52
On the first day of school, I stood at the back of the auditorium where the boring opening ceremony was taking place. I sneaked out into the hallway when I heard a sound. I turned to see a girl standing at the end of the hallway. She tucked her shoulder-length hair behind her ears, tapping the ground with the tip of her toes. She must’ve thought no one was looking because she started doing some kind of warm-up. She stretched out her arms and legs and hopped three times before sprinting across the hallway. Panting, she stopped right in front of me and our eyes met. For five seconds at least. That was Dora.
Her glasses had a thick, matte silver-gray frame with round lenses. The lenses were thin and had so many scratches that reflected the sunlight, making her eyes hard to see.
Dora wasn’t like everyone else. She didn’t react to every little thing like other kids did. She was calm, so calm that she sometimes struck me as a very old woman. It wasn’t just that she was smarter or more mature. She was just a little different.
Dora had missed a lot of school that spring. When she did come to school, she often left early without taking any supplementary or evening classes. That’s why she hadn’t seen the incident between Gon and me. In fact, she didn’t seem to care what went on around her at all. She always sat in the far corner of the classroom with her earphones in. Someone said she was preparing to transfer to another high school, one with a track team. But she ended up staying at ours. I barely saw her talk from then on. Even in class, she would only stare at the school field outside the window, like a caged leopard.
I did see her without glasses once. It was during the spring Field Day. Dora had been selected as our class representative in the 200-meter dash. Her skinny figure didn’t give off much of an athletic impression as she stood ready at the starting line, which was, coincidentally, right in front me.
On your mark! Dora throws her glasses down and touches the ground. Get set. Just then, I see her eyes. Her eyes, slanted at the corners. Her eyelashes full and long. Her pupils radiating a light brown hue. Go! Dora starts running. Her slender yet strong legs push against the ground with a cloud of dust, retreating farther. She is faster than anyone else. She is like the wind. A powerful yet light wind. She finishes the lap in a flash. She passes the finish line and, right before she stops, she snaps the glasses and puts them back on her nose, her mysterious eyes vanishing behind them.
Dora was usually surrounded by people and ate with a group. The groups weren’t always the same. She wasn’t a loner but she wasn’t necessarily attached to certain friends, either. She didn’t seem to care who she ate with or who she walked home with. Sometimes she was by herself. Still, she wasn’t bullied and never looked out of place. She seemed like someone who could exist on her own.
53
Mom opened her eyes. After nine months in bed. The doctors said there was no need to be excited. Just because Mom had opened her eyes didn’t mean she had come back. They said it was not unlike the urine tube filling up on its own. She still needed to be turned over every two hours or so with the tube attached. When she was awake, though, her eyes would rest on the ceiling, blinking. Her pupils even seemed to move, however weakly.
Mom was a person who could find constellations even from a dizzy wallpaper. Look, doesn’t the ladle shape here look like the Big Dipper? There’s Cassiopeia. That’s the Great Bear. Let’s find the Little Bear. Then Granny would say, “If you’re so crazy about the stars, why don’t you fetch a bowl of water and pray to the moon goddess!” I could almost hear her saucy voice. When I went to visit Granny’s grave later, it was covered with weeds. I thought of Mom’s and Granny’s laughter, like distant echoes.
I barely had customers at the bookstore for quite some time. I still always sat behind the cash register after school but it was pointless to expect any sales. I couldn’t keep living off Dr. Shim’s charity forever. I realized one day that, without my mom and grandmother, the bookstore was like a grave. A grave of books. A grave of forgotten letters. That was when I decided to close down the place.
I told Dr. Shim I’d like to pack up the bookstore, downsize my belongings, and move to a room in a shared house. He was silent for a while, then instead of asking why, he just nodded.
*
The school librarian was a senior-class homeroom teacher who taught Korean literature. When I went to the teachers’ lounge, I saw him bowing low to the vice principal, who was grilling him about his class having the lowest scores again on the last mock college exams. When he came back to his desk, his face flushed, I asked if I could donate books to the school library. He nodded absently.