Chapter Text
The white-washed walls of the hospital room didn’t just smell of antiseptic and starch; they smelled of finality. The pale moonlight, streaming through the open curtains and bare window, sliced the room into stripes of light and shadow, casting a cold silver hue over the boy sitting on the edge of the bed.
Ha Yi-chan sat with his back to the door. The world had become a strange, muffled place—a silent film where the soundtrack had been ripped away, leaving only the vibration of the air and the frantic rhythm of his own heartbeat. He didn't hear the door creak open. He didn't hear the hesitant footsteps of the boy who had claimed to be from a time yet to come. But he felt the shift in the room’s energy. He felt the weight of a gaze.
Slowly, Yi-chan lifted his eyes. In the reflection of the window pane, framed by the distant view of the Seoul skyline, he saw him. Eun-gyeol. The boy who had appeared out of nowhere, forced his way into Yi-chan’s life, and taught him that "shining" wasn't just about the light you received, but the fire you started yourself.
Eun-gyeol stood there, his shoulders slumped as if he were carrying the weight of the entire sky. His face was a mask of grief, his eyes rimmed with a red that spoke of sleepless nights and a guilt so profound it threatened to swallow him whole.
Yi-chan didn't turn around immediately. He watched the reflection. He watched the way Eun-gyeol’s lower lip trembled, the way his hands clutched the strap of his bag as if it were a lifeline.
"Are you going back?" The words felt heavy in Yi-chan's throat. He couldn't hear his own voice—not really—but he felt the vibration of it in his chest, a low hum that reminded him he was still there, still anchored to the earth.
He finally turned his body, the movement slow and deliberate, the hospital gown rustling against the sheets. He forced a smile, though it felt brittle, like dried parchment.
"I saw your reflection in the mirror and the sad look on your face before saying goodbye," Yi-chan said, his eyes locking onto Eun-gyeol’s. He tried to keep his tone light, the way the "Frontman" of the Watermelon Sugar band always would. "That's my Sherlock Holmes moment."
Eun-gyeol didn't laugh. He didn't even crack a smile. Instead, a single tear escaped, rolling down his cheek. His lips moved, and even without hearing the sound, Yi-chan could read the shape of the heartbreak.
"I'm sorry," Eun-gyeol mouthed.
Yi-chan’s heart squeezed. He hated that word. Sorry. It was a word for mistakes, for accidents that could have been avoided. But this? This felt like destiny, even if it was a cruel one.
"Where are you going?" Yi-chan asked, his voice steadying, growing more inquisitive. He leaned forward slightly, searching Eun-gyeol’s face for the truth he had been avoiding for weeks. "Home? Abroad to study? Or the future? You said you were from the future."
He said it with a tilt of his head, a ghost of the old, mischievous Yi-chan peaking through the bandages and the trauma. He wanted to give Eun-gyeol an out. He wanted to tell him it was okay to be impossible.
Eun-gyeol stepped closer, his face collapsing into a sob he tried to stifle. "I'm really sorry," he repeated, his voice likely cracking, though Yi-chan could only see the agony in the way his throat moved.
"I'm just curious," Yi-chan continued, his pace quickening as the realization of the departure settled in. There was so much he needed to know. If this was the last time he would see this strange, brilliant boy, he needed a map for the silence that was about to consume him.
"What happens to me in the future? Do I even go to college? What about the band? Do I keep playing?" Yi-chan’s eyes searched Eun-gyeol’s, desperate for a glimpse of a version of himself that wasn't broken. "Will I... be able to hear again? Will I stop putting Halmeoni through bad times and become a good grandson leading a proper life?"
He was rambling now, the fear finally leaking out. The fear of a life without music, a life where he was a burden to the grandmother who had given him everything. He needed Eun-gyeol—his "tutor," his friend, his self-proclaimed protector—to tell him it wasn't all for nothing.
Eun-gyeol reached out, his hands shaking. He began to speak, his expression shifting from grief to a fierce, burning conviction. He spoke with his whole body, his eyes wide and pleading, desperate for Yi-chan to believe him.
"You will have a good life," Eun-gyeol’s lips moved with emphatic precision. "Your life will twinkle more than anyone's life. Remember what I told you before? Your wife will love you. Your children will respect you. You will become an excellent father. That will be your future."
Yi-chan watched him, mesmerized. He couldn't hear the words, but he felt the warmth of them.
"Your weakness will make you unique," Eun-gyeol continued, his face glowing with a strange, prophetic light. "You will shape every hardship into the story of a hero. So—"
But the wall of silence was too thick. Yi-chan’s eyes welled up, the frustration of the quiet finally breaking his composure. The world was moving, Eun-gyeol was giving him the answers to the universe, and he was trapped behind a glass partition he couldn't shatter.
"What are you saying?" Yi-chan cried out, the sound of his own voice a distorted, muffled roar in his skull. He gripped the edge of the mattress, his knuckles white. "I can't hear you at all!"
The sight of Yi-chan’s frustration was the final blow. Eun-gyeol let out a broken wail—a sound Yi-chan felt as a sharp vibration in the air. They both sat there for a moment, two boys caught in a temporal knot, weeping for a past that was changing and a future they couldn't grasp together.
Eun-gyeol wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He took a deep breath, his gaze hardening with a newfound purpose. He didn't just speak this time. He raised his hands.
Slowly, tentatively, Eun-gyeol began to use sign language—the very thing Yi-chan had previously tried to learn for Cheong-ah, the bridge between their two worlds.
"So..." Eun-gyeol signed, pausing as a fresh wave of tears hit. He looked Yi-chan directly in the eye, his hands moving with a grace that felt like a song. "Keep your promise. Be strong and overcome this. Make sure to become my father."
Yi-chan froze. The words ‘Make sure to become my father’ echoed in the silence of his mind. It was the most ridiculous, impossible, beautiful thing he had ever heard—or rather, seen. He looked at Eun-gyeol, really looked at him. He saw the resemblance he had joked about before—the eyes, the stubborn set of the jaw, the way they both loved music with a frightening intensity.
"You listened to it?" Yi-chan whispered, referring to the cassette, the music, the dreams they had shared.
He reached out and patted the space on the bed beside him. "Come here."
Eun-gyeol moved like a ghost, sitting down where Yi-chan indicated. They were inches apart now. Yi-chan could feel the heat radiating from Eun-gyeol’s body. He reached out and placed a hand on Eun-gyeol’s neck, pulling him close—close enough that his lips were right against Eun-gyeol’s ear. He knew he couldn't hear, but he wanted Eun-gyeol to hear every vibration of his soul.
"Listen to me," Yi-chan said, his voice low and vibrating through his own jawbone. "This isn't your fault. Accidents are just accidents. I will be miserable for a while. I’ll cry, and I’ll be angry. But I won't be in despair, thinking my life is ruined."
He pulled back just enough to look Eun-gyeol in the eye, his expression fierce.
"So go. Don't even look back and leave. Go. When you can finally get rid of that guilty look on your face... come back to see me."
Eun-gyeol’s face crumpled. He lunged forward, throwing his arms around Yi-chan in a desperate, bone-crushing hug. Yi-chan held him back just as tightly, his hand coming up to rhythmically pat Eun-gyeol’s back, the way his grandmother did when he was a child.
‘It’s okay,’ the gesture said. ‘I am Yi-chan. I am the Frontman. I am the master of my own sparkling life.’
They stayed like that for a long time, the silence of the room filled with the unspoken promises of twenty years.
Eventually, Eun-gyeol pulled away. He stood up, his face red and swollen, but the crushing weight of the guilt seemed to have shifted into something else—a quiet, somber hope. He walked toward the door, stopping at the threshold.
He turned back one last time. He gave Yi-chan a smile—a small, tremulous thing, but a smile nonetheless. It was a promise.
Yi-chan sat on the bed, the pale glow of the moon bathing him in a halo of silver. He raised his hand and waved—a slow, rhythmic goodbye. He smiled back, his eyes glistening with tears and the quiet determination to live a life worth coming back to.
As the door clicked shut, Yi-chan stayed in that wave for a second too long. The room was silent, but in his head, he could still hear the faint, ghostly ringing of a guitar string.
He wasn't losing a friend today. He was letting go of a guardian so that he could grow into the man that guardian needed him to be.
‘See you in the future, Eun-gyeol,’ he thought, his hand dropping to his lap. ‘Wait for me there. I’ll make sure I’m a father you can be proud of.’
-
The silence was not a void. That was the first thing Ha Yi-chan learned in the minutes after the door to his hospital room clicked shut, severing the last physical link to the boy who claimed to be his son. Silence was not the absence of sound; it was a heavy, pressurized substance, like being trapped at the bottom of a deep, crystalline ocean. It pressed against his eardrums, a constant, humming weight that vibrated with the ghost of every song he had ever played, every laugh he had shared with the band, and every frantic, desperate word Eun-gyeol had shouted at him.
Yi-chan stayed in that wave for a long time. His hand was still raised in the air, a frozen salute to the empty doorway. The cold moonlight shifted, stretching the shadows of the IV pole across the floor like the long neck of a lonely bird. He felt a strange, phantom ache in his chest—a localized grief for a boy who had vanished into the ether of time.
He lowered his hand slowly. The movement felt sluggish. He was a boy who had lived his entire life in a symphony of noise—the clatter of the Snail Boarding House, the roar of the crowd at the festival, the rhythmic thumping of his own grandmother’s wooden spoon against a pot. Now, the symphony had ended, and the conductor had walked off the stage.
He turned his gaze back to the window. The world outside continued its frantic dance. Cars blurred past on the street below, pedestrians moved in a chaotic, synchronized flow, and the trees swayed in a wind he could no longer hear. It looked like a silent film, beautiful and distant. He felt like an observer of his own life, a spectator sitting in a darkened theater, watching a reel of "Ha Yi-chan" play out on the screen.
The door opened again.
He didn't hear it. He didn't even feel the vibration of the floorboards this time. It was only when a shadow fell across his bed that he realized he was no longer alone. He looked up, his heart skipping a beat, half-expecting—half-hoping—to see Eun-gyeol’s tear-streaked face one more time.
But it wasn't Eun-gyeol.
It was Cheong-ah.
She stood there, clad in a simple dress, her hair falling like a dark curtain around her pale face. Her eyes were wide, rimmed with a redness that mirrored his own. In her hands, she clutched a sketchbook—her voice, her lifeline.
Yi-chan felt a surge of warmth cut through the cold pressure of the silence. He tried to smile, but it felt lopsided and heavy. He reached out a hand, gesturing for her to come closer.
Cheong-ah moved with a hesitant grace. She sat on the edge of the plastic chair beside his bed, her knuckles white as she gripped her charcoal pencil. She didn't write anything at first. She just looked at him—at the bandages around his head, at the way his eyes searched hers for a sound that wasn't there. She reached out, her fingers trembling as she brushed a stray lock of hair from his forehead.
The touch was a revelation. It was a language he still understood.
She opened her sketchbook, the charcoal scratching against the paper with a vibration he could feel in the air between them. She turned the book toward him.
“I’m sorry,” it read.
Yi-chan shook his head instantly, a sharp, jagged movement. “No,” he said. He couldn't hear the volume of his own voice, couldn't tell if he was shouting or whispering, but he pushed the words out with all the conviction he had left. “Why are you sorry? You didn't do this.”
Cheong-ah’s eyes filled with fresh tears. She flipped the page, her movements becoming more frantic, more desperate. She wrote quickly, the pencil lead snapping under the pressure before she grabbed another. When she held the book up, the words were jagged, bleeding into one another.
“The car. It was my stepbrother. He was driving. He was looking for Eun-gyeol. He wanted to hurt him because of me. Because of my father’s house. He caused this. He took your voice. He took the music.”
The world seemed to tilt. Yi-chan stared at the paper, the letters dancing before his eyes. The accident hadn't been a random strike of lightning. It had been a targeted strike of malice. The stepbrother—the one who had treated Cheong-ah like a ghost in her own home, the one who had tried to stifle her light—had ended up extinguishing Yi-chan’s sound.
A cold, sharp anger flared in his gut, but then he looked at Cheong-ah. She was trembling, her shoulders hunched as if she expected him to strike her. She was carrying the sins of her family like a crown of thorns. She thought that because she loved him, she was the reason he was broken.
