I have a story for you — something that drifts through the streets of Yeongdo, in Busan.
I heard it from someone, but apparently most people who were born and raised on Yeongdo already know it. Up on Bongnaesan, there's a rock they call Grandmother Rock. Just an old stone, by the look of it — but the people of Yeongdo have never seen it as just that.
The grandmother, they say, welcomes those who come to Yeongdo. She takes them in, holds them close. But for those who leave — it's different. Walk away without her permission, and she won't simply let you go.
No one can say for certain, but among the old Yeongdo families, the saying has been passed down for generations: when you leave the island, you must first climb Bongnaesan, stand before Grandmother Rock, and bow. You ask her leave. Only then may you go.
It sounds like superstition. I thought so too, at first.
But then someone I know told me something — told me directly, in their own words.
This person had lived on Yeongdo for over twenty years before moving to the mainland. They were busy with the move, or maybe they simply didn't think about it — they just left. Grandmother Rock? Who has time for that? They crossed Yeongdo Bridge in the moving truck and figured that was that.
It wasn't long after the move that things began.
Small things, at first. Work at the new job kept going sideways in ways that made no sense. Water started leaking into the apartment for no apparent reason. Then, around the six-month mark, things between them and their wife began to sour — over nothing, really. Nothing at all.
What does any of that have to do with anything, you might ask. Just a run of bad luck, surely.
That's what they thought too. At first.
But then came that winter. They had a dream. In the dream they were walking somewhere, and at the base of a mountain, in the dark, a woman was standing. They recognized her even from a distance. A small, bent figure in white ramie cloth, watching them. Not saying a word.
It wasn't like an ordinary dream. Not frightening, exactly — just cold. The air in the dream was cold. They said they could feel the chill rising on their skin. And when they looked at the old woman's face, it was expressionless — except for her eyes, which were fixed on them. Unblinking.
They woke up, and the room smelled wrong. Not the sea, not earth — something older than that. The smell of a room that had been shut for a very long time. The windows were closed.
The next day, they went straight back to Yeongdo. Climbed Bongnaesan. Stood before Grandmother Rock.
They didn't know what they were supposed to do, so they just stood there, and then said it: I'm sorry. I left without saying goodbye. That was all. Their voice shook when they said it. They weren't embarrassed. It simply felt like something that had to be done.
After that, nothing more happened. So that's something, at least.
But here's the thing.
They told me — standing there before Grandmother Rock, head bowed, there was no wind. And yet a leaf on the branch beside the rock moved. Just once.
They still don't know what it meant. Whether she forgave them. Or whether she's simply still watching.
That's the part that stays with me. That one thing.
