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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" ><generator uri="https://jekyllrb.com/" version="3.10.0">Jekyll</generator><link href="https://ize-studio.github.io/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" /><link href="https://ize-studio.github.io/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" /><updated>2026-06-12T17:49:34+09:00</updated><id>https://ize-studio.github.io/feed.xml</id><title type="html">Ize Studio</title><subtitle>Essays on writing, reading, typewriters, e-ink tools, and the making of Ize Compose.</subtitle><author><name>Ize Studio</name></author><entry><title type="html">Writing Dialogue</title><link href="https://ize-studio.github.io/posts/essays/writing-dialogue.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Writing Dialogue" /><published>2026-06-12T00:00:00+09:00</published><updated>2026-06-12T00:00:00+09:00</updated><id>https://ize-studio.github.io/posts/essays/writing-dialogue</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://ize-studio.github.io/posts/essays/writing-dialogue.html"><![CDATA[<p>Write dialogue.</p>

<p>“Hey, did something happen today? Why does the mood feel like this?”</p>

<p>I meant to write whatever came to mind, but why did I end up writing a sentence that feels abrupt and bewildering even to me? They say that sometimes something from the unconscious world puts on the mask of randomness and gets caught in the net. If that is true, perhaps it is not entirely useless to think about what caused that sentence.</p>

<p>On the other hand, if the cause of that sentence is not in me, but purely in the force exerted inside the unconscious world, or, if force is not the right word, in its own internal dynamics, then whatever I guess may be wrong.</p>

<p>The mood is not good, so it feels as if something happened today. Why? In truth, the reason is unknowable. Unless someone tells me, I can never guess it. Otherwise I would not have asked the question. I would have asked whether it was because of this or that, not why.</p>

<p>What was my subconscious trying to tell me? Did it simply want to ask why I touched it, like a fish caught in a net and pulled up? If so, this falls into circular logic. The reason I pulled it up was that I wanted to hear a story. The story that was pulled up, in turn, tells me that what it ultimately wants from me is a story called the reason for something. Yes, let me be honest. I wanted to hear a story.</p>

<p>What happened? Yes, I wanted to hear your story. That is the whole reason. So stop asking questions now and tell me the story. What about the mood? Is the mood bad? Does it seem as if something happened? Why do you think so? Why does the mood look bad? Did you simply dislike the expression on my face, the one that was expecting a story from you?</p>

<p>I want to hear a story. Not a story I can commonly see and hear in life, and not something that has nothing to do with me, like an event happening at the far end of the universe. I want to hear the story that is happening inside me, so close and yet unknown to me. That is why I listen to dreams. But I know very well that relying on dreams will lead to nothing. So please speak. My unconscious, please trust me and speak.</p>

<p>Yes. I am wary of my unconscious. Like a blackout after drinking, I am negative toward the self I do not know. I want to stop the unconscious from bursting out in any way I can. But that only means I am wary of it coming outside me without my knowing. I truly want to know what shape it has when it is not doing something with my body in ordinary life, but exists purely as thought, as a state of reflection, as when I am lost in thought. And yet, once I come to know it, I do not know what I would do with that knowledge. I do not know what will come out. The world I do not know is this deep. No one knows whether what comes out will be what I call a religiously supreme state, a joyful state like the realization of all the principles of the world, or the emptiness of absolute nothingness. It may even differ from person to person. A situation may arrive that wraps around me completely like truth, yet differs from the truth of others, like the premise of an absolute religious war. What should I do then? Since not everyone can overhear such a story, should I simply insist that my words are the truth?</p>

<p>Yes. The great premise of everything is deceiving everyone.</p>

<p>The premise that such a state must exist.</p>

<p>Perhaps what we call the unconscious is only something like an illusion produced when the realm of instinct invades the realm of rational logic. Like when a dog presses a calculator and numbers appear on the screen, numbers the dog does not understand but that we can read, even though they have not the slightest connection to the dog.</p>

<p>Now, back to the starting point. I like stories like this. Stories in which one walks vigorously, keeps moving without rest on a round planet like the Earth, and finally returns to the same place. If I have walked this long only to come back to where I began, then surely this must be a place like the Little Prince’s planet, somewhere one can visit only in imagination.</p>]]></content><author><name>Ize Studio</name></author><category term="Essays" /><category term="essay" /><category term="translation" /><category term="writing" /><category term="unconscious" /><category term="dreams" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[Write dialogue.]]></summary></entry><entry xml:lang="en"><title type="html">It Was Not the World of Light, but the Baptism of Light</title><link href="https://ize-studio.github.io/posts/projects/it-was-not-the-world-of-light-but-the-baptism-of-light.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="It Was Not the World of Light, but the Baptism of Light" /><published>2026-06-08T00:00:00+09:00</published><updated>2026-06-08T00:00:00+09:00</updated><id>https://ize-studio.github.io/posts/projects/it-was-not-the-world-of-light-but-the-baptism-of-light</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://ize-studio.github.io/posts/projects/it-was-not-the-world-of-light-but-the-baptism-of-light.html"><![CDATA[<p>Subtitle: Before I Could Write Korean on the ZeroWriter Ink</p>

<p>It was the day before, the day I was reading <em>Leaves of Grass</em>.</p>

<p>I opened the book with some expectation because it was said to be the only Korean translation available in this country, but from the beginning, difficult sentences kept appearing, sentences that made me wonder whether the book would really have been praised so highly if it had been written like this from the start. Still, I could let that pass. Perhaps it was simply that kind of book. But when I reached the phrase “received the world of light,” I could not stand it any longer.</p>

<p>I searched to see whether the original text could be read online. Since it was an old book, the foundation had apparently made all of the books available. The files were easy to find, so I chose one edition, opened it on my phone, enlarged it, and began comparing the words. And when I actually reached the passage I had been reading, I had no choice but to conclude that the phrase should have been not “the world of light” but “the baptism of light.” I downloaded the original text so that next time I could compare it directly as I read, instead of only wondering about it.</p>

<p>The next day, I became exhausted from going back and forth between the book and the PDF file, and eventually ordered a copy of the original. There was one being sold at an online bookstore for 7,000 won. While waiting for the original to arrive, I began reading another book. It was just after that that I found out the ZeroWriter Ink had arrived at my house.</p>

<p>It was a crowdfunded product, but the box felt as if it had been properly packaged. What I am about to tell is a story about a tool for writing. However, unlike the advertisement from when the funding campaign began, the tool was not suitable for writing in every language. The website said that most Latin-based characters could currently be written, but it also said that languages such as Korean and Japanese would be supported in the next funding campaign.</p>

<p>Then what about this machine?</p>

<p>Still, it was not something I had received for free, nor was it something I had bought for twenty or thirty thousand won. I decided to try using it somehow. The first thought that came to me was to download the source code from the website and slightly modify it so that it would support Korean. I did not know much, but if I brought AI along with me, would something not come out of it?</p>

