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Seokjin didn’t mean to.
It’s a nice spring day. The thick foliage makes his trek cool under his collar, and the sunlight casts sleepy, molted shapes through the gaps of the forest. He’s so caught up in admiring the moving shapes that the snuffled grunt surprises him.
The wolf is staring at him from a short distance away. Seokjin freezes, his hand still held up from where he was looking at the dancing light against his skin. Its amber eyes track his movements, its nose dipped and front legs pulled taut. In Seokjin’s mind, it’s rearing back for an attack. And this is it—his heart slows in a painful lurch. Get it over with.
The wolf turns and leaps into the cluster of trees to his left.
Seokjin sags in relief-disappointment-fear, again. Then remembers. The flock. He can hear the sheep bleating from where he stands.
Heart thundering in his chest, he goes against his common sense, against everything he knew and was taught— he bellows for help as he runs up the hill, barrelling into the clearing.
He bursts through the trees to his father’s flock of sheep—so still in the clearing, grazing, oblivious. He’s panting and sweating hard, gazing wildly over the perimeters when Hongsik and Sangguk rush into the clearing.
“Where is it?” they ask him, Sangguk coming up to Seokjin and grasping his elbow with a rough hand. “Are you hurt?”
“No—I—” Seokjin stammers, still searching—
“There’s nothing here,” Hongsik calls. “Look at the sheep, they’re not even scared.”
Sangguk’s face twists and he drops Seokjin’s arm like a hot stone. “The boy said—”
Hongsik’s upper lip curls. “Liar.”
“You think this is funny,” Sangguk spits at Seokjin. “The entire village is coming here.”
The indistinguishable murmuring thrumming in the background bursts. People mill out of the woods and into the clearing. So many carry knives and long wooden sticks, their faces cracking into confusion at the sight of the peaceful flock.
“The boy lied,” Hongsik calls to them. “Let’s go home.”
*
Seokjin has just turned twenty, just old enough to go with his parents to the next town over. It’s time for their family to purchase some household items, and most importantly, some snacks for Seokjin’s brother. He has been asking for months from the city, where from he writes about the terrible conditions of his dormitory and his industrial work. But there is money to be made, he wrote.
His brother speaks of the city with great conflict in his letters; some letters speak of the cloistered joy of discovery—new, shiny things. The industrial revolution is in full-swing. He writes about the clipped charm of the men and women who work side-by-side for months. Other times, he compares Seoul to the yawning mouth of a wild beast. But always, his letters convey the deep longing for their small derelict house. Seokjin never understands why.
At the town fair, Seokjin barters with men and women from the neighboring five villages, convincing them that his parents’ wool and dried meats are the best out of everyone at the fair. Meeting all these new people, who smile and frown and argue with varying expressions on their faces, makes Seokjin smile so hard his cheeks hurt. As the sun starts to set, he regretfully begins to pack up his little shop. His parents approach him, their arms laden with honey, preserved citron tea in jars, and a huge box of his brother’s favourite snacks.
They tell him about the people they met, old man Lee who recovered from his high fever and was now springing around the fair like a child, the Jeon’s kid that had a 12 centimeter growth spurt—who looks more like his father than ever. They cradle the box of food in between them, their smiles so secretive and shy—as if unable to bear the happiness of a simple thing as sending their eldest son a part of something he’s left behind.
He averts his eyes, his nose flooding with the smell of old, rusty metal. Despite himself, he follows the prickle on his neck, and turns to look. And there, standing right at the edge of the bustling fair, is a young man who’s staring right back.
He must only be eighteen, at most, no more than a boy. Their eyes meet and Seokjin feels the tug of something pulling him in. The boy’s eyes are dark, and his lips pull into a slight purse. On any other face, it might have been seen as a rude gesture, beckoning for a fight. On the boy, however, it’s as though he has always looked that way; cold and affronted, but unassuming, and not malicious. He’s dressed like any other person in the village, but while the people bustle around him, he seems to have all the time in the world.
Then, Seokjin’s parents call for him. Seokjin blinks and the boy is gone.
It’s time to go home. Seokjin walks behind his parents, carrying the little of the meats that he hadn’t managed to sell off. The sky has turned dark, and the cicadas have come out to call.
