“Siddhārtha also had similar thoughts and left the palace.”
“Sid . . . who? I’ve heard that name before.”
I got tongue-tied. I tried to come up with a response that wouldn’t get on his nerves. “Yeah, he’s famous.”
“Anyway.”
My answer must’ve worked—Gon didn’t react much. He gazed into the distance and lowered his voice. “I mean, you and me, maybe someday, we might become people we never imagined we’d be.”
“Probably. For better or worse. That’s life.”
“Just when I thought you were okay, you had to go and sound like a dick again. We’ve both lived a same number of years, you know.”
“It’s the same number of years, not a.”
“Shut up.” Gon pretended to hit me. “Strangely enough, I don’t feel like looking at those old magazines anymore. It’s no fun. It reminds me of how everything beautiful will fade eventually. Not that a dumb-ass like you would understand.”
“If you say you lost interest in Brooke Shields, maybe I can recommend another book that could help you.”
“What is it?” he asked nonchalantly.
I suggested The Art of Loving by a foreign author.* He looked at the title and wore a strange smile. He brought it back a few days later, telling me to cut the bullshit, but I thought the recommendation still made sense.
43
The days were slipping by and it was already early May. The unfamiliarity of a new semester fades away by this time. People say that May is the queen of seasons, but I don’t quite agree. The hardest job is transitioning from winter to spring. Frozen ground melting to let sprouts shoot up, colorful flowers blossoming from each dead branch. That’s what tough looks like. As for summer, it simply needs to take a couple more steps forward using the momentum of spring. That’s why I think May is the laziest of all the months. A month that’s overrated. And May was the month that always reminded me I was different from the rest of the world. Everything on the earth glittered, vibrantly. Only me and my bedridden Mom were stiff and gray, like an eternal January.
I was able to open the bookstore only after school, and naturally, sales were slow. I remembered Granny used to say, “If business isn’t good, just shut it down.” I swept the dust and mopped the floor every day, but for some reason, the space Granny and Mom had left behind seemed to wear down by the day. How much longer would I be able to handle this void?
One day while I was tidying up, I dropped a dozen books I was carrying, cutting my fingertip. It was not something that often happened in a damp used-book store. I just got unlucky because the book happened to be an encyclopedia with thick, hard paper. Absently, I watched the drops of blood dripping down on the floor like sealing wax.
“Dude. You’re bleeding.”
It was Gon. I hadn’t even heard him come in, but he was already next to me. “Doesn’t it hurt?” Eyes widened, Gon quickly grabbed a tissue and handed it to me.
“I’m okay.”
“Bullshit. If it bleeds, it hurts. Are you really an idiot?” He sounded angry. The cut must’ve been deeper than I’d thought. The tissue was already soaked red. Gon rolled up another tissue and grabbed my hand. I could feel the pulse from my fingers, beating hard from his tight grip. He put pressure on the cut until the bleeding stopped. “Don’t you know how to take care of yourself?” He raised his voice.
“It hurt, but it was manageable.”
“You were gushing blood, you call that manageable? You really are a robot, aren’t you? That’s why you just stood there, huh? Did nothing when your mom and grandma dropped down in front of you. Because you’re a robot. You idiot, it didn’t even occur to you that they were hurt, that you should’ve stopped him, that you should’ve been angry. Because you don’t feel anything.”
“You’re right. The doctors said I was born this way.”
Psychopath. That was what kids had called me since elementary school. Mom and Granny would go ballistic over it, but to some extent, I thought they had a point. Maybe I really was a psychopath. I wouldn’t feel guilty or confused, even if I hurt or killed somebody. I was born this way.
“Born this way?” Gon said. “That’s the shittiest thing people say.”
44
A few days later, Gon came to the bookstore holding a clear plastic container. Inside was a butterfly he had somehow gotten his hands on. The box was too small for the butterfly, so it kept banging the sides of the container.