[Inn of the Rainy Season] Chapter 13🌦️Epilogue
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Chapter 13🌦️Epilogue
When the fifth child was born, the season was just entering the heavy, oppressive start of the rainy season.
The air was heavy like a water-soaked sponge, the leaden sky hung terribly low, and everything that met the eye was tinged with an unpleasant dampness.
It is a dense season unique to this land, one that causes everything to rot while simultaneously making things sprout with a frantic intensity.
By that time, the innkeeper was no longer involved in any of the inn's work.
He would sit in his usual spot on a chair in the dim corner by the entrance, puffing on a cheap cigarette, occasionally watching the mud-covered children running around with an expressionless face.
That was all.
And then, one day, without any warning at all, he said:
I am leaving the inn to my daughter. I am retiring.
It was a terribly short statement. There was no explanation or reason given at all.
But that was enough. No one was surprised.
Rather, everyone accepted it as a matter of course, feeling that it should have happened long ago.
The daughter simply nodded deeply once, in silence.
That woman. Now, she runs everything in this inn.
The coming and going of guests. Procuring food. Managing the rooms. Assigning the day laborers.
The face of the woman she once showed in the night rooms has long since vanished, and there is no longer a shred of hesitation or gap in her movements and decisions.
From that day on, the old man became an even quieter presence. He does no work at all.
He is simply there, near his grandchildren who share his blood.
He picks up a crying baby. He soothes it. He breaks into a smile, his wrinkled face crumbling with joy.
With just that, his day ends in contentment. The rest of his life.
No one in this town doubts anymore that it is a rightful remainder of his life.
I continue to work, just as before. From morning until night.
Manual labor at the inn. Grueling construction work in the suburbs.
My body has now completely adapted to the labor of this land.
I move without hesitation, even without being told.
I can work without thinking about anything unnecessary, relying solely on the contraction and repetition of my muscles.
And...
I have still not received a single baht.
Not even once. I have never asked for it, either.
There is absolutely no need to.
The woman manages all the money.
The inn's income. My earnings from outside. The expenses. All of it.
I do not get involved in that. There is no reason to get involved.
It was different in the beginning. Right after I recovered from the fever, I did calculate.
Returning to Bangkok. To the place I was before. To the person I was before.
For that, I absolutely need cash. So, I work.
I was moving my body based on that logic.
But now, it is different.
I am the one who knows best what will happen the moment I hold 'disposable money' in the palm of my hand.
I will definitely leave this place. I must leave.
It is not a rational choice, but rather something closer to the reflex of a fugitive.
If I had money, I would try to reissue my passport, return to Bangkok, and fall back into that void once again.
That is why...
I do not need money. To be precise, I must never 'desire' it.
I keep my own ankles chained.
This absolute state of penniless dependency is what keeps my mind most stable.
I can stay here. I am allowed to take root in this mud.
That is enough.
I fully understand that perverse truth.
The woman also understands it with cold clarity.
That is why she never gives me money, and I never ask for it.
Through that twisted yet solid complicity, our balance is kept perfectly intact.
The children increase in number. They run, slipping on their muddy feet. They fall.
They cry as if they were on fire. They laugh in high-pitched voices.
Every one of those noisy moments becomes my daily life.
I watch it. Sometimes, I pick up their heavy bodies.
I call their names with the local pronunciation. Language is no longer a barrier.
The language here has, before I knew it, become the language of my thoughts.
Bangkok is far away. Not as a physical distance on a map.
It is just a feeling.
There are times when I remember it on a whim.
The neon lights of a Sukhumvit night. The ceiling of a cheap inn.
But that is no longer reality. It is not even the past.
It is merely an image.
A vague, intangible phantom, like the remnants of a dream on a tropical night.
Before long, the rain begins to fall in earnest. It is a heavy rain.
It beats violently against the corrugated metal roof, filling every gap in the air with the scent of water.
When night falls, the sound of the rain grows even denser, as if to shut off the world.
And then...
At the bottom of that sound of rain, that distinct noise mingles in.
...Tokay.
A dry, eerily rhythmic cry.
From somewhere, it echoes low, piercing through the curtain of rain.
I lie on the bamboo floor of the dim room, listening to it, and slowly close my eyes.
Sometimes, I remember that night. The jungle where the gunshot rang out.
The overwhelming presence of death. That night in Bangkok where it all began.
But even that quickly melts and fades away into this sound of rain and heat.
The present is everything. This place is everything.
If...
If you are looking for a rhinoceros beetle.
You should visit this remote inn during the rainy season.
When night falls, they fly around the bare lightbulb in the lobby as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Creatures with black, hard shells and magnificent horns.
You don't have to go deep into the forest where landmines are buried; if you just wait while drinking a beer, it's not difficult at all to get your hands on one.
But...
How far you go in pursuit of it is entirely up to you.
There is a road here. A road to return to the world. And a road from which you will never return.
Both of them exist, waiting with open mouths beyond this rain and mud.
The End
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