Yi-chan reached out and grabbed her hands, forcing her to drop the sketchbook. The book thudded onto the linoleum floor—a soundless impact that sent a tiny vibration through the soles of his feet. He pulled her toward him, ignoring the ache in his own body.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his eyes burning. “Cheong-ah, look at me.”
She lifted her gaze, her face a mask of agony.
“You did nothing wrong,” Yi-chan said, his voice thick. He emphasized every syllable, hoping she could read the shape of his truth. “You are the girl who paints the wind. You are the girl who taught me that music doesn't need ears to be felt. Your brother is a coward, but you... you are my muse. Do you hear me? You didn't take anything from me. You gave me a reason to keep looking at the world.”
He pulled her into a hug, burying his face in her shoulder. She let out a jagged, silent sob, her hands clutching the back of his hospital gown. They clung to each other in the center of that silent room, two islands in a vast, quiet sea. Yi-chan could feel the rhythm of her heart against his chest—thump-thump, thump-thump—a percussion more beautiful than any drum set he’d ever owned.
After a long time, Cheong-ah pulled back. She wiped her eyes and picked up her sketchbook. She wrote one more sentence, her hand steadier now.
“My father is taking me to the USA. We leave in three days. He wants to start over. Away from that house. Away from them.”
Yi-chan felt the air leave his lungs. First Eun-gyeol, now Cheong-ah. The two people who had redefined his world were being pulled away by the currents of time and distance. He felt a moment of pure, unadulterated terror. If they both left, what would be left of the Ha Yi-chan who lived for the "sparkle"?
But he saw the look in Cheong-ah’s eyes. It wasn't a goodbye; it was a plea for a tether.
“The USA?” he asked, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “That’s... that’s far. But they have good teachers there, right? And big schools for art?”
She nodded, a small, sad movement.
“Then go,” Yi-chan said, his grip on her hands tightening. “Go and paint the whole world. Don't let that house keep you a prisoner anymore. Be the Cheong-ah who can fly.”
She leaned forward, her forehead resting against his. She reached for the sketchbook and wrote a single word in the corner of a page.
“Fax?”
Yi-chan laughed, a dry, raspy sound that he felt in his throat. “Yes. Fax. I’ll buy the most expensive fax machine in Seoul and replace my old one. I’ll send you so many messages the paper will run out in all of America. We’ll talk every day. You can draw for me, and I’ll... I’ll tell you about the band. About Halmeoni. About how I’m becoming the hero Eun-gyeol said I would be.”
They made the promise there, in the fading light of the hospital ward. A promise written in charcoal and sealed with a touch. When Cheong-ah finally left, the room felt emptier than before, but the silence was no longer so heavy. It was a canvas now. A blank page waiting for him to write on it.
-
The discharge from the hospital was a blur of paperwork and the concerned, hovering presence of his grandmother. Halmeoni didn't say much—she didn't need to. Her eyes, usually sharp and twinkling with mischief, were now soft and guarded, as if she were afraid he might shatter if she looked at him too hard.
The taxi ride back to the Snail Boarding House was a surreal experience. Yi-chan watched the city through the window, his mind automatically trying to assign sounds to the sights. The honk of a horn, the screech of brakes, the chatter of students outside a tteokbokki stall. He realized with a pang of sorrow that he was starting to forget the specific textures of those sounds. They were becoming memories, fading photographs in the back of his mind.
When the taxi pulled up to the boarding house, the familiar sight of the wooden gate and the climbing vines brought a lump to his throat. This was his kingdom. This was where the "Frontman" lived.
He stepped out of the car, his legs feeling a bit like jelly. The ground felt different—the vibrations of the street were more pronounced now that the auditory "noise" was gone. He could feel the engine of the taxi idling, a low-frequency hum that traveled through his shoes and up his spine.
He walked through the gate, Halmeoni following close behind with his small bag of belongings.
The courtyard was the same, yet entirely different. Balsan was there, sitting on the wooden porch, repairing a broken chair leg. He looked up as the gate creaked—Yi-chan assumed it creaked, based on the way Balsan’s head turned—and his face lit up with a wide, gap-toothed grin.
Balsan stood up, waving his arms enthusiastically. He shouted something—Yi-chan saw his jaw drop and his chest expand—but the sound never reached him. It was a jarring reminder. Yi-chan stopped in his tracks, his breath catching.
Balsan realized it almost instantly. The older man’s face fell, a look of profound realization crossing his features. He stepped down from the porch, his movements slower now, more careful. He walked up to Yi-chan and, instead of his usual loud greeting, he simply placed a heavy, warm hand on Yi-chan’s shoulder and squeezed.
Yi-chan looked at him, his eyes searching. He needed to know. He needed to confirm the thing he already knew in his heart.
“Balsan-hyung,” Yi-chan said, his voice feeling strange and disconnected from his body. “Eun-gyeol. Ha Eun-gyeol. Did he... did he come back here? After the hospital?”
Balsan’s brow furrowed. He looked at Halmeoni, then back at Yi-chan. He shook his head slowly. He held up his hands, mimicking a bird flying away, then pointed to the door of the room Yi-chan and Eun-gyeol had shared. He made a "gone" gesture—palms up, moving outward.
“He didn't come back at all?” Yi-chan pressed, a desperate edge to his voice. “Not even to pick up his things? His guitar? His bag?”
Balsan shook his head again. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small notepad he’d started carrying. He scribbled something and handed it to Yi-chan.
“The last time I saw that kid was the morning after the accident. He ran out like he was being chased by a ghost. He never came back.”
He never came back. The words struck Yi-chan like a physical blow. Eun-gyeol hadn't just left; he had been pulled back somewhere else, leaving behind a hole in the world that only Yi-chan could see. To everyone else, Eun-gyeol was a strange, temporary boarder who had moved on. To Yi-chan, he was the boy from nowhere who made the biggest difference in his life.
“I see,” Yi-chan whispered.
He turned away from Balsan and walked toward his room. The hallway felt narrower, the air stiller. He reached the door and hesitated, his hand hovering over the handle. This was the space they had shared. This was where they had argued about music, where Eun-gyeol had tried to teach him English, where they had dreamed of a future that felt so bright it hurt to look at.
He pushed the door open.
The room smelled of old paper, laundry soap, and the faint, lingering scent of the citrus spray Eun-gyeol used. It was exactly as they had left it the night of the accident. Eun-gyeol’s bed was unmade, the sheets rumpled as if he had just stepped out for a moment and would be back any second.
Yi-chan walked into the center of the room, his eyes scanning the space. The sunlight hit the dust motes dancing in the air, creating a silent, shimmering swirl. It was beautiful, in a tragic sort of way.
Then, he saw it.
Draped over the back of the wooden chair was the grey hoodie. The one Eun-gyeol had been wearing the very first day they met. The one that looked a little too modern, a little too high-quality for 1995.
Yi-chan walked over to it, his movements trance-like. He reached out and touched the fabric. It was soft, thick, and held a faint warmth from the sun hitting it. He picked it up, burying his face in the hood. It smelled like Eun-gyeol—a mix of rain, cedarwood, and the sterile scent of the hospital.
He slumped into the chair, clutching the hoodie to his chest. The silence of the room felt different now. It wasn't an ocean anymore; it was a sanctuary.
“You idiot,” Yi-chan whispered into the fabric, his voice cracking. “You left your heart here. How am I supposed to be a hero if you’re not here to nag me?”
He closed his eyes, and for a moment, he could almost hear Eun-gyeol’s voice. “Dad. Be strong. Don't give up. The future is waiting for you.”
He remembered the look on Eun-gyeol’s face in the hospital room—the raw, bleeding guilt. Eun-gyeol thought he had failed. He thought that by trying to save Yi-chan from the accident, he had somehow made things worse.
“It wasn't wasted,” Yi-chan said, his grip on the hoodie tightening. “Everything you did. The lessons. The band. The way you looked at me like I was the most important person in the world. None of it was wasted.”
He stood up, his legs feeling stronger now, his resolve hardening like cooling steel. He walked over to his desk, the one where Eun-gyeol had forced him to sit and study for hours. The desk was covered in loose papers, lyrics for songs that would never be sung, and sketches of a "Watermelon" logo.
He smoothed out the hoodie and laid it carefully across the foot of Eun-gyeol’s space. It was a relic now. A holy object from a future he was determined to reach.
“I’m going to be better,” Yi-chan vowed, speaking to the empty room, to the silence, to the ghost of the boy who had loved him. “I’m going to live a life that twinkles so brightly you’ll be able to see it from wherever you are. I won't be a burden to Halmeoni. I won't let the music die just because I can't hear it. I’ll be the father you deserve. I promise.”
He felt a strange sense of peace settle over him. The fear was still there, lurking in the shadows of the silence, but it was no longer the dominant force. He had a mission now. He had a map, even if the legend was written in a language he was still learning to read.
He sat down at the desk. His hands were steady as he reached for a stack of books tucked into the corner. He pulled one out—the English textbook Eun-gyeol had bought him. It was thick, intimidating, and filled with a language that felt like a secret code.
He opened it to the first page. Chapter One: Greetings.
He looked at the words—Hello. My name is...—and he felt a phantom vibration of Eun-gyeol’s voice, coaching him on the pronunciation. “Round your lips more, Yi-chan! It’s ‘Hello,’ not ‘Hullo’!”
A small, genuine smile touched Yi-chan’s lips. He reached for a pen.
The door opened softly. He didn't hear it, but he felt the shift in the air, the familiar, comforting presence of his grandmother. He didn't look up immediately. He wanted her to see him like this—not as a victim, not as a broken boy in a silent room, but as a student of his own life.
Halmeoni walked into the room, carrying a small tray. On it was a bowl of steaming porridge, a side of kimchi, and a glass of barley tea. She set it down on the edge of the desk, her movements careful not to disturb his books.
She stood there for a moment, her hand resting on his shoulder. Yi-chan looked up and met her gaze. He saw the worry in her eyes, but he also saw the fierce, undying love that had been his foundation since the day he was born.
He reached out and patted her hand, a silent "thank you."
She leaned down and kissed the top of his head, her lips a warm, fleeting pressure. She pointed to the porridge, making a "eat" gesture, and then she quietly slipped out of the room, leaving him to his task.
Yi-chan picked up the spoon and took a bite. It was warm, savory, and familiar. It tasted like home. It tasted like a beginning.
He turned back to the textbook. He gripped the pen, the plastic cool against his fingers. He began to write, the tip of the pen scratching against the paper, a vibration he could feel in the very bones of his hand.
H-E-L-L-O.
The silence was still there, but it was no longer a weight. It was the air he breathed. It was the space where his new life would grow.
He took a deep breath, the scent of the grey hoodie on the bed behind him filling his lungs. He looked at the empty bed, at the silent room, and then at the window where the first stars were beginning to twinkle in the darkening sky.
“Watch me, Eun-gyeol,” he thought, his eyes bright with a fire that would never go out. “Just you watch.”
He turned the page.
-
The weeks that followed were a masterclass in adaptation. Yi-chan discovered that the world was incredibly loud if you knew how to look at it. The vibration of the floor when Balsan walked past his room, the rhythmic tapping of the rain against the windowpane, the way the air changed temperature when someone entered a room—these became his new senses.
He spent hours every day with the English textbook. It was his way of staying connected to Eun-gyeol. Every word he learned felt like a bridge being built across time. He imagined Eun-gyeol in the future maybe, just like what the boy had told him, sitting in a classroom, perhaps playing a guitar, unaware that in 1995, his father was fighting to become the man he had described.
He also spent hours at the fax machine.
It was a clunky, beige beast of a machine that sat on a small table in the corner of the boarding house’s common room. Every night, Yi-chan would sit before it, waiting for the shrill, electronic whistle that signaled an incoming message—a sound he couldn't hear, but a light he could see flashing.
The first time a fax came through from Cheong-ah, he almost cried.
It was a drawing. A simple, elegant sketch of a girl sitting by a window, looking out at a city skyline that wasn't Seoul. In the corner, she had written: “The light here is different, Yi-chan. It’s colder, but it’s clear. I miss your smile.”
He wrote back immediately, his handwriting frantic. “I’m studying English! Eun-gyeol’s book is hard, but I’m winning. Don’t look at the cold light too long. Remember the sun at the music camp.”
They became each other’s anchors. Across the ocean, across the silence, they built a world out of ink and thermal paper.
