Prof. Rho Heon-gyun
 
   Just after getting out of a subway station, he hurries himself to a narrow lane to get to his office.  He prefers to take the dirty, crooked, deserted, and less crowded road rather than the street a block away, busy, noisy, energetic, and showing off.  He glances at shops on both sides.  The owner-to-be in Jangchoong  Rice-Flour Mill pours off a bucket of water to wash away several years old dirty remainders on the window.  Ignoring the mill owner's efforts to keep her store clean, an old man running a hardware store opposite to the mill splutters a baggage of wastes on the road.  The busy office man walks ten meters further to find a small drug store.  He takes his time to make sure how many items have been sold for a whole day.  But expectedly and unsurprisingly, he gets bored to find the same stacks of Sam-lip bread on the front row with dust coated bottles of Vegemil.

   He turns back when he listens to a hurried voice.  "How much is this Vegemil together with Sam-lip full moon bread," a young woman in wet hair shouts toward a cavelike store. 

   A restless short silence. 

   You can see a big creature crawling out of a corner without hurry.  "Two thousand won, if you want."

   The female customer digs inside her hand bag, soon grasping several coins.  "I can't count the shit coins. What on earth did they make ten-won coins in this minimal size?  They?e less than shits.  Let your dog take all these useless tens." She begins, however, to count the coins with all attention. 

   He could hear the growling sound in her empty stomach.  He suddenly turns to right to join a main road.  He zigzags not to step on phlegm and vomitings thrown up last night.  He can't understand why drunkards always pass their water and vomit around the corner or between alleys.  A man conscious of how to behave properly even in heavy drinking can't control his obsession for more bottles of beer, that's a drunkard's mystery.  As he gets out of the narrow alleys, he takes a deep breath as if to congratulate himself on his successful escape from the dirty neighborhood again.  Ahead the clean and shiny signboards of Paris Baguette and 7 Gram Cafe seem to say hello to the man.  He doesn't have to worry about re-adventuring the lonely district he just past until this afternoon when he comes back home.  That's a splendid blessing!

                                                                                                  By Prof. Rho Heon-gyun

                                                                                                  Professor, Faculty Advisor

                                                                                                  Dept. of English lang.&Lit.

 

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