Dareumi sat on the bench, swinging his short legs and spooning ice cream into his mouth. I asked him whether he was still mailing letters these days. He nodded and told me he’d just mailed off another one on his way over.

Every couple of days or so, Dareumi wrote someone a letter. As soon as he’d learned to read and write, he started penning letters that weren’t quite letters. What I mean is, it wasn’t the writing of the letters that mattered, but the mailing of them—the act of putting them in the box. The point of the letters was to keep the mailbox near Dareumi’s house from disappearing. I’d first met him there, actually, at that red box labeled “111” inside a white circle.

I remembered that autumn day two years earlier. I’d been on my way to the minimart to buy the mandarins my middle sister had been craving when I saw a kid on tiptoe, straining, trying his hardest to drop a letter into the mailbox. I couldn’t simply pass by a struggling child, one whose hands didn’t even reach the mail slot, so I called out, “Need some help?” and approached him. Wondering what a little kid like him knew about snail mail, I asked how old he was, to which he replied: “Six.” “You’re only six, but you know how to write letters?” “My mom helped me.” “Who are you writing to?” “My uncle. But the mailbox is too tall.” “Try eating a lot. Then the mailbox should shrink.” “Really?” Ever since that day, I started noticing him around and would lend him a hand mailing letters now and then until he grew tall enough to do it himself. Half a year went by before I asked him, “Hey, Dareumi, why do you write so many letters?” “Because I heard if no one puts letters in the mailbox, it’ll disappear.” He’d seen a news story on TV about how mailboxes with no mail to collect would eventually be removed. “That’s why you’ve been writing the letters?” “Yes.” “Mailboxes don’t disappear that easily, though. I have one I check on every day, too, and I’ve never seen a single person drop a letter in it. But it’s still there. Still standing.” “Nope. I heard without letters, they’ll go away.” “How come you don’t want the mailbox to disappear?” “Because a long time ago, that mailbox helped me find my mom and dad. My house, too.”

Dareumi told me that when he was four years old, he’d gotten separated from his mom. It happened at his mom’s friend’s wedding in an unfamiliar part of the country, which he and his mother had taken a train to get to. The wedding was the rowdiest, most hectic event Dareumi had attended in his young life, with everyone around him busy catching up, eating and drinking and jabbering on. His mom was no exception. Dareumi summed up how she had lost track of him: “My mom neglected me.” “Do you even know what ‘neglect’ means?” “It means treating me like I’m invisible.” As he wandered around in search of his mother, Dareumi ended up leaving the wedding venue and getting lost in those unfamiliar streets. Luckily, thanks to a student who thought it strange that Dareumi was all alone, he was brought to a local police station, but little Dareumi was too young to assist the officer there in helping him. At that age, he didn’t know his parents’ names, his home address or phone number. All he could remember was the name of the city where he lived—Seoul—and the red mailbox near his house. More specifically, the number on that mailbox. Dareumi, who couldn’t count beyond his age of four, falteringly described it to the police officer. “Inside the circle on the mailbox at our house, there are three number ones.” With just that one clue, the officer was able to find his parents’ house. From then on, for Dareumi, that mailbox ceased to be ordinary.

Eating a spoonful of my own ice cream, I asked, “But you can find your house now even without the mailbox, can’t you?” He nodded. “Then you can stop writing the letters, no?”

Dareumi said that he would keep writing them anyway. “What if other little kids end up lost like I did?” he reasoned. “Plus, since I got to first grade, I’ve made lots of friends. So I have to write lots and lots of letters.” His eyes widened, stressing just how many letters he must have meant by lots and lots.

“Wow, you must be pretty busy then?” I said, hamming up my praise for the little guy. I asked him whether he’d ever received any replies. “Of course,” he said.

“Want me to introduce you to someone else you could write a letter to?”

 “Yes, please,” said Dareumi, more enthusiastic than I’d expected. “Who is it?”

“She’s a grown-up, but a bit of a lazy one. Quite an oddball, too, so I think she’d have fun swapping letters. I’ll give you her address—why don’t I jot it down in your notebook for you?”

