"Choco Papa`s Health Note"

  The Conversation I Couldn't Follow It happened at a restaurant. Six of us around a table — old colleagues, the kind of dinner I'd started going to once a month after retirement. The restaurant was noisy. Music playing. Other tables laughing. The usual background chaos of a Friday evening in Seoul. The man sitting across from me was telling a story. Everyone was laughing. I smiled and nodded, but I hadn't caught a single word. Not because I wasn't paying attention — I was straining to hear him. His mouth was moving, the sounds were reaching me, but the words were muddy, like listening to someone talk through a wall. I leaned forward. Still couldn't make it out. I turned my head slightly, angling my right ear toward him. Better, but not enough. Finally, I did what I'd been doing more and more often: I waited for someone else to respond, then guessed what had been said from context. Nobody noticed. I'd gotten very good at faking it. On the drive hom...