Setting

In the distance, skyscrapers towered over the scene. Only small patches of sky were visible between the windowed monolith's roofs.

Behind me, horns blared, and voices screamed out. The traffic was so thick you couldn't cross the street, not because of the risk of getting hit, but because there was no room between the cars.

The towers reached skyward all around, and openings were torn deep into the earth where the subway trains roamed. It was almost a second city down there.

And down one alley, also choked with cars, but with small trees growing on the left hand side, was something out of place. Looking down the alley, to the left and right were the white walls of office buildings, but at the end, a six sided structure of reddish painted wood. It was capped by a roof of hard black tiles carved to resemble strange faces, in traditional Korean style. The walls of the structure were plain, adorned only by the red coat shining on the surface. Under the roof, though, were the dragons. They peered out of all six corners, thin, serpentine, but noble and magnificent. They were colored green and blue, with eyes seemingly of sapphire. Horns emerged from their slender bearded heads.

Seeing a temple pavilion in the middle of a bustling, clogged city street like that was such a strange site, and yet so typical of Korea.