Almond

Yunjae explains that Dora is Gon’s opposite and teaches him opposite things about the world and emotions, saying, “Dora knew how to sing the songs everybody knew, in an entirely different way” (169).

Fall arrives, and Yunjae feels himself begin to change with it. He watches a K-pop show and dwells on how the singer tells the crowd that she loves them. Feeling like love is an extreme state, he asks Gon what he thinks love is, and Gon laughs and says he doesn’t care; he wants to be tough like a person named Steel Wire instead. The name fills Yunjae with dread. Yunjae himself thinks that the love between a man and a woman is purely for reproduction. Lacking answers, Yunjae remembers a conversation between his mother and grandmother about love; his grandmother describes it as “discovering beauty.”

Yunjae pictures Lee Dora running whenever he thinks of her—throwing her glasses to the ground when she runs and putting them back on her face when she finishes each race. All that he knows about her is that she runs and that the images of her running linger in his mind.