By 1810, the road between the Baek bakery and Ah-Rin’s school had learnt their footsteps.
Every clear morning, the same pattern: oven fires banked down, trays slid into racks, a quick exchange of words between Cho Mi-Young and her son, and then In-Su would wipe flour from his hands, call, “Byeol-ah, bring your bundle,” and step out into the lane with his daughter at his side.
On this particular spring morning, the air smelt of yesterday’s rain and today’s bread. The bay’s breath reached into town in light gusts, ruffling laundry and nudging loose shutters. A dog asleep under a cart opened one eye, decided nothing urgent was happening, and closed it again.
“Appa,” Han-Byeol said, already half a step in front of him, “I’m eight now.”
“So you keep reminding me,” In-Su replied.
“A hundred times,” she insisted. “Which means I could come to school alone. The way grown-ups do. The way I could have done about a hundred years ago.”
“Mm. Not quite yet.” He shifted the small cloth bag he carried, as if weighing her complaint on invisible scales. “When you are a hundred, I will consider it.”
She puffed out her cheeks. “Other girls walk alone,” she muttered. “Soo-Yeon comes by herself. Mi-Ran, too. If a tiger ate me, I would shout very loudly from its stomach.”
“That is exactly the problem,” he said. “You would shout from its stomach. Better to avoid the tiger entirely.”
“There are no tigers in Haesong,” she pointed out.
“Exactly,” he said again. “Because I walk you to school.”
She threw him a look over her shoulder that was half exasperation, half reluctant amusement. Somewhere under the teasing, she knew there was more to it than worry for her safety. Two years ago, he had walked her here stiffly, as if the path itself were unfamiliar. By now his feet knew every stone.
They passed the turning to the well, the corner where the potter’s stall used to sit before his son moved it closer to the harbour, the low wall where children perched to swap sweets and secrets. The smells of the bakery—warm yeast, sesame, the faint char of yesterday’s crumbs—thinned as they moved away. Ahead, the air took on the drier tang of paper and river.
“You don’t have to come all the way to the door,” Han-Byeol tried again. “You could stop at Master Nam’s and ask about grain. You always say you need to.”
“Grain is not going anywhere,” he said. “You, on the other hand, are very good at wandering. I will see you safely to the gate. Then I will let Nam Seung-Mo complain at me.”
She glanced sideways at him. His outer coat was not his oldest. His hair, tied back hastily most mornings, sat a fraction neater today. He had not brought any empty sacks for flour, though he talked of grain. Over the last year she had accepted these things without thought. Lately, she had begun to notice.
“You know the way very well now, Appa,” she said slyly. “You bring me so often.”
“Do I?” he said, too lightly. “I hadn’t realised.”
“Mm,” she said, echoing him. “Me neither.”
They turned into the narrower lane that led to Ah-Rin’s school. The old house by the stream had changed in small ways since Eun-Jae’s tools moved out and books and girls moved in. The windows were clean; the yard swept. In good weather, lines stretched between posts with papers pegged to dry—the girls’ copy work, Ah-Rin’s own neat lines of Hangul, sometimes a poem she made them read until they could hear the rhythm even with their eyes.
This morning, the door stood open. Kim Ah-Rin was on the low stone step, broom in hand, sweeping the last of the night’s dust out into the yard. Her sleeves were rolled; a hairpin had worked itself slightly loose at the back of her head, letting one strand escape.
At the sound of their steps, she looked up. For a heartbeat the old awkwardness flickered—years of distance, words left unsaid—but it was thinner than before, worn away by shared girls and ledgers and festival nights.
“Good morning, Ah-Rin-ssi,” In-Su said, bowing.
His tone had changed over the last year. The first season, the honorific had been correct and cool, a careful wall. Now it carried warmth, a polite respect sitting on top of something older and softer.
“Good morning, In-Su-ssi,” she replied. The corners of her mouth lifted. “You brought our most diligent troublemaker again.”
“I didn’t have to bring her,” he said. “She would have arrived even if the road refused.”
“It wouldn’t dare,” Ah-Rin said, looking at Han-Byeol. “Our Han-Byeol-ssi shines too brightly. The road would be embarrassed not to carry her.”
Han-Byeol beamed. “Seonsaeng-nim, I told Appa I can come alone,” she said. “He says there are tigers.”
“Tigers?” Ah-Rin repeated. “In Haesong?”
“Invisible ones,” Han-Byeol said. “They only eat disobedient children.”
“Mm,” Ah-Rin said thoughtfully. “Then perhaps it is better if your Appa walks you a little longer. Until the tigers find somewhere else to live.”
Han-Byeol opened her mouth to argue and then shut it, sensing she had no allies here. “Fine,” she sighed, but it was mostly for form.
“Go put your things at your place,” Ah-Rin said gently. “Soo-Yeon and Mi-Ran are already here, and I promised them a poem about the sea that uses more than one word for ‘deep’.”
Han-Byeol’s eyes lit. “Really?” she said.
“Go,” In-Su echoed, amused. “Before Seonsaeng-nim uses my apron for ink practice.”
She made a face at him, then skipped up the step, ducking past Ah-Rin into the cool dim of the classroom. Her footsteps pattered along the floor; a moment later, the sound of a mat sliding around told them she had flung herself into her place at the low table.
The yard fell quiet. The stream behind the house muttered over stones.
“You’ve been well?” Ah-Rin asked.