Dareumi reached inside his bookbag and handed me a notebook with a kitty on the cover. I wrote down the address for Baek Sujin, the playwright. She didn’t seem like the type to shatter a child’s innocence, so I imagined that she’d reply to Dareumi right away. The important thing here was the location of the mailbox nearest her house. It happened to be the one right across the street from the No. 1 branch of the Insomnia convenience store chain. To mail Dareumi a reply, she’d need to leave her house, and when she saw the store across the way, she’d have to stop by and make her purchases herself for once. Then again, knowing her, she would probably just end up asking me to mail her letters for her, too.

I returned Dareumi’s notebook. “You have to write this lady lots and lots of letters, all right?”

“How come?” he asked, at which I snickered, “On top of being lazy, she’s a little lonely, too.” Dareumi giggled as if he were in on the joke, revealing two missing front teeth. Just then, something like a rush of wind blew in between our laughter, and I heard a voice out of nowhere.

“Do you want to play with me?”

I looked around. “Did you hear that just now?” I asked Dareumi. “Someone asking to play?”

“No,” he said, innocently shaking his head.

As he did, I heard the voice again. A man’s, it seemed like.

“I’m bored and lonely—will you play with me?”

I turned toward the voice but saw nothing. Dareumi and I were the only ones in that tiny park. A shiver ran down my spine, like I’d swallowed something cold.

I told Dareumi that if he was all done with his ice cream, we should get going. It was my first auditory hallucination. Maybe the trauma from my accident two years ago was taking on yet another form. My mind overrun with useless anxieties, I hurried away toward home.

After parting ways with Dareumi, I rounded the first corner and started down the alleyway. I couldn’t hear any other footsteps, but I kept sensing something trailing me. Yet when I looked back, of course, no one was there. Only when I turned the second corner did I hear something.

This time, a barely audible voice grazed my ear. The same voice from earlier.

“I want to try vanilla ice cream, too. And what does a burrito taste like, I wonder?”

I whipped around and shouted, “Who’s there!”

Suddenly I was afraid. I knew auditory hallucinations were a classic sign of schizophrenia, and I worried that maybe the obsessive-compulsive disorder I’d had for so long had morphed into something along those lines. Or else, could this be some sort of tinnitus? Was it the same clicking in the ears that tormented Baek Sujin? As my mind leapt between thoughts, I rounded the last corner on my way home.

Hoping to lift my downcast spirits, I took out five wine glasses and brought them upstairs. I slipped some of the dry ice I’d gotten from the Baskin-Robbins into each one, then filled the glasses with water. A white haze rose and spread out. I placed the glasses a set distance apart, and soon my room became a world inside the clouds.

Leaning back against the soft, plush body of my giant teddy bear, I dug into my meal: a burrito and a sandwich on rye bread. Biting into the burrito, I scanned my room. I wanted to confirm whether the voice I’d heard earlier at the park and then again in the alleyway had indeed been a mere hallucination, or whether it belonged to a being with whom I could actually hold a conversation.

I spoke out into the empty air. “If you want to know what a burrito tastes like . . . hmmm, I guess I would say it’s similar to a hamburger?” Then I listened closely, ears perked. The only sound I could hear was the ticking of the second hand on the wall clock. Thirty seconds went by, then three minutes. Once five minutes had passed, I spoke up again. “I heard the woman who lives across the street might be a bar girl. Could that be true?”

I held my breath and focused on the sounds. But as expected, I didn’t hear a thing. Whew. What a relief. The voice I’d heard earlier had clearly been brought on by extreme hunger.

The clouds of fog from the dry ice spilled over and roamed dreamily about the room. I felt as though real clouds had drifted in, which slightly calmed my nerves.

***

The next day I showed up to work at the No. 3 branch of Insomnia as per my boss’s request. Even on a Saturday afternoon, business at that branch was slow-going. I stocked the displays and sorted the trash. I went into the bathroom next to the storage room and emptied the contents of one of the bins—where people dumped their ramen broth—into the toilet, then rinsed the bin clean. I used to get nauseous doing this particular task in the beginning, but I had grown accustomed to it and now felt nothing much either way.