<p>In truth, I do not know programming well enough to vaguely think, “Would something not come out of it?” I can barely write Python code. Of course, I can do simple calculations or make the mouse click automatically. So if skill were measured from 0 to 100, I would not be at 0. Of course, that does not mean I would be anywhere near 100. I would not even be at 10.</p>

<p>But soon I learned that, contrary to the maker’s promise, even the code had not yet been released. It was open source, but its release had been delayed for various reasons. In the end, my hope of “slightly” changing something and writing with it disappeared.</p>

<p>But I was using Gemini. And then a small desire arose. That choice at that moment was the beginning of all this. Starting something modest with AI. Writing Korean on the ZeroWriter Ink. Above all, when I gave it the specifications, it immediately told me the hardware standards and coding language, so naturally I thought that if it was that much of an expert, it would not take long.</p>

<p>At the time, I did not think very seriously about coding with AI. So I went about it in a truly ignorant way. In fact, putting Korean into the machine itself was not that difficult. I did not even use VS Code. I simply opened the Arduino IDE, did as I was told, and asked Gemini:</p>

<p>“What should I do first?”</p>

<p>Gemini looked up the hardware specifications of the ZeroWriter Ink and told me to set this and that as the basic configuration. One quarter of the left side of the screen turned black. Then it began blinking endlessly.</p>

<p>People who have programmed before may laugh. At the time, I did not even know what a serial monitor was. It was only a month ago, but I have learned a lot since then. Startled, I quickly turned the machine off and thought for a moment.</p>

<p>“Should I ask Gemini about this situation and debug it, or should I quickly put the stock firmware back in and at least make it work in English?”</p>

<p>But this was literally the extreme of black-and-white thinking. It was the moment when I had to decide between making a machine I could use right away, and entering a period of waiting that might never lead to anything I could use.</p>

<p>Only the next product might support Korean, and this product might never support it at all. Crowdfunding always contains that possibility. People do not fund things because they are foolish. They fund them even while knowing that such a possibility exists.</p>

<p>In the end, I chose debugging.</p>

<hr />

<p>Korean original: <a href="https://brunch.co.kr/@rup-l/411">빛의 세계가 아니라 빛의 세례였다</a></p>]]></content><author><name>Ize Studio</name></author><category term="Projects" /><category term="project" /><category term="writing-tools" /><category term="translation" /><category term="brunch" /><category term="zerowriter" /><category term="ink" /><category term="firmware" /><category term="korean" /><category term="ai" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[Subtitle: Before I Could Write Korean on the ZeroWriter Ink]]></summary></entry><entry><title type="html">The Boundary of a Promise</title><link href="https://ize-studio.github.io/posts/fiction/the-boundary-of-a-promise-1.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="The Boundary of a Promise" /><published>2024-04-27T00:00:00+09:00</published><updated>2024-04-27T00:00:00+09:00</updated><id>https://ize-studio.github.io/posts/fiction/the-boundary-of-a-promise-1</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://ize-studio.github.io/posts/fiction/the-boundary-of-a-promise-1.html"><![CDATA[<p>A promise exists to be kept. Despite the scale theory that says a promise is something that makes each side step back from the point of maximum profit and forces the other side to do the same, thereby creating balance, I wondered whether another interpretation might be possible and asked my students to write about it. One student turned in the following piece. That student still seems to be under the illusion of living in the world of the living. There are no children here, and there is no play. Even a newborn has only just arrived here. That does not mean it is ignorant of how the world works. The analogy is wrong. I thought I had lived long enough, but perhaps I still have to live even longer before I can see the world properly. I am making the full text public as a warning to that student. I sincerely hope no one will make the foolish attempt to hold on to the viewpoint of that world in order to artificially hasten, even by a little, the natural phenomenon of being born again into the world of the living. I can say with certainty that until every embodied rule from the world of the living has been forgotten, that world will not be reachable even in a dream. Still less should anyone resort to the cheap trick of stirring nostalgia for that place in others. That is not a mistake. It is an act approaching crime. Without the protection of a professor, a student would be locked up at once. What follows is the full text written by that student. Since I have written this myself as a warning, I will not reveal the student’s name.</p>

<p>If one promises never to open one’s eyes, no matter what happens in the world, when is it permissible to break that promise? At what point is the promise voided? Or at what point is immunity for violating that promise silently allowed? If, not from the standpoint of fact but from the standpoint of thought, one opens one’s eyes in a state of darkness where nothing can be seen, and thereby comes to know that the whole world is dark, has one still broken the promise? Is a promise not to see anything different from a promise not to open one’s eyes? Or, because one ultimately saw nothing, has the promise been kept? What if one’s eyes were covered? Is the promise not to open one’s eyes still valid? Suppose that despite the blindfold, something is visible through a gap, and when one opens one’s eyes, one realizes what one was not supposed to see. But if one acts well enough, the other person will not know the promise has been violated. In that case, the promise has not been violated. But if one opened one’s eyes and still saw nothing because of the blindfold, that would be a violation of the promise, yet because nothing happened as a result, one would be granted immunity.</p>

<p>We are thinking now not at the level of law but at the level of children’s play. Even so, it is not simple at all. Although the words and concepts children use are simple, the various concepts they call forth are so simple in themselves that applying them to reality becomes more difficult. Let us return to the beginning. If one promises never to open one’s eyes no matter what happens in the world, with whom is that promise made? If it is a vow made to oneself, it does not matter if one breaks it. There may only be the possibility of regretting, again and again, one’s own lack of will. But even that is only a possibility. Self-exemption requires no mutual agreement, so it is always possible. If the other person dies, I will automatically be released from the promise.</p>

<p>But what if Medusa is in front of me? If the premise was that I must not open my eyes in order to stay alive, then the promise was made by the other person for my sake, and there is no outcome that is unilaterally advantageous to the other person simply because both sides keep it. If, while trying to protect me, the other person met her eyes and turned to stone, I would have to keep the promise in order not to turn to stone myself. If Medusa is waving a sword around, I will die either way. But if Medusa is also in a petrified state, and the promise was made because meeting her eyes even then would kill me, then the ultimate goal of not opening my eyes is only not to look at Medusa. Therefore, I do not need to keep my eyes shut. I only need to look at the ground. I simply need to have no interest whatsoever in what is on the ground, what the ceiling is like, or what decorations are on the walls. I should have been told to care about nothing except keeping my balance while looking at the ground. Since the promise itself was flawed, it does not matter if I break it. However, this could only be argued if the other person were still alive. If that person has already disappeared, I will be released from the promise automatically. But even if the promise was flawed, the moment I free myself from it and lift my head, I may turn to stone, and the promise will have failed in what it set out to accomplish. Of course, this would be a matter of urgent danger, so it would not really become an issue at the moment of entering a cave where an actual statue of Medusa has been placed. Everyone would turn to stone before having time for such concerns.</p>

