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colors were blinking on and off in the winter sun. When I saw it, I realized Christmas was coming. I thought of Gaudete Sundayin Paris. Christmas lights filling the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, girls selling flowers on the street, red wine and the futile charm of soft, savory foie gras melting on my tongue, ending a night of drinking with arguments and vomiting…
    We turned several corners and were guided into a small room. Just a few square meters in size, the room had a crucifix on the wall next to a copy of Rembrandt’s
The Return of the Prodigal Son.
It was a simple room with one small table and five or six chairs. Aunt Monica set down her bundle and turned on an electric kettle. After a moment, we heard a knock at the door. I caught a glimpse of a light-blue prison uniform through a small glass window in the barred door.
    “Come in! You must be Jeong Yunsu.” Aunt Monica went over to the man who was being brought into the room by a guard and hugged him.
    Death row. He was on death row. A red nametag was sewn to the left side of his shirt. Except it was not a nametag. There was no name on it. In black letters, it read
Seoul 3987
. He seemed very uncomfortable with my aunt’s embrace. He looked like he was about five foot seven in height and had curly black hair and light skin; his eyes behind their horn-rimmed glasses were wide and penetrating. But the curly hair, which looked softer and darker than other people’s, spilled over his broad, pale forehead and lessened the sharpness of his features.
    To my surprise, the dark shadow that hung over his face reminded me of the young professors I had met at university. The look on his face was the same as the one on theirs when they complained about the school:
Damn it, what does the foundation think it’s doing?
Or when they had to listen to the chairman of the board say ridiculous things during faculty meetings:
Our university’s primary goal this year is to create a university that studies. We
need better students. Our foundation created this school for that purpose
. The kinds of things that anyone in their right mind would laugh at. I momentarily deluded myself into thinking that the red tag on his chest meant he was a political dissident who had violated the National Security Law. It was probably the air of intellectualism that I had glimpsed in him for a moment that caused me to assume this. He looked like the kind of guy you would see in Paris wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the grim face of Che Guevara.
    How could I describe it? He was a being who transcended death, glimmering with some feral quality possessed by those who swear themselves in their youth to a lonely death in the wild. And it seemed to suit him better. To be even more honest, he didn’t look like what I had always imagined convicts to look like. But I enjoyed having my own clichéd ideas shattered without mercy. I began to feel curious about him.
    “Let’s sit down. Please, have a seat. I’m Sister Monica, the one who has been writing to you.”
    He sat down awkwardly. I noticed then the shackles that bound his wrists in front of him. They were fastened to a ring that hung from a kind of thick leather belt around his waist. It wasn’t until later that I even remembered they were called
shackles
, but when I saw them, my heart sank.
    “Please, Officer Yi, I brought some pastries for him to eat. Could you… Would it be possible to remove his shackles?” Aunt Monica asked carefully.
    The guard called Officer Yi, who was assigned to the Catholic prison ministry, smiled uncomfortably and did not answer. The look on his face said he was a man who played by the rules. Aunt Monica unwrapped the pastries. Cream buns, butter buns, sweet red bean buns. She poured hot water from the kettle to make instant coffee and seta cup in front of Yunsu. Then she put one of the pastries in his shackled hand. He lifted it wordlessly and stared at it for a moment. He looked like he was wondering if he was really