The ground under my feet suddenly turned soft after walking on concrete. It felt warm and cushiony, as if I were sinking into the earth. Someone must have cut up discarded Christmas trees and spread the wood chips along the walking path. Once proudly decorated and displayed during the holidays, the abandoned trees had become a shabby carpet beneath our feet. Before they completely crumbled back into soil, they seemed to release one last deep scent of pine, so strong that it made me feel as if I were walking through a forest. Drunk on that smell, I wandered back into a distant winter in Seoul.
It was Christmas Eve during my freshman year of college. I remembered my best friend Mia and me selling tangerines in front of our favorite clothing stores, Nonno and Bando Fashion, in busy Myeongdong. Mia lived in Hoehyeon-dong, and I grew up nearby in Namsan-dong, so Myeongdong was our playground.
To the sound of Christmas carols, couples flooded the streets hand in hand. Stores decorated with Santas and Rudolphs were packed with shoppers. We secretly took tangerines from fruit boxes at home, piled them into baskets, and headed out to sell them. Mia looked like the rabbit from the moon legend. Whenever she held out a tangerine and blinked her bright round eyes, hardly anyone could walk past without buying one. Even the Salvation Army donation pot across the street kept filling with coins. The man ringing the bell seemed more energetic than ever. We were simply taking advantage of the excited Christmas mood. Within a few hours, we sold everything.
Proudly patting our heavy pockets, we ran to a Chinese restaurant in Sogong-dong.
“Do you want spicy seafood noodle soup or black bean noodles?”
“Jjamppong. I want something hot because it’s cold.”
“Then I’ll get jajangmyeon.”
One of us always ordered jjamppong and the other ordered jajangmyeon so we could share both. After eating half and half, we went to a beer pub called OB’s Cabin nearby. We walked around lightly, full of hope that something exciting might happen.
Back in middle school, Mia was number five in line and I was number six. We were always the shortest girls in class. We became close while constantly bickering side by side. In college we became inseparable. Both our parents were merchants, so we grew up learning how to stretch pocket money and survive with little. We always carried only spoons with us, ready to eat whenever an opportunity appeared.
In winter, we spent most of our time in a small separate building behind Mia’s house. Except for meals, we rarely entered the main house. Her parents were busy running their business. We stood in front of a large mirror trying on hats, hairpins, and dark lipstick, laughing at ourselves. We wore colorful clothes like gypsies and headed out to Myeongdong in the afternoon as if going to work.
Spring brought daffodils, forsythias, and magnolias, and then we wandered through mountains carrying nothing but spoons tucked into the back pockets of our jeans.
“Hey little girls, where are you going?” hikers often asked.
Men in hiking gear carried huge bags, but we believed pocket money and spoons were enough for life. People laughed and asked if we were just out for a stroll.
“We’re going hiking too,” Mia answered sweetly beneath her straw hat.
I stayed close beside her, carefully deciding whether strangers were good people or bad people.
One day while hiking, four older men approached us.
“What grade are you girls in?”
Thinking we were high school students, one man teased us.
“We’re college students,” Mia answered with playful annoyance.
“Don’t lie. Which college?”
We quietly showed our university badges pinned inside our clothes.
“Oh wow, they really are college students.”
The men laughed in surprise. Later they stopped walking and began cooking on a portable burner.
“You girls must be hungry. Sit down and eat.”
One man stuffed an unbelievable amount of spinach into a tiny boiling pot. We gasped like children watching magic when the spinach suddenly shrank enough to fit.
“You two carry spoons around but probably don’t even know how to cook,” they joked.
They played guitar and sang songs in the mountains while we followed them around eating free food and laughing. Back then, the world felt kind to us.
We continued meeting those men after that trip. Mia liked a tall handsome man named Mr. Kim who reminded her of actor Gang Dong-won, though with slightly smaller eyes. Another man named Mr. Bang, short with a permanently red face, kept joking that he wanted to date me.
“Mom, a man named Bang asked me out.”
“No! Haven’t I told you many times? Never marry a man from the ‘Cheon-Bang-Ji-Chuk-Ma-Gol-Pi’ family names!”
“Oh, that’s why the name sounded familiar.”
We met the girlfriends of the other men too and were treated to meals and drinks. We even attended one man’s wedding. But naturally, the friendship faded. The men were already at marriage age while we were only nineteen. Then Mia fell in love.
