My Shoebox Friend

“Well you could always just tape it” he said, crouching down next to me as I lay on the pavement, my scrapped knee bleeding.

“I don’t think that’ll keep it clean” I said.

He said it’s what his mother always did, when he got bruises. “It keeps them from ripping. “ I said wounds don’t rip like paper, and that tape isn’t usually what people use.

We pushed the bikes along the rest of the park trail, the lampposts slowly coming on as the last hours of day crept underneath the horizon. He wore a khaki shirt and a pair of jeans that had been badly ripped some time ago, and the sole of his shoe was beginning to come off. He said he didn’t mind, that he washed them twice a week and that he didn’t need any other clothes.

A couple years later, when I had moved out of my parents, I had gone back to Korea, to study as a translator. I moved into a flat in Hong Kong. I wrote translation pieces for my internship with the college, and had earned a minimal wage penning off short pieces for a Korean print company, evidently just being an foreigner was enough for them to want my name in their post.

I had spent some time each day wandering the city visiting different restaurants and businesses; I came across a young girl, only a year or two younger than I at the time, perhaps she having just graduated; who had been the clerk at a bakery that I bought a bagel from.

She looked familiar, though I scarcely could recall why. It suddenly struck me! She was Jeong’s little sister. I asked about him, and how he was doing. It had been years, I said. She said he was well, that he was living in the centre of the city. I inquired of his address, and she said she couldn’t remember it, but that she could bring me to it if I came back after the shop closed.

I did as she asked, arriving as the soft blue of the lights around the city fell onto the sidewalks. Her green and black dress was fitted well on her, the short bob of hair complimenting the long structure of her face. She smiled as she turned towards me, that softness stirring in me a recollection of days that had been lost to me, of days I had forgotten.

“It really was strange, mother thought” she said, as I pushed my bike along the sidewalk, her beside me.

I laughed, saying; “I think I could have maybe done it differently.”

“If you’re going to again, next time don’t ask while in your underwear” she said, her eyes facing forward.

“I didn’t want to not give her a hug goodbye” I said.

She laughed, saying nothing in response.

“He lives here” she said, as we arrived at a narrow building that rose some 7 or 8 stories.

The front door was a dark silver, tinted blue and red with the light of the street mixed with the closed sign from across. It didn’t look very welcoming, I said.

“No” she said, her face hushed.

I asked if we knock, and she said there wasn’t a need, you just went in. The hallway was narrow, a woman sitting against the wall with a child stared at me as I passed, the childs face cupped against the mothers bosom. Two kids tossed pencils at each other in the stairwell, scampering down as Iseul and I made our way up it, she leading.

We came to what must have been the fifth or sixth floor up, and she lead me down a narrowed and ill lit corridor. It had three windows along the left wall, which looked out along the roofs of nearby buildings, and just one closet door along the right wall that Iseul said was where maintenance equipment was stored.

At the end there was a slender door, which she opened and led me through. I saw at once a kitchen, consumed by the plastic wrappings of store bought dry noodles, waiting to be cooked, cardboard packages of cereal and of quick rice, dry vegetables sitting out and a sink with a pot in it, soaking in sudsy water.

From the kitchen ran a short hallway to another room, and in the room were eight bunk beds, though more finely delineated against one another with wooden doors that closed the bed off from the outside room, like a child made fort. Jeong was sitting on the bottom bed in the corner, his feet on the floor with a book in his lap, the fan on the desk beside him circulating the air around the room.

Iseul went and greeted him, Yeong closing the book, the shorts he wore showing the thin and small legs underneath; and rising to hug her. She said a few things, and then turned towards me, Jeong’s eyes looking over at me. I smiled as I saw his face once again, saw the eyes that I once saw so many years ago. He did not smile, his face, already in a neutral posture, fell further into what looked like sadness. He looked at the floor, and then at me again. Iseul said something again, and he came towards me, extending his arms into mine.

I felt his embrace, though it felt timid, uncertain, and so unlike the boy who had been by my side so many years ago. Iseul asked if we should go into town, at this hour there was a really nice noodle shop that played karaoke. Jeong nodded his head.

We walked the street, recalling the days when we had stumbled in the living room, their dog wrestling with the rope we held in our arms.

“It did alway’s take the three of us” Iseul said with the effect of laughter and a smile.

We arrived at Kobachi’s, the terrace lights turned off, the inside now alive with people at tables, strangers faces smiling as glasses of wine emptied and plates held only the bones and shells of what had been on them. We sat nearby the case of books in the back, where there was a small level of stairs that led to a room in the back, one we figured must be for the restaurant owner and workers.

Someone had just finished singing, and was laughing as they bowed to the sound of applause from those at the tables, and then the sound of conversation took over the room. We talked for a short while until food was brought out, after which we suddenly seemed to fall into a fit of wordlessness. Nothing came from either of us, only small glances here and there as we ate. I had realized at this time Jeong and I had yet to speak directly to each other, it had only been Iseul that was talking to both of us, occasionally getting Jeong to say something as she repeated the question I had asked, of which only she answered.

“He usually talks more” she said, as we walked down the hallway with the three windows now to our right, having dropped Jeong back home, “I think maybe just the shock of seeing an old friend again surprised him”, she added.

“He didn’t seem happy surprised” I said.

She didn’t directly say anything to my comment, but instead asked if I thought Kobachi’s was good, as it was seldom that she went there, but always thought it to be nice.

I said I enjoyed it, and that I would love to go sometime again. I asked if her and Jeong would be able to visit the library sometime, it would be fun to walk around together and chat again, this time perhaps Jeong would be more chatty, if it were during the day.

“That sounds nice” she said.

We stopped off at the corner of a street a little over a mile away from where we had dropped off Jeong, when Iseul had said her apartment was just up the street, and that she was happy to see me again. I said I felt the same, and that I would stop by again during the week. We parted, giving each other a farewell embrace, after which I began to walk alongside the cobbled walls that rose to my knees that acted as the barrier of a church’s property line.

I looked back, and saw the silhouette of my companion walking up the road as it climbed the city hill. I could not discern a feeling, only an image, a stillness, one that through the ages provoked a desire to paint, to capture; I could only draw out a sentiment of passing, of time passing and of lives, of strangers who became friends, who became strangers after time played its part. I wondered at the thoughts of which filled my companions pockets, and of what became of their parents, of what became of their old house after all these years, questions that seemed lost while in their company. I wondered at my old friend, and at how the only words spoken directly to one another was of those in parting after the evening, Iseul having been our postal dove.