“It’ll be a good harvest this year,” his mother notes. “We’ll have enough to tide over even next summer.”
His father laughs, the sound drowning out every other chirp, rustle, or call the night has to offer. They do not once look back to see if Seokjin was still following them.
*
Seokjin considers himself a very placid person. Things are easier when he knows what to do, who to follow, when things are easy and quiet in the house. These days, the silence oppresses, like the air held in his parents’ hearts the day his brother left.
Seokjin’s daily routine is so ingrained in him that he can do it with his eyes closed. In the morning, he greets his father at his usual rocking chair. It’s made of bamboo and frayed with use, but it is the only chair that that won’t hurt his father’s back even more. He spends most of his days in that chair, docile and quiet, after the accident.
“Have you eaten your medicine, father,” Seokjin asks, a formality since he knows his father hasn’t, and sets down a cup with the ground medicine in it. He pours hot water over the powder and mixes it, and then raises the cup to his father’s lips.
His father drinks without a word. Seokjin sets the empty cup down. “I’ll be going now,” he tells his father. The man on the rocking chair tilts his head, but that may just have been the motion of the chair. Seokjin sees himself out.
The herd is bleating from their pen already, some of the sheep bumping against the wooden fences, desperate to go out and play.
Not yet, he thinks as he runs a hand through an ewe’s wool. He will have to head down to Hongsik’s first to trade off some chickens for bags of rice, a bimonthly routine that Seokjin has taken over from his father. Seokjin winces at the thought, at the memory of calloused hands gripping his arm like he was a doll.
And, his brother had written again.
His letter is shorter this time, his handwriting slanted and cramped.
I don’t have much time to write, my foreman has been pushing us hard and we barely get enough sleep. I hope that you are well and that Seokjinnie has been dutiful. Every day I think of coming back home to you but I will persevere. Please stay proud of me.
Seokjin has to stop himself from scoffing.
There’s nothing in the village for them. Seokjin closes his eyes and thinks of the market last week. The only noise here, the only true noise worth listening to, is the rush of the small streams.
He reaches Hongsik’s doorstep. Seokjin sighs and pushes the door open.
“Hongsik-samchon?”
Hongsik straightens from where he’d been squatting, washing some of the vegetables in a pail of water. “Seokjin, I thought it was about time you arrived. Where’s your father?”
“He sent me today,” Seokjin says, and plonks the two hens onto the floor. The sooner he leaves, the slighter the chance that Hongsik will bring up that day in the woods.
Hongsik takes his sweet time going to the back of the shed and retrieves two bags of rice. The tops are sewn shut with even stitches. Someone must have done it for him. Seokjin makes a mental note to ask his mother if Hongsik has been asking her to help out, even with the two hens his father has been delivering every two months to Hongsik’s doorstep.
“How’s your father doing?” The words are so normal, but it’s the way that Hongsik says them which puts a bad taste in Seokjin’s mouth.
“He’s fine.” He resists the urge to snap at the man.
“That injury was quite severe,” Hongsik cuts in, as though Seokjin has not spoken, or as though he doesn’t care about the answer, anyway. “He should go to the doctor. When’s your brother sending some money back, anyway?”
Seokjin hauls one bag of rice over his shoulder. “None of your business,” he mutters under his breath, and then says, louder and clearer this time, “not too soon.”
Hongsik gazes at him with sharp eyes. “Well, that’s too bad. How does it feel, being the only son in the house now?”
Seokjin smiles so hard he can feel his canines cut his lower lip. “It’s great.”
*
After making sure that the grazing ground is safe, Seokjin wanders a little aways from the flock, and settles next to a small creek.
Around him, the birds are silent, and this time in the summer even the water barely make a sound as it moves through Seokjin’s village. On a whim, Seokjin leans down and presses his ear to the rocks stained with moss and spring water.
There’s a soft snip a few feet from where Seokjin is crouched.
He turns to see a boy leaning against the large tree. He knows that gaze, that dour mouth frozen between expressions.
Seokjin straightens up. “Hello,” he greets. “Are you lost?”
The boy unfolds himself slowly from the tree. “Hello. I’m Kim Namjoon,” he says. “What’s your name?”
