“Whoa! You’re an awesome artist!” I praised a boy whom I saw sitting on the corner of our school soccer field.

He was sitting there alone.

The boy seemed not to care a bit that I just complimented him, normally which I don’t do much.

“Hey, can you hear me? You should be grateful, you know? …Though I agree you deserve that.” I said to him, rubbing my own forehead.

Still, I got no response from the boy, who kept on drawing a tree in front of him. That tree alone was present in his world, nothing else; at least it seemed like that, basing on how absorbed he was in his drawing-book, drawing the big oak tree just behind our school boundary.

Now that he didn’t reply me, I got a little mad at him. No one ignores me this deliberately. So, for taking revenge, I slapped him across his arm. He jumped at my touch; a hard touch you could say though.

He looked up at me while I just glared. He looked lost like he really didn’t hear all the things I’ve said to him.

“You should respond to people when they talk, ya know?” I said grumpily.

He still looked baffled. Weird. ‘Is anything wrong with him?’ I wondered.

“This picture is nice.” I said to him again, pointing at the drawing paper.

In reply, he pointed at his own ears and waved his hands; maybe indicating me that he couldn’t hear.

“I’m sorry.” I said sympathetically. But then I remembered he can’t hear. So, I clasped my own two hands, a sign for asking forgiveness.

He laughed, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. He didn’t make a single sound when he laughed, but still he covered his mouth and I can’t but agree that it made him look more cute- like a kitten covering its face with its little cute paws.

He then took the drawing-book and flipped the page where he was drawing and started scribbling down something. When he was done, he showed it to me. It said: “My name is Taemin.”

I smiled at his cuteness.

I took my phone and typing my name, I showed it to him.

“It’s Minjung.” I typed, knowing he wouldn’t understand if I told him my name.

He seemed so happy finding me friendly towards him. I guess he doesn’t have lots of friends. I stretched my right hand to him, gesturing him to shake it. He grinned wide, without making any sound and immediately shook it.

“Can we be friends?” I asked him by typing it on my phone, out of curiosity. I knew it won’t be easy to befriend with him as he couldn’t speak. How would you be friends with someone you find difficult to even interact? Knowing all these beforehand, knowing it’ll be real awkward when I couldn’t talk to him without writing it to him- I still offered my friendly and encouraging smile to him so that he doesn’t feel awkward around me, though it was hard. I was thinking hard how to interact with him, without considering him just a mute kid.  He couldn’t hear I knew, and thus he couldn’t speak too. It was understandable though- how could you talk when you don’t know what people say?

Maybe every parents don’t get enough time to teach their children every single word to learn, but still the kids know how to pronounce the words, still their own dictionary becomes richer. Though every time they don’t learn it consciously; but nevertheless, they learn.

We learn by hearing people around us- what they say, how they say and where they use those words. By born, we are the beings who like to imitate and by imitating, we learn.  Taemin, the boy in front of me- I bet he didn’t get enough chance to imitate, as he didn’t get the devices in him what we need to imitate people.

To answer my question, he nodded his head furiously, curiosity evident in his eyes. I smiled at the mushroom head, which kept moving up and down.

He then wrote in his page-

“I know sign language. If you want, you can talk with me that way.”

I stared at him for a while, processing his question in my head. When it seemed to me that I understood his question, I found out that I didn’t know a single thing about sign language! How could I know when I never felt it important to learn something like that? It’s simple; I don’t need it, so I didn’t learn it. Who would know I would need it now?

Being a bit sad, I shook my head.

“I don’t know. Sorry.” I said, though I knew he couldn’t hear me. It just felt awkward not to move my lips!

I always complained about me being a talkative one; ‘an incorrigible chatterbox’- that’s what the teachers labeled me. I kept on talking and talking until I became exhausted, though every time I’d promise I’d talk less; it never helped. I only remembered my own promise when all the talking was done. And I would make another promise again, just to break it in the end of the day. I was always like that. But, seeing Taemin like this, I felt overwhelmed; and suffocating too. I understood, it was a blessing that I can even talk, more or less doesn’t matter; but still I can express what is in my mind, I can comment on anything and everything I see, I can easily befriend with my classmates without forcing them to learn sign language to interact with me. Shouldn’t I feel lucky?

Taemin’s face fell, getting my answer. But, he again became normal, smiling at me wide.

“You don’t have to be sorry, Minjung.” He wrote smiling.

How did he know I said him ‘sorry’? Because, I knew seeing me shake my head, he’d understand that I don’t know it. But, shaking head doesn’t indicate that I was sorry too. So, I wondered. He may be understood my confusion, so he laughed a little. If he could make sound, I could say that- ‘he chuckled’.

“I observed how people talk, and I saw many people around me. So, sometimes I understand what people say, seeing their lips, how it moves.” He wrote. He looked so proud of himself being an understandable one. I smiled. It was sure an achievement, I had to agree.

After that day, I hang out with Taemin for several times. He always loved to travel, to see the nature, to see the animals and birds who couldn’t talk, like him. I came to know him more when I chatted with him over phone. He could say to me a lot of things that way, without being panicked how he should make me understand what he said to me. Our all hang-outs were mostly silent ones though, because when your partner doesn’t speak, with whom do you speak? But, I never felt bored. He had an aura around him; he always kept me interested at what he does.

I once saw him adoring a dirty kitten and it was really really dirty, like someone let it be soaked with drain water. But, Taemin adored it like he didn’t even realize it had dirt all over its body. I asked about that incident when I was chatting with him. His reply was- “’they can’t talk, and that doesn’t mean they don’t suffer.”

It was