At that moment in the meeting hall of the gods, no one was watching Father.
In the center of the white light, the four sat in their respective places, their gazes directed elsewhere. Where those gazes were directed did not matter. All that remained with the four that day was that, wherever they had been looking, it had not been at the theater stage in the snowbound northern city.
Rhinedottir was the first to raise her head.
The hand beneath her veil rose of its own accord, and the thread of life it held gave a great tug. What came up from the other end of that thread was not death, but pain. The pain of bones slipping out of place and flesh being crushed traveled along the thread into her palm, and Rhinedottir knew whose pain it was before she could even ask.
"Father."
At that single word, the other three turned their heads. When all four looked down together, what lay there was already over. They saw two fallen women, a shattered painted flat, and the left leg pinned beneath it. The four were not seeing the instant that leg broke, but what came after it had broken.
No one said they were too late.
It was not as though they had been delayed by holding one another back, as on that night when Father fell into the snow. Nor had one stopped another from reaching out a hand. No one had simply been looking. And because no one had been looking, there was no one to blame. The meeting hall, with no one to blame, was silent.
Ronova stared down with her flower-shaped pupils widened. Istaroth placed her fingers against the ring on her wrist, then lowered them without turning it. Asmoday stood with her arms folded, never taking her eyes off that leg. Only Rhinedottir could not lower the hand gripping the thread.
They could fix it. For the Shade who governed life, mending a human leg bone was easier than moving a finger. All four knew that, and so the next words ought naturally to have been: Let’s fix it.
Before those words could emerge, the same thought passed through all four at the same instant. If that leg remained as it was, Father would now have to rely on someone even to walk. And if the only people he could rely on were the water nymph and the ballerina below, then they themselves might be able to take those places. That thought stopped the words: Let’s fix it.
The thought was brief, and all the clearer for its brevity.
Each of the four saw herself having that thought. None voiced it, and those who did not voice it could not bring themselves to say they should fix him, either.
The moment one of them said they should fix him, the question would come back: Why had you hesitated until now? None of the four could give that answer to the others, or to herself. And so the silence stretched on.
"If I’d been there."
Ronova broke the silence, though she was not speaking to anyone in particular.
It had been over a month since she had begun entering and leaving the theater in Alyosha’s guise. Of the four, she had gone closest, stood by Father most often, and could have been inside the theater that day as well.
But going only when he was alone was a rule Ronova had set for herself. And because Father had not been alone that day, Ronova had not been there.
She was both the one who had made the rule and the one who had kept it. This time, even the person she could resent was inside herself.
No one answered. Asmoday rose first and walked beyond the light of the meeting hall. Ronova rose after her. Long afterward, Istaroth looked once more at her ring before slowly disappearing.
Only Rhinedottir remained.
『We cannot heal him without asking Father what he wants.』
Naberius spoke inside her mind, and beneath her veil Rhinedottir gave a small shake of her head.
"I know. I know, Nabel. But how am I supposed to know what he wants when I can’t even ask?"
『Which is why we definitely cannot. We brought him here as we pleased, nearly froze him as we pleased, and if we heal him as we please now, what would we be to Father?』
Rhinedottir did not answer. The hand clutching the thread was still receiving the pain from below. She could cut that pain off, yet could not. For a long time, Rhinedottir stared at that hand.
For the first time, she wondered whether there might be a way to place a hand beside Father without going to him herself. At the end of that thought, one path came to mind.
Only Rhinedottir knew who stood at the end of that path, and she had not yet told Naberius.
======
The yellow light came right up before my eyes, then went out.
After that came fragments. I heard someone calling my name. Several hands slid beneath my back and lifted me, and the corridor lamps passed overhead one by one.
It was cold outside. I was lying on top of something that swayed, and every sway sent something from below my left knee all the way to my teeth. I did not know whether to call it a sound or pain. I clenched my teeth, then released them, then clenched them again.
Someone was holding my hand. The hand was cool, and its owner kept talking while holding mine. I could not hear the words, but somehow the fact that the sound did not stop reassured me.
Then it stopped.
When I opened my eyes, the ceiling was white. It was a plastered ceiling with neither wooden beams nor soot, and the light through the window made that white even whiter. I stared at it for a long while before wondering where I was.
