Paddling

"Seo Yeehyeon. Seo Yeehyeon, wake up."

I didn't know when I'd fallen asleep. I was curled up on the bare floor, still wearing the clothes I'd had on at the harbor.

It was hyung who shook me awake. In the darkness, his eyes shone with an unusual brightness — a light that suggested something out of the ordinary.

It was dead of night. Only the faint glow of the sodium lamp hanging over the main gate barely reached into the room. The house had fallen completely silent in the meantime, and I could sense that it was raining — not from the sound, but from the change in the smell of the air.

"Just pack what you absolutely need. Quickly."

Hyung spoke in a low, rapid voice.

"Morae will be waiting at Jaeyoon hyung's office. We'll drive to Seoul from there in his car."

Jaeyoon hyung was the owner of the surf school and a close friend of both Morae and Yeehan. Hyung had worked there as an instructor before enlisting, and even after his discharge he occasionally taught temporary lessons there to earn money.

It was a plan we'd been making for a very long time — since high school. We'd decided that if the situation ever reached a point of no return, we would put our plan into motion.

I felt a little out of place being included in what was, in some ways, an elopement — but they had included me from the very start, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

No one was telling me to work on a boat, and no one was pressuring me to break up with a lover — yet the fact that I had nothing waiting for me became my reason to leave. I had no reason to go, but then again, I had no reason to stay.

It had started as half a joke. Back in high school, lying on the beach and laughing as we sketched out this absurd plan like something from a low-budget film, we never once thought the day would actually come when we'd carry it out.

Hyung's and my hands moved swiftly as we chose what to pack. Nothing we owned was so precious that we absolutely had to take it. From the drawers crammed with nothing but striped shirts, I grabbed a couple of T-shirts and some underwear.

Finally, hyung stuffed one of his favorite comic books into his bag, zipped it shut, and stood. He paused for a moment in front of the photograph on the wall. Then he tore it down, folded it in half, and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

The house — three rooms in a row facing the sea — had undergone modern renovations years ago, but its basic structure was still that of a traditional Korean house. We carefully slid open the door and stepped out onto the raised wooden porch, now covered in stone and cement.

As expected, it had started to drizzle. The sea breeze felt colder than usual against the skin — an unsettling chill that made the back of my neck prickle.

We hurried across the yard through the damp air. Hyung gestured for us to climb the wall instead of opening the main gate. It wasn't very high; it seemed better than risking a noisy exit.

As we started walking toward the wall, a door opened behind us from the main house. The sound of a sliding door being pushed outward from inside. We instinctively stopped and slowly turned around.

It was Father.

In the darkness — where only the sound of unseen waves could be heard — Father sat inside the room, holding the doorknob, looking toward us.

Hyung and I were standing in the rain past midnight, each with a backpack, without umbrellas. Anyone could tell we weren't just stepping out for a casual stroll.

How would Father react?

Sweat beaded instantly on my forehead and down my spine. My pounding heart felt like it might burst.

In that moment, all my attention was fixed on Father's lips — not on whether our escape would succeed or fail. It wasn't the frustration of being caught.

The past five years. Those lips that had made me abandon hope, through the endless cycle of expecting and resenting, until finally even that cycle had gone silent.

Silence was exhausting. Yet I, too, had been becoming someone steeped in silence — someone most accustomed to it. Father…

"Hyeon-ah¹, let's go."

I didn't know how long we'd been standing there getting soaked. Hyung placed a hand on my shoulder. It wasn't a gesture to hurry me along. He knew what I was thinking, what I was feeling.

We changed our minds and opened the main gate instead of climbing the wall.

The iron gate — long un-oiled and easily corroded by the sea air — creaked open. Hyung slipped out first, and then I stepped a foot beyond the threshold. With a heart more reluctant than Lot's wife leaving Sodom, I turned back one last time.

Where are you going? Don't go.

Father never said anything in the end.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

1. 1 Hyeon-ah (현아) — An affectionate way of calling out to someone. Close friends and family may shorten a name and attach the vocative suffix -ah to the final syllable (Yeehyeon → Hyeon → Hyeon-ah). ↩ Back to text