The school guard is getting ready. He opens the door of his warm office and steps out into the cold winter air. It’s mid-afternoon and the sun is at its brightest, but all he can feel is the frost biting his cheeks. He observes the school in its quietest moments. Three pale yellow buildings stand strong against winds that have been beating them for almost a hundred years now. Most windows are closed, barred against the wind, trying to keep in what remains of the heaters. A few are open; an attempt to get out the bad air. The neatly manicured evergreen bushes and trees as bare as bones. They shiver but do not bend to the wind. Litter scatters across the red brick road and lodges itself under cars and against the cold metal grates that separate the school from the rest of the town. The courtyard is quiet, picturesque even.
The guard tugs on his vest, and opens the gates to the outside world. A moment later the music begins, marking the end of the school day, and the start of after school.
Before the last notes of the ending bell ring the students come. They race out of doorways and down uneven stairs; they fill the courtyards with screeches and laughter, the sound of soft soled shoes slapping on frozen ground. The courtyard is filled with one big group of students which slowly divides into smaller groups, pausing now and then to wait at the gate for friends.
Three girls, taller than the rest, intertwine their arms together, blending into one being. They walk towards the far building, singing K-pop songs amid squeals of laughter and the sound of friendly bickering. They can see their breath in the air, puffing out in short bursts, mingling in the cold. Past two buildings and up another three flights of stairs they go, and into an unused classroom they stumble, still latched together. The classroom is filled with older students, girls and boys who will move to middle school in a month.
At the front of the class a tall girl with short black hair zippers up her sweatshirt, and turns facing the students. She calls out in Korean, stretching her arms far above her head, then down to the floor. The three in the back unlace their arms and follow instructions, still giggling. More students come filing in, dropping their bags, and lining up, doing their best to catch up to the rest of the students. Once they have all arrived someone attaches cheap dollar store speakers to their cellphone, and the dance class begins.
First, there is the shimmy of the hips, arms poised outwards, then the full turn towards the front. Three exaggerated steps forward, before turning sideways, and dropping the hip, shoulders slanted, eyes towards the front. They are just beginning their second turn when laughter makes them look towards the door. Three boys stand there, watching from the open door, grinning. The short haired girl shrieks at them, another girl stops and music, while one of the tall girls slides the door closed with force, barely missing the last retreating fingers.
The three boys keep laughing, until they hear their names being called. Up the stairs they can see one of their teammates holding their sneakers. They dash up, nearly knocking over a shorter classmate coming down the stairs. The boys shout an apology back to him as they keep going. The small boy barely notices, turning to enter the classroom at the end of the hall.
This room is brightly lit and warm. Heat blasts from the ceiling, and the students cluster themselves around wooden table and plastic chairs. Jackets are thrown into a pile in one corner of the room, while bags are lined up neatly along the wall. Students of all ages are here, mostly doing homework, or artwork, or even just playing card games together. At one table a group of the smallest kids sit, snacking on crackers and juice. At another table, a little girl pushes her long black hair back from her face, being careful not to smudge the paint from her half finished project onto her cheek.
The teacher greets the small boy as he enters the classroom, motioning for him to sit. The small boy does so, reaching into his bag and taking out a few battered notebooks and one brand-new looking pencil case. The case is colorful, bright orange with yellow cartoon characters laughing up at you. It has a small backboard on the top where the boy has written “몰라.”1 The teacher smiles at this as she joins him at the table.
Glancing through a worn yellow folder the teacher sees he has math homework, and he needs to finish something from Korean class. She asks the boy to get a pencil, but when he opens his pencil case there are no pencils. No pencils, no erasers, nothing but the chalk that came with it. She lends him one of hers. It has “교육복지실”2 written on it. The boy takes it and begins to write on the math paper. His notebook lays unopened beside him; he wants to save the last few pages for class.
As the small boy begins his math work, the after school teacher sticks her head out the door in time to see three sheepish shoulders slouch their way up the stairs to the waiting Taekwondo coach. She smiles at them all, before looking down the hall in hopes of finding a few more students walking toward her door. But the only students in the hall are the small figures of second grade boys, returning freshly clapped erasers to their teachers before turning on heel and racing down the stairs and out onto the dirt field.
On the field, the soccer team has started practice. Standing in a big circle, they stretch. Each boy is dressed in black pants with brightly colored dashes down the sides. They shout out numbers while their coach, standing in the middle, turns slowly to make sure they are all working. The coach is worried. Today is the last practice before the game tomorrow. The team has won their last two games, and he hopes they can win the next. It will be the last one of the season, and for a number of them, their last chance to play a soccer game before middle school. All the coach wants is for them to enjoy the end.
