The neck’s language was of suppression, unlike that of his face, where the jungle inside his body oozed free through his eyes, nose, and mouth. Vavra’s mistake had been to draw rational strokes of narrative, compelling me to understand everything about Moon at once. But all I’d needed was to begin with the singularity of his neck.

---

He was a gift forever in the moment of being handed over. But he couldn’t be had. Hunger pierced me. I wanted something, and I wanted all of it, but I didn’t dare want Moon, because if it was that simple, it was also that impossible.

---

All I wanted was a single sentence that radiated truth, yet I found myself turning page after page, faster and faster, accruing small cuts all over my hand, as if I were grappling with the mouth of a rabid dog.

---

Nothing made me want to end a conversation faster than the words “Oh, that reminds me of the time …” I did not want to remind anyone of anything. I did not like to be related to.

---

"...To become a human being is the only task, and I’m dimly aware that its accomplishment requires that I run the hands of truth, briefly gifted from above, over the most secret part of another person. But no one will let me. So should I kill myself? Tell me how. I want to pull it off with such dark elegance that it makes you proud.”

---

“You’ve settled for a comfortable distance from him so that you can yearn without suffering. Sorry, but you’re not in love. You’re a fan. Boring, lethargic, overfed. If you really loved him, you’d be in Seoul right now. You’d be walking the streets day and night in search of him. The magnitude of the task would crush you until you became a ball of pulp containing just your heart. All other organs—crushed into dysfunction.”