The next morning, Haneul marched into Section A with renewed, if slightly delusional, determination. He plopped into the seat next to Ji-won with a force that made the desk shudder.
"Good morning, Jiwon-ssi!" he chirped, his voice artificially bright. "Lovely weather we're having, isn't it? Really great for... photosynthesis."
Ji-won, who was in the middle of solving a calculus problem that looked like it could launch a rocket, didn't so much as twitch. His pencil continued its steady, silent journey across the page.
Haneul's smile tightened. He tried again, leaning slightly into Ji-won's line of sight. "I like your pen. Very... efficient."
Nothing. Not even a blink. It was like talking to a very handsome, very focused wall.
Frustrated, Haneul dramatically raised his hand. "Teacher-nim!"
The homeroom teacher looked up from his attendance sheet, looking weary already. "Yes, Lee Haneul?"
"Is it possible to change seats? I think my current location is creating a... a gravitational pull that's interfering with my concentration."
From behind him, someone snickered. Ji-won's pencil paused for a nanosecond—the only sign he'd even heard.
The teacher sighed. "Lee Haneul, there are no other seats. Please sit down and try to coexist with the local gravity."
Haneul slumped back into his chair with an exaggerated huff. He crossed his arms and proceeded to glare at Ji-won's profile, his eyes practically boring a hole into the side of his head. **Look at me, he thought, pouring all his mental energy into the command. Acknowledge my existence, you human ice sculpture!
Ji-won, feeling the intense stare, finally turned his head. His cold eyes met Haneul's petulant ones. He held the gaze for a moment, then slowly, deliberately, reached into his bag, pulled out a single, wireless earbud, and placed it in the ear facing Haneul.
Haneul's jaw dropped. The audacity!
Just as he was about to combust from indignation, their English teacher, Ms. Park, swept into the room. "Good morning, class! Today, we're going to work on descriptive writing and observation. To make it practical, your assignment is to write a short paragraph in English... about your deskmate. You have one week, good luck"
The class erupted in a mix of groans and excited whispers. Haneul felt all the blood drain from his face. English? Write? About him? This was a disaster of epic proportions.
Meanwhile, a quiet, almost imperceptible sound came from Ji-won's direction. It was a soft, weary sigh that seemed to carry the weight of the entire universe. He slowly removed his earbud and stared at his pristine notebook as if it had personally betrayed him. He, Han Ji-won, who wrote essays that could be used as model answers, was being forced to waste his intellect describing... this.
He glanced sideways at Haneul, who was now frantically muttering to himself, "Uh... 'My deskmate is...' Subject-verb agreement... 'is'... 'is' what? 'Is cold'? Is that an adjective? Is 'brick wall' one word or two?"
A tiny, almost painful twitch developed under Ji-won's eye. This was going to be a very, very long assignment.
Math period was always quiet in Section A. The only sounds were the teacher's voice and the scratch of pencils. For Haneul, it was torture. He fidgeted, he tapped his foot, he sighed dramatically.
Then, he saw it. Sitting perfectly in the groove of Ji-won's desk was a pristine white eraser.
Ooh, shiny, Haneul thought.
While the teacher droned on about quadratic formulas, Haneul's hand slowly crept over. He snatched the eraser without a sound.
Ji-won, deep in focus, didn't notice.
Haneul grinned. He pulled out a pencil and started decorating. He drew a little smiling sun in one corner. He added a tiny, grumpy-looking cloud next to it. He was an artist, after all! This was more fun than math.
A few minutes later, Ji-won made a mistake. He reached for his eraser. His hand patted the empty spot on his desk. He froze.
He turned his head and saw it. In Haneul's hand. Covered in doodles.
Ji-won's eye twitched. "Give it back," he whispered, his voice low and tight.
Haneul clutched it to his chest. "But I've improved it! Look, it has a personality now!" He held up the eraser, showing off the sun and cloud.
"I don't want a personality. I want my eraser," Ji-won hissed, his calm cracking. He reached for it.
Haneul, giggling, pulled his hand away. "You have to say please!"
That was the final straw.
"JUST GIVE IT BACK!" Ji-won's voice wasn't a whisper anymore. It was a loud, frustrated shout that echoed in the silent classroom.
Every single student flinched. The math teacher stopped writing mid-formula. The room was dead silent.
