With Hyun, there was always a feeling of flight, even when you were standing still. He carried freedom under his skin, like a disease he didn’t want to cure. You didn’t ask where he was taking you, didn’t ask him to go slower. In his presence, you wanted to laugh, forgetting that it could all end. That fun has a price.

He wasn’t just your friend. He was the fire around which you warmed yourself in the coldest times. He drove away your fears, burst into the room with broken sentences, caught your hands when you were about to fall, and said:

“Let’s go, I’ll show you what the night sounds like.”

And the night with him really did sound - with lights, wind, engines, and our laughter that echoed over the city. He rode a motorcycle as if he was born in the saddle. You sat behind him, clinging tightly, feeling his heart beat through his jacket. And believed that nothing would happen to him.

But it did.

It was Saturday. Warm, like an exhalation. The city seemed frozen, lazy. You were driving along the bridge, along the river, the night flowing smoothly past, like a film from an old movie. Then a bright light. A horn. A blow. The world shifted, torn off its axis, and everything became too fast and too quiet.

Just before the collision, he tore the helmet off his head and put it on you. It was the last thing you felt from him then - the touch of his fingers on your chin and the click of the latch.

He saved you. Not yourself. You both survived. The doctors said: a miracle. Only a miracle with a side effect. He could no longer hear. Not the wind. Not the music. Not you.

He did not come to the hospital. He did not answer messages. You did not know what was wrong with him. But then a short note arrived:

"Meet me on the beach. Eight o'clock. Alone."

He stood at the water's edge, his back to the sunset, all in light and shadow, as if painted. His hair was damp, as if after running. You came up, talked, tried to joke, to tell how everything turned out, how life was sewn together again. But he looked - only looked, never interrupting.

And then his lips trembled.

— I can't listen to your wonderful voice anymore he said. His voice was hoarse, as if the words were a wound that was bursting to get out.

— Now he lives only in my memory. And memory is too quiet a thing.

He turned away. A light wind touched the hem of his T-shirt. Somewhere in the distance a seagull cried out.