For a few seconds, the three of them remained frozen on the staircase.
The morning bell had not rung yet.
Students were still arriving through the front entrance, their voices echoing faintly through the building. Somewhere downstairs, someone laughed loudly. A locker slammed shut.
Ordinary sounds.
Yet the small space between Daewon, Aera, and Yerin felt strangely separate from all of it.
Daewon looked at the photograph in Yerin's hand.
Then he looked at her.
"Are you saying the boy in that photograph is me?"
Yerin immediately shook her head.
"No."
The answer came quickly enough that Daewon almost laughed.
"Okay."
"I mean... I don't know."
She looked embarrassed.
"I thought maybe."
Aera stepped closer.
"What makes you think you know him?"
Yerin glanced at the photograph.
"The name."
"Dae?"
She nodded.
"I remember someone calling him that."
Daewon looked at Aera.
Aera looked back.
Neither of them said anything.
Yerin noticed their expressions.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have stopped you like this."
"You don't have to apologize," Aera said.
Yerin held the photograph closer to herself.
"I found this at home yesterday."
"You have the same photograph?"
"Yes."
"Then maybe we should look at it together."
Yerin hesitated.
Aera gave her a small smile.
"Only if you're comfortable."
After a moment, Yerin nodded.
They moved toward the empty classroom beside the stairs.
The room was still unlocked because a teacher had been preparing materials for the first period.
Yerin sat at one of the desks.
Daewon and Aera sat across from her.
She placed the photographs on the desk.
There were three.
The first showed the two children beneath the pale blue umbrella.
The second showed them walking down the same street.
The third was taken from behind.
The boy's face couldn't be seen.
Daewon studied them carefully.
"How old were you?"
"Maybe six."
"Do you remember the boy?"
Yerin frowned.
"Pieces."
"What pieces?"
"His voice. His schoolbag. The way he held the umbrella."
She touched the corner of the photograph.
"He wasn't very good at holding it."
Aera smiled.
"Why?"
"He kept tilting it toward me."
Yerin looked at the picture.
"So his own shoulder got wet."
Daewon laughed softly.
"That sounds like something a kid would do."
Yerin nodded.
"I remember being upset because I thought he was going to catch a cold."
Aera's expression softened.
"Do you remember his name?"
"Not completely."
She pointed to the handwriting.
"Just Dae."
Daewon leaned closer.
"Could it have been a nickname?"
"Probably."
"Do you remember where you lived?"
"Near Haneul-dong."
Daewon and Aera exchanged another glance.
That was close enough to make the coincidence interesting.
But it wasn't enough to make it impossible.
Yerin continued.
"My family moved away a few months later."
"Where?"
"Busan."
She folded her hands together.
"I never saw him again."
Daewon looked at the photograph.
"So you thought the boy might be someone here."
"Yes."
"Why me?"
Yerin looked slightly embarrassed.
"Because someone told me your name."
"Who?"
"The girl who sits behind me."
She pointed vaguely toward the hallway.
"She said your name was Daewon."
Daewon understood.
"Dae."
Yerin nodded.
"That's why I thought..."
She stopped.
Aera gently finished the thought.
"That the photograph might be you."
"Yes."
Daewon looked down at the photographs again.
For a moment, he wondered what it would feel like to discover a photograph from when he was six.
He wondered whether he would recognize himself.
Then another thought came.
"What was the boy like?"
Yerin looked surprised by the question.
"Quiet."
Daewon smiled.
"That's not very specific."
"He didn't talk much."
"Anything else?"
Yerin thought.
"He drew."
Daewon's smile disappeared.
Yerin noticed.
"He drew on everything. Paper, notebooks, sometimes the ground with sticks."
Aera looked at Daewon.
He looked back at her.
"Did he have a sketchbook?"
Yerin shook her head.
"I don't remember."
"What did he draw?"
"Umbrellas."
That answer made the room quiet again.
Yerin looked down.
"Mostly umbrellas."
Daewon slowly leaned back.
For the first time, the possibility felt real.
Not that the boy was him.
Something else.
The possibility that a childhood memory could survive in a stranger's life without anyone knowing.
But there was still a problem.
Daewon remembered the girl beneath a blue umbrella.
He remembered her.
He remembered being separated from her.
And he remembered finding Aera again years later.
That memory was his.
It wasn't something he was willing to replace simply because another photograph had appeared.
Aera seemed to understand what he was thinking.
She didn't say anything.
She didn't need to.
Yerin gathered the photographs.
"I'm sorry."
Daewon looked at her.
"For what?"
"For making this weird."
"It's not weird."
"It kind of is."
"Maybe."
He smiled.
"But it's interesting."
Yerin smiled back.
"Thanks."
The bell rang.
All three of them looked toward the door.
