HYYH 1 Notes (ENG)

The Direction Where The Sun Rises (PT2)

HoSeok
12 August Year 22

Someone shoved my shoulder as I got off the train. I dropped the ticket I was holding. It fell onto the railroad and slipped into one of the cracks. I looked around. It was mid-summer when I left and it was still summer now. The train departed for the next station, stirring up wind.

At the end of last month, I left Songju
by train from this platform. I watched the city receding out of the window.
As far as I could remember, I lived
in Songju. I'd never left the city and never imagined living anywhere else.
I went to the burger joint and to the practice room on schedule. After dancing for hours, I went home and crashed. Although the town was small, in Songju I had somewhere I needed
to go to, somewhere I needed to be.

After my ankle was injured, my daily routine fell apart. I went to work and the practice room wearing a soft cast. The condition of my ankle worsened. With a full cast on, I had to take a sick leave. I had the whole three weeks full of nothing. Three weeks of no work,
no dancing, and nowhere to be.

I managed to get by in the morning
of the first day. The rain that poured throughout the night stopped at dawn.
I cleaned the house and organized
my clothes. I got a haircut and wiped rainwater from the bench in front of my house. But I ran out of things to do in the afternoon. My phone didn't ring. Some messages from my coworkers
and the members of Just Dance were
all that came in. Still, no call or message
from the others. Come to think of it, I'd always been the one who contacted
the others first. I laid my phone down.
I didn't want to contact them first this time. What if none of them sends a message? So be it. I remembered how I'd run into YoonGi the night before. What I blurted out was replayed in
my head. I sprang to my feet and shouted into the air. "He won't remember anyways!"

The way home seemed farther than usual after I left YoonGi there. I had
to go up the slope on crutches. Although the sun had set, the air felt sultry. It was also humid. I was drenched with sweat when I got home. I didn't regret what I'd said to YoonGi. It was time for him
to stop indulging in self-pity. But those moments, those words kept coming back to me.

On the rooftop, I could look down
on the city without me. The train
was passing through downtown and disappearing around the corner at the foot of the mountain. I carelessly threw my clothes into a bag and headed for the station. I browsed through the list
of cities in front of the ticket office and picked the largest city nearby. I thought it'd be better to move to the large city. And just like that, I left Songju.

I got off the train after about two hours. As soon as I walked out of the station, I was faced with a bustling intersection. Rows of high rises and people busily walking by under the bright sun came into view. I took the first bus that stopped in front of me.

"Where should I get off?" The driver looked at me like I was speaking nonsense. A passenger who asks
his own destination? Yes, I must've sounded stupid. After about twenty minutes, the bus arrived at a neighborhood that seemed like an
old part of town. I put down my bag
in a small room attached to a market that had a "Guesthouse" sign. I stepped outside. I couldn't tell which direction was which.

I just roamed around the neighborhood for the first two days. There were
no high rises and no brightly lit commercial district. It was similar to my neighborhood where my rooftop room on the slope was. I'd chosen to leave Songju for the first time in my life and arrived at another Songju. Maybe this was why. I tried not to think of the city and people I'd left behind, but I lost control. I turned on my phone and thought about the others. I might've
left Songju, but my mind was still there.

On the third day, I decided to venture out further. But in less than twenty minutes after I left the market, my shoulders began to stiffen with the crutches underneath them. Sweat ran down my back under the scorching
sun. A red brick building came into view. It was the Citizens' Hall. While I was pushing the button on the vending machine, the door of the auditorium opened and several people came out. The sound of music streamed through the open door. I could see a man stretching in one corner of the stage with the spotlights illuminating his head.