<p>Now that we have looked briefly at the middle and the end, let us look at the beginning. No matter what happens. What can happen? What cases were imagined, and what minimum and maximum expectations were set, for one to be able never to open one’s eyes? What about a spider crawling over the back of one’s hand? Something is crawling there, and yet one is told to keep one’s eyes closed. If, at the time of making the promise, the situation was life or death as before, the reason for saying not to open one’s eyes even if something touches one’s skin was most likely to prevent panic. In that case, one should simply keep one’s eyes closed. But suppose the other person somehow knew one’s birthday, prepared a cake, and seems to be about to show it. Then, while one’s eyes are closed, instead of a spider on the back of the hand, there is the sound of a cup breaking, and the other person says “Ah!” and seems to have collapsed onto the floor. May one open one’s eyes? Since whether the other person is injured has much greater value than the intended goal, that would be a sufficient condition for immunity. If it was not a cake but a gift of jewelry, and if the cup did break but the sound was not the other person falling, only the cake splattering onto the floor along with the cup, then the other person may be angry when one opens one’s eyes. But because we were born into a world that holds human beings to be most important, we can force immunity on the grounds that we were made to worry. The other person should apologize for creating a situation in which one could misunderstand that they might have been hurt, not argue over whether the promise was kept.</p>

<p>Then let us look again at the whole sentence. No matter what happens, one must never open one’s eyes. The degree to which performance of the promise is compelled is determined by the gravity of the thing that happens. The phrase “not opening one’s eyes” can be diversified, implicitly, from the degree of physical exposure of the eyeballs to a point where it is enough that the image is not actually interpreted through the optic nerve. And the sentence ends with “must not.” What is hidden there is reward and punishment. If a punishment for violation and a benefit for compliance are given, one can infer from them the reason one must not open one’s eyes, and that reason is closely tied to the degree of compulsion behind performance. Therefore, even this simple sentence must be interpreted by grasping the conditions before and after it from context, considering the situation, and including implicit matters such as one’s relationship with the other person within that context. Children’s play works by resetting countless things and making interpretation extremely simple. If the interpretation is wrong, no one is hurt and no money is taken. The difference is only like the rules of Go-Stop, which vary by region. But if one looks even a little more closely, it becomes possible to enlarge and dissect this too, much as looking through a microscope reveals that what seemed inanimate is actually something like soil for microorganisms.</p>

<p>If “not opening one’s eyes no matter what happens” is reduced to the extreme, it becomes “Do not open your eyes.” Here the concluding “do not” is presented only as a vague instruction, a promise, and the consequences of following or not following that instruction can be roughly guessed as two things: “There is a higher chance it will be fun,” and “You will be blamed for making it no fun.” It is pressure to keep the promise in order to avoid blame, but there is only the expectation that it may be fun, not any certainty. Still, not every game is fun every day, and if something is to become exciting enough that time seems to pass quickly, one must cooperate to some extent with actions that raise that possibility. This promise is no more than one part of that. The obligation is only this much: a level of implicit and moral pressure within agreement, the ordinary kind applied to the rules of most games.</p>

<p>The action itself is to close one’s eyes. The purpose of this is not so much to avoid the danger of opening one’s eyes as to reduce the ordinariness of seeing with open eyes. In children’s play, closing or covering the eyes usually serves the purpose of laughing at the state of not being able to see ahead and therefore not being able to move in the intended direction. Thus it belongs less to an emotional or physical device for protecting the child with closed eyes than to an auxiliary condition of the game. Yet not every game becomes more exciting when the eyes are closed. Just as hide-and-seek would require additional devices if played blindfolded, closing the eyes often makes things more cumbersome. Usually, when a game requires someone to close their eyes, the person whose eyes are covered is likely to have a relatively safe role with little need to move. Therefore, in games where closing the eyes is important, being able to see naturally adds an effort to secure safety that would otherwise not need to be secured, and the game becomes dull.</p>

<p>Lastly, there may rarely be cases in which someone is made unable to open their eyes in order to tease them. The target may be covering their eyes or keeping them closed for one of the purposes listed above, while the others are actually using that purpose as a pretext to observe the target waiting and reacting. In such cases, the time it takes for the target to realize the truth varies greatly. Sometimes the target realizes immediately because nothing happens when the game should begin. Sometimes everyone says they are about to begin, then takes advantage of the fact that the target cannot open their eyes and leaves, so that the target spends a long time asking whether it is all right to open their eyes. There are countless cases in between, but the closer it gets to the latter, the more it becomes something like bullying rather than play. When the purpose is not shared by all participants, a minority with a different purpose may be made into the target of bullying, and this happens so naturally that the target too often dismisses it as a joke.</p>

<p>Although I have carried out simplification quite forcefully, there are still too many possible cases, and they do not organize themselves well. Perhaps the boundary grew wider precisely because I simplified it. I hastily assumed that children would have a narrow range of thought about actions, but in fact, as said above, if what is involved is only simple play without subtle violence or ostracism, that range does not become especially narrow just because it is children’s play. Pure play has a fixed frame, and actions that consider only simple fun tend rather to decrease as one becomes an adult, so it can be inferred that the total breadth is similar.</p>

<p>“I will not open my eyes, no matter what happens in the world.” In fact, this sentence is too heavy for children to use. It is absurdly heavy, so heavy that each word is perfect for use in a joke through exaggeration. A way of speaking like “I will not eat carrots, no matter what happens in the world” brings a smile to adults’ lips. But when used in play, it becomes an amusing sentence that merely adds one more rule. What about on a battlefield? Depending on what rule and what background are made, tens of thousands of cases arise, and according to each of them, the appropriate action, that is, what it means to faithfully keep the promise, can differ. In one case, the act of keeping that promise may mean trampling on the same promise in another. Every case in human affairs has its own chains, and words keep watch without rest, judging whether to fasten the chains around the wrists or around the ankles of those cases. A promise is a promise no matter what happens, but it is not something that must be kept no matter what happens. Promises are not always kept, but as long as something is called a promise, it is useful to both sides to act as fittingly as possible according to the case.</p>

