2
2. Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan.
When people think of Canada, they probably think of Toronto, Quebec, Vancouver, and places like that first.
‘This is exhausting. I’m tired..... Damn, I didn’t know that little plane would shake that much.’
All I knew about Saskatchewan was that it was a place in central Canada known for its vast plains.
Simply put, it was the countryside.
I had to take a small plane for another two hours from Vancouver Airport to an airport in Saskatchewan.
“Shinyong!”
The moment I arrived at the airport and collected my luggage, I heard a familiar voice speaking my mother tongue from
somewhere in the distance.
When I turned my head, I saw an Asian man with his hair tied back, waving his hand.
“......No way, is that Jeongmin?”
“Of course it’s me! You bastard! Long time no see!”
Wham!
As soon as Jeongmin saw me, he hugged me as if he were genuinely happy to see me.
‘That’s Jeongmin? This muscle monster?’
I even felt a strange sensation, as if a boulder were hugging me.
“Why is your body so.....”
“Solid? Of course it is. I work out, you idiot!”
“.....Of course?”
Jeongmin was someone who absolutely hated exercising.
Even three years ago, he was the type to complain, saying, “We’re all going to die someday anyway, so why bother
exercising?”
“Let’s go home first! What about your luggage? Is that seriously all you brought?”
“Ah. Yeah. Well.....”
“That one bag is everything? What about extra clothes?”
“About one shirt and one pair of pants?”
Coming to Canada had involved a lot of hesitation and hassle.
I had been pushed into coming because the people around me kept insisting that I needed to rest, but I was planning to
return soon.
“You crazy bastard. You even brought your laptop?”
“Hey, hey! Why are you opening my bag here? Hurry up and close it!”
“I invited you here so you could rest, but you’re already thinking about working here? I’m confiscating this laptop for
now.”
“Hey!”
“You wanna fight?”
“.....No.”
I didn’t know about the Jeongmin of the past, but honestly, I didn’t even want to mess with the Jeongmin of today.
Jeongmin grabbed my luggage and strode out of the airport.
‘Why has that guy changed so much?’
The Jeongmin I remembered wasn’t nearly this energetic.
No, in fact, he was so quiet that I looked like the energetic one in comparison.
He had been timid and quiet enough to only show his true personality when talking to me, so I couldn’t get used to
seeing how completely different he was now.
“This is the car.”
“It’s a pickup truck?”
“Get in.”
The vehicle was quite dirty.
There was mud splattered all over it, and various farming tools could be seen inside.
‘Farming tools?’
As far as I knew, Jeongmin’s family ran a restaurant.
I had heard that they didn’t sell Asian food, but simply ran a small restaurant selling things like sliced bread and
bacon, so I was confused.
“Ah. We farm too.”
“......Really?”
“You’ll be surprised when you see it. Get in.”
“......”
I put my bag down in a spot with as little dirt as possible and got into the passenger seat.
The passenger seat was also quite dirty, but it was still somewhat bearable.
“So how long does it take?”
“To our house?”
“Yeah.”
“About..... three hours?”
“Three ho...... Wait, what did you just say?”
“I said it takes about three hours. Ah. Put your seat belt on. If it’s your first time, you won’t be used to it.”
“Wait.....”
“I’m leaving.”
As if he had no intention of listening to me anymore, Jeongmin started driving.
---
Having vast amounts of land meant that there were many places where human reach simply couldn’t extend.
“.....At first, I was scared because you were driving so fast, but now I don’t even care.”
Vrooooooom!
I had no idea how many kilometers per hour we were going, but honestly, I was starting to feel bored.
We had been driving along a completely empty road for hours, not minutes, and to be honest, it was dull.
“Can’t you drive a little slower? I’m getting used to it now, but it’s still scary.”
“I was scared at first too, thinking something might suddenly jump out, but I got used to it.”
“At first.....”
“When I first came here, I drove slowly too. But there aren’t many cars passing by anyway. You don’t even see anyone.”
“You don’t see anyone?”
“Who would there be? There’s no one on the road.”
“......”
Had the laws somehow changed while I wasn’t looking?
There was no way nobody would see us.
‘Still..... I’m getting bored.’
The feeling I had experienced on the plane came flowing through my mind once again.
If I had spent this meaningless time doing something enjoyable back in Korea, how much writing would I have gotten done
by now?
“Don’t think about Korea. Enjoy the present.”
“.....I wasn’t thinking about Korea.”
“Don’t lie. You look like you’re itching to get back to work.”
“.....”
“It’s written all over your face.”
At Jeongmin’s words, I looked out the window at the world outside.
‘It’s written all over my face.....’
As I lived my life buried in work, I could feel my emotions gradually becoming numb.
At first, the feeling of happiness disappeared.
Later, even the feeling of anger disappeared.
‘My sex drive disappeared too.’
Eventually, even my sex drive disappeared.
No matter how beautiful a woman was, all I felt was that I had seen a female human being, and I gradually became afraid
of talking to people.
‘There’s something..... different about my face?’
Even I could feel myself turning into a robot.
Work was me.
If I didn’t work, I became garbage.
That thought had turned me more and more into a machine.
Into a robot.
‘To have emotions again.....’
The car continued driving endlessly ahead.
The vehicle kept moving forward without stopping, to the point where I couldn’t even tell what lay beyond the vast
grassland.
Just like me.
“Jeongmin.”
“Why?”
“I’m hungry.”
Grrrrr.
