Maybe, he thought to himself, he would go into a video pang later and let drama absorb him in a personal intimacy with a fictional entity of depth and substance. He had no misgivings. His life was a stunted one. Still, back in Chongju, he made the call and cancelled his classes. Then, near the bus terminal, he went to a restaurant. He ordered some bogum bop, a thick mixture of rice and vegetables that one mixed into a thick brown gravy that stood off aside on the plate and the appetizer of kimchee maundu. Alone, eating and reading a Newsweek he pulled out of his bag, he began to wonder of the lives of those that owned or managed the restaurant. Their area was shielded only behind sliding doors. Behind the tables and the chairs, their living area consisted of just one space. A girl came out and he could see within it clothes drying on a plastic rack and a small television that was on the floor. Then a man came out with a baby in his arms. He wore an undershirt and boxer underwear. The women cooked. Then, after they served Sang Huin a second helping of kimchee maundoo, they put breakfast on a table for the family. They all ate together. Like Yang Lin at Toksugum Palace seeing newlyweds and the wife he should have been, Sang Huin saw his alter ego in the man. His life was probably limited. A wife and children pinned him into a small existence with family commotion and responsibilities. It floated in non-ambitious swaying like a plastic boat on ripples in a bathtub. It probably droned on in its unaware and insignificant tedium through the years, but it had its connections. Chapter Six Attempting to thwart his primitive hungers for sex and socialization (synonymous words of civilization's shaping, but base nonetheless), and sensing the true vacuous abyss that would exist without learning or creating, he went into a park that was near the bus station. There, he worked on his amorphously wordy musical composition that was a bit of everything and nothing. Still, he told himself that this potpourri was worthwhile even though really he had his misgivings about it. He told himself that he needed to test the musical aspects of it on his cello later that day when he returned to the yogwam. It was a plan of a return "home"(whatever that word meant) and a means to contravene his deviance to Seoul. It was a self-created urgency to repress his sexual obsessions and to clothe the animalistic movements and hunger of his naked soul. To his delight, from previous recitals of Hayden at the yogwam, it would probably bring to his door an audience of elderly tenants and one of his more fulfilling connections.