One evening, about a month after returning home, Yi-chan was sitting in his room. The grey hoodie was now neatly folded and kept in a drawer, a secret treasure he only pulled out when the silence felt a little too heavy.
He was working on a new song. Not a song with lyrics—he wasn't ready for that yet—but a song of rhythms. He had discovered that if he pressed his forehead against the body of his acoustic guitar, he could feel the notes. The low E string was a deep, rumbling growl in his skull. The high E was a sharp, stinging prickle.
He was composing a melody for the "Twinkling Live" he was starting to build.
There was a knock on the door—a vibration he felt through the floorboards.
“Come in,” he said, his voice stronger now, more controlled.
Balsan entered, looking uncharacteristically somber. He was holding a small, weathered wooden box. He walked over to Yi-chan and set it on the desk.
He pointed to the box, then to Yi-chan, and then he made a gesture like he was playing a piano.
Yi-chan opened the box. Inside was a collection of old photographs, a few medals from a long-forgotten school competition, and a small, silver harmonica.
Balsan picked up the notepad from the desk and wrote: “This was my father’s. He couldn't hear well toward the end, either. But he always said that music isn't for the ears. It’s for the bones. You’re doing well, Yi-chan. Don’t let the quiet make you small.”
Yi-chan looked at the harmonica, then at Balsan. The older man’s eyes were moist. In that moment, Yi-chan realized that he wasn't the only one who had been changed by Eun-gyeol’s visit. The "ghost" of the boy from the future had touched everyone in the Snail Boarding House, leaving behind a wake of kindness and hidden strengths.
“Thank you, Hyung,” Yi-chan said, his heart full.
When Balsan left, Yi-chan picked up the harmonica. He held it to his lips. He didn't blow into it yet. He just felt the cool metal against his skin.
He looked at the English textbook, at the drawing from Cheong-ah on the wall, and at the guitar leaning against his bed.
He wasn't the Frontman of a band anymore. He was the Frontman of a life.
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and blew into the harmonica. He felt the vibration start in his lips, travel up through his teeth, and resonate deep within his chest. It was a sharp, bright sensation. It was a sound he couldn't hear, but it was a feeling he could own.
He smiled, a wide, "shining" Yi-chan smile.
The silence was no longer a prison. It was a stage. And he was just getting started.
He picked up his pen and turned back to the textbook. Chapter Two: My Family.
He began to write the word "Father," his hand steady, his heart rhythmic.
In the corner of the room, the sunlight caught the edge of the grey hoodie in the drawer, a tiny spark of light in the quiet.
Yi-chan didn't look back. He just kept writing.
-
The morning light in the spring of 1995 didn’t carry a sound, but it had a rhythm. It was the rhythmic flickering of dust motes in the air of the classroom, the synchronized movement of forty pairs of hands turning a page, and the steady, silent vibration of the chalkboard being scraped by a teacher’s frantic chalk.
Ha Yi-chan sat in the very first row, so close to the podium that he could smell the stale coffee on the teacher's breath and the faint scent of laundry detergent on his suit. This was a position previously unthinkable for the leader of Watermelon Sugar. In the "old" life—the life before the world went quiet—Yi-chan had been a creature of the back row, a king of the shadows where he could whisper to Ma-joo, doodle lyrics, or catch a quick nap behind a propped-up textbook.
Now, the back row was a ghost town. To sit there was to be lost.
He watched the teacher’s mouth with a focus that was almost predatory. Mr. Choi, the literature instructor, had a habit of biting his lower lip before he spoke a key point, and his mustache twitched whenever he quoted poetry. Yi-chan’s eyes darted from the man’s lips to his throat, watching the muscles tighten and release. It was exhausting. By the second hour of the day, a dull ache usually bloomed behind Yi-chan’s eyes—a "visual hangover" from the sheer effort of translating movement into meaning.
Beside him, a notebook sat open. It wasn't for doodles. It was filled with meticulous, jagged handwriting. Every time Mr. Choi wrote on the board, Yi-chan scrambled to copy it, his knuckles white against the pen. He was no longer just a student; he was a detective, piecing together a puzzle of a world that refused to speak to him.
Occasionally, a classmate would drop a pen or slide a chair, and the vibration would travel through the floorboards, up the legs of Yi-chan’s desk, and into his elbows. He would flinch, his heart jumping into his throat, thinking for a split second that the sound had returned—that the heavy, underwater pressure in his ears had finally snapped. But then he would see the teacher's lips continuing their silent dance, and the reality would settle back in, cold and heavy.
He was the Frontman. And a Frontman never looked back.
He thought of Eun-gyeol. He thought of the way the boy had looked at him in that hospital room—the raw, bleeding desperation. Eun-gyeol had practically begged him to be a hero. He had promised a future where Yi-chan was a father to be proud of. And heroes didn't fail their exams. Heroes didn't let the silence win.
When the final bell rang—a vibration that rattled the windowpanes—Yi-chan didn't move immediately. He watched as his classmates stood up, their mouths moving in silent chatter, their gestures fluid and loud in a way he could no longer quantify. He waited until the room emptied, savoring the stillness.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. He didn't jump; he knew that specific weight. It was the heavy, slightly sweaty palm of Oh Ma-joo.
Yi-chan looked up and grinned. It was a practiced grin, the "shining" smile he used as armor. Ma-joo was holding a sketchpad, a new constant in their friendship.
“The guys are waiting at the practice room. Are you coming?” Ma-joo had written in thick, black marker.
Yi-chan nodded, stuffing his books into his bag with more force than necessary. “Of course,” he said. He spoke clearly, his voice vibrating in his own chest. He had been practicing speaking while watching himself in the mirror, trying to maintain the cadence Eun-gyeol had taught him. He didn't want to sound like a stranger to himself. “The Frontman doesn’t keep his band waiting.”
The walk to the practice room—the spacious room located in a building not far from school they had claimed as their kingdom—felt longer than usual. The sidewalks were a gauntlet of sights that lacked their corresponding sounds. The teens playing basketball on the court before they round the block was a silent ballet of squeaking sneakers and bouncing balls that Yi-chan could only feel as a low-frequency thrum in the soles of his shoes.
When they pushed open the heavy wooden door to the room, the smell hit him first. It was the scent of Watermelon Sugar: old wood, cigarette smoke from the previous tenants, damp concrete, and the metallic tang of guitar strings.
The band was there.
Kang Hyun-yul, who always looked like he was modeling for a grunge magazine, was leaning against a stack of amplifiers, tuning his bass by feeling the vibration of the strings. Se-bum was staring at the keys as if they were a language he had forgotten how to speak. And Siguk was sitting behind his kit, his sticks held loosely in his hands, his eyes fixed on the door.
As Yi-chan entered, the atmosphere shifted. It was like a sudden drop in barometric pressure. The guys stood a little straighter, but their eyes were careful, guarded. They looked at Yi-chan like he was a fragile vase that might shatter if they played a note too loudly.
“Why are you all standing around like you’re at a funeral?” Yi-chan shouted, throwing his bag into the corner. He walked over to his guitar, the white electric that Eun-gyeol had spent so much time helping him master. “We have work to do. The festival might be over, but the legend of Watermelon Sugar is eternal!”
He picked up the guitar and slung it over his shoulder. The weight of it was a comfort, an anchor. He looked at the guys, waiting for them to take their positions.
Hyun-yul was the first to move. He plugged in his bass, the red light on the amp glowing like a watchful eye. Siguk tapped his sticks together—one, two, three, four—a movement Yi-chan tracked with his eyes.
They began to play. Or they tried to.
In the past, their music had been a conversation. They finished each other’s sentences; they breathed together. Now, the thread was broken. Yi-chan struck the first chord—a bright, distorted G Major. He felt the vibration through the strap of the guitar, a jagged roar in his ribcage. But he couldn't hear the drums. He couldn't hear the bass.
He was playing in a vacuum.
He tried to keep time by watching Siguk’s shoulders, but the rhythm felt "off," like a heartbeat skipping. He was too fast, then too slow. The harmony he expected to feel from the keyboard never came.
He looked at his friends.
Hyun-yul had stopped playing. His hands were still on the strings of his bass, but his head was bowed, his long hair obscuring his face. His shoulders were shaking.
Ma-joo, who had been standing by the door with his manager’s clipboard, was leaning against the wall, his face buried in his hands. A soft, jagged sob escaped him—a sound Yi-chan felt as a sharp, painful prickle in the air.
Se-bum had turned away entirely, staring at a stain on the concrete wall, his jaw set in a hard line of suppressed grief.
And Siguk. The drummer was just staring at Yi-chan. His sticks were frozen in mid-air, his eyes wide and glassy, filled with a horror that he couldn't hide. He looked at Yi-chan’s ears, then at his hands, then back at his face, as if he were looking at a ghost.
The silence of the room was no longer just the absence of sound. It was a monster. It was a thick, suffocating blanket that threatened to extinguish the very "sparkle" Yi-chan had fought so hard to keep.
Yi-chan let his hands fall from the guitar. The vibration died away, leaving him in that familiar, cold pressure. He looked at the crying Ma-joo, the broken Hyun-yul, and the frozen Siguk.
A flash of anger sparked in his chest—not at them, but at the situation. At the unfairness of it all. At the way the world was trying to take his friends away after it had already taken his sound.
“Hey!” Yi-chan roared. He stepped into the center of the room, his voice loud enough to make Ma-joo jump.
He didn't just speak. As he spoke, he began to use sign language—the sharp, deliberate movements completely opposite with the way he signed to Cheong-ah during that night before the day of the music camp. He signed as he spoke, the dual language grounding him, making his words physical.
“What are you doing?” he signed then spoke, his eyes flashing. “Are you giving up? Is that all Watermelon Sugar is? A band that cries the moment things get a little quiet?”
Hyun-yul looked up, his eyes red. He opened his mouth to say something, but Yi-chan cut him off with a sharp gesture.
“I’m the one who can’t hear!” Yi-chan pointed to his ears, then to the band. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be crying! But look at me. Am I crying? Am I giving up?”
He paced in front of them, his hands moving with a frantic, beautiful energy.
“If you guys keep doing this—if you keep looking at me with those pathetic, 'sorry' eyes—I’m going to disband us right now,” he said, his voice dropping into a low, theatrical threat. He cracked a tiny, lopsided smile to show he didn't entirely mean it, but the steel was still there. “I’ll do it! I’ll fire the bassist, I’ll fire the drummer, and I’ll turn this room into a storage locker for Halmeoni’s radish water!”
Ma-joo let out a watery, hiccuping laugh, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.
“Listen to me,” Yi-chan continued, his tone softening but remaining firm. “Eun-gyeol... that crazy guitarist of ours... he’s gone for now. We don’t know where he is or when he’s coming back. But he gave us something. He gave us a reason to shine.”
He looked at each of them in turn, locking eyes with them, refusing to let them look away.
“We have to keep playing. Not because we’re going to be famous, and not because it’s easy. We play because we are Watermelon Sugar. We play so that when Eun-gyeol finally walks back through that door, he’ll hear the music before he even sees us. We have to be the band he remembers. No—we have to be better.”
He signed the word Future—a broad, sweeping motion of his hand moving forward.
“We play for Cheong-ah,” he said, his voice catching slightly as he thought of the girl across the sea. “We play for Seg-yeong. And we play for ourselves. Because if we stop... then the silence really wins. And I don’t plan on losing.”
Ma-joo stepped forward, his sketchpad in hand. He flipped to a fresh page and wrote in massive letters:
“I’M NOT CRYING, MY EYES ARE JUST LEAKING EXCESS TALENT.”
Yi-chan laughed, the vibration of it warming his throat. He reached out and ruffled Ma-joo’s hair, the familiar gesture bringing a sense of normalcy back to the room.
Ma-joo then looked at Yi-chan, his expression becoming more serious. He wrote something else, slower this time.
“By the way, I heard from the grapevine of the school today. Seg-yeong... she’s gone too. She went back to the US. Her dad came and picked her up a few weeks ago according to some people from their school.”
Yi-chan read the words. He felt a small, sharp pang of nostalgia—the memory of a first crush, the scent of her perfume, the way her cello had sounded like a longing soul. But it wasn't a devastating blow. The "First Love" he had chased so desperately felt like a story from a different book, one he had already finished reading. He felt only a quiet, somber farewell to a friend who had been part of his "shining" youth.
