Rain fell from early morning.
Not heavy, but steady enough to make the village roads glisten and the workshop close earlier than usual. I came home before noon, my uniform still damp when I stepped inside.
Something unfamiliar lay on the living room table.
A map.
Not a small one. A large map, neatly folded, its surface filled with coastlines and the names of port cities printed clearly. The paper had yellowed with age. The creases were too precise for decoration alone.
I stopped.
My mother was in the kitchen. My father hadn't returned yet from buying spare parts.
I walked closer and unfolded part of the map.
Busan.
Incheon.
Shanghai.
Singapore.
Rotterdam.
The names felt… alive.
Not like words in a textbook, but like places things actually passed through goods, people, decisions.
I thought of the newspapers I had been reading. The port strikes. The trade routes. The conversations I only half-heard in school hallways. They connected, like invisible lines drawn across the paper.
In one corner of the map, there was a faint pencil mark.
A small circle around Busan.
My throat tightened.
I had never been there. But seeing that circle felt like finding a footprint proof that someone had stood there long enough to leave a trace.
Footsteps sounded outside.
I folded the map quickly and placed it back exactly as it had been.
My father entered, carrying a small bag.
"You're home early," he said casually.
"Yeah."
Then, before I had time to stop myself, I asked, "Dad… what is Busan like?"
He paused.
Just for a second.
But it was enough.
"…Busy," he answered shortly. "And far."
I nodded and didn't ask anything else.
That night, in my room, I opened my notebook. I didn't write homework. I didn't write schedules.
I wrote a single line.
Busan port.
There were no grand dreams attached to it.
No clear plans.
But for the first time, the outside world was no longer a vague idea.
It had a name.
It had a place.
And I realized something quietly.
I didn't need to run yet.
It was enough to know that one day,
I would step out of this village.