Chapter 5: The Theater

It took three days and one night to move from the stool into the storage room.

For three days, I sat beside that door and read the writing on the boxes. For one night, I barely slept. Before Vodianitsa could wake me at dawn, I was already up, tying my bootlaces.

"You’re up early. Nervous?"

"...A little."

"Nothing to be nervous about. Just do what you’ve been doing until yesterday. The only difference is that your spot is moving from inside to outside."

It was from outside to inside, but I did not correct her.

The forest path was the same as yesterday, and so were Vodianitsa’s words. Only today, every last one of those words was directed at me.

Greet Grandpa first. Go immediately if the theater director calls for you. Try not to stand out in front of the leads. Her advice continued all the way down the forest path, and I took it in and memorized it piece by piece.

The snow had piled up a little deeper than yesterday. Vodianitsa’s footprints were a little deeper too. As I stepped into those prints, I started trying to count how many times I would walk this road in the future, then stopped. It was not a number I could count.

"And if you do something wrong, nobody will tell you. They’ll just talk behind your back. So if you don’t know something, ask Grandpa. He’s the kind who says it to your face."

"...Yes."

"Don’t mind what they say behind your back. I don’t."

Vodianitsa said that and tugged her hat down once. Watching that gesture, I wondered why someone who did not care about what people said behind her back adjusted her hat so often. By the time I had finished thinking about it, the forest had ended.

The old man was standing in the corridor when we entered through the theater’s rear door.

"You’re here?"

"...Hello. I’m reporting for work starting today."

"I know. Follow me."

The old man turned and walked away. I bowed once to Vodianitsa and followed him, while she waved before vanishing down the opposite corridor.

At a corner in the hallway, we ran into a man wearing glasses. His hair was half gray. He nodded to the old man, slowed as he passed me, and swept his gaze over me from head to toe.

"Mr. Kim Sang-hyeon. I heard about you from Vodianitsa. I look forward to working with you."

"...Yes. Thank you."

"Ask this old fellow if you don’t know something. I’m busy."

The theater director said that and passed on. It was the first thing I said to the man who had taken me in, and for quite a while afterward, the last.

The storage room door stood open. It was the door beside which I had sat for three days. The old man entered first and lit the lamp on the wall. As the light spread, all the things piled up in the darkness revealed themselves at once.

There were boxes, painted backdrops, and objects covered in cloth. Shelves rose along the walls, lined with candlesticks, goblets, fake flowers, crowns, and things like that. Several long rolls of fabric lay on the floor.

After three days of peering in from outside and coming in once to set up a backdrop, I had only known the front part of this room.

The prop room I knew extended only as far as the lamplight reached. I had not known there was such a deep space beyond it.

"This is the prop room. Everything here goes onstage, and once it comes down, it comes back here. Your job is to count it, clean it, and put it back where it belongs."

"Yes."

"On performance days, you move it backstage, then bring it back when it’s over. This used to be a two-person job, but I’ve done it alone since last year. Now there’ll be two of us again."

As he said that, the old man picked up a candlestick from the shelf.

"What is this?"

"A candlestick."

"How many are there?"

I looked at the shelf. The candlesticks spanned two sections and came in different sizes. I counted them with my eyes, then lost track halfway through.

"...I don’t know."

"Twelve. Four large ones and eight small ones. One broke during the last performance, so there are eleven now, but the records still say twelve. That’s the sort of thing you need to know."

He put the candlestick down and moved to the next shelf.

Twenty goblets. Six bunches of fake flowers. Three crowns, one of which was for the back row because its gilding had peeled. Five large backdrops and nine small ones. Seven pieces of fabric, sorted by length.

Numbers poured from the old man’s mouth, and I struggled to put them all into my head. But around the fourth shelf, the numbers from the first shelf slipped away. Even knowing that, he did not stop.

"I’m not telling you to memorize it all. Just listen today. I’ll tell you again tomorrow."