There had been a time when I woke hoping I was in a hospital. That time, it had been a mountain cabin. This time, though I had not even hoped for it, the smell of disinfectant reached my nose first. From that smell, I learned this country had hospitals too.
It was a small room. There was one metal bed, two chairs, a little table, and one window. Outside the window was white, and the walls were whiter still.
There was only one bed. If there had been another, I might have wondered who would be lying in it. Since there was not, I did not.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor beyond the wall, and farther away carriage wheels rolled over cobblestones. From that, I knew I was in the city, not beyond the forest. It had to be somewhere not far from the theater.
I raised my hand. The knuckles of my right hand were bruised, and my left palm was scraped. Seeing those marks reminded me which hand had grabbed whom. I did not examine what came back to me any further.
I knew about my leg without looking. Below my left knee, it was tightly bound in boards and cloth, and the inside of it burned. Something kept throbbing beneath that heat, a throbbing beyond comparison with the feeling of frostbitten toes waking up in the snow.
"You’re awake?"
The voice came from beside me. Turning my head, I saw Vodianitsa sitting in a chair. She had not even taken off her coat, and she still wore her fur hat. There were dark shadows under her eyes. She looked at me, half rose from her chair, then sat back down.
"You’re awake? You’re awake. Does anything hurt? No, of course it hurts. Other than that, how’s your head? Do you know who I am?"
"Vodianitsa."
"Good."
Vodianitsa said only that and sank back into the chair. The sight overlapped with the day my fever broke after three days, when she had dropped the firewood. She had said good then too, and taken a huge breath after it.
"Did you sleep here?"
"Do you think I slept? You were groaning all night."
"I’m sorry."
"I told you not to say that."
It was a scolding I had heard countless times since she picked me up in the snow. Hearing it, oddly enough, felt more familiar than knowing where I was.
Odette stood beside the door. She was neither sitting nor leaning against the wall. She stood there in that straight posture, watching me. She wore gold-heeled shoes and a coat rather than her practice clothes.
Both of them were there.
Once I confirmed that fact with my eyes, strength drained from somewhere in my body. I did not know what I had been holding it for, but once it was gone, my leg finally began to hurt properly.
"Are you two..."
"What?"
"Were you hurt anywhere? I pushed you earlier."
Vodianitsa’s mouth opened, then closed.
"Yesterday."
"What?"
"Not earlier. Yesterday. You slept for an entire day."
A whole day was missing.
"When they set the bone, you never woke up. You just screamed. The doctor said you were fine, but I had no idea what ‘fine’ was supposed to mean."
I did not remember making that sound. The fact that this person remembered a sound I could not added one more thing to the calculation.
"How did we get here?"
"The theater people put you on a stretcher. The old man cleared the way in front, and the people who handled the ropes carried you from behind. It took four people to pull you out from under that thing. Then we came by carriage."
The sensation of swaying on the carriage and the cool hand holding mine came back together. But I did not say whose hand I thought it had been. I had an idea what Vodianitsa might say if I asked, and right then I had nowhere to put those words.
"So where were you hurt?"
"Nowhere. I bruised my butt a little, and Odette scraped her elbow. That’s it. Is that really what you should be asking right now?"
Vodianitsa’s voice rose a little. I pretended not to notice and turned toward the door.
"Odette, what about your feet?"
Odette’s eyes widened ever so slightly.
"My feet?"
"Your dancing feet. You didn’t twist an ankle when you fell, did you?"
Odette did not answer right away. By the door, she slid one foot before the other, then withdrew it. I could not tell whether that was the way a dancer checked her feet, or something else.
"They are fine."
"And dancing? The performance is right around the corner."
"I can dance."
"That’s a relief."
"...A relief?"
Odette’s voice was short and cold as usual, but its end lifted just slightly. I did not know where to put that lifted note, so I simply left it there.
"I’m telling you, that isn’t what you should be asking right now."
Vodianitsa cut in. I looked at her.
"It is what I should ask. I pushed you."
"You pushed us, so we’re fine."
"That’s why I need to ask whether you’re fine."
