little sea1

                                  1.

The little sea is to a boy as good as another Badug , which is the name

of his dog, his favorite friend. Every morning the little sea awakes him.

He usually gets up listening to the sounds of the little sea and steps down

to the front yard closer to it right ahead. At the end of the yard

the stone bank is set up to keep his house from overflown by the sea water. 

The sounds of the little sea is familiar to his ears. Everyday he sees it 

ebbing and flowing and hears the sounds it whispers by the winds

and waves.

 The boy falls asleep in Summer nights, hearing the sound which the wind

ripples the surface of the little sea , and in Winter at dawn,

gives his ears still in bed, with his eyes half opened, to hear

flocks of wild ducks in it at the right moment flapping their wings.

In Spring, at high tide, he looks down lowering his head

to silvery fish playing in flocks beneath the water surface and

in Fall ,wet afternoons,he looks through windows to the little sea

smelling of seaweed  mixed in the wind.
He usually goes out ,with Badug leading him,to a playground

in the center of the village to meet boys in his age at play. 

The playground is where at the harvest season the villagers

thresh grains and stack hay ,and at the lunar New Year or

the Full Moon Harvest Day flock to enjoy traditional games of Yut,

drinking and group dancing .

There is another place to attract him and his dog.He goes there everyday.

The playground is a part of the water front about 30 yards away

from his house which is haunted by a tramp selling Yeot ,

Korean hart taffy ,hauling a handcart , with  a  lot of Yeot stick

on it. When he shows up before us making a familiar sounds to us

with a big scissors on his right hand, at first every boy there

on hearing the sound runs to his house and return in a hurry to his cart

grasping pieces of copper wire, old books or empty bottles

on the hands to exchange with Yeot sticks .Every boys likes him. T

he boy respects him  as much as he wants to be a tramp selling Yeot

in the future like him . 

 

In the evening the boy often slips out of his house to go to a hut 

without the knowledge of his mother.In the hut lives a man

, half blind and unmarried,named Myunggu about in his thirties.

The hut is kind of a hideout where in the evening 5 or so  youths 

of good-for-nothing get together for playing'flower cards', Korean

traditionally favorite card game. The man always welcomes the boy,

who never comes without something to please him,say, pieces of

cigarettes or couples of red-ripe persimmon put in the pockets,

The boy easily gets tempted by  the old tales he tells him.

The boy is familiar to the story of Alibaba and 40 thieves or

Sindbut adventure or a Korean Arirang tale heard several times there

in the hut. Among the old tales his favorite is the ghastly story of

a wolf-turned school boy, who every dead of night from 1 oclock to

3 steals out of the dormitary to the cemetery in the hill  at the back

of his village and turns back to his bed with blood stains on his mouth.

 

Every day the little sea approachs the embankment of the house 

to meet the boy and Badug. Sometimes In the late morning ,

sunny and warm , the little sea looks like Badug's sleepy face 

and another time at the the tide of ebbing, it reminds the boy

of seagulls dancing above over it. 

The little sea never stays still at one place. It waits for the boy

to return home from school or the playground ,moving in waves

against the upper part of the stone wall .Sometimes the boy gets up

in the early morning to find it playing with wild ducks diving up and down

far at the edge of the mud flat bottom of it at low water tide.

Now and then it never moves at the embankment as if it were sleeping ,

and listening to the sound of the breeze blowing on the forest of reeds

along the left seaside it abruptly awakes to run farther and farther 

toward the wider sea.

One day in the little sea appears  a whale, called Mulchi by the villagers,

after a very long absence. The sea is delighted at the unexpected

visitor, which it has forgotten. The sea is really happy to meet the whale

which appears after a long  absence.  Then this time the appearance

and disappearance of the exotic whale comes to be not a usual accident

to the little sea, as the accident provides a momentum for the little sea

for the first time to have a big curiosity beyond the horizon 

out of the narrow  inland sea. Probably  there will be  a reason for it . 

 

The little sea it has  thought it natural  to lead its living

within the boundary of the inland sea, repeating  its routine tide 

of ebb and flow . Then Mulchi gets it to realize in asudden

there are other seas beyond the horizon ,wondering

how wider and deep the open sea not far from itself  is!

 

you know that the little sea has a unique temper ,free and untamable .

Usually it makes friends with humans and fpets, in particular dogs.

However it loses its reason. 2 monthes before the boy was surprised 

that  it runs mad and wild at the time of Saraho typoon,

resutling in the heavy destruction of his house and the missing of

his dog, Badug. 

??????

 

The boy  has never seen  Mulchis before .However, he know  that

the giant whales making a rare visit to the little sea are  on

friendly terms with human beings, in particular, boys in his years,

because the hut keeper told about  a kind of Mulchi, boasting that he

had a rare thrilling experience of swimming with the whales

in the little sea near the island named Dotsum. The boy remembers him

saying that  he was frightened out of his wits to see

an unexpected giant figure ,with its head out of the surfaces,

approaching him. But he emphasized, he remembers too,

that the whale was amiable and liked to play with human beings.

 

Since then, the little sea comes to undergo a delicate change.

In a way, it often gives its ears at tide of ebbing toward  Dotsum

island, through which Mulchi playing with it passed out out of sight 

and gazes with strong  curiosity, beyond the island ,to the remote 

open sea. In that sense, it is natural for the little sea to have

a yearning of traveling far and wide beyond the horizon 

to the open sea where the exotic whale was sure to come

from and disappear . Now the little sea begins to make itself a promise

that in the near future  it will risk making a travel far and wide,

 which it never experienced before,

 

However, the boy is unware of such a exquisite change in the little sea's  

inside. His greatest concern is to catch the crab fish called Sok, 

living, beneath the surface of the bottom at the tide of ebbing, 

in the little sea , These days he has frequently stood on the yard

of his house facing the little sea showing its bottom, He knows that

the next day the good-for-nothings who like him are scheduled

to go catching  the crabfish. The hut keeper informed the boy of it .

So he is busy to prepare instruments for it :a weeding hoe,  

stems of smutted barley, a bamboo basket, and a lump of Denzang,

Korean traditional soybean paste. etc. 

.