Aera stood.
"We should go."
Yerin nodded.
As they walked into the hallway, Daewon stopped beside the display.
The pale blue umbrella photograph was still there.
Yerin stood in front of it.
She didn't touch it.
She simply looked.
Aera came beside her.
"Do you want to take your copy home?"
Yerin nodded.
"Yes."
"You can."
Yerin looked at her.
"But what about the school display?"
"We can leave the school copy."
"Even if we know who it might be?"
Aera smiled.
"Knowing isn't always the same as owning."
Yerin considered that.
Then she nodded.
"I understand."
She slipped the photographs into her bag.
Before leaving, she looked at Daewon.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"If you ever find out who the boy was..."
She hesitated.
"Could you tell me?"
Daewon nodded.
"Yeah."
"Thank you."
Yerin left.
Daewon watched her disappear into the crowd.
Then he looked at Aera.
"Do you think we'll find him?"
Aera shrugged.
"Maybe."
"You're not curious?"
"I am."
She glanced at the photograph.
"But I think the important part is that she remembers now."
Daewon nodded.
They started walking toward class.
After a few steps, Aera said,
"She said the boy tilted the umbrella toward her."
"Yeah."
"So his shoulder got wet."
"Apparently."
Aera looked at him.
"That sounds familiar."
Daewon stopped.
"What?"
She smiled.
"You."
He frowned.
"Me?"
"You do that."
"When?"
"Whenever it rains."
Daewon looked down.
He hadn't noticed.
Aera continued walking.
"You always hold the umbrella more over me."
Daewon caught up.
"That's different."
"How?"
"Because you're shorter."
Aera stopped walking.
She slowly turned toward him.
"I'm not that short."
Daewon looked at her.
Then at the top of her head.
Then back at her face.
"You are."
She stared at him.
He realized his mistake.
"Compared to me."
Aera narrowed her eyes.
"You've changed."
"What?"
"You used to be nicer."
"I am nice."
"You're not."
Daewon laughed.
Aera tried not to smile.
She failed.
They reached their classroom just before the teacher arrived.
The morning passed normally.
Math.
Science.
Korean.
Lunch.
A forgotten pencil.
A disagreement over whose turn it was to clean the board.
Nothing happened.
And yet, during lunch, Daewon found himself thinking about the photograph.
He remembered being six.
He remembered rain.
He remembered an umbrella.
But his memory wasn't clear enough to trust every detail.
That afternoon, he opened his sketchbook.
He turned to a blank page.
For several minutes, he didn't draw.
Then he began.
An umbrella.
A street.
Two small figures.
He stopped.
He looked at the drawing.
Something was wrong.
The boy looked too much like him.
So he erased the face.
Then he drew the umbrella again.
He erased that too.
Aera sat beside him in the art room.
"What are you drawing?"
"I don't know."
She looked at the page.
"That's new."
"What?"
"You usually know."
Daewon looked at the half-erased drawing.
"Sometimes I think I remember something."
Aera waited.
"And sometimes I think I'm just remembering the story I told myself."
She understood.
She didn't try to answer immediately.
Instead, she took a pencil.
On another page, she drew a small rectangle.
A photograph.
Then beneath it, she wrote:
A memory doesn't have to be complete to be real.
Daewon read it.
Then he wrote beneath her sentence:
But we shouldn't fill in the missing parts just because we want an answer.
Aera looked at him.
"That's better."
Daewon smiled.
"You're stealing my lines now."
"I'm improving them."
"You definitely changed."
"So did you."
They looked at each other.
For a while, neither spoke.
Then Aera reached into her bag and pulled out the photograph she had taken of him in the hidden garden.
She placed it beside his sketchbook.
"Maybe that's enough."
Daewon looked at the photograph.
Then at the unfinished drawing.
"Enough for what?"
"To remember who we are now."
He looked at her.
Outside the art room window, the afternoon sky had begun turning blue again.
The rain was gone.
Daewon closed his sketchbook.
"Yeah."
Aera carefully put her photograph away.
"Some memories can stay unfinished."
Daewon smiled.
"Some should."
Neither of them knew yet whether Yerin would ever find the boy from the photograph.
Neither knew whether the name Dae belonged to someone they already knew, someone who had moved away, or someone who had simply disappeared from their childhood.
And for now, that was okay.
Because there was something they had both begun to understand.
A memory wasn't a puzzle that always needed to be solved.
Sometimes, it was simply something a person carried.
Sometimes, finding the missing name mattered.
Sometimes, remembering the feeling was enough.
And sometimes, the people standing beside you in the present were more important than the people you had lost somewhere in the past.
Daewon looked at Aera.
She was already looking out the window.
He smiled quietly.
Then he opened his sketchbook again.
This time, he drew her.