The teacher turned around slowly, his eyes wide with disbelief. "Han Ji-won? Did you just… yell?"
Ji-won looked like he'd been caught stealing. His ears turned bright red. "He… he took my eraser," he said, sounding more like a frustrated first-grader than the school's top student.
The teacher's stern gaze landed on Haneul, who was trying to hide the evidence behind his back. "And you, Lee Haneul. Are you in kindergarten?"
"We were just…" Haneul started.
"I don't want to hear it," the teacher interrupted, pointing to the door. "Both of you. Out. Now. Stand in the hallway and think about your actions."
Haneul's shoulders slumped. Ji-won looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him whole. They stood up and shuffled out of the room, the entire class staring at them.
Once in the empty hallway, they stood side-by-side against the wall. The silence was awkward.
Haneul sneakily glanced at Ji-won, whose jaw was clenched so tight it looked like it might break.
Haneul slowly held out the doodled-on eraser. "Sorry," he mumbled.
Ji-won snatched it back without a word. He stared at the little smiling sun, his expression a mixture of fury and utter confusion. This had never, ever happened to him before.
The silence in the hallway was thick and heavy. Haneul, unable to bear it for more than ten seconds, started fidgeting again.
"Look," he whispered, "I said I was sorry about the eraser. It was a very nice eraser. Very... erase-y." He kicked lightly at the leg of a nearby locker, creating a soft thump-thump-thump.
Ji-won took a slow, deep breath, his eyes fixed on the wall opposite them.
"And you have to admit," Haneul continued, leaning a little closer, "the little sun was kind of cute. It added—"
Thump-thump-thump.
"—a bit of cheer, you know? This place could use—"
THUMP.
The sound stopped. Ji-won's hand was flat against the locker, stopping Haneul's foot. He finally turned his head, and the look in his eyes wasn't just cold anymore. It was sharp. Dangerous.
In two swift, silent steps, he closed the distance between them. Haneul instinctively backed up, his shoulders hitting the cool tiles of the wall. He was trapped.
Ji-won loomed over him, his voice a low, venomous whisper. "Do you ever stop? Do you ever just... stop?"
Haneul's playful bravado vanished. His eyes widened, the smile melting from his face. The intensity in Ji-won's gaze was unlike anything he'd ever seen. It wasn't just annoyance; it was a raw, unfiltered warning. This wasn't a game anymore.
Seeing the genuine fear flash in Haneul's bright eyes, Ji-won felt a flicker of something unfamiliar. He watched as Haneul's bottom lip trembled slightly and his eyes welled up, glistening with unshed tears. But the boy didn't cry. He didn't argue. He just bit his lip, looked down at his shoes, and turned his head away, as if trying to make himself small.
The fight drained out of Ji-won as quickly as it had surged. The scary, quiet anger was replaced by that same heavy, weary feeling. What was he doing? He wasn't a bully.
Without another word, he pushed himself away from the wall and returned to his original spot, leaning against it and closing his eyes. The hallway was silent again, but this silence was different. It was charged with the echo of his own outburst and the image of a sunshine boy looking genuinely, truly scared of him.
Haneul stayed pressed against the wall, his heart hammering in his chest. He risked a glance at Ji-won. The storm had passed, leaving behind the usual cold front, but Haneul had now seen the thunder and lightning beneath the ice. And for some reason, that made him even more determined to understand it.
"So let me get this straight," Min-seo said, a piece of kimbap frozen halfway to her mouth. "You drew on the Ice Prince's eraser, he yelled so loud he broke the sound barrier in Section A, and you both got sent to the hallway like a couple of misbehaving first-graders?"
Haneul poked miserably at his rice. "Yes. And then he cornered me and looked like he was going to vaporize me with his mind. My soul almost left my body, Min-seo. It was terrifying."
Min-seo tried to keep a straight face. She really did. She pressed her lips together, but a snort escaped. Then another. Soon, she was clutching her stomach, laughing so hard she was crying.
"It's not funny!" Haneul wailed, though a tiny smile was tugging at his own lips. "He's scary!"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" she gasped, wiping a tear from her eye. "It's just... the image! The perfect, untouchable Han Ji-won, brought down by a doodled-on eraser! It's the best thing I've ever heard! You're a chaos genius!"
