I Can Always Take Off Again

The winter between my junior and senior year of high school arrived, and with it a migration out of the dorms. Seniors needed quiet and control; communal living offered neither. By late winter, roughly half the boys had moved into tiny rooms scattered around town. I started hunting, too.

Around our school, landlords counted on Geochang High kids to fill spare rooms. There was no slick student-housing market—no brokers, no listings. You went door to door and asked, “Any room to let?” After a weekend of knocking, I found one: a small outbuilding up the hill directly across from the front gate.

“Room” flattered it. It was really a converted storage shed attached to an elderly widow’s house. Into that shed someone had crammed a sink and a few odds and ends so a person could technically live there. The space was just over a pyeong—call it a bit more than forty square feet. If I unrolled my bedding, there wasn’t much floor left. Patches of mold darkened the corners, and a damp, sour smell crept up from the boards.

The outhouse was the worst of it. To reach it, you crossed the landlord’s courtyard to a shadowy corner where a pit latrine sat—just a hole in the floor with a cesspit below. The stench rose up in waves. At night I was convinced that if I slipped I could actually die. For the first weeks, I did everything humanly possible at school before trudging up the hill. If I needed the bathroom while studying, I sprinted back down to campus.

That ended the night I found the school building locked. The dorm was locked, too. There was no choice; I had to use the pit. Under the dim bulb, I squatted there half believing a hand might reach up from the dark. Then a thought came: If I were the ghost, I’d be more frightened of the living kid blocking my only way out. The absurdity made me laugh, and after that I stopped running to school in the middle of the night.

Next to the outhouse was a combination wash area and utility nook. No hot water. No door. The landlady kept a big reddish-brown rubber tub—exactly the kind neighbors use on kimchi-making day—filled with water. I couldn’t really shower, but I could wash my face and sometimes dump a pail over my shoulders. On weekends, a few friends and I walked to the public bathhouse and scrubbed properly.

March nights in the countryside still bit. To sleep, I had to slip outside in my slippers and kick on the oil-fired boiler. It let out a long, buzzing hum that made the papered door seams flutter all night. Around three or four in the morning, the landlady—early riser, thrifty—would cut the boiler to save fuel, and I’d wake shivering until dawn.

When I did wake in the small hours, the room had its own nocturnal soundtrack. Something would skitter thud-thud-thud across the ceiling joists. The landlady’s dog would bark once—woof!—and the skittering would reverse direction. Mice, clearly. I never met them face-to-face, which felt like grace.

There were bright spots. The place sat high on the hill; step into the yard and the whole town lay below. On clear mornings the air felt almost drinkable. I squeezed in a desk and a bookcase, later a tiny fridge. For study, the quiet was perfect enough.

Then August came—sweltering and wet. Officially it was summer break; unofficially, not for seniors. One humid afternoon I watched the sky through our classroom windows go from dull to bruised. The panes rattled in their frames. The news had been tracking a typhoon pushing up the peninsula. So this is it, I thought.

Classes ended. I had no umbrella, but the rain paused—a lucky window, I figured. I slung my bag over my shoulder and headed for the hill. The last stretch was a narrow, cement alley pitched so steeply you climbed it like a ladder, hands and feet. Halfway up, something littered the path—soaked scraps of paper, clotted in puddles. When I crouched to look closer, my stomach dipped. They were torn workbook pages. Mine.

The higher I climbed, the more there were.

At the top I froze. The roof over my shed had peeled off. The ceiling gaped at the sky. The yard was strewn with my college-entrance workbooks and neatly compiled notes, blown out and shredded by wind and rain. The landlady gave me an awkward smile and mopped the floor in circles.

I stood there, emptied out. I might as well have pinched myself: Is this a dream? It wasn’t. Three months from the CSAT—the College Scholastic Ability Test, Korea’s SAT-equivalent—the idea of taking it suddenly felt unreal. Between a reality I hated and an “unreality” barreling toward me, I tasted real despair.

Then, from somewhere low in my gut, another feeling rose—part refusal to give in, part calm you earn when you’ve got nothing left to lose. Under the ragged hole where the ceiling had been, I clenched my fist and told myself, Fine. Whether I make it or not, I’ll start over.

First, triage. I unplugged every appliance before a short could finish them off. Bedding and clothes went straight into the washer. I sorted the books: a few could be saved on the top shelf to dry; most were waterlogged beyond hope. I stacked the ruined ones in a box and carried them out without ceremony.

By evening the light had thinned to blue. My emotions had, too. There was nothing to do but lie down on the still-damp floor and stare through the missing roof at the stars. The night air, washed by the typhoon, was surprisingly cool. When was the last time I fell asleep counting stars? I wondered.

Only then did I realize something else had changed: no more scurrying in the ceiling. The mice had left with the roof. A tiny upgrade for concentration, I decided. If the storm had taken my roof, it had also taken my roommates.

People like to say, “Even as you fall, you have wings.” That line always felt half-finished to me. Here’s the rest I learned that night: When you fall, there is no floor. That’s good news. If there’s no floor, you won’t shatter on impact. You can keep falling until you remember you still have wings—then beat them and rise. The real danger that night wasn’t the typhoon; it was my own urge to crumple.

So instead of cursing what I couldn’t change, I asked what I could do next. The next morning I bought new workbooks and began again.

From then on I worked at a pace that bordered on ferocious. One workbook a day, cover to cover—explanations and all. Slim volumes, I finished two. I went through every CSAT prep book I could find, then bought fresh copies and redid them. When momentum carried me, I went a week on fumes, sleeping in scraps and solving problems. One night my shins prickled; half a dozen mosquitoes were lined up in formation, siphoning away. I spritzed the room with bug spray and turned the page.

My body felt wrung out; my mind felt quiet. The CSAT is a blunt instrument, but it has one mercy: effort tends to show.

January arrived. I stood on the dirt field in front of Korea University’s main building. Today that space is a manicured plaza; back then it was a windblown expanse of dust with big plywood boards bolted upright. You found your name with a finger, and if you were lucky you hugged whoever was next to you. It was one of the last seasons before the internet took that ritual away.

I found it. On the list: Shin Seung Keon — College of Medicine (Pre-med).