“I see,” Yi-chan said, nodding slowly. “I hope she finds what she’s looking for over there. Maybe she and Cheong-ah can start a 'Girls Who Survived Ha Yi-chan' club.”
The joke landed. Hyun-yul finally cracked a smile, a real one that reached his eyes. Siguk let out a long breath, the tension leaving his shoulders.
“Alright!” Yi-chan clapped his hands together, the vibration echoing in his palms. “No more tears. No more 'Sherlock Holmes' sad looks. We’re going to practice. Siguk, I need you to hit the drums harder. I need to feel the kick drum in my teeth. Se-bum, play the high notes—I can feel those as a tingle in my ears. We’re going to learn how to play together again, even if we have to invent a whole new way to do it.”
He picked up his guitar and stepped back to his microphone. He couldn't hear his own voice, but he knew the words by heart. He knew the feeling of the "Watermelon Sugar" anthem in his soul.
“One more time!” he shouted. “From the top! And if I see one single tear, Ma-joo has to pay for everyone’s snacks for a month!”
Ma-joo made a horrified face, scrambling to grab his clipboard.
As the band began to find their rhythm again—a rhythm born of sight, touch, and an unbreakable bond—Yi-chan felt a strange, shimmering sensation. It was as if the room were filling with a different kind of sound, one that didn't require eardrums to hear. It was the sound of a promise being kept.
He closed his eyes for a second, feeling the floor tremble under Siguk’s kick drum. Thump. Thump. Thump.
‘I’m doing it, Eun-gyeol,’ he thought. ‘I’m keeping the band together. I’m being the hero.’
And in the silence of his mind, the music had never been louder.
-
The weeks bled into months, and 1995 began to transition into the heat of summer. Yi-chan’s life became a masterclass in the "new normal." He was a regular at the local fax shop, spending his meager allowance on buying paper to send long, rambling updates to Cheong-ah.
“The guys finally figured out how to cue me,” he wrote one Tuesday evening. “Siguk wears a bright red wristband now. When he raises his arm a certain way, that’s my count-in. It looks ridiculous, but it works. My English is getting better, too. I can now say ‘The cat is on the table’ and ‘Where is the library?’ I’m basically an American citizen now.”
Cheong-ah’s replies were his lifeline. She sent him sketches of the New York skyline, of the people she saw in the park, and of herself, always looking a little more confident, a little more "shining" in every drawing.
“I’m learning sign language here too,” she faxes back. “It’s different from the one Eun-gyeol taught me, but the heart of it is the same. I told my teacher about you. I told her you were the bravest boy in Korea. She wants to meet you one day.”
Yi-chan would read her faxes over and over until the thermal paper started to curl. He kept them in a folder under his bed, right next to Eun-gyeol’s grey hoodie.
School remained a challenge, but he was winning. He had become a master of the "front row stare," a technique that involved intense eye contact with the teacher to ensure he didn't miss a single syllable. His grades were actually higher than they had ever been—a fact that made Halmeoni weep with joy every time a progress report came home.
“My grandson is a genius!” she would shout, her voice vibrating through the house as she prepared a feast of his favorite side dishes. “He’s going to go to a top university! He’s going to be a big man!”
Yi-chan would just laugh and eat, feeling the warmth of her love like a physical embrace.
But there were moments, usually in the quiet hours of the night when the boarding house was asleep, when the silence felt a little too heavy. He would sit by the window, looking out at the moon, and feel a sudden, sharp pang of loneliness.
The "twist" of his life—the sudden transition from a world of sound to a world of shadows—was a weight he carried every day. But as he sat there, clutching Eun-gyeol’s hoodie, he realized something.
He wasn't just living for himself anymore. He was living for the boy who taught him how to truly appreciate music with life. He was living for the girl who was painting the world in a different light. And he was living for the friends who refused to let him play alone.
He was Ha Yi-chan. The Frontman of Watermelon Sugar. The boy who twinkled more than anyone else.
He reached for his English textbook, opening it to a bookmarked page.
“Hello,” he whispered to the empty room, his voice a low hum in the stillness. “My name is Ha Yi-chan. I am a musician. I am a student. And I am going to have a sparkling life.”
He turned the page, the sound of the paper rustling a phantom memory in his mind.
The future was coming. And for the first time, he wasn't afraid to meet it.
-
The winter of 1995 didn’t arrive with a sound, but with a bite. It was a sharp, frost-laden wind that rattled the windowpanes of the Snail Boarding House, a vibration Ha Yi-chan felt in the marrow of his bones as he sat huddled over a desk that had become his entire universe. The year that had begun with the chaotic, sun-drenched dreams of a rock star was ending in the quiet, sterile intensity of a scholar.
The silence, which had once felt like a thick curtain dropped over his life, had transformed. It was no longer a barrier; it was a sanctuary. In the quiet, Yi-chan found a focus so sharp it felt like a blade.
He sat in the front row of his classroom every day, his eyes fixed on the teachers’ lips with a gaze so piercing it sometimes made them stumble over their lectures. He had learned the geography of the human mouth—the way a "p" puffed the cheeks, the way a "th" caught the tongue between the teeth, the way a "k" originated deep in the throat. He was no longer just listening; he was decoding. His notebooks were masterpieces of desperation and determination, filled with jagged handwriting that captured the essence of physics, the flow of history, and the intricate, frustrating puzzles of English grammar.
Beside him, always, was the English textbook Eun-gyeol had left behind. Its edges were frayed, its pages tea-stained and dog-eared. To anyone else, it was a book of vocabulary and syntax. To Yi-chan, it was a conversation with a ghost. Whenever he hit a wall of exhaustion, whenever the math equations started to look like meaningless scratches, he would run his thumb over the cover.
“I’m becoming him,” Yi-chan would think, his chest tightening. “I’m becoming the man you said I would be.”
-
The month before the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) was a blur of caffeine, cold air, and the rhythmic scratching of pens. The Snail Boarding House had become a fortress of support. Balsan-hyung had taken to walking on his tiptoes—a gesture Yi-chan appreciated even if he couldn't hear the footsteps—and the other boarders left snacks outside his door like offerings to a silent deity.
One evening, a week before the exam, Yi-chan sat in the common room. The band members were there, though they looked less like musicians and more like a weary street gang of tutors. They didn't play their instruments much these days; the practice room was too cold, and the pressure of their own futures was beginning to weigh on them. But they wouldn't leave Yi-chan behind.
Ma-joo sat across from him, holding up a series of hand-drawn flashcards. He had become remarkably proficient at a crude, personalized version of sign language that only the two of them understood.
“If you get this wrong, I’m eating your share of the fried chicken tonight,” Ma-joo signed, his face a mask of exaggerated sternness. He flipped a card: a complex calculus derivative.
Yi-chan smirked, the old Frontman spark dancing in his eyes. He scribbled the answer on a piece of scrap paper and shoved it across the table. “Eat your own chicken, Ma-joo. You need the brain cells more than I do.”
Ma-joo looked at the answer, then at the textbook, then back at Yi-chan. He let out a silent groan, falling dramatically back into his chair. He picked up his notepad.
“You’re a monster, Ha Yi-chan. Since when did the king of the back row become the god of mathematics? Is this what happens when you stop listening to rock and roll?”
Yi-chan reached out and tapped the table, the vibration drawing Ma-joo’s attention. “I haven't stopped listening,” Yi-chan said, his voice steady and resonant. He pointed to his chest. “The music just moved. It’s louder in here now because there’s no noise out there to drown it out.”
The room went still. Hyun-yul, who had been dozing over a literature book, looked up. Siguk dropped his drumsticks. They all looked at Yi-chan—really looked at him. They saw the hollows under his eyes, the ink stains on his fingers, and the fierce, unyielding light in his gaze. He wasn't the boy who had tripped over his own guitar cable anymore. He was a man who had looked into the abyss of silence and found a way to bridge it.
Ma-joo scribbled one more thing, his hand trembling slightly.
“Eun-gyeol would be proud. Really proud.”
Yi-chan looked at the name. The name that still felt like a secret prayer. He nodded slowly, his hand going instinctively to the drawer where the grey hoodie was kept. “He’d better be. Otherwise, I’m going to charge him for all the tutoring fees he skipped out on.”
The morning of the exam, the world was a pale, frozen grey. Seoul was hushed, the entire nation holding its breath for the hundreds of thousands of students who were about to decide their destinies.
Halmeoni was up before the sun. Yi-chan found her in the kitchen, the air thick with the smell of steaming rice and the sharp, comforting scent of her medicinal tea. She was moving with a frantic, focused energy, packing his lunchbox with the care of a master craftsman.
When she saw him standing in the doorway, she stopped. She wiped her hands on her apron and walked over to him. She didn't say a word—she didn't need to. She reached up and cupped his face, her hands smelling of sesame oil and home. She looked into his eyes, and in her gaze, Yi-chan saw the history of their life together: the struggles, the laughter, the way she had worked herself to the bone to give him a chance at a "shining" life.
She made a gesture—a circular motion over her heart, then a firm, upward push of her thumb. ‘Be strong. You are my pride.’
Yi-chan leaned down and pressed his forehead against hers. The vibration of her soft, rhythmic breathing was the only "sound" he needed to hear. “I’ll be back, Halmeoni. I’ll bring back the prize.”
He stepped out of the boarding house, his bag heavy with books and the weight of a thousand expectations. At the gate, the band was waiting. They weren't supposed to be there; they had their own lives, their own fears. But they stood in the cold, their noses red, holding a massive banner that read:
WATERMELON SUGAR’S FRONTMAN: CONQUER THE FUTURE.
Siguk was holding a flask of hot tea. Hyun-yul was holding a lucky charm from a local temple. Ma-joo was holding his sketchpad, looking like he was about to cry. Sebum was holding balloons with some of them saying happy birthday.
Yi-chan stopped, a lump forming in his throat. He looked at them—his brothers, his soldiers. He raised a fist in the air, a silent salute to the boys who had stayed by his side through the roar of the crowd and the stillness of the ward.
“Don't you dare disband while I’m in there!” Yi-chan shouted, his voice echoing in the quiet street.
They all laughed—a sound he couldn't hear, but a joy he could feel in the way their shoulders shook.
-
The testing center was a labyrinth of echoing hallways and tense, pale-faced teenagers. As Yi-chan walked to his assigned desk, he felt the familiar pressure of the silence. But today, it felt different. It felt like a vacuum, waiting to be filled with the answers he had carved into his brain over the last six months.
He sat down. The desk was scarred with the graffiti of students who had sat here years before him—hopes and fears etched into the wood. He took out his pens, his ruler, and his identification card.
A proctor stood at the front, his mouth moving in a series of instructions. Yi-chan watched intently, catching the keywords: Begin. No talking. Pencils down.
The bell rang. Yi-chan felt the vibration through the floor, a sharp, metallic jolt that signaled the start of the battle.
He opened the first booklet. Language Arts.
The words flooded over him. He read with a hunger he had never known. He parsed the poems, analyzed the prose, and dissected the grammar. He could almost hear Eun-gyeol’s voice in the back of his mind, arguing with him about the interpretation of a classic Korean novel.
“Yi-chan, you’re thinking too much like a musician. Think like a writer. What is the subtext?”
Yi-chan smiled to himself, the pen flying across the page. He wasn't just taking an exam; he was narrating his own comeback.
The hours passed in a surreal, focused blur. The English section came—the section he had feared the most. He put on the headphones provided for the listening portion, even though they were useless to him. He had been granted a special accommodation: a transcript of the audio. He read the dialogue, his mind translating the flat text into the rhythmic, bouncing English Eun-gyeol had spoken.
“How are you?” “I am fine, thank you.”
He could see Eun-gyeol’s lips moving, the way he rolled his 'r's and popped his 'p's. He breezed through the questions, the language of the future becoming the tool of his present.
By the time the sun began to set, casting long, orange shadows across the classroom, Yi-chan was exhausted. His hand was cramped into a claw, his eyes were burning, and the silence in his ears had become a dull, pulsing ache. But he didn't stop. He checked his work, then checked it again. He thought of Cheong-ah in the US, probably studying just as hard. He thought of the fax machine waiting for him at home. He thought of the shining future.
