Na Hye-jin
“Yesterday, when I was walking alone, the house that was so far away seemed so short.
“Let’s eat together with me tomorrow.”
This one sentence in Korean was better than any English I heard in America.
“Let’s go to school together tomorrow! “When I see you tomorrow, I’ll be the first to smile at you!”
〈The first moment I made eye contact with that child was when he first entered the class.〉
“Kim Ha-eun. “Your homeroom teacher wants you to go to the teacher’s office.”
I suddenly realized that the child had only been at school for two days, so I opened my mouth to tell him where the teacher’s office was.
“know.”
To my shame, the child left without saying a single word, so I awkwardly closed my mouth. I blinked my eyes shyly and turned my head. Just two days after transferring to the school, I was already labeled as the unlucky kid in class.
Since our school is located in a fairly deep rural area, students rarely transfer schools at the end of the semester. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that all students know each other, as transfers themselves do not come often, and the new transfer student attracted everyone’s attention. There were seniors who were famous for being pretty and who only played among themselves at school, so it was as if the entire school had come to see the child.
However, interest quickly waned as the child only answered “uh” or “yeah” to every question, and all that was left was behind-the-scenes chatter about him being an unlucky person. Some of my friends kept complaining that they were ignoring me because it was a rural school. When my friends saw me looking embarrassed, they all came over to complain about the child, so I just shrugged them off.
“Well, you’ll figure it out on your own. what.”
The next class was a moving class, so I moved quickly, so thoughts about that child quickly disappeared from my mind.
〈The first time I made eye contact with that child was when I first entered the first 5th grade class.〉
Maybe it’s because I’ve lived abroad since I was 5, but Korea, which I haven’t seen in a long time, was very unfamiliar and awkward even though it’s my country. Although I learned Korean in the United States, it was inevitable that when people around me spoke Korean instead of English, my smiling face would harden and no answer would come out automatically.
It was the same at the new school I went to. I was smiling until I entered the class, but my facial muscles became increasingly stiff as the teacher told me to come in in Korean and the murmur of Korean I heard as soon as I entered.
Maybe that’s why it’s been a few days since I came, but no one has spoken to me. No, I think he came to talk to me a lot at first. But later on, no one came near me except the scary sisters who came and laughed at me every now and then. I felt so lonely amid the Korean language, which was too fast and awkward to understand.
‘Hey, Kim Ha-eun. When my homeroom teacher said, “Please go to the staff room,” and heard my unfamiliar name, I raised my head a beat late. I suddenly really missed the name ‘Emily’ that I used in the US.
When I got up, the class leader, Yu Sa-rang, who had called me, added something as if he wanted to tell me where the teacher’s office was, but I unconsciously said that I knew and turned my head away. Actually, I don’t know for sure, but I was more confused when I heard it in Korean. And since I had already gone to the teacher’s office yesterday, I thought, ‘I could just go backwards, following the teacher I followed yesterday,’ and moved forward.
“When I made eye contact again, the child avoided my eyes.”
“Yu Love! “The teacher told me to go with Ha-eun because she doesn’t know much about school.”
What is happening now? While laughing and chatting with my friends, I was startled by a voice I heard. The child who said he knew the teacher’s room was looking at me with a restless expression behind his homeroom teacher. When I looked at the child, he slightly avoided my eyes.
“Love, what are you doing without looking at the teacher? “The teacher is talking now.”
Should I at least make an excuse? I had to tell the teacher that the kid said he knew the way to the teacher’s office, but his mouth was dry and his voice wouldn’t come out. I have never been scolded by teachers. I was always a good student and a good class president. I couldn’t believe that I was getting scolded by my teacher for the first time, so I couldn’t even see my friends’ gestures telling me to respond quickly.
“Yu Sarang, you don’t even listen to what the teacher says. “I didn’t want to do this, but please clean up after school today and then go home.”
I continued to stare blankly at the back of the teacher who took the child out of the classroom with those words. As my vision blurred and tears welled up, I lowered my head and chewed my lower lip. I tried my best not to cry. If I cry over something like this, it will only make me laugh. Just like before, I just kept my head down while listening to my friends gossiping about the child.
“When we made eye contact again, I avoided his eyes.”
