The day began with wetness.
Not on his tongue, not in his belly—no, lower. Heat spreading beneath him, soaking the cloth. He whimpered, but the sound was small, defeated before it left his throat. The wet clung to him, sticky, sour. His skin itched. His body burned with shame, though no one else seemed to notice.
Hands came. They lifted him, peeled the cloth away. The cold air bit his skin, and he cried. The hands worked, cleaning him again, firm but careful. Yet the humiliation cut deeper than the cold. I am a man, and I cannot even keep myself dry.
The thought pulsed, though the word man was already slipping, dissolving in his mind like paper in water.
Another time—hunger.
The ache twisted him, hollowed him. He wailed until his voice cracked, until his throat was raw. The world answered, but not with food, not at first. Instead, rocking. Soft shushing. As though comfort were enough. He hated the lie of it. His belly knew the truth. His body only wanted to be filled. And when at last it was, when warm milk soothed the fire inside, he drank greedily, helplessly, each swallow a surrender.
Later—noise.
Voices around him. Laughter. He could not see their faces, only hear the rumble and rhythm. The voices ignored him. They spoke of things he could not grasp. He tried to cry, to insert himself into the world, but they hushed him without words, without thought, as though his presence mattered less than the crackle of the firewood.
And so he learned again what he had always known: to be unseen.
Darkness came.
The cradle swayed gently, but he was awake. Wide, helpless eyes staring into black. Every creak of wood, every rustle outside—it was too much. He trembled, the gray heaviness in his chest swelling until it drowned even his fear.
In that silence, in that dark, he remembered…
Not clearly. Just flashes. His old desk. His computer's cold light. The face of a coworker laughing at a joke not shared with him. A dinner eaten alone. The faint sound of rain against glass.
Then—nothing. The memories slid away again, leaving only the weight. The familiar dullness. The gray.
He curled what little he could—tiny fists pressed to his chest, body arching in the crib. A gesture of resistance, though it meant nothing.
The night stretched long.
At last, exhaustion dragged him under. Dreams came: voices he could not place, faces without names, laughter that always excluded him. He tried to scream in the dream, but no sound came.
And when he woke, he was still in the cradle. Still trapped. Still small.
The cage had not broken.
It never did.
The days bled together. Hunger, warmth, cold, wetness. A cycle, endless and cruel.
Then came sickness.
It began with fire in his skin. His head swam, heat choking him from the inside out. He tried to cry, but his breath broke into ragged gasps. His chest burned. He coughed, tiny body convulsing, choking on his own spit. Panic seized him. The room tilted. He clawed at the air with hands too small to grip anything.
Hands lifted him, patted his back, coaxed the blockage out. The sound that left him was neither cry nor scream, but a wet, hacking sob. When at last the milk and phlegm cleared, he collapsed, body trembling with exhaustion.
Relief did not feel like triumph. It felt like defeat. You could not even keep yourself alive.
Time passed—he could not measure how much. Sometimes laughter surrounded him. A woman's voice—warm, tender, often close. A man's voice—lower, firmer, rarer.
Sometimes both were gone.
Those were the worst.
The emptiness stretched too wide. The crib, the shadows, the silence—it was unbearable. He would scream, kick, thrash, but no one came. His cries shrank until they were only whimpers, his throat raw, his breath breaking. At last, silence pressed against him like a hand smothering his mouth.
It was then that the grayness inside him swelled strongest. You were abandoned in your old life, and you are abandoned again. Some things never change.
But—there was something else.
Even through fever, hunger, and fear, fragments reached him.
The light that filtered through the window was too bright, too sharp, tinged faintly gold, unlike the pale skies he remembered from Seoul.
The air carried scents—sweet, earthy, wild. Not the stale smoke of traffic or fried food from street vendors, but something raw, like grass crushed underfoot, flowers blooming unseen.
And outside, when silence fell, he sometimes heard sounds no city ever held. Not cars. Not sirens. Not even birds he knew. Instead, long, low calls in the distance—deep, resonant, like horns blown from the belly of the earth. Sometimes, too, a shrill cry that pierced him, unfamiliar and sharp, echoing as though from vast heights.
He could not name them. He could not understand. But he felt, even through infant haze, that this world was not his own.
Jealousy stabbed him once, sharp and strange, when he saw another child—a little older, toddling in the arms of a woman. That child was praised, adored, called by a name he could not catch. Laughter surrounded them.
He wept then, bitter and small. His cries went unheard, drowned in the joy of another's. It was the office all over again: voices passing over him, praise for others, silence for him. His throat ached with helpless envy.
And still, the strangeness pressed closer.
One night, half-awake, fever-drenched, he opened his eyes. Through the window above his cradle, he saw the sky.
Two moons hung there.
Both pale, both full. One larger, golden-white. The other smaller, tinged faintly with violet. They hung side by side, silent, eternal, gazing down at him.
He stared until his lids closed. Fever or no, he knew the truth.
This was not the world he had known.
But he was too small, too weak, too helpless to ask where he truly was.