“Two iced Americanos for pickup.”
As soon as I set the finished drinks on the pickup counter, a new order came in. The café in front of the university, with final exams just around the corner, was packed with students who had come to study, and there wasn’t a moment all afternoon to sit down.
I was twenty-two. I’d thought college would make life a little easier, but it wasn’t much different from high school. In the morning I went to class, in the afternoon I worked part-time, and after getting off work I did the homework I’d fallen behind on, then fell asleep in the early hours of the morning. Today was no different. Whew. I brushed my hair back as I caught my breath, and then I heard a sound that pierced my ears.
Click!
When I looked up at the shutter sound, I saw the customers sitting by the window all gazing outside with bright, excited faces. With their arms stretched toward the view outside, some were taking selfies, and some were taking pictures of the scene outside.
Ah, it’s snowing. I had no idea. White snowflakes were falling beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass. It was the first snow of the year. I glanced outside for a moment, then went back to processing orders. There was no time to be sentimental. There were too many customers, and the backlog was mountain-high.
As the sun began to set and the customers started to thin out, I carried a full garbage bag to the back door of the café, not even a few hours later. When I opened the door, cold wind slapped my face. There was more snow on the ground than I’d expected. White snow had settled on the bicycle parked behind the building, and on top of the wall as well.
I put the big garbage bag into the plastic bin and hurried back to the front of the shop. Just as I was about to go inside and grab the doorknob, a thought came to me, and I lowered my hand and stood there for a moment. Snowflakes fell onto my hair and shoulders, and the cold air quickly stung the tip of my nose.
It had been like this then too. That especially cold winter. That day, too, I hadn’t realized it was snowing, and only after hearing someone’s camera shutter had I looked outside. Just like today, I had only then realized it was snowing.
Five years ago, in the winter when I was seventeen.
*
Even after final exams were over, there wasn’t much change in my daily life. My friends were busy going out to karaoke, the movies, and the like, saying exams were over, but I was more concerned with the workbook I had to finish before second year of high school.
That day, too, I went to the library as usual and, since there were no empty seats in the reading room, I took a spot in the first-floor lounge. It was a little noisy since it was a space where people came and went talking, but once I put in my earbuds and opened my math workbook, the surrounding noise quickly stopped bothering me. I was in the middle of solving problems.
Click.
When I looked up, a boy was standing a little ways off with a camera in his hands. No matter how I looked at it, the lens was pointed my way. I frowned instantly and approached him with an obvious look of annoyance.
“Hey, did you just take a picture of me?”
The boy lowered the camera and looked at me with a slightly flustered expression.
“No, I was taking a picture outside.”
“Show me the photo.”
On the camera screen he held out, there was a snowy view in front of the library. Ah, so he’d been photographing outside. But the inside of the lounge was faintly reflected in the glass window, and looking closely, I could even see my side profile as I stared at the workbook. I wanted to ask him to cut that part out, but I guessed that would be hard.
“I’m in that picture.”
“Ah, you are. Sorry.”
“Can you delete it?”
The boy obediently deleted the photo and put the camera away. Once I realized it had been a misunderstanding, I felt a little embarrassed. I brushed the back of my neck and sat back down, about to put my earphones in again, then turned my gaze outside.
Only then did I realize it was snowing. The trees and flower beds in front of the library had already turned white, and large snowflakes were fluttering through the wind. One by one, people gathered by the windows and took out their phones to start taking pictures.
It was the first snow.
I picked up my phone, which I’d left face down beside my workbook. The group chat with my friends was full of snow talk too. The message telling us it was going to snow had arrived over an hour ago. It was coming down so heavily, for so long, and I’d had no idea. I guess I really was emotionally dried out.
I stared at KakaoTalk and the window outside for a while, then opened the workbook again. Well, whatever. This is just how I am. I’ve always been a dry, cold sort of person. But I still couldn’t focus.
I absentmindedly tapped the workbook with my pen, tap, tap, then eventually stood up. For some reason, I felt strange and restless today, and I couldn’t study. It wasn’t as if I’d mismanaged my condition or anything. A little after six in the evening, I left the library. The snow had stopped, but because of the clouds it was dark like night. There was still white snow piled along the edge of the sidewalk. As I walked toward the bus stop, I noticed a boy crouching by the roadside and slowed my steps.
It was that same kid.
This time he had lowered the camera close to the ground and was taking a picture of something. As I passed by and glanced down, it was a small puddle formed by melting snow. While I was checking the photo the kid had taken, my eyes drifted to the camera screen without me realizing it. The streetlamp and branches reflected in the puddle filled the frame. Just a moment ago, it had looked to me like nothing but dirty muddy water, but in a photo it looked surprisingly nice.
“Oh, you’re the person I saw at the library earlier, right?”
Maybe sensing someone nearby, the kid turned his head toward me, looked up, and greeted me. I nodded and pointed at the camera.
“Did you take this?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“No, just. It turned out well.”
The kid glanced down at the screen once, then turned the camera back toward me.
“Want to see some more?”
I ended up crouching down beside him, a little dazed. The camera was full of snow photos. A bench piled with snow, gloves hanging from a tree, even an alleyway littered with footprints. Scenery I’d normally have just walked past. But somehow, seeing it in photos made me look at each one.
After flipping through a few more shots, he suddenly handed me the camera.
“Try taking one.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You can take it from here.”
I carefully took the camera. Just like he had, I lowered the lens toward the puddle, but the screen was filled only with muddy water and my shoes.
“That’s weird. It looks totally different from the one you took.”
“Lower it a little more. So the streetlamp shows up in the water.”
At his words, I moved the camera, and a streetlamp appeared on one side of the screen. I leaned down a little more to adjust the composition, then pressed the shutter.
Click.
When I checked the screen, it was a much more convincing photo than before.
“Oh, nice!”
Before I knew it, I was laughing. The kid checked the photo beside me and nodded in satisfaction. Just then, the bus pulled into the stop. I hurriedly handed back the camera and grabbed my bag.
“My bus is here. Thanks!”
“Yeah, take care.”
After I got on the bus and sat by the window, I could see the boy holding the camera again. The sight of him crouched there in the snow was a little funny, and I laughed without meaning to.
As the bus pulled away, I took my English vocabulary notebook out of my bag. If it had been normal, I would have memorized words until I got home, but that day I couldn’t even get through a few pages before closing the book. Snow-covered streets passed by outside the window. The long shadows of trees under the streetlights, footprints left on the white snow, even the raindrops on the bus window.
I took out my phone and tried snapping a photo of the view outside. The picture was terrible. The moving bus made it impossible to focus, and my own reflection in the window showed up on top of everything else. Still, I didn’t delete it. It just felt like a slightly different winter today.
