Keypage: Jae-heon’s Page

Had I been busy with an urgent appointment as any other tragic tale should go, your death wouldn’t have felt so miserable. Yeah. I would’ve cried until my tears had run their course, and I would’ve been ready to send you off. It was an ordinary day. The sort of day when there were no meetings or gatherings to attend to after I came home from work. Your body was crushed beyond recognition—I couldn’t have noticed on my own that it wasn’t a random chunk of flesh. They put your remains in a stasis box and sent it to me; that was their gesture of condolence. I’d have refused to believe it was you, if it weren’t for the clothes. I spent hours sitting there in numbed silence, vacantly staring at a lump I couldn’t even dare to hug.

A stuffed doll you were carrying, now next to the box, caught my eye. Even though it was shredded and soaked in blood, the cotton filling was still clustered together, as if it remembered the volume of the doll. It seems some cotton remained even after the roller crumpled all the outer fabric. Then for reasons unknown, I brought the other dolls out of your room and cut them up with a pair of scissors. I don’t know what possessed me to cut them into pieces of fabric. There wasn’t even enough to fully cover the doll, so I scraped together the pieces of clothing to sew it back up. With the same, gentle hands that made your doll the first time.

The outcome was creepier than what it used to be, but it was the same doll I remembered nonetheless. The appearance didn’t matter. Maybe, just maybe, the same could be said for you? I gazed at the box where you, my son, rested for what would no longer be an eternity. My two hands were once so busy that it was a bother; they had paused for the time, but now they are about to move again—just for you.