Take me there

I sat on a hill, waiting for my friend, watching the clouds drift by. In front of me was a small, cozy mountain peak, and a little stream flowed gently around it.

“When you were in the U.S., didn’t you play golf at all?”

When I called my friend after coming to Seoul, she immediately suggested we go golfing. She couldn’t believe I had never played and dragged me to the golf course.

“In a big country like America, you didn’t play golf? Even here in crowded Korea, everyone plays...” 

She left me on the hill by the golf course, looking disappointed, and went off to play.

Back in college, I used to meet this friend often. Maybe it was because we were both searching for love. I remember one winter, we randomly took a long-distance bus and got off wherever we liked. There was a big lake, and from faraway houses, smoke from cooking rose into the sunset sky. The lake was frozen solid. We slipped and laughed, helping each other across the ice, heading toward the village on the other side. Our laughter echoed across the frozen lake.
At one point, we heard the ice crack beneath us and stopped, scared. We stood there, just staring at the unreachable village in the distance, not saying anything for a while.

“You waited long, didn’t you? I knew you’d wait, so I finished early today,”
my friend said, taking off her sunglasses with a sorry look.
“Do you know where we are now?” I asked.
“Where?”
“The place where we tried to cross the frozen lake in winter.”
“Oh, that? I don’t know where that was. We just got off the bus randomly.”
“Do you remember going to the cabin with our friends during college? That night, you and I couldn’t sleep, so we went outside to look at the stars. Do you remember?”
“When was that?”
“We were afraid our shoes would get wet in the snow, so we wore those big army boots the boys left behind—the ones we had crushes on—and dragged them through the white forest.”
“Oh... that.”

The day I was supposed to meet the boy who owned the boots, I had swim class. What were the chances? I always wondered if he waited for me. He knew my home phone number, but he never called. We said goodbye without even a proper farewell. I regretted not meeting him again.

“What do you think those boys are doing now?” I asked.
“Probably playing golf like me. Why are you suddenly thinking about all this old stuff? What’s the point?”
“I just... I wanted you to take me back to those places again.”
“That was ages ago. Forget it. Learn golf instead. It’s great for your health, and nothing is more fun than golf. Plus, if you want to connect with upper-class people, you need to know how to play. When you go back to the U.S., learn it. Next time, we’ll play together.”

Have we come too far from those days?