<hr />

<p>Korean original: <a href="https://brunch.co.kr/@rup-l/4">약속의 경계</a></p>]]></content><author><name>Ize Studio</name></author><category term="Fiction" /><category term="essay" /><category term="translation" /><category term="brunch" /><category term="fiction" /><category term="promise" /><category term="interpretation" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[A promise exists to be kept. Despite the scale theory that says a promise is something that makes each side step back from the point of maximum profit and forces the other side to do the same, thereby creating balance, I wondered whether another interpretation might be possible and asked my students to write about it. One student turned in the following piece. That student still seems to be under the illusion of living in the world of the living. There are no children here, and there is no play. Even a newborn has only just arrived here. That does not mean it is ignorant of how the world works. The analogy is wrong. I thought I had lived long enough, but perhaps I still have to live even longer before I can see the world properly. I am making the full text public as a warning to that student. I sincerely hope no one will make the foolish attempt to hold on to the viewpoint of that world in order to artificially hasten, even by a little, the natural phenomenon of being born again into the world of the living. I can say with certainty that until every embodied rule from the world of the living has been forgotten, that world will not be reachable even in a dream. Still less should anyone resort to the cheap trick of stirring nostalgia for that place in others. That is not a mistake. It is an act approaching crime. Without the protection of a professor, a student would be locked up at once. What follows is the full text written by that student. Since I have written this myself as a warning, I will not reveal the student’s name.]]></summary></entry><entry><title type="html">I Was a Boy</title><link href="https://ize-studio.github.io/posts/fiction/i-was-a-boy.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="I Was a Boy" /><published>2024-04-26T00:00:00+09:00</published><updated>2024-04-26T00:00:00+09:00</updated><id>https://ize-studio.github.io/posts/fiction/i-was-a-boy</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://ize-studio.github.io/posts/fiction/i-was-a-boy.html"><![CDATA[<p>I was a boy. I do not know how far back my memory goes. My first memory was of a strange shape becoming another shape as light fell across it. When I think of it now, I imagine that it must have been a staircase, but I cannot be sure whether that white space was something I saw in a dream or something I saw in life. The only thing I can say with certainty is that it was the first memory of this life of mine. After that, I remember being five years old and being looked down on by a friend because I could not read. That friend never did teach me my letters. But whenever play turned even a little against him, he would take out his anger by making a show of the fact that he knew how to read. From the age of five onward, I do have scattered memories of one thing and another. But if someone asked me to tell any story I happened to remember, most of what came to mind would probably be things that happened after I was nine. That was when a school was first built in our village. Even a child like me, they said, had to go to school. My parents objected, saying I had to work, but the country did not allow such things. From my point of view, it was good not to have to work, but more than anything, the thought that I would be able to read was appealing.</p>

<p>The school gave us books, and when classes ended I left mine on my desk. School finished at two. Other children would probably go home and eat lunch first, but I had to go straight into the forest. In fact, when I hummed the things I had learned at school while picking up branches, I could gather far more than I did when I was simply working because I had to. So no one at home said much about my going to school. Nothing much happened at school either. Just ordinary things: the smell from the toilet reaching all the way to the classroom one day, a window breaking while we were cleaning, things like that.</p>

<p>Then, around the time I was to graduate, they said they would tear down the building and put up a new two-story one. A lot happened then. Sometimes the girls would run around and show their underwear by accident, and the boys, if they suddenly felt hot, would take off their shirts. Looking back now, there were children there who would have been about the age of second-year middle school students, so it was understandable. On top of that, they tore down the building and set up tents in the schoolyard for everyone to study in, so there was no helping the restless atmosphere.</p>

<p>There were no more music classes. The children who were going to attend middle school in town began studying mathematics. It looked the same as arithmetic, but even at a glance it seemed difficult. I had no money to go to middle school, so just as before, I would come home at two, make sure my parents had gone out to the fields, and head straight into the forest. By then I could catch small rabbits or foxes and roast them in the forest, or bring them home. Once, after roasting and eating one, I ran a high fever that night and lay sick for two full days. When I told my mother I had eaten a rabbit, she said it was because I had eaten it without cleaning it, and she beat me severely, saying I had lost my mind over meat and eaten it alone without even telling my parents. Other children had many siblings, but I was alone in our house. Whenever that came up, my father grew angry and my mother smiled in a way I could not understand, so I could not ask why. It was fortunate I was already over ten then. If I had had a younger sibling, I might have secretly shared it, and who knows what might have happened.</p>

<p>After that, whenever I caught an animal, I cleaned it, washed it, and brought it home. We had nowhere to store anything, and we were always hungry, so whatever I caught that day we ate that day, grilled or steamed. There were many days when rice was short and we filled our stomachs with meat alone. In winter we even caught and ate water deer.</p>

<p>When I was eighteen, I followed my father to the city. We rode in a truck to town and then took a train. It was the first truck I had ever ridden in, and though I do not know how many hours I sat in it, as soon as I got down my stomach lurched so badly that I ran to a corner and threw up. Even though it was also my first time in town, I somehow had the presence of mind to look for a building and run behind it. They said there was a fine if you vomited in the middle of the street. It was for keeping the place clean, they said, but I wondered why they went that far when the rain would wash it away anyway. Perhaps it was not a rule made to stop people from doing it, but a rule made to take their money.</p>

<p>After we arrived, there were many foods I had never seen before. My father said he had received something called investment money and bought several things from street stalls. We stood in a corner, ate them all, and walked in another direction. Even from town we walked another thirty minutes or so before there was a train station. They said the place was not developed enough for the tracks to come all the way into the middle of town. To me, compared with the village where I had lived, there were already an overwhelming number of people and things I had never seen. If this was not developed, I could not understand what developed meant.</p>

<p>We rode the train for only about an hour before getting off. The train was much better than the truck. It was clean inside, there were many people wearing good clothes, and I did not get motion sickness. But perhaps because there were so many people, I could definitely hear Korean here and there. At home we did speak Korean, but outside I had only ever spoken Japanese, so it felt awkward.</p>

<p>“You have to be able to speak Korean the way you speak Japanese. It is courtesy to match the person you are speaking to.”</p>

<p>My father told me that, but I still had the fixed idea that Korean was something spoken only among family, and it felt terribly awkward.</p>

<p>As I mumbled imaginary conversations to myself in Korean, we reached the place where we had to get off. Since everyone was preparing to leave, I looked at my father and saw that he too had shouldered his luggage. We waited until everyone else had gotten off, then I followed my father and mother down.</p>

<p>The station was truly full of people flowing like water. Crowds moved all at once this way, then all at once that way. At the crosswalks people stood packed together, then when the signal changed they surged across. The sight of crowds the likes of which I had never seen even in town sweeping back and forth all day made me dizzy just watching it at first. There had even been traffic lights in town, but they had been turned off. Here, everyone stood watching the traffic lights.</p>

<p>My father worked in a printing shop. He said he was working with a Japanese man. In fact, the place had first been opened with money that the Japanese man had brought from Japan, but once they earned enough and paid that money back, the Japanese man and my father would split the business between them. So I was to help with the work after school.</p>

<p>But going to school was not easy. I had not intended to go to middle school, and no one at home had expected it either. My father, who had thought one could attend as long as one had money, was told I was not at the level needed to enter middle school and said I should just quit. But the son of the Japanese man my father worked with was a high school student, and he agreed to teach me little by little at the print shop while also helping me prepare for the middle school entrance exam.</p>

