He's nobody.

A child, with their nose pressed against the train window, shakes their legs in silence, fascinated by the scenery rushing backward. Outside, the thick green leaves are slowly changing their clothes into shades of red. The wide fields, embracing the pouring sunlight, shake off the morning dew and lazily enjoy the end of summer. An autumn breeze is gently approaching, pushing away the hot summer. It is a clear and beautiful day.

The woman’s daughter had begged to go to Manhattan. The woman did not want to look back at the place where she used to live. She had completely forgotten about it—or so she thought. However, she could not refuse her child's rare request, so they are now on their way to Manhattan for shopping. Is there anything else besides giving birth and raising a child that gives someone the energy to close the past and move powerfully into the future? From the moment the child kicked her belly, she was reborn as a completely different woman under the name of "Mother." The child crossed the river of a past she never wanted to look back on, leading her into today's reality and allowing her to dream of the future.

The child, out on an excursion, has flushed pink cheeks from excitement. She is wearing a pink and yellow floral dress over gray leggings. Shaking her thin legs in shiny light-pink sneakers, she chatters like a bright sun and a clear, flowing stream. She is a gift from heaven. Looking at the child she had at the age of 39 with eyes full of deep love, the woman murmurs to herself like a habit, "If I didn't have this child..."

Pushed by the massive crowd, they stepped out of the train station. The child looked up at the tall buildings with her mouth wide open. They walked toward 32nd Street East. Moving through the waves of people like a dancer riding a wave, they entered a slightly quieter alley. Suddenly, a tall man walking from the opposite direction stopped. He stared straight at the woman through his glasses, as if trying to make sure it was really her. She had no choice but to look up at the man blocking her path. When her eyes met the sharp eyes behind his glasses, she gasped inwardly. However, she tried her best to hide her expression and firmly pulled her child's hand. The child, who had been distracted by the tall buildings and crowds, looked up at her mother, suddenly snapping back to reality. The man hesitated, looking back and forth between the woman and the child. All three of them looked flustered. The woman gripped her child's hand tightly and tried to bypass him.

"Long time no see."

At the sound of the man’s voice, which had not changed at all, the woman froze for a moment as if hit on the back of the head. Without saying a word, she pulled her child's hand again and hurried away.

"Mom, my hand hurts. Who is that mister?" "Nobody. Let's go quickly."

After shopping and dinner, they boarded the train back. The child, exhausted from the rare excitement of the outing, fell asleep with her head on the woman's lap. On the 9-year-old child's cheek, thin blue veins were visible, looking like a frozen river you could see through. The golden sunset gently faded into the darkness, as if falling asleep just like the child. The window reflected the calm image of the woman lost in thought, stroking the child's head on her lap. "If I didn't have this child," she murmured again. She held the child tightly, as if someone might snatch away this precious gift she had obtained with such difficulty.

In the dark window, a young couple sitting closely together in the diagonal front seats was reflected. The woman kept opening and closing a red wallet, perhaps something she had just bought. The man was unbuckling and buckling a black belt, looking at it closely. The woman buried her head in the man's shoulder. The man straightened his posture. The two became one. The train clicked and clacked, sliding along as if putting the two of them to sleep.

The man's voice saying "Long time no see" would not leave her mind. Even though time passes, voices do not seem to age; it sounded exactly the same. However, the man’s once-brilliant appearance had withered into a haggard look, dressed in outdated clothes. There was no trace of his past neatness anywhere. In the span of ten years, he had aged like a piece of white paper turning yellow and wrinkled. The past events she didn't even want to think about wound vividly around her mind, just like the young couple in the window opening and closing the red wallet, or buckling and unbuckling the black belt.

Ten years ago, the day before the woman's 39th birthday was also clear and bright, just like today. The woman and the man went to a Korean market in another town to shop for groceries. Unlike usual days when the man would stay in the car reading the newspaper and waiting for her, he took the lead, pushing the shopping cart. The woman felt a slight sense of anxiety at his unusual behavior, but she was also happy, thinking, "Wow, a day like this actually comes!" She followed him with a proud gaze, looking at his tall height, broad shoulders, and stylish figure.

