Hammond Hotel (7)

“Of course I don’t know.”

“What?”

Perhaps it was an unexpected answer, because Kang Chae-young’s eyes went round.

A single tear pooled in her widened eyes, then fell with a plop.

This wasn’t the time or place to discuss guilt.

When it feels like debt is piling up in real time, you realize how small a person can feel.

“If I knew everything inside you, I’d be an entity, not a human.”

I pointed my index finger at my temple and continued.

“This place has gone haywire, but if I could still make normal judgments, that would be my fault. It isn’t, right? Bluntly, everything in front of me is all there is.”

I wondered whether it was appropriate to make an analogy like that at a hotel we’d come to so someone with such damn good eyes could close them...