<p>The Japanese man who worked with my father had not originally known him, but he said his elder brother had once been indebted to my father. I do not know what could have happened for him to be indebted to my father all the way out in that countryside, but he must have insisted over and over that my father was trustworthy. Five years later, after the investment money had been paid back, the Japanese man took only 40 percent for himself and let our family take 60 percent, except for the 20 percent of profits my father set aside as reserves, using as his reason the fact that my father had won exclusive printing contracts here and there with various organizations. To be honest, I had never imagined that my father would be good at drinking and dealing with people. But it was fascinating to watch him use language however he wished: sometimes doing business in Korean, sometimes in Japanese; sometimes laughing and speaking Korean in a strange accent to tease someone, sometimes dragging out Japanese slowly to needle them. In those places I too was given a glass or two of liquor, though not much because I was still young, and it was fortunate that I could see those scenes up close.</p>

<p>I entered middle school smoothly. There were said to be cases of children bullying one another, but even when I studied at school, I had to help with printing afterward. Perhaps because so many people were connected with our shop through printing, even our school decided to entrust its printing to us, and I could sense the other children avoiding me a little. I thought that if things went on like this, it might be all right to inherit the printing business, but at the same time I was anxious that I would not be able to do sales the way my father did.</p>

<p>When a manuscript came in, we counted the characters and drew slashes at regular character counts. The space between one slash and the next became one line on the press. Sometimes the printed width was narrow and sometimes it was wide, so the length of a line was decided by that width. Once I received the paper marked like that, I set the type. This was the part that took the longest. If even one slash had been marked incorrectly, all the following slashes had to be shifted by that amount, so it took even longer. Once all the type had been set, the Japanese older boy looked over it to see if I had done it correctly. For Japanese, I set the type and he checked it. For Korean, he set the type and I checked it. It only made sense that checking should not take longer than setting.</p>

<p>If there were no problems, we operated the machine, inked the rollers, and printed as the paper passed through. Our shop mostly handled large sheets printed on both sides, like newspapers, so there was not much cutting to do, but folding required a great deal of skill.</p>

<p>One day, while I was working, someone waved from outside the window. It was a girl I often ran into on my way to school in the morning. The first few times I greeted her, she turned her head away as if irritated, but later she began to raise her hand first and greet me. Still, if I tried to speak to her she ran away. That day, on her way home from school, she had stopped by our shop. Not knowing what to do, I lowered my head again and turned the machine. The paper was being cut and piled up. I looked at it for a while, then turned my eyes back to the window and saw that the girl was still standing there, staring blankly at the press. When she realized I was looking at her, she waved again. This time I waved back. After only waving her hand, she left.</p>

<p>The high school boy, who had been watching, said,</p>

<p>“I think she likes you.”</p>

<p>He had a look on his face as if he found it cute.</p>

<p>“She does not like me. At first she only got annoyed.”</p>

<p>“People can be like that when they do not know you. Now she has seen you often enough that you look all right to her, so she came all the way here.”</p>

<p>“She has not seen me enough to know anything. She probably just came because it is unusual to know someone at a print shop.”</p>

<p>Still, after hearing what he said, I became a little interested.</p>

<p>Once a week, we tightened the bolts on the press. The places that could come loose were fixed. When you turned them, they moved even if only a little. Any place that moved even a little would loosen bit by bit because of the vibration once the press was running. My father and the boy’s father would each turn the bolts by hand at the start or end of printing.</p>

<p>That day too was supposed to be the day to tighten the bolts, but there were many complicated characters and I was in a hurry, so I forgot and rushed to set the type and run the machine. Then, while the machine was running, I belatedly tightened the bolts and missed one in the middle. When I realized I had missed it, I thought I should do it at the end, then thought I might simply forget again, so I decided to do it right away and turned the wrench. To my surprise, it turned loosely. I think it turned almost a full rotation. Even when I put strength into it, it just kept turning. It was strange. Even after nearly two rotations it continued to turn. I thought I would turn it just a little more, and at that moment there was a ping. What was that? I looked at the wrench and saw that the head of the bolt was gone. Then everything in front of me grew hazy. For a moment, I thought I heard the boy calling me.</p>

<p>When I opened my eyes, it was night. Everything before me was black. I saw that I was covered with a blanket. When I sat up, it was hard to keep my balance. What lay beneath me was not a floor mat. It was not tatami either. I seemed to have come to my senses, but something was wrong. I barely got to my feet, and the next moment I fell with a thud. The floor had dropped away. My ankle, knee, and hip twisted, and without meaning to I screamed. But no one responded. I barely stood up and looked around. It was a large room I had never been in before. There was a switch on the wall for turning on fluorescent lights, but I had only seen such switches at the print shop, never at home. At home there were only bulbs and switches hanging from the necks of the bulbs, but in the dim scene before me there was no bulb on the ceiling. I made my way to the wall and clicked the switch up, and a flood of fluorescent light poured down so bright it dazzled my eyes.</p>

<p>One wall was filled with mother-of-pearl wardrobes. When I turned around, I saw the wooden bed I had been lying on. The blanket was shining silk. Bewildered, I sat there and went over what had happened.</p>

<p>I had been born in the countryside with no siblings. I had followed my father to a city, worked in a print shop, and attended middle school. A girl had followed me to the shop, and when I told the son of my father’s business partner, an older boy, he said she liked me. I was so used to the work of the print shop, setting type and operating the machine, that I could do it even without adults there. I lifted my hand and looked down at it. The motion of picking up each piece of type and lightly rubbing it against the side wall so the adjacent piece would not come along, the motion of using the tip of a finger as a base against the forme and pushing the type in with my fourth finger-my fingers felt as if, even in the middle of this night, if someone placed the press before me, they could set the type in an instant. But I could not speak Japanese.</p>

<p>Huh?</p>

<p>That was right. I could not speak Japanese. And Korean was not Joseonmal anymore; I spoke Korean. Just in case, I put my hand between my legs. I could not grasp anything. I put my hand to my chest. I was unmistakably a woman. And yet the memory of having been a boy was vivid.</p>

<p>Did I die like that? Hit by the head of a bolt?</p>

<p>It was 1960 now, so the background would have been at least thirty or forty years earlier. But I did not know what city it had been, or what countryside. I felt I had heard the names, but already they were growing vague, like a dream. Since I was forty, had he died and been reborn as me?</p>

<p>In any case, the dream had been far too vivid. And I had thought that everything I did from then on–with that girl, with my studies–would matter. Then it ended like that. I was angry. It was heartbreaking. How could it end so absurdly?</p>