"He hates me," Haneul sighed, finally giving up and laughing a little himself. "And now I have to write a whole paragraph about him in English. My English is a disaster! It's going to be all, 'My deskmate... is... very... quiet. And... scary. The end.' I'll get a zero."
"Okay, okay, my turn for gossip," Min-seo said, finally calming her laughter. "You think your day was dramatic? Park Doyun, Mr. Basketball Captain himself, asked me for a pencil today."
Haneul's eyes widened. "No way! What did you do?"
"I, being the pinnacle of grace and composure, panicked and threw my entire pencil case at him," she confessed, her cheeks turning pink. "Pens, pencils, a highlighter... it rained stationery all over his desk."
Haneul burst out laughing. "Min-seo! You didn't!"
"I did! He just looked at the mess, then back at me with this... this totally unreadable face. Then he picked out one pencil, handed the case back, and said, 'Thanks. Just needed one.'" She fanned her face dramatically. "I think I'm in love. Or I have a fever. It's hard to tell."
They both dissolved into giggles, the stresses of their weird morning momentarily forgotten under the warm rooftop sun. For Haneul, it was a perfect reminder that even with a human iceberg for a deskmate, there was still warmth and laughter to be found. He just had to survive English class first.
AFTER SCHOOL..
The click of the apartment door closing behind him was the only welcome Ji-won received. He stood for a moment in the entryway, his shoulders slumping almost imperceptibly. The air was thick and still, heavy with the scent of stale air and yesterday's perfume.
She must be sleeping, he thought, a familiar, weary script running through his mind. Good. Quiet.
But the silence was a lie. The living room told the true story. A wine glass sat on the coffee table, its red lipstick stain a vivid accusation. A discarded sweater was slung over the back of the couch. He let out a slow breath, rubbing his temple where a headache was already beginning to pulse in time with his heartbeat.
He placed his school bag neatly by the door and got to work. It was a mechanical process: glass to the sink, sweater to her bedroom chair, cushions plumped. His movements were efficient, devoid of emotion. It was just another variable in the equation of his day.
Then he saw it. On the kitchen counter, the lunchbox he had prepared for her that morning. Untouched. The rice was cold and hard, the side dishes undisturbed. A cold stone settled in his stomach. He picked it up, his grip tight on the plastic container, before placing it silently in the refrigerator. There was no use wasting food.
He was halfway through wiping down the counter when a sharp rap echoed from the door.
Ji-won froze. He wasn't expecting anyone. Cautiously, he peered through the peephole.
A man in a cheap suit stood there, holding a wilting bouquet of roses.
Ji-won's jaw clenched. Another one. Another variable of chaos.
He opened the door just a crack, his expression a carefully constructed wall of ice. "Yes?"
The man offered a slick, nervous smile. "Ah, hello! Is... is Mira-ssi home? Could you tell her I'm here?"
Before Ji-won could form a response, a door slammed down the hall. His mother, Han Mira, stumbled out of her bedroom. Her hair was disheveled, her robe hanging open over her nightdress. Her face was a mask of fury.
"You! I told you not to come here!" she shrieked, her voice raw and loud in the small space. "Get out! I don't want to see your face!"
"Mira-yah, please, just let me explain—" the man pleaded, trying to push past Ji-won.
"Explain what? How you're just like all the others? Get lost!"
The noise was unbearable. Their shouting filled the apartment, bouncing off the walls. The man's pathetic excuses, his mother's piercing curses—it was a symphony of everything Ji-won hated. Everything he built his life to escape.
His knuckles were white where he gripped the doorframe. The carefully controlled world he maintained was shattering around him, and he was just the silent, invisible stagehand.
Without a word, he turned. He grabbed his school bag from the floor, shoved his feet into his shoes, and walked out. He didn't look back at his mother, at the man, at the mess. He just walked, down the stairs and out into the fading afternoon light, heading to his part-time job an hour early. The silence of the convenience store, with its humming fluorescent lights and orderly shelves, was a welcome refuge from the chaos of his own home.
The bell above the convenience store door chimed, a cheerful sound that did nothing to pierce Han Ji-won's concentration. He was meticulously restocking a shelf of banana milk, each carton placed with exact precision, the lines perfectly straight. It was a small, manageable world of order.
The order was immediately shattered.
"—and I'm telling you, the way he dribbles is practically an art form!" Min-seo's voice carried through the aisles, loud and full of suggestive implication.