The man picked up a bunch of green onions tied with a rubber band, selecting the thickest ones by gripping the white parts. He pressed the core of the napa cabbages and knocked on watermelons to choose the freshest and tastiest ones. He stayed at the fish section for a long time. He checked the color of the fish eyes, pressed and turned over their bodies with his hands, and after making his selection, rinsed his hands in a water tank where loaches were squirming, just like his mother used to do.

The man's mother always bought flounders whenever she went to the market. She would dry and grill them, or ferment them with millet rice to make sikhae (fermented fish fish dish). At the dinner table, the family members would sit in silence with their chopsticks raised, contemplating which part of the flounder to dig into first. Then, they would busily use their chopsticks to pick the fish clean without saying a word. It was like a lion quietly approaching its prey and focusing entirely on devouring it. The woman would just hold her chopsticks and watch, then quietly put them down after seeing the empty plate with only a skeletal spine left, the head and eyes completely gone. She felt like a disappointed hyena waiting for the leftovers left by the lion. It was truly like the animal kingdom. The man, who only craved fish, looked at her with a crooked gaze, deep wrinkles forming on his forehead, displeased by her lingering around the butcher counter. The woman turned her gaze away, avoiding eye contact.

"Why are you picking up beef ribs that aren't even on sale?!"

Startled, she turned around and saw it was the shout of a middle-aged man to his wife, who was holding a pack of beef ribs behind them. The women shopping nearby giggled quietly. Watching the woman secretly put the pack of ribs back down, the protagonist felt a bitter sense of camaraderie, as if they were sailing in the same boat.

While the man was distracted, she quickly snuck a pack of ramen and a bottle of soju deep into the cart. On days when the man worked late at the research institute, she wanted to eat ramen peacefully out of the pot while watching TV without worrying about cooking. When the spicy and refreshing ramen soup went down her throat, all the stress she had accumulated seemed to wash away. With diced radish kimchi and a glass of soju, her tense body would relax and loosen up.

After paying for the groceries, the woman hesitated in front of the cashier, feeling that something had been miscalculated. The man stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at her coldly. His eyes seemed to hold a complex calculation. The woman knew his mind. Unlike his first wife, she had no material greed and did not disrupt his minimalist lifestyle since her own parents sent her small amounts of pocket money. That was why he considered her an "easy, comfortable wife." He must have been satisfied with her simplicity, knowing she wouldn't nag unless provoked and would bury her inner pain in a glass of alcohol. However, when the submissive woman suddenly stood her ground at the register, a look of displeasure crossed his face.

Having found the miscalculation, the woman wanted to correct it, even though it was a small amount. She held out the receipt to the cashier and tried to explain. The cashier ignored her, looking at the people waiting in line behind her instead. The woman, who usually let things go, had no intention of backing down this time. She thrust the receipt close to the cashier's face. Overwhelmed by her aggressive attitude, the cashier reluctantly skimmed through the receipt with an annoyed expression.

The woman had been physically weak since childhood, which made her overly sensitive. If the world didn't turn exactly according to the rules, she felt suffocated. This didn't mean she was a stubborn person who threw tantrums just to get her way. She was simply someone who could only feel at peace after verifying what she believed was right. Because of her picky personality, she had never dated anyone for long. After all her friends got married, she chose to study abroad and got married late.

Her parents were deeply shocked when they received a sudden notification that she was marrying a man without even consulting them. They were even more shocked to hear that he was a divorced man, and strongly opposed the marriage. They told her that if she was going to marry such a man, she would be better off living alone. Just as her anxious parents, who were waiting for their daughter to return to Korea with her degree, began to think that they should reconsider the man if their picky daughter had chosen him, the mother collapsed upon receiving a notice that they had already married at City Hall.

"Let's just leave," the man said quietly. "Wait a minute. If there's a mistake, it should be fixed. Why should we just leave?" "The line behind us is long." "Why do you always care about the people behind us and ignore me? It will only take a moment."

The woman was furious. Rather than the cashier's mistake, a surge of anger rose from the bottom of her heart because the man was constantly worrying about what others thought while completely ignoring her perspective. She became even more persistent with the cashier.