“Kim Seokjin.” Kim Namjoon bows and Seokjin returns it, his mind hazy.
“Are you lost?” he tries again.
Kim Namjoon shakes his head. “I moved here from Seoul.”
The thought is so perplexing that Seokjin nearly reels from it. “Why,” he asks, before he realizes that he’s being impolite.
“Don’t know,” Kim Namjoon says simply. The idea is so ridiculous that Seokjin chuckles out loud. “I moved to Seoul when I was six,” he offers.
“I don’t think it’s loud over there. And I don’t think I’ve seen you before, how old are you?”
“I’m eighteen this year. You?”
“Twenty. I’m your hyung.” Seokjin puffs his chest out.
Kim Namjoon’s eyes shine amber in the bright afternoon light. “Hyung,” he says, and Seokjin can hear the distinct rattle of each syllable against Namjoon’s throat, like a winding of a clock. It’s then that Seokjin realizes how his voice sounds like music.
*
They sit at the edge of the grazing ground for the entire afternoon, and Seokjin listens to the stories Namjoon tells about Seoul city. There’re huge cranes on every street, and the factories run from 6 o’clock in the morning until 9 in the evening, their funnels pumping burning, black smoke into the sky. Namjoon lived in an apartment that overlooked the whole of Gangnam, and would wake up each morning to the rumble of the city coming alive.
Namjoon tells him about the pollution, the hundreds of people who have gotten sick in the factories, the crush of people that turns from cosy into overbearing.
Soon, the forest is lit aglow by the dying rays of the sun. The view from his spot makes the distance in the sky seem so small, like he can just walk to the next town over, to Seoul.
“I have to go and bring the herd back home,” he tells Namjoon. “You should head home too, it’s late.”
“That’s okay,” Namjoon says. They stand up together. “One more thing. You never told me why you want to go so badly. What do you want to do in Seoul?”
Seokjin smiles.
*
In his village, it was a stroke of luck to be born as the first son. Seokjin was two years too late.
His older brother, brilliant and hardworking, simply sat their parents down one evening and told them he was going to Seoul.
“What’re you going to do there?” Their mother held her hands to her chest, her eyes growing misty.
Seokjin’s brother sighed and smiled at her. “My friends have already planned everything. We have jobs waiting for us in Seoul, and there will be a hyung who can take care of us there. So don’t worry about me.”
The next week, he packed all his bags. At the door, he turned around with his bags and said to Seokjin, “When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Why I get to go, and why you have to stay.”
Then he opened the door. It was pouring outside, the water a roar against Seokjin’s eardrums. He can still remember seeing how the rain splattered off the narrow walkway from his spot in the sitting area. His brother shut the door behind him, and the noise stopped. The room was shrouded in darkness again. Like in his memories, like in every dream he had for the past two years, Seokjin called out to the person behind the door, “Come back soon.”
There was only silence from the other side of the door, and the rain.
*
When he was cleaning the house one day, Seokjin had the misfortune of coming across his mother’s half-finished letter to his brother.
Our dearest son, the letter began.
Seokjin tucked the letter into his pocket and saved it till when he was herding, and let the letter sail away in the river, its ink disintegrating into the paper.
*
Namjoon’s waiting for him when Seokjin reaches the grazing spot the next day. He’s holding a book in his hands.
“What’re you reading?” Seokjin takes one last look at the grazing herd, and settles onto the grass patch besides Namjoon.
Namjoon shows him. The words “Hanjungnok” are emblazoned on the front in green font. The book cover is of a maiden with flowing hair and lying on a tiger. On the right side of her is a man in magistrate robes reaching towards her, but who seems frightened by the tiger. Seokjin gives Namjoon a look of open curiosity, and yet his heart gives a twinge of anger. Seokjin’s family owns five books, all of them distributed for free or passed down from distant relatives who went to the city states. He’s never had a book just for leisure.
He swallows the sudden lump in his throat and puts on his best smile.
“What’s it about?”
Namjoon looks at him, studying him closely, and then hands the book over. “You can have it, if you want.” He holds out the book so carelessly.
Seokjin takes it, and opens the first page. The spine of the book crackles in the silence.