<p>I went out to the living room, took the water bottle from the refrigerator, and poured water into a cup. The bottle cap had not been closed all the way, but the cup was clean, so my husband must have put his mouth to the bottle again while drinking from it. On any ordinary day I would have been angry, but today the feeling was tangled with the emotions from the dream, and everything felt blurred. My knee and ankle, which had hurt when I fell earlier, still ached a little, but it felt not as if I had hurt myself by falling, but as if I had awakened after being hurt in the dream.</p>

<p>I cried. I cried because I pitied the boy. I cried because I thought, I should have lived harder. I cried because I was sorry I had not done my best to look around me a little more.</p>

<p>Sitting at the dining chair, things returned to me one by one. I must have failed to close the water bottle tightly when I filled it and put it in the refrigerator. My husband had already passed away two years earlier. In the country house, my five children would be sleeping now. I was in the Seoul house because of the clothing brand my husband had left behind. The executives handled most things on their own, but there had been something important, so I had come up to Seoul to finish the work, and in the morning I would take the train back home. The first and second children were university students, the third was in high school, and the fourth and fifth were in elementary school. All except the fifth were boys. My in-laws had gone on and on about sons, but after I had borne three sons they said they wanted to see a granddaughter too. When I gave birth to the youngest, they were so delighted that for a year they came to the house almost every day.</p>

<p>The clothing brand was doing better than expected. The department store entry that my husband had been preparing just before he died, but never saw through to the end, had been confirmed, and from then on the company went fully on track. We listed stocks and even separated the sales and asset-management divisions into affiliates. If my husband had been alive, he would probably be called Chairman by now. It is sad, but each day is so busy that there is no time to sink into sentiment.</p>

<p>Tomorrow, as soon as I get off at the train station, I have to take a taxi to meet the homeroom teacher of my fourth child, who is in elementary school. The children do not cause trouble, but sometimes they do absurd things. The quietest was the first, but he was only quiet; the absurdity was the same. The second said he wanted to become a singer who sang in English and go study in America, but after a teacher told him he sang so badly it was unbelievable, he oddly declared the very next day that he would study again.</p>

<p>This time the fourth had apparently danced inside the classroom. He had said he would become a famous dancer, and even when the other children booed him, he stubbornly insisted, pushed all the desks to the back of the classroom, and danced. Then, when the children said he was bad at it, he cried and cried and did not go to school the next day. After receiving that call yesterday, I telephoned the housekeeper, and it seemed he had not come out of his room. Fortunately, he had eaten everything brought to him. But I needed to know exactly what had happened, so that I could either comfort him or scold him properly. It seemed necessary to speak with his homeroom teacher.</p>

<p>Suddenly a thought came to me. If my child had been that strange and had turned out to be just the son of a print shop, would the school have called me so kindly? If he had danced and sung like that, would they have watched quietly without beating him? I felt newly grateful to my husband. Then I thought that perhaps in the dream, my father had worked so desperately and run around so hard because he too wanted to live even a little better, and tears came again.</p>

<p>Until morning, I could not get free of that dream. The sense of loss was too great. An entire life had disappeared from inside my head, and I could not tell whether it had disappeared only from my head or whether something that had actually existed had vanished and I had simply come to know it. No, to be honest, there is no difference. Even when you read a novel, is it not sad when a vivid protagonist dies? It is sad because the dream is vivid. Even when I tried to think that way, I kept thinking of the father’s grief at losing his son, the shock of the older boy who had seen his close younger friend die before his eyes, the sorrow of the girl who would learn that the boy she liked had died only minutes after she last saw him. Would the print shop go on as it had? Would the father be able to stay sane and continue printing? Would the high school boy who had seen the death of someone he knew right in front of him be able to live normally? If it had been a dream, then the dream had simply ended, and there would be nothing after that. There would be nothing to worry about. But somehow I felt that the time after it was cruelly continuing to flow, and because of the bolt I simply could not see that flow anymore. It was an instinctive feeling.</p>

<p>I went back to bed and lay down, trying to sleep again, but sleep did not come. When I closed my eyes, I saw the inside of the print shop. I stared blankly at the press, then looked toward the glass window and saw the girl smiling. When I turned around, the older boy was there, watching anxiously to see whether the printing was going well.</p>

<p>Toward dawn, I briefly fell asleep and woke. I think I had slept for a little less than an hour. Because I had only dozed off for a moment while tossing and turning, I did not feel rested at all. Besides, last night’s dream was still so vivid that I felt as if my feet were planted in two worlds at once. But I had made all my appointments, so there was nothing to be done. Resigned to the idea that I would have to sleep deeply on the train, I showered and dressed. I decided I could redo my makeup after I arrived.</p>

<p>After getting off at the train station, I stood for a while on the platform and watched another train pass by. Only a small number of those who had just gotten off had crossed over, so there were still many people on the platform. Just before the train passed, something familiar crossed my eyes. No, something I thought of as familiar was there in the scene. Apart from the station itself, there was unexpectedly nothing familiar, and yet I felt a sense of deja vu. A noisy locomotive was approaching, but I could not hear even that sound. I was only busy looking at the station building through other people’s heads and hats, trying to find what I had just seen.</p>

<p>A cap.</p>

<p>It was the cap the older boy had worn in the dream. Perhaps it had been part of a school uniform. I had been thinking the dream was vivid, but I had not imagined it would be vivid enough to be imprinted on my memory like this, enough for me to think of it as something that had truly happened, enough to feel deja vu. But the train immediately passed through, and because it was passing a platform where people stood, it moved very slowly. Enough time passed for me to make eye contact with the people riding inside as the train crawled by, and at last I was able to cross five or six platforms and pass through the ticket gate. By then, however, I could no longer see that cap.</p>

<p>I touched up my makeup roughly in the restroom and went out toward the plaza. As it was winter, the smell of roasting sweet potatoes and chestnuts filled the air here and there. In the midst of all my distraction, I realized I was hungry because I had eaten nothing that morning. I had not arrived terribly early, but there was no need to hurry, so I bought a bag of roasted chestnuts.</p>

<p>The man blew into a sheet of paper to make it into a bag and, with tongs, filled it tightly with chestnuts. I counted out the money and took the bag. Usually, when someone sells roasted chestnuts or sweet potatoes, they say something like Enjoy them or Thank you, but the man said,</p>

<p>“Stay strong!”</p>

<p>I was startled. Did it show that I was troubled because of my fourth child? Or had he seen that I was confused because of the dream? I looked at him with my eyes wide. He grew flustered and said,</p>

<p>“No, I just thought you looked like you had not slept, so I said that to cheer you up. I did not mean anything bad.”</p>

<p>Perhaps, sleepy as I was, I had jumped to conclusions. Embarrassed, I said,</p>