“Well enough,” In-Su said. “The almond harvest was kinder this year than last. People eat their worries faster, when the news from the capital is bad.” He hesitated, then added, “Han-Byeol likes your school. She… she comes home with words I don’t know yet.”
“Then she should teach you,” Ah-Rin said softly. “That way you can complain about grain more beautifully.”
He huffed a quiet laugh. The sound warmed the air between them.
He turned as if to go, then paused when she spoke again, the name catching in her throat for a heartbeat before she let it out.
“In-Su-yah.”
He glanced back, surprise flickering across his face before he smoothed it, but not entirely. The smile that followed was small and genuine.
“Yes?” he said.
She shook her head, suddenly almost shy. “Just… see you later.”
His smile deepened by a fraction. “Mmm,” he said. “Later, then.”
He bowed ever so slightly, if unwilling to break eye contact, turned, and slowly walked back down the lane, the morning sun catching on the flour dust still clinging faintly to his sleeves.
On the step, Ah-Rin watched him go, her hand still resting lightly on the broom handle. Behind her, inside, Han-Byeol’s voice piped up, already telling Soo-Yeon with great importance that her father had no idea how many invisible tigers she could fight off alone.
Ah-Rin let herself smile, brief and private, then took a breath and went back inside to face the day’s ink.
By the time the bell by the door had chimed twice, the schoolroom held its usual little constellation of girls.
Han-Byeol sat at the centre table, brush poised, a small crease between her brows as she copied a line from the board. Soo-Yeon—taller now, her plaits longer, still carrying the faint salt of the fish stalls in the seams of her clothes—murmured through a sentence under her breath. On her other side, Mi-Ran counted dried beans with the intense seriousness of someone who knew every bean stood in for real rice.
On the blackboard, Ah-Rin had written in firm strokes:
바다는 깊고,18Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwQJz5fA8VJ
사람의 마음도 깊다.
“The sea is deep,” she had translated for them earlier, pointing, “and so is the human heart.”
Now the girls were copying the sentence, each at her own pace, some characters straighter than others. At the bottom of the board, she had added a simple account line:
쌀 — rice — 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqWKuU7hm61
종이 — paper — 10
“Words and numbers share the world,” she had told them. “We will not let one go to waste because the other is loud.”
Outside, the sounds of the town came and went: a cart wheel catching on a stone, a woman calling to a child, the harbour’s distant clatter. Inside, the scratch of brushes and the soft murmur of breath filled the small room.
The knock, when it came, was hesitant. Three small taps, then silence.
“Please, come in,” Ah-Rin called.
The door slid aside, and a woman stepped in, bowing almost before she had fully crossed the threshold. Her clothes were tidy but worn; her hands had the reddened, cracked look of someone who spent long hours in water and work. Behind her, half-shadowed by her sleeve, stood a girl.
The girl must have been even younger than Han-Byeol. She was thin in the way of children who worked hard and ate enough to survive but not to grow soft. Her hair had been tied back neatly, but a few strands had escaped; they hung near her ears, where they did not seem to trouble her. Her shoulders were held too still, as if any movement might invite rebuke. Her eyes did not wander like most children’s; they moved quickly, sharply, taking in the room and everyone in it before returning to the far wall.
Ah-Rin set her own brush down and came forward. “Good morning”, she said. “Welcome. How can I help you?”
The woman bowed again, more deeply. “Seonsaeng-nim,” she said, voice brisk with nerves, “I came to ask a… favour.” She reached back, her fingers tightening briefly on the girl’s shoulder, then pushing her gently forward. “This child. She is my late brother’s girl.”
The girl’s gaze flickered up at the touch, then away.
“What is her name?” Ah-Rin asked.
The woman’s mouth opened, then closed. “We… call her Beong-i,” she said at last. “She doesn’t hear properly.” She tapped just behind her own ear, a habitual gesture. “Her words are… crooked. They don’t come out right. People don’t understand her. So.” She made a small, helpless motion. “Beong-i.”
Behind Ah-Rin, the room had gone very quiet. The brush in Han-Byeol’s hand hovered above the paper, ink trembling at the tip.
“And before you called her that?” Ah-Rin asked. Her voice stayed polite, but something in it cooled. “What name did you give her when she was born?”
The woman shifted her weight, eyes dropping to the floor. “My brother died when she was still small,” she said. “Her mother before that. There was no one to whisper names. She never answered to anything. The neighbours started saying, ‘That mute girl,’ and…” Her hand flapped, embarrassed. “These things stick, Seonsaeng-nim. Everyone calls her Beong-i now. She knows it. If I shout it, she looks.”
Ah-Rin felt the flare of anger rise in her chest—not the hot, sharp anger of youth but the deep, slow kind that had learnt to sit behind the ribs and wait. She swallowed it back into something more precise.
Calling her what she is, you think, she thought. Or what you have decided she isn’t.
She crouched down so her eyes were level with the girl’s. “Hello”, she said softly. “They call you Beong-i-yah, do they?”
The girl looked at her then, properly. Her eyes were dark and wary, but not dull. After a heartbeat, she gave the smallest of nods.
“Mm,” Ah-Rin murmured. She resisted the urge to say, That’s not a name. Names were gifts, and here, it seemed, no one had thought this child worth one.
Aloud, she said, “I am Ah-Rin.” She tapped her own chest lightly. “Na—Ah-Rin.” She tapped the girl’s chest, very gently. “Neo—Beong-i-yah.”