I wanted to say ‘I’m sorry’. It was me who was wrong, so why are you getting scolded? I should have apologized instead of avoiding eye contact. Or tell the teacher it wasn’t your fault. I was confident that I could go to the teacher’s office alone. I got lost and wandered around the school looking for my teacher until lunch time.
‘Yu Sarang, you don’t even listen to what the teacher says. I didn’t want to do this, but please clean up after school today and then go home.’
It’s all because of me that my child got scolded. I stood there in a daze, embarrassed, and then I was led by the teacher’s hand back to the teacher’s office and left the classroom. I couldn’t apologize again. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I apologized to that child several times in my heart. I hope my heart touches that child.
“Teacher, the class president did nothing wrong. “I said I was going alone and that I knew the way to the teacher’s office.”
“I came to clean the house because Sarang was ignoring what the teacher said, so don’t worry, you can go home. “The teacher also knows what a good child Sarang is.”
〈If our eyes meet again, will I be able to smile at that child first?〉
After the last class, I picked up the broom depressed. No one was late today, so I got to clean this large classroom by myself. As I watched my classmates leave one by one, all I could do was sigh.
“I guess he still has a conscience.”
The friend, who was depressed and said he was sorry for not being able to help because of school, took out a broom and winked at the child who was trying to clean. I stared at him for a moment, then turned my head when I thought our eyes would meet.
I waved at my friend, who said hello, and started cleaning while standing at a distance from the child. I just kept cleaning in silence as if the child wasn’t there, as if I couldn’t see him. Because the child stayed behind as if he was going to clean until the end, I ended up feeling dirty, so I mopped once or twice more as if the area the child had cleaned was still dirty, then took my bag and left the class. I felt like I heard someone calling me in a low voice from behind, but I just ignored it and went down the stairs.
〈If our eyes meet again, I will smile at that child first.〉
“Love! “Yusarang!”
I tried calling that child several times, but I guess my voice didn’t reach him. The child went down there first. Every time the child took a step, each step away from me felt like the distance between the child and me. I quickly grabbed my bag and ran down. I saw the child in front of me walking while looking at his cell phone, so I called him again in a loud voice, but the child didn’t look back. So, I stood there, bowed my head, closed my eyes, and shouted loudly.
“If you don’t want to look back, I’ll just tell you! Sorry! I think you are the only one who suffers because of me. Sorry. It’s okay if you don’t forgive me… . I’m really sorry.”
“Why did you say you knew the way when I said I would show you the way?”
I looked up at the words I heard right in front of me, and before I knew it, the child who had come in front of me was looking at me.
“I-I don’t know Korean very well. I thought it would make my head more complicated if you told me… . And since I already went yesterday, I thought I could go… .”
“Then you could have asked me to come with you.”
The short sigh followed by the child’s tone of voice made me more and more anxious, so I looked down and looked down.
“You’re Korean, but you live in America, so you don’t know Korean well?”
“It’s not that I don’t know much, it’s that I’m still awkward, so I have a hard time understanding people when they speak fast. “If you speak slowly, I can understand everything.”
When I awkwardly smiled and answered the child’s question, the child looked at me, held my hand, and walked quickly.
“Where is home? “Let’s go together.”
My face turned red with surprise and joy at the unexpected words. Will the apology be accepted? I was so happy that the smile on my face did not disappear. I felt this way too, so I wondered if I should control my facial expressions, but I had a smile on my face until the end and couldn’t give up easily.
After those words, no further conversation took place between the child and I, but neither of us let go of our hands first. Just by holding his hand once, it seemed like he and the child had developed a great relationship.
They say time flies when you’re happy, and when I was walking alone yesterday, the distance home that was so far away seemed so short. Before I knew it, the child and I had arrived in front of our house. I was upset.
“Let’s eat together with me tomorrow.”
The Korean language had been extremely unfamiliar to me until now, but this one Korean sentence was better than any English I had heard in America. As I looked at the child without saying anything, the child mumbled something that I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t hear well, so I blinked and read the child’s lips.
“… … mom… I like it so much Let’s go to school together tomorrow… ?”