<p>“No, it helped.”</p>

<p>I thanked him and turned away.</p>

<p>The station plaza was quite wide. There were more and more cars now, but not enough yet to separate sidewalks from roads, so cars and people moved mixed together. In Seoul, if it were like this, the sound of horns would be blaring everywhere, but here the drivers had to avoid people as best they could. Still, there were many people walking, so it was not easy to eat while carrying something around. I went back into the station and sat on a bench.</p>

<p>I should have just told the driver to come out, I thought. I had planned to take a taxi and get off nearby so I could walk to the school, because going there in my own car felt like putting on airs. But now that I thought about it, even if I took my own car, I could simply get off before the schoolyard and walk. As I put one chestnut after another into my mouth and thought this over, I began to grow annoyed. Worse still, I had made that decision yesterday morning, after a good night’s sleep. Why had I decided that?</p>

<p>But no matter how much I tried to focus on such small things and think about them, the inside of the print shop with its wooden-framed glass window kept coming to mind. The thought even occurred to me that perhaps, resentful at having died like that, I had not been able to leave this world and had been born into this body.</p>

<p>At the school I had worried so much about visiting, the meeting showed that in truth it was nothing serious after all. It would not be right to say I had worried for nothing; rather, it was fortunate that my worries had not become reality. The teacher had only meant kindly to let me know, since ours was a fatherless household, in case I did not know enough about the children or might worry too much if I misunderstood. It was not something likely to turn into a serious matter like what had happened with the first child. Still, it did seem true that the fourth had a certain gift. Not enough to make a living as a performer, perhaps, but I thought he might be good at planning things or arranging a stage.</p>

<p>Ten years passed, and I forgot all about that dream. All the children were earning money. The second had taken over the company, and the first worked at another company. Fashion still seemed to make no sense to him no matter how hard he tried. But industry must have been calculable to him, because he worked in sales for a trading company. Since it dealt in industrial imports, it had almost no point of contact with us. The third and fourth worked in our company’s sales branches. Though it was not a single branch but overall management, the work required a sense for branch design and layout; the fourth would propose three or four options, and the third would choose one from among them. Put the two of them together, and to be honest, almost anything seemed likely to work out. The youngest became a professor. Seeing how early she became one, I suppose the family background must have played some role, but she herself had not failed to work hard, so even if I did not boast of it, I did not try to hide it either.</p>

<p>The five children were each doing their part, and with the help of the board, the company seemed to be running smoothly. Then a problem arose. The person who had been my husband’s partner from the beginning gathered major shareholders and tried to sell the company off. Later this came out in the media after several shareholders’ meetings and rounds of lawsuits, and the children too had a hard time working at the company. One day I gathered four of the children and told them,</p>

<p>“There is no problem with our family right now, is there? Company matters are to be resolved legally within the company. So, first child, do not think of quitting your job and coming in here to do something because of this. Just remember that you are the only person in our family who earns money outside our company. If things go wrong, your family must not be harmed too. Second, I still have control of the board, so keep managing things as you have been. Third and fourth, there may be people who openly ignore you on site, so do not stand in front of customers. But go to the branches often enough that no one forgets the company still belongs to us. As for the youngest, I do not know whether she has seen the news, but she seems busy with a paper these days. There is no need to contact her deliberately, but if she calls when she has a little breathing room, tell her the truth.”</p>

<p>All the children were married, but only the first had children, two sons. I had seen them only when they were babies, not after they had grown a little. I thought they would not feel safe being held by their grandmother until this whole matter was over. Three years passed, and the company stabilized again. It had been the company’s greatest crisis. Even so, the company continued to grow. No one had imagined it, but exports had begun. Each time a new contract was made, I went to my husband’s grave and cried. He had left after laying the company’s foundation without seeing how firm it would become, and the crisis, though not simple, had been rot from within; yet we had cut it out and risen more stubbornly than before.</p>

<p>“I did well, didn’t I?”</p>

<p>I asked whenever I went to his grave, whenever I looked at his photograph in the bedroom. He seemed to nod. Because he was always smiling in the photograph, it felt as if he were telling me he knew everything. Even the five children had not yet all gathered together as adults. I thought that if only we held one family gathering, I would have done my duty to my husband. In fact, we were able to hold a family gathering only after all five children had given me grandchildren. I had never imagined such a noisy family gathering.</p>

<p>The family gathering was held together with my sixtieth birthday celebration. It was called a celebration, but we simply rented a small wedding hall and did not use company money. We did not invite executives. We only called it a family gathering and did not say unnecessary things like whether it was a birthday or a sixtieth birthday.</p>

<p>A large cake came out, and they had prepared a great deal of Western-style fuss, cutting ceremony and all. When I brought up the cost, the youngest stopped me.</p>

<p>“Oh, it is not much. Now, hold the knife here and try cutting it. Excuse me! You are taking pictures over there, right?”</p>

<p>The youngest chattered excitedly. Even the small children were smiling, as if they had never seen their mother so animated. After we cut the cake, beer was finally placed at each seat. At first they had asked about soju or liquor too. I had originally said people could order what they wanted and that I would drink only beer, but I changed my mind and told them not to bring soju or liquor at all. While running the company, whenever I attracted investment or dealt with bad matters, whenever soju or liquor became involved, sexual harassment or verbal abuse always followed. Only after I had aged to a certain point did it become all right. Before then, there were times when I wondered whether people were confusing me for someone in the drinking business rather than the fashion business. The years I spent brushing it off and answering as if nothing were wrong are nothing to be proud of. It is not something one should have to do. If I had put that same energy into the business instead, might this country have become much better off? And surely such things did not happen to me alone. The more I thought like that, the more upset I became at the sight of soju or liquor.</p>

<p>I drank a glass of beer in one go and called the children.</p>

<p>“If I drink more my face will probably get red. Shall we take the group photo now?”</p>

<p>Then the first child said to the children,</p>

<p>“We are going to take pictures now, so go put on your nice clothes.”</p>

<p>The children took uniform-like jackets out of their bags and put them on. And just before the photo was taken, they put on caps. Seeing them from behind, I recognized the cap from that old dream, the cap the older boy had worn, the cap from the familiar railway. That was it. I simply thought,</p>

<p>Ah, so it was just a school uniform after all,</p>

<p>and smiled. I had seen such things often when I was young too. It might have stood out a little more because it had appeared in the dream, but perhaps it had appeared in the dream precisely because it was familiar.</p>

<p>Five years after my sixtieth birthday celebration, I collapsed while walking down the street. Someone reported it, and an ambulance carried me away. I had no memory of collapsing, nor of feeling pain anywhere. I had simply fallen all of a sudden. While I was in the hospital, the second child came straight to my room. The hospital must have contacted him right away.</p>

<p>“Mom, hyung will come tonight too. I heard from the doctor that surgery is possible, but I will talk to the doctor about that.”</p>

<p>I was not thinking about surgery at all. So instead of answering, I said this to the second child:</p>

