Saturday morning.

Minseo woke earlier than usual. She turned off her alarm and stared at the ceiling for a moment.

What did I have today?

Three seconds later, she remembered.

“…Oh.”

The temple stay.

She opened her phone. The reservation message was still there.

[Today is your temple stay check-in day.]

Minseo stared at it for a long time.

Could I just not go?

She could say she was sick. Or that something urgent had come up at work.

Then another thought struck her.

Who am I making excuses to?

No one was going to interrogate her about why she hadn't shown up. She had made the reservation. She could cancel it herself. End of story.

That was exactly why she couldn't bring herself to cancel.

If she backed out this time too, the weekend would end up exactly like all the others.

Minseo got out of bed.

“Let's go.”

She wasn't sure who she was talking to.

The temple was farther away than she'd expected. She took a bus, transferred once, and then had to walk up a mountain path for the last stretch.

Minseo stared up at the stairs. She couldn't see the end.

“…This was definitely not in the description.”

She adjusted her backpack and started climbing.

After ten minutes she was out of breath. After twenty, instead of “looking inward,” all she could think about was a taxi.

A woman who looked at least seventy overtook her from behind.

Minseo instinctively sped up. She gave up almost immediately.

There were more temple stay participants than she expected. A college student who had come alone. A middle-aged couple. Two women who seemed to be friends. One foreign visitor.

Minseo looked around and wondered whether everyone had some story that had brought them here.

Then she corrected herself.

No. I don't have some dramatic story either. I just didn't want to stay home.

She handed in her phone, changed into temple clothes, ate vegetarian temple food, listened to a monk speak, and that afternoon did 108 bows.

The first ten were fine. Twenty were fine too. Around thirty, her knees started making themselves known.

As she bowed, Minseo thought:

Why am I even alive?

Wake up. Go to work. Work.

Make money. Go home. Eat.

Sleep. Go to work again.

Then forty. Fifty. Sixty.

And after that?

The fortieth bow.

What kind of life do I actually want?

Marriage? Do I really want it?

I don't know.

Children? I don't know that either.

Success? Do I want to become a director someday?

No… Is getting promoted really the same thing as success?

The fifty-second bow.

Her knees hurt. Minseo clenched her teeth and stood again.

Money? Sure, more would be nice. But how exactly am I supposed to get rich?

It wasn't as if her salary would suddenly double. Not unless she won the lottery.

The sixty-seventh bow.

Her knees hurt even more.

So what am I supposed to do? What counts as living well?

The eighty-third bow.

Forget looking inward. Her knees were now the most important thing in her entire life.

Minseo stayed facedown on the floor for a moment with her eyes closed.

I should've stayed home and slept.

After ninety, even her thoughts became simpler.

Life. Money. Marriage.

Work.

Whatever. Just let this be over.

Then suddenly she almost laughed.

She had been lured all the way up a mountain by a phrase about “looking inward,” and right now her deepest wish in life was for her knees to hurt less.

After the one hundred and eighth bow, Minseo sat on the floor for a while without moving.

Her knees throbbed. And yet, strangely, her mind felt a little quieter.

That night, after the scheduled activities were over, Minseo went alone into a small Dharma hall.

No phone. No company messenger. No television.

With nothing else to do, she had no choice but to think.

She sat in front of the Buddha statue and closed her eyes.

Should she pray to make a lot of money? To meet a good man? To do well at work?

She tried each wish in turn, but none of them felt quite right.

For a long while, Minseo said nothing.

Then, very quietly, she murmured,

“I don't even know what I want.”

She paused.

“I don't know what kind of life I want either.”

The thoughts from the 108 bows returned.

Why she was alive. What she was supposed to do. What she was supposed to leave behind before she died.

At last, Minseo brought her hands together.

“What is the meaning of life, anyway?”

A moment later, she added,

“What am I supposed to do with my life so I don't regret it when I die?”

There was no answer.

Of course there wasn't.

Minseo opened her eyes. She sat there for a moment, then gave a small laugh to herself.

“…That's a hard one.”

She went back to her room without reaching any conclusion.

The next morning she ate temple food, took a short walk, listened to the checkout instructions, and got her phone back.

Messages. The company group chat. Spam texts.

Two missed calls from her mother.

Everything was exactly where she had left it.

Minseo headed down the mountain.

The only obvious difference from yesterday was the soreness in her thighs.

Near the bus stop, she stopped at a convenience store. She picked up a bottled coffee and brought it to the register.

A young male clerk scanned the barcode.

(Clerk): “That's 3,400 won.”

Minseo reached for her card—then stopped.

Something was floating above the man's head.

7

Minseo blinked.

It was still there.

She closed her eyes, opened them again.

7

(Clerk): “Ma'am?”

(Minseo): “Oh. Right.”

She hurriedly handed over her card, paid, and walked outside.

Was she so tired she was hallucinating?

A little farther down the mountain road, a middle-aged man passed her.

Above his head:

2

Minseo slowed down.

Two young men were coming up from the other direction.

11 24

She glanced at them as they passed.

Then a female hiker walked by.

Nothing.

Another man.

0

Another woman. Nothing.

Another man.

18

Minseo stopped in the middle of the path.

“…What?”

It was the same on the bus.

There were numbers above the men's heads. Nothing above the women's.

Minseo sat by the window, stealing glances at everyone around her.

The man in front of her:

4

The man across the aisle:

17

She rubbed her eyes several times.

The numbers did not disappear.

After a while, she took out her phone and opened the notes app.

Numbers above men's heads

She stopped, thought for a moment, and added another line.

Nothing above women

Then she looked at the numbers again.

What in the world was this?