Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Quis ipsum suspendisse
When a Woman Subways
1 Each day, Sujin draws a line down her face. She begins at the top of her head and pulls the line past her eyebrows, down the mound of her nose, and brushes it vertically across her lips. Then, silence. A slightly cliched one. Like the predictable calm before a storm. Lo and behold, Sujin’s head splits in two. At first it’s painful—the moment of the split. The sort of pain an apple would feel when you first tap the blade of your fruit knife into its head. Her split skins curl, sliding down limp to hang like orchid leaves. The birth of Faces I and II. Sujin scratches her upper arm. Shall we go? she asks. “Noo . . . ja . . . mee . . . Noojameeee.” Face I is still newborn and clumsy with words. Face II blinks. I think so too, Sujin says with a smile. They are in agreement, the three of them. Yes. Yes. Yes. Three in agreement make a triplet, or maybe a trio. Ha ha ha. Whatever the case, this is a rare occurrence. A good start to the day. La-dee-da lala. One to coax a song from your lips. La-dee-da lala la-dee-la lala lalala . . . 2 “Are you fully masked?” the station employee asks unmasked people. Sujin and the Faces watch the employee. As the train pulls in, Face I yells, “The trayyyy— trayyyy—” The Faces this time are unusually slow to speak. How much longer will it take for them to manage, The train is now entering the station? When will they understand how the station employee must feel about asking unmasked citizens, “Are you fully masked?” Will they ever get angry at the words “Good for you, hotshot”? But Sujin is a good teacher. She has taught stupider heads to speak. Even Face XVI of 16’ learned the difference between the two kinds of “good for you, hotshot” and “good for you, hotshot” and the fact that there was no real difference between the two just before dying. She knows she can do it again. Sujin opens her textbook. 1. The station employee is not visually impaired. 2. The station employee knows that the citizen is not wearing a mask. 3. Then why did the employee ask, “Are you fully masked?” The faces of Sujin and the Faces turn. A citizen outside the train seems to have spit on the station employee. Sujin shrugs. Let’s try a practice question, she says. Fill in the blank with the appropriate word(s). _____________, are you fully masked? The subway is deserted on weekday afternoons. Only four people in section 3-1—three (one male, two females) in the seat in front of Sujin and one (a male) in the priority seat—but she chooses to remain standing. Face I plays Hangman on the handle above and Face II plays Red Light, Green Light on the luggage shelf overhead. The train emerges from the underground. The river and bridges and the big dark shadows of the bridges speed past the windows. Then underground again. Full stop. The Faces slide down and cling to the doors, leaving two misty circles on the glass. The doors open. The doors close. Don’t cry. When No One boards, the Faces burst into tears. Sujin tries to console them. There, there. Let’s stop those tears and answer the practice questions. Here, let me solve the first one for you. The blank goes like this: Whoa there, please don’t get scared, sir. Deep breaths. You’re okay, and I know you’re not actually like this. You don’t even realize it yourself. Imagine the look on your face when you realize! Please stay calm. Breathe. Slow, deep breaths. Now try touching your mouth, are you fully masked? See? Just like that. I know you can do it. The Faces sob on. Oh, all right. Just one more. Here: Ordering you around, sir? Oh, absolutely not, please have a listen to the recording again, Do you hear a “Please put on a mask?” No, not even once. I’m not giving orders to people; I’m just looking after them. It is my civic duty to look after citizens, and citizens have the right to be looked after by me. Please don’t refuse your right, remember to be looked after. No sir, it’s not that I dare to look after you, so let me ask you again, are you fully masked? Sujin runs gentle hands over the tear-swollen Faces and explains, Even if you forget how to read, never forget the first rule of how to speak. She brings her hands together in front of her, one hand over the other palm as though rolling up a little ball of dough. Always make sure you talk round and round and round in circles. Can you tell me why? She asks, preening. Someone walks past. Who? Sujin turns. A woman. Sujin scans the car. PASSENGER STATUS: Standard seats: (one male, one female) Priority seats: (one male) One person is missing. The Woman sitting next-to-next-to the Man has run away. She is already at the door to the gangway connection. She looks back at Sujin with a