’ve begun to wonder if Earth and I kept meeting up precisely because this was the sort of person he was. I thought maybe he was putting up with the emotional stench emanating from me. Thought maybe he was taking the roundabout way in an effort not to hurt me. Thought that since that was who he was, I would be no exception to the rule.

I’m not the only one trying to endure.

 

*

 

I had nothing I wanted to write, not enough words to fill a single line in my diary, so I transcribed the notification I had received earlier that day.

 

Please be advised that the indoor charnel house at the Seoul Municipal Crematorium will be closed during the Chuseok holiday in accordance with COVID-19 prevention measures. We ask for your active cooperation and request that you refrain from visiting over the Chuseok holiday period.

 

*

 

The first thing I do when I get on the bus is check if the very front seat on the left is empty. The seat is installed above one of the front wheels, and sitting there makes for an even more cramped and bumpy ride than usual, especially on a low-floor bus, but I still try to claim that spot whenever I can.

This seat preference is because I can watch scenes unfold as clear as day. Scenes of bus drivers exchanging the briefest of greetings as they pass each other. At some point I realized that every time the driver of the bus I’m on and the driver of the same bus going in the opposite direction cross paths and lock eyes, they slightly raise a hand or give a little nod, and that made me think there must be something like a tradition practiced at every bus company in the country, or else a mannerism known only to the drivers hired by this bus company. But anyway, seeing the drivers act as if they knew each other lifted my spirits so much that I found myself looking forward to those moments.

Today, though, for some reason, the driver in the opposite-bound lane gave no greeting whatsoever as he passed my driver by. From the moment the bus entered my field of vision, my eyes had been trained on the driver’s seat, so I doubt I missed the timing or had seen it wrong. Had the driver been distracted with other thoughts and simply driven past? Had something happened to sour his mood to the point where he couldn’t be bothered with greetings? Or did that driver and my driver dislike each other so much that it was second nature to turn away whenever they crossed paths?

Right, that could be it. Even an encounter this brief could be too hard to bear.

 

*

 

As I was reading the horoscopes my co-worker S shared with me a few days ago, I thought again of Water. Because the forecast for Cancers like me said that as Uranus continued to occupy our Eleventh House as it had begun to do in 2019, we would experience many changes in the realm of friends and acquaintances. The way thoughts of Water specifically flooded my mind as soon as I read that made me think there was still quite a distance between us.

 

While 2022 will bring many sudden, unexpected encounters with new people, your core relationships will also undergo many shifts. In a few years, by the time Uranus moves into a new position, you will have completely different friends, colleagues, and acquaintances in your circle.

 

I read up to there, then scrolled back to the title of the post.

‘2022 Classic Horoscope for the 12 Zodiac Signs.’

So these were predictions for the following year. I stared at those four digits, a number that felt like such a distant future. Did this mean I was going to lose someone again? Would next year see another relationship severed and estranged?

 

*

 

Look, I’m sorry, but. . . I wish you’d stop talking about him with me. We weren’t even all that close, to be honest. I don’t think carrying on like this will do either of us any good.

This was what Earth said to me around this time last year, his face stiff in a way I’d never seen before. Until then, I hadn’t known just how much I had been talking about Water. Or, I knew, the same way I knew that Earth was tolerating it and that I’d become a burden to him, but there was no one besides him that I could talk to, and no one else I wanted to talk to, either.

 

*

 

I got a call from Water last year in mid-May. It was a little after midnight, the fresh sound of the rain rushing into my room through the slightly opened window. I was awake with my phone already in my hands, but when Water’s name came up on the screen, I just stared at it, not moving. It had been long enough that I was shocked to be getting a call from him after all that time, and I had a bad feeling. Why a phone call at this hour . . .?

If I had been curious or concerned about how Water was doing, I should have answered, but in the end I didn’t pick up. It’s not that I wasn’t curious or concerned, but more that the desire not to know overpowered my every other thought. I didn’t want to deal with a situation that had grown complicated, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to reconnect with Water. I figured if he had an urgent request, he would message me, so I waited a little while, but after that one attempt to call, Water gave up on contacting me again.

For some time, whenever I thought about my choice that day, I would insist to myself over and over that my back had simply been against the wall. I was completely burnt out at the time and wouldn’t have had the energy to listen or empathize with someone else, so even if someone besides Water had sought me out that night, I wouldn’t have answered—this was how I tried to make sense of the way I’d acted.