"...Yes."

"Instead, do this today."

The old man tossed me a rag.

"Clean all eleven candlesticks. Come find me when you’re done."

After he left the prop room, I stood before the shelves with the rag in hand.

The candlesticks were brass, caked with fingerprints and candle wax. Cleaning the first one took quite a while.

I had to scrape off the wax with my nails and rub away the grime with the rag. Once it was clean, it gleamed yellow beneath the lamplight, and I felt a little proud. That pride did not last until I had finished all eleven.

As I cleaned, I thought about what the candlesticks would look like onstage. I did not know in what scene or in whose hand they would appear. It felt strange to clean them without knowing that, but when I thought about it, most of the work I had done until now had been cleaning things without knowing where they would be used.

After around the sixth one, I brought in the stool.

It was the same stool that had stood beside the door. I carried it into the prop room, set it in front of the shelves, and sat down. As I moved it, I truly felt that the place where I had spent three days looking from outside in had become a place where I looked from inside out.

People passed through the corridor.

Until yesterday, they had seen a strange man sitting on a stool. Today, they saw a man cleaning candlesticks in the prop room. Their gazes were a little less curious than yesterday’s, and one person asked as they passed, "Are you new here?"

"Yes, I started work today."

"Good luck. Grandpa’s strict."

That person laughed and passed on. I realized that was the first joke I had heard in this theater.

From inside, those people looked a little different. From the stool, they had merely been passersby. From within the prop room, they were the people who would hold these candlesticks and wear those crowns. It was oddly interesting, matching their faces to the props, so I stopped cleaning a few times to look out into the corridor.

When I finished all eleven, my hands were black, my back ached, and it was still light outside.

I went out into the hall to find the old man and got lost. Having spent three days doing nothing but sitting on the stool, I did not know where the corridors turned or where they led. At the second corner, I followed the sound of singing and stopped before a broad door. Inside was a rehearsal room.

The door stood slightly open.

I could see people through the gap. About ten people stood in a semicircle before a piano, five in the front row and five in the back. Vodianitsa stood at the very end of the back row.

Vodianitsa was wrapped in cloth. It was wound around her up to her ears like it was at home, though she wore no hat over it. She was the only one in the rehearsal room wrapped that way.

That was when I first learned that she covered herself even in the rehearsal room. I had heard that being a water nymph was not something to hide within the troupe. But looking at someone standing there with something not meant to be hidden covered up, I understood that hiding and covering were different things.

The piano stopped.

"Back row, again. The end keeps sticking out."

The person standing by the piano said that, and the back row sang again. Listening through the crack in the door, I understood what it meant for the end to stick out. The voice I had heard in the snowy field rose above the other nine voices.

"Tone down the ending."

Vodianitsa nodded. When they sang again, her voice could no longer be heard. It was right that it could not be heard, and I stepped away from the door.

I knew it was right to quiet that voice. The back row had to sound like the back row; it would be that way in any troupe. Even so, seeing through that crack how the voice that had saved me in the snow disappeared at a single command to tone it down was harder than I expected.

The old man was backstage.

"Finished cleaning?"

"Yes."

"Let me see your hands."

I held them out. He looked once at my blackened palms and nodded.

"That’ll do. Hands like that mean you cleaned them. You’re done for today. Stay in the prop room until Vodianitsa finishes. Tomorrow, you’ll do the backdrops."

"...Yes."

"And."

He stopped as he turned away.

"Don’t stand in front of the rehearsal room door. The leads don’t like it."

I could not answer. The old man said no more and disappeared toward the stage.

As I returned to the prop room, I thought about what it meant that the leads did not like it.

I could not tell whether they disliked someone standing at the door, or someone coming to see somebody inside. Either way, all I could do was not stand there.

On the second day, the old man repeated the numbers as promised.

Twelve candlesticks, one broken, leaving eleven. Twenty goblets. Six bunches of fake flowers. Three crowns, one for the back row. Five large backdrops and nine small ones. Seven pieces of fabric.

