The older brother stopped smiling. His expression turned quite serious as he carried Hae Dam over to the sofa and sat down, still holding him. The younger brother took a seat as well, his expression growing solemn.
Perched on the older brother's lap and enduring his rough petting, Hae Dam pricked up his ears.
"Are you really planning to emigrate?"
Emigrate! This was a much bigger deal than he'd expected.
"Brother, I've already made up my mind."
"I know. Once our Dungdung makes up his mind, there's no changing it. But this is too big a life decision to make at twenty-two. You're talking about spending the rest of your life in some faraway country you've never even visited. People would call it hasty even if you made that decision at thirty-two."
"......"
"You can look at me like you already know everything I'm going to say, but I'm saying it anyway. Just hear me out, all right? This is advice from your eldest brother, who's sixteen years older than you. Don't think of it as nagging."
"All right... Go ahead."
"There's nothing wrong with thinking about emigrating. When I was exactly your age, I thought about leaving this shitty country and moving abroad myself. But look at me now. If I'd gone through with it back then, I wouldn't have been there when Mom and Dad passed away. I would've missed our Dungdung's entrance ceremonies and graduations, and I never would've grown the company into what it is today. Just thinking about it is horrifying. Are you listening?"
"I'm listening."
"And another thing. Foreign countries are dangerous. Sure, your English is good, so you won't have trouble communicating, but the lifestyles and cultures are so different that even if you understand the words, you won't feel like you're actually connecting with anyone. And, and... I know you've got black belts in martial arts, but gun violence overseas is on a completely different level from South Korea. And don't even get me started on how horrific drug-related crimes are!"
The older brother launched into a barrage of terrifying crime stories and gruesome incidents.
People might smile at him to his face, but secretly they'd be plotting to swindle this innocent-looking young Asian man. Someone might discover how wealthy he was and break into his house at night with a gun. They might secretly drug him until he couldn't think straight, then imprison him and beat him...
The younger brother listened calmly and impassively before finally offering a single response.
"How could anyone possibly trick me...?"
"......"
The older brother fell silent.
As though he couldn't think of a single argument against that.
Hae Dam was puzzled.
He could understand someone confidently declaring that they would never be deceived because they had absolute faith in themselves. But why had the older brother accepted that claim so readily?
And what was all that business about gods and cults earlier?
Humans were a species full of incomprehensible things to begin with, but there was an unusually large amount about these brothers' conversations that Hae Dam couldn't understand.
"I didn't make this decision lightly either, brother. Please respect it."
"Of course I respect it. You've always been the most grown-up and mature one in our family, even though you're the youngest. So how about waiting until you graduate before making your final decision? I'm not telling you to cancel your plans. Just postpone them. You'll be a fourth-year student next year, right? You've only got one year left until graduation. You worked so hard to get into Korea University. Wouldn't it be a waste to drop out without graduating? Mom and Dad's lifelong dream was for at least one of their children to get into a four-year university in Seoul. None of us older brothers and sisters managed it, but you made their dream come true. Imagine how happy they must've been watching from heaven! If you actually get your diploma, they'll be so thrilled they'll probably show up in our dreams!"
"Mom and Dad would just want me to be happy."
"Well, that's true too. Of course it is. Absolutely true. But you've only got one year left! It'd be such a waste!"
"One year is too long."
"You're still a baby, Dungdung, so you don't realize how quickly a year goes by. Seriously, it flies by much faster than you think. You'll blink and it'll be spring. Then you'll have one good, long yawn and suddenly it'll be autumn. Your big brother guarantees it."
The conversation continued for another hour.
The older brother tried to persuade him not to emigrate, while the younger insisted that he would.
It was a battle between a spear and a shield.
In fact, the shield was considerably sturdier.
The younger brother seemed absolutely determined to emigrate, no matter what.
The older brother was so talkative that, over the course of that hour, Hae Dam learned a great deal about the younger man.
First of all, he was the owner of this apartment. Apparently, his family had been wealthy since his parents' generation.
He was majoring in business administration at Korea University, supposedly the best university in South Korea. He seemed academically gifted, though not particularly interested in his studies.
He was the youngest of six siblings, with two older brothers and three older sisters. His eldest sister was forty-two, and his youngest older sister was thirty-three, so there was a considerable age gap between him and his siblings.
They had probably practically raised him themselves, which might explain why they were so worried about their youngest brother emigrating.
His personality was exactly what his appearance suggested: calm and quiet.
He preferred staying home alone to going out and socializing in noisy places. Not that he had any hobbies that kept him busily occupied at home, either. He didn't play games or watch movies or television dramas.
