6 a.m. — The narrow yard of the Nakwon-dong boarding house 🔍

By the time I splashed my face with the cold well water at six in the morning, three other boarders were already crouched in the yard, fanning charcoal embers to life under their breakfast pots. The smell of barley rice and soybean paste drifted thick and familiar into the still air — the kind of smell that reminds me of home in a way I'd rather not think about too hard. I tied the front of my white cotton jeogori with careful fingers; the fabric was already limp from the humidity before the sun had even cleared the rooftops. I ate quickly, standing, watching a small sparrow fight with a crust of rice someone had left on the stone step. Being twenty and in the city alone means you learn to take your comfort where a sparrow takes it — in small, unguarded moments.

10 a.m. — Jongno 2-ga street and the small bookshop in the arcade 🔍

I reached Jongno just before ten, when the tram was running its morning rounds and the street was loud with clattering wheels on rails and vendors calling out prices for cold barley water. I had promised myself I would look for a secondhand Japanese-language textbook — if I am going to keep working as a copy clerk at the printing office, I need to keep sharp, and the office demands Japanese in every margin and heading. The bookshop under the stone arcade was dim and dusty, the proprietor fanning himself behind a stack of magazines, barely acknowledging me. I found a worn grammar workbook for fifteen jeon and held it against my chest as I stepped back out into the blinding white street. The tram bell rang twice and a gust of coal-smoke rolled past — I stood there a moment, squinting, wondering if there was something in this city that was truly mine.

6 p.m. — A low-ceilinged noodle shop near Gwanghwamun 🔍

By six in the evening the heat had not broken, only shifted — from a hard overhead glare into a thick, breathless orange haze that settled into every doorway. I slipped into a noodle shop near Gwanghwamun where a single electric bulb hung low over four wooden tables, and ordered a bowl of cold naengmyeon for four jeon. The owner's wife ladled the broth with the practiced motion of someone who does nothing else all day, and I watched the thin buckwheat noodles curl under the ice chips as if they, too, were trying to escape the heat. At the next table, two older men spoke in low voices over their bowls — I caught fragments, something about the price of millet being up again, something about a cousin who had gone north to work. I did not ask. I slurped my noodles and thought about writing a letter to my mother tonight, on the back of a used sheet of printing-office paper, the way I always do. Outside, the city lamps flickered on one by one against the darkening summer sky, and for a moment Jongno almost looked gentle.