"It's just basketball, Min-seo," came Haneul's lighter, amused reply.
"See? He's humble, too!" she chirped, nudging Doyun, who walked beside her, a faint, pleased blush on his cheeks. He'd been sticking close to Haneul since they left school, laughing a little too easily at his jokes.
Min-seo's eyes darted between the basketball captain and her best friend, her mind weaving a complex bl narrative in real time. The tough, popular athlete softened by the sweet, sunny artist... yes, this is good.
They rounded the corner into the snack aisle, and Haneul's chatter abruptly stopped. His eyes lit up, forgetting all about Doyun and Min-seo's not-so-subtle shipping. There, in his grey convenience store apron, was Ji-won.
The morning's hallway confrontation seemed to vanish from Haneul's mind, replaced by his innate, relentless friendliness. He bounded over, a human golden retriever spotting a familiar, if grumpy, face.
"Jiwon-ssi!" Haneul beamed, stopping right beside him. "You work here? Wow, it's so clean! You even make the ramyeon packets look organized."
Ji-won didn't look up. He simply placed another carton of milk on the shelf, his movements never faltering. The silent treatment was back in full force.
Doyun, who had been enjoying Haneul's undivided attention, felt a prickle of irritation. His easy smile tightened into a frown. He stepped forward, his tall frame imposing next to Haneul's.
"Hey, Haneul," Doyun said, his voice a little too loud. "Let's go pick out some drinks. Don't bother the staff." He shot a dismissive glance at Ji-won's back.
But Haneul was undeterred. He leaned closer, trying to catch Ji-won's downcast eyes. "Are you still mad about the eraser? I can buy you a new one! A ten-pack! Or… do you like a specific brand? What's your eraser type, Jiwon-ssi?"
Min-seo watched the scene unfold, her initial shipping plans momentarily derailed. She saw Doyun's jealous glare, Haneul's oblivious persistence, and Ji-won's stone-cold indifference. A slow, wicked grin spread across her face. This was even better than her imagined bl plot.
She whispered to Doyun, "Looks like someone's got competition. And who would have thought it'd be the human calculator?"
Doyun scowled, crossing his arms over his chest as Ji-won finally finished the last carton and, without a single word or glance, turned and walked straight into the back stockroom, leaving Haneul standing alone in the aisle, looking slightly deflated.
The stockroom door swung shut, leaving Haneul staring after Ji-won.
Before Haneul could process the rejection, Doyun stepped in front of him, breaking his line of sight.
"Hey, forget about him," Doyun said, his voice softer now. He gently pulled Haneul by the wrist toward the drink coolers. "He's not worth your time. Come on, I'll buy you that banana milk you like."
He moved closer, deliberately placing himself between Haneul and the stockroom door. "So, about the art club," he continued, his tone light and engaging. "You're still joining, right? We could really use your talent for the festival banners."
Doyun leaned against the cooler, his shoulder brushing against Haneul's, reclaiming his attention completely while Min-seo watched from a few feet away, barely containing her glee at the unfolding drama.
The stockroom was a sanctuary of sterile silence, filled with the faint hum of the refrigerator units and the clean, sharp scent of disinfectant. Ji-won leaned back against a tall shelf of paper products, the cool metal seeping through his apron.
He closed his eyes, but all he could see was the image of Haneul's bright, expectant face in the snack aisle. The guy was like a persistent, colorful stain on his grey world.
After everything this morning... the hallway... he's still approaching me.
A frustrated click of his tongue echoed in the quiet room. Tsk. He's really stubborn.
Why? Why did Haneul even bother? He had made it perfectly clear he wanted nothing to do with him. He had been cold, he had yelled, he had cornered him. Any normal person would have gotten the message and given up. They would have turned their sunshine elsewhere—toward people who actually welcomed it, like that basketball player clinging to him out there.
Why does he keep trying when he knows I'm just going to push him away?
The question circled in his mind, a glitch in his usual, orderly thought process. It was illogical. It was inefficient. It was... distracting. And Ji-won hated distractions. He prided himself on his control, on his ability to wall off anything that threatened his focus.
Yet here he was, hiding in a stockroom, thinking about Lee Haneul.
He didn't know why. And that, more than anything else, was the most irritating part of it all.
