The news traveled through the island's quiet channels, from the postman to the fishmonger to the old women tending their plots in the community garden. The old man from Haeteul, the one with the kind, distant eyes and the gentle smile, was gone. There was no sense of tragedy, only the respectful acknowledgment of a tide going out at its appointed time.
Ha-ru received the call from the kind, unobtrusive nurse who checked in daily. He felt the words not as a shock, but as a deep, seismic settling. He had known this was coming, had seen the peaceful completion in his father's eyes. The grief that rose was clean, sharp, and vast—a wave that broke over him with the force of a lifetime of love. He called Hae-won, his voice breaking on her name, and they held each other through the phone line, a continent apart but united in the loss of their shared sun.