<p>“Your older brother too, of course, but I have a bad feeling. I would like all of you to gather once. Not the little ones. Just the six of us.”</p>

<p>“All right. I will contact everyone. Do not think bad thoughts. If you have surgery, you will get better.”</p>

<p>But the doctor suspected something in the brain, and after tests he said that even with surgery, the chance of survival would not rise very much. More than anything, I had the feeling that I would not make it past the following Wednesday. I called the second child again and told him we should gather again on Wednesday evening. The youngest had not yet been able to come because she had a presentation overseas. So I insisted again and again that everyone had to gather on Wednesday.</p>

<p>The next morning, the youngest called.</p>

<p>“Mom, I booked a flight that arrives Wednesday morning. I will be beside you from the morning, not just the evening. I love you.”</p>

<p>From her voice, she must have been calling in the middle of the night over there to match the morning here.</p>

<p>“All right, so go to sleep. You could have told your brother. Why make a call for that?”</p>

<p>“People feel sad when they are sick. Someone has to say one more caring word. Who will do that if not your daughter?”</p>

<p>“Hey, come and do it, come and do it. Go to sleep.”</p>

<p>“All right. Mom, you rest too and stay comfortable. That way your blood will flow well.”</p>

<p>I stared blankly at the ceiling. Only after a little while, when I heard the loud doo-doo-doo-doo sound meaning the receiver had not been placed properly, did I crawl across the bed and hang up the phone.</p>

<p>On Saturday, my condition suddenly worsened. It seemed the problem was not only in my brain or blood vessels. I lost consciousness once and woke, and the doctor said that just in case, if there was anything I wanted to say, it would be best to say it now. After hearing that, the first child arrived first. Then the third, the fourth, and the second…</p>

<p>“Did she say when the youngest might be able to come?”</p>

<p>“She said she booked a plane ticket in a hurry. She contacted us saying she would take anything that departed as soon as possible. She is rushing so much she is already at the airport, so it is hard to reach her.”</p>

<p>“I will sleep for now. It is night, so I must be sleepy. If I wake around the time the youngest comes in the morning, that should be all right.”</p>

<p>For some reason, I felt I slept deeply for the first time in decades. I do not think I had ever slept like that while running the company. Even in the morning, I woke because the sunlight dazzled my eyes. When I opened them, the fourth child was sitting in front of me. The moment he saw me, he jumped up and said only,</p>

<p>“You are awake?”</p>

<p>Then he ran outside.</p>

<p>A moment later he came rushing back in with the other three, and I searched for the youngest with my eyes.</p>

<p>“Has the youngest not come yet?”</p>

<p>The first child answered something, but suddenly I could not hear him. It was not that I could not hear. The sound reached me, but I could not understand what it meant.</p>

<p>“Wait, say that again?”</p>

<p>I tried to say it, but for some reason I was no longer sitting. I had collapsed without realizing it. All the children were startled and supported me, laying me straight on the pillow.</p>

<p>“I wanted to see the youngest, but I suppose I cannot. It is not that I wanted to see her more than you. I only wished to see the five of you gathered together one last time…”</p>

<p>I felt tears come from my right eye. I waited a moment, but the tears did not flow. They had come out, but they did not flow.</p>

<p>Why?</p>

<p>Had my tears dried up? I had clearly felt the surface tension and gravity of a tear, but when I touched my face there was no tear. I sat up straight again. Then I grew bewildered. The hospital room that had been so bright a moment ago was dark. The children were gone. Looking closely, it was not a hospital room either. I got down from the bed and looked at the clock. It was eleven. Eleven at night?</p>

<p>I was not even curious about what was happening. The only thing I wanted now was to see the youngest child’s face. For a moment, my memory was confused. I had a company I had built over a lifetime, and I was a student in Canada on language training. It was hard to follow my memories. When I tried, two strands were read at once. The faces of my grandchildren overlapped with the faces of my parents. The grandchildren were the children from the dream, and my parents were my real parents in Korea. Even while using the bathroom I was dazed. Then I returned to bed and fell asleep again.</p>

<p>The first thing I did the next morning was sit leaning against the wall and go over the dream I had had the night before. Could someone’s life become a single night’s dream? But it was not merely a single night’s dream. The night within that dream had also been another person’s dream. And what was hardest of all was that I had not seen the face of my youngest daughter. When I thought of that, my throat tightened as if it would burst. And I cried and cried, shedding the tears I had not been able to shed in the dream. Even so, nothing eased. If I was going to cry, I should have cried inside the dream. I should have cried there. What use was crying now, after it had already become something that was not reality? At that moment, I resented the fact that I had no talent for drawing, or at least that I had never practiced drawing. The face of my youngest daughter was so vivid, and yet the fact that I could not see in reality what had been vivid in the dream was unbearably sad. Already, much of the memory was disappearing. Perhaps I would soon forget even my youngest daughter’s face. Perhaps I would even come to doubt whether there had truly been five children. If only that would let me forget the last sorrow too, I thought. But because it had left a mark in my heart like a carving knife, emotionally serious and sharp, I knew I could not forget.</p>

<p>Does a person become nothing when they die? I do not know.</p>

<p>Is a person reborn when they die? I do not know.</p>

<p>When a person dies, does that life remain as a mere dream? If I explain from the point of view of someone who has experienced it, a mere dream means that the life in the end was nothing. Once you wake, nothing remains. Even the experience is of no use in reality. What remains is only a bundle of emotions. But if, conversely, a dream is someone’s life, then we have reason to remember dreams. And we have reason to record dreams. Yet the unavoidable fact is that the answer to this question too cannot be known.</p>

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<p>Original text in Korean: <a href="https://brunch.co.kr/@rup-l/1">Read on Brunch</a><br />
한국어 원문: <a href="https://brunch.co.kr/@rup-l/1">브런치에서 읽기</a></p>]]></content><author><name>Ize Studio</name></author><category term="Fiction" /><category term="fiction" /><category term="dream" /><category term="memory" /><category term="life" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[I was a boy. I do not know how far back my memory goes. My first memory was of a strange shape becoming another shape as light fell across it. When I think of it now, I imagine that it must have been a staircase, but I cannot be sure whether that white space was something I saw in a dream or something I saw in life. The only thing I can say with certainty is that it was the first memory of this life of mine. After that, I remember being five years old and being looked down on by a friend because I could not read. That friend never did teach me my letters. But whenever play turned even a little against him, he would take out his anger by making a show of the fact that he knew how to read. From the age of five onward, I do have scattered memories of one thing and another. But if someone asked me to tell any story I happened to remember, most of what came to mind would probably be things that happened after I was nine. That was when a school was first built in our village. Even a child like me, they said, had to go to school. My parents objected, saying I had to work, but the country did not allow such things. From my point of view, it was good not to have to work, but more than anything, the thought that I would be able to read was appealing.]]></summary></entry></feed>