Member-only story
For Kim Seokjin
When the car engine dies, the man’s pounding heart serves as the lone instrument in a silent symphony. The swampy forest is as quiet as the day he first came here, all those years ago as a boy. His shaking hands grip the steering wheel tighter, but he knows he’ll have to let go. Open the door. Find the box again. Will it still be there?
“Remember why you came,” he whispers out loud, because if he’s stuck in his head again, that engine will turn right back on.
The sounds of the world are muted: the squeak of the door, gravel under his boots, the pop of the trunk. He examines his shoes during the ten steps to the back of the car. The dirt in the creases. The burgeoning hole near his left pinky. Echoes of schoolkid teases and snide half-whispered remarks from colleagues past buzz around his ears like vengeful bees, but he pushes up the trunk and pulls out his backpack. The hand shovel is still securely attached.
With a compass resting comfortably on his open palm, he stares at the dark treeline, nods, and sets forth.
Dank, gloomy trees droop around him like the arms of corpses, while dark mud gropes at his shoes, eager to pull him into suffocating depths. The man tries to keep his eyes on the compass. It’s not too far, no more than ten minutes. That he remembers. But he wishes back then he’d made a map, no matter how crudely drawn.