They were the same numbers as yesterday, and they slipped away at the same points. At the fourth shelf, the first shelf vanished from my mind. At the fifth shelf, the second vanished. When the old man finished speaking, only the final two shelves remained in my head.

"I’ll tell you again tomorrow."

He left, but I knew that tomorrow I would lose the same numbers at the same places.

I wanted to believe it was not because I was stupid. I had simply never been good at holding onto things exactly as I heard them. I was good at writing things down, though, and there was plenty of paper in a corner of the prop room.

I spread out the back of a sheet that had wrapped a box and picked up a piece of charcoal.

I meant to write in Teyvat script. I could write candlestick, and I could write goblet, but my hand stopped at the third line.

I did not know how to write fake flowers. I did not know crown either. As I stopped before those unknown letters, another of the numbers the old man had told me slipped away.

So I wrote it in Korean.

Eleven candlesticks. Twenty goblets. Six fake flowers. Three crowns. Five large backdrops, nine small ones. Seven pieces of fabric.

The Korean written in charcoal was small and quick. It took one breath to write all six lines. When I finished, all the numbers that had left my head had returned to the paper.

As I wrote Korean, my hand sped up on its own. When I wrote Teyvat script, my hand drew each letter one by one. When I wrote Korean, the letters appeared before the thought had even finished. The difference made me a little lonely. Here, nobody could read the writing my hand could write so quickly.

I took the paper and went around the shelves. I counted the candlesticks and marked off the eleven. I counted the goblets and marked them off. There were only five bunches of fake flowers, so I drew a question mark beside the six.

By the time I had marked all six lines, the prop room came into view at a glance for the first time.

Until yesterday, it had been darkness piled with boxes, backdrops, and fabric. Today, it was a room with eleven, twenty, five, three, fourteen, and seven. Simply holding those numbers in my hand made me a little less of a stranger in this room.

Holding those numbers meant I could speak about the room. If someone asked how many candlesticks there were, I could answer eleven. I could say one bunch of fake flowers was missing. Once I had something I could say, the room tilted a little toward me for the first time.

When the old man returned, I held out the paper.

"There are five bunches of fake flowers. One is missing."

He took the paper and looked at it for a long time without saying anything.

"...What is this?"

"A checklist. I made it so I could keep track."

"I mean, what are these letters?"

"...They’re the letters from my homeland. I still don’t know all the letters here."

He turned the paper over, then turned it back. For a long time, he looked at six lines of unreadable script, five marks beside them, and one question mark. Then he handed the paper back.

"One bunch of fake flowers got stepped on during a performance last month, so I threw it out. The records still say six."

"...Then I’ll change it to five."

"Do that."

He turned away, then stopped at the door.

"Only you can read that paper?"

"Yes."

"Then if you quit, that paper’s trash."

"...Yes."

"Don’t quit."

The old man left those words behind and went out. Holding the paper, I stared at the door for a long while.

Don’t quit was the first thing I had heard in this theater. Perhaps it was the first time I had heard it in this country, too.

Vodianitsa’s words had always been more on the side of saying I could stay, never on the side of telling me not to leave. But the old man’s single sentence was unmistakably on the side of telling me not to go. I thought about that difference as I erased the question mark from the paper.

From the third day on, there were two sheets of paper.

One was in Korean and the other in Teyvat script, though the Teyvat one only had three lines so far.

Candlestick, goblet, and fabric. I copied over only the things I could write with letters I knew, leaving the unknown ones on the Korean sheet. Every evening, whenever Vodianitsa taught me a new letter, another line was added to the Teyvat sheet.

Set side by side, the Korean sheet was always longer. The Teyvat sheet grew only as far as the letters I knew, while the Korean sheet held things other than props as well. The old man’s words and the jokes I heard in the corridor were written only on the Korean page. I did not know whether the day would come when I could transfer those words into Teyvat script.

