Hyung-sik returned to his lodgings, ate breakfast, and went straight to school. The old woman said, "You look terribly worn out. Why don't you rest today?" He ignored her. Over the past three days he had exhausted his mind and slept poorly—his face showed it, and his body was limp with fatigue. But the first class this morning was fourth-year English. He had already taken yesterday off; another day off would mean two consecutive days away, and that troubled him deeply. Before his illness, Hyung-sik had never once missed a school day. Even when a cold brought pounding headaches and fever, he forced himself to attend. And if he came home sicker than before, he consoled himself: "It was for my duty." He considered it a great sin to let over a hundred young men waste an hour each just so he could rest comfortably for one. But there was something greater than duty driving him to school with such fervor.
It was this.
Hyung-sik had grown up lonely. He never knew a parent's love, nor the love of siblings. What was more, he had no close friends. The affection of a friend of similar age and temperament is hardly less than that of a sibling. But Hyung-sik never stayed in one place long enough to make such friends. And during his pitiful wanderings, the children who might have befriended him looked down on him instead. When he was twelve, he grew deeply attached to a younger cousin of the same age—they had studied together once. One night, Hyung-sik was playing at the cousin's house until late. He was overjoyed at the chance to share a bed with him. He could easily have walked back to his uncle's house where he lodged, but he insisted he couldn't because it was dark, and begged to stay. But the cousin shouted loud enough for the whole household to hear:
"Your clothes are crawling with lice!"
Hyung-sik felt hurt and furious, but could do nothing. He ran out of the house in tears. And indeed, his clothes and hair were infested with lice. So young Hyung-sik never tasted even a friend's affection. Later, at Park Jinsa's house, he lived only with people more than ten years his senior. Even after coming up to Gyeongseong, it was the same. The only time he might have enjoyed friendship was during his studies in Tokyo. There were many boys his age there. Thirsting for companionship, he tried his best to befriend them. But he had been battered by the world since childhood, and the youthful bloom had long faded from his face and heart, replaced by a premature adult weariness. No matter how hard he tried to get close to boys his age, they would not open their hearts. Moreover, he was far ahead of them in learning, so they respected him as a senior—but they never wanted to link arms or hold hands as friends. When they met Hyung-sik, they would stop their roughhousing, bow their heads, and say, "Good morning, sir." Helpless, Hyung-sik would reply, "Good morning." Once he grabbed a boy two or three years younger and said,
"Listen, let's be friends. Let's hang out together."
The boy, thinking it a joke, said "Yes, sir!" took off his hat, bowed, and ran off. Later, whenever he had the chance, he tried to befriend the boys, but they just giggled, bowed, and dashed away. In the end, he never managed to become a true friend to any of them. To this day, all his close acquaintances were at least a decade older. Hyung-sik would lament to himself:
"I skipped my boyhood!"
His heart—having never known a boyhood—was indeed desolate. He often said, "I was robbed of one of life's rights. And that right is the greatest and happiest of them all." Every time he said this, he could not suppress his loneliness and would let out a long sigh.
Then, at twenty-one, he became a teacher at Gyeongseong School and gained the chance to be close to many boys. But when they slipped away from him with a respectful "Good morning, teacher," the loneliness remained. He even thought, "Maybe I should enroll in a middle school myself and play with those boys."
Hyung-sik loved his students dearly. Every word and gesture toward them flowed from a burning love. He wiped their noses, tied their shoelaces and coat strings. Some teachers sneered at him for this; some even interpreted his intense affection in a malicious light. Especially his special love for Hee-kyung—they said it was because Hee-kyung was handsome. Some claimed to know for certain about an indecent relationship between them. A friend once warned Hyung-sik about it, and Hee-kyung himself endured nasty ridicule from classmates. There were even those who slandered Hee-kyung's top grades as Hyung-sik's manipulation.
But Hyung-sik continued to love his students. If one of them had been a patient who could only live by drinking human blood, Hyung-sik thought he would gladly sever his own artery. And toward a few like Hee-kyung, he felt a love as intense as a man's love for a woman.
