A Gyopo In Korea: Alone Again, Naturally

I’m Dylan, a 3rd generation Korean-American, and I’ll be living in Seoul for three months. In that time, I hope to improve my near non-existent Korean skills and experience the culture that I’ve been removed from. In this series, I’ll be detailing those experiences. If you’re not caught up, you can catch the other chapters here.

I got off work at 6:30 on the dot. I thought about exploring and eating dinner out, but I decided to head back home immediately. I don’t know why. I guess I just felt like it.

I made my way down the street and up the stairwell. I punched in the code to the gate, then to the sharehouse. Upon entering, I saw that the light to my housemate’s room was off and her door was ajar. I opened the shoe closet to put my boots inside, and realized that all of the UGGs were gone, leaving only my pair of leather sneakers and the row of shoes on the top shelf.
Taped to my door was a folded sticky note. Ugh. I was already getting a sinking feeling in my stomach. Like before, it was somewhat difficult to read, but I could understand enough:

“Hello, I’m the person from the room next to you. You were the first to say hello, so now I’ll be the first to say goodbye…”

Damn. Only a little more than a week had passed since I left that first sticky note on the table, a little more than a week of me failing to say anything to her once again, and now she was gone.

I stepped into her old room and flicked on the light. I was curious to see what it looked like, after all.

Immediately, I became jealous. It was easily twice the size of mine, with a much nicer desk space and large window. There were two beds, so I guess this was that “double” option I was offered in the email before I made the payment.

I was kicking myself, not just because I liked her and she was gone–I honestly wasn’t going to try to pursue anything–but also because I was simply looking forward to having someone around that I might’ve been able to talk to. It would’ve been great for improving my Korean, too.

I told the sharehouse manager that I wasn’t able to say bye to her and asked for her phone number, which he gave.

Through KakaoTalk, I messaged, “Hello YeJin-ssi! I’m HyunMyung, the person from next-door. I got your number from the sharehouse manager. I’m really disappointed you left so soon! I don’t really have any friends here in Korea so I was looking forward to talking to you, but I’m a really shy person so I wasn’t able to much… I wanted to have a Korean friend so I could practice my Korean but it’s hard to find people…

“Take care! (Also, sorry if the sentences don’t make much sense. I’m using Papago to help translate haha)”

She responded, “Oh, hello! 🙂 I also wanted to talk to you more, but I was also very shy, so the most I could do was leave a letter saying goodbye. Thanks for leaving me a message like this. It’s nice to hear from you haha.

“There are many Korean people who are good at English, but my English is so bad. It must have been uncomfortable reading my letters since they were all in Korean, right?

“It was really nice to hear the occasional guitar playing at night 🙂

“Well, even if it’s not me, I hope there will be many opportunities to make friends with other Koreans. I’m sorry that we couldn’t be friends, but I’m glad we could talk like this! I hope we can meet someday!”

I said, “Yes, maybe one day we can meet. Thank you for talking to me!”

She followed up with, “We didn’t talk much, but I’m glad we made some good memories thanks to you! It was nice to know each other, even just for a little while. I hope we can meet again someday 🙂

“It’s getting cold again and it’s raining a lot these days, so be careful not to catch a cold and sleep warm!”

“Thanks, you too!” I responded.

And that was that. It’s whatever. I was just being stupid. The conversation was awkward and clunky because we were both translating things on our separate ends, and I could tell she didn’t want to keep on talking to me. I found it strange how she told me she wanted to meet again someday, when it was clear that she didn’t mean it. Again, it must’ve been her just trying to be polite.

Huh. I should try making some friends.