The man looked back at the people in line, frowned, and urged her to leave. The woman ignored his rushing and continued to argue with the cashier. The man grabbed her arm to pull her away, but it was in vain. The man's face twisted in disgust at her attitude, causing a scene over a trivial matter. To a man who had grown up like a weed, lighting fires in furnaces and smelling the scent of earth all his life, the woman's sensitivity, nurtured under overprotection, must have seemed like a luxury. Raised under a mother who vented her mother-in-law's abuse as irritation, the word "mother" was synonymous with "irritation" to him. He was now habitually throwing the same irritation he had hated growing up onto the woman. In fact, his first wife had left him because of this very irritation.

The bigger reason his first wife had left was his silence. When he got angry and his wife responded, he would shut down completely. He would become even more annoyed with his wife as she followed him from room to room trying to talk to him, and he would often storm out of the house and disappear. Like a periscope popping up from a submarine because it was curious about the world above water, he would return to his daily life without a single word of apology or gratitude once things quieted down, acting as if nothing had happened. Then one day, unable to bear it any longer, his first wife vanished and never returned.

The woman's misfortune had begun with the disappearance of the man's first wife.

One day, while the man was struggling to pull himself together, he received a phone call from a senior colleague. "Forget about the person who left and meet someone new. Come to my house this weekend."

The man walked through the senior's door. He was disappointed at his first glimpse of her, sitting blankly with a small, fragile frame. She did nothing but smile silly and say nothing, and he did not want to see her again.

On the other hand, the woman liked the man as soon as she saw his tall, robust build and sharp, intellectual eyes. Sometime later, the person who introduced them contacted her again. With a glimmer of hope, she went to meet him. The man showed up nearly an hour late and blurted out: "I am already married. Although she left the house and we are out of touch now, my wife is tall and beautiful."

As the man spoke, glancing at the woman's short legs, she pulled her legs closer together and sipped her coffee. "Our family background wasn't wealthy, so she worked at a newspaper right after high school, met me, and we got married after many ups and downs. She supported me while I was studying for my PhD. When we lacked living expenses, she even worked as a waitress. If she had worked instead of wasting time chatting like this, she would have made a lot of money. Time is money, you know."

The man rambled on carelessly, making it obvious that he had been dragged out against his will by his senior's request. The woman wanted to storm out of her seat, but her body felt as if it had fallen off a cliff, and she couldn't lift herself up. Losing her words, she turned a bitter gaze out the window.

In the man's mind, the woman introduced by his senior came from a wealthy family and was well-educated, but she did not look like the type who would work to support him; rather, he felt an anxious premonition that she would depend on him. Above all, he did not like her appearance.

The wife who had left did not return, and instead, divorce papers arrived. Hearing the news of the divorce, the senior persuaded the man to meet the woman again. "If she can afford to come from Korea to study abroad, her family must be rich. Who knows? Maybe her family will buy you a house if you get married."

The woman was usually very gentle. However, as they lived together, she proved to have quite a temper. A woman who was usually as peaceful as a quiet lake would turn into a wild wave the moment she felt pricked by a thorn. Once the problem was solved, she would return to the calm surface of the lake. It was never easy to predict when the next wave would crash. The man sat in his car, comforting himself that he was enduring as much as he could to make sure his second marriage would not fail.

The woman came out of the market after correcting the mistake and receiving the small amount of cash. Feeling awkward under his gaze, she opened the car door. Before she could even put both feet inside, the man drove off violently. The woman had recently been in a car accident, so she was terrified of speeding, feeling as if every car was rushing at her. As if knowing this, the man drove even faster than usual.

"What's wrong? Please slow down. Are you mad?" "The line was long, and you made people wait just to get a few cents back." "You care so much about other people's feelings, so why can't you understand my position?"

Suddenly, the man pulled the car over to the side of the road. "Get out. Go. I said get out. Aren't you getting out?"

Overwhelmed by his momentum, which made her feel that he might crash the car somewhere if she didn't get out, the woman had no choice but to step out.

Watching the car speed away and disappear, the woman felt dizzy. Her legs trembled so much she felt like she would collapse at any moment. Suddenly and unexpectedly, she felt as if she had been left alone in the universe, dropped into a desert. Tears flowed endlessly down her cheeks. She had been thrown out on an unfamiliar roadside, completely alone. She waited for a long time, hoping the car might turn back. But the car that left never returned.

