Origami Is Hard
"Ooooh..."
I couldn't hold back a gasp as I looked through the file our teacher had handed out. I had never imagined a single sheet of paper could be folded into so many things.
"Everyone, pick an animal or an object from the file I gave you and try folding it!"
We'd been given plenty of paper, so a failure or two wouldn't sting. There was no pressure even if I tried something difficult. I tapped the screen and scrolled. Nothing had quite stolen my heart yet. Then my eyes lit up — I had found exactly what I wanted.
Dinosaur
A dinosaur! The mere fact that you could make one out of origami was enough to set me buzzing. The clay dinosaur I'd made last time was still sitting in my room, and the thought of adding another piece to the collection made my chest swell. Beside me, Yumi and Jiyu each seemed to have settled on the animals they wanted to make.
"I'm gonna make a rabbit!"
"I'm doing a frog!"
Both of them had gone straight for something simple and easy. A man, though, has a path he has to walk, no matter what trials stand on it. Without a second thought I opened the dinosaur file — and the moment I saw how long the page ran, I had no choice but to hesitate. The steps were quietly, sneakily complicated.
I let my gaze roll over toward Jiyu's and Yumi's tablets. Whether it was because these were a child's eyes or for some other reason, this body's eyesight was remarkably sharp. Even from a distance, everything came through crystal clear. Not eagle-sharp, of course. Anything truly far off stayed invisible, as it should.
Both of their instructions were short. That meant the dinosaur I'd chosen was complicated to make. If it had been easy, there would have been no need for an explanation that long. I dithered, stretching a hand toward my tablet.
"Hana, you're making a dinosaur? You really do love dinosaurs!"
At Yumi's words, the hand I'd been reaching out flinched and stopped. Somehow, giving up here felt like something I wasn't allowed to do. With superhuman patience I seized the part of me that wanted to pick something else, pinned it down, and resolved to fold the dinosaur.
"Uwaaah..."
Folding a dinosaur was not as easy as I'd thought. I had followed the instructions exactly, and still I couldn't understand why the result looked different. How had they managed to make it come out like that? Hoping to cool my head, I glanced over at what Jiyu and Yumi were making.
They were already finished — and coloring them in with colored pencils.
This can't be!
I might be far ahead of them at studying, but to lose to children at origami... Faced with a reality I couldn't believe, the world went dark before my eyes. That was when Yumi looked at the paper I'd been wrestling with, came over, and spoke.
"Hana, is it hard? Want me to help a little?"
I shook my head, ready to refuse — but I wanted a dinosaur with a proud, gallant bearing. Honestly, I'd already taught Yumi plenty about studying. Would it really be so bad to take her help just once? The thought cleared my head at once. Give and take was the great truth of human relationships, wasn't it?
I nodded.
"Here, Hana. Watch."
Yumi pulled a chair up beside me and taught me with patient kindness. I could only marvel at the dinosaur taking shape in her hands. When I'd fussed and fiddled with the paper myself, it had looked nothing like this. Under Yumi's hands, it was being born as an actual dinosaur.
The incomplete creature I'd groaned over for thirty whole minutes, she finished in three. She didn't complete it all the way. Rather than catching the fish and handing it over, Yumi seemed to want to teach me how to catch it myself.
"Hana. Watch carefully. From here, what you do is..."
"Whoaaa..."
I listened to her explanation in open admiration. Yumi seemed born for anything that needed clever hands. She might lag behind me in studying, but at this she was far better. Of course, once she reached the same grown-up age I carried in my head, she'd probably leave me behind at studying too. All I had, in the end, was the cheat of an adult's mind.
Start us from the same line, and Yumi's potential was much higher than mine. Right now I was so far out in front that the gap looked enormous, but give it time and she would catch me. No question.
"Wow! When I make it the way Yumi showed me, it actually works!"
Following her instructions, the dinosaur came together, quick as anything.
