↱ECHO↲ ⇾seongjoong⇽

終身

Her chubby little finger wrapped around his.

It's the only thing he can stare at in the dark of night, sitting in front of the wide window overlooking the skyline of Seoul.

Mako, his blind daughter, rests in his arms, her small perfect face scrunched up in glee as she realizes that she's touching her father.

She has only been theirs for six months now, but it feels like yesterday that he and Hongjoong picked her up from that overcrowded Japanese orphanage.

Seonghwa will never forget the empty feeling in his gut when the staff told him that Mako was lucky to get adopted because of her disability.

"She's blind," the woman had told him over the phone in a hushed voice.

"She doesn't interact much and she is very delayed in development. She will have a hard life. No one will understand her. Are you sure you want a child that is damaged?"

Seonghwa had looked down at his own legs, dressed in a pair of jeans but propped up in his wheelchair and thought to himself, "is this what the world thinks we are? Damaged?"

There was a time when he would've used that word to describe himself— to berate and hate himself— but now...

Now he knows better.

He likes to think it was a sudden realization, an all-consuming moment of truth, but inner peace rarely is.

It's a slow and often painful process, a climb to the top of a very steep mountain, and often times, no one is there to greet you at the top.

And when you come back down— because you must at some point— people look at you expectantly, silently daring you to do it again.

But once you've reached that impasse, staring down at the world and all it's tiny forms, you realize something—

You did it.

And no climb down, no crashing back to earth, no amount of judgmental expectation from those below you can take that away from you, even if your feet are firmly planted on the ground and you stay there forever.

There's no need to justify how you made it there or if you're going back, because that moment will always be with you; you'll always remember the time you were bigger than yourself.

Seonghwa has his bad days.

Hongjoong does too.

Everyone does, and it's those days that often cloud that summit, make it impossible to remember if you ever kissed the sky and touched the stars.

But there are things worth staying rooted for, people who have not yet begun their own climb.

One of those souls is the infant in Seonghwa's arms, eyes wide and unresponsive, but grip firm as she holds onto her father like Seonghwa holds onto his new life— joyful and amazed.

"You'll be ok," he whispers against the crown of her small head, lips tickling the soft downy of her hair.

"You're perfect. Don't let them tell you otherwise."

He sits in silence for a few more moments, eyes narrowed in the darkness, discerning as he watches life move on outside around him.

It's early, barely before dawn, and he wonders if life is marked by moments like this for other people like it is for him.

So far away it seems, that transcendent life he used to yearn for— fame, money, lust, attention.

He could've had it all, and he did at one point, but those moments are mere currency to buy moments like these.

Quiet, composed in this room.

Hum of the air conditioner, glow from lights of other lives reflected on the glass.

Little hand searching for him, Hongjoong and their son in their bed, resting after long hours at the hospital.

Masks on their face when they leave the house, expressions of relief when they come home.

Dawn, it comes, like it does for everyone, and still, Seonghwa will be here, holding onto the only hope he knows.

"We'll be ok," he tells her, and it is so.

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THE END.

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