Contrary to what I had just been thinking, I was hungry.
No, thinking about it, it was only natural.
“What about the in-flight meal?”
“It tasted bad, so I left it.”
They say that your sense of taste becomes dull at high altitudes, making it difficult to properly taste food.
Perhaps because of that, my first experience with an in-flight meal hadn’t been particularly pleasant.
‘I haven’t eaten anything since the airport.’
As soon as I arrived at the airport, Jeongmin had dragged me outside before I could eat anything.
And now I had been sitting in a car for hours, so I was getting hungry enough to feel dizzy.
“There aren’t any diners around here.....”
“What’s a diner?”
“It’s like a small restaurant. Think of it as something like a Korean driver’s diner.”
“There’s no way there’d be a restaurant in this middle of nowhere..... Is there somewhere like a rest stop?”
“Don’t think of it like a Korean rest stop. They don’t sell food here..... Ah. Wait a second. I think I bought something
to eat.”
Jeongmin rummaged through his clothes before handing me something long.
“Beef jerky?”
“This is good.”
I couldn’t read the English, but there was something that looked yellow attached to the beef jerky.
‘Cheddar cheese?’
There were plenty of cheese-covered beef jerky products in Korea too, so without giving it much thought, I tore it open
and put it in my mouth.
Chew, chew.
“.....”
After chewing the jerky a few times, I had no choice but to put it down.
“Is it good?”
“.....There’s too much cheese. Honestly, I can’t even tell what it tastes like.”
I couldn’t believe his taste had changed this much from living in Canada, to the point that he carried something like
this around and called it delicious.
“I bought it because it was on a huge sale, but it tasted bad, so I just left it in my jacket and completely forgot
about it. I just remembered.”
“You bastard.”
“Hahahahahaha! It won’t have gone bad! I only bought it recently!”
It definitely hadn’t gone bad, but the taste was incredibly strange.
It tasted like beef jerky, but also like cheese, while at the same time just being a little unusual.
“When will we get to your house?”
“I think we’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes..... We’ve still come quite a long way.”
Looking out the window, I could see that the sun was gradually setting.
We were still speeding along in the car, but the position of the sun was clearly visible.
“Let’s take a short break before we go.”
“Huh? Why?”
“I need to pee.”
“Right now.....? But where are you going to do it?”
“I’ll just go somewhere around here. Nobody’s watching anyway.”
It was a little strange seeing someone who used to refuse to use anything except a clean bathroom now preparing to pee
on the side of the road.
‘He’s changed a lot.’
From the airport until now, Jeongmin had felt incredibly unfamiliar.
People say humans change when their environment changes, but far too much about Jeongmin had changed.
Screeeeech.
The vehicle that had been speeding along for hours finally stopped.
Jeongmin got out of the vehicle and hurriedly pulled down his pants toward the grassland.
Swoooooosh.....
“Ahhh..... That feels good.”
“.....That’s disgusting.”
I turned my gaze away so I wouldn’t have to look at Jeongmin.
The moment I turned my eyes away, the sight before me made me mutter unconsciously.
“......Beautiful.”
“What? My stream of urine?”
“Are you crazy? I’m talking about the sky. The sky.”
“The sky?”
I had spent plenty of time looking at the scenery through the car window, but the moment I actually stepped outside, my
body froze at the overwhelming sight of nature.
People say that when you see something beautiful, the strength naturally leaves your entire body without you realizing
it.
Only now did I think I understood what that meant.
‘It’s..... different from the gray sky surrounded by tall buildings.’
The sky was high.
The sky that covered the endless grassland like an umbrella was unbelievably high and vast.
The sky was so high that it felt as though I could never reach it even if I stretched out my hand, and it held the red
glow of the sunset within its clouds.
The overwhelming vastness of the sky seemed to drain every ounce of strength from my body.
“.....Hey.”
“Why?”
“Why are you crying?”
“.....Who? Me?”
“Yeah, idiot. Who else? There’s no one around here. Do you think I’m crying? My third leg already cried everything out,
so there isn’t even any water left.”
At Jeongmin’s words, I brought my hand to my eyes.
“......It really is.”
Tears were running down my cheeks.
---
Even after I let my tears flow freely, nothing really changed.
I didn’t feel good, nor did I feel relieved.
My mind was hardened like a stone, so I couldn’t think of anything anyway.
‘It’s just..... embarrassing.’
I was embarrassed.
It wasn’t because I had cried in front of my friend.
I was embarrassed because, at my age, I had lost control of my emotions and burst into tears.
“Feel better now?”
“Do you think I would?”
“You were crying your eyes out.”
At first, I had only shed tears, but eventually, I couldn’t hold them back.
As I kept wiping away the tears that continued to flow, I eventually broke down crying.
“You know what?”
“What?”
“A lot of people come traveling to places like this because life is so difficult that they want to quietly give up on
life surrounded by beautiful nature where nobody knows them.”
“......”
“But apparently, when they actually come here, they cry a lot. Maybe after being buried in work their whole lives, their
instincts are telling them something when they stand before nature so beautiful that it overwhelms them.”
Learn from nature, come to understand through nature, and return to nature.
I had received a gift from nature, but I still didn’t understand what that gift meant.
“There are plenty of people who cry besides you, so don’t be too embarrassed.”
“Shut up. More importantly, when are we getting there?”
“I can see it up ahead.”
I looked ahead, and in the distance, I could see lights made by people.
We had finally arrived at Jeongmin’s house.