The words the writer uses are difficult, and Seokjin struggles to get past the first page. He stays over the first page for an agonizingly long time, and then Namjoon leans over, his rescuer, his witness to his shame, and puts his index finger on the page.
He reads to Seokjin out loud, his voice sometimes soft light and lilting, other times so gravelly it crunches crisply like dry wheat. At some point, Seokjin begins to study Namjoon instead.
His dark hair is well-cut, and his sharp chin gives off a delicate disposition. He speaks with clarity, and it’s as though each word pierces Seokjin, but to Seokjin the words aren’t important.
He reads all the way until the sun sets, and Namjoon has to prod at him, asking him, “don’t you have to go home?” It occurs to Seokjin that Namjoon might have someone waiting for him at home, too.
Namjoon could spend the entire afternoon by Seokjin’s side. He seems to have no place to be, no worry to take care of. And yet, he looks like he’s exactly where he wants to be.
Suddenly, Seokjin is consumed by the need to know where Namjoon lives. It floods his senses so overwhelmingly that he blocks out the drone of Namjoon’s voice for a while, until the boy at his side nudges him.
“Hyung?”
Seokjin turns his attention back to Namjoon. “Ah, I’ll better be going then.”
They go separate ways, as usual. Seokjin wonders what might happen if he turns around and follows Namjoon home. An ewe bleats in their direction, and Seokjin shakes off the thought to tend to the animal. He’s only half there all there when he runs his hand through the wool in a way that’s supposed to placate. That intention is far, far away from his mind, then.
*
Namjoon is at the grazing ground every morning before Seokjin arrives. Seokjin’s mood has been sour all morning, since his brother’s weekly letter arrived today. He loses himself in his new friend, and his own imaginings.
They speak about so many things, but most importantly, Namjoon tells him about Seoul, his father’s company, and his decision to come home.
“The truth is,” Namjoon says ruefully, “I didn’t want to come here at first. My father sent me.” Seokjin knows the sinking feeling in his stomach. Namjoon continues with his measured, even tone, and Seokjin thinks that it’s unjust for him to be so composed when revealing a past lie. “But I like it here.”
Seokjin is quiet for a while. He recalls his brother’s letter this morning, and the truth of his situation strikes him hard like the first time. There truly is nothing here for any of them, and Seokjin mourns the soft death of a hope that Namjoon used to bring—a hope that here is perhaps better than there.
Namjoon waits for him to answer, his eyes dipping to rest at Seokjin’s mouth.
“Why do you like it,” Seokjin asks finally.
Namjoon laughs, and in his laughter Seokjin hears relief. “I met a friend,” he says.
*
The rain pours in Seokjin’s dream.
“Come back soon,” he says, and it’s not a goodbye. Not yet a plea.
He stares at the person standing outside looking back at him, the two of them like two sides of a mirror. Who is the reflection?
Seokjin’s brother smiles. The door closes.
Seokjin strides over to pull the door open.
The wolf is on his doorstep, the great hulking mass heaving. Its coat is dry.
“Come back soon,” Seokjin tells the wolf, and closes the door again.
*
There are other days, where they sit in the sunshine and learn about what they do not talk about. Seokjin associates Namjoon with sunshine now. After all, they meet just after dawn and part at twilight. Namjoon’s eyes are so clear and bright in the sunset light.
Namjoon never speaks of his mother. All Seokjin knows is that she was from this village, and he figures that perhaps Namjoon doesn’t want Seokjin to go nosing around behind his back and ask others if they knew her. So he never asks.
Seokjin never wants to talk about his brother and his parents, either, but Namjoon makes it so easy. He nods and hums when Seokjin runs out of breath, and asks questions, his voice so gentle.
And then Namjoon asks Seokjin again, “why do you want to go to Seoul so bad?”
Seokjin hums. “I want to do what my brother can do.”
“You want to switch places with him?”
“What? No.” Seokjin chuckles. “I believe that what he can do, I can do, too.”
Namjoon bites his lip, and looks away.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Namjoon mutters. “It’s just… your father is ill, isn’t he?”
Seokjin nods, and the unbearable lightness in his chest drop all at once in his stomach, like a stone. “Someone has to take care of my parents,” he says. “My brother says he can go to Seoul because he’s the stronger one.” He casts his eyes to the forest floor, unable to check for Namjoon’s expression.
