the sky is blue; the sun is shining;

When Jeongguk was very young, his grandmother started to tell he and his brother stories. His elder brother, who was seven years older than Jeongguk and thought of himself as much too old for fairytales, never stayed seated for long and always ended up running off before she got to the good parts. Jeongguk’s parents would watch from the doorway, occasionally, and smile to themselves at the wonder in the small boy’s face. Sometimes his father would laugh and call to his mother not to fill his son’s head with impossible things. Whenever that happened, Jeongguk’s grandmother would get a strange look on her face and pat at Jeongguk’s chubby cheeks, telling him to never let himself stop believing in wonderful things, because even the most impossible stories could come true.

Eventually, Jeongguk grew older and thought that he, too, was much too old for fairytales. He forgot all the wonderfully strange stories that his grandmother had told him, putting them all down to the silly things you tell small children to keep them quiet.