Judging by the fact that his brother never tried to persuade him by saying, "It'll be hard to see your friends," he probably didn't have any particularly close friends.
Likewise, since his brother never asked, "What are you going to do about your girlfriend or boyfriend?" he apparently wasn't in a relationship.
He did seem popular, though.
During that single hour, Hae Dam learned that this quiet, composed apartment owner had received twelve confessions of love in one year when he was in second grade.
He was also a martial arts black belt holder.
He had trained in practically everything, from taekwondo and judo to kendo and Muay Thai.
Apparently, he'd learned them for self-defense. Had his family been overprotective because he was the youngest child born into a wealthy household so much later than his siblings?
Perhaps all that training was why his shoulders were so broad.
Though he was a little thin...
Hae Dam had learned all sorts of things about the man, from his university major and personality to his martial arts experience.
Yet there was one crucial thing he still didn't know.
His name.
"Dungdung, please? Just one year. Think of it as saving your brothers' and sisters' lives. Just one more year, okay? Please?"
"......"
"We've always been the clumsy ones, and you've always been the sensible grown-up. Aren't you worried about leaving us behind? Hmm?"
"......"
"Forget about me for a second. Your eldest sister doesn't have any friends or family of her own. She lives for you and you alone..."
Because the older brother kept calling the apartment owner "Dungdung," "the baby of the family," and "the youngest."
He really is a beloved youngest child, born long after his siblings.
A warm, tender feeling spread through Hae Dam's chest.
Whenever he saw such unmistakable displays of love, his heart softened.
The apartment owner's heart, however, remained resolute.
His brother hadn't persuaded him in the slightest.
It wasn't that he grew irritated or angry and told his brother to stop talking.
He simply listened quietly before saying, "Brother, I'm going to emigrate."
His voice was gentle rather than harsh, which somehow made his determination seem even firmer.
After delivering one impassioned argument after another without getting anywhere, the older brother finally let out a long sigh.
"Why Iceland, of all places? You've got the United States, Canada, Australia... Why Iceland?"
Iceland.
Hae Dam knew about it too.
A cold country where Arctic foxes, reindeer, and seals lived. A beautiful place where you could experience the grandeur of nature firsthand.
It wasn't a particularly popular destination for South Korean emigrants, so Hae Dam was curious about the reason as well.
The apartment owner didn't answer immediately.
His older brother waited patiently through the silence.
The younger man leaned back against the sofa.
His gaze settled on a bare white wall.
"I heard it's... quiet there."
No, he wasn't really looking at the wall.
His eyes were fixed somewhere in the empty space beyond it as he continued in a low voice.
"It's a country with an extremely low population density. Apparently, it's not so much that there are too few people as that nature is simply too vast. They say the distance between one village and the next can be as great as the distance from one end of our country to the other. You can drive along an endless stretch of road all day without encountering a single car. It's a slow, cold place. I've even heard people say glaciers are more common than people there. To glaciers, which measure the passage of time in centuries, the human world must seem like something that vanishes in an instant."
"......"
"They say you occasionally hear birds singing during the day, but at night there's no sound at all. The silence is so deep that even the awareness of being alone gets buried beneath it. Loneliness must be such an ordinary feeling there. Being lonely would be perfectly natural. Comfortable, even."
"......"
"Brother, this world is too loud for me. I've tried to endure it, but I can't seem to manage. I truly love you and all our brothers and sisters, but I don't want to stay in this place filled with noise anymore. I want to go somewhere quiet now. I want to feel at peace. Please understand."
A place where snow muffles every sound.
A place where everything is lonely.
Only there will I finally find peace.
It was almost as though Hae Dam could hear those unspoken words.
Why does he talk as though loneliness is something he's supposed to feel?
Ultimately, the apartment owner wanted to go to Iceland because loneliness was natural there.
And he believed that if he went somewhere loneliness was natural, he would finally feel at ease.
In other words, because he believed he had no choice but to be lonely, he would rather go somewhere loneliness was simply a fact of life.
Why does he have to find comfort in loneliness? Why should loneliness be natural? Can't he just... not be lonely?
Hae Dam had been lonely his entire life.
And that was precisely why he hated loneliness.
If he had to choose the one thing he hated most in the world, it would be hunger.
If he could choose two, they would be hunger and loneliness.
No matter how often he experienced them, he could never get used to either.
Being so hungry that he lost consciousness, and realizing that he was utterly alone in the world...
Both were so painful they made his heart ache.
The truth was...
There had been a brief time when he had been neither hungry nor lonely.
But it had been far too short.
It had passed in the blink of an eye.