“It’s not so bad to stay at home to take care of them, right? Being so far away from home is tiring, too.”
Seokjin shakes his head. “That’s not it at all.”
“Your brother took the heavier burden,” Namjoon insists. “If I were him, I would have just stayed home.”
“He wanted to go because he was bored. I want to leave because there’s no place for me here. Namjoon, do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I don’t. He made a mistake, I’m telling you.”
“It’s so easy for you,” Seokjin argues. “You can go as you please. Do you not realize?”
“I’m stuck here, too, Seokjin,” Namjoon whispers, and he places a hand gently on Seokjin’s shoulder, and Seokjin’s too worked up to even want to shake it off. “You’re with me.” At least, his tone implies, but Seokjin is tired of the implications. Namjoon speaks in eloquent riddles, and Seokjin feels something burst inside him. All the things he wished to keep hidden come rushing out in a flurry of words.
“I can’t go on like this, Namjoon,” he says. “If you haven’t noticed, no one likes me very much here. I’m by myself all the time, they think I’m insane. I’m losing my mind, I’m seeing things, I always have the same nightmare of my brother…”
Namjoon just watches him, silent.
“Remember that fair? I was so happy to see new faces because they don’t know me, they don’t know what happened.” Seokjin finishes with his heart thundering in his throat, and he closes his eyes. This is it, Namjoon will ask, what happened, why are you like this and everything will be over.
Instead, Namjoon asks, “what fair?”
*
Seokjin made a promise to himself once, to never talk about the wolf to anyone. Not even to his parents, not even to Namjoon.
Even when they’re all alone in the meadows, just a few paces from the village, there’s something that lingers in the periphery of Seokjin’s vision. Something that smells like blood. Seokjin doesn’t need to see it to know what it looks like.
Before that summer fair, the wolf has only been a passing concern, but these days, Seokjin feels it press against the edges of his vision. The first time is a coincidence, and there already has been a second.
*
There is a secret that Seokjin’s been keeping.
The day after his brother left for Seoul, Seokjin was walking home from Hongsik’s house when he saw it for the very first time.
The wolf lingered at the edge of the woods. Its body was turned such that it had to look at Seokjin from its left, as though it had just stopped mid-step and noticed Seokjin the same time he saw it.
One of them had to give.
Seokjin tore his gaze away and bellowed as loud as he could. He still remembers what he thought to himself in that panicked moment, as the wolf simply stared at him, its yellow eyes unblinking.
Someone, come save me.
Someone, tell me what to do. Take me far away from here.
When Hongsik arrived, the wolf was gone. Seokjin’s parents casted their eyes downwards when he got home.
“My son,” his mother said, her mouth overflowing with sorrow.
*
Time passes, but Namjoon stays by Seokjin’s side. He seems like something eternal, something that doesn’t belong anywhere but in daydreams. Seokjin wants to know more about Namjoon, the boy who lived in Seokjin’s dreams, but the fear of breaking the illusion becomes too strong.
Once, he can’t control his curiosity anymore, and blurts out, “don’t you have somewhere you have to be?”
“I have all day,” Namjoon says.
Seokjin, surprised by the curt reply, pauses. “What’s going on,” he asks, more careful this time.
Namjoon sighs and doesn’t reply, looking as though he has suddenly taken on all the burdens the world has to offer. Seokjin worries at the hem of his sleeves and observes Namjoon. The usually calm boy he’s grown accustomed to draws Seokjin’s attention even more now. He wonders what Namjoon can worry about.
*
His brother hasn’t written for more than a month. His parents barely spare a glance for their younger son, too busy with worry. The house moves like a funeral march. Seokjin is glad to have someone distract him in the afternoons, even if Namjoon is also growing increasingly distant, and their conversations increasingly sparse.
After seeing each other everyday for months, they are bound to run out of things to say, Seokjin figures.
These days, they sit side by side watching the sheep graze. Occasionally, they ask each other something that they asked before, as though they’ve travelled back in time.
