고등학교 영어Ⅰ (NE능률 오선영) 연계 글

One Tuesday night in March, I found a folded note taped to our front door. Written in pencil on a page torn from an old calendar, the note came from Mr. Namgung, the elderly man who lived directly below us. In a few polite lines, he explained that a rolling sound, followed by a dull knock, came from overhead almost every night after eleven. He had endured the noise for two weeks, he added, because he did not know how to raise the matter without seeming rude.

My father was sure that the noise came from another apartment, since none of us wore shoes indoors. My mother, however, suggested that we listen to our own home for one evening before blaming anyone. That evening we found two noisy habits: my younger brother, Siho, often jumped off the sofa, and we did laundry late at night. The real source turned up just before midnight, in my own room. Whenever I turned toward my bookshelf, the hard wheels attached to my chair sent the chair rolling across the floor and into the shelf. The rumble of the chair matched the sound described in the note, and my face burned at the thought of disrupting an old man's sleep every night.

That Saturday, my mother and I carried a box of tangerines downstairs to apologize. Mr. Namgung accepted our apology and explained that he went to bed at ten and spent most afternoons at a nearby park. With his routine in mind, the two families reached a compromise about when to do the laundry and where to let Siho jump. The washing machine would stop by nine, and Siho would jump only between four and six, on a thick mat placed by the window. Mr. Namgung, once a carpenter, also showed me how to glue soft felt pads onto my chair's wheels.

After that, we kept in touch through a small notebook hung on his doorknob. In May, I wrote that Siho's friends would visit for his birthday on a Saturday afternoon. Mr. Namgung's reply, written below mine the next morning, said that he would stay at his daughter's house from Friday to Sunday evening. "Let the children laugh as loudly as they like," he added.

By August, the notebook was nearly full, yet few of its pages mentioned noise. Most held modest exchanges: recipes, weather reports, and his advice about which bus to take downtown. Living in harmony, I realized, meant knowing when to make noise and whom to tell first.