Vodianitsa started to say something, then stopped. Her hand slipped into her coat pocket and came back out empty.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor, and the door opened. A man in a white coat entered. His hair was graying, and he carried papers in one hand. He looked at me once, my leg once, and then the papers.
"You’re awake. I’m the doctor. Your name?"
"Kim Sang-hyeon."
"Mr. Kim Sang-hyeon, you were carried here from the theater yesterday with an injury to your left leg. Listen carefully to what I’m about to say."
The doctor did not pull over a chair. He stood at the foot of my bed as he spoke. I looked from the white ceiling to him.
Vodianitsa got up from her chair and came to the head of my bed. Odette did not move from the door. Both wore the faces of people who had already heard this.
Only after seeing those faces did I realize there was something I had not heard yet.
"Your left shinbone is broken in two places."
The doctor spoke without looking at the paper. It was not that he had memorized his speech; he was someone who did not need paper to say things like this.
"The edge of the painted flat came down and crushed the bone. We set it and bound it yesterday. You must remain in bed for the time being. You may not get up, and you definitely may not put that leg on the floor."
"How long will it take?"
"The bone alone will take around a month to knit. After that, there will be walking practice."
I converted a month into days in my head. The doctor did not stop talking while I did.
"And I should tell you in advance: the bone will heal, but you will not walk as you did before. The area below the knee was not cleanly crushed. You will limp, and that will remain even with time. You will need a cane."
Vodianitsa gripped the bedrail. I heard the sound of her grip, but did not turn my head.
"Is that so?"
"It is."
"I understand."
The doctor looked at me briefly. His were eyes that had seen many faces receiving such news. Whatever they sought in mine, they did not find it, and his gaze dropped away.
"Call a nurse if the pain becomes severe. I will see you again tomorrow."
The doctor took his papers and left. The door closed, leaving the three of us in the room.
Vodianitsa opened her mouth to say something, but someone called her name from the hallway. It sounded like someone from the troupe. She looked between the door and me, then stood.
"I have to go because of practice. I’ll be back soon."
"Go ahead."
"Odette, you need to go too. You’re in the front row."
Odette looked at me once more from beside the door and turned away. Before turning, she glanced very briefly at the leg tied at the foot of the bed. It was a measuring gaze. Whether she was measuring length or something else, I could not tell.
Once they left and the door closed, the white ceiling remained.
Looking at it, I laid out the words I had just heard again. My bone was broken in two places. I had to lie down for about a month. Afterward I would limp and need a cane. Each sentence was easy to understand on its own.
Yet I neither cried nor shouted after hearing them. My habit of counting small things rather than looking at the big thing in front of me had come first again. The hands that shook when a report was rejected in front of my manager, when I read a 5,700-character comment, lay still atop the blanket now.
A month was a little over thirty days. I could not go to the theater during that time. If I could not go to the theater, I would have no wages. And without wages, next month I would not have money for candy—let alone food for myself.
At my company, there would have been paperwork. Papers counting the days I had to miss due to injury, papers making up half the wages for those days. I had written many such documents for others. But here, I did not even know whether such papers existed. And even if they did, no one would write the name of a man with no identity on them.
So the calculation had to begin with the days without wages.
A little more than half of the wages I had received remained. The envelope should have been in my coat pocket, but I did not know where that coat was now. From the bed, I could not even tell whether the coat hanging over the chair was mine or Vodianitsa’s.
I could not even calculate the hospital fees. I did not know what hospitals charged in this country, nor the price of lying here for a day. I knew even less about who was paying it. But I could not put what I did not know into the calculation, so I left that space undecided.
I knew the monthly wages of the troupe’s back row now. They were the same as mine, and from that money came soup, salt, and my share of the bread. Now I had to add the trip back and forth to the hospital. I did not want to add it, but there was no way not to.
Once there was an undecided space, everything I had received lined up beneath it: being carried from the snow, three days of soup, two candies, boots, a coat, a job, a blanket, letters, a month of forest paths. To that were added the undecided hospital fees and a month of blank wages.
There was nowhere to write them down, so I lined them up only in my head. Even in my head, the list was long.
As I counted, there was one thing that fit into neither column.