"How do you write fake flowers?"

"Fake? Why are you writing that?"

"Because they’re in the prop room."

Vodianitsa laughed as she wrote the letters in charcoal. I copied them onto the Teyvat page, but I did not erase the line from the Korean one. Having the two lines side by side somehow reassured me.

"What did Grandpa say about you carrying those two sheets around?"

"He told me not to quit."

"...Grandpa said something like that? What exactly did you do?"

"I told him one bunch of fake flowers was missing."

Vodianitsa laughed for a long time. Not knowing why, I laughed a little with her.

At noon on the fourth day, I passed the rehearsal room and looked that way again.

Because I had been told not to stand there, I did not stop. I only looked as I passed. The door was open wider than last time, and there were nine people standing before the piano inside.

Vodianitsa was leaning against the wall beside the door.

She was in the corridor, not the rehearsal room, holding sheet music in her hand. She leaned against the wall and listened to the nine people singing inside, then smiled with her usual expression when she saw me.

She looked accustomed to leaning there. It was not the posture of someone trying it for the first time. The way she pressed one shoulder to the wall and crossed one foot over the other said that she and this wall had known each other for a long time.

"Did you eat?"

"...What about rehearsal?"

"My turn got pushed back. They’re doing the front row first, then the back row."

"But the other people in the back row are inside."

"They’re the back row. I’m the end of the back row. The end goes last."

Vodianitsa said it as if it were nothing and looked back at her sheet music. I stood beside her for a moment, then remembered the old man’s words and started walking.

"Go on. Grandpa will be waiting. I’m fine."

"...Yes."

I went.

On the way, I heard something. During a pause after the singing inside stopped, someone spoke quietly, but the words carried out to the corridor. They said that even letting a fairy stand in the back row was more than she deserved. Someone laughed, and that laugh quickly cut off.

I did not know the voice that said it. It was fortunate that I did not. If I had known, I would not have known what expression to wear when I met that face in the corridor tomorrow. And unfamiliar faces were always waiting for me at the end of the hall.

I did not stop walking.

I did not stop because there was nothing I could do if I did. I had learned once at the market that there were things I could do nothing about, and this was the second time I learned it at the theater. At the market, I could at least go back later and buy fish. Here, there was nothing to go back and buy.

Back in the prop room, I cleaned the backdrops. I tried not to think about anything as I cleaned, but failed. No matter how much I wiped, more dust came out of the painted boards.

One backdrop depicted a castle. It was a snow-covered castle with three towers and yellow lights in every window. I did not know what scene it appeared in or who was supposed to live inside it. Cleaning the windows of an unknown castle, I had the pointless thought of wondering who had left the lights on within.

That evening, Vodianitsa came to the prop room as usual.

"Let’s go. We finished all the way to the end of the back row today. We started late, so we finished late too."

"...Yes."

"What’s wrong? You’ve got that look again."

"It’s nothing."

Vodianitsa looked at me briefly but did not ask further. On the forest path, she talked a little more than usual, yet not one of those words was about the rehearsal room.

On the forest path, I almost asked her. I wanted to ask why she stayed silent. I opened my mouth to ask, then remembered the words I had heard at the market—this happens all the time—and closed it again. Asking about something that happened all the time was the sort of thing only someone who did not know it would do.

That night, another line was added to the Korean sheet.

End of the back row. Last of all.

The line beneath the prop counts was not a prop. It was not something I could count or mark off. Still, I did not erase it. The claim that writing things down made my mind lighter was a lie, at least when it came to this paper.

On the sixth day, the old man mentioned the name Alyosha for the first time.

"It’d be nice if Alyosha showed up today."

Fifteen boxes lined the floor of the prop room. The performance was the day after tomorrow, and all the boxes had to be moved backstage by then. Counting them, the old man said it almost to himself.

"Alyosha?"

