Kerrand leaves Sokcho

Yan Kerrand’s departure from Sokcho is a separation announced in words and completed through traces rather than a witnessed farewell. He tells the narrator that he will return to France because he has been too absorbed in his hero and does not want to waste any more of her time. In the days that follow, a laundry-room encounter sets the departure’s practical terms; afterward, footprints leading out through the snowy courtyard and an empty room make his absence visible. The sketchbook left on the desk complicates the finality of the scene: he has gone, but the work and the relationship remain materially present.

The Decision to Leave

The decision comes after Yan Kerrand knocks twice on the narrator’s door. He has to go to the supermarket again and asks whether she can translate one word for him, without needing to accompany him. The small request opens a pause: the narrator holds her breath. He eventually says it does not matter and that he will manage, but then stops before leaving. In French, he tells her that she was right. He acknowledges that he has been wrapped up in his hero for too long, says he has decided to return to France, and adds that he will not waste any more of her time. He is leaving in four days.

The explanation joins an artistic preoccupation to a personal decision without spelling out more than Kerrand says. His absorption in the hero has occupied him for too long; his return is also framed as a refusal to take up more of the narrator’s time. The passage does not establish that the narrator asked him to leave, or that he gives a fuller account of what he means by wasting her time. What it does show is a change from the immediate, modest request for translation to a declaration that ends their shared stay. After speaking, he returns to his room. The narrator drags herself to bed and curls into a ball beneath the covers, her physical response registering the announcement before the scene offers any further conversation.

Notice and Last Encounter

The departure becomes concrete in a later encounter, on the morning of the fourth day. While sorting dirty washing in the laundry room, the narrator finds trousers apparently forgotten by the girl with the bandages and tries them on. They swim around her thighs but will not fasten at the waist. Near tears, she takes them off, notices a run in her tights, and crouches to search the pile for another pair. There she sees Kerrand.

He stands by the door holding a bag of clothes. The narrator tugs at her sweater to hide her legs and tells him that she is sorting colours, offering to take his things. He sets the bag down awkwardly, then changes his mind: there is no need to wash the clothes, because his bus will leave the next morning at ten. The correction makes the approaching departure immediate. The narrator’s attempt to conceal her legs and her explanation about the laundry belong to the same brief, exposed moment; Kerrand’s presence interrupts an ordinary chore, while his bag and bus timetable give the encounter its practical finality.

He tells her that he will send a copy of the book when it comes out. She replies that he should not feel obliged. This exchange leaves the future connection conditional and modest: a book may cross the distance between them, but no promise of continuing intimacy is made. The conversation does not become a prolonged goodbye. Instead, the timetable, the bag, and the offered copy carry what neither of them develops into an extended farewell.

Departure Recorded in the Courtyard

The narrative does not show Kerrand boarding the bus. It later lets the courtyard record that he has gone. Its door stands open, and two fine lines in the snow cross the ground: footprints leading from Kerrand’s room, past the fountain and chestnut tree, as far as the courtyard door, where they disappear into the distance. The narrator identifies them again as two lines, his footprints, then stares at them. The measured repetition holds attention on a simple mark of passage. Instead of turning departure into a public scene, the account makes the reader follow the route out from his room to the edge of the courtyard.

The path gives absence a direction. Kerrand’s steps pass familiar features of the shared surroundings before vanishing beyond the open door; the narrator does not describe seeing him leave or say where the footprints lead after that point. The snow makes the departure legible while also limiting what can be known: it preserves a trace, but only up to the threshold. The narrator then walks along the covered walkway to his room, moving from the exterior evidence of his leaving to the interior it has emptied.

The Room and What Remains

The curtains are drawn, and the quilt is carefully folded on the bed. The narrator notices that the smell of his breath still permeates the room, along with incense. In the mirror, a beam of light catches particles of dust floating down from the ceiling and settling on the desk. These details give the room a suspended quality: its occupant is gone, but the air and the objects have not yet lost every sign of him. The careful fold of the quilt contrasts with the dust’s slow descent, joining an orderly remainder to the gradual settling of what is left behind.

On the desk lies his frayed canvas sketchbook. Its presence connects the departure to the work that had occupied Kerrand and to his promise to send the narrator the finished book. Yet the passage does not turn the sketchbook into an explanation of his decision, nor does it disclose what it contains here. It is simply among the objects remaining in the room, where the narrator finds it after following the footprints. The ending’s force comes from this arrangement of departures and residues: the bus is named but not shown, the path reaches the courtyard door and disappears, and the carefully folded bed, lingering smell, dust, and worn sketchbook hold open the space between Kerrand’s leaving and the narrator’s next response.