Although we followed our desires freely, we both dreamed of intellectual and sensitive men. Mia looked delicate and elegant like a rabbit, and men constantly stared at her. Her cold personality made them even more fascinated. As the years passed, more and more men followed her around. I usually ended up standing in the background, but I didn’t mind. Being around Mia always made life exciting.
At one group blind date, five women sat across from five men. Mia and the organizer handed out numbered slips of paper to match partners. Just as I looked down to see my number, Mia quickly switched her paper with mine. I froze in confusion. Through the crowd leaving the table, I noticed the man who was supposed to be my partner. He was exactly the quiet intellectual type I had always imagined.
After Mia began dating him, she completely changed. Even when we met, her mind seemed somewhere else. Christmases came and went, but the lively days we once shared disappeared.
Later, another friend introduced me to a man. I prepared nervously, changing clothes over and over before meeting him at a coffee shop in Jongno. He looked refined, strong, and slightly mysterious. He spoke little, but his low voice was attractive. My friend whispered that he played guitar and sang beautifully. We met a few times, but he constantly appeared and disappeared from my life. I began calling him “Mr. In-and-Out.”
Years later, Mia’s boyfriend left for New York to study abroad. She was heartbroken. One day we even took a train to Jinhae to visit him at the naval academy. He wore glasses and a sharp expression that made him look like Steven Yeun in uniform. Under glowing cherry blossoms, Mia disappeared into the darkness with him while I stood alone, my heart pounding strangely.
Eventually Mia agreed to an arranged marriage after her relationship failed. On her wedding day, surrounded by glamorous friends, she looked farther away from me than ever. I quietly left the wedding hall and wandered alone through Chungmuro.
Being left behind felt unbearably lonely.
I became desperate to find direction in life. I studied hard to become a teacher and unexpectedly passed the difficult exam with good scores. Later, Mr. In-and-Out suddenly proposed marriage. I stared at my teacup in silence, unable to understand why he had drifted in and out of my life for so long.
Meanwhile, Mia became busy with marriage and motherhood. I felt abandoned beneath the Seoul sky. I wanted to escape somewhere far away.
“Dad, I want to study abroad in Paris.”
“Why France? If you’re going abroad, go to America. Go to New York. Even standing in Manhattan for a few months will change your life.”
So I studied again and was accepted to a university in New York.
At the airport, Mia looked at me with tearful eyes.
“We only played around together. When did you even study enough to become a teacher and go abroad?”
I tried to answer calmly, but my voice trembled.
“While you were busy, I missed eating jajangmyeon and jjamppong with you. I had too much free time, so I studied. Maybe you’re the reason I’m leaving Seoul.”
Even now, whenever I visit Seoul, Mia and I still meet at Chinese restaurants. We split jajangmyeon and jjamppong in half and complain about our husbands. We both married men far from the intellectual, sensitive type we once dreamed of.
One day I searched online for Mr. In-and-Out. To my shock, he had become a famous pastor. Time had stolen most of his hair, and he now combed the remaining strands across his bald head exactly the way my father used to mock.
I laughed and told my husband, “Thank God I didn’t become a pastor’s wife.”
My husband answered proudly, “Didn’t my mother say our marriage fortune was the best she had seen in thirty years?”
I didn’t remember. I didn’t want to.
Unlike Mia and me, my husband does not believe in sharing food. He insists we each order our own meal. My lonely bowl of jjamppong sits untouched while his jajangmyeon belongs completely to him. Looking at the empty dishes, I return once again to the days when Mia and I shared everything.
The smell of chopped Christmas trees pulled me so deeply into memory that I lost track of time sitting on the bench. When I finally looked up, I saw an older Asian woman walking ahead of me dressed exactly like women on the walking trails near Namsan in Seoul. Covered with a mask, gloves, and a hat, she walked with the familiar swinging stride of older Korean women. She paused to look at blooming forsythia flowers.
“Why is my older sister over there?” I almost thought.
I moved closer happily, but she quickly walked away as if avoiding me. Suddenly homesickness rushed over me. My head lowered with quiet sadness. Perhaps years of isolation had made me imagine things. It has been over forty years since I left Korea, yet somehow I still have not fully walked out of a small alleyway somewhere in Seoul.
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