Instead of being nostalgic, these moments bring Seokjin bursts of panic. Time is slipping away quickly. His dreams have become increasingly violent, and on more than one occasion he has felt the itch to do something more insane, like ask Namjoon if he sees something out of the corner of his eyes, too. Sometimes, he’s overcome by a strange urge to lean into the boy and bury his face in his neck. His daydreams overtake him sometimes, and he awakes to himself hovering over the juncture of Namjoon’s neck before he manages to stop himself.
Seokjin knows the darkness hovering at the corner of his eye is drawing closer. He knows he doesn’t have much time left.
*
At home, his mother stops him in the kitchen, and asks if he’s gotten a letter from his brother.
“No, mother,” Seokjin says.
His mother’s face crumples then, and without even another glance, she leaves him standing alone in the small, cramped space.
This has been the only thing she has said to Seokjin for months.
*
“Why did your father send you here,” Seokjin persists.
Namjoon sighs. Now, he sighs nearly all the time, and Seokjin is both parts on edge and concerned. “Seoul is getting very complicated,” Namjoon says. “It’s not safe. When I left, he said there’s going to be some sort of uprising soon, and he wants me out of it.”
“What does that mean?”
“He says people are unhappy with the pace of progress. We’re sacrificing a lot to build the nation, and some people might say that it’s too much. And he was right. It’s happening right now. Anyway, it’s nothing you have to worry about.”
Seokjin frowns.
Namjoon sighs and looks into the distance. “They have the city sealed off since a few days ago and it’s a miracle that my father’s letter even got to me.”
Seokjin clenches his fists so hard that his knuckles hurt. “What do you mean?” His words slur together in his urgency. “What do you mean, sealed off?”
Namjoon doesn’t seem to realize Seokjin’s growing anxiety, and rattles off information as though he has memorized it. “No one is going in or out of the city. It’s terrible. The ministry has set its sights to demolish any opposition standing in its way—”
Seokjin cut in, unable to bear listening to words he doesn’t understand, a place he seems wholly unable to grasp, and now, might never be a part of. “When is it going to end?”
Namjoon shrugs. “A year, at the least. I told you, Seokjin.” His frown is set so deep in his face, and Seokjin wonders how he ever thought Namjoon was a free spirit that roamed as he pleased. He is still human, after all. The realization so disappointing.
“I told you why you have to stay.”
Seokjin rocks back and forth on his toes, and then he stands up. “I’m going to go look at the sheep. Check on them…” He trails off, already stalking away from Namjoon.
In the clearing, the wind is so loud that Seokjin can barely hear his own thoughts. He sits down against the edge of a tree, eyes unseeing. Everything clicks, his brother’s complete silence since a month ago, his parents’ despondence, Namjoon’s restlessness and anxieties.
A year. How can he bear this for a year more, when everyday is an ache from a mortal wound he has suffered for years? How is he supposed to live?
*
Namjoon doesn’t show up the next day.
Seokjin stares at the huge tree in the middle of the forest. He considers for a moment walking around its perimeter, just to check.
He sits at the edge of the grazing ground, and notes that the grass is turning sparse and brown. The book in his hands is worn, and Seokjin wonders if everything he touches turns rusted and beaten-down, if new things simply aren’t meant for him.
*
Seokjin dutifully tells his father one morning that he will be going to bring the sheep to another grazing ground. The man on the chair doesn’t move, and only the twitch of his lips indicates that he heard Seokjin. Seokjin toes into the kitchen, where his mother is chopping up small blocks of wood. He tells her the same thing. She nods with a faint smile, and turns back to her work without waiting for him to leave.
The sheep are more restless than usual, and Seokjin has to bring in more than one that tries to wander off the perimeters of the grazing ground.
This is the last day. The bark holds none of the scratches that he and his brother engraved onto the trunk, it is this that makes him realize time still rolls on and on.
He has forgotten for a while, but it’s all coming back to him now.
*
Seokjin wakes up with a start, and hurries to wash up with an itch in his belly. It’s only when he prepares his father’s medicine that he realizes what conclusions he had drawn the night before, and remembers his dream. He sets the cup down, the copper material thumping against the wooden table, and hurries out of the house.
Before, if he stepped out of the house without helping his father and greeting his mother, he would feel a great sense of shame. Now, the feeling is liberating. His father can eat the medicine himself, and his mother won’t drop dead if he doesn’t greet her for one day. Seokjin has more pressing things to take care of.
