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Large buildings were like the small mountains of Umsong with a topping of cloud on a rainy day monuments of beauty welcoming him to its domain that edified and exhilarated his appetites and his love.
It was Kim Yang Kwam, the friend who had labeled him as dirty and had abandoned him for that one touch, that one weak moment of wanting to celebrate the beauty of the friendship and the beauty of the man to its fruition. The two were in the bedroom of that apartment in Umsong as they had been before, and Yang Kwam was pulling out a CD from its plastic holder. "Yes, lovely.
He chewed it and sprawled himself on the bench thinking himself as a more worldly version of Huckleberry Finn. In galoshes, they would trudge into the depths of mud to sow, reap, and thresh the rice. The moon above the empty Umsong stadium was a lambent glow over the rice and gave a slight visibility to the forest that interconnected a nearby field to the stadium.
His stay in Umsong had been like a fearful boy scout in a tent on a camping expedition a child looking at black clouds from his small portal, and wishing to again restake his homestead in the less ominous domain of his parents' back yard.
It was from his mother who kept forgetting his address just as she forgot that he was living with a man to have a semblance of family the best that he was able to do. She wrote that she called the office of Shin Se Gue in Chongju but the telephone line was disconnected. He knew that she was not thinking either that it had moved to Umsong or that he was now in Seoul.
He looked from the window to flat patches of skimpy forest that most Koreans thought of as so beautiful. The way was straight, south and barren and made him almost yearn for the tortuous roads that appeared near Umsong to be rid of scenery so bland. Although the bus traveled down the highway as a solid, jitterless mass, he jittered into more drowsiness.
One certainly could never part a Korean from his kimchee. Here women strapped babies behind their backs but even in a rural town like Umsong many carried cellular telephones in their purses. Koreans' love of making their country into a high tech Mecca was only secondary to their continued devotion to their obsolete pagers.
There were no private lessons there. His reactions toward Umsong also did not have much of a rationale.
"You must all eat," said Sung Ki as he poured water into the remaining rice in Sang Huin's bowl. He had heard it so many times. How they had carried on an affair with the sister staying there and the overnight visits of Sung Ki's father was a mystery. They had met in the park in Umsong. Sang Huin was memorizing words in his textbook entitled Let's Speak Korean.
Still, the isolation had its beauty: mountainous green hills near lush, green rice fields, and some good times such as when he and Yang Kwam made their way down a trail in the forest and then spent the night at the Umsong Stadium sleeping on the vast green Astroturf in the midst of empty yellow seats and stars.
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