"A hunter. He comes and helps carry things on days he isn’t hunting. Young fellow who travels with a dog. He’s strong, so if there are two of us, we can finish in half a day. But it’s hunting season, so he hasn’t been coming around."

"...I see."

"If he comes, introduce yourself. He knows this room better than you do."

In a corner of my Korean paper, I wrote Alyosha, hunter, dog. Beneath that, I wrote fifteen boxes, by the day after tomorrow—the numbers the old man had said.

I could not quite picture what a hunter who traveled with a dog helping carry loads at a theater would look like.

But I learned there were more people who came and went from this theater than just the theater director, the leads, the back row, the old man, and me. I also learned that getting to know those people one by one was part of what I had to do here.

After lunch, someone called the old man from the stage.

A piece of the stage set had gotten stuck. The old man dropped his rag and left, telling me not to touch the boxes and to wait. That wait continued until evening.

The footsteps in the corridor dwindled one by one.

The people carrying instruments left first. The people holding armfuls of clothes left next. Piano music still came from the rehearsal room, but its intervals were growing longer. Vodianitsa’s rehearsal was at the end of the back row again today, and the end of the back row was last of all.

It grew dark outside the window.

I took a candlestick down from the shelf, fitted a candle into it, and lit it. One lamp did not reach the corners of the prop room. There were eleven candlesticks anyway, and the old man would not say anything over using one of them.

The candlelight stretched long shadows over the boxes.

There were fifteen. I had been told not to touch them, so I did not. But counting them without touching, I judged that moving them alone would take three days, while the performance was the day after tomorrow.

I sat on the stool.

The sound of a theater emptying was different from the sound of a home emptying. The house had been quiet from the beginning. But the theater was a place that filled with noise, then let it all drain away, so the silence after it drained was much bigger. In that silence, I could hear the candle wick burning.

Listening to the theater empty, I thought about what made this different from the three days I had spent sitting on the stool. I had been alone then, and I was alone now. But then I had been someone waiting, while now I was someone left behind. The solitude of someone left behind was far heavier.

I thought of my one-room apartment in Seoul.

I had always been alone there too, but I had never felt alone this intensely. Perhaps because being alone had been the default in that apartment, while here I was in a space people had left behind.

The solitude in that apartment had no name. The solitude here did have a name: someone waiting for the rehearsal at the end of the back row to finish. Solitude with a name kept making me look toward the door.

When the candle had burned a little shorter, I rose and tried lifting one of the boxes.

I had been told not to touch them, but I thought trying to lift one would be all right. It was heavy. To get backstage, I would have to turn through two corridors. Alone, three days. With the old man, a day and a half. If the person named Alyosha came, half a day.

That person did not come.

I set the box down and sat on the stool again.

Then I heard a sound at the door.

It was not footsteps. If it had been footsteps, I would have heard them from the corridor, but the hall was silent. What I heard was something touching the doorframe very lightly. I raised my head.

The person at the door wore a white coat. Pale mint-green hair, neatly cut at the chin, lay over it. Their face was pale, freckles scattered over their nose and cheeks. One hand rested against the frame as they looked into the prop room.

"...Excuse me."

The voice was quiet. Quiet and careful, with a faint tremor at the end.

"Could I help you?"

I stood from the stool.

"Are you Alyosha?"

The person’s eyes widened for a brief instant before returning to normal.

"...Yes. I’m Alyosha."

"Grandpa told me to introduce myself if you came."

"Ah... yes. Where is Grandpa?"

"He went to the stage because a set piece got stuck."

"Then... you’re alone right now?"

Alyosha said the word alone a little slowly. I answered that I was, and as I did, I briefly thought this person was somehow unlike the hunter who supposedly traveled with a dog.

There was no dog. The coat was far too white. And for a hunter’s hand, the fingers resting on the doorframe were too slender.

Still, I was not in a position to dwell on such things. There were fifteen boxes, and the performance was the day after tomorrow.

"...May I come in?"