My leg was neither something received nor something to repay, so I could not put it in either column. Pushing the two of them had been something I did; having my leg pinned had happened afterward. I could not charge anyone for the first, nor blame anyone for the second.
I had no words to explain why I pushed them. If it had been courage, I would have thought at least once beforehand. But I had no memory of thinking. My feet had simply moved first.
So I did not know why, when that foot came back, it got caught. I could not even remember whether it had been where I nailed something down. No matter how I tried to recall it, there was nothing but yellow light.
At the company, I could not leave something unknown as unknown. Here, I did.
There was only one thing I knew. If that foot had not caught, someone else would be lying in this bed now. I decided not to count which of the two it would have been.
Once I left the leg column empty, the rest of the calculation became a little lighter. What I had received was what I had received, and the blank was a blank. It was a strange calculation, but if I did not leave it that way, I felt it would never end.
Only belatedly did I wonder where my two checklists had gone.
They had left my hands beside the stage, and after that I had no idea where or how I stepped. No one in this country could read the Korean side, so if someone found it, it would look like trash. Someone might be able to read the Teyvat side, which had over ten lines now, but they would not know what kind of paper it was.
The performance was the day after tomorrow. The task of carrying boxes and setting up candlesticks had returned to being the old man’s alone, and he had to finish by the day after tomorrow what would take one man three days. If Alyosha came, it would take half a day, but I was lying somewhere I could no longer know whether he would come or not.
I briefly wondered whether Alyosha would hear of this. He only came when I was alone, and I would be almost alone here. But that did not mean he would come all the way to the hospital.
The last evening he had come, he asked whether my feet were better now. I said they were fine, and he had looked relieved. When that face came to mind, the words I had said began to feel like a lie. I pushed that face away again.
Snow began to fall outside the window. Lying down, it did not look as if it fell from above. It looked as if it simply appeared inside the window frame. Watching it, I started the calculation that did not count my leg from the beginning once more.
It would be snowing on the forest path too. I began to think of the person who would walk that road alone this evening, then stopped. Even after I stopped, the snow kept falling.
No matter how many times I did it again, the blank remained a blank, and everything else was long.
Whenever pain rose, the calculation broke off, and I resumed from where it stopped. Meanwhile, there was no sound of snow piling up within the window frame. Only the sound of nurses passing in the corridor came several times.
That evening, Vodianitsa returned carrying wrapped bread and soup. Her soup was saltier than the hospital’s. She put the spoon in my hand and supported the bottom of the bowl. They were the same hands from the day I first sat up and ate soup. That day the bowl had trembled. Today it did not.
"The old man came by during the day. You were asleep, so he just looked at you and left."
"What did he say?"
"Nothing. He looked at your leg once, your face once, and left."
I knew what it meant when the old man said nothing. Because I knew, there was nothing more to ask.
"What about the performance?"
"It’s still on the day after tomorrow. They put up new ropes. They can’t use the castle."
At the word castle, yellow windows came to mind. I had cleaned those windows. Now they were shattered windows. I swallowed that thought with my soup.
Vodianitsa did not get angry that evening. She spoke less than usual, and in the gaps between those few words, she repeatedly opened and closed her mouth. Whenever she closed it, her hand went toward her inner coat pocket, but she did not take anything out.
"I’ll come again tomorrow after practice."
"It’s far. If you stop here, it takes more than two hours to get home."
"I know. So I’ll see you tomorrow."
Vodianitsa said that and left, and I remained alone beneath the white ceiling.
Alone, I counted again. To what I had received today, I added bread and soup. To the two-hour road, I added the trip to the hospital. The blank below remained unchanged.
The night was long.
During the day, calculation suppressed the pain. At night, pain suppressed the calculation. In the places it pressed down, I looked at the ceiling. There were no beams to count, so I counted the cracks in the plaster. There were three. Once I had counted all three, there was pain again.
When I slept briefly, I was in the snowfield. My feet sank into the snow, and sensation cut out every ten steps. But this time there was no song. Instead, the sound of wood breaking woke me. When I woke, there was my leg.