Where should she go? In the crimson glow of the evening sunset, the woman held her throbbing head, completely lost. She dragged her heavy legs and walked continuously in the direction the car had vanished. The red sunset turned into a deep blue, and then it grew dark. Walking in the pitch black, the woman trembled from the cold. In the darkness, a neon sign that read "MOTEL" glowed sadly in calm red letters. She dragged her exhausted body into the motel. She lay down without even washing. Sleep did not come. Tossing and turning all night, the thoughts she had suppressed—the disastrous first meeting with the man and her marriage that went against her parents' wishes—surfaced above the water.

From the beginning, she had put on clothes she shouldn't have worn and struggled to adapt. She didn't try to take off the ill-fitting clothes and alter them. Fearing what she might lose if she took them off, she pretended to be comfortable. There had been a faint hope that they would fit well someday. Furthermore, the woman was terrified of facing her parents, who had loved and supported her as an old maid with a degree. She thought that pretending to live well far away from them was the only filial duty she could offer. And believing she would never get another chance to marry if she lost this man, she had blindly chosen him based on his decent first impression.

When the woman lifted her head from the motel bed, bright daylight was shining through the curtains. She was afraid to face the morning after staying up all night. The sun, looking so different from yesterday, seemed to blame her. People were bustling outside the room. It was 12 o'clock, the checkout time. She paced around, anxious about what to do. Where should she go now? Somewhere far away? She had nowhere to go. And what if her parents found out about this? Just recently, during a phone call, her father had said: "I woke up startled from a dream where you suddenly appeared at our front door holding your bundles. You're doing well, right? Come visit if you want to rest." She could not get a divorce while her father was still alive.

She picked up and put down the phone countless times. Instead of calling the man, she called her older sister. Her sister, who had always disliked her brother-in-law, gave her the keys to a country house and told her to stay there for a while to figure things out. As evening grew dark, she cried frequently, overwhelmed by the sorrow of being abandoned in an unfamiliar place. She was overwhelmed by a sudden, heavy sleepiness. Living with someone must have been incredibly exhausting.

There was no word from the man. It was expected. The man had already received his PhD last semester. And there was a woman with a PhD whom he had been locking eyes with at the research institute. His strange behavior continued; he would snap about not being able to find clothes he usually didn't even wear. He would say he had to go somewhere urgently, look in the mirror frequently, and fidget restlessly. Watching him out of the corner of her eye, a suffocating anxiety would wash over her.

The woman turned a blind eye to the affair between the man and his mistress. Fortunately or unfortunately, the man spent more time at the institute, so they crossed paths less often than before. On days he came home early, they drank wine at the dinner table just like they used to. "You're home early today? What's the occasion? Did something happen at the institute?" As always, the woman chattered, waiting for an echo that never came, and the man silently got up from the table first. When she heard his dishes clattering in the sink, she felt suffocated, as if the oxygen in the room had suddenly dropped. She remained at the table and poured more wine into her glass. The color of the wine looked unusually red, like blood. For a long time, she blankly stared at a young couple through the window of the opposite apartment, tenderly preparing dinner together in the kitchen. Then, she washed the dishes with slow movements and lay down in bed.

A few times, she intended to bring up his mistress. But even if she did, the silent man would never answer. The answer was obvious. His silence would only grow heavier and longer. And he would leave the house. She didn't need to provoke a predictable future where she would end up waiting for him and eventually vanish like his first wife.

Last summer was terribly hot. The saying that humans come from water must be true. The woman loved the empty sea. Just as vegetables lose their sharp edges and wilt when salted, her tension melted away when she immersed her body in salt water. Whenever she asked to go to the beach, he would say he was too busy, but unable to bear the heat, he suddenly suggested going. She followed him excitedly. However, he didn't even change into a swimsuit; he just took off his shirt and read the newspaper. He didn't respond when she asked him to go into the water together or to walk along the beach. If she pushed him further, he would surely get annoyed. The woman walked along the shore alone. Turning around after a while, the man was out of sight. She kept walking. The further away she got from him, the lighter and more liberated her steps became! What if she just left like this? How far had she come? She didn't want to turn back. She reached the end of the beach where she could walk no further. To go any further, she had to step into the water.

