One quiet summer afternoon, I was sitting at the edge of my bed, looking at my phone.
It was hot, so I had the windows wide open.
But the house was quiet.
Shoooo… shoooo…
I heard something.
What was that?
I looked up.
It was a sound I had never heard before.
It stopped.
Then it came back again.
And again.
I kept listening.
I wanted to know what it was. I got up and walked to the living room.
I listened.
It wasn’t the sound of cicadas.
What was it?
Insects, maybe?
I walked to the veranda, leaned slightly out the window, and looked around.
Outside, everything felt the same as usual.
Then the sound came back, as if it were moving toward me.
Shoooo…
It was the wind.
Maybe this would be normal in the countryside.
How could a sound like this exist here?
Even though there was nature around us, it was still the middle of the city.
What kind of home was this?
I couldn’t stop wondering about this place.
The Wind Moving Through This Home
Nineteen floors up.
An old apartment, on the top floor.
There were no footsteps from above, which I loved.
But in the summer, it could get hot.
The veranda in the living room opened wide.
Low buildings stretched out below, and beyond them, there were mountains.
To the side.
And behind.
Wind moved down from the mountains and flowed into the open windows.
The cord of the blinds swayed lightly, then stopped.
Then swayed again, and stopped.
It matched the sound exactly.
It was the wind.
I picked up my phone and filmed the cord moving.
Then I recorded the sound and listened to it.
In the living room first.
Then in the bedroom.
I listened again, wondering if it really was the wind.
I was curious to see whether I could hear the same sound outside. So I stepped out.
Meeeeh…
Cicadas.
I smiled.
It wasn’t the same. Not the sound I had heard at home.
I recorded it on my phone and listened again.
It was different.
I moved to another spot and recorded again. Then listened again.
Still different.
I looked around. People were just passing by, as usual. No one seemed to notice.
I went back inside.
Later that evening, I told my husband about it.
“This house is so strange,” I said.
“I was inside this afternoon, and I heard the wind.
It came like this—
shooo…“
I kept talking, wanting to share the feeling I had earlier.
“That’s just cicadas.”
He said it simply, as if it didn’t matter.
I stopped.
He just wasn’t interested.
And I realized I used to be like that too.
I probably wouldn’t have paid attention to a sound like this. I might have thought it was just cicadas and moved on.
When I thought about what I had been doing that afternoon, I almost smiled.
Almost sixty, and hearing something for the very first time.
Recording it here, then there.
Feeling curious.
Even a little excited.
It had been six months since I moved here, after years of living in Seoul. Now I was in a place surrounded by mountains.
One afternoon, a butterfly came to rest on the window screen of this nineteenth-floor apartment.
It arrived in the daylight.
And it stayed.
Even as the light faded, it didn’t leave.
Before going to bed, I saw it still there.
Maybe it was resting.
By the next morning, it was gone.
I smiled to myself.
Maybe it had rested well, and left.
I found myself taking a photo of the empty spot where the butterfly had been.
