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# Chapter 3: Three in the Morning, When Eyes Open
Rice cooled in her mouth as Eunseo watched her grandmother’s hands. The fingers that lifted and set down the spoon were slightly bent, marked by time. Eunseo looked down at her own hands. Still young, still long. An editor’s hands—holding manuscripts, revising sentences, typing emails, gripping a mouse. But the sensation in her fingertips had gone numb. It had been so long since she’d felt the roughness of paper, the weight of ink, the rhythm of typing.
“Why aren’t you eating?” her grandmother asked. Eunseo snapped back to attention. She picked up her spoon. The first spoonful of hot doenjang-jjigae burned her tongue, and she stuck it out. Her grandmother laughed—a warm, genuine laugh. She blew gently on her own spoon, cooling the soup the way she always had. It was exactly as Eunseo remembered from childhood. Time hadn’t changed her grandmother. She was still the woman who cooled her food this way.
“You always said the fingertip test was the perfect temperature,” her grandmother teased. Eunseo picked up her spoon again. This time she waited. The soup was still hot, but her mouth was adjusting. The deep flavor of doenjang touched her tongue. Tomato, squash, tofu. And something more. She closed her eyes, trying to analyze it. No red pepper powder—instead, a careful umami. This was broth that had simmered for hours. Food in Seoul was fast. Thirty minutes from app to doorstep. But this stew felt different. This was food that held time inside it.
“Good?” her grandmother asked. Eunseo nodded without speaking. That was enough. Her grandmother began eating her own meal. They ate in silence—not an uncomfortable silence, but a natural one. Between them, words seemed unnecessary. Or perhaps impossible. Eunseo had anticipated this silence from the moment, four weeks ago, she’d decided to come here. But the silence of reality ran deeper than she’d imagined.
After the meal, her grandmother offered to show her the room. Eunseo followed her up the creaking stairs, luggage in hand. The stairs still groaned—not unpleasantly, but like a sign that the house was alive. The Seoul apartment had never made a sound. Not the elevator, not the doors, not the windows. Everything was silent. But this house was different. This house spoke.
The second floor was small. There was barely a hallway. Open a door and you were in a room. Left or right. Her grandmother opened the left door. “Your room.” It was larger than expected. One window looked out onto the persimmon tree in the yard. No bed—instead, a rolled mat and pillows stacked in the corner. No wardrobe, no desk. Just empty space. Eunseo felt she should say something, but she remained silent.
“Unpack. You have plenty of time before dinner,” her grandmother said, leaving the room. Eunseo was alone. For the first time, she felt this was her space. The Seoul apartment had been chosen by distance to the office, commute time, subway lines—efficiency, not emotion. But this room was different. This was space her grandmother had kept empty for her. Eunseo set her luggage in one corner and unrolled the mat.
Unpacking, she realized again how little she owned. A few clothes, five books, a laptop, a charger. That was all. When she’d stepped down from her position as editor-in-chief, quit the company, left Seoul—she’d stripped her life to its minimum. Discarded everything unnecessary. What remained was only what was essential to survive. She stacked the books in a corner. A pattern emerged: they were all sad books. Murakami Haruki, Park Wan-seo, Eun Hee-kyung. All of them dealt with loss. She tried to understand why she’d brought them, but the answer was clear. Because she, too, had lost something.
Through the window, she looked at the persimmon tree again. Still green. Spring came slowly here. In Seoul, seasons changed in weeks. Fashion, café menus, people’s expressions—everything shifted rapidly. But here, the persimmon tree remained green. It would take months for those fruits to turn orange.
Eunseo lay on the mat. She stared at the ceiling. It was old wood, stained and dusty—untouched, uncleaned. She thought: this isn’t Seoul. This is a world moving at a different speed. Time flows differently here. Here, persimmons ripen slowly. Here, floorboards creak. Here, my grandmother cools her food by blowing on it.
In those thoughts, she fell asleep. The exhaustion of the journey from Seoul poured out. Her body felt pulled into the mat—and it felt good. For a long time, she hadn’t felt where her body touched anything. In Seoul, something was always pressing down on her. Work, deadlines, expectations. But here, there was none of that. Just a mat, a body, and herself breathing slowly.
That breathing carried her to the edge of sleep.
Three in the morning. Eunseo’s eyes opened.
