The floor of my barely six-pyeong studio apartment was still too cramped to put one’s feet down comfortably, but even so, the tiniest changes had begun to appear over the past few days.
The six-ring binder and sticker book that had gone into the small, fern-like hands of an eleven-year-old girl; the imported patterned origami paper I had placed in the arms of a seventy-year-old grandmother I met at the community center; the bundle of forty rolls of masking tape that a working father had carefully picked up for his daughter. Then there was the watercolor set that had found its way into the callused hands of an art student returning to school, the resin art bead set touched by the excited breath of a stay-at-home mother raising a child, and finally, the thirty Sarasa gel pens tucked into the breast pocket of a middle-aged man in his fifties who was studying for the licensed real estate agent exam.
From Episodes 1 through 6, I had finally emptied the first living box completely—the one packed full of the stationery items that had once felt like the fever of my youth. When I set the empty box, its bare bottom exposed, out with the recycling, I thought I could finally breathe a little easier. But as the other boxes buried beneath it emerged into view, the hopelessness came rushing back. There were still five or six unopened boxes piled in the corners of the room, beneath the bed, and under the clothing rack, and I still had an overwhelming amount of stuff left to sell.
The second plastic box I pulled out today was the one I had left untouched the longest. The moment I opened the lid, a heavy smell that stung the tip of my nose came rushing out along with the fine dust lodged in the gaps. There was the stale scent of hardened glue-stick residue, the cool, soft dusty smell held by compressed wool felt, and a faint whiff of glue—the kind of scent you might find in the corner of an old stationery store.
In the middle of the box lay a palm-sized, pale-pink mini glue gun. At the tip of its nozzle, transparent silicone that had melted and hardened again hung like a tiny icicle, and the cord, wound tightly around the body, was grimy with age. Surrounding it were felt scraps in all shapes and sizes. Only a few pieces of new felt still retained their original rectangular shape. Most were malformed scraps left behind after circles, hearts, and stars had been cut out.
Around the age of twenty, I had been pathologically obsessed with making everything by hand. As long as my fingertips were busy moving, I felt as though my anxiety about the future and the noise of the world were shut out. Whenever I pulled the trigger of the glue gun in the heat spinning around me, sticky, scorching silicone would ooze out and instantly join the fragments together. Without even realizing I was being burned badly enough to blister, I pressed down hard with my thumb as I made felt teddy-bear brooches and stitched coasters to give my friends.
“I’ll use this scrap someday, too. I’m sure it’ll come in handy for making doll eyes or buttons.”
That was how I carefully collected even one-centimeter scraps no bigger than a fingernail, refusing to throw them away, until they eventually became this heavy box. But as job hunting wore me down and simply getting through each day became exhausting, the glue gun’s cord hardened like a brick, and it never even got plugged into an outlet again. The lovingly kept scraps I had dressed up as a product of my handiwork had ultimately become pretty trash, gnawing away at one corner of my room.
I laid out the glue gun, ten glue sticks, and the colorful felt scraps in neat rows on the old vinyl flooring. Beneath the fluorescent light, I adjusted the camera angle and took a picture.
[For Sale] Mini glue gun + 10 glue sticks + box of felt scraps, sold as a bundle (5,000 won). Well-used, but works perfectly. The felt is great for making small crafts or adding details like doll eyes and noses. There are so many scraps that it felt wasteful to throw them out, so I’m listing the whole box at a low price as a bundle.
I set the price at 5,000 won not out of a desire to make money, but out of the bare minimum of decency—the hope that someone would breathe new life into these scraps that had lost their usefulness.
Less than thirty minutes after I posted the listing, the familiar notification rang out through the cramped room.
[Carrot!]
Sunshine Class Teacher: Hi! Would it be possible to meet today? I’m on my way home from work right now. Could we meet around 8:30 in front of the CU convenience store at the entrance to the neighborhood?
Her profile picture showed a cartoon character wearing a yellow apron. Her manner score was 41.2. Memories of certain nights in my past, when I had stayed up gluing things together with the glue gun in my hand, flashed through my mind. I hurriedly stuffed the scattered felt scraps into a clear zipper bag, wrapped the glue gun in bubble wrap, and sent my reply.
Yes, that works. I’ll meet you in front of the convenience store’s patio umbrella at 8:30.
When I checked the time, it was 8:15. I put on a jacket and stepped outside, and the chilly night air in the alley brushed my cheeks.
As 8:30 approached, three or four tiny flying insects drifted slowly around the fluorescent light above the convenience store’s patio umbrella. Through the clear plastic shopping bag resting on my knees, the brightly colored felt scraps shimmered.
