It was a weekday afternoon, and I’d taken a half day off.
If I went straight home, the day felt like it would end too neatly.
I didn’t have a particular destination.
I had time left, and the weather was strangely fine.
So, on my way home on foot, I ended up at Seoul Station.
It was winter, but it didn’t feel cold.
I stood there without deciding where to go,
then simply went up toward Seoullo 7017.
It wasn’t a conscious choice.
There were stairs, people were going up,
and I blended into that flow.
As soon as I got up there, the cars disappeared.
No traffic lights, no reason to stop.
My walking pace naturally settled.
I decided not to think about lunch.
Not because I wasn’t hungry,
but because it felt like eating something right then would break this rhythm.
The reason felt vague,
and it seemed right to just leave it that way.
Up on Seoullo, there was nothing particularly special to see.
I could see Namsan, I could see the roads,
the city was moving as it always does.
It felt like I was the only one who had briefly risen above it.
While walking,
thoughts like “What should I do today?” didn’t come up.
Neither did “How far should I go?”
My feet simply led to the next step.
Up to that point,
I didn’t think this was the beginning of a day.
It wasn’t a stroll, it wasn’t exercise,
and I had no intention of leaving anything behind.
I had simply thought,
let’s walk.
And that thought
lasted quite a while.
As I walked, I realized something.
That today was the warmest day of the winter.
They said the temperature had risen to around 10 degrees Celsius.
I heard the number later,
but my body knew first.
My breath came out less white,
my shoulders weren’t stiff.
Some people were wearing padded coats,
others were in light jackets.
The variety in clothing
didn’t mean the weather was unclear,
but that people had each decided for themselves before coming out.
Maybe because of that,
there were more people than expected.
Up on Seoullo,
the distance between walkers stayed even.
No one was rushing,
and there weren’t many people stopping to take photos.
Everyone was walking at a similar pace.
I thought,
“Today must be an okay day.”
There was no basis for it,
but no reason to deny it either.
Winter usually gives you
an excuse not to go out.
It’s cold, the sun sets early,
there are plenty of reasons you don’t need to be outside.
But that day,
those excuses briefly disappeared.
So people came out.
Not because they had special plans,
but because there was no reason not to.
As I walked,
and stopped being aware of the cold,
my thoughts slowed down too.
I didn’t try to organize anything,
and I didn’t evaluate the day.
There was just
a lingering sense of
“Right now is okay.”
Looking back later,
this day was the beginning.
Not because I started walking,
but because winter loosened for a moment,
and in that gap, I loosened too.
I only realized that
a little later.
At first, I didn’t see them.
To be precise,
I saw them, but didn’t recognize them.
While walking, people passed by
like part of the background.
The backs of those walking ahead,
shoulders brushing past,
footsteps heard from behind.
At some point,
people began to come into focus.
There was someone pushing a stroller,
someone walking at a steady pace with earphones in.
Someone was jogging lightly,
someone else leaned against the railing for a moment.
What they had in common was
that their expressions were all similar.
Faces that weren’t joyful, but weren’t tired either.
Expressions without a clear destination.
Then there was one person I passed by.
They were holding a stopwatch,
looking toward the river.
Their gaze was fixed,
they raised and lowered their head,
counting something.
It looked like they were counting birds along the river.
Timing things, taking notes,
checking off birds that entered a certain section one by one.
They looked like a college student,
but I wasn’t sure.
Their bag was light,
their movements careful.
After I passed them,
I felt something was strange.
Not strange exactly,
but the fact that this scene belonged to today.
It was winter,
a weekday afternoon,
someone was counting birds,
someone was pushing a stroller,
and I was just walking.
That combination
felt strangely natural.
Ah,
so today is this kind of day,
I thought.
Not a day when something happens,
but a day when people come out,
each at their own pace.
As I walked,
it felt like the city was moving
to a single rhythm.
Neither fast nor slow,
without forcing itself.
That was when, for the first time,
I thought,
“I’m not the only one who came out.”
This wasn’t a solitary walk,
but a momentary blend into
a silent collective outing.
And that sensation
lingered a little longer.
By the time I came down from Seoullo 7017,
I wasn’t thinking about where I was going.
There were stairs,
a path continued downward,
and I went down naturally.
After coming down and walking for a while, I saw a sign for Cheonggyecheon.
So I just went.
Cheonggyecheon
doesn’t ask walkers questions.
“How far are you going?”
“Why are you walking?”
It doesn’t ask.