I grabbed the three garbage bags, bulging with trash that had been pressed down to fit, and pushed open the glass door. Before I stepped out, I tapped the toe of my sneaker against the door’s bottom edge seven times. Another one of my compulsions. I took the bags outside and set them down in a row beside a telephone pole. One of the bags on the end started to lean, so I quickly reached out my foot to right it again.

I was heading back inside when I heard a voice behind me.

“Excuse me—do you want to play with me?”

I stopped short. It was the same voice I’d heard before. “Ugh, what’s with me?” I muttered to myself. “Hearing things again.”

Goosebumps sprang up on the nape of my neck and down my spine. My hunched shoulders began to tremble. I turned my head, slow and fearful. Slid my eyes toward that voice. Once again, I was expecting to see nothing, but now, as if to mock me, a black figure was indeed standing there in that spot. What on earth is that? I kept blinking. The shadow was shaped like a person but did not seem like a person. I wasn’t sure whether to call what I was seeing a person or a thing. A spring breeze blew by, sending the smell of oil pastels fluttering through my hair. Only then did I remember. The strange energy I had encountered in that alleyway last time. The same heavy, icy feeling entered my body again. But—it couldn’t be. Maybe I was hearing, no, seeing things this time, too. The figure was no more than an apparition, one that would vanish in the blink of an eye. But as time passed, it did not disappear, instead continuing to stare as though it had some business with me. To add to that, the shadow grew more manifest by the second until I could no longer dismiss it as a mere phantom. Like it was asking me to look at it. To see.

When I thought I couldn’t back away any farther, I addressed the shadow in a shaky voice. “It was you, wasn’t it? When I hurt myself in the alleyway a few weeks ago . . . ”

“Sorry about that,” said the shadow. “Are you okay?”

“I’m f-fine.” Wait, what? This encounter was becoming an actual conversation.

“Glad to hear that.” It—no, he—seemed to be smiling. I wasn’t sure of the shadow’s gender, but his voice and contours struck me as those of a man.

“Am I the only one who can see you? And hear you?” I asked, worried about what I would do if he did turn out to be a hallucination visible to no one but me.

He tilted his head. “I don’t think so?”

So other people could see him, too? Wasn’t that even weirder? I took a step closer, curious now. “What exactly are you?” I asked, sniffing the air. I couldn’t quite say he had a cold scent, but in any case, he smelled damp.

“I’m me,” he said with a light shrug.

“I mean, what are you made of? What elements? What components?”

Again, he shrugged. “As you can see, I’m just a black-colored something-or-other. Cold. Like air.”

“Black-colored? Sort of like a black oil pastel?”

He burst out laughing. “Oh, no, do I look like an oil pastel?”

“It’s not that,” I said, frowning. “It’s just that earlier, I smelled pastels for a second. If not, then what are you?”

“I’m not sure. Even I don’t really know how to explain it,” he said, scratching his head sheepishly.

“Are you, by any chance . . . like a shadow? That’s what you look like to me.”

“Oh, a shadow!” He snapped what would have been his fingers, then pointed to the long shadow stretching out from me. “That seems more accurate, yes. That’s what I’m like. A shadow.”

“Do you have an owner?”

“I don’t. It’s just me. I don’t cling to anybody or trail them around. I’m my own owner,” he said with a smug grin.

“Then you must have a name?”

“No, not yet.” He sounded wistful.

“How come?”

“Well . . .” He rubbed his chin. “I still haven’t met anyone who would give me one. Honestly, as you know, names exist more for others to use. What’s your name?”

“Jeong Haejin. The same hae as in haebaragi, sunflower.”

“That’s a nice name. Would you want to be the one to name me?”

I stumbled back. “What? Me? But why . . . ”

“You’re my first ‘other,’ the first one to perceive me. You’ll need something to call me from now on—shouldn’t you pick a name that works for you?”

