“Look who’s here! I thought you were going to be here next week at the earliest.” Her mom sounds more scolding than welcoming. She then turns to the car that has pulled up to the stand where she is selling apples. “No, I can’t go any lower. No, not even a cent. I’m giving you such a good deal!” The car slowly pulls away and she yells after the car, “Okay okay. Just give me 4,500 won!” After the car leaves, Sol’s mother clicks her tongue in annoyance. “City folk really don’t give a damn about other people. Selling apples is a business with slim margins.” Sol’s mother shoves the money she just received into her fanny pack and starts to order Sol around as though her daughter never left for college and has always been at hand. Sol pulls out rotten pears from the boxes and collects them in the basket under the wooden platform. She then refills the empty rubber bucket her mother used with new apples.

“Mom, I brought a friend with me. We’ll stay over for the next few days.” Sol’s mother doesn’t respond to her announcement. Instead she asks if we had eaten. “Yeah, we ate a while ago. You know the grandma’s seafood tent on the sidewalk next to the bus terminal? We ate the clam soup. We each had a whole bowl. It was so good.”

“Yeah, hers is the real deal. All the other places dilute the soup, or use Chinese clams and lie that they are local Hadong clams.” Even though I showed up unannounced on the evening of New Year’s Day looking like a wet rat, soaked in sleet, Sol’s mom offers me an apple after wiping it on her sleeve. I take a big bite of the shiny red apple. It’s fragrant and sweet.

Selling fruit on the side of the road is not easy. We pile up the apples and pears, sitting on the wooden platform by the side of the highway. It’s cold, so we blow on our hands and rub our red cheeks. A car stops. People mostly ask for the price, poke at the fruits, smell a few, but then leave. I feel an urge to walk into the road with a fruit basket in my hand. I could just lie down on the road and be done with it.

It’s getting dark and no one is buying our wares, but still we wave at the cars with their headlights on.

“People must have eaten a lot of food and gotten full at the New Year’s rituals. Let’s just go home.” We walk past the green tea farm and reach the house on the hill. In its small yard, a dogwood tree is blooming, its flowers look like scattered yellow pills. Next to the tree, a pinwheel is spinning.