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This is somewhat of a digression, but it's necessary at this point to talk about Hyung-sik's past few years as a teacher. In a word, his four years at Gyeongseong School were a life of love and anguish.
The love that had been locked up and starved for twenty years—once he became a teacher and met the boys—burst forth like grass shoots that had been covered over, springing up in the spring breeze. Never having tasted a parent's love, a sibling's love, or a friend's love—let alone a woman's love—Hyung-sik's love surged like a high tide, flooding over the four hundred young students of Gyeongseong School. He once wrote in his diary:
You are my parents, my brothers, my sisters, my wife, my friends, my sons. It is you who have taken possession of my whole spirit and my entire love. I will work and love you until this blood runs dry, this flesh is pared away, and these bones are ground down.
That passage spoke his true feelings. Every morning, when he entered the school gate and saw the students playing, he was happy. Every period, standing at the podium and seeing them look at him and listen to him, he was happy. At night, lying alone in bed, thinking of how they had played and studied, he was happy. He wondered how he could teach them more, how he could make their conduct beautiful, how he could awaken their minds—and so he said everything he knew and used every method he could. When students quoted his words in debate or used a method he had suggested for some task, his joy knew no bounds.
Thus for four years, most of Hyung-sik's time and energy were spent entirely for the students. As a result, his nerves had weakened and his body had grown frail. He knew it himself. But when he faced the fourth-year students—whom he had shaped with his own hands—he felt the same joy and satisfaction a farmer feels in autumn when he looks out at the paddies and fields that have ripened yellow, bowed low, after sweating and toiling from spring through summer. In Hyung-sik's mind, most of the fourth-year students' knowledge, their beautiful thoughts, words, and conduct were the fruits of his devoted labor. Indeed, he had never let even the smallest opportunity slip, sharing all his knowledge, experience, impressions, and even interesting stories. Now, when he faced the fourth-year students, he felt he had given them everything he had—so much so that there was hardly anything left to say. He filled every spare moment after teaching the textbook with stories he thought new and beneficial. One of his reasons for reading was the desire to share with these students. The students listened with interest. They even begged him, "Tell us more!" Hearing such requests, Hyung-sik felt even more satisfied. Of course, among the students there were those who found his stories tiresome, and some who deliberately stared off or doodled in their notebooks even while he spoke with utmost sincerity. But in his view, most seemed to listen with keen interest. So the students received no small amount of influence, knowledge, and pleasure from him. Among the teachers, both others and Hyung-sik himself acknowledged that he had the greatest influence on the students.
But the other teachers did not consider Hyung-sik's influence particularly positive. Some criticized him, saying he made the students arrogant, and that by reading them bad novels he unsettled their minds.
These criticisms were not entirely groundless. Hyung-sik always argued that students should be given as much freedom as possible, and that the school authorities should respect student opinions as much as possible. When he first joined the school, both the principal and the vice principal were extreme advocates of authoritarianism. The students dared not express a single opinion to the teachers. If anyone so much as criticized or opposed a school order or a teacher's remark, they were harshly scolded in front of the entire student body, then either suspended or, in severe cases, expelled. Hyung-sik, who harbored liberal ideas, clashed with them many times. He would even say in front of the students:
"If there is something to be dissatisfied with, it's right to speak up boldly. If the school treats a just matter unjustly, it's right to resist."
Such dangerous words. So Bae Hak-gam's claim that the recent student disturbance was incited by Hyung-sik was not entirely baseless.
Hyung-sik also subtly encouraged literature among the third- and fourth-year students. As a result, some students began reading novels, philosophy books, and magazines. A few started walking around with their heads bowed as if they were great thinkers—most literary, most philosophical. These students sneered at other teachers as childish people who knew nothing of spiritual life. To Hyung-sik, this was progress and a source of joy. But to the other teachers, it was degeneration and impertinence. Even among the students, there were those who mocked Hee-kyung's clique for carrying around small-print difficult books and the latest magazines.
