Cover of Park Seon-woo's “We in the Same Place” / Courtesy of Jaeum & Moeum

Written by Park Seon-woo

Translated by Sunnie Chae

I walked all the way from Jongno 3-ga to Myeongdong. It was early winter but warm. Sunlight glimmered on the pavement, beckoning like a fluttering bird. I found myself strolling down the street. Just one of those days, you know?

It only took twelve minutes to Myeongdong.

With Nagwon Arcade behind me, I walked toward Namsan Tower. Crossed the street twice, I think. Passed by the Labor Office, turned at the Daishin Finance Center, and lo and behold—Myeongdong Cathedral. I didn't jog or walk fast at all. The crosswalk signals turned green right away, but even so . . . unbelievable, isn't it? Only twelve minutes.

I always took the subway before. Once I'd enter Jongno 3-ga station, it'd take nine minutes to the platform, seven minutes to transfer at Chungmuro station, twelve minutes to hop on Line Four and reach Myeongdong station, another nine minutes to edge through the crowd and emerge from the exit. Thirty-seven minutes total. Same route every time. Ever since I was a kid, the Seoul I knew was charted by the subway. Navigating from Jongno 3-ga to Myeongdong always took that long.

Just look how far apart they are on the transit map. Who would've thought it was a walkable distance? A twelve-minute distance at that. The cathedral spire came into view, and I was stunned. How was it right there, so close? I had no idea. Then it flashed through my mind—the face of an estranged friend.

Ju-yun. My friend of eighteen years. I'd never understood why we drifted apart, but right then and there, it became clear. We fell out the day she filed for unemployment. She rang me up outside the Labor Office, a nervous wreck. Asked where I was. Well, I happened to be at Jongno 3-ga. Tucked away at a Starbucks across Nagwon Arcade with a book—The Noonday Demon. She asked me to come over. To meet her there. She said, “Have you been here before? It's right by Myeongdong Cathedral. The thing is, I'm spooked. I see black pigeons perched over the entrance, leering at me. Sneering. Like vultures eyeing rotten flesh.” She moaned, “It's terrifying. I'm shaking all over.”

“Why are you so scared?”

I was baffled. Bothered, too. Not that I had better things to do. I'd been bored stiff, hoping someone would ring me up to hang out. But once I got the call, it felt like a hassle. I'd been plodding through the book half-awake, but the next passage caught my eye—something about the self losing its capacity for affection. I set out to finish this book today. That's why I'm here. I replied as tactfully as I could. “Ju-yun, you know it's a long way . . . here to there. It'll take a good forty to fifty minutes even if I hurry. Isn't that too long a wait?”

She went quiet. “You think?” she finally asked, her voice going flat. “Is it really that far?”

“It is.”

“Is it?”

“It really is.”

That was it. The last time we ever spoke. We'd hung out with each other for eighteen years, graduated from university together, and even filled in for family to sit through each other's LASIK surgeries . . . but then it was over.

There was a long silence before we hung up, like a blackout on stage. Sometimes I look back on that moment. That eerie, abrupt end. No matter how many times I turn it over in my mind, I can never pinpoint the exact change. I'm lost each time like some clueless puppy dumped by the road.

It happened again on my way over today. I came out the subway and stopped at the crosswalk. Shivered while waiting for the signal. Then it dawned on me that Ju-yun must've felt the same way that day. Even now, she'd be standing by the Labor Office, it seemed. Phone clutched in hand, a lone figure in the crowd, still waiting for me.

*

Young-ji stopped talking. She hung her head, drunk, her ears red. I'd heard about their falling out three other times already. It was a drunken habit of hers to regurgitate that story. Not that she forgot already telling me before. The repetition was a way of purging the memory altogether—or so I heard. Was Young-ji trying to erase that eighteen-year friendship from her mind? Wiping out every trace of it, even the fact that it was over?

I gave her an arm for support as we left the bar. She wobbled like a rag doll, but I managed to hail a cab and get her in the back seat. “Take her to Mangwon,” I told the driver, handing over enough bills to cover the fare. Young-ji shooed the money away, her eyes barely open. “No, no. You paid for drinks, too.” I put a hand on her shoulder to let her know it was okay. As I shut the passenger door, I caught a glimpse of her holding back some sort of emotion. Or I thought I did, but maybe I was wrong.

The cab disappeared into a tunnel. I gazed up at the sky, hands in my pockets. A light breeze brushed against my face. Not too cold for a midwinter night. Seized by an urge to walk, I started climbing the sloped pavement. Once I got going, I wanted to walk as far as I could until my legs gave out. How could I describe that odd feeling?

Young-ji and I had met at university. We were both enrolled in Croquis Sketching, a General Education course offered by the art department. As a math major returning from military service, I was left with no other choice in Gen Ed after registering too late. On the first day of class, I sat sulking in the back row. It was hard enough returning to campus where I no longer knew anyone, but there I was, forced to earn credits in an art class without the faintest notion of how to sketch. A few dozen easels stood spaced apart in the classroom. Only a dozen or so students filled the seats, most of them non-art majors like me.

That first class was all about perspective.

Perspective, we were told, was the foundation of drawing. It gave flat surfaces a sense of depth. The middle-aged professor, mustached and wearing round, horn-rimmed glasses, seemed bored by the lecture he'd given too many times before. I, for one, came to realize that perspective in art shared a basic premise with geometry. The so-called vanishing point, where parallel lines appeared to converge, matched the point at infinity in projective geometry.

Toward the end of class, the professor put us in pairs for a semester-long project. He stood at the lectern and paired students sitting close to him to those who were farther away.

“That makes it fair,” he said.

Why he thought so was beyond me, but in any case, we all eyed our partners and grudgingly gathered our things to meet halfway. Each pair sat side by side facing an easel. Young-ji and I were grouped together. She was a bubbly freshman majoring in art history. Things were different for her back then. It was a time of financial and emotional security before her father's textile factory in Pohang went bust.