Silk Shoes (Short-short story)

SILK SHOES 
by Paul Lee 

I grew up in the rustic village, where I was born, near Yesan. The hills and the broad plains along the endless Moohan Stream between the Charyung Mountains and the Yellow Sea always gave me a high spirit with a peaceful mind and the people in the village had a simple-hearted charm you couldn'tfind in the town. They used to gather and bustle around at the Yesan jang, market square, with their products in a festive mood every five market days. 
Thinking of those early days in my life, I am reminded that I received rewards whenever I helped dad as a small boy and dad always called me "papa's helper." I saved that little money papa gave me in my piggybank until it was filled up with money. And when I thought there was enough money to buy something I wanted to have, I begged my oldest sister to take me to the jang. 

In the fresh spring morning of a market day, my sister took me to the market square located five miles from home. Of course, I brouht all the money I had saved. The square was already so crowded with the mingling of the whole country peoplein various shapes and forms, so we could hardly move forward. (At that time, anyway, I had enjoyed looking at many, many different goods and people.) 
While I was curiously looking around here and there, I found a pair of shoes embroidered with the pretty, little, red, and yellow flowers, and the green stripes in silk thread. 
"What beautiful shoes!" I exclaimed. "I should like to have them." 
I really wanted to put them on. So I asked the man how much they cost. 
"Boy," the man looked at me for a little while and answered prtending to be funny, "if you're buying, I'll let you take a good deal." 
But the price he offered was so high that I couldn't afford them. There fore, saying "if you please," I looked at my sister. 
In her eyes I could read that she couldn't afford them either. After a while my sister whispered to me in my ear: "Next time I'll surely buy those shoes." 
On the way back I felt so unhappy that I was dragging myself to get home. 

Over a month since our last visiting jang, I always asked mom to buy me the beautiful silk shoes whenever she went to the jang. Then I used to go out and sat, under the weeping willow tree at edge of the village, waiting for mom anxiously in the dark. 
Early in the summer evening, coming back from shopping, mom handed me a small package. As I opened it up, much to my surprise, there was a pair of leather shoes. "Ah, leather shoes!?" Very disappointed with the shoes, I looked at mom with tearful eyes. 
"Poor baby," said smiling mom, leaning forward and softly stroking my wet cheeks, "your feet are already too big for the silk shoes." 
I looked down at my feet. 
Looking back, that's a helpless early boyhood. 

(poet Paul Lee 이풍호 시인, 1981 and 1991)