Kim Shintae was a Grade 7 civil servant living out in the provinces. Ever since he was little, he had listened to his mother complain, over and over, that the countryside had no jobs worth wanting. So from a young age he had thrown himself into preparing for the civil service exam.
The result was that he sat the exam the moment he graduated university and became a Grade 9 civil servant. Now, with the years stacked up, he had climbed to Grade 7.
As the age when a man was expected to marry drew near, he couldn't withstand the nagging around him and started going on blind dates. Civil servant society was woven so tightly together that the setups seemed to come one after another.
If his job had been nothing special, the offers would never have arrived. But holding a government post in a place like this put him, at the very least, in the upper ranks of eligible bachelors. Unless someone worked for a major conglomerate or a state enterprise, his career was a downright broken one — employment guaranteed all the way to retirement.
And so today, home from yet another blind date with a suitable woman, Kim Shintae reached his front door, saw the package waiting there, and brightened at once.
"Oh! This is from Jaechang? It's finally here!"
Young as he was, still in his thirties, Kim Shintae preferred makgeolli — Korea's cloudy rice wine — above every other drink. Once you fell for that sweet, pleasantly tipsy taste, other liquors didn't even catch your eye. Finishing a long day of work and drinking makgeolli with something to nibble on a Friday evening was his way of healing.
Tomorrow was Saturday, a day off, so he didn't have to worry about a hangover. He carried the box in carefully and set the makgeolli gently on the table.
"Shintae, what's this?"
His mother, who had been watching television, called over to him. He didn't live on his own. He was still lodged at his parents' house.
"Oh, that? It's a new makgeolli Jaechang made. He said a new product was out and sent it so we could try it first."
"Is that so?"
At that, his mother went into her room. She wasn't the sort who cared for a drink in the first place.
"Forty thousand won a bottle?"
Two bottles had come, which put the makgeolli in the box at eighty thousand won. He couldn't imagine who would pay that kind of money for rice wine. He'd only bought it for forty thousand because of the friend discount — half off. If Jaechang had told him to pay the full eighty thousand, he might have considered cutting the friendship off, even as a joke.
Walk into any supermarket and makgeolli didn't even cost two thousand won. And since Jaechang had asked him to spread the word a little, Shintae planned to drink one bottle himself and take the other to the office dinner. A civil service organization was knit tight and woven dense; rumors raced through it in no time.
The moment an office romance came to light, word traveled not only through that official's own office but through other offices as well. It was enough to make you realize that the civil service was enormous and tiny at the same time.
"I wonder if it even tastes good..."
Taste was the only thing that mattered. He'd bought it because Jaechang had recommended it so hard, but he was curious whether it could possibly taste like forty thousand won. If he tried it and it was bad, he was ready to scrap the plan of bringing it to the office dinner. There was no telling what might happen if he pushed tasteless makgeolli on his superiors.
He set the bottle on the table without much ceremony, washed up, and came back out. The snack was beef jerky. In nothing but a tank top and pajama pants, Kim Shintae set a cup on the table.
He took the makgeolli in hand and twisted off the cap.
"Oh?"
The moment it opened, the scent rose up so thick it seemed to hum, and a strange little smile crossed his face. It was a deep, rich aroma no other makgeolli had ever given him. He poured.
A makgeolli of a deep, gray tone welcomed him.
"Good color, good smell..."
Now it only had to taste good. Kim Shintae lifted the cup and drank. He had meant to take a single sip and set it back on the table, but the flavor was so good he threw the whole cup back in one shot.
Eyes wide, Kim Shintae stared at the makgeolli.
"This is actually delicious?"
The makgeolli sold in supermarkets had never been makgeolli at all. That stuff tasted like liquor watered down. After this, Kim Shintae didn't think he would ever look at it again.
And so the rest of Kim Jaechang's friends went through the very same thing Kim Shintae had. Their reactions were identical. It was makgeolli with a truly heavenly taste.