Evaporation

This damn country.

A country so devout it holds dawn prayer meetings every day.

I hated the dawn.

“Pastor... please, save my son...”

That day, I had to wake up to a phone call at 4 a.m.

It was Elder Kim Joo-wan. He was crying.

He told me the paramedics were delayed,

and begged me to come right away.

Was he calling me instead of an ambulance?

What could I possibly do?

Could I save him?

But I couldn’t refuse a church member’s plea without a valid reason.

I sat up in Song’s bed.

She was still sound asleep,

wrapped in sheets steeped in the scent of wine.

A wave of hangover and irritation hit me at once.

I opened the rooftop door and stepped outside.

The crunch of snow shattered the silence.

I moved carefully.

Cold air seeped beneath my coat,

sending a chill down my spine.

I exhaled a long breath.

The scent of wine lingered at the tip of my nose.

It was the smell of hypocrisy—

the kind only I could recognize.

There he was.

Perched on the edge of the rooftop railing.

One strong gust could send him plummeting.

The boy slowly turned his head to look at me.

His expression was a mixture of emptiness and rage.

“Not an ambulance, but a pastor, huh...”

He muttered bitterly,

a cynical smile on his face.

I thought the same thing.

Who would want to be here?

Like a pitcher, he hurled a snowball at me.

It burst at my feet—

like his life, breaking into pieces.

The boy I knew was a rising star in the baseball world.

A promising talent, already accepted into a top university.

He always prayed after games,

firmly believing his talent was a gift from God.

He had even appeared in youth sports magazines.

When asked about his dreams, he answered,

"I want to glorify God through my life."

But an unexpected accident took everything.

Admiration in others’ eyes turned into pity.

He withdrew into the shadows, and he changed.

Gone was the vibrant boy.

Replaced by depression.

He became obsessed with nihilism and apocalyptic thoughts.

His parents had asked me multiple times to visit him.

I tried to convince him he was wrong.

But he closed his heart to me.

He looked at me, his breath forming mist in the cold.

"I told you. The world is already over."

Fine, let him hear what he wanted.

“You were right. It does feel like the end of the world.”

He turned to me.

“So now you get it?”

He smiled faintly.

The smile of someoneseeking validation.

That’s the psychology of doomsday believers.

I didn’t want to argue.

I just wanted the ambulance to arrive.

He looked down from the railing.

A chill ran through me.

If he jumped, I would be held responsible.

I moved closer.

He threw another snowball.

This one hit my face. I stopped.

“Don’t butt in when you know nothing.”

He wasn’t wrong.

I didn’t want to know.

I had ignored everything until he ended up here.

What really bothered me was the thought of his parents watching.

I had hoped my indifference would stay hidden.

But it had been exposed.

My hypocrisy. The burn scar on his face.

I had once told him,

"A scar can become a star."

He only laughed at me.

“Pastor... what is hell like?”

Lost in thought, I almost missed the question.

“It’s total separation from God, an endless darkness,”

“How would you know? You've never been there.”

Suddenly, he turned on me,

fury and confusion etched into his face.

I was speechless. But I had to say something.

So I said what pastors always say.

“Think of Job. He lost everything, but God restored...”

“Shit! I’m not Job!”

Words can save or kill.

Which had mine done?

“I’ll walk into hell myself.”

That was his last line, vanishing into the swirling snow.

Sirens began to wail, faint and far.

If only they had arrived sooner—could he have been saved?

His parents screamed, looking down over the edge.

Even after they left, I remained on that snowy rooftop.

I looked down. It was higher than I expected.

Dizzying fear gripped me,as if something would pull me over.

White snow shamelessly marked the boy’s blood.

Death looked absurdly small.

I didn’t want to look at the body anymore.