sol.ace_r

Memory felt like a quiet room.
When you opened a door that had been shut for a long time, fine dust drifted out slowly.
Inside that room, where almost no light entered, old boxes were stacked, and on top of each box was a date and a single handwritten note.

“On this day, you cried.”
“On this day, no one listened to what you said.”
“On this day, you first thought about wanting to disappear.”

He faced that room every day.
Even when he didn’t want to, the door opened on its own, and the boxes ended up in his hands.
Memories were not forgotten.
They were simply following him, relentlessly.

Memories came at random.
The smell of a passing street, the pattern of wallpaper inside an elevator, the melody of a certain song, the tone of a sentence encountered by chance—all of them became buttons that opened the door to old memories.
Beyond that door, there were always similar scenes.

An elementary school playground, sunlight at noon, sitting alone.
A middle school classroom, the shape of classmates’ mouths as they laughed at him.
A high school hallway, a shoulder brushed past without a thought.
And home—a living room too quiet, filled with stillness.

All of those scenes surfaced more vividly than reality.
Strangely, the more painful a memory was, the more it refused to lose its color.
Happy, warm memories faded and disappeared, but moments of hurt grew sharper, sometimes even exaggerated.

He muttered to himself,
“Why are memories so cruel?”

Sometimes, he dreamed.
Dreams where a single scene from memory repeated itself.
The day he was climbing the school stairs, the moment someone pushed him from behind.
His body pitched forward, his knee split open and bled, and above him, classmates laughed.

In that dream, he always heard the same lines.

“It was just a joke. I didn’t think it’d really happen.”
“Hey, why are you making such a big deal out of nothing?”
“You’re crying? Over that?”

Even in the dream, he couldn’t speak.
He couldn’t explain what was wrong, and there was no one who would take his side.

Waking up, he whispered,
“It’s in the past. That was a long time ago.”
But those words brought no comfort.
What had passed was not the same as what had disappeared.
That scene inside his memory was still alive, still moving.

He had never, not once, truly spoken about all of it.
Each time he was hurt, he chose silence.

“It’s okay.”
“Maybe it’s my fault.”
“I should just endure it.”

Those sentences were shields, but at the same time, masks.
And after wearing that mask for too long, he could no longer tell what his real face looked like.

Memory was a mirror.
Reflected in it was his younger self, with deep fear pooled in his eyes.
That fear still remained inside him, even now that he was an adult.

One day, he found an old photo album tucked into the corner of a bookshelf.
Inside was a picture of himself as a child, smiling.
Bright, carefree, arms stretched wide, laughing.
He stared at that face for a long time.
And he wanted to ask:

“Were you truly happy back then?”
“Or was that smile for someone else, too?”

Memory did not answer.
But the smiling face conveyed something to him.
‘The me from back then is still here.’
He felt it.
That feeling was not an unforgotten memory, but a trace of existence that could not be erased.

Within memory, there is a quiet kind of violence.
No one hit him, no one left a visible wound, and yet he was clearly hurt.
More painful than words or actions was the feeling of being ignored in that moment.

Within his memories, he always grew smaller.
He swallowed his words, avoided eye contact, shrank his body.
Even now, when someone raises their voice, his shoulders flinch reflexively.
That was memory etched into the body.
Forgetting did not make it disappear.
Memory remained in the flesh.

But he had one other memory—just one.
A moment when someone spoke to him quietly.

“It’s okay. I’m listening to everything you say.”

Those words were very short, but with just that single sentence, he was able to endure countless days.

He thought,
‘Why did those words stay with me for so long?’
Because they were the first of their kind.
In a time when the world was unbearably quiet, someone’s words felt like light.

He took that memory out and held it close.
Among all the memories of pain, there was a single warmth.
And with just that warmth, he had not completely collapsed.

Perhaps memory was not a room, but a forest.
Some places were full of thorns, others filled with sunlight.
You could lose your way, you could turn back, but if you kept walking, suddenly, the wind would blow, leaves would rustle, and you might hear birds singing.

He thought he was lost in the forest of memory, but as he moved through it, he was slowly meeting himself again.
There was no path, but there was a direction.
The forest was still deep and dark, yet within it, there was a path that belonged only to him.