But a year and a half has gone by now, and I know that’s not the full reason. It’s not a complete lie, but I knew there were real reasons that would easily overshadow it, knew there was a clear element of truth to the discomfort that had made me cower and hesitate that day.

 

*

 

When I started seeing Earth, we all hung out together from time to time. Earth and Water were curious about each other, and Earth in particular seemed to find Water amusing. At first, Water didn’t seem to like Earth much and was standoffish toward him, but after having a couple of meals and drinks together, they hit it off and soon were laughing and chattering away. Earth certainly seemed more cautious than when it was just us two, and I had a feeling his interactions with Water were working to feed his own ego, but things felt neither awkward nor strange. As always, Water regaled us with stories about his latest string of one-offs, but at some point Earth ended up being the one to direct the conversations, firing off questions for Water to answer. Earth had never been around someone like Water, someone who acted boldly on his desires, or rather someone who had no qualms about discussing them openly, which Earth found fascinating. I knew all too well how he felt, wide-eyed and eager to listen a little more carefully.

But at some point, Earth started hinting at his true feelings about Water.

By the way, is everything all right with him?

Huh?

He didn’t look so good today. He’s not sick or anything, right?

Sick?

I mean, I’m genuinely worried about the guy. No matter how lonely you are, no one should be living like that.

Did you not hear him earlier?

Hear what?

What he said. That he doesn’t sleep around because he’s lonely, but because he likes to. He said it’s as simple as that.

I tried defending Water, even told Earth that if he wasn’t going to introduce the guy to someone, he shouldn’t judge or criticize him for the way he lived, but even I couldn’t completely mask my concerns. If I imagined that when he parted ways with us, he would be heading into a world branded with stigma, I worried that much more.

A moment later, though, I realized we were both feeling reassured deep down that we were in a position to worry about Water, and that by drawing this distinction between us and him, Earth may even have been inching closer toward something like certainty about our relationship. I didn’t know when or how things would end, but in that moment at least, I felt as though the two of us had pulled off a joint escape from rock bottom.

Yet naturally these conversations I had with Earth about Water opened a rift between Water and me. The reason I stopped responding to Water’s messages right away or pushing back the date of our next meet-up wasn’t just because it was getting harder to make ends meet. Whenever I got the occasional message from Water jokingly saying that he was living modestly as a ‘non-gay’ like the two of us these days, I could sense that he was hurt but just laughed it off, not wanting to lay bare those feelings even then.

And so I think at some point I began to choose Earth over Water. More than the world of Water, which was swept under the rug and seen as shameful even within the community, I wanted to be enmeshed in the world of Earth, which seemed middling and safe. I wanted somehow to settle into a life that sat higher up in the hierarchy of normalcy, even if only by one level.

Yet in the end we’re no different from other outsiders. Even if we prove we’re as loyal and benign as any of our fellow citizens, our community is always in danger, always subject to approval, a bunch of people who never know when or how we might be dragged away by our hair yet again.

 

*

 

If I imagine the reason Water called me that time wasn’t to complain or ask for help but because he’d wanted to know how I was doing, I feel like crying. Amidst the unprecedented chaos of being violently outed and watching the soaring number of homophobic articles being churned out by the day in the name of disease prevention, as we held our breaths, trembling in fear of becoming each other’s alibis—if I imagine that in the middle of all that, he’d been wondering about my well-being. . . I want to die.

 

*

 

Today, at the recommendation of S, I went to have my palm read. There was a fortune teller based in Gwangju who even researched palmistry, and I jumped at the chance to book a reading on one of the rare occasions they would be in Seoul.

Yet for the thirty-odd minutes I sat across from the fortune teller, my mind was elsewhere. Whether because I hadn’t slept well the night before or because of the side effects from the new medication, I couldn’t focus, my mind muffled as though swathed in fabric. Even worse, the details that the fortune teller was reading in the lines of my palm were generally unexciting. My fate must have been a drag if this was all they could come up with, but I had to wonder, as I slowly began tuning out, if some of the particulars—my digestive issues, my tendency to overthink, my choosiness when it came to people—weren’t things anyone could tell just by looking at me. Probably finding it equally awkward to end the conversation or simply let it meander, the fortune teller asked me whether there was anything I was curious about, and I considered mentioning what a hard time I was having with my novel, but I was afraid the reason for that would turn out to be my own lack of talent or something along those lines, so I kept my mouth shut. I stared down at the chaotic crisscross of stark and faint lines on my palm until I thought of something to say.

Ah, I thought of something.

