Dancing on the Top of the Feet

Written by Younghee Kim

A girl and her father lived in a beautiful city where there was a music festival every May. She loved music so much that she was always humming and then dancing when she was very excited. When spring came and the city was agitated by the preparation of the music festival, the girl could not help but sing like a small bird all day long.

But the girl's father couldn't listen to the music.

After suffering from a mysterious illness as a young man, the sound of the world grew farther and farther away, then eventually he became impossible to hear even the slightest sound.

He took it naturally that he couldn't hear because the sound had faded away slowly, he used to secretly cry at the fact that he could no longer hear his daughter's soft breath and clear laughter.

When the girl couldn't speak well because she was very young, she could see what they were thinking by just looking at her father. Only the invisible scales and winds of the two people floated around like an air fairy, and there was no need for complex letters.

Then when she grew up and became better at speaking than singing, she became more and more resentful of her deaf father. The more she wanted to say to her father, the more she needed his help, the more she wanted his love. So from one day, the girl started turning away from her father's sound. The sound of his eyes, his face, his heart.

The girl who wanted to go to the music festival was still young, so she was desperate for help as her father's guardian, but she was ashamed of her old, deaf father. Looking into father's eyes, which she hadn't looked at for too long, it felt hard to understand and persuade him.

But her father already knew.

It was because he watched his daughter walk around in front of the music hall where there would be colorful lights coming out and beautiful music coming out.

It was because he saw his daughter's desperate look at the concert, already.

One night, her father asked the girl who was crying alone why she was crying.

No matter how many times he asked her why, she just shook her head.

Her father's eyes were wet with sorrow, but the girl looked down on her feet, turning away from her father's.

Then, there was a little girl singing from somewhere.

The girl raised her head to the familiar voice and looked at the place where the song sounded.

The place she looked at, an old recorder was playing a song, and her father was standing in front of there and listening to. It's like he could hear that song. It was recorded by her father when she was very young, singing all the songs of the world in high spirits as if they were her own. The little girl's voice in the tape recorder was full of love and happiness, and cheerful as it would come through the speakers.

The girl looked at her father's eyes only then. His eyes were warm and lovingly looking at the girl, and his arms were open as if waiting for her. The girl went back to being a very small child and climbed on the top of her father's feet. When the music came out, she went back to her very childhood, when her father was dancing with her feet on the top of his feet.

The height of the girl who used to be around her father's knee and waist has grown, and now she has her ears close to her father's chest, she found out that the dances that she felt were moving to the music, were actually moving to the sound of her father's heart. She realized that the girl's song that came out of the tape recorder was one of her father's heartbeat.

The height of the girl who used to be around her father's knee and waist has grown, and now she has her ears close to her father's chest, she found out that the dances that she felt were moving to the music, were actually moving to the sound of her father's heart. She also found out that her father never stopped singing in his heart and never put her foot down on his feet. The father and the girl went back to the moment when they were originally one, when they didn't need words and writing, and danced together for a long time.

Her father and the girl prayed... do not let the hearts and ears facing each other, and the feet that take a step in support of each other, not scatter over the sand in any time that comes after that, and not be able to understand each other.