"Yes. Please come in."

Alyosha crossed the threshold. Passing beside the candlestick, the candle flame did not stir. I thought it was because there was no wind in the prop room and turned back toward the boxes.

"These have to be moved backstage by the day after tomorrow. But Grandpa told me not to touch them."

"...Grandpa always says that. Then the next day, he asks why you didn’t do it."

Alyosha said that with a very small laugh. The laugh vanished quickly, and caution returned in its place. I could not tell what that caution was directed toward.

"So... it’s fine to move them. I’ll take responsibility. That’s how it’s always been."

"...Then please help me."

Alyosha picked up the first box.

It was the one I had tried lifting and put back down because it was heavy. Alyosha lifted it as if it were nothing. I found myself wondering how such slender arms produced that kind of strength.

"I’ll carry the heavy ones. Um... your foot is still bad, isn’t it?"

"...How do you know?"

"Your walk makes it seem that way."

I could not answer. Without waiting for one, Alyosha carried the box into the corridor. I chose a lighter second box and followed.

Through two turns of the corridor, Alyosha did not adjust their hold on the box even once. They set it down precisely in a dark spot backstage, and even pointed out where I should set the second box. The gesture belonged to someone who had done this many times.

Half the corridor lamps had been extinguished. Each time we passed beneath an unlit one, Alyosha’s white coat seemed to float alone in the darkness. Following that whiteness, I had no fear of getting lost.

"Here. This is where we take them from during the performance."

"Yes."

On the way back, Alyosha walked half a step behind me. Not ahead, nor beside me, but half a step behind, matching my pace. The distance felt somehow measured on purpose.

From the third box onward, Alyosha spoke a little more.

"That box has the candlesticks. You have to carry it upright. If you lay it down, they roll around inside."

"...What is this one?"

"Fabric. It’s light, but large, so it catches at the corridor corners. Turn the edge first."

I carried the boxes while listening to those words. Nothing Alyosha said was wrong, and somehow, that fact reassured me.

As we set down the fifth box, Alyosha looked at my hands.

"You’ve got charcoal on your hands."

"I’ve been practicing letters. I still can’t read them all."

"...Letters?"

Alyosha took in those words and said nothing for a moment. They seemed about to ask something else, but did not. Instead, they headed first toward the next box.

"Are you all right at this theater?"

"I still don’t really know."

"...Everyone’s like that at first."

I wanted to ask what happened after the beginning passed, but Alyosha was already carrying another box, so I put the question off for later.

After setting down the sixth box, I paused to catch my breath.

The prop room was always cold, so my breath spread white every time I exhaled. Raising my coat collar, I looked at Alyosha. Alyosha stood before the next box, surely catching their breath as well, yet there was no visible breath on that side.

Before I could feel it was strange, Alyosha lifted the box. I picked up the next one with my collar still raised.

While carrying the ninth box, I dropped my paper.

The Korean paper folded in my inner coat pocket slipped out as I lifted the box. It fell before Alyosha’s feet, and Alyosha set the box down and picked it up.

There was a brief moment between picking it up and handing it to me.

Alyosha was looking at the paper. At the few lines of Korean written on the outside of the folded paper. Their eyes rested on it longer than the time of someone looking at letters they could not read. I noticed, but said nothing.

"...This."

"It’s mine. A checklist."

"Yes."

Alyosha held out the paper. The fingertips offering it trembled just a little. I took it and put it back into my inner pocket. Alyosha asked nothing and picked up the box again.

It was strange that they did not ask. The old man and Vodianitsa had both asked what those letters were when they saw them. But this person did not ask. Instead of asking, they carried boxes. And after lifting the box, they did not bring up the paper again.

Still, I was grateful that they did not ask. I did not have to make up the excuse about it being the writing of my homeland again. In front of someone I did not have to make excuses to, I carried my box a little more lightly.

When the fifteenth box was set backstage, the candle had burned halfway down.