He needs to see the butcher, who helps sell the meats in another town and who must see every person in the village in the span of a week. Seokjin goes into the small house with scarcely a knock, and calls out, “Samchon?”
Sangguk peers out. “Seokjin,” he says, looking uncertain. “What’re you doing here?” It surprises Seokjin that there’s no trace of anger on Sangguk’s features from their last encounter with the supposed wolf.
“I wanted to ask you something.” Sangguk inclines his head. “Do you know anyone who just came to this village recently? Any visitors, I mean.”
Sangguk shakes his head.
“Does the name ‘Namjoon’ sound familiar,” Seokjin pursues desperately.
“What’re you on about,” Sangguk says, and finally a hint of that anger in the clearing weeks ago show on his face. “What’re you blathering on about, boy?”
Seokjin worries his lower lip between his teeth, a dark premonition casting a vision in his mind.
The smell of blood fills his senses again.
*
But that wasn’t the secret.
When Seokjin stared at the wolf as he called out for help, it didn’t move. There was no indication that it had heard Seokjin at all.
And so Seokjin took two steps back. The wolf followed with three steps towards him, its movements sinuous and purposeful. Seokjin choked back a frightened yelp and backed away further. And then the wolf didn’t chase him. It simply sat back on its haunches, like a premonition.
Then Hongsik appeared from Seokjin’s right, breathing laboured. Seokjin turned back to the wolf and the it was gone.
It was perhaps because of the coincidental timing between the wolf’s first appearance and his brother’s departure, that Seokjin finds it natural that he began to dream of the wolf as his brother.
It never moved or blinked in his dreams, instead looming over Seokjin like a spectre with its great yellow eyes, that showed no sadness or anger, hunger or contentment.
In his dreams, Seokjin always closed the door to the wolf on his doorstep, and then he would wake up.
Truthfully, when Seokjin saw that wolf again—he was certain that it was the same one—he had become so familiar with it that he had forgotten its nature, what it meant.
*
Seokjin has his back to a tree trunk, his gaze holding steady on the herd, when he hears footsteps.
He turns, expecting to confront Namjoon, but the wolf is there instead.
Seokjin feels his breath punch out of him in one long exhale.
This is it, he knows. Something will happen, and there will be no one there to help him.
*
“Come back soon,” Seokjin calls in his dream.
The door opens.
He sees himself on the other side. And then Seokjin realizes that he’s standing on the front porch. When he takes a step forward into the house, he moves like an animal. The terror in the other Seokjin’s eyes—the face morphs, turning into his brother—tells it all.
*
“Seokjin?” A voice travels to the clearing. Namjoon. “Seokjin, are you there?”
The wolf stays still.
Slowly, Namjoon emerges from the trees.
“Seokjin, I finally found you,” Namjoon breathes out, walking past the wolf and over to Seokjin.
“Don’t you see it,” Seokjin says, his voice climbing.
Namjoon glances around the clearing. The wolf is still staring at Seokjin. It hasn’t moved at all. “What?”
Seokjin pauses. He turns his head just so that the wolf aligns itself to the corner of his vision. The smell of blood is overpowering.
And then he slowly turns back. The wolf is gone.
Namjoon is standing over him, incredibly real and human. And Seokjin understands now, why Namjoon seems so untouchable.
A wave of despair waves over him, and with it carries a visceral, cruel sort of realization that flits at the edges of his understanding. Just out of reach.
“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing at all. How did you know where to find me?”
*
Seokjin waits until Namjoon goes home, follows from a distance away. He goes into the most ordinary-looking house with a sturdy lock on the front door. Seokjin lingers until the last candle has been blown out. After all, he has nowhere else to be.
He returns to the herd in the clearing, to the sheep bleating in confusion and exhaustion. Seokjin walks a leisurely circle around them and finally, he goes to one.
He leans into the lamb’s throat. Fastens his mouth around the rabbity pulse, and pulls.
*
A grandfather once told his grandson, "there are two wolves inside of us that are always in battle. One wolf is truth, joy, hope, and compassion. The other represents fear, regret, jealousy, and anger."
The grandson thought for a while, and then asked, "which wolf wins?"
The grandfather responded, "the one you feed."