The girl’s shoulders tensed, waiting for mockery. None came. The tension did not vanish, but it shifted, confused.
“Seonsaeng-nim,” the woman said, seizing the moment, “she eats well, she works well. She carries water, peels vegetables, does what she is told. She is just no use for talking. If we send her to market one day, I fear she will be cheated blind. If she could at least read numbers… maybe she could count change. Read prices.” She shrugged, half ashamed, half defensive. “She has no mother. There is only so much we can do.”
“There is always more than ‘only’,” Ah-Rin said quietly.
The woman blinked. “What?”
“She is not ‘no use’,” Ah-Rin said, rising to her feet. “She is a child. Children are not tools to be thrown aside because one part does not move the way you expect.”
She caught the flash of hurt and pride in the woman’s eyes and gentled her tone. “You work hard,” she added. “I can see that. It is not easy to feed another mouth when your hands are already tired. But if you have brought her here, then you have not given up on her completely. Don’t start doing it now.”
The woman’s shoulders drooped a little, as if someone had named her own exhaustion too plainly. “I just… I don’t know how to speak to her,” she admitted. “She watches, but she doesn’t answer. The other children call her…” She bit the word off too late. “They call her names. If she could show them she can read, maybe they would—”
“Children learn from the names we use,” Ah-Rin said. “If they hear you call her ‘mute’ all day, they will not think to call her anything else.”
Behind her, Han-Byeol’s grip on her brush tightened. Soo-Yeon’s eyes had grown round. Mi-Ran’s lips moved as if silently counting something other than beans.
Ah-Rin took a breath. “Leave her with us in the mornings,” she said. “We’ll start with letters. And the other girls will learn to speak with their hands as well as their mouths. If she learns to read numbers, I promise you she will not be cheated easily.”
The woman bowed again, this time more deeply. “Thank you, Seonsaeng-nim,” she said. “If she is troublesome—”
“Children are troublesome,” Ah-Rin said. “That’s how they grow. You can come for her at noon.”
When the woman had gone, the door sliding shut behind her, the room stayed very still for a moment.
“This is Beong-i-yah,” Ah-Rin said, turning back to the girls. “She will be learning with us.”
Han-Byeol, who had never been shy a day in her life, set her brush down carefully so as not to blot the sentence and scrambled to her feet. She moved a little closer, but not so close as to crowd.
“Hello, Beong-i-yah,” she said, voice bright but softer than usual. “I’m Han-Byeol. They call me that because I was born on a night full of stars. Not because I shout.”
The corner of Ah-Rin’s mouth twitched. Trust Han-Byeol to throw a stone at the heart of it without even aiming.
Soo-Yeon and Mi-Ran followed, offering shy greetings. Beong-i’s gaze flicked from face to face, uncertain, as if waiting for the twist where this turned into a joke.
Ah-Rin went to the shelf, took down a fresh sheet of paper and a brush, and set them at the end of the low table. “Sit here,” she said, touching the mat.
Beong-i hesitated, then moved as instructed, her steps light but careful. She sat, hands folded tightly in her lap, eyes fixed on the blank page as if it might suddenly accuse her.
Ah-Rin picked up a piece of chalk and turned to the board. With careful strokes, she wrote:
가 나 다
“Today,” she said, “we start at the beginning.” She looked at all of them, older and younger alike. “For all of us.”
The first days with Beong-i in the room slipped past like cautious guests.
She arrived each morning in her aunt’s shadow, stood stiffly until Ah-Rin pointed to her place, then sat on the edge of the mat as if the floor might reject her. She copied what she was shown with quick, precise strokes, but she did not recite with the others. When the girls stumbled through reading aloud, their voices filling the small room, her lips stayed still. Her eyes, though, missed almost nothing.
On the board, the sentences had grown a little more ambitious with the years. One morning, Ah-Rin wrote in broad strokes:
바다 — sea18Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvlaShH5SfT
마을 — village18Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXCMjM02dFQ
집 — house
Underneath, she added:
“Sea, village, house. The three things that argue over who we belong to.”
“That’s not in the book,” Han-Byeol said, squinting.
“Then we’ll put it in ours,” Ah-Rin said. “Copy.”
The older girls set to work. Brushes scratched softly; the faint smell of ink curled up like steam. At the low table near the front, Beong-i watched each stroke as if memorising it from the chalk to the page. When she tried to repeat a word aloud, it came out thick and twisted. After a few attempts, she had learnt that chalk on slate was kinder than tongues that didn’t know how to wait.
“Ba-da,” Soo-Yeon murmured, half to herself, reading, “sea.”18Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJvl8UY3iNl
“Ma-eul,” Mi-Ran followed, “village.”18Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQRtxgOB82q
“Jip,” Han-Byeol concluded, “house. And bakery. And school.”
“And bakery,” Ah-Rin agreed, lips twitching. “And school.”
She moved between the tables, correcting the angle of a brush here, nudging a wrist there. When she reached Beong-i’s place, she rested two fingers lightly on the girl’s page. The characters were clean, unhesitating.
“Good,” she said.
Beong-i’s lashes flickered. She dipped her brush again without looking up.
Later in the lesson, Ah-Rin set the brushes aside and drew simple sums on the board.
3 + 2 = ?
Below it, she wrote:18Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡshjcvlPSb4
쌀 — rice — 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSCj04rHBKx
빵 — bread — 2
“Who will read this?” she asked.