Back in the prop room, I sat on the stool while Alyosha stood beside the door. They did not sit, and when I told them to, they shook their head. From that spot, their gaze traveled once over the prop room, past the shelves, boxes, and candlesticks, before stopping on me.

The candle was close by.

Alyosha’s eyes were yellow. Yellow close to gold. In their center, catching the candlelight, the pupils looked strange for a brief moment—not round, but as if their edges split into several branches. When I blinked and looked again, they were simply dark pupils.

I thought it must have looked that way because the candle was flickering.

"...Thank you. It would have taken me three days alone."

"It’s nothing. I didn’t have anything to do either."

"I heard it was hunting season."

Alyosha’s hand paused atop the doorframe.

"...There wasn’t any today."

"Is that so?"

"Yes."

I accepted that answer. As I did, I thought about why this person had come to an emptying theater at this hour and carried fifteen boxes for a man they had never met. As I thought, an old habit lifted its head. It tried to find traces of a price in this person, but found none.

"Excuse me."

"Yes?"

"Why did you help me?"

Alyosha did not answer at once. The hand on the doorframe clenched and opened once. Their gaze fell to the floor, then rose. Once raised, their eyes looked not at me but at the shelves over my shoulder.

"It looked like too much for one person."

"Is that all?"

"And."

The words stopped there. They remained stopped for a long time. I waited, and as I waited, only the sound of the candle wick burning remained.

"...And I’ve always done that for Grandpa. That’s all."

I did not know whether I should trust someone who said that’s all twice. But the fifteen boxes were backstage, and that was not a lie. Before something that was not a lie, I bowed my head for now.

I had still not found Vodianitsa’s reverse side, or Odette’s reverse side. Now there was one more person here without a reverse side, someone who barely showed even their front side.

"Still, thank you."

"Yes."

Footsteps sounded at the far end of the corridor.

They were Vodianitsa’s footsteps. I could recognize their quick, light sound now. Alyosha seemed to hear them too, for their hand fell from the doorframe.

"Then I’ll be going now."

"Already? Vodianitsa is coming."

"Yes. It’s late."

Alyosha bowed and turned away, walking down the corridor opposite the footsteps. Their steps were as quick as when they carried boxes. It took only two or three breaths for the white coat to disappear into the corridor’s darkness.

There had been no sound of footsteps. I only then remembered it had been the same while we carried boxes back and forth through the corridor. I remembered, and left it at that.

"You did it all by yourself?"

Vodianitsa peered through the prop room door. Her eyes widened when she saw there were no boxes left on the floor.

"All fifteen? Alone? I thought Grandpa told you not to touch them."

"Alyosha helped me."

"Alyosha came? I didn’t see him."

"He just left that way."

Vodianitsa looked down the opposite corridor, then shrugged.

"That’s just how he is. He’s so quick on his feet that nobody ever sees him coming and going. Still, that worked out well. Grandpa will be pleased."

Vodianitsa told me to come, and I extinguished the candle, put out the lamp, and closed the prop room door. As I closed it, I looked once at the frame.

There was nothing on it. No handprint, no melted snow. Nothing at all—enough to make me doubt whether someone had really stood there with their hand against it. Yet all fifteen boxes were backstage.

The following morning, the old man stood for a long time looking at the boxes backstage.

"Alyosha came?"

"Yes. In the evening."

"Didn’t see him yesterday. Then again, nobody ever sees that kid coming. You only realize after he’s gone."

The old man opened one of the boxes and checked inside. It held candlesticks, standing upright.

"You carried them upright."

"Alyosha told me to."

"Right. That kid knows."

The old man said no more. By then, I understood that his saying no more was praise.

Performance day was short.

We arrived at dawn, opened the backstage boxes, took out the props, and arranged them through the whole morning. In the afternoon, while the old man ran around the stage, I stood backstage with my Korean paper, marking off props as they went out and returned. Then, after the curtain rose in the evening, I stood in the darkness behind the stage and heard what a performance was for the first time.

