"What's nothing?"
"Comics."
"In Braille?"
"Yes."
"You can't see the pictures. There are no pictures in that book, are there? There are words. I guess being blind makes you have to develop a vivid imagination." Seong Seob did not say anything. "Comics about what?" He was trying to control this disapproving undertone that often crept into his voice. He disliked wasted leisure. It did not seem to him that leisure should be such a frivolous pastime with the few when the many were so needy. He also did not like Saeng Seob's lack of motivation; and it was only because of his friend's blindness and knowledge that his mother had thrown him like a coin into a wishing well of death that Sang Huin managed to stay mute about this issue. For the first time a better reason for not judging others formulated in his head: he who was a promiscuous homosexual, an unfaithful partner to his friend, one who had urged the abortion of his former girl friend's embryo, and had by his Puritanical Korean values been an inadvertent abettor of the crime against his sister, Jun Jin, had no moral authority to state an opinion about anything. Even if Saeng Seob at times exhibited double his own reticence making conversation short of impossible, he knew that this was even less of a reason to judge him than the fact that he was such an unmotivated sloth. Still it was natural to think that one's own introverted character was right in being such and that someone else who was sometimes even more reticent, was abnormal. He thought, "So this guy has a part time job with his cousin and no real hobbies outside of strumming on a guitar and light reading— these are innocuous pursuits in one who from his pain could have become a hardened criminal. Surely there are blind bad guys in penitentiaries; and who am I to judge him?" . "A cat"
"Garfield?"
"Yes."
"In a book?"
"A collection."
Relinquishing the idea of having a meaningful conversation, Sang Huin changed the channel to CNN and got his fix of war updates; but a half hour later it became an overdose. He turned down the macabre sounds and returned to his computer.