Soo-Yeon’s hand shot up. “Three measures of rice, two loaves of bread,” she said. “Five things to eat.”
“Exactly,” Ah-Rin said. “Count wrong, and someone goes hungry.”
She set a little pile of beans on each girl’s table. “Now copy the sum and match it with these,” she said. “If the numbers on your page and the beans on your mat disagree, ask them which one lied.”
As they bent over their work, the sound in the room thickened again: girls counting under their breath, whispering numbers, Han-Byeol arguing with an imaginary customer over “fair prices” using beans as coins.
Only at the front was there a different kind of quiet.
Beong-i took the brush and copied the numerals carefully; her tongue pressed against her teeth in concentration. She glanced up each time Ah-Rin wrote a new sign, then down at her own page, as if tracing the path from chalk to ink.
When the others began to check their answers aloud, their voices turned clumsy sums into a kind of chant. Beong-i’s head jerked slightly with the first swell of noise, as if she’d expected the room to stay as it had been. She looked from mouth to mouth, but whatever scraps of sound reached her were only that: scraps.
Mi-Ran, trying to be helpful, turned towards her and exaggerated every syllable, her voice rising too loud.
“Three. Plus. Two,” she said slowly, as if voice could climb over the gap.
Beong-i flinched, eyes dropping to the table. Her fingers tightened on the brush until the wood trembled.
“Enough,” Ah-Rin said from the front.
Her voice wasn’t sharp, but it cut across the babble. The room stilled; Mi-Ran’s cheeks flushed.
“I only wanted to—” the girl began.
“I know,” Ah-Rin said. “And next time, you’ll remember that help isn’t the same as shouting.”
She set her own brush aside, picked up a piece of chalk, and turned to a bare strip of board.
“Look,” she said.
She drew a simple open hand: five short lines like a child’s sketch. Next to it, she made a little arrow curving back.
“This,” she said, tapping it, “means ‘again’.”
She turned and repeated the gesture with her own hand: palm up, a small circling twist, as if asking time itself to come back once more. “Again,” she said. “Do it with me.”
The girls mimicked her, some too fast, some backwards, giggling. Beong-i watched, wary.
Next, Ah-Rin drew a small circle with a dot in the middle. “This means ‘good’,” she said. “Or ‘that’s it’.”
She pressed thumb and forefinger together just above her heart. “Like this. Good.”
Then, two short horizontal strokes and one longer one: “Slow,” she said, touching the short lines, “and ‘fast’.” She slid her hand slowly across the air, then quickly.
“These are our class signs,” she said, turning back to them. “If we want Beong-i-yah to learn with us, we must also learn to speak the way she can answer. Your mouths are not more important than her hands.”
Something in her tone made even Han-Byeol sit a little straighter.
She took Beong-i’s hand, very lightly, and raised it so the others could see. “Her hands know how to work,” she went on. “We will teach them letters. In return, her hands will teach yours patience.”
For a heartbeat, Beong-i froze under the attention. Then she let her fingers relax, resting them in Ah-Rin’s palm like a small, wary bird.
“Now,” Ah-Rin said, stepping back, “everyone. ‘Again’.”
She made the circling motion. The girls copied, some clumsy, some unexpectedly graceful. Han-Byeol, tongue caught between her teeth, tried three times before she was satisfied that her wrist turned just so.
Ah-Rin looked at Beong-i. “Your turn,” she said.
Very slowly, Beong-i lifted her hand and turned it in the same small circle. Her fingers were more precise than most of the others’, the movement neat.
“Good,” Ah-Rin said, and tapped the circle with the dot. “You all did well. Now you know one word in Beong-i-yah’s language. We’ll learn more.”
The air in the room shifted; something small but real had been laid down, like the first plank of a bridge.
18Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZPD1x8PA5S
After that, the signs crept into the lessons like shy cats that had decided the hearth was safe.
When Ah-Rin wanted a sentence read again, she gave the circling hand; girls laughed and obeyed, chanting more carefully. When someone rushed through a line of numbers and tripped, Han-Byeol tapped the “slow” sign on the side of her own nose, grinning; Mi-Ran blushed, giggled, and tried again.
One afternoon, after a tricky passage about a stubborn fisherman and a storm, Han-Byeol turned to Beong-i, eyes bright, and did the “again” sign in front of her.
For a moment, Beong-i just stared, as if waiting for the catch. Then she raised her own hand and answered with the same gesture, fingers steady as she turned her wrist.
“She said I did it right,” Han-Byeol whispered to Soo-Yeon, delighted, as if she’d just been praised by a princess.
From the back of the room, Seol-Ha watched the little exchange while sorting through a stack of worn readers. The way Beong-i sat—present, but braced against being spoken over—was painfully familiar.
She’d been “Yoon Eun-Jae’s daughter” for as long as she could remember, the tune of her father’s name often louder than any sound she made herself. It took time, she knew, for people to learn to call you anything else. And sometimes, it took one stubborn person to insist you were more than the label they found easiest.
She placed the last mended reader on the pile and watched as Beong-i, thinking no one was looking, traced the “again” sign on her own knee, just once, as if testing the shape of ownership.
When the bell by the door finally chimed to mark the end of lessons, the room burst back into its usual tangle.