A nurse came in once, lowered the lamp, and left. They had told me to call if it hurt, but I did not know how much pain was enough to call for someone. So I did not. Not calling was what I was used to.
Before leaving, the nurse asked whether there was family to notify. I said no. The nurse did not write down that answer, only nodded. They said it was fine because people from the troupe were coming. I did not know which column to place those words in.
The doctor came again in the morning.
"Did you sleep?"
"A little."
"You have the face of someone who did not..."
Without unbinding my leg, the doctor pressed it from above. Each time he pressed, I clenched my teeth. Watching my face, he nodded.
"The swelling is better than yesterday. Keep lying down like this. Lying down is your job."
I had never heard anyone say lying down was a job before. I lay down as told. Calling it a job made me feel a little less sorry.
"When can I work again?"
"What kind of work?"
"Carrying boxes and cleaning props at the theater."
The doctor thought for a moment.
"If it is seated work, after the bone knits. If it requires standing, another month after that. You will not be able to carry anything heavy for quite some time after that either."
I put the words unable to carry boxes beside my wages. Whether a prop-room worker unable to carry boxes could receive wages would be for the old man to decide, and the old man was a man of few words.
I spent performance day in the hospital room. I did not know exactly where the theater was, but Vodianitsa told me it was in the direction the bells came from. Whenever I heard bells, I traced what must be going out behind the stage at that moment.
Boxes went out at dawn. Candlesticks took their places in the morning. The old man ran across the stage in the afternoon. As I traced that sequence, I felt as if I were standing in the same place as on performance day a month ago.
At curtain time, I stared at the ceiling and counted eleven candlesticks and twenty glasses. The numbers came even without paper, and while they came, my leg hurt a little less.
I tried not to wonder whether someone else was counting those numbers in my place, but it did not go well.
A nurse brought dinner. When I took the bowl, I mentioned there was a performance at the theater today. The nurse said tickets were too expensive, so she had never gone. I said I had never seen the stage from the audience either. The nurse smiled a little at that answer.
When the performance should have ended, Vodianitsa came. She seemed to have come straight after the curtain fell. Black traces of stage makeup remained around her eyes, and she was out of breath. After opening the door, she stood beside the bed without removing her coat or sitting down.
"Is it over?"
"It’s over."
"How was it? The back row?"
"They did it without the castle."
Vodianitsa added,
"No one knows the castle is missing. The only people who know it was supposed to be there are you and the old man."
After saying that, Vodianitsa took a tin from her inner coat pocket. It was the tin with the floral lid. One corner had been crushed inward, so the lid sat crookedly. Vodianitsa opened that crooked lid and put a candy in her mouth.
I saw the dent. The sound of it rolling across the stage floor came back to me. I did not say it aloud, but Vodianitsa did not hide that part either. She neither straightened it nor covered it. She simply held it.
"Want one?"
"No, I’m fine."
Vodianitsa put the tin away. Then she watched me for a long time. Her eyes were different from usual, and I waited for whatever words would come.
"You."
"Yes."
"Why did you do that?"
Her voice was low. It was neither bright nor quick. It was the first time I had heard such a voice from her.
"Why did you jump underneath it?"
"That..."
"I picked you up from the snow. I carried you back, and I stayed awake for three days making soup so you wouldn’t lose even one toe. And then you get crushed under a stage flat in my place? What is that?"
Her words began to quicken. The low voice rose, and once it rose, it did not stop. The words only had the speed of her usual chatter. They were nothing like her usual words.
"I’m a fairy. Falling is nothing to me. Odette is a dancer, so fine, her feet are another matter. But what are you? You have no one here. If someone with no one lets his leg get like that, who is supposed to look after him afterward?"
"Vodianitsa."
"I saw it right there. I saw it come down on your leg. I heard the sound. I saw your face turn white under it. I saw all of it."
Vodianitsa’s words broke off once, then continued.
"Answer me. Why did you do it?"
I did not know why I did it. Even after two days of counting in the hospital room, that space remained blank. With no words to say that blank aloud, I said something else.
"I’m sorry."
"For what?"
"I made things worse by jumping in without thinking. If I had stayed still, you might have gotten out of the way yourself, but I interfered, and my leg ended up like this. The performance had to go on without the castle, and the old man had to carry the boxes alone."
