Bad luck that hunting yielded no game was tolerable, but encountering a fierce beast could have cost a life!
When Song Chongjin was just a half-grown lad, he had already gone up to the mountains to provide for himself and his sickly mother, while I, to this day, apart from laboring in the fields during the farming season, only took on various short-term jobs for a few months to pay the compensation for injuring He Dawei.
I hadn't learned any manners or social cues and spoke and acted solely on my own impulses.
Any time I had an issue, big or small, I would go looking for Song Chongjin, never once considering whether it might be an inconvenience. How could I have been so oblivious back then?
My face burns with shame at the thought of it.
It wasn't right to bother Song Chongjin, and in that moment, I didn't know who else to turn to—I couldn't speak of such matters to anyone else.