When the final bell rang—the final vibration of the day—Yi-chan laid his pen down. He didn't look at his classmates. He didn't join in the collective sigh of relief. He just sat there, looking at the booklets, his heart beating a steady, rhythmic thump-thump against his ribs.
‘It’s done,’ he thought. ‘Eun-gyeol, it’s done.’
-
The weeks between the exam and the results were a test of a different kind. The suspense was a living thing, a shadow that followed Yi-chan through the hallways of the boarding house. He tried to distract himself. He went back to the basement with the band. They played for hours—not for an audience, but for the sheer, stubborn defiance of it.
Yi-chan learned to play the guitar by the "sting." He would turn the distortion up until the guitar vibrated so hard it felt like his teeth were rattling. He couldn't hear the melody, but he could feel the shape of the sound. He could feel the difference between a minor and a major chord by the way the air hit his skin.
One snowy evening, the fax machine in the common room began to whir.
Yi-chan was there in an instant. He watched the thermal paper slowly emerge, the ink forming the familiar, elegant lines of Cheong-ah’s drawings.
It was a sketch of a bridge. One side was Seoul, the other was New York. And walking across it were two figures, their hands reaching for each other.
“How was the exam?” she had written at the bottom. “I felt a shiver on my skin at 9:00 AM your time. Was that you finishing the first section? I am painting a series called ‘The Sound of Silence.’ It looks like you. I hope you are smiling today.”
Yi-chan leaned his forehead against the fax machine, the heat of the paper warming his skin. He wrote back, his hand surer than it had been in months.
“The exam was a monster, but I think I’m a bigger monster. I’m waiting for the results. The band is still together, though Ma-joo is currently trying to convince us that he’s the next great music producer. I miss the way you look when you’re drawing. Don’t stay in the cold light too long.”
-
The day the results were released, the Snail Boarding House was louder than a festival. Even though Yi-chan couldn't hear the noise, he could feel the energy. It was a static charge in the air, a frantic, joyful vibration that made his skin tingle.
He didn't want to check the results alone. He sat at the computer in the local internet cafe—a clunky, beige monitor that hummed with a low-frequency buzz. The band was crowded around him, their faces reflected in the glass. Halmeoni stood behind him, her hand gripping his shoulder so hard her knuckles were white.
Yi-chan typed in his registration number. The cursor blinked. The world seemed to slow down, the silence expanding until it was the only thing left in the universe.
He hit Enter.
The screen flickered. A table appeared, filled with numbers and percentiles. At the bottom, in a bold, black font, was the final score.
Yi-chan stared at it. He didn't know if it was good. He didn't know if it was enough. He looked at the faces of his friends in the reflection of the screen.
Ma-joo was the first to react. He let out a silent scream, his mouth forming a perfect "O" of shock. He began to jump up and down, his hands slapping the back of Yi-chan’s chair.
Sebum, Siguk, and Hyun-yul followed, their faces breaking into wide, ecstatic grins. They were shouting—Yi-chan could see the veins in their necks—but he didn't need to hear them. He felt the joy. It was a physical wave, a warmth that flooded the room and washed away the months of exhaustion and fear.
Then, he felt the weight on his shoulder shift. He turned.
Halmeoni was crying. Not the quiet, dignified tears of a grandmother, but the raw, shaking sobs of a woman who had seen her greatest hope realized. She pulled him into a hug, her face buried in his neck. Through the contact, Yi-chan felt the vibration of her voice—a low, melodic hum of pure, unadulterated triumph.
“You did it,” he imagined her saying. “My grandson. My pride. You’re going to be a big man.”
Yi-chan looked back at the screen. He had passed. Not just passed—he had soared. He had earned a place at the very university Eun-gyeol had mentioned. The university where his future was supposed to begin.
He felt a sudden, sharp clarity. The silence wasn't a punishment. It was a forge. And he had come out of it stronger, sharper, and more "shining" than he had ever been as a boy with hearing.
The celebration had been a hurricane of movement—a chaotic, blurring symphony of vibration that had shaken the very foundations of the Snail Boarding House. For hours, the courtyard had been alive with the stomping feet of his friends, the frantic clapping of the boarders, and the heavy, rhythmic thrumming of Oh Ma-joo leaping onto a table to declare himself the manager of a future national treasure.
But now, the hurricane had passed.
The winter night had reclaimed the boarding house, wrapping it in a blanket of heavy, silver frost. The others had finally succumbed to exhaustion and the lingering haze of too much celebratory cider, retreating to their rooms in a tangle of limbs and laughter. The silence that remained was not the lonely, pressurized quiet of the hospital ward, but a soft, velvety stillness that felt like a reward.
Yi-chan sat on the edge of the wooden porch, his legs dangling over the stone courtyard. The air was so cold it turned his breath into ghostly plumes of white, but he didn't feel the chill. His skin was still humming with the residual energy of the day. On the small table beside him sat his registration slip—the piece of paper that proved he hadn't just survived the silence; he had mastered it.
He looked up at the moon. It was a sharp, brilliant crescent, hanging in the sky like a silver guitar pick. In the old days, he would have imagined the sound of the stars—a high-pitched, twinkling chime. Now, he simply watched the way the light hit the frost on the tiles, creating a visual rhythm of sparkle and shadow.
A shadow moved in the doorway behind him.
He didn't hear the footsteps, but he felt the subtle shift in the vibration of the old wood beneath him. He didn't need to turn around to know who it was. The air always seemed to grow warmer, more fragrant with the scent of ginger and starch, whenever she was near.
Halmeoni stepped out onto the porch, wrapped in a thick, quilted vest. She carried two mugs of hot barley tea, the steam rising in swirling patterns that danced in the moonlight. She sat down beside him, her movements slow and deliberate, the weight of her body sending a comforting, familiar shudder through the porch boards.
She handed him a mug. Yi-chan took it, his frozen fingers tingling as they wrapped around the ceramic heat. He looked at her and smiled—the real, raw Yi-chan smile that he saved only for her.
Halmeoni didn't smile back immediately. She just looked at him. Her eyes, clouded with age but bright with a fierce, ancient intelligence, traced the lines of his face. She looked at the scar near his brow, the set of his jaw, and finally, her gaze rested on his ears.
She reached out, her hand calloused and rough from decades of scrubbing floors and kneading dough, and cupped his cheek. She didn't use sign language. She didn't need to. She spoke with her eyes, and Yi-chan, who had become a scholar of the human face, read every word.
“My grandson,” she mouthed, her lips moving with a trembling pride. “You did it. You really did it.”
Yi-chan leaned his face into her palm, the warmth of her hand seeping into his skin. “I told you I would, Halmeoni. The Frontman of Watermelon Sugar never breaks a promise.”
He spoke clearly, his voice vibrating in his own throat—a low, resonant hum that he had learned to control through months of practice in front of a mirror. He wanted her to hear the strength in him, even if he couldn't hear it himself.
Halmeoni’s eyes welled up, the moonlight catching the tears until they looked like liquid silver. She pulled her hand back and began to gesture—the slow, rhythmic movements of a woman who had learned to communicate through the soul long before she learned the "official" signs.
“I was so scared,” she gestured, her hands shaking slightly. “When the world went quiet for you, I thought the light had gone out of your life. I thought I had failed your parents. I thought I would have to watch you wither away in the shadows.”
Yi-chan shook his head, reaching out to grab her hand. “No, Halmeoni. You never failed. You were the one who kept the light on.”
She squeezed his fingers, her gaze shifting to the courtyard, to the spot where the band had been dancing just hours before. A look of distant, pensive memory crossed her face. She sat in silence for a long time, the only movement the steam rising from her tea.
Then, she looked back at him, her expression turning serious, almost haunted.
“Yi-chan-ah,” she mouthed, her face illuminated by the moon. “Do you remember... that boy?”
Yi-chan’s heart gave a sudden, sharp thud against his ribs. He didn't need her to say the name. There was only one "boy" who occupied the space between them—the ghost who had walked among them for a few brief, miraculous months.
“Eun-gyeol?” Yi-chan asked, his voice a whisper.
Halmeoni nodded. She set her tea down and leaned closer, her voice—which Yi-chan felt as a low vibration in the air—dropping into a conspiratorial tone.
“That boy,” she signed, her eyes wide. “He wasn’t like the others. I’ve lived a long time, Yi-chan. I’ve seen many people come and go through this boarding house. But Ha Eun-gyeol... he was different. He looked at you as if he were looking at his entire world. And he looked at me...”
She paused, a stray tear finally escaping and rolling down the deep wrinkles of her cheek.
“He looked at me with such sorrow, but also such love. As if he knew every pain I’ve ever felt. As if he had already seen my whole life.”
Yi-chan watched her lips, his breath hitching. He remembered the way Eun-gyeol had clung to Halmeoni, the way he had hovered over her, making sure she ate, making sure she rested. At the time, Yi-chan had joked that Eun-gyeol was more of a grandson than he was.
“He was a strange kid,” Yi-chan said, trying to keep his voice steady. “He knew things he shouldn't have known. He taught me things that was too mature for our age.”
Halmeoni nodded vigorously. She reached into the pocket of her vest and pulled out something small. It was a wrinkled piece of paper, yellowed at the edges. She handed it to Yi-chan.
He opened it. It was a note, written in a neat, modern hand that he recognized instantly.
“Halmeoni, please take care of your knees when it rains. And tell Yi-chan that his life will be a masterpiece. Don't let him give up on the music.”
Yi-chan stared at the paper. The ink seemed to shimmer in the moonlight. He had never seen this note before.
“When did he give you this?” Yi-chan asked, his hands trembling.
“The night before the accident,” Halmeoni signed. “He tucked it into my apron while I was cooking. He hugged me so hard I could feel his heart beating. He didn't say goodbye, but he smelled like it. He smelled like a long journey.”
She looked at Yi-chan, her eyes searching his.
“Yi-chan-ah, where did he go? People don’t just vanish. I asked the police, I asked the school where you said he went with Cheong-ah... they say he was never officially enrolled. They say his papers were ‘incomplete.’ It’s like he was a dream we all had together.”
Yi-chan looked away, his gaze falling on the grey hoodie that he had left draped over a chair inside his room—the only physical evidence that Eun-gyeol had ever been real. He thought of the hospital room, the sign language, the impossible promise:
Make sure to become my father.
“He went back home, Halmeoni,” Yi-chan said, his voice thick with unshed tears. “To a place very far away. But he didn't leave us empty-handed. He gave me the university. He gave me the band. He gave me the chance to stay shining.”
Halmeoni wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, a small, sad smile touching her lips.
“He reminded me of someone,” she signed, her movements fluid and poetic. “Not in the way he looked, but in the way he loved. He loved with a desperation, as if every second was a gift he didn't deserve.”
She leaned over and patted Yi-chan’s knee.
“I’m proud of you, Yi-chan. Not just because you passed that test. But because you didn't let the silence turn you bitter. You took the sorrow that boy left behind and you turned it into a bridge.”
She stood up, the old wood creaking in a way that vibrated through Yi-chan’s spine. She reached down and kissed the top of his head, her lips a warm, fleeting blessing.
“Go to sleep soon,” she gestured. “The university starts in the spring. You have a lot of shining to do.”
Yi-chan watched her disappear back into the house, the golden light of the hallway silhouetting her small, sturdy frame before the door clicked shut.
Now, he was truly alone with the silence.
He looked back at the note in his hand. “Your life will be a masterpiece.”
He closed his eyes, and for the first time in months, he didn't try to "hear" the world. He just felt it. He felt the cold air on his skin, the rhythmic thrum of his own heart, and the strange, electric pull of a future that felt closer than it ever had before.
He stood up and walked to the center of the courtyard. He stood on the very spot where Eun-gyeol had stood the first time he entered this place.
“I’m going to do it, Eun-gyeol,” he whispered to the moon. “I’m going to go to that university. I’m going to write songs that people feel in their bones. I’m going to marry the girl who paints the wind. And I’m going to be the man you told me to become.”
As he turned to go back inside, a sudden gust of wind swept through the courtyard. It rattled the vines, sent the dry leaves dancing in a silent swirl, and blew the note out of his hand.
Yi-chan lunged for it, but the paper caught an updraft, spiraling higher and higher into the silver night. He watched it go, a small, white spark ascending toward the stars.