This wasn’t new. In Seoul, too, she’d woken at three. The hospital had called it “insomnia.” But Eunseo didn’t think it was insomnia. Insomnia was wanting to sleep but being unable to. This felt different. She only felt like she existed when she was awake. If she fell asleep, she felt she might disappear. That fear woke her every night at three.
She looked at the ceiling. In the darkness, she couldn’t see it, but she traced its shape in her mind. Wood, water stains, dust. What lay above it? What lay on the floor above? Her grandmother’s bed? Her wardrobe? Eunseo got up. She left the mat and opened the window. The night air entered—cold but soft.
The persimmon tree appeared as a dark silhouette in the darkness. A night tree. It was an entirely different thing from the daytime tree. Like a tree from another world. She wondered: does that tree open its eyes at night too? Does it wake at three in the morning? She found no answer. The persimmon tree didn’t speak.
She lay back down. Closed her eyes. But sleep didn’t come. It was the same in Seoul.
From three to six in the morning, she was always awake. Those hours felt like a different time zone. Outside the normal flow of time—her own time. In those hours, she thought: Why did I come here? What do I want? Who am I?
But tonight was different. In Seoul’s early morning, there was city noise. Distant car sounds, footsteps from above, the hum of elevators. Those sounds kept her awake. But here was silence. Complete silence. In that silence, she heard her own heartbeat. Or her own breathing. Or something coming from deeper still.
She got up again. This time, she left the room. She went down the stairs. They creaked even at night—as if acknowledging her footsteps. Downstairs, her grandmother’s radio was on. Very low volume. A voice came from it. A late-night radio program. Was her grandmother awake too? Or did she sleep with it on? Eunseo couldn’t tell.
She went into the living room. Through the window, she could see the riverbank path. The night path, wrapped in darkness. She opened the window. The sound of the river came to her. Water flowing. A constant sound, almost mechanical. But within it, subtle variations. Water meeting stone, water brushing sand, water mixing with water. All these sounds combined into one river sound.
She listened to the river. It was like meditation. In Seoul, she’d never meditated. No time. No time for deep breaths, no time to listen to her own heart. But here, there was time. Time in abundance. She didn’t know what to do with it.
“Did you wake up?” Her grandmother’s voice. Eunseo jumped. She turned around. Her grandmother stood in the doorway in white pajamas. She’d been awake too.
“I’m sorry,” Eunseo said. Her grandmother waved her hand. “Don’t apologize. Waking at night is common.” She came into the living room and stood beside Eunseo, looking out the window. “Listening to the river?”
“Yes.”
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” her grandmother asked. Eunseo nodded. “The river sounds better at night. During the day, there are too many other sounds to hear it. But at night… at night, the river can speak with its own voice.”
Eunseo understood. The river speaking with its own voice. It was poetic, yet utterly real. The daytime river and the night river were clearly different beings. Like daytime Eunseo and nighttime Eunseo.
“So you’re the type who wakes at night,” her grandmother observed. It wasn’t a question. “Did it happen in Seoul too?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’ll happen here too. Changing places doesn’t change habits.” Her grandmother turned up the radio slightly. Still very low, but the gesture was deliberate. “When you wake at night, listen to the radio. That’s what helps most.”
So her grandmother woke at night too. And she’d accepted it. She didn’t think of it as an illness. She’d simply accepted it as part of herself. Eunseo needed that perspective.
“Do you want to eat, or just have some water?” her grandmother asked. Eunseo said water. Her grandmother went to the kitchen and brought back cold water—from the nighttime refrigerator. Drinking it, Eunseo felt, for the first time, that this place could become home.
Her grandmother sat on the sofa. Eunseo sat beside her. They listened to the radio. A late-night program. Someone’s story, someone’s consultation, someone’s voice. All flowing from the darkness. Eunseo heard those voices. Voices like her own. Voices of people awake at night.
Four in the morning came. Five in the morning came. At some point, Eunseo felt sleep creeping in. Her grandmother’s head tilted slightly beside her. Neither was fully asleep, nor fully awake. Suspended between dream and waking.
Her grandmother reached over and placed a hand on Eunseo’s shoulder. Its warmth transferred to her. No words were spoken. Her grandmother simply sat. Eunseo sat too. They listened to the radio. The river’s sound. The night’s sound.
Six in the morning. The window slowly brightened. Black to navy, navy to gray. The colors changed. Her grandmother rose. “Let’s make breakfast.” Eunseo rose too. They went to the kitchen. The radio still played.
The smell of morning began to fill the house.