"Is that what you have to say right now?"
"Because I caused trouble. That’s why you’re angry, isn’t it?"
Vodianitsa looked at me. I could not read what her eyes held. Unable to read them, I watched her take the bedrail in both hands. It creaked. The strength was hard to believe from arms that looked so slender. I had felt that strength once before in the snow.
"Trouble?"
"Yes."
"You just said you caused trouble?"
"I didn’t have another word for it."
Vodianitsa released the rail. Then she dragged over a chair and sat down. Sitting there, she rubbed her face once with both hands. Her hands did not erase the black makeup around her eyes; they smeared it.
"You really are a strange person."
I had heard that before. Last time she said it laughing. This time she did not laugh.
"You’re the person who couldn’t eat one candy and kept it under your pillow, but you throw your leg away like that? Then apologize for causing trouble? What kind of calculation do you even have in your head?"
I could not explain how my calculation worked. It was a calculation that counted what I had received and did not count my leg. I could not tell Vodianitsa, or myself, why it was made that way.
"I’m not angry," Vodianitsa said.
"No, I am angry. But not because of what you think."
"Then why?"
"If you don’t know, I’m not telling you."
Vodianitsa closed her mouth after saying that. Even with her mouth closed, her eyes were still on me. I could not meet them for long.
I could not find words to place between a person who said she was angry and a person who had caused trouble. At the company, I always placed I’m sorry in such a space, and usually it filled it. Here, it felt as though those words had only widened the space.
"Don’t ever do that again."
"Okay."
"Not that answer."
"I won’t do it again."
"Liar."
For the first time, Vodianitsa smiled a little. It was closer to an exhale than a smile. After that breath, she wiped at her eyes once more with her sleeve.
"You’ll do it again without thinking. That’s why I’m angry."
That anger was different from the shape of anger I had imagined, but in that moment I did not understand how.
"What about Odette? Did the performance go well?"
"It did. She’s not someone who makes mistakes onstage."
Vodianitsa began unwrapping the bread she had brought, then stopped her hand.
"But she leaves straight after practice. She doesn’t even walk with me lately. If I bring you up, she doesn’t answer."
"She’s always quiet."
"This is different from how she usually is. You wouldn’t know."
One more thing I did not know had been added. There was no paper to write it on, so I stored it only in my head.
Vodianitsa took out the bread and tore it in half. She put one half in my hand and ate the other herself. She said nothing while eating. Only after she had finished did her usual voice return.
"I’ll come tomorrow after practice too."
"If you come every day, you won’t get any rest."
"Why are you counting whether I rest?"
Vodianitsa stood and drew her coat closed. As she did, she pressed her inner pocket once. The angular shape of the dented tin showed through the coat.
"That."
"Hm?"
"The tin is dented."
"I know."
"A new one..."
"It’s fine."
Vodianitsa said no more, and neither did I. Once the door closed, I thought for a long time about what that it’s fine meant, then stopped. One thing was certain: I did not have the money to buy her a new one right now. It was easier to start by counting what was certain.
That night, I calculated again. To what I had received, I added half a piece of bread. To the trouble I had caused, I added the castle in the performance, the old man’s three days, and Vodianitsa’s anger. Once I added them, the trouble side looked longer than the received side for the first time. I could not know whether it was right for it to look longer, so I left that uncertain calculation as it was.
The leg column remained empty that day too.
Several days passed that way. The doctor pressed on my leg in the morning, I counted the cracks in the ceiling during the day, and Vodianitsa came in the evening. After that, Vodianitsa did not get angry again. Instead, her words came back.
She told me the practice-room piano was out of tune, that one of the leads had caught a cold, that the snow had piled deeper on the forest path and made two hours into two and a half. Listening, I pictured Vodianitsa’s footsteps walking the forest path alone.
She was the person who said she was sick of walking alone. I added to the calculation that I was the one who had made her walk that road alone again. Once I did, the trouble side grew longer again.
On the second day, Vodianitsa brought my coat. The old man had kept safe the one hanging in the prop room. The envelope in its inner pocket was still there. After Vodianitsa left, I poured the coins out onto the blanket and counted them.