Backstage was different from the prop room as well. It was dark and cramped, and people moved through it holding their breath. Among those people, holding my paper, I was not a passerby for the first time. It took the whole morning for that fact to sink down to my fingertips.

I could not see. From backstage, the stage itself was invisible. All I could see was light leaking through the curtains, and the people entering and emerging from that light. But I could hear everything.

I could hear the sound at the end of the back row too. It was a sound that should have been buried in the whole, and it was. But once, it rose very briefly before falling again. In that instant, someone backstage clicked their tongue.

The tongue-click was brief. I could not see in the darkness who had made it. Keeping that sound in my ears, I looked down at my paper. The numbers on the page did not click their tongues.

When the curtain fell and people began leaving, the old man told me we would do it tomorrow and left first. I remained alone in the prop room.

Vodianitsa had been dragged off to the gathering after the performance. She said the back row had to go too, and left with a face that said she did not want to. She told me she would be late and that I should go on ahead, but waiting here was preferable to going home through the forest alone.

"Don’t leave first. Wait for me, all right?"

"...Yes."

"That answer was slow. You understand?"

"I understand."

Only then did Vodianitsa leave. At the end of the corridor, a small person wearing gold-heeled shoes passed by while putting on a coat. They looked once in my direction, dipped their head ever so slightly, and vanished.

I put a candle in a candlestick and lit it.

The props returned from the stage lay on the floor in their boxes. Putting them back on the shelves was tomorrow’s work. I sat on the stool, then got up and opened one of the boxes.

Eleven candlesticks stood inside, newly crusted with wax. I took one out and began wiping it with a rag.

A sound came from the door.

"You’re alone again."

A white coat stood in the doorframe. It was the same spot as the day before yesterday, the same hand resting on the frame. I looked up with the rag in my hand.

"You came?"

"Yes, I was just passing by."

The theater was empty, and I did not ask where there was to pass by.

"Today it’s not boxes, but candlesticks. I’m just cleaning them, so I’m fine."

"...Still."

Alyosha came in and sat in front of the box. They sat directly on the floor and took out a candlestick. There was no rag, so they scraped off the wax with the end of their sleeve.

"Your sleeve will get dirty."

"It’s white, so it’s fine anyway."

I could not understand what it meant that it was fine because it was white. Alyosha cleaned a candlestick, and I cleaned one too. Two sounds of scraping wax filled the prop room.

The sound of two people cleaning was different from the sound of one person cleaning because it was the sound of two people. It was an obvious thing, but I did not realize it until the third candlestick. Once I did, I found myself doubting whether the prop room where I had sat alone on the stool the day before yesterday was truly the same room.

"...Your name is Sang-hyeon, right?"

"Yes."

"I heard Grandpa call you that."

"I should have told you then. I’m sorry."

"No. I didn’t ask."

Alyosha said that and took out another candlestick. The cleaned ones went to Alyosha’s left, the uncleaned ones to the right. The row on their side grew twice as quickly as mine. Watching those hands, I lowered my eyes back to my own candlestick.

I didn’t ask sounded like an apology. I did not know whether failing to ask someone’s name was something to apologize for, nor had I ever met anyone who apologized for such a thing. But after saying it, Alyosha scraped the candlestick a little harder.

The candle stood between us.

Whenever Alyosha set down a candlestick, the floor vibrated. That vibration should have reached the candle flame, but the flame stood straight. I saw it for the second time. This time, I decided not to think anything of it.

Once all eleven were clean, Alyosha stood.

"Then I’ll be going now."

"Already?"

"...Yes. I should leave before people come back."

Alyosha went to the doorframe and looked back once. Yellow eyes watched me over the candlelight. The shape at their center was fainter today than it had been the day before yesterday, so they looked like ordinary dark pupils.

"I’ll come again."

"Yes."

"When you’re alone, Sang-hyeon."

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