You walk out from the time machine. It’s 1941, and you are in Seoul, Korea. You always wondered about the Japanese Colonial Era in Korea. Now you are there. It’s cold. Dry wind hits your face. The air is definitely fresher and cleaner than what you used to feel in 2022. You sense the mixture of earthy smells and the smells of new buildings. You pick up a newspaper from a street vendor. Some letters in the articles are Korean, but most of the words are written in Japanese. You walk down the street. You can hear and see Japanese words all around you with some Korean words. You can see buildings, some with Western style and others with traditional style. These are all in colors. These are not black and white like photographs you saw from history class. These are not the colors imagined by movie directors and producers. These are the real colors. 

***

Several students in front of you are cheerfully talking. They laugh a lot. These happy noises make you amused. You’re just walking down the street without any plan or purpose, so you decide to continue to follow the students because you want to keep listening to their delighted voices. All of a sudden, several Japanese police officers come out of a truck near the sidewalk. Their uniforms are more frightening than you thought. The officers take the students’ bags away. They open the bags and take books and notes out. They open those books. Finally, you find Korean letters, more than a paragraph, in those books. The officers seem not so happy to find proof of these students secretly learning Korean, which is against the law. They yell at those students and leave, still holding the students’ bags. You feel unpleasant. You think that you really should have stopped the police yelling at the students. You decide to stop following the students. When you walk past them, you can read fear in their eyes. 

Was that what you really wanted to see? You’re afraid that going back to 1941 was a bad decision. Why were you curious about the past when most people suffered? Maybe you wanted to see how people suffered back then. Maybe you were curious about the pain that you’ve never experienced during your entire life. How rude and ignorant is that, you think. 

You cannot stop looking around, however. This place is so familiar and yet so foreign to you. You regret that you didn’t bring your camera or phone. Therefore, you decided to record everything in your eyes, your brain, and your mind instead.

***

You remember reading from the newspaper that it’s 1941, so you find a cafe near Yonhee College where writers and poets usually gather and share their ideas. Immediately after you enter the cafe, there is a person that you immediately recognize. He has the purest eyes, and a warm smile is always on his face. He wears a dark navy blue jacket just like the photos you’ve seen more than a hundred times, but he is much thinner and paler than you imagined. His hands are put together on the table. He seems reserved; rather than passionately speaking with his friends, he usually listens to what his friends are saying, smiling. You feel this emotion that you can’t even describe. It’s the first time you hear his voice. He speaks very quietly and slowly, but even only by listening to his voice, you know he is a warm person. You just stand there for a while, watching and listening to him. It’s your favorite poet. 

Poetry is one of the fields of literature that you are not very interested in. You think the language used in poetry is too vague and abstract. You find those vague and abstract words beautiful sometimes, but usually, you don’t see their beauty in most of the poems you read. This poet you immediately recognize in the cafe is the only poet who showed you how poetic language can be vague and yet clear and beautiful, all at the same time. 

Unfortunately, you can’t tell him that he is your favorite poet and that you love his poems because he couldn’t publish his poems during his lifetime. Telling him that you’re a big fan of him will just make him surprised and suspicious about you. So, you will have to go sit at his table and say hi to him and his friends. Try not to show them that you are from the future. Just blend in and talk about school life since the poet is going to graduate college in that year. Once you get closer with the poet and his friends, you’ll hear from them that the poet wants to publish his poems to celebrate his graduation. His friends don’t think that publishing his poems is a good idea because of censorship conducted by Japanese authorities. You have to pretend that you are surprised by him. Say, “Wow, do you write poems? That’s amazing!” Then, he’ll respond “Oh, it’s nothing,” while blushing his face. You should say, “Come on, show me your work. I’d love to read them!” He will hesitate for a while, but he is too kind to say no. He will eventually show you his notebook. You recognize “Self-Portrait” written by him in 1939. It’s a relatively short poem, but you can’t take your eyes off his notebook. 

“Yeah, it’s clumsy, right?” His anxious but very polite voice wakes you up. 

“No, it’s great! I love it!” You hand his notebook back, wishing to read it a little longer. You know that you will not and cannot forget this moment forever because it will be the first and the last time you grab the notebook and read his handwriting; back in 2022, you can see his notes only through protection glasses in the museum. 

You discuss various topics with the poet and his friends. They’re delightful people to talk with. 

At some point, even though the poet never explicitly tells you, you realize that he thinks of himself as helpless. You already read his poems, so you know that he often reproaches himself for not taking action when his country is in the middle of the great crisis. He doesn’t express such feelings since he wants to keep the bright mood of conversation, but you can feel his emotion, emotion with an almost self-hate level of intensity. Such intensity seems so incompatible with such a soft person like him. Observing his hate and indignation toward himself, you can partly understand where the intense emotions come from.

***

It was the summer of 2022. You were staying in New York City, taking part in an investigative journalism summer program. It was late morning. You were taking notes about how to interview people and planning for the interview assignment in Central Park later in the class when you got an update on Roe v. Wade. It was overturned. Soon, the entire class got the update, and the class for the day technically ended. Everyone was distraught. You were so angry, and you could feel your blood was burning. During lunch, the organization of the program sent you an email urging you not to participate in any protest. You wanted to speak up for this human rights violation. However, you couldn’t because your parents wanted you to follow what the organization said. Still, there were a lot of students who went to the protest. One of them was your roommate. Watching her determined face, gathering stuff that she needed, you felt helpless. You doubted yourself, wondering if you were determined enough or cared about it enough. You thought that you’re just a sad little powerless person. The next day, when you went outside of the building to get a matcha latte, you saw a group of pro-life supporters in front of the building. They said that pregnant women shouldn’t be the ones who decide whether to give birth or not. You wanted to retort sharply, but instead, you just dropped your head and moved your legs to Starbucks.

***

The poet is now staring into the air with blurry eyes. You think you know what he is thinking. Just as you were disappointed in yourself in the summer of 2022, he is disappointed in himself in 1941. Both of you don’t like yourselves sitting on a chair, doing nothing while your worlds are in pain and some of your friends raise their voices to solve the problems. 

***

The sun is already going down. The sky is no longer blue. It is now orange. You tell them that you’re glad to meet them and say goodbye. You walk out from the cafe. You walk against the cold and dry wind. You find the time machine and go inside it.