It just
continues forward.
There’s a path beside the water,
people beside the path,
and people choose a pace and walk.
You can stop,
but there’s no reason to.
So you keep going.
As I walked,
the city’s noise lowered a little.
The sound of cars rose above,
and below there were only footsteps and water.
At this point,
it would make sense to think,
“I didn’t know I’d come this far,”
but I didn’t.
Because
it didn’t feel like I had come anywhere.
There was no middle.
It was just continuous.
I knew Cheonggyecheon connected to Jungnangcheon,
but I didn’t think about it.
I had the knowledge,
but not the awareness.
While walking,
it didn’t feel like I was choosing a route.
It wasn’t a choice,
but a placement within a flow.
That’s what waterways are like,
I thought.
From above,
you can see where they start
and where they go,
but from inside,
you only see what’s ahead.
So the walking continued.
Not because of a plan,
but because there was no reason to stop.
Looking back later,
this might have been when it started.
That the walking of this day
wasn’t “a route I chose,”
but me following
“a route the city had already made.”
That fact
would only gain meaning
a bit later.
When I arrived,
I didn’t feel anything special.
After passing Jungnangcheon and coming out toward the Han River,
walking past Eungbong and a bit further,
I saw a familiar sign.
Oksu Station.
A name I had always passed through by subway.
A name that existed only as a sound.
That day too, at first,
it was nothing more than that.
Just
“Oh, this is here,”
that level of recognition.
My body had already walked quite a bit,
and I thought this would be a fine place to stop.
I saw a bakery café near the station,
and went in without thinking.
When I sat down,
I didn’t bother calculating
how far I had walked.
What was a little strange was
that I wasn’t immediately hungry.
Even though it had been quite a while since I’d skipped lunch,
I didn’t feel an urgent need to eat.
Drinking coffee,
I watched people through the glass.
Everyone was moving through the station
at their own pace.
Then suddenly,
the word “Oksu”
caught in my mind.
Not the sound,
but the meaning came first.
玉水.
Jade-like water.
The route of the entire day
suddenly felt tied together by a single word.
Cheonggyecheon,
Jungnangcheon,
the Han River.
Following waterways,
and stopping at a place named “water.”
It didn’t feel profound.
Rather,
because it felt so natural,
I smiled a little.
I wondered if this was what names were like.
Nothing when you pass them by,
but when context appears,
they suddenly find their place.
The things I realized that day
didn’t all gain meaning at once.
Records of King Sejong,
historical context,
those things didn’t come to mind then.
There was just one thing that was clear.
From now on,
I wouldn’t be able to pass this station name
the same way as before.
Oksu
was no longer just a sound,
but a meaning attached
to the end of a day.
That meaning
wasn’t organized yet.
It didn’t need to be.
Just the fact that I had arrived here
was enough.
After entering the café,
I drank coffee,
looked out the window,
and drank coffee again.
I didn’t know exactly how time passed.
I didn’t check the clock,
and there were no notifications.
I just sat there.
My body slowly cooled down.
The heat left my soles,
my shoulders loosened again.
Sensations that hadn’t been there while walking
gradually returned.
Only then did a signal come,
not from my stomach,
but from my whole body.
A signal that it was okay to eat now.
That’s when I realized
it had been four hours
since I skipped lunch.
It was an ambiguous time
to call it a late lunch.
Still,
it didn’t feel strange.
It didn’t feel like releasing something I’d been holding back,
but like a natural next step
that came when it was needed.
Even with food in front of me,
I didn’t eat in a hurry.
I chewed slowly,
swallowed slowly.
I don’t remember if the food tasted special.
Just that
the fact that I was eating
quietly sank in.
Only then did the day
feel like it was completed
as a single flow.
Walking,
sitting,
eating.
None of them
were ahead or behind.
The late lunch
wasn’t a reward.
It wasn’t compensation for effort.
It was just
a kind of permission
to move on to the next thing.
When I went back outside,
the sky was starting to darken.
The temperature was dropping too.
Still,
there was no need to hurry.
Today had already
flowed well
at its own pace.
In the past,
there were times when I felt a strange sensation while living a day.
A feeling that this scene
would be used later.
A premonition that these words
would be taken out and said again someday.
When that happened,
it felt less like I was living a day,
and more like I was organizing memories
and handing them over somewhere.
Wrapping good memories a bit more,
paring down bad ones a bit.
The present becoming material
for future explanation.
Back then,
that felt natural.