The library was a tomb of quiet concentration, and Ji-won was its most dedicated inhabitant. He buried himself in textbooks and problem sets until the fluorescent lights above him flickered, signaling closing time. The streets were quiet and dark as he walked home, the weight of the day and the coming night a familiar pressure on his shoulders.
He pushed the apartment door open, and the scene that greeted him was a familiar script, performed with depressing regularity. The stale, sweet-sour smell of soju hung in the air. Empty green bottles stood like fallen soldiers on the coffee table and floor. The wilting bouquet of flowers from the afternoon's visitor was now crumpled in the trash can. And on the kitchen floor, a bottle had shattered, glittering shards of glass scattered across the linoleum like malevolent confetti.
Ji-won clenched his jaw, the muscle ticking. He dropped his bag by the door and got to work. He moved with a grim, automated efficiency, collecting the bottles first.
A soft groan came from the couch. His mother, Han Mira, stirred, her eyes fluttering open. She squinted at him in the dim light.
"Jiwon-ah…" she slurred. "Go to sleep. It's late. You have to… you have to wake up early for work."
For a single, treacherous second, a flicker of warmth sparked in his chest. It sounded almost like concern. It sounded like something a mother would say.
He didn't respond, moving instead to the kitchen to deal with the broken glass. He knelt, carefully picking up the larger pieces.
"Stubborn," she muttered, her voice gaining a sharper, more bitter edge. "Really stubborn. Just like your father."
His hands stilled.
"Now you're bleeding," she chuckled, a dry, hollow sound. "You should have just left the glass there. Such an idiot. Now how are you going to work? Tsk. All men are idiots."
Ji-won looked down. A sharp piece had indeed sliced into his finger, a thin line of red welling up. He hadn't even felt it.
She tried to get up from the couch, her movements uncoordinated. She stumbled, lurching toward the floor.
Instinctively, Ji-won scrambled up and caught her, his bleeding hand wrapping around her arm to steady her.
The moment he touched her, she flinched violently, her eyes flying open with sudden, sober-looking clarity. "Don't touch me!" she shrieked, shoving him away with a surprising strength. He stumbled back, hitting the kitchen counter.
She glared at him, her face a mask of pure, undiluted hatred. "You… you remind me of him. Of your father. Never come in front of my face ever again, you mistake!" She spat the words, each one a shard of glass aimed directly at his heart. "I should have listened to my mom. I should have aborted you when I had the chance!"
With that, she turned and staggered down the hall to her room, slamming the door shut.
The sound echoed in the sudden silence, louder than any shattering bottle.
Ji-won stood frozen in the middle of the wrecked living room, his hand dripping blood onto the clean floor he had just wiped. The air felt thick, suffocating. The carefully constructed walls around his heart, the ones made of discipline and cold logic, didn't just crack. They shattered.
He was broken.
He slowly slid down the kitchen cabinet onto the floor, drawing his knees to his chest. He sat there in the dark, amidst the garbage and the ghosts of her words, the bleeding cut on his hand the least of his wounds. The apartment was silent again, but this time, the silence was inside him. A vast, hollow, and absolute emptiness.
The Lee household was a portrait of quiet contentment. Soft lamplight pooled over the living room, illuminating Haneul, who was curled on the sofa with a sketchbook, and his mother, Lee Sun-hee, whose hands moved in a steady, rhythmic dance with her crochet hook.
Haneul's pencil stilled. He'd been trying to sketch the curve of a flower, but his mind kept drifting back to a pair of cold, dismissive eyes.
"Mom?" he asked, his voice soft against the quiet.
"Hmm?" she replied without looking up, counting her stitches.
"Why are some people so… distant? Like, so mean for no reason?"
Lee Sun-hee's hands slowed. She placed her crochet work in her lap and gave her son her full attention, her kind eyes thoughtful. "That's a heavy question for a weeknight, Haneul-ah. Did something happen at school?"
Haneul fidgeted with his pencil. "There's this boy in my class. He's the top student. And he's… he's like a fortress. No windows, no doors. I just said hello, and he looked at me like I was a bug he wanted to scrape off his shoe. He yelled at me today over an eraser." He didn't mention the convenience store or the hallway confrontation; some wounds were still too fresh.
His mother listened patiently, a gentle smile on her face. "Ah. So you've met a person who speaks the language of thorns."
"The language of thorns?"