Soo-Yeon rolled her shoulders and announced she was going to the harbour to see if any fish had tried to escape their baskets. Mi-Ran carefully brushed crumbs of eraser from her slate and lined up her beans as if she might need them again later. Han-Byeol declared loudly that invisible tigers had been very well-behaved during class and that clearly this meant she was old enough to walk home alone.
“Invisible tigers also attend school,” Ah-Rin said. “They learn which children taste the most like arguments.”
Han-Byeol pulled a face and ran out to meet whatever errands her grandmother had invented for her.
One by one, the girls tumbled into the yard and away, until only Beong-i remained, sitting on the mat at the front.
Her aunt was late, as she often was when the laundry lines filled faster than her arms could keep up. Beong-i sat very still, hands flat on the floor, fingertips pressed into the mat. Without the other voices, the room felt oddly bigger around her.
Seol-Ha, stacking the last of the papers on the back table, noticed.
She wiped ink from her fingers, hesitated for half a heartbeat, and then crossed the room, not straight towards the girl but at a slight angle, leaving space.
She crouched a little distance away and tapped the floor between them with three gentle knocks.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Beong-i’s head turned. Her eyes dropped to Seol-Ha’s hand.
Seol-Ha smiled, kept the rhythm, and then, with her other hand, made the small circling “again” sign.
Again?
Beong-i looked at her face, then at her hand, then at the spot on the floor. Slowly, she raised her own hand and echoed the three taps.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Something in Seol-Ha’s chest loosened. Good, she thought. There you are.
She glanced over at the corner where her gayageum leaned against the wall, half wrapped in its cloth. Her fingers twitched with the instinct to go to it. If I can feel Abba’s storms through the floor, she thought, then so can you.
“Wait,” she murmured, more to herself than to the girl.
She rose, crossed to the instrument, and carried it carefully back, setting it down on a folded mat close enough that they both could reach.
Beong-i watched every movement, eyes wide and wary. Instruments, in her world, had mostly been background: something adults did, a sound she felt more than heard when someone played nearby. No one had ever put one within the circle of her own hands.
Seol-Ha knelt beside the gayageum and patted the floor just in front of it, between them. Then, remembering, she added the “come” gesture Ah-Rin had used in lessons: a small invitation with her fingers.
After a moment’s hesitation, Beong-i shuffled a little closer. Not too close; she left a finger’s width of safety between her knee and the mat on which the instrument rested. But it was closer than she’d been at the start of the year.
“May I?” Seol-Ha asked quietly, lifting her hands a little, palms up, where the girl could see.
Beong-i looked at the hands, then at her face. Her shoulders rose and fell on a shallow breath. Then she nodded, once, a small jerk of chin.
Gently, Seol-Ha took the girl’s hands and guided them to rest flat on the soundboard, beneath the strings. The wood was cool and smooth; the edges were worn a little where fingers had brushed them over time.
“Just listen with these,” she said, though she knew the words themselves were mostly for her own sake. She tapped the backs of Beong-i’s hands lightly. “Here.”
She plucked one of the lower open strings with her right hand.
The note was not loud, but it had weight, a round, soft thrum that travelled through the wood into the girl’s palms, then up her arms. It was like feeling a distant cart roll past, or the first rumble of thunder somewhere you couldn’t see.
Beong-i’s eyes widened. Her fingers twitched in surprise. Under her fingertips the string’s shiver was undeniable, a clean, firm line of sound her ears could not steal from her.
Seol-Ha watched her face more than the strings. “You feel it,” she said, voice no more than a breath. “Don’t you?”
Another nod, quicker this time.
She plucked again. The same note. The same vibration, small but insistent. Then she tried a simple pattern: low, low, higher, low. Her free hand, resting lightly on the wood near Beong-i’s fingers, tapped the same pattern in gentle beats.
Tap, tap, tap-higher, tap.
On the third repetition, the girl’s breath hitched just before the higher note, as if her body anticipated the change a heartbeat before it came. Her mouth parted, not in words but in pure startlement.
Seol-Ha felt a smile slipping onto her own face, uninvited and unstoppable. “Good,” she whispered, barely moving her lips. “That’s it.”
She changed the pattern. This time: low, higher, higher, low. Her fingers on the wood mirrored the rhythm. Under her hands, Beong-i’s palms shifted, almost as if leaning into the stronger pulses.
Then, slowly, the girl did something she had not done in any lesson so far without instruction.
She lifted one hand away from the soundboard, hesitated, and then tapped her fingertips along the wood near the bridges. The taps were uneven, curious rather than ordered. When she stopped, she looked up, searching Seol-Ha’s face as if asking, Did I do that right? Did that go anywhere?
Seol-Ha’s throat tightened.
“You’re asking,” she said softly. “That’s all it has to be right now.”
She took Beong-i’s lifted hand, turned it palm-up, and traced a small arc along it with her fingertip: rising, falling, rising, falling. Then she plucked the string in a matching curve of notes—up, down, up, down—so the movement on the skin matched the tremor in the bone.
Beong-i watched her hand, then her face, then her own palm. Her mouth moved, shaping nothing, or everything. No sound came. But the tightness in her shoulders had eased, just a little. The line of her back was less guarded, more curious.
They stayed like that for some time. The room held the thin, bright sound of the strings and the quieter language of touch: pattern repeated, pattern changed, pause, response. Outside, the stream kept talking to the stones; inside, the gayageum talked to two pairs of hands.