And for a split second, just before the paper vanished into the darkness, Yi-chan felt a vibration—not a low thrum, but a high, clear resonance that seemed to ring through his very soul. It was a sound he couldn't hear with his ears, but it was a melody he knew by heart.
It was the sound of a guitar string being plucked in a time yet to come.
Yi-chan smiled, his eyes bright with a fire that would never go out. He didn't need to hear the future to know it was waiting for him.
He walked into his room, closed the door, and for the first time since the accident, he didn't turn on the light. He didn't need it. He had the glow in his heart, and that was enough to light up the whole world.
-
Spring in Seoul arrived with the scent of cherry blossoms and the promise of new beginnings. The air was soft, carrying a gentle vibration that felt like a melody Yi-chan was just starting to compose.
He stood before the massive, wrought-iron gates of the university. He was dressed in a new suit—a gift from Halmeoni and the collective savings of the Watermelon Sugar band. It was a little stiff, a little too formal, but as he adjusted his collar, he felt like a king entering his realm.
In his hand, he carried a small, leather briefcase. Inside were his notebooks, a new set of pens, and, tucked into a side pocket, the silver harmonica Balsan-hyung had given him.
He didn't have his guitar today. Today was for the mind. But he knew the music was still there, tucked away in his bones, waiting for the right moment to emerge.
He looked back at the street. A taxi was pulling away, and for a split second, he thought he saw a flash of a grey hoodie in the crowd. His heart skipped a beat. He squinted, searching the sea of faces for the boy who had changed his life. But the figure turned, and it was just another student, another stranger in a world of millions.
Yi-chan smiled to himself. Eun-gyeol wasn't here—not yet. He was somewhere, waiting for the version of Yi-chan that was currently being built.
“Wait for me,” Yi-chan whispered, the words a silent promise to the air. “I’m coming. And I’m going to be the best father you’ve ever had.”
He turned back to the gates. The campus stretched out before him: grand stone buildings, winding paths, and thousands of students moving in a silent, beautiful choreography. It was a world of knowledge, of art, of possibilities.
He took his first step across the threshold. As his foot hit the pavement, he felt a vibration—not from a car, or a bell, or a voice. It was the vibration of the earth itself, the steady, rhythmic pulse of a world that was finally ready to listen to him.
Ha Yi-chan walked into the university, his head held high, his eyes bright with the "sparkle" that no accident could ever take away. He was a student. He was a musician. He was a hero in the making. And the silence? The silence was his greatest song.
-
Yi-chan’s daily life at university was a tactical operation. He didn't just attend classes; he colonized them. He arrived thirty minutes early to ensure he had the "Alpha Seat"—the spot directly in front of the professor where the lighting was best for lip-reading. He made friends with a quiet girl named Min-ji who had the neatest handwriting in the department, and they developed a system: she would take notes on the lectures, and in return, Yi-chan would help her with the complex logic of their philosophy assignments.
He used his eyes to "hear" the room. He could tell when a professor was about to make a joke by the way the students’ shoulders shifted. He could tell when a debate was getting heated by the way the air in the room seemed to thicken with tension. He was a predator of information, a Sherlock Holmes of the lecture hall.
But the most profound change was in his relationship with music.
One afternoon, in the university’s music wing, Yi-chan found an empty practice room with a grand piano. He sat down and pressed his cheek against the polished wood. He struck a single note—Middle C.
The vibration traveled through his jawbone, into his skull, and resonated in the center of his chest. It was a pure, golden sensation. He struck another note, then another. He began to play a melody he hadn't thought of in months—a song Eun-gyeol had hummed while they were cleaning the boarding house.
He couldn't hear the pitch, but he knew the weight of the notes. He knew that C felt like a solid floor, and G felt like a soaring bird, and F-sharp felt like a jagged piece of glass. He was painting with vibrations.
A student stopped in the hallway, watching him through the glass. Yi-chan didn't see them. He was lost in the "Watermelon Sugar" of his own soul. He realized then that Eun-gyeol hadn't just saved his life; he had redefined what "life" meant. It wasn't about the sounds you heard; it was about the echoes you left behind.
-
The night was so still it felt like a held breath. Yi-chan found himself sat on the wooden porch of the Snail Boarding House again, the cold air biting at his exposed ankles, but he didn't move. Beside him, Halmeoni sat with her eyes fixed on the dark horizon of the courtyard. The steam from her mug of barley tea curled into the air, a silent, swirling phantom in the moonlight. She reached out and patted Yi-chan’s knee, her hand a familiar, grounding weight.
"I went to the police station again last week," she signed, her movements slow and heavy with the exhaustion of a long search. She didn't look at him; she looked at the empty space where a pair of sneakers used to sit. "And the school. Seowon Arts High School. I thought... maybe they made a mistake. Maybe there was a record of him."
Yi-chan watched her lips, the pressure in his chest tightening. Seowon Arts High School. The same school Cheong-ah attended. He remembered seeing Eun-gyeol in that uniform, looking both out of place and perfectly at home within those prestigious walls. It was one of the many mysteries the boy had carried—how a kid who seemed to live in the gutters of 1995 could walk the halls of the city’s elite arts high school.
"They told me the same thing," Halmeoni continued, her hands dropping to her lap. "No Ha Eun-gyeol. Not in the records. Not in the yearbooks. It’s like he was never there, Yi-chan-ah. Like he was a spirit sent to look after us and then called back to heaven."
Yi-chan let out a breath that turned into a cloud of white. "He wasn't a spirit, Halmeoni," he said, his voice a low, controlled vibration. He spoke with a fierce certainty that came from the memory of Eun-gyeol’s sweaty palms, his frantic heartbeat, and the way he cried in that hospital room. "He was real. He was the most real thing that ever happened to me."
He looked down at his own hands. He thought about that final, desperate promise Eun-gyeol had forced out of him. That same sentence has been echoing in his mind every single day.
Make sure to become my father.
Yi-chan didn't believe in the science fiction of it. He didn't truly think the boy had stepped out of a time machine from the future. That was the talk of a kid who had read too many comic books. To Yi-chan, the promise was something far more spiritual, far more daunting. He believed that in this lifetime—or perhaps the next—their souls were bound. He believed that Eun-gyeol was a lost soul who needed a father, and Yi-chan had promised to be that man. Not in the next few years, but now. He was living his life as if a son was already watching him, waiting for him to prove that he was worth coming back to.
"I'm going to find him," Yi-chan whispered, mostly to himself.
Halmeoni looked at him, her eyes softening with a pity he didn't want. She touched his cheek, her thumb tracing the line of his jaw. "You have school now, Yi-chan. You have a big life waiting."
"I can do both," he insisted.
The next morning, the sun rose over a Seoul that was crisp and indifferent. Yi-chan didn't head to the library to prepare for his orientation. Instead, he pulled on his coat, tucked the grey hoodie—Eun-gyeol’s hoodie—into his bag, and stepped out of the boarding house gate.
He had a list in his head. A map of the moments they had shared. If Eun-gyeol was still in this world, if he was hiding, if he was lost, Yi-chan was going to find the trail.
His first stop was the old guitar shop on the corner of the music district.
The bell on the door didn't make a sound for him, but he felt the rush of warm, sawdust-scented air hit his face. The shopkeeper, a man whose face was as wrinkled as a dried prune, looked up from a fretboard he was polishing.
Yi-chan walked up to the counter and pulled out a photo. It was a polaroid from the festival—the band, laughing, with Eun-gyeol standing right in the middle, his arm slung around Yi-chan’s neck.
"Have you seen him?" Yi-chan asked. He spoke slowly, articulating every syllable. "He was here a lot. He knows more about guitars than anyone."
The shopkeeper took the photo, squinting through his bifocals. He shook his head. He pointed to the 'Out of Order' sign on a vintage amp and then to his own ears, gesturing that he didn't recognize the boy.
Yi-chan felt the first sting of frustration. He left the shop and walked toward the small snack stand near the park. This was where Eun-gyeol had treated him to spicy rice cakes after their first grueling practice. He sat on the same plastic stool, feeling the vibration of the passing buses through the pavement.
He closed his eyes, trying to summon the memory of Eun-gyeol’s voice. “Yi-chan-ah, don’t eat so fast, you’ll get indigestion!”
He stayed there for an hour, watching every teenager who walked by, searching for that specific, frantic gait. He looked for the messy hair and the eyes that always seemed to be looking at something a mile away. But the park was filled with strangers who didn't know the boy who had tried to save the world with a guitar.
By mid-afternoon, Yi-chan found himself standing in front of the gates of Seowon Arts High School.
The prestigious institution was a fortress of red brick and ivy. He watched the students stream out of the gates—girls in neat blazers and boys with perfectly combed hair. They looked like they belonged to a different world.
He walked up to the security booth, his heart hammering against his ribs. He didn't have a photo this time; he just had his voice and his desperation.
"I'm looking for a student," he told the guard, who looked at him with suspicion. "Ha Eun-gyeol. He would have been a senior last year but I don’t think he graduated."
The guard frowned, checking a clipboard. He said something, but he was facing away. Yi-chan stepped around the booth, placing a hand on the glass to get the man's attention.
"Please," Yi-chan said, his voice cracking. "Look at me when you speak. I can't hear you."
The guard’s expression shifted from annoyance to a guarded sort of sympathy. He spoke slowly. "No Ha Eun-gyeol. I've been here five years. I know all the kids.There was a 'Lee Eun-gyeol' three years ago, but no 'Ha'."
Yi-chan felt the ground beneath him seem to sway. "He wore the uniform," Yi-chan argued, gesturing to the school crest on a passing student’s jacket. "He was here. He was Cheong-ah’s friend."
The guard shook his head and gestured for Yi-chan to move along.
Yi-chan backed away from the gate, his chest heaving. He turned and leaned his back against the brick wall, sliding down until he was sitting on the cold sidewalk.
He wasn't a time traveler. He didn't believe in magic. But as he sat there, in the shadow of the school where Eun-gyeol was supposed to exist, the silence felt more like a lie than ever before.
How could a person be so vibrant, so loud, so heavy, and leave absolutely no footprint?
He reached into his bag and pulled out the grey hoodie. He ran his fingers over the fabric. It was real. It was tangible. It held the shape of a person.
"Where are you?" he whispered into the cloth. "You told me to be your father. How can I be your father if you won't let me find you?"
The sun began to dip, casting long, skeletal shadows across the street. Yi-chan stood up, his joints aching from the cold. He had one last place to go.
The rehearsal room. The building where Watermelon Sugar had been born.
He walked down the narrow, concrete stairs, the air growing damp and cool. He didn't turn on the lights. He knew this room by touch. He walked over to the corner where Eun-gyeol used to sit, hunched over his guitar, his brow furrowed in concentration.
Yi-chan sat on the floor, pressing his back against the cold wall. He closed his eyes and let his hands wander over the dusty floorboards. He wasn't looking for Eun-gyeol anymore. He was looking for the memory of him.
In the silence, he felt the vibration of the city beside him—the heavy thrum of the cars going down the street, the rhythmic patter of footsteps, the low-frequency hum of a world that never stopped moving. He thought about what Halmeoni had said. “He looked at me as if he knew every pain I’ve ever felt.”
Eun-gyeol hadn't just been a friend. He had been a mirror. He had looked at Yi-chan and seen the man he was going to become, and he had loved that man before he even existed.
Yi-chan realized then that he had been looking for the wrong thing. He had been looking for a boy in a uniform, a body in a crowd. But Eun-gyeol had left him something much more important than a physical presence.
He had left him a mission.
Yi-chan stood up, his movements purposeful now. He walked over to the light switch and flipped it. The harsh fluorescent hum flickered to life, illuminating the empty room. He walked to the center of the space, where he usually stood as the Frontman. He took a deep breath, feeling the air fill his lungs, feeling the strength in his own body.
"I'm going to school," he said to the empty room, his voice loud and clear. "I'm going to become the best student they've ever seen. I'm going to write songs that make the world shake. And I'm going to take care of Halmeoni until her knees don't ache anymore."
He paused, a small, sad smile touching his lips.
"And one day, Eun-gyeol... when the time is right... you're going to walk back through that gate. And when you do, I'll be waiting. Not as a boy who needs a tutor. But as the father you were looking for."
He didn't need the police. He didn't need the school records. He didn't need the world to confirm what he knew in his soul.
Eun-gyeol was real because Yi-chan was living the life he had fought for.
