Chapter 4. The Girl Who Came into My Summer

Whenever I faced difficulties, I tended to give up too easily.

So, before summer vacation began, I decided to make a different choice.

I thought I might as well go somewhere I couldn’t easily run away from.

That was how I ended up in Goseong, Gangwon Province.

I took an intercity bus from Sangbong Bus Terminal and rode for quite some time.

After arriving at the terminal, I had to take another bus farther into the area.

It was quite far from home.

I had decided to work there for a month during the summer.

I had grown up near the southern coast of Korea.

So the sea itself was nothing new to me.

But the East Sea was different.

The southern sea had seemed to flow gently between its islands, while the East Sea looked as though it stretched endlessly toward the horizon.

The first time I saw it, the East Sea seemed vast and refreshing.

And somehow, it looked deeper, too.

Around twenty to thirty people took part in the summer job.

They were all university students.

Some had returned to university after completing their military service, while others, like me, had only recently entered university.

Daily life was fairly strict, with the returning students taking the lead.

We had to get up at set times and follow a fixed schedule.

I was the kind of person who liked to sleep late.

Yet there I was, having to get up early every morning.

I also disliked being told what to do.

But there, I had to follow the rules and routines.

It wasn’t a place where I could live however I wanted.

What frustrated me most was that the sea was right in front of me.

The beach was nearby. All I had to do was walk a short distance to reach the water.

But because I had to work, I couldn’t go swimming whenever I wanted.

Sometimes, it was frustrating to have the sea right there and still have to spend my time working.

Around that time, I met a girl about my age with short, curly hair.

She was cheerful and bright.

Even when the work was hard, she was always smiling.

I tended to lose heart when things became difficult, but she never seemed to lose her smile, even in tough situations.

Perhaps that was why I kept noticing her.

As we spent more time living and working in the same place, we naturally began talking.

At first, she was simply one of the people working alongside me.

But as we saw each other every day and went through difficult moments together, we gradually grew closer.

One day, she noticed how tired I was and offered me some words of comfort.

Perhaps what she said wasn’t anything special.

But to me, it meant a great deal.

It felt good to have someone who cared about me and smiled at me in the midst of such a demanding routine.

Whenever she smiled, I found myself feeling a little more at ease.

Thanks to her, I was able to endure those difficult days.

At the time, I was keeping a diary.

After working all day, I was so exhausted that I couldn’t write in it that night.

Instead, I would get up a little earlier the next morning and write about what had happened the day before.

One day, she noticed me writing in my diary.

She asked to see what I had written.

I showed it to her.

She said it was interesting and asked me to show it to her every day.

From then on, I wrote in my diary every morning and showed her what I had written when I finished.

Writing about the previous day and showing it to her the next morning gradually became part of my daily routine.

As I wrote, I would think about showing it to her the following day.

If I had been doing it for myself alone, I might have stopped somewhere along the way.

But knowing that someone was waiting to read it kept me going.

Thanks to her, I was able to record every day of that summer month without missing a single day.

Even now, when I read those old diary entries, the scenes and people from that summer come back to me.

And among those records are the moments I spent with her.

Whenever I had some free time during the summer job, I sometimes went down to the sea.

Once, I took a canoe out onto the water by myself.

At first, I paddled along without giving it much thought.

But as I moved farther away from the beach, the sea began to look different.

The East Sea stretched out before me, a deep, vivid blue.

As I realized I was alone in the middle of the sea, I began to feel a little afraid.

From the shore, it had looked like nothing more than a vast and beautiful sea. But out there, alone in a canoe, it felt much larger and deeper than I had imagined.

I think that was the first time I truly realized how small I was.

There were many difficult days, but as I spent time with her, I gradually grew accustomed to that life.

And so, my summer went on.