When footsteps sounded in the yard at last, quick and tired, Seol-Ha let the strings fall silent. She eased Beong-i’s hands gently off the wood.
The girl’s aunt appeared in the doorway, breathless. “Sorry,” she said. “The washing—”
“It’s all right,” Ah-Rin called from the back, where she had paused in the middle of stacking books, watching without intruding. “She was busy learning.”
The aunt glanced at the gayageum, then at her niece’s face. For once, she seemed to notice that there was colour there, a faint brightness that had not been there that morning.
“Come,” she said, softer than usual. “We’ll be late for the market.”
Beong-i stood, fingers still tingling, and cast one last look at the instrument. Seol-Ha lifted her hand and gave the small “again” sign.
The girl blinked, then answered it—precise, unhurried. Again.
Then she followed her aunt out into the yard.
When the door slid shut, the room felt larger and quieter at once.
Ah-Rin came forward, pressing a hand briefly to Seol-Ha’s shoulder as she passed. “That was good,” she said quietly.
“It was only a few notes,” Seol-Ha replied.
“Sometimes that’s all a door needs,” Ah-Rin said. “One knock in the right place.”
Seol-Ha looked down at the gayageum, at the string with the tiny old bamboo bridge sitting under it, humming faintly from the last touch.
“All right,” she murmured under her breath, not sure if she meant it for the instrument, the bridge, or the girl who had just left. “Again, then.”
She set her fingers to the strings and played the greeting pattern once more into the empty room, as if leaving a promise hanging in the air for the next time Beong-i’s hands would listen.
It became a habit so quietly that no one could say which day it started. Most afternoons, when the lesson had ended and the others had dashed out into the yard, Seol-Ha would stay behind a little longer to straighten mats or stack slates. Beong-i, waiting for her aunt or for In-Su, would hover near the doorway, torn between escape and staying where the room felt less sharp.
One day, instead of calling her over, Seol-Ha tapped the floor with two knuckles.
Tap. … Tap.
Then, after a breath, a third, lighter tap.
Tap.
A crooked little rhythm. Hello, again.
Beong-i’s eyes dropped to the sound. She didn’t move, but her fingers twitched on the edge of the mat.
The next afternoon, Seol-Ha did it again as she crossed the room to her gayageum. Tap, tap… tap. The room was quiet enough that the pattern seemed to hang in the air.
This time, after a small pause, another set of taps answered from the front mat.
Tap. … Tap. Tap.
Not perfect. Not identical. But close enough that Seol-Ha’s mouth curved without her permission.
“All right,” she murmured, more to the strings than to the air. “We have a greeting, then.”
From that day on, they didn’t need words when Beong-i arrived early or stayed late. Two taps, a pause, a third—and an answer. A tiny code stitched into the boards.
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It was Cho Mi-Young’s idea, of course.
Word travelled oddly in Haesong. A complaint dropped into the laundry yard in the morning could end up in the bakery by afternoon, lifted along on steam and gossip. So, when Beong-i’s aunt sighed over the tubs one early summer evening, that it was hard to bring the girl every day and still keep up with work, that sigh reached Mi-Young’s ears before the sheets had finished dripping.
“Your niece comes here?” she had asked, rinsing a shirt with sharp, practiced twists. “To Ah-Rin-ssi’s school?”
The aunt, startled, had nodded. “She… yes. Seonsaeng-nim agreed to take her. She says learning letters won’t break her.”
“Good,” Mi-Young had said. “Something in that house will know how to bend without snapping, even if her family doesn’t.”
By the time the bread had finished rising that evening, she had presented her solution to her son as if it were a settled fact.
“You already walk Han-Byeol,” she’d said, shaping dough with firm, floury hands. “The girl’s house is hardly a turn from your way. Pick her up.”
In-Su had opened his mouth to protest, then shut it again. “It will be trouble for them,” he’d said instead. “Two children instead of one.”
Mi-Young had snorted. “Our Byeol is already three children in one. One more pair of feet will not wake the mountain.”
So, on a soft morning a few days later, In-Su and Han-Byeol stood in front of a different gate.
The courtyard beyond was smaller than theirs at the bakery. A low wall enclosed a hard-packed yard where a water jar stood by the door, half full, and washing hung from lines stretched from eaves to pole. Someone had tried to grow herbs in a cracked pot by the step; the leaves were doing their best with little help.
Han-Byeol knocked smartly on the gate. “Hello! It’s Han-Byeol!”
The door slid open with a rattle, and Beong-i’s aunt looked out, surprised. She wiped wet hands on her skirt, eyes going instantly to In-Su behind her.
“Baek In-Su-ssi,” she said, bowing quickly. “Is something… wrong?”
“No,” he said. “Nothing wrong.” He inclined his head. “My mother said your Beong-i-yah should not have to walk alone. We pass this way. Let our Byeol drag her to school instead.”
“Appa,” Han-Byeol whispered, offended. “I don’t drag people.”
“Very well,” he amended. “Escort. Herd. Carry if needed.”
The aunt’s gaze flicked from father to daughter, to the school bundle clutched in Han-Byeol’s hand. The idea of someone else valuing her niece’s lessons enough to make a detour seemed to sit uneasily beside years of thinking of the girl as a burden.
“It’s trouble for you,” she said, automatically.
“Trouble is flour on the floor,” In-Su said. “You sweep it and start again. This is only another pair of feet.” His voice was mild, but there was a quiet firmness under it, the voice of a man long used to deal with both dough and customers who demanded more than they had paid for.