He returned to the Snail Boarding House as the first stars were beginning to prick through the velvet sky. The gate creaked—a vibration he felt in the palm of his hand as he pushed it open.
He stopped in the courtyard.
Halmeoni was still there, sitting on the porch, wrapped in her quilted vest. She looked up as he entered, her face breaking into a soft, relieved smile. She held up a finger, gesturing for him to wait. She stood up and walked into the kitchen, returning a moment later with a bowl of steaming soup. She set it on the table and patted the spot beside her.
Yi-chan sat down, the warmth of the food radiating against his chilled skin. He picked up his spoon, but before he ate, he looked at her.
"Halmeoni," he said, his eyes bright. "I'm not going to look for him anymore."
Halmeoni’s hand paused in mid-air. She looked at him with concern.
"I'm not giving up," he clarified, reaching out to squeeze her hand. "I'm just going to wait. I said he should come back when he didn't have a guilty look on his face anymore. Before that moment comes, I'm going to live a life that makes me proud. I'm going to be the person he remembered."
Halmeoni watched his lips, a slow, deep understanding dawning in her eyes. She nodded, her chin trembling slightly. She reached out and tucked a stray lock of hair behind his ear—the ear that could no longer hear her, but could feel the love in her touch.
“That’s my grandson,” she signed, her movements fluid and strong. “That’s the man he saw.”
They sat there in the quiet courtyard, eating soup under the moonlight. The silence was no longer a void. It was a space filled with the presence of a boy who had changed everything.
Yi-chan looked at the gate, half-expecting, half-hoping to see a flash of a grey hoodie, a messy head of hair, and a pair of eyes that held the secrets of thousands of secrets left unsaid
He didn't see him. Not tonight.
But as he took a bite of the warm soup, he felt a vibration in his chest—a steady, rhythmic thump-thump that felt like a song.
‘I'm here, Eun-gyeol,’ he thought. ‘I'm staying right here. I'm becoming the hero you promised I would be.’
And in the stillness of the winter night, the journey towards a twinkling life began its next movement.
-
The university lecture hall was a cavernous, drafty space that smelled of old wood, floor wax, and the collective anxiety of two hundred students. For Ha Yi-chan, it was also a battlefield.
He sat in the very front row, his back rigid, his eyes fixed on Professor Han’s mouth with the intensity of a hawk watching its prey. In 1997, the world didn’t care much for accommodations. There were no digital transcripts, no live captions, and certainly no sign language interpreters provided by the state. There was only the movement of lips, the frantic scratching of a pen, and the sheer, stubborn will of a boy who had promised a ghost he would become a masterpiece.
Today, Professor Han was particularly difficult. He was a man of great intellect and very little facial movement. He spoke with a stiff upper lip, his words muffled by a thick, grey mustache that acted like a curtain over his speech. Yi-chan felt a bead of sweat roll down his temple. He was missing every third word. The context was slipping through his fingers like sand. When the professor turned to the chalkboard to scrawl a complex diagram of social stratification, the link was severed entirely.
Yi-chan stared at the man’s back. The silence in his ears was suddenly deafening—a heavy, pressurized roar that made his head throb. He looked down at his notebook. The page was half-blank, the ink of his last sentence trailing off into a jagged line.
The accumulation of cultural capital leads to...
Leads to what? To success? To understanding? To a life that twinkles?
Around him, he could feel the subtle vibrations of the other students. The girl to his left was tapping her foot—a rhythmic thump-thump-thump that traveled through the floorboards and up into the soles of Yi-chan’s shoes. Behind him, someone was whispering, the tiny shifts in air pressure tickling the back of his neck. They were all part of a conversation he was no longer invited to.
He felt a sudden, sharp pang of resentment, a dark flare of the old, impulsive Yi-chan. He wanted to stand up, slam his desk, and shout into the silence. He wanted to demand that the world speak up. But then he felt the weight of the silver harmonica in his pocket, and he remembered Eun-gyeol’s face—the raw, desperate hope in that boy’s eyes.
“Yi-chan-ah, you have to work hard. Take this seriously.”
Yi-chan gritted his teeth, forced his hand to stop shaking, and began to copy the diagram from the board. He would stay late. He would borrow notes from a classmate who didn't look at him with pity. He would bridge the gap. He had to.
The walk back to the Snail Boarding House was long, and the Seoul winter was beginning to settle into the marrow of the city. The sky was the color of a bruised plum, and the air was thick with the scent of roasted chestnuts and coal smoke.
Yi-chan pushed open the wooden gate of the boarding house, the familiar vibration of the latch clicking home providing a small sense of comfort. But as he stepped into the courtyard, he saw his grandmother.
Halmeoni was sitting on a low wooden stool, a large basin of cabbage at her feet. She was preparing kimchi for the winter, her movements rhythmic and practiced. But as Yi-chan watched her, his heart sank. She was moving slower than she had even a month ago. Her back was bent into a permanent question mark, and her hands—the hands that had held his world together—were gnarled and swollen with arthritis.
He walked up behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She jumped slightly, her head snapping around. When she saw him, her face didn't immediately break into the bright, fierce smile he relied on. For a split second, her eyes were blank, searching his face as if she were trying to remember which drawer he belonged in.
Then, the recognition flooded back, and she beamed, but the delay had sent a chill through Yi-chan’s chest that had nothing to do with the winter wind.
“You’re home late,” she signed, her movements a bit stiff. “The soup is cold. I’ll heat it up.”
Yi-chan shook his head, sitting down on the ground beside her. “No, Halmeoni. I’ll do it. You should rest. Your hands look sore.”
He spoke slowly, making sure she could see his lips. She swatted at him with a cabbage leaf, a flash of her old spirit returning. “Rest is for the dead! I have a grandson who is going to be a big man at a big university. He needs to eat well so his brain doesn't shrink.”
She laughed, a sound Yi-chan felt as a low, rattling hum in her chest when he leaned against her. But as she went back to the cabbage, he noticed she was squinting at the salt, her fingers fumbling with the measurements.
The Snail Boarding House felt different now. Many of the old tenants had moved on, replaced by younger students who didn't know the story of summer 1995. The lively, chaotic energy of that year had faded into a quiet, domestic routine. Balsan-hyung was still there, but even he seemed more subdued, his loud jokes replaced by a quiet concern whenever he looked at Yi-chan.
Yi-chan felt like he was living in a museum of his own life. Every corner of the house held a ghost. The porch where he and Eun-gyeol had sat and argued about English verbs. The kitchen where Cheong-ah had first tasted Halmeoni’s cooking. The basement where the music had been so loud it felt like it could shatter the world.
He missed them. He missed them with an ache that was physical, a localized pain in the center of his chest that never truly went away.
After dinner, Yi-chan retreated to the common room. The beige fax machine sat on its little table, a silent sentinel of his long-distance heart. He sat before it, waiting for the light to flash.
He and Cheong-ah had been writing for two years now. Her faxes were his lifeline, his only window into a world where he wasn't defined by what he had lost. She told him about her art classes in New York, about the way the light hit the skyscrapers, about her struggle to learn American Sign Language.
The light began to blink.
The machine let out its electronic whir, and the thermal paper began to crawl out, inch by painful inch. Yi-chan watched the ink form the shapes of her thoughts.
“Yi-chan-ah,” the message began. Her handwriting had become more confident, more fluid. “I went to a gallery today. There was a painting of a cello that looked like it was crying. I thought of you. I thought of the way you used to look when you played the guitar—as if you were trying to catch the sun. Are you still catching the sun? Or are the books too heavy?”
Yi-chan leaned his forehead against the cool plastic of the machine. He could almost hear her voice—the voice he had never actually heard, but one his mind had constructed from the rhythm of her writing. It was soft, like the brush of silk, and filled with a quiet strength.
He missed her. He missed the way she looked at him without words. He missed the way their hands talked to each other in the quiet of the night. In the silence of the boarding house, the distance between Seoul and New York felt like a million light-years. He was here, struggling to understand a professor’s mustache, while she was a world away, becoming a woman he hadn't yet met.
He grabbed a pen and began to write back, his movements frantic.
“The books are heavy, Cheong-ah. And the silence is louder today. Halmeoni is getting older, and sometimes I look at the gate and expect Eun-gyeol to walk through it. I feel like I’m waiting for a train that already left the station. But I’m still here. I’m still the Frontman. I won’t let the music stop.”
He sent the fax, watching the paper disappear into the machine. He stayed there long after the light stopped blinking, the silence of the room pressing in on him.
He was losing hope. The "sparkle" Eun-gyeol had talked about felt like a distant memory, a trick of the light from a summer that had ended too soon. He was tired. Tired of lip-reading, tired of the pitying looks, tired of the weight of a promise he wasn't sure he could keep.
The restlessness became too much to bear. Yi-chan went back to his room and opened the closet. Tucked away in the back, behind his university blazers and Halmeoni’s hand-knit sweaters, was a black guitar case.
He pulled it out. This wasn't his old white electric guitar. This was the electric guitar Eun-gyeol had used during their rehearsals, the one he had played during that magical night at the School Music Festival. After Eun-gyeol vanished, Yi-chan had found it tucked in a corner in the practice room, as if it were waiting for its rightful owner to return.
Yi-chan slung the strap over his shoulder. The weight of it was a familiar comfort, a phantom limb that made him feel whole again.
“I’m going for a walk, Halmeoni!” he shouted toward the kitchen. He didn't wait for a response. He needed to move.
He stepped out into the night. The city was a kaleidoscope of neon and shadow. He began to walk, his feet leading him down paths he had tread a thousand times before.
He walked past the old snack stall where they had celebrated their first successful practice. It was closed now, the metal shutters pulled down like blind eyes.
He walked past the park where he had tried to teach Cheong-ah how to "hear" the wind. The swings were empty, swaying slightly in the breeze, a rhythmic creak he could only imagine.
He walked past the gate of Seowon Arts High School. He stood there for a long time, looking at the dark windows of the music wing. He remembered Eun-gyeol in that uniform, the boy who shouldn't have been there but was.
He felt like a ghost haunting his own youth. Every street corner held a memory of a laughter he couldn't hear anymore. Every streetlight illuminated a patch of sidewalk where he and Eun-gyeol had once stood, dreaming of a future that had turned out to be much harder than they imagined.
He adjusted the guitar on his shoulder. He felt like he was carrying Eun-gyeol with him, a wooden heart that beat against his back.
“Where are you?” he whispered into the cold air. “You told me to be a masterpiece. But how do I paint a picture in the dark?”
He wandered further than he intended, moving into a part of the district he hadn't visited in years. The streets here were narrower, the buildings older and more huddled together. The neon signs were fewer, replaced by the warm, dim glow of traditional lanterns.
The air felt different here. It was stiller, heavier, as if the modern world were being filtered through a thick layer of velvet. The vibrations of the city—the distant rumble of cars, the hum of electricity—seemed to fade away, replaced by a strange, humming resonance that Yi-chan felt in the very marrow of his bones.
He turned a corner into a small, cobblestone alleyway that he didn't recognize. At the end of the alley, nestled between a shuttered tailor shop and a crumbling brick wall, was a small storefront.
It was a music shop.
But it didn't look like any music shop Yi-chan had ever seen. The wood of the exterior was dark and polished, glowing with an inner light that seemed to defy the shadows of the alley. The windows were filled with instruments that looked like they belonged in a museum—lutes with intricate carvings, violins that shimmered like liquid gold, and guitars that seemed to breathe.
Above the door was a sign in a language Yi-chan couldn't read, but the symbols were elegant, flowing like musical notes across a staff.
The shop looked otherworldly. It didn't belong in 1997 Seoul. It didn't belong in any time Yi-chan knew. It sat there like a tear in the fabric of reality, a place where the past and the future were shaking hands.
Yi-chan stopped at the edge of the alley. His heart began to race, a frantic, syncopated rhythm that made his breath come in short, sharp gasps. He felt a sudden, overwhelming sense of deja vu, a memory that wasn't his own.
He looked at the guitar on his shoulder. It felt warmer now, the wood vibrating against his back as if it were responding to the shop’s presence.
He shouldn't go in. Every instinct he had—the practical, university-hardened instincts of a man who had learned to live in a silent, rational world—told him to turn around and go back to the boarding house.