Of course, ask away.

Will next year be a hard year for me again?

Seeing the puzzled frown on the fortune teller’s face, I explained that I was asking because my horoscope had said that Uranus was entering my star sign’s Eleventh House, which meant some of my core relationships would become estranged. It said this was true not only for last year and this year, but next year, too, so I was curious whether that would really be the case.

Your star sign?

Oh, does that sort of thing not appear in your palm?

The fortune teller calmly returned my gaze.

What’s wrong? Have you grown estranged from someone?

Well, yes . . .

Was that really hard for you?

Well, yes . . .

After silently studying my palm for a moment, the fortune teller spoke, a wan smile on their lips.

Just call that person up and invite them out for a drink. That should do the trick.

 

On the bus home, I listened to a song by Lee Young-hoon. I watched a little bit of a live cover he did on YouTube, then queued up several songs I liked from his first and second albums. His voice was thin and shaky, yet comforting for that reason. A quiet, honest consolation.

Suddenly, I thought of the person who had first introduced me to him. Back in 2010, this singer would sometimes busk at the old playground in Hongdae, and this person enthusiastically urged me to go and see him perform at least once. That was already more than ten years ago now. How had that person and I grown so distant?

While the songs played on, I thought of all the people, in no particular order, from whom I’d now become estranged.

The hyung next door who had fled under the cover of night with his debt-saddled parents but left behind a three-page letter for me. The friend who pretended not to know all along that I was the one leaving recordings of love songs as voicemails for him every night. The friend with whom I’d shared my first kiss in a bathroom out of sheer curiosity. The friend who swore that when he grew up he was going to work in an office building in Gwanghwamun. The teacher who told me on graduation day that I could make movies and gifted me the film magazines he had been gathering since his own college days. The sunbae who said we should never give up on our novels no matter what and then wept inconsolably. My first love, with whom I’d been denied entrance to a motel on the grounds that there were no rooms they could rent out to two men. A lover from long ago who shouted while drunk that I was an asshole and I should know it.

I wonder whether they’re all doing well.

 

*

 

I woke up this morning and saw that Earth had sent me a link on Messenger. Thinking it would be one of those clickbait posts that starts off with a sensational news report and ends with an ad for some dietary supplement, I clicked it and saw the title card for a set of slides that read ‘The Words Half of All Koreans Spell Wrong.’ The slides featured the instructions ‘Choose the correctly spelled word from the following pairs’ along with sets of commonly confused words: apoplepsy vs. apoplexy, renumeration vs. remuneration, reperation vs. reparation, perspire vs. prespire.

Ever since I had brought Earth’s ridicule upon myself by accidentally saying “I’m spurious” instead of “I’m furious,” he’d taken to shoveling articles about spelling down my throat like a mother bird regurgitating food into her chicks’ mouths. Seeing the lengths he went to, I wondered whether I had made similar mistakes in front of him more than just the one time. Earth didn’t know this, but I’d been humiliated at my first-ever job, too, after writing “personnel expenses” as “personal expenses.”

I picked the correct word out of the first few pairs before I got frustrated with myself for obediently doing what I’d been told and went back to the Messenger tab. Then I started a new conversation completely unrelated to spelling. Earth replied right away, as if he’d been looking at his phone at that exact moment.

 

What are you doing this Saturday?

Probably hanging out.

With who?

With you.

In that case, can you come with me? I need to go somewhere.

Of course.

You’re not even going to ask where? Are you the type who’ll go anywhere if someone says let’s go?

What’s wrong? Do I need to mentally prepare for something?

No, nothing like that . . . I’m going to Paju.

Paju?

Yeah, to see my grandmother. I couldn’t visit during Chuseok. The charnel house was temporarily closed due to Covid.

 

*

 

We had just entered the building when Earth stopped short and said it would probably be better if he waited outside. There was a table near the entrance with a sign-in sheet for contact tracing purposes, and I was writing down my phone number and about to head inside when Earth spoke up.

I’ll be fine. Take your time paying your respects.

The charnel house was a two-story building constructed in the style of a royal mausoleum, and Earth’s voice hummed inside the high-ceilinged room. Suspecting something was wrong, I studied his face, and sure enough he seemed annoyed, which prompted me to apologize again. I couldn’t help feeling sorry, as he’d walked more than thirty minutes uphill in the glare of the autumn sun to accompany me. When I came alone, I got on with the trek by telling myself the walk was manageable, but today for some reason there had been unusually heavy traffic coming and going, so we had to keep stepping aside onto the shoulder of the road to avoid the cars as they passed. According to Earth, though, that wasn’t the reason he was hesitating now.