"It's a language people learn when they're afraid," she explained, her voice warm and steady. "Think of it like this, Haneul-ah. When a plant is constantly in a storm, it doesn't grow soft, broad leaves to catch the sun. It grows thorns to protect itself. The thorns aren't there because the plant is evil. They're there because it has been hurt. The meanness, the distance… it's rarely about you. It's a shield."
Haneul considered this, his artist's mind painting the picture. "So… he's in a storm?"
"It's very possible. Maybe his home is a difficult place. Maybe he carries a burden he thinks no one can see. A person who has never known safety often doesn't know how to be soft. They push people away before they can be pushed away themselves. It's a way to control the pain."
"But that's so sad," Haneul murmured, his heart aching at the thought.
"It is sad," his mother agreed. "And it's also not your job to fix him. You can't force a rosebush to drop its thorns. But…" she leaned forward, her expression softening even further, "you can be the sunshine. You can be the steady, gentle rain. You can make sure the soil around it isn't poisoned with more meanness. You can choose to see the potential for a beautiful flower, even if all you can see right now are the thorns."
She reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. "Your father was a bit like that when I met him. All sharp edges and silence. But I saw a flicker of something good underneath. I was just patient. I was just… kind. Consistently. Without asking for anything back. And one day, he trusted me enough to put the thorns down."
Haneul's eyes widened, completely captivated. The boy who was just a "fortress" was now a complex, tragic figure—a storm-tossed plant, a person speaking a language of pain he didn't understand. The artist in him was fascinated. The sunny, kind-hearted boy felt a new, profound sense of purpose.
"So… being kind is like… watering a plant you can't even see yet?" he asked.
"Exactly," his mother smiled, picking up her crochet hook again. "Just remember, you can't control if it grows. You can only make sure your own actions are full of light. Now, tell me more about this fortress of a boy. What's his name?"
A new, determined spark lit in Haneul's eyes. "His name is Han Ji-won."
MEANWHILE..
The sharp, clean scent of soap still clung to Ji-won's skin as he re-entered his bedroom, a small oasis of order in the apartment's chaos. The confrontation with his mother was locked away in a mental vault, a skill he had perfected over years of practice. He moved mechanically, placing his textbooks into his bag for the next day.
His hand brushed against something soft and rubbery. He paused, then slowly pulled out the eraser.
There it was. The evidence of Lee Haneul's invasion. A little smiling sun and a grumpy-looking cloud, drawn with a surprising deftness. In the sterile silence of his room, the doodles seemed absurdly vibrant, a splash of color on his monochrome world. He remembered the sheer, illogical persistence. The way Haneul had bounded over to him in the convenience store, as if the hallway confrontation had never happened. Why do you bother?
With a sigh, he pulled out his English notebook. The assignment. Describe your deskmate. A waste of time. An illogical emotional exercise.
He poised his pen over the blank page, ready to write the most efficient, factual description possible. Lee Haneul. Male. 18. Noisy. Distracting.
But the words wouldn't come. Instead, his mind, usually a fortress of disciplined thought, betrayed him. It replayed snippets against his will.
The way he laughs too easily.
The way he fidgets, a constant source of minor motion.
The genuine excitement in his voice when he talked about art.
The look of sheer, unadulterated fear in his eyes in the hallway—a look Ji-won had put there.
His pen moved, almost of its own accord.
"My deskmate is a paradox."
He stared at the sentence. It was inefficient. It was subjective. He should scratch it out.
He didn't.
"He is the loudest silence I have ever encountered. He fills a room not with volume, but with a presence that is difficult to ignore. He operates on a wavelength of pure, unfiltered emotion, which is both illogical and... consistent. He draws on erasers and seems to believe a smile is a universal key. It is not."
Ji-won's brow furrowed. This wasn't the assignment. This was something else. This was observation tainted with... something.
"His persistence is his most defining and aggravating characteristic. He is like a ray of sunlight that insists on shining through a boarded-up window. It serves no functional purpose. It only highlights the dust in the air."
He put his pen down, his hand trembling slightly. He had written a paragraph, but it felt like he had dissected a part of his own brain. It was messy. It was emotional. It was everything he despised.
His gaze fell back on the doodled eraser. The smiling sun seemed to mock him.
For the first time, Han Ji-won had attempted to describe a color, and all he could manage was to define it by the absence of light.