For bread, it was about thirty days. For the hospital, I did not know how many. The calculation stopped there, and I put the stalled calculation back into the envelope.
By the third day, I could sit with my upper body raised. A nurse propped pillows behind my back. Sitting up, I could see roofs beyond the window. Far beyond those roofs, one rounded dome sat above the others. That dome was the theater.
I did not ask whether Vodianitsa had requested this room on purpose or whether it was the only empty room in the hospital. If I asked, I felt one more thing would be added to the line.
Once I could sit, Vodianitsa brought paper and charcoal. They were sheets with song lyrics written on them. She said we could practice the letters we had not done on the forest road on the backs of those sheets. Writing on the bed in charcoal the letters I had drawn with a branch in the snow made my hand slower.
Vodianitsa waited for my slow hand without laughing. For some reason, her not laughing was stranger.
During the afternoons when Vodianitsa was absent, I turned over a lyric sheet and wrote Korean on the back. I transferred the lines I had kept only in my head in charcoal: the snowfield, soup, two candies, boots, the job, the blanket, letters, the forest path, bread, undecided hospital fees. Then I left one line blank at the bottom.
I knew what should go on that blank line, and I knew I had decided not to write it.
I tucked those lines, written in words only I could read in this world, between the lyric sheets and left them on the table.
Odette did not come.
She did not come along on the evenings Vodianitsa came, nor did she come during the day. Vodianitsa did not bring up Odette first, either. Not asking was my habit, but lately that habit kept creaking. Though it creaked, I did not ask.
Vodianitsa did not seem to know why Odette was not coming either. I told myself I was not curious enough to break apart that not knowing, but that was only half true.
On the fourth day, the old man came. This time I was awake. From the doorway, he looked once at my leg and once at my face.
"Keep lying down."
He said only that, then left. He did not mention the boxes or the performance. I did not ask either. That day, not asking was not a habit but courtesy.
It was the afternoon of the fifth day. It was not the time Vodianitsa came, nor the time the doctor came, but footsteps sounded in the corridor. They were light and steady. They stopped before the door, and after a very brief delay, the door opened.
Odette stood there alone.
She wore a coat and gold-heeled shoes. She carried nothing. After closing the door, she stood in her place by it. It was the same place and posture as the day I first woke, but this time she glanced once toward the chair.
"Please sit down."
"I’m fine."
"If you stay standing, I have to look up at you, and my neck hurts."
At that, Odette brought over the chair and sat. She lifted it as she moved it so it would not make a sound. Her seated posture was just as straight as her standing one.
After sitting, Odette first moved the water glass on the table. The glass had been where I could not reach it from bed; now it was where I could. Odette did it without a word, and I only realized the glass had moved once her hand stopped.
Then she looked at the papers on the table. A Korean line poked out from between the lyric sheets. Odette picked up the paper by only its edges, as she had at home, then put it back down.
"Those letters again."
"I wrote down what I’ve received."
"What you’ve received?"
"Yes."
Odette wore an expression as though she had accepted those words and set them aside, but I could not see where she had put what she accepted.
"How is practice?"
"It is a day off."
"Coming all this way on your day off..."
"I was passing by."
I did not know whether the hospital was on the way from the theater or not. I accepted the words without knowing. There had been another person who said she was passing by before, and the theater had not been on her way either.
"Do not tell Vodianitsa I came."
"Why not?"
Odette did not answer. I left the space without an answer as it was.
Odette looked once from top to bottom at my left leg bound in boards and cloth, then at my right leg, then at my hands. On the day I first met her at her home, she had looked at my hands and walk the same way. Then it had been a measuring gaze. Now I could not tell what it measured.
"How is the pain?"
"It hurts a little at night. I’m fine during the day."
"And sleep?"
"A little at a time."
"How much?"
"I sleep about two hours, wake up, then sleep another two hours or so."
Odette asked and I answered. Her questions resembled the doctor’s, yet they were different. The doctor asked to write things down. Odette did not write.
"It is six steps from the bed to the door."
"What?"
"When you can walk, it will be six steps with a cane. It may take more."
"You measured it?"