Forsythia yellow, deep mugwort green, burgundy almost the color of wine, and pieces of black and white no bigger than fingernails. To some people, they might have looked like shabby crumbs that belonged in the trash immediately, but the shopping bag’s handles were pulled taut by the weight of my lingering attachment—the same attachment that had kept me clinging to them in a corner of my room for nearly ten years.
Tap-tap-tap. Urgent footsteps rang out, cutting through the silent darkness at the far end of the alley. I looked up and saw a woman running toward me, panting, a large canvas tote slung over one shoulder and a thick padded vest over her clothes. Her hair was messily twisted up with a large plastic claw clip, and several strands of bangs clung to her forehead, dotted with beads of sweat. As she panted and looked around, her eyes met the heavy shopping bag on my knees.
“Excuse me… are you Inseon from Carrot Market?”
She stopped with her hands braced on her knees and let out a ragged breath. The exhaustion of the day lay heavily over her youthful face, but her eyes, meeting mine, shone brightly in the streetlamp glow. She looked to be around twenty-five or twenty-six—about my age, or perhaps a year or two younger. Her sky-blue employee ID lanyard was covered in clusters of adorable teddy bear and chick stickers, and three or four peach-colored bandages were wrapped around the tips of each thumb and index finger. They were the hands of a kindergarten teacher, cut countless times by glue, scissors, and paper.
“Yes, that’s me. You could’ve taken your time walking over. Why did you run so hard?”
“Oh, I was afraid I’d be late! The meeting about the fall classroom decorations and the props for the dramatic-play area ran long at school, so I got off work really late. I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.”
She bent deeply at the waist in greeting, then carefully pulled a crumpled 5,000-won bill from the pocket of her padded vest and held it out to me. When she peered into the shopping bag I handed her, she suddenly covered her mouth like a little child and let out a soft gasp.
“Wow… there are so many more felt scraps than I expected! And so many different colors. Oh my gosh, these brown and orange scraps would be perfect for making squirrel tails and acorn hats! If I cut the red and yellow ones into tiny leaf shapes and put them beside the attendance board like a maple tree, the kids would absolutely love it.”
Instead of the fatigue of working late into the night, her eyes were filled with pure excitement as she imagined the carefree laughter of the children who would walk into her classroom tomorrow morning. The moment I saw her expression, something ached sharply in one corner of my heart. Before my eyes, my useless scraps, which had been trapped in a box in the corner of my room, slowly suffocating beneath a blanket of dust, transformed into a miracle: squirrels for children to hug and tumble around with, an autumn forest brought to life by her gentle hands.
“Try turning on the glue gun, too. Just in case, I checked that it heated up at home before I left, but it’s been stored for a long time, so it’s a little worn.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter at all as long as it works! The large glue guns at school are so heavy and hot that I’m always burning my hands while attaching felt. For eyes or buttons as small as the children’s fingernails, a mini glue gun like this is the best. I’m only in my second year, so I’m still slow. I spend every night cutting things out at home after work… If this listing hadn’t popped up on Carrot Market today, I would’ve ended up spending a fortune at a stationery store. I feel like I’ve met my salvation.”
She rummaged through the heavy canvas tote hanging from her shoulder, then pulled out a yellow banana-flavored milk and placed it in my hand.
“Have this on your way home. Drink it cold. I’m so grateful you came out this late. I’ll use everything so carefully and make it really beautiful!”
She hugged the shopping bag full of felt as tightly as if it were a treasure chest, repeatedly bowing as she walked down the alley. Watching her sturdy footsteps grow distant, I quietly savored the cool, sweet weight of the banana milk lingering in my palm.
When I returned to my studio apartment, locked the door, and turned on the light, the room seemed unusually quiet. In the place where the heavy second transparent plastic box had always been kicked by my toes beneath the dresser, a square patch of empty space, roughly thirty centimeters by thirty centimeters, had appeared. When I wiped away the faint rim of dust pressed into the vinyl flooring with a wet wipe, the floor that had been hidden for so long finally revealed its clean, unadorned face.
The scraps that had been trapped by my lingering attachment and laziness had finally met someone’s devotion and kindness, and set off to receive a real new life. I had only cleared out one object, but it felt as though a cool stream of night air had passed not only through the cramped floor space of my room, but also through the narrow, hardened gaps in my heart.
I pierced the banana milk with a straw and took a long sip, gazing absently at the next boxes still waiting their turn beneath the calendar hanging on the wall.