“Beong-i-yah!” Han-Byeol called, unable to wait any longer. “We’ll be late. Seonsaeng-nim promised a story about a fisherman who argues with the sea and loses.”
“That story is about stubborn people who do not listen,” In-Su said. “You should hear it twice.”
A small figure appeared in the doorway behind the aunt. Beong-i’s hair was damp from hurried washing; her simple jacket still being fastened. Her eyes went quickly to Han-Byeol, then to In-Su, then down to the ground, as if waiting to be told what this arrangement would cost her.
“We’re walking together,” Han-Byeol said, as if declaring a festival. “Halmeoni said so. Appa said so too.” She leaned sideways, stage-whispered, “He pretends it’s all trouble, but he likes having his hands full.”
In-Su snorted softly. “If I deny it, I will be outvoted.”
Beong-i’s aunt placed a hand between the girl’s shoulder blades and nudged her gently forward. “Go,” she said. “Don’t dawdle. Listen to Seonsaeng-nim. Count properly. Don’t shame us.”
Beong-i nodded, that small, tight nod that meant obedience rather than agreement.
“We’ll bring her back when the bell rings,” In-Su said. “If she grows any taller on the way, it will not be my fault.”
Han-Byeol stepped forward and, quite deliberately, reached for Beong-i’s hand. The girl stiffened for a moment at the unexpected contact, then let her fingers uncurl.
Their hands were almost the same size. One gripped with cheerful certainty, the other with cautious surprise.
“Come on,” Han-Byeol said. “If we’re early, I can tell you how the story should end.”
Together they stepped out into the lane. In-Su followed, closing the gate softly behind them.
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The road to the school was the same as always, but it felt different with the extra small presence at his side. Beong-i walked half a pace behind the two of them at first, as if ready to drop out of formation if someone shouted. After a while, Han-Byeol tugged her lightly until they were level.
“Have you ever seen the sea angry?” she asked her new companion, talking as much with her hands as with her mouth. “Really angry, with white foam on its head and the wind shoving it?”
Beong-i watched her gestures, the swooping of palms to show waves, and shook her head.
“We’ll show you,” Han-Byeol said. “From the hill. Seonsaeng-nim says the sea and people argue the same way. They both shout and then pretend they didn’t.”
“You argue like the sea,” In-Su put in.
“You bake like the sea,” she replied automatically.
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It does in my head.”
He shook his head, but there was a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Halfway to the school, they passed a knot of boys loitering near a wall, uneaten sweets in their fists, boredom sharpening their tongues. One of them nudged another and jerked his chin towards the girls.
“Hey,” he called. “Beong-i-yah. Try not to get lost on the way. You won’t hear the road calling.”
His friends sniggered. It was a familiar kind of cruelty, worn smooth from use.
Before In-Su could speak, Han-Byeol stopped dead. She turned to face them, eyes flashing, still holding Beong-i’s hand.
“She hears better than you,” she said. “With her eyes. And her hands. And her head. All you hear is your own noise.”
The boldness of it stunned even the boys. One opened his mouth, then glanced up and properly saw the man standing a few steps behind the girls.
In-Su did not raise his voice. He did not even frown. He simply looked at them.
It was the kind of look that bakers learned early: the one that weighed a person, like dough, to see if they would rise to anything. It was not angry. It was assessing. In some ways, that was worse.
After a few seconds of that quiet, level gaze, the bravest of the boys mumbled something about needing to help his mother and backed away. The others, suddenly very interested in a patch of dirt by their feet, followed.
When they had rounded the next corner, Han-Byeol let out a breath she had been holding a little too tightly.
“You should not speak like that to boys bigger than you,” In-Su said mildly.
“They were wrong,” she said. “If they are bigger, they can be wrong more loudly, that’s all.”
“That is exactly what worries me,” he muttered. “You will be the end of my peaceful old age.”
“You are not old,” she said, outraged.
“That is what worries me too,” he replied.
Beside them, Beong-i’s shoulders had eased a fraction. She still said nothing, but when Han-Byeol swung their joined hands once, lightly, she did not pull away.
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By the time they reached the schoolhouse, the stream had started its usual chuckle behind the old building, and the first light from the open door spilled across the yard.
Ah-Rin stood just inside, arranging low stools. When she looked up and saw the three of them together, her brows lifted, then smoothed into something very like relief.
“Three birds with one basket,” she said as they approached. “I see Mi-Young-ssi’s hand in this.”
“She has long arms,” In-Su said. “They reach into all the corners of town.”
“Halmeoni said it’s better if we all come together,” Han-Byeol announced. “Then invisible tigers will see there is no space between us.”
“Wise tigers,” Ah-Rin said. Her eyes went to Beong-i. “Hello Beong-i-yah.”
The girl dipped a small bow. Her free hand nudged the edge of Han-Byeol’s sleeve, just once.
“Go put your things down,” Ah-Rin said. “Soo-Yeon and Mi-Ran are inside.”
The girls scampered in, one tugging the other. In the space where their hands had been, the air felt briefly lighter.
“Thank you,” Ah-Rin said quietly, when they were out of earshot.
“It is a short road,” In-Su replied. “And if she learns to count properly, she may grow up to demand the right change from me. This is dangerous for my business.”
“Then you will learn to be as honest in numbers as you are in bread,” Ah-Rin said.