"I measured as I came in."
I took in the number six steps. Once, I had walked six steps to the shelf in front of this person. The eyes that had measured those steps then were now measuring steps I could not yet walk.
"About the stage floor," I said first.
"Was the spot where I nailed it all right? During the performance?"
"It was fine."
"And the candlestick position? Second from the right, half a foot inward?"
"Everything was fine."
"That’s a relief."
Odette looked at me. I had said that’s a relief on the day I first woke too, and her voice had risen then. This time it did not rise. Instead, she said nothing.
"What happened to the candy Vodianitsa gave you that day? The one you were holding?"
"I dropped it."
"Then ask her for another. She has lots in the tin."
Odette did not answer. Something passed across her silent face for the briefest moment, but it went by too quickly for me to see what it was.
Again, I could not endure the space without words.
"I heard they put up new ropes. They can’t use the castle, though."
"I heard."
"The castle with three towers—I cleaned its windows."
"I know."
"You know?"
"I saw how that painted flat fell. I also saw what it was painted with before it fell."
Odette’s words were short and cold as usual, but they came more spaced out than usual. The gap between one word and the next was wide. It felt as if something lay in that width, and I did not touch it.
Snow fell outside again. Seen while sitting, it fell from above and settled atop the rounded dome, unlike the snow I had watched while lying down. Odette turned her head to look at that dome too. While she looked, her hands were folded over one another on her knees. Once, they clenched and unclenched.
"That day," Odette said.
"I was not supposed to be there. The front row should stay toward the front, but I went to the back during the break. Because I was there, Mr. Kim Sang-hyeon..."
"Odette."
"So—"
"That’s not it."
The words came out first. Just as my feet had onstage that day, my words moved ahead of my thoughts. I followed them.
"No matter who had been there, my body would have moved first. I told Vodianitsa the same thing. I didn’t think and then jump in, so I don’t know why I did it either. So it isn’t because you were there, Odette."
"Even so."
"And this."
I looked down at my leg. I looked at the boards and cloth binding it, then at the blanket draped over them.
"It isn’t payment. It’s just something that happened."
Odette’s hands stopped.
"I can count what I received from Vodianitsa. Soup, candy, boots, a job—things like that. The blanket I received from you too, Odette. Things like that, I can repay someday. But this wasn’t something I received or gave, so there’s nowhere to count it. Things with nowhere to count can only be called something that just happened."
As I spoke, I hoped it would sound to Odette like I was telling her not to thank me. If I heard her say thank you, I would not know where to write it down. Accepting words with nowhere to write them was harder than placing candy beneath my pillow.
"So you don’t have to say thank you, or sorry, or anything like that. It isn’t part of the calculation."
Odette looked at me. Her eyes, shifting from purple to pink, were trembling. Those were eyes that had not trembled onstage, before pieces of charcoal, or before a bottle of salt. They were the eyes that had measured my hands at home. Now they could not settle on my face.
I did not know what I had said wrong.
I had meant to stop her from thanking me. After making Vodianitsa angrier by saying I had caused trouble, I had left those words out this time. Yet Odette’s face was becoming like that anyway.
Her mouth opened once, then closed. Her folded hands came apart, then folded again. Her fingertips trembled very faintly.
It was the first time I had seen those hands tremble. They were hands that had not touched the wall even when she changed boots while standing on one foot, hands that picked up paper by only its edges. Now they could not find their place atop her knees.
"Odette."
"Stop."
"What did I—"
"Stop talking."
Odette lowered her head. Her straight back remained straight, but only her head lowered. I had never seen her like that anywhere, and did not know what to call it.
After being told to stop talking, I went back over what I had just said from the beginning. I considered each word—whether payment was wrong, whether just was wrong, whether nowhere to count was wrong. None of the words seemed wrong. I could not explain how words with nothing wrong in them could make someone look like that.
Outside, snow gradually covered the rounded dome. There were two sounds of breathing in the room. One was uneven, and I knew whose it was without looking.
Odette raised her head. The corners of her eyes were not wet. They were red without being wet, and she looked at me through those red eyes. I could not read to the end what she meant to say with them.
"How can that be something that just happened?"
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