It’s just, I don’t think it’s right for me to join in.

What do you mean?

Your grandmother might be uncomfortable with us being together.

At that, I fell silent. Here was a man who had come this far in life only to feel like he even had to walk on eggshells around a dead person, but if I thought about it as though I were bringing someone home to meet my parents, it wasn’t like his diffidence was totally unfounded, so I couldn’t quite scoff at him for that. Yet even when I considered it in that light, I still came to the conclusion that Earth was worrying for nothing. What could my grandmother possibly know about us when it had already been twenty years since she’d passed? And even if she did somehow know something, what was I supposed to do about that now?

As these thoughts ran through my mind, Earth asked me,

What was she like?

My grandmother?

Yeah. Like, was she open-minded?

Open-minded . . .

I pretended to think for a moment, then said that for someone of her generation, she leaned more toward an open mindset. Even in that moment I wanted to say the words Earth wanted to hear, and since he’d come all this way, I wanted him to have a good impression of my grandmother.

But as I answered him, I thought of how my grandmother was about as far from open-minded as anyone I could imagine. I learned later from my mother that while my grandmother was incredibly warm in front of me, she would nag my mom behind my back. Just how are you raising your son to be such a sissy? Sometimes when the topic of my grandmother came up, my mom would tell me how she’d spent so many heartbreaking years unable to conceive even after marriage, how she’d never been able to shake off the sorrow she’d held onto all that time, how my grandmother went around to all the top herbal medicine clinics in the country and refused to let her give up, how there wasn’t a single day my mom managed to get a restful night of sleep. No one would have imagined then that the precious son she had conceived with such difficulty would eventually grow up to be the one to sever our family’s bloodline entirely.

 

*

 

My grandmother’s remains were enshrined somewhere in the middle of Section B. From the entrance, she was on the right, housed inside a rectangular stone pillar that looked like any other storage locker. While I wiped away the dust that had gathered on her nameplate with one finger, Earth spoke.

Your grandmother’s family name was Won.

It was.

“Grandma Won’s.” Like the bossam restaurant chain. Did your grandmother like bossam?

I said nothing. I told myself it wasn’t right, I shouldn’t laugh, but then I started cracking up, the corners of my mouth lifting as I tried to ignore the satisfied grin on Earth’s face. I slid my bag off my shoulder and set it on the floor. After pausing for a moment to catch my breath, I took out the memorial prayer pamphlet I’d brought from home. It was a four-page printout that Roman Catholics used for funerals and death anniversaries. My faith had lapsed a long time ago, but when I came to the charnel house, I always made sure to bring this booklet, believing that reading the prayers was an effort to remain even a little while longer by my grandmother’s side.

We crossed ourselves clumsily and started on the prayer. The text was divided into alternating parts, the changes in the speaker indicated by alternating white and black circles. I hadn’t noticed when I read it alone, but as the two of us read the prayer together, an interplay, we unwittingly created a kind of rhythm. At one point I even felt as though we were reciting a poem.

Once we had read through the whole thing, I was seized by a strong desire—no, a need—to read it over from the beginning. I asked Earth if we could go through it one more time from the top.

Again? How come?

Is it too long?

It is.

Well, I just liked how it sounded. And it would be nice to pray for all my grandmother’s neighbors here, too. . .

At first, Earth studied me, as if trying to suss out any ulterior motives. Then, seeming resigned, he took the prayer sheet from my hands and said if we were reading the same prayer again, we should switch roles. He would start this time.

In that moment, I thought of Water. The line in the prayer that read “all the departed” repeated so often that I couldn’t help but think of him, couldn’t help but think about how I couldn’t go and see him, how I had no way of knowing where or how he was resting. According to the friend who had sent me the funeral announcement, even though the ongoing pandemic was reason enough not to hold a gathering, the truth was that Water’s father—his only surviving blood relative—didn’t want anyone finding out his cause of death and thus had elected to lay him to rest without a service, keeping even the location of the cemetery a secret from the prying eyes of people like us.

For our second reading, I thought it would be a good idea to recite the prayer loud enough so that others could hear. I thought it would be nice if we could somehow send the prayer farther by exerting a little more effort. It probably wouldn’t be able to reach Water, wherever he was, but still. . . If I didn’t at least try thinking this way, I might come to hate myself again so much I couldn’t bear it, and not wanting Earth to know what I was feeling or to blame me and hate me too made me deliberately try thinking this way even more.

