Do you like Saturday mornings in April?

 

A Saturday Morning in Hongdae

<Table of Contents>

- Saturday Mornings in Korea

- Pi Chyun Deuk and Haruki Murakami

On a Saturday morning in front of Yonsei University, cherry blossoms bloom softly in the distance.

<Saturday Mornings in Korea>

It may be because of gatherings that went late into Friday night,

or simply the fatigue that has quietly piled up over the week.

On Saturday mornings, the streets feel relaxed,

like faces that have just woken from a long, satisfying sleep.

When you step outside on a Saturday morning,

you notice bare faces glowing softly in the light.

My favorite time is exactly this—Saturday morning.

A time when nothing feels rushed,

and even doing nothing feels perfectly fine.

Even the buses passing by

seem to be painted in soft pastel tones.

<Pi Chyun Deuk and Haruki Murakami>

On mornings like this, two writers come to mind.

Both of them begin their stories

on a certain morning in April.

Pi Chyun Deuk, a Korean essayist,

wrote an essay titled “Inyeon (a connection that lingers in time)”,

which reads like a lingering regret left behind by April.

Over the course of twenty years,

he recalls meeting Asako three times

and parting from her three times.

“Even when we long for someone,

we may meet only once and never again;

and even if we can never forget them for a lifetime,

we may still live without ever seeing them again.”

It is a sentence that lingers

under the clear April sky.

Haruki Murakami’s short story

“On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning”

is a story of crossing paths and missing them.

“Don’t you think it’s a sad story?

Yes, I should have spoken to her in that way.”

It feels like a line

that might suddenly come to mind

on an April street where petals are falling.

So I think,

Saturday mornings in April

are about encounters,

about regrets,

and about memories.