The waves, crashing with foam and pulling back, whispered for her to enter the water. The sea was calm. She floated on her back. Cumulus clouds drifted freely in the sky. Had she been suffocating herself in silence all this time, trying alone to catch a man who was like a fleeting cloud she could never grasp? For a long time, she lay there, paddling her arms. Away from the man, she moved her arms as freely as a bird flying in the sky. Just then, the sound of a passing boat startled her back to reality. She had drifted too far from the shore. Fear gripped her. She swam vigorously back to the beach. Quite a bit of time seemed to have passed. Holding onto a faint hope that he might be worried, her walk quickened into a run. The man was asleep. Once again, she had only confirmed her own bitter, meaningless existence.

As soon as she got home, she checked the expiration date on her passport. She wanted to forget everything and rest by her parents' side.

She got off the airport bus. In the early morning, she quietly pushed open the door her father had left unlocked before going out for a walk and stepped silently into the house. Her mother, preparing breakfast at the sink, glanced back at the sound of someone entering. She was about to turn back to her work when she suddenly dropped the dish she was holding, jerked her head back, and cried out: "What brings you here? Without a word! Oh, my baby!" She hugged the woman tightly and began to weep. The woman also wept aloud in her mother's arms. "What's wrong? Why did you come so suddenly without calling?" "I just missed you, Mom."

She lay in her mother's bed, a place she had dreamed of day and night. Rolling around while breathing in her mother's scent, she fell into a deep sleep. Her mother lay beside her, tickling her leg with her toes to wake her up. "I woke you up because you were talking in your sleep so much. Is something troubling you?" "I'm just a bit tired." "Going to America changed you. All that bad temper of yours is gone. You look completely exhausted. American water must be tough. Go get your hair done, buy some clothes, and meet your friends." "My friends are too busy raising their kids."

A world with Mom and Dad is heaven. No one else in the world will protect and love you unconditionally without strings attached. If such a person exists, you have to pay them back several times over later.

Come to think of it, the woman hadn't loved the man either. She had merely deluded herself into believing that if she held on, convinced she loved someone, he would embrace her like her parents did. Her desire to repay her parents' love had led her in the wrong direction. Her mother seemed to have sensed something already; she didn't ask about the man and told her she could live in Seoul if she wanted to. "Thank you. I've done nothing for you and Dad, yet you give me so much every time." "Having a daughter I can help and having the ability to do so makes me happy. You just need to receive it joyfully. Don't be too sad about being unhappy. Happiness is waiting for you around the corner. Don't worry about anything and just live naturally, letting life flow like water."

After a good rest at her parents' house, she returned to New York with a thick envelope of pocket money, without contacting the man. When she unlocked the door and walked in, she saw a vibrant bouquet of flowers in a vase on the kitchen table. Wasn't he the man who used to sneer, "Why did you waste money on flowers that are going to die soon?" whenever she bought bright flowers to decorate the house? She thought about throwing them away but left them. What fault did the flowers have? She used to pick up dying cacti from the trash out of pity to raise them, and she would always pour her remaining water for flowers left behind at airports. She intuitively knew that while she was in Seoul, the connection between the man and his mistress had deepened. The flowers were one thing, but traces of the mistress frequenting the house were evident everywhere.

By chance, she met the mistress at a gathering. She appeared to be two or three years younger than the woman. With a slender figure and her permed hair swept back with a headband, she wasn't beautiful, but she looked intellectual. She spoke confidently and naturally among a group of men, livening up the atmosphere. She consistently acted as if she didn't notice the woman at all. The woman, who had already grown accustomed to silence just like the man, merely watched her from a distance.

The woman did not realize then that her happiness had begun with the appearance of the mistress.

Why was the man suddenly nice to her, taking her all the way to the Korean market for her birthday despite having a mistress? Was it because she had returned from her parents' house with a thick envelope of cash? Surely a human being couldn't be that selfish. The woman felt anxious as she watched his changed attitude. That anxiety eventually became reality.

Even now, if the woman were to beg and swallow her pride, would the man be willing to live with her again? Even if she went back, could this marriage truly continue? The fundamental question of her using him as an escape, knowing he was a bad man, swirled in her mind.