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Of course, Hee-kyung's clique did not really understand those difficult books. After reading ten or twenty pages, they could not grasp the meaning systematically. They were content with picking out a sentence or two here and there that they could understand. They boasted of reading many pages a day without really knowing them, and considered it a singular glory to memorize names of Western literary figures, philosophers, and religious thinkers—along with the titles of their works—as they had heard from Hyung-sik. They memorized and quoted in debates or conversations phrases from their reading like "What is life?" or "What is the universe?" Sometimes they quoted Tolstoy or Shakespeare, or recited entire English aphorisms from memory. Even the quoters themselves didn't fully understand the meaning, but they felt that quoting these words gave expression to their thoughts. Other students who listened would snort "Hmph!" but secretly envied their apparent erudition. So they too secretly bought old magazines or quietly remembered what they had heard from Hee-kyung's clique and used it elsewhere to show off.
Hee-kyung had considerable comprehension. In Hyung-sik's view, Hee-kyung seemed the most mature in thought, and Hee-kyung himself believed he understood what Hyung-sik said. When they sat together, topics of life and the universe would flow one after another, like like-minded thinkers meeting after a long time. But Hyung-sik thought he still had many noble ideas that he could not yet share with Hee-kyung. That was true. Sometimes after speaking his thoughts at length, he would see Hee-kyung sitting blankly and smile faintly, as if to say, "You still don't understand," and stop talking. Then Hee-kyung would blush as if insulted. Of course, Hee-kyung acknowledged that Hyung-sik had more knowledge and deeper thoughts than he did. But he did not think Hyung-sik was tens of li ahead. So when Hyung-sik treated him with an air of "How could you possibly understand?" Hee-kyung felt displeased and rebellious. Up through the second year, Hee-kyung had seen Hyung-sik as thousands of li ahead. There seemed nothing Hyung-sik didn't know; every word from his mouth seemed profound. He thought Hyung-sik was the most knowledgeable and deepest thinker in all of Joseon. But from halfway through the third year, he began to see Hyung-sik as not so different from himself. Hyung-sik's knowledge was not so vast; his thoughts were things Hee-kyung himself had thought. The things Hyung-sik said from the podium were nothing special—Hee-kyung felt he could easily say as much if he stood up there himself. But when he actually tried speaking at a debate, he could never match Hyung-sik. However, that was not because he was inferior, but because Hyung-sik had years of practice as a teacher. With enough practice, he would surpass Hyung-sik. Hee-kyung believed that in three years he would exceed Hyung-sik in thought, knowledge, and speech. When he reached the fourth year and studied the fourth reader, he noticed that Hyung-sik sometimes didn't know certain words and couldn't clearly explain some grammatical points. He no longer looked up to Hyung-sik even in English. Now, in Hee-kyung's eyes, Hyung-sik seemed only a step or two ahead. In the future, he would rise ten or twenty times higher. Hee-kyung came to look down on middle school teachers. He had long seen other teachers as empty shells who knew nothing. And even Hyung-sik, who had seemed to know the most, was nothing when you looked closely. Hee-kyung was not the kind of person to take a job like middle school teacher. In the future, he would become a great scholar, or at least a doctor. If he ever came to a middle school, it would be as principal.
The teachers all seemed to him like small men who had already reached their limit. He alone seemed to have infinite potential. But Hee-kyung didn't know that Hyung-sik, six or seven years before, had thought the same way. To Hee-kyung, Hyung-sik seemed naturally limited, unable to leap high—stuck as a middle school teacher for over four years, likely to spend his whole life there. So he half despised Hyung-sik and half pitied him. Hee-kyung was not alone in this. Everyone who tried to read difficult books like him came to feel the same. The other students had never truly respected Hyung-sik from the start. To them, he was just a young teacher who was extremely kind. What's more, they mocked his favoritism toward Hee-kyung's clique and his special affection for Hee-kyung, and they even felt some dislike for him.
The students had grown from children into young adults. They had gone from first year to fourth year. Those who had known nothing had acquired general knowledge. In their own eyes, they had progressed and matured over the past four years. But Hyung-sik seemed unchanged to them—whether they remembered him from first year or saw him now in fourth. They felt that Hyung-sik had given them almost all of his knowledge—if not all—and now lacked any qualification to be considered superior to them. So although their outward behavior toward him remained the same, in their hearts they regarded him as their equal or even their inferior.