Earth tapped me on the elbow.

All right, he said. Let’s start.

 

*

 

Meanwhile, even now, I still know nothing for certain about what happened to Water. I’m not the only one in the dark—almost nobody in the community who knew him has any idea either, and since we were the type who could easily remain friends without knowing much of anything about each other’s daily lives, Water’s death could only be explained to us in a handful of familiar keywords and some guesswork based on those. Hate and condemnation, exclusion and deprivation, depression and isolation, disease and pain, sexual minority and suicide.

For a while, I tried to tear down these speculations surrounding his death. I declined the test papers submitted in the absence of the one person who would know the right answers, refuted the narratives that reinforced the old bias that a life lived outside the norm was the same as an early death. I feel awful, but now I wonder whether there was something else I could have done for Water, if I had done all this more for myself, to put my own mind at ease, if only a little.

Water hadn’t died because he was promiscuous.

Water hadn’t died because he was anxious.

Water hadn’t died because he was weak.

Water hadn’t died because he was sad.

Water hadn’t died because he was angry.

Water hadn’t died because he was lonely.

Water hadn’t died because he was gay.

But my effort to cleave these causal relationships left me with yet more questions. Why do I want to make Water’s death into something flawless? Do I somehow want to prove, by completely erasing the parts that might appear unsavory, that not all of us gays lived and died that way? Who exactly is the owner of the gaze I find myself constantly aware of as I censor myself over and over again, and who exactly am I pushing away or cutting off so that I might receive approval from that gaze?

 

*

 

The night I first introduced Earth and Water to each other, Water had said about Earth:

I knew you’d end up meeting someone similar to you.

And that same day on the subway ride home, hinting at his first impressions, Earth had asked me about Water:

Where did you end up meeting someone like him?

 

*

 

I met up with H on the twenty-ninth. We’d initially agreed to meet up on the last day of the month, but something unavoidable came up for H and we pushed up the meeting by a day.

We sat in a quiet corner of a café that H liked, reading each other’s diaries in silence. Reading through them just once left much to be desired, so we went back and read them again from the beginning. And like that, half an hour went by. There wasn’t that much to read, but it still took us a while. We returned the diaries and heaved dramatic sighs—whew—neither of us wanting to start first.

Then H spoke up.

Because at least someone should know, she said.

I chimed in,

Right, I think so, too.

We decided to abide by our old rule of not sharing any feelings or opinions related to the content of the diaries this time, too, and so had no choice but to talk about other things. Those other things turned out to be mostly what we’d been seeing, hearing, and thinking about lately, so technically, you could say our conversation wasn’t all that different from what we had written. But either way, H and I both thought it was a little funny and a little sad watching the other try their hardest to refrain from discussing the diaries. H told me how she’d been consistently calling someone by the wrong name, a syllable off, since last summer, yet the person hadn’t once corrected her, and I talked about the time the host of this podcast I liked said he was confident we could all have decently interesting conversations without making other people into caricatures or insulting them.

How long had it been? As we were chatting, I’d gotten hungry and ordered a slice of carrot cake, and when I returned, H suddenly remembered something.

Wait—I just realized we have one more day left of writing our diaries, but I guess we won’t get to read those last entries. September ends tomorrow.

Oh, you’re right. Should we write them and send them over KakaoTalk or something?

H considered this for a moment, then suggested another option.

How about we bury them and dig them up again next year?

Oh, like a jar of kimchi?

Like a time capsule!

I thought that sounded like it could be fun.

Ah, then will we keep diaries together next year, too?

Of course. We’ll write them together.

Embarrassed at the way something inside me fluttered in that moment, I lowered my gaze to the table, staring at a spot where the afternoon sunlight was puddling as I answered.

Then next September first, I’ll be the one to let you know it’s time to start.

 

*

 

I was walking down the street when I stopped short at the sight of a flowerpot placed outside the gate of someone’s home. A rather large note was stuck to the nameless, dried-up, withered-black plant.

 

Reviving. Please don’t remove.

 

I opened my camera app, framed the shot so that the note was clearly visible, and was about to snap the picture, convinced I should write about this today, when a thought suddenly crossed my mind and made me lower my phone once again. Though I had decided not to make rash judgments, though I had resolved to stop rushing to sympathy or pity, it seemed that in the blink of an eye I had already forgotten my promise.

 

Translated by Paige Aniyah Morris