I thought everyone lived that way.
But today,
that sensation wasn’t there.
While walking,
I never once thought about
how I would describe this later.
I didn’t want to take photos,
and I didn’t feel the urge to record anything.
I didn’t even care
whether this would remain as a memory.
Because of that,
this day wasn’t sold.
It wasn’t delivered anywhere,
and wasn’t reserved for any purpose.
It simply remained
as time that had been paid.
Only later did I realize the difference.
In the past,
I was selling memories,
and today,
it felt like I bought one.
Not with money,
and not through effort.
I just
spent time
without attaching any conditions,
and that was all.
Days when you sell memories,
when the day ends,
feel a little empty.
Explanations remain,
but there’s no afterimage.
Days when you buy a memory,
even without explanation,
linger strangely.
You can’t use them,
but they don’t disappear either.
Today
was the latter.
That’s why this day
was stored in a form
that suits my future self
better than my present self.
As I left Oksu Station,
a thought suddenly crossed my mind.
That every time I pass through this station in the future,
my future self
might remember my present self.
Without trying to recall it deliberately,
just
as the train stops,
as the doors open,
in passing.
“Ah,
that time I just walked.”
That would be enough.
My present self
has no plan to make use of this memory.
I don’t intend to use it as comfort,
or organize it into a lesson.
Just
the feeling that something is now there,
something my future self can take out when needed.
It naturally followed that
the benefit wouldn’t be enjoyed by my present self,
but by my future self.
Thinking back on that day
won’t solve problems.
It won’t clarify direction.
But it will probably be like this.
On a hard day,
on a day when I’m tired for no reason,
or on a day when nothing happens at all,
a fleeting scene.
The stairs going up at Seoul Station,
the wind on Seoullo,
footsteps beside the waterway,
the lights near Oksu Station.
That memory
doesn’t say anything,
but somehow
makes you a little less rushed.
So my future self
might feel quite grateful
to my present self.
“For leaving that day
without forcing an explanation.”
After thinking that,
it felt like there was nothing more to do
in this moment.
As if
everything that needed to be handed over
already had been.
My future self
will take it out when needed.
That was
enough.
When you think about it,
days like this aren’t special.
Everyone has them.
You moved without intention,
spent time without purpose,
and later, when you look back,
it felt strangely okay.
Most of them, however,
go unrecognized.
They’re wedged between schedules,
too ordinary,
or too busy,
and simply pass by.
Days judged
as not worth remembering.
So they get sorted out
before they ever become memories.
People often look for the reason life feels hard
in big events,
but in reality,
the fact that days like these go unrecognized
has a greater impact.
Not because there were no okay moments,
but because they existed
and weren’t held onto.
Unrecognized days
don’t become comfort.
They don’t remain as evidence.
So when hard days come,
the illusion that
“I was always struggling”
quietly hardens.
But in truth,
in between,
there were definitely times
when nothing was wrong.
We just didn’t notice them.
What was different about today
was just one thing.
That this day
was recognized.
Not by attaching meaning,
not by giving it a name,
but simply being able to say,
“Ah, there was a day like this.”
That alone
was enough.
You don’t need to live every day like this.
You don’t need to notice every time.
Just,
not forgetting that there were days like this,
even occasionally.
That alone
makes life
a little less harsh.
I won’t say I learned something from this day.
It’s hard to say there was any realization.
The day simply passed,
I walked,
and I stopped at a station.
That’s all.
I don’t know
whether I’ll recall this day again.
It might be often,
or hardly at all.
But
it doesn’t seem like it will disappear.
This day
wasn’t organized,
wasn’t bound into meaning,
and wasn’t submitted anywhere.
That’s why
it remains intact.
A day that started at Seoul Station,
walked through Seoullo,
followed the waterways down,
and stopped at Oksu Station.
Explained plainly,
it’s a simple route.
No special events,
nothing to boast about.
And yet,
strangely,
it doesn’t vanish.
Probably
because there was no intention.
I didn’t try to leave anything behind,
and I didn’t try to use memory.
I simply
lived.
That’s why this day
will continue,
from time to time,
to surface without warning.
When a subway stops,
when a station name is heard,
on days with similar temperatures.
Each time,
it doesn’t need to feel big.
A brief passing is enough.
“Ah,
that day existed.”
With just that one sentence,
this day fulfills its role.
Not every day
needs to be meaningful.
It’s okay if there’s at least one day
that didn’t demand meaning.
That day
was one of those days.