rv hosteller 3- seawards

                     1. seawards

 

                                 3.

 

In his boyhood he lived by an inland sea which he called the little sea.

Every morning the little sea awoke the boy. He used to get up listening

to the sounds of the little sea and step down to the front yard  to see the sea

right ahead.The stone wall at the end of the front yard kept the house 

where his parents and sisters and a dog named Badughi lived with him,

from overflown by the sea water. Everyday he saw it ebbing and flowing.

The boy went to bed in Summer nights, hearing the sound of ripples

of the little sea and in Winter at dawn, gave his ears,with his eyes half closed

still in bed, to hear flocks of wild ducks flapping their wings. In Spring,

at high tide, he looked down, lowering his head over the rock wall, 

to silvery fish playing in flocks beneath the water surface and in Fall,

wet and windy afternoons,  he could smelled, through the open windows,

of seaweeds in the sea at ebbing.

He usually went out,with Badughi leading him, to a playground in the middle

of the village to meet boys in his age at play there. The playground was 

where at the harvest season the villagers used to thresh grains and stack hay,

and at Lunar New Year or Full Moon Harvest Day and flock to enjoy 

traditional Yut games, drinking and dancing.

There was another playground to attract him and his dog.

It was a part of the seaside bank about 30 yards away from his house ,

which was haunted by a peddler hauling a handcart ,with lots of Yeot sticks

to sell on it. When he appeared making a familiar sounds to th boys,

with a big scissors on his right hand, most of boys there ran away

to somewhere at the sound of the scissors and returned in a hurry to his cart

grasping pieces of copper wire, old books or empty bottles on the hands.

to exchange them with Yeot sticks .Every boys in the village liked the peddler.

On seeing the peddler, he had a dream: to be a free tramp like him someday. 

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

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

half blind and unmarried,named Myunggu in his thirties.The hut is a hideout

where in the evening several youths of good-for-nothing got together

for playing 'flower cards', a Korean traditional card game. The man always

was delighted to see the boy,who never came without something to please him,

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

The boy easily got tempted by the hut owner telling old tales to him.

'Alibaba and 40 thieves' he loved was heard at first in the hut.  one of

his favorite among the tales was the ghastly story about a school boy.

who stole out of a dormitory every dead of night around 1 o'clock 

to the cemetery in the hill  at the back of his school and turned back

unobserved after a while to his bed with blood stains on his mouth.

Every day the little sea approached the rock wall at the end of the yard 

of the house to meet the boy. Sometimes In the late morning ,

sunny and warm,the little sea looked like Badughi's sleepy face and

another time at the the tide of ebbing, it reminded the boy of seagulls 

whirling around above over his head. 

The little sea never stayed still at one place. It waited 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 got up

at dawn to find it playing with wild ducks diving up and down

afar at the edge of the mud flat of it at low water tide.

Now and then it seemed to sleep quietly under the rock wall, 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 

form the boy.

One day in the little sea at high tide appeared a whale, called Mulchi

by the villagers,The sea was delighted at the very rare visitor,

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

of the exotic whale turned out to be not a usual thing to the little sea,

as its appearance provided a momentum for the little sea for the first time

to have a strong curiosity beyond the horizon out of the narrow inland sea.

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,

The little sea used to think it natural  to lead its living within the boundary

of the inland sea, repeating  its routine tide of ebb and flow .

Then Mulchi's unexpected appearance caused him to realize

that there could be other seas beyond the horizon,wider and deeper

than itself.

Usually the little sea, free and amiable, liked to make friends with humans

and dogs.Then It unexpectedly it once suddenly turned mad and brutal

at the time of Saraho typhoon ,hitting the house heavily destructed and

his dog, Badughi lost.

Since then, the little sea came to undergo a delicate change.In a way it ,

at tide of ebbing, gazed beyond the horizon to the remote open sea. 

However, the boy seemed to be unware that the little sea would risk

making a long journey far to the open sea where the exotic whale was

sure to come from. 

The older the boy got, the farther the little sea went out. Actually it 

stepped back further and further from him before he noticed it. one day,

at the time of ebb ,the little sea gave its ears to the sound of the wind 

coming from outside and gazed at the exit of the water way 

on the right side, Then the boy was unaware of it.