But he wasn't just a man. He was the Frontman of Watermelon Sugar. He was the boy who had promised to be a hero.
He walked toward the shop, his boots clicking on the cobblestones. The vibrations of his footsteps felt different here—clearer, sharper, as if the ground were made of a different material.
He reached the door. It was made of heavy, dark oak, with a brass handle that was shaped like a coiled serpent.
He hesitated. The silence of the alley was absolute, but it wasn't the empty silence of his ears. It was a waiting silence. A silence filled with the ghost of every song ever played.
He reached out and grasped the handle. It was warm to the touch.
He pushed the door open.
As the door swung inward, a small, silver chime attached to the frame struck a bell.
Yi-chan froze.
He didn't hear the sound. Not with his ears. But a sharp, crystalline ring exploded in the center of his brain, a vibration so pure and high-pitched that it sent a violent shiver down his spine. It was a sound that tasted like lightning and felt like the first day of spring.
It was the first "sound" he had "heard" in two years.
He stepped into the shop, the chime still echoing in his skull, and the world behind him vanished into the dark.
The air inside the shop did not behave like the air outside. In the alleyway, the winter had been sharp, smelling of coal and frozen asphalt, but here, the atmosphere was thick, heavy with the scent of aged cedar, lemon oil, and something older—something that smelled like the ozone that lingers after a lightning strike.
Yi-chan stood frozen just past the threshold. The door had closed behind him with a silent click that he felt in his teeth, but the chime was still ringing in his mind. It wasn't a physical sound; it was a resonance, a high-frequency vibration that seemed to be scrubbing the interior of his skull clean. For the first time in two years, the oppressive, underwater pressure in his ears was gone. In its place was a vast, echoing emptiness that felt like a cathedral.
He looked around, his eyes wide and stinging. The shop was a forest of instruments. Walls of violins hung like suspended amber, their varnished bodies catching the dim, golden light. Cellos stood in the corners like stoic sentinels, their curved necks elegant and silent. There were guitars of every shape and era—archtops, flattops, sleek electrics that looked far too modern for 1997. In the center of the room, a grand piano sat with its lid open, its black keys gleaming like obsidian.
The silence here was different. It wasn't the absence of sound; it was the presence of music that hadn't been played yet.
Then, he saw him.
Behind a high, mahogany counter sat a man. He was dressed in a suit that seemed to shift color under the flickering lamps—sometimes charcoal, sometimes deep violet. He was leaning forward, his chin resting on intertwined fingers. His eyes were the most striking feature; they were cat-like, sharp and amber, possessing a gaze that didn't just look at Yi-chan, but through him, as if reading the sheet music of his soul.
The man didn't speak. He simply raised a hand and beckoned.
Yi-chan’s legs felt like they belonged to someone else. Every step he took toward the counter sent a ripple through the floorboards, a vibration that felt like a heartbeat. He clutched the neck of Eun-gyeol’s guitar, his knuckles white. He felt small—not the university student, not the legendary Frontman, but a lost boy standing at the edge of the world.
As he reached the counter, the man tilted his head.
“How are you, Ha Yi-chan?”
Yi-chan flinched. He looked around the room, his heart hammering against his ribs. The man’s lips hadn't moved. The shop was still. And yet, the voice had been clear—resonant, rich, and vibrating directly inside his thoughts. It wasn't the muffled, guessed-at speech he had lived with for years. It was perfect.
“I… I’m okay,” Yi-chan stammered. He spoke aloud, his own voice sounding strange and booming in the private theater of his mind. “Who are you? How did you… I can’t hear. I’m deaf. How am I hearing you?”
The man’s cat-like gaze didn't waver. He didn't look surprised by the question.
“Sound is just a vibration of the air,” the voice echoed in Yi-chan’s mind. “But truth is a vibration of the spirit. In this place, we don’t need the air to speak. We are at the crossroads of what was, what is, and what could be.”
Yi-chan backed away a step, his breath hitching. The mysterious aura radiating from the man was suffocating. It felt like standing too close to a high-voltage transformer. “Am I dead?” Yi-chan whispered, his eyes darting to the rows of silent instruments. “Is this purgatory? Did I freeze in the alleyway?”
The man let out a small, silent chuckle. “Purgatory is a place of waiting, Ha Yi-chan. This is a place of exchange. It is the ‘La Vida’ of the universe—a shop where fragmented souls are directed when they can no longer find the rhythm of their own lives. You came here because you are seeking a piece of yourself that was lost in time.”
The man leaned closer, the amber in his eyes glowing brighter. “Do you want to find him?”
The question hit Yi-chan like a physical blow. He didn't have to ask who "him" was. The image of Eun-gyeol—his frantic eyes, his messy hair, the way he looked at Yi-chan with that unbearable, heartbreaking love—flashed across his mind with the force of a tidal wave.
“Yes,” Yi-chan breathed, his voice cracking. “More than anything. I made a promise. I told him I’d be his father. I told him I’d be a masterpiece. But I don’t know where he went. I’ve looked everywhere. The school, the police, the parks… he’s gone.”
“He is not gone,” the man said. “He has simply returned to his own movement in the symphony. You are living in the prelude, Ha Yi-chan. He is part of the crescendo.”
Yi-chan’s mind was reeling. The cryptic words felt like they were trying to unlock a door in his brain that was rusted shut. “What does that mean? How do I get there? How much is the cost?” He gripped the counter, his eyes desperate. “I know how these things work. There’s always an exchange. You want my soul? My life?”
The man’s gaze fell to the guitar slung over Yi-chan’s shoulder.
“That instrument,” the voice said. “The one that doesn't belong to you. It carries the vibrations of a place where the owner resides. It is a bridge. If you leave it here, you provide the currency for the door to open.”
Yi-chan froze. He reached back and touched the worn wood of the electric guitar. It was one of the few things he had left of Eun-gyeol. It was the guitar that had played the songs of 1995, the one that still smelled faintly of the Snail Boarding House and the sweat of their rehearsals. To give it up felt like severing his final limb.
“This is all I have,” Yi-chan whispered. “If I give this to you, and I don’t find him… I’ll have nothing left. I’ll just be a deaf man in an empty alley.”
“Risk is the first note of any great song,” the man replied.
“And what is the ‘twist’?” Yi-chan asked, his old, defiant spark flickering to life. “There’s always a catch. What’s the catch?”
The man smiled, and for a moment, he looked almost human—almost kind. “Sometimes, the universe gives mercy to those with a pure heart. The twist is not a trap, Ha Yi-chan. The twist is the mercy. You gave up your sound to save a life. Perhaps it is time the world gave something back.”
Yi-chan looked at the man, then at the guitar. He thought of Halmeoni’s aging hands. He thought of Cheong-ah’s lonely faxes. He thought of the two years of silence that had felt like a century. If there was even a one-in-a-million chance that Eun-gyeol was on the other side of that door, he had to take it.
He slowly unslung the guitar. He held it for a moment, pressing his palm against the strings, feeling the silent potential of the instrument. “Take care of it,” he said. “It’s a good guitar. It knows how to sparkle.”
He placed it gently on the mahogany countertop.
The man reached out and touched the headstock. As his fingers made contact, a faint, golden shimmer rippled across the wood. The man then reached under the counter and pulled out two items.
The first was a thick stack of banknotes—modern, colorful Korean Won that looked nothing like the currency of 1997. The second was a small, plastic card—a ticket with a digital chip embedded in it.
“Take these,” the man said. “Time is a precious resource, and yours is currently out of sync. Go. The door will not stay open forever.”
Yi-chan took the money and the ticket, his hands trembling. The man gestured toward the door he had entered through.
“Wait!” Yi-chan shouted. “Where am I going? How do I find him?”
“Follow the vibration,” the voice echoed, fading now, as if moving into a long tunnel. “The soul always recognizes its own rhythm.”
Yi-chan turned and walked. He didn't look back at the guitars or the violins. He didn't look back at the man with the cat-like eyes. He pushed the heavy oak door open.
The silver chime rang again—clink—and the world exploded.
-
The first thing that hit him wasn't the sight, but the smell.
The air was different. It didn't smell of coal smoke or the heavy, industrial tang of the 90s. It smelled of espresso, expensive perfume, and a crisp, electronic cleanliness.
Then came the light.
Yi-chan stumbled out of the alleyway and onto a sidewalk that felt smoother, harder. He shielded his eyes. Above him, the sky was dominated by massive, glowing screens that reached toward the clouds. They weren't the grainy, flickering billboards of his youth; they were vibrant, high-definition displays that showed colors he didn't know existed.
He looked around, his heart leaping into his throat. The cars were sleek, silent bubbles of metal and glass, gliding over the asphalt with a whisper. People walked past him in clothes that looked like something out of a futuristic movie—minimalist, tech-heavy, everyone staring into small, glowing rectangles in their palms.
He turned around to look at the shop, but it was gone. Behind him was only a clean, grey wall of a modern convenience store.
He was standing in the middle of a dream.
He walked toward the main road, his boots feeling clunky and old-fashioned against the pristine pavement. He felt like a glitch in the system. People glanced at him—his 90s-style denim jacket and his confused expression—but they quickly looked back at their phones.
Then, his eyes caught a massive digital billboard across the square. It was a weather update, and in the corner, in sleek, glowing white numbers, was the date:
OCTOBER 15, 2025
Yi-chan stopped dead. Twenty-eight years. He had walked through a door and leaped over nearly three decades. He began to hyperventilate, his lungs struggling to adjust to the high-altitude reality of the future.
2025. He was nearly fifty years old in this world. Or he was dead. Or he was never born. The paradoxes clawed at his mind, but he forced them away. “Follow the vibration,” the man had said.
He stood in the center of the bustling sidewalk and closed his eyes. He blocked out the visual chaos. He blocked out the towering buildings and the silent cars. He focused on the ground.
He felt it.
It was a faint, rhythmic thrumming. It wasn't the heavy bass of a car or the mechanical pulse of a generator. It was the specific, jagged vibration of a guitar string being struck with passion.
He turned his head, his internal compass spinning. The vibration was coming from across the wide, multi-lane street, near a plaza filled with trees and glowing benches.
He didn't wait for the light. He dodged between the silent cars, ignored the angry honks he couldn't hear, and sprinted toward the plaza.
A crowd had gathered near the edge of a fountain. They were standing in a semi-circle, their phones raised to record something.
Yi-chan pushed through the crowd. He was frantic, his shoulders bumping against people who muttered in annoyance. He didn't care. The vibration was growing stronger. It was hitting his chest now—a rhythmic, driving force that felt like a hand reaching out to grab his heart.
He broke through the inner circle of the crowd.
There, sitting on a high stool with a black electric guitar, was a man.
He was wearing a black face mask that obscured the lower half of his face, and a dark beanie pulled low over his brow. He looked to be about the same height as Yi-chan, his frame lean and wiry.
But Yi-chan didn't need to see his face.
He watched the man’s hands. They moved across the fretboard with a terrifying, beautiful fluidity. It was a style that was both technical and raw—a blend of classical precision and rock-and-roll rebellion.
Yi-chan’s breath hitched. He recognized that technique. It was the way the man used his thumb to anchor the top string. It was the specific, aggressive way he vibrated a sustained note, making the whole guitar seem to weep.
Then, the man shifted his weight. He had a habit of tapping his left heel twice before a solo—a nervous, rhythmic tic that Yi-chan had teased him about a thousand times in the courtyard of the Snail Boarding House. He would tilt his head to the right when he hit a difficult chord, his eyes narrowing as if he were trying to see the music in the air.
The man hit a power chord, and the vibration traveled through the asphalt, up through Yi-chan’s boots, and settled in his very soul.
It was him.
The man looked up, his eyes meeting Yi-chan’s through the crowd.
They were the same fiery, determined eyes. The eyes that had looked at Yi-chan in the hospital and promised a future. The eyes that had cried for a father who couldn't hear.
In the middle of the hyper-advanced, neon-soaked Seoul of 2025, the silence finally broke. Not in Yi-chan’s ears, but in the center of his universe.
The busker froze. His hands stilled on the strings. The crowd around them seemed to blur into a smear of light and color, leaving only the two of them in a pocket of frozen time.
Yi-chan stepped forward, his heart feeling like it was about to burst out of his chest. His voice, unused to the sounds of this new world, came out as a raw, trembling rasp.
“Eun-gyeol-ah...”