Yet, she couldn't give up the lingering hope that he might come looking for her, and she spent a long time that autumn waiting. The ticking second hand of the clock pierced her body second by second, like embroidery. Suddenly, a bird—whose name, appearance, and color were entirely unknown—burrowed into her chest and lived there. Every time the bird fluttered its wings violently, she became flustered and miserable. Sometimes it lasted for hours, sometimes for days. She lost her appetite and lay down. Then, when the bird suddenly fell quiet as if it had found a safe nest, she would scramble up and run outside like a madwoman to gather her strength, wandering wherever her feet took her. Every blade of grass she stepped on and every tree she looked at seemed to have lost its color, appearing dead.

Like a person who had given up on everything, she wandered aimlessly, quietly slipping into an open American church to sit in the back, weep silently, and leave. When she was roaming outside, the bird fluttering in her chest remained quiet, as if it liked the fresh air. The woman could also find her peace of mind. However, the moment she opened the front door and stepped inside, darkness enveloped her body, making her feel as if she were opening a coffin lid and lying down. Her throat tightened as if she were trapped in an airtight space. On days she managed to fall asleep, it was a relief. Even in her sleep, she suffered from a half-awake delirium, feeling as though the man was unlocking the door to enter or leave. She heard the clattering sound of him brewing coffee as usual, and her nose twitched at the aroma. Waking up with a profound sense of relief that he had finally returned, she would face disappointment, lie back down, and sink into thought.

The woman fell like a leaf, crushed and bruised. Why did she wait so anxiously to cling to a person who had neither love nor affection for her, like a tree shaking off its leaves? This was her own solitary problem, completely unrelated to the man who did not love her. "He must already be faithful and happy in his new relationship." Her tears dried up. The unknown bird that had driven her mad and stirred her chest finally left and flew far away. Her mind became at peace.

That winter was terribly cold. She went to bed early. She pulled the blanket over her head and tried to sleep. Is there anything more agonizing than lying awake trying to force sleep that won't come? Just as she fell asleep, she would wake up to the sound of the wind rattling the window, and when she fell back asleep, she wandered through dreams. At least while sleeping, she could forget reality.

A desperate longing for someone to solve this life of waiting began to slowly rear its head. She could take matters into her own hands. However, if she waited a little longer, the man would solve it. The abandoned woman held onto the hope that she had to be thoroughly scarred to abandon her lingering attachments, and she just kept waiting. Not long after, she received a thick manila envelope. Her hands trembled as she held the documents, which arrived sooner than expected. Without opening it, she threw it onto the kitchen table. For a long time, she stared at the envelope with her arms crossed. She poured wine into a glass. Holding the glass, she blankly stared out the window. The snow that had been falling throughout the end of the year had stopped. The accumulated snow drifted wildly in the wind. What was meant to come had finally arrived. In fact, she felt liberated that he had resolved it quickly.

By nature, human beings are inherently selfish. There was no need to blame anyone. It was simply her own selfish nature choosing a man who was faithful to his own selfish nature as a quick escape. Once you see the absolute bottom of human selfishness, it becomes easy to forget. The woman smiled faintly as she signed the divorce papers on the table, as if she had known it would turn out like this from the very beginning and had been vaguely waiting for this separation.

She heard news that the man had quickly married his mistress. He had switched to a third horse, believing it would run better than the second. The ability to switch horses gracefully without falling off was a brilliant talent he inherited from his mother. Her former mother-in-law used to boast to the woman, her second daughter-in-law: "The eldest daughter-in-law makes good money and bought a house." When the woman didn't make money, she would say: "Shouldn't your parents at least buy you a house?" She would wait for the woman's response, and when she remained silent, the mother-in-law would click her tongue behind her back.

Shaking her head at the vivid sound of her ex-mother-in-law clicking her tongue in her ears, she snapped back to reality, blaming herself for falling into useless thoughts. Outside the train window, it was now pitch black. The tired expressions of the people reflected in the window were as still as taxidermy. As the station where she had to get off approached, the woman looked at the child in her arms. The child was still sleeping peacefully, breathing softly. As the child's warm breath touched her ear, the image of the car driving away ruthlessly into the red sunset long ago finally sank slowly into the darkness.