Jin-young Choi

What I need is a resurrection, an immaculate conception. A miracle beyond the bounds of science and ethics. A thousand-year leap through time. I need Armageddon or eternal life. I need to lose my head. I don’t need to be human – I just need you.

Faith is what I need.

I did not cry; Gu did not breathe. Even with his lifeless weight in my arms, I couldn’t comprehend that he was truly gone. His physicality and the notion of death seemed to repel each other, like poles of a magnet. Had I imagined it all? Nothing felt real, even weeks after dragging his stiffening body back home.

I convinced myself that, over the years, I had said everything I needed to. Even if I’d missed something, there was no need to speak it now. Some things are better left unsaid.

You were what I wanted to see. Do you even know that? Or can you not know because I never told you? The thought of you not knowing kills me. I died with thoughts of you, but without glimpsing you one last time. You should’ve come a little sooner. My final vision of this world should’ve been you.

As I lay back down, Gu spoke again.

— If you die before me, I will eat you.

I will carry your remains with me to the very end of time. You will die only when I die. I won’t follow you into death; I will have you follow me.

I won’t watch you disappear.

I will live.

I will live to remember you.

Hide him where? I couldn’t even keep him safe in life. And suicide? Idiotic. No, I have a better plan.

I will eat you, Gu.

I will eat you and live for an extraordinarily long time.

Why should I report his death? For what purpose? For who? I can’t do it, not when he’s right here, right in front of me, with this beautiful body that I can touch, that I can hold.

No one can know.

No one cared about him anyway. They put a price on his life, used him and discarded him, and then acted like he never existed. How can someone who never existed cease to exist?

I can’t bury or burn his beautiful body.

Gu is here. Right in front of me.

Nothing could touch the depth and intensity of his existence.

If we really shared a special bond, how could he not sense my soul’s call?