Unfulfilled First Love (7)&(8)

Day 20. 

My first love, which could not come true! 

(7)&(8)

 As a result, I commuted to work in the
widows’ village of Seoul on weekdays and in the mountains with a free spirit on weekends, and I spent more time away from her as I spent more and more days enjoying the smell of the countryside and the solitary workshop in the countryside when there was nothing special going on.

 After a while, when China opened again, the order to return was issued, and the separation began again in earnest, with the reenactment of the farewell at the airport, and her life in China, soaked in nostalgia for her homeland, was inevitably dry.

 But it’s a vocation that I somehow got, but I can’t just throw it away, I spent a year in agony, but as the days went by, I realized that I really wanted to rest, and in the end, I decided to take responsibility for another year, and I ended up crossing the Gobi Desert on the Silk Road and Mt. Paektu.

 All of them ended their two-year life in China, attached a medical certificate stating that they were suffering from the mental trauma of “life impermanence, life council” accumulated due to work, etc., and applied for a long-term leave full of pen papers, saying that they wanted to rest on the green zandum of their hometown for the time being and go to their father-in-law.

 Luckily , I was able to admit that I had been covering a long period of time that was only connected to remote areas and rough terrain, and I was paid off for up to six months. However, my heart was already in the soybean field, so I thought that this outing would not be a mere six months.

 I also learned that some foreign journalists believed that it was possible to take a long-term leave without work or pay to freelance indefinitely, so I took the plunge and  headed to Korea.

 After 10 years of going back and forth between the poles and the poles, I went home with her over the Mungyeong Sejae that I had dreamed of. Country house which had nothing to do for two years was flooded by torrential rain a few days ago, saying “day to go is the day of sacrifice”,

 Not only our house, but also our neighborhood was in shambles. When I finally got to the village, I opened the door and found that nothing was completely intact, and the house didn’t have an owner anyway, and I didn’t have any money, but my clothes were still wet in the drizzle

 I needed the necessities of life right away, but it wasn’t something that could be done with a penny or two to buy them all at once, so I had to spend money that I didn’t expect, but I had a huge collection of books, precious photographs, etc.

 The scrapbooks of my articles and related materials from the last 10 years were all mixed up in muddy water, and I couldn’t even sigh. It was pitch black, But I was being chased by darkness right now, and I urgently needed a place to rest,

 On my first night with her, after a long outing, I had to unpack my clothes while showering in the starlight in a car by the creek, doing the mosquitoes a good job. The next day, when we were almost awake, we had to roll up our hands and hurry to clean up.

 After three days of clearing the house with the support of volunteers and other flood recovery teams, we were finally able to build a house where we could live temporarily, but it seemed that it was impossible to continue using it in this state, and that we had no choice but to tear it down and rebuild it sooner or later.

 I didn’t have any other alternative anyway, so if I didn’t have to live here, I didn’t know, but if I had to, I would have to rebuild it slowly, because the only thing left was time, but I could see that she was absolutely against it, and that she wanted to go to Seoul unconditionally.

 After all, I thought that her escape from the scene would not help at all, so I sent her to Seoul for the time being, and after thinking about it for a few days, I decided that if it was confirmed that there was no problem with the embankment work in front of the village, it would be rebuilt.

 This time, I decided to build a sturdy two-story stone house so that there would be no problem with flooding, and first of all, I prepared a budget for it, and then I set up an H-beam, and in the meantime, I swept into the room, and I picked up the large and small stones that were scattered around, and I built a wall, and then I put a concrete slab on top of it.

 Thinking that it would not be immune to any natural disaster, I decided to add a large floor-to-ceiling window in the living room on the second floor to create a plausible cottage that was both shaped and practical. Immediately, he called the cultivator and began to build the house with his own hands, starting with the stones he could use.

 With the sole intention of building my own house with my own hands, I was stuck in the daily routine of building a house without being able to move, and I was satisfied with the comfort that she visited me once or twice a month.

 But because of his insistence that once he had begun, he would finish it, and the seasons had completely turned around and he had come back to his place, and he had not yet finished it, and he was just clinging to the cottage which was still in progress, O years! Newol!

 Like children who are more interested in jets than on sacrifices, they are more obsessed with a bowl of rice wine and a game of bet than building a house, and they often spend their time drinking from one town to another, and there is no doubt that the water is better and the air is better.

 On weekends, my friends would come to visit me in beautiful bundles, dip my feet in the stream, play the guitar, boil spicy soup, roast meat,  and have a drink.

 However, the paid vacation has long since ended, and I can’t escape the fun of stealing the money I’ve earned, and even though I’m still old enough to work, I’m just going to watch the world and she isn’t a carrot.

 It seemed like it was going to come eventually, but when she saw my little boy who had been like that for more than a year, not even a day or two, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, and she couldn’t stand it at all, and she was constantly nagging him to go back to his original place.

 He even blamed himself for it, and finally said that he would let me go, and one day he suddenly disappeared to Japan. Of course, everything was in a transitional period at that time, especially as the competition for survival became fierce, women also became more economically active.

 Considering the hardships on the harsh industrial front, they made rapid advances, but it was not something that anyone could easily do, like “a camel passing through the eye of a needle”, so the young ladies who went to Tokyo blindly like a fashionable place,

 Depending on my appearance, I often worked at coffee shops, restaurants, and entertainment districts with relatively good incomes, but if I happened to meet a college lover in the back of my younger siblings, I would become a pure lover who would take all the money I had and cherished it. 

 Perhaps, she was born as the only daughter of three sons and one daughter in a remote farmhouse near the armistice line, like a corner of such a marginalized world, and she chose the path of unstinting devotion to her blood and lived her life burning herself like an omnipotent  

 As reverse tourism began in Korea due to the liberalization of overseas travel, a scout proposal at a large hotel in neighboring Japan recognized her good looks and fluent Japanese skills, and it was clear that she was about to retire from the Korean art industry, so it was her last chance.

 Once again, in the choice for his family, in vain of love, I was just a stumbling block, forced into a one-way street, skipping the obvious top, just to not burden me like I always did.

 After a phone call saying that he would transfer the Songnisan land and car that belonged to him as a final gift to me, he left Korea without regrets, reflecting on the prepared farewell . At first, I couldn’t soothe my bitterness,

 As time passed, no matter how much it was a love that came to me like a coincidence, I knew that it was a love that presupposes the inevitable separation at any time, but I  couldn’t escape from the escapist love that ignored the reality of love because of the fact that “no way I’m going to catch someone”.

 It is clear that there was a problem with the responsibility of the maintenance, and the irreparable spilled water that she had left anyway, if it was our destiny, it was only natural that we should gladly accept it, bless it, and go our separate ways.

 The legend of my love, which had already departed, was a reality, and the times when I thought I couldn’t have had her were gradually erased, and I realized that I could let her go just as she had let me go, and I finally realized the reality of my life without her.