I looked carefully at the shape of the mouth and traced the lips, and then made eye contact with the child. I raised my hand and gently waved it from side to side, telling the child to go home as he turned around to go home, saying that he was embarrassed or nothing. The child also raised his hand and gave me an answer. I followed the shaking hand with my eyes, and each time our hands shook toward each other once again, happy warmth burst through my whole body and once again in my heart.
I felt the warmth in a daze, and when I came to my senses, the child was already far away. Suddenly, I felt like the child was going to disappear, so I jumped up, grabbed the child’s hand, and said,
“Let’s go to school together tomorrow! “When I see you tomorrow, I’ll be the first to smile at you!”
… … At that moment, the sight of Sarang smiling in front of me was more beautiful than anything else.
Now, Sarang is not ‘that child’.
〈The moment I met the eyes of the child smiling beautifully at me〉
Ha-eun is no longer ‘that kid’.
I really love the word ‘friendship’… May we always be together
● Thoughts on winning
![[신춘문예 100주년/동화 당선작]The moment our eyes met](https://dimg.donga.com/wps/NEWS/IMAGE/2025/01/01/130766126.1.jpg "[신춘문예 100주년/동화 당선작]The moment our eyes met")
I was running as hard as I could to graduate from college, and while I was taking a break and lying down, I received a phone call out of the blue. I usually don’t answer phone numbers I don’t know, so I thought about it for a while before answering, but I won! It was a moment when I almost regretted not answering the phone.
Thanks to this opportunity, I gained confidence in writing. I realized how exciting it is to be able to have my writing, my ideas, and even just a little bit of my imagination read by someone else. I also wanted to reveal to the world other writings that I had always held tightly in my arms. I will become a writer who always works hard to write good articles in the future.
The family was really happy. Seeing such families made me even happier. I would like to say thank you to the judges who gave my family such a sudden and happy New Year’s gift. Thank you so much.
In addition, since the story is about friendship, I will write down in advance words of gratitude for congratulating the friends who will hear this news on January 1st. Guys, this is me… . It was just a joke, and because of you, I was able to write a fairy tale about friendship, and thanks to that, I was able to get the incredible honor of being elected to the Spring Literary Contest. thank you.
friendship.
It’s a word I really love. It is a word that can never be left out in the life we have lived so far and the life we will walk in the future, and it is a word we are obsessed with. I hope that this word can always be with me, and I will write less and express my gratitude to everyone who is always by my side. thank you
△Born in Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do in 2002 △Students in the Department of Donghwa and Korean Language and Culture, Glocal Campus, Konkuk University
Capture the inner self of people with a serious attitude
● Review
It was a time when the feeling of dizziness did not subside easily, whether I was walking briskly along the wide streets of Gwanghwamun or slowly walking between the walls of my neighborhood apartment. However, if you walk this path, reading each line with your eyes, you can enjoy the joy of encountering the beauty of life and the reason for existence that are buried or hidden in every corner of the world. Even if life is full of blood, we sometimes find reasons to live. So the spring literary contest screening is also a time of blessing for ourselves.
This year, we saw over 300 works. As fierce(?) as the competition is, the quality of the work is always sharp. Out of disappointment, I put down many works and chose 4 first. ‘Inadvertently Guilty!’ depicts the trial of a boy who inadvertently harmed a frog with a thrown rock, and as the number of victims continues to increase due to the interconnectedness of the world, the trial is unique in its nonsense-style exaggeration and bizarre yet witty trial. did it ‘Ant and Buffalo Maru’ is a scene where two beings in completely different situations meet by chance and have a conversation, connecting it to human life, giving pleasure through the effect of vivid contrast.
In addition, ‘Luncheon Captain’ and ‘The Moment of Eye Contact’ dealt with timely topics related to communication issues in the multicultural era. However, while the misunderstanding in ‘Luncheon Captain’ was more of an incident, the advantage of ‘The Moment When Eyes Met’ was that it well captured the inner changes of the two children resulting from misalignment.
So, although ‘The Moment Our Eyes Met’ lacks the beauty of completion and the richness of the story, it was selected as the winning work based on the author’s serious attitude toward people and the possibility of solidly walking down the path of a writer.
Noh Gyeong-sil, a children’s book writer and Won Jong-chan, children’s literature critic (Professor of Korean Language and Literature at Inha University)