He tilted his head, acknowledging the touch. For a moment they stood there, the sounds of the girls inside beginning to swell, the stream talking behind the house, the town opening around them like a fan.
“Later,” he said at last.
“Later,” she echoed.
He turned back towards the lane. Behind him, in the low room, Han-Byeol was already explaining to Beong-i, with extravagant gestures, how storms and fathers were both very bad at listening the first time you told them anything.
From the doorway, Ah-Rin watched them for a breath longer, then stepped in and picked up her chalk. The day’s lessons waited, and now, so did one more small, stubborn heart.
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The last bell of the day was a small brass thing, cracked along one edge. Ah-Rin loved it for that. It had a voice that never quite rang the same way twice, as if it refused to pretend the days were interchangeable.
She rang it once, lightly. The sound chimed down the room, bouncing off paper and wood.
“Enough for today,” she said. “Close your ink. Don’t argue with your brushes; they’ve done their best.”
There was the familiar scramble as girls wiped nibs, closed inkstones, stacked their work. Soo-Yeon rolled her shoulders like a sailor shaking out a sail. Mi-Ran counted her last little pile of beans as if they might run away if she left one miscounted.
Han-Byeol, who had been sitting close to Beong-i, tapped twice on the edge of her own slate in their shared “again” rhythm, grinning. Beong-i’s mouth tugged up at one corner as she answered the rhythm with her fingertips on the mat.
“Tomorrow,” Ah-Rin said. “There will be more sums for you to scowl at then.”
The girls filed out into the yard, voices rising as soon as they crossed the threshold. The stream behind the house picked up their chatter and carried it away between the stones.
In-Su arrived not long after, his shadow falling across the doorway just as Han-Byeol was telling Soo-Yeon a highly exaggerated version of how she had fought off three invisible tigers that week.
“Four,” he said mildly from the step. “You’re forgetting the one you argued with in your sleep.”
“Appa!” she cried, half scandalised, half delighted. “You promised not to tell anyone about that.”
“I promised no such thing,” he said. “Seonsaeng-nim, we’ve come to steal your scholars back.”
Ah-Rin straightened from where she’d been tying up a bundle of practice sheets. She wiped a stray line of chalk from her sleeve and came to the doorway.
“You return them more tired than I send them,” she said. “I should charge you for the ink they burn through in the evenings, asking questions.”
“If I could pay my flour bill in questions, I would be a rich man,” he said. “Sadly, Master Nam does not accept them.”
Han-Byeol had already darted to his side, slipping her hand into his without quite letting go of the strap of her school bundle. With her other hand she reached back, catching at Beong-i’s sleeve.
“Come on,” she urged. “Halmeoni made red bean buns yesterday. There are always one or two secret ones left.”
Beong-i glanced at her aunt, who had just arrived at the gate, hair damp from the washing yard, hands red from soap. The woman looked from her niece to the baker and back, then nodded, slightly flustered.
“If it’s no trouble,” she began.
“Trouble,” In-Su said, “would be telling a child there might be buns and then saying no.” He inclined his head. “She’ll eat, then we’ll send her home before the pots boil over.”
The aunt’s shoulders eased. “Thank you very much,” she murmured.
As the two girls hurried ahead, comparing ink stains on their sleeves like badges, Ah-Rin watched them with a small ache. Han-Byeol had wrapped herself around Beong-i’s existence with the same stubborn loyalty she gave everything she decided to love. If the world had been unkind, Han-Byeol’s answer was simply to talk louder and hold on tighter.
“You’ve raised her well,” Ah-Rin said quietly.
“I am still in the middle of it,” In-Su replied. “Ask me again in ten years.”
She smiled. “I might.”
For a moment they stood together in the doorway, the noises of the yard thinning as the girls’ chatter moved down the lane. The evening light turned the dust in the air to faint gold. Somewhere up the hill, a dog barked at nothing of importance.
“Thank you,” she said, after a heartbeat. “For walking Beong-i-yah. It… matters.”
“Han-Byeol would carry half the town on her back if I let her,” he said. “This way, at least I know which half she’s dragging.”
His tone was light. Underneath it, she heard something steadier. He had not flinched from the extra responsibility. He had simply adjusted his stride.
“You always did bake more than bread,” she said, before she could stop herself.
He glanced at her, the old, quick wit stirring. “And you always did make more than paper,” he said. “Even when you were only pretending you didn’t know it.”
Their eyes met. For the space of a breath, there was the strange sensation of standing in two years at once: the children’s voices echoing in the present, the memory of a younger girl at his bakery counter in the past, chin lifted in outrage over some injustice involving buns.
Then the moment slipped off like a wave leaving the sand.
“I should close up,” she said.
“I should go rescue my mother from those two,” he replied. “If I arrive late, they’ll have eaten everything and sworn they were testing poison for me.”
He took a step back, then paused. “Ah-Rin-ah.”
“Yes?”
He seemed to weigh a thought, then let it rest. “It’s good you came back,” he said simply. “Even if the town is only just learning how to deserve it.”
Something in her chest tightened and loosened at the same time. “It was always my town,” she said. “I just had to grow large enough to fit it again.”
He huffed, the sound almost a laugh, bowed once, and turned away, following the fading thread of Han-Byeol’s voice.
When they had gone, silence settled over the yard with the last of the light. The stream kept talking, patient and indifferent. Inside, the classroom waited, papers cooling, ink drying.
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