“Oh . . . is that so?” I felt like I had been unwittingly implicated in something. As we talked, I started to question whether all this was real or imagined.

“Take your time. Meanwhile, I’m parched. Do you think I could buy something to drink?”

“Sure, be my guest.” I smiled awkwardly, swallowing hard.

Looking up at the storefront sign, the shadow said, “‘Insomnia.’ Not a bad name for a 24-hour convenience store. It means the store is up and running 24/7, right?”

“I think so. But wait—you know how to read?” I asked, eyes widening in awe.

“Of course I do,” he said. “I hope you’ll come up with a neat name like that for me. And it’d be great if the surname was fairly common. I don’t want to stand out too much.”

“S-sure thing.”

Something felt strange, but not overly so. Or rather, something should have felt strange, and it was strange that nothing did. Perhaps because the situation was so incredibly strange, it transcended categorization as such and ceased to feel strange at all? That being said, there was clearly something strange happening, and it was all the more odd that I didn’t feel strange about it. How on earth was I supposed to explain this?

“Odd, very odd indeed.” My vision began to spin. Who exactly was I talking to?

He grabbed a can of Coca-Cola from the fridge and brought it up to the counter. Because his entire body was black, I couldn’t tell what style of clothing he was wearing. He looked to be about five nine and on the lean side. I didn’t know whether his hair was naturally curly or not, but I got the impression he had loose curls that came down to right below his ears.

He set the soda on the counter. When I told him the price was 900 won, he pulled out some coins from his coat pocket and handed them to me. “The minimart over there sells these for a thousand won. What a bunch of thieves,” he griped.

“Ah, our stores are slightly cheaper than others. Our boss says it’s a business strategy.”

The shadow nodded and said he’d have to come here from now on.

“I usually work at the No. 1 branch, though. I’m covering a shift here at No. 3 just for today.”

“Are you asking me to visit you at the No. 1 branch then?” The cold shadow man laughed, his mood lifted.

 After the fact, I wondered: Should I have said all that? Flustered, I quickly asked another question. “By the way, I can’t tell because you look completely black, but what kinds of clothes are you wearing?”

“A suit, as always. I have exactly one outfit—a poor gentleman in his only suit, as they say.” He spread his arms and spun around once. “See this handkerchief, the very symbol of a gentleman?” he said, pointing to his left breast pocket.

“Oh, yes,” I said, but all I saw was shadow.

Even his face was completely black, so I couldn’t make out his features in any detail, which was a shame. Still, his side profile suggested a high nose and a smooth, not too prominent chin area.

Once he’d paid, he cracked open his soda and started to drink. “Coca-Cola is number one when it comes to soda. However many times I drink it, that tingling feeling always gives me a thrill like no other.” To my surprise, he let out a belch. “Even better than alcohol.”

I found myself unable to stop laughing at the strangeness of it all. I was bursting with so many questions I didn’t know where to start. One thing at a time, I decided. “Oh yeah, was it you who asked last time what a burrito tastes like?”

“Probably?”

“They taste kind of like hamburgers. Have you had a hamburger before?”

He waved his can of soda and said, “A Coke and a burger, a burger and a Coke—the two go hand in hand.”

“You seem to be an expert,” I said.

Was the shadow man wearing a watch? He looked down at his wrist as if checking the time. Of course, I didn’t see anything there. He downed the rest of his soda and, sounding like he had something urgent to do, said he’d better get going. Feeling a little let down, I blurted out, “Already?”

“Well, even I have to earn a living. No one’s going to give me soda for free.” He appeared to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. “Oh, and don’t forget about your promise to name me, okay? I’ll see you next time.” He waved goodbye.

I waved back, completely baffled. “Right . . . n-next time.”

To my surprise, he dropped his empty can into the correct recycling bin before heading out. His curls and the hems of his suit flapped in the breeze. He tucked his tousled hair behind his ear as he disappeared around the corner.

What sort of name should I give a cold shadow man? He’d said he wanted ordinary—how about Kim for a surname?

“Kim,” I said aloud. “Kim.”