The coach steps toward the tallest boy in the group, and instructs him to lead the next exercise so he can go and get the equipment. The captain stands straight and calls out in a strong, deep voice towards the rest. He shifts lower to the ground and drags his feet out, kicking up dirt and dust. The day is cold, and dry. It hasn’t rained for a week now, and the legs and cleats of each boy are coated in soft, dry dirt. His own shoes, normally so white, have started to turn a light shade of brown. They have also started to grow snug, something he is reminded of when he presses his heel into the dirt and feels his toes tap the front of his shoes. He would ask his parents for a new pair, but he doubts he’ll have time for soccer anymore anyway.
Unlike most of his peers, he won’t go to either of the middle schools in this village or the next. Instead, he’ll get up at six, and take the bus for a half-hour downtown with a few other bleary eyed individuals. He thinks he’s lucky though. The taekwondo boys will ride the bus with him and then past him, for another 45 minutes until the line ends at a school that specializes in taekwondo. His new school only specializes in getting students into the best high schools in the city.
The captain stands up straight again, and shouts out across the circle, counting down each exercise. He is about to shift the group into jogging when he realizes that one of the boys, standing almost directly across from him, is not one of his players. Scowling, he shouts across the field towards the boy. The intruder laughs, and stands up to face his accuser. He is a head taller than the boys to either side of him, and the captain stares even with his nose. He is bigger too. He readjusts his hat, imprinted with BOY, back on his head and turns on heel, waving towards his friend. The captain frowns back, annoyed like usual at his lazy counterpart.
The laughing boy walks back towards the school and up the cement steps. Standing just inside the door, and out of the wind is his friend. The friend is bigger – like the laughing boy – but a head shorter than his counterpart. The laughing boy claps his buddy on the back, and picks up both their bags. With his arm gently guiding him he leads his friend through the hall and out the front door towards the graying gates. He is full of questions, asking the other boy about his classes, and what he did at lunch as they make their way past the bare branches of the trees in the courtyard. His friend mostly smiles shyly and says nothing. Neither boy minds, they have been neighbors for a long time. The laughing boy knows his friend is just quiet because he worries people will laugh at the way he stumbles when he speaks.
Together they walk out the gates and past another group of girls saying goodbye to each other. They stand near the crosswalk, frustrating the guard whose job it is to stop traffic for them, and keep them safe. He shouts towards them to either move back from the road, or cross now, but the girls pay him no mind. They are all checking their phones, promising to message each other as soon as class ends. They make a strange sight: some are tall and look out of place in front of the old elementary school, while a few others are so small people may assume they are younger siblings. Each girl is dressed in the latest fashion trend; skinny jeans, sneakers, and black sweatshirts with bold English words on them. One of them is dressed in a pair of shorts and tights, and has abandoned her sweatshirt, despite the cold, to reveal a tight fitting, short, t-shirt underneath.
In groups of two or three the girls say goodbye to each other and set off in different directions, towards different after school academies, until only the girl in shorts is left. She stands by the entrance, until she sees the guard looking at her. Then, she turns back into the school.
She walks slowly, looking at her phone and pretending not to notice anyone near her. She is careful on the uneven brick, not wanting to trip and call attention to herself. She doesn’t want to be sent to the after school program. She walks around the second building and into the main building, the safest way to avoid most of the teachers. Here she pauses to look outside at the kids playing soccer. She watches the tallest boy, her class captain, stand in goal with his arms on his hips, waiting for the boys to line up and take their shot. She knows he can’t see her through this window, but her face is still warm at the sight of him, and the knowledge that she must walk across the dirt field to get to the apartment building beside the school, her apartment building. At the same time, she wouldn’t mind if he did see her.
Taking a deep breath, she checks her appearance in her cracked phone, before stepping outside, down the cement steps, and onto the field. She keeps her eyes forward, wanting to appear as though she doesn’t notice the boys. Or, at least she tries. Just as she is walking past the boys lined up to shoot on the goal she glances over, and makes eye contact.
From the goal the captain waves to her, smiling one of his rare smiles. The coach yells for him to pay attention, and the other students start to laugh. Both the boy and the girl turn red, but neither of them says anything.
The girl continues on her way, walking the length of the field and past the three young students on the swings. She pushes open the rusted gate and walks past the empty plots of farm land on either side of her, skipping over potholes, trash, and puddles that never seem to dry. When she reaches the entrance door she skips the first step, knowing that the crumbling cement may give out at any moment, and types in her code. Up four flights of stairs, cheeks still red, a smile still on her lips, and she pulls the key from her bag, tied to a small piece of ribbon, and opens the door. She drops her bag and unlaces her sneakers, carefully placing them on the shoe rack beside her mother’s heels and her sister’s slippers. She then opens the door to the one room apartment. It smells somewhat of the beer her mother brought home from work, and of the stale smoky clothes that lay unwashed in the corner. She doesn’t notice though. She can only think of smiles.
Hannah Shannon is a 2014-2016 ETA at Ocheon Elementary School in Pohang, Gyeongsangbuk-do.