smile. Stupid bitch. I’m out. She disappears into the next car. Without warning, Sujin’s left cheek turns cold. Who put ice on my face? Her eyes peer slightly to the left and realize the Man is looking at her. Hunched far forward, staring. Times like this, she wonders: how does it feel to be cut at the ankle? Would it feel this cold? Biting, like her blood has drained out the severed ankles to the last drop? With only her head still burning. Slowly, the blood rises again—and suddenly boils. He is looking at me. He’s looking at me. Sujin will bolt. “Calm down,” says Face I. “If you go now, you’re dead,” says Face II, winding tight around her legs. 3 How wondrous is the growth of these Faces! Only seconds ago, Face I was capable of only the sounds “The trayyyy” and “Noojamee.” Now Face I is bombarding her, berating her. “Beware, be where?” It even makes use of puns, to her consternation. She recalls other Faces were much the same—16’, 17’, 18’, and 19’. Not because of Sujin’s exceptional teaching but because danger forced their sudden growth. 16’ Face XVI sayeth: Peril is the greatest teacher. Take a child struggling with her times tables and stand her at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Soon she’ll be reciting the periodic table! If only she could turn back time. Sujin looks at the gangway corridor. It is empty. The Woman is gone. She is going. How far? To 3-2? 3-3? 4-6? Or maybe 10-2? Maybe she will have done her a favor and gotten herself attacked by an old man on her way from 4-5 to 4-6. Shut that door proper, you slut! Full stop. Misty breaths. Open. No One. Don’t cry, Sujin consoles the Faces. The Faces bite Sujin. (“In this world, there are people who send out ‘beware, be where’ warnings and people who run asking ‘beware, be where?’ Why did we have to be born to a loser?”) Sujin travels back in time. In the past, she does what she had to do. But that happy thought soon turns into regret, a cruel list of things she should have done but didn’t. What she should have done: bring up the facts. Use the facts to scan the space behind her and make a Passenger Danger Rating list. But she failed to take even that basic measure. That was all it would have taken for her not to be taken by surprise by the Woman. PASSENGER DANGER RATING: 1. Man 1: Head down. Rating – Unknown, continued observation recommended. (Note: Ratings based on objects in possession: acid – 10; bladed weapon – 9; none – 5; pigeons – 4) 2. Woman 1: Next to Man 1. Knitting. Rating – 0.5 3. Woman 2: Next to next to Man 1. In motion. Rating – 4 For the Old Man 1 (as there is a different scale for those aged seventy plus), Sujin must fill out a checklist. 1. Varicose veins? Y 2. Possesses a cane? N 3. Capable of walking? Y 4. Capable of running? Maybe 5. In case of acid possession? Solve for the difference between your escape speed and the old man’s sprinting speed. Is the result positive or negative? “Not forgetting anything?” asks Face I. Sujin does not understand. Face I rolls her one eye loudly. “Dis—cretion!” “Oh!” Sujin finally remembers. She goes back to the beginning. That was what she should have done. Bring out the facts, open the facts, turn slightly away, scan behind her with the facts, and discreetly—indiscreetly—roll her eye, and by doing so send the following message to Man 1: Look, I’m rolling my eye. My contact lens is slipping. I’m not the kind of woman who fixes her makeup in the subway. You saw, right? Please put that on the record . . . Ugh, seriously? Why not just run? Why not just take off? Faster than anyone, different from everyone. Whenever some immature blockhead says that, Sujin wants to tell an old story. Once upon a time, there was a cat named Pani. “Pani” means “water” in Nepali. Pani was my ex’s cat. Pani would crawl out from under the bed and stare stupidly at us having sex. Then one day my ex said, “Sorry, babe.” Pani got angry, because she pressed the back of his head with her thumb. Pani leapt clear away and rolled around a piece of bloody tissue. “I’m not playing favorites with him,” my ex said. “And, like, it’s not all his fault,” she said, and swatted my bangs, tied up with a hairband. They shook. And Pani lost it again! My ex said to me, applying ointment on my face, “That is simply the way of felines, drawn instinctively to moving objects. Then they pounce. He lunged and scratched your brow because he witnessed your bangs bob up and down. Is it not wondrous? He has been domesticated with manmade feed, but his hunting instincts remain.” Then it’s playtime again with the mouse wand! Look at Pani go, bolting boldly after the fake feather! What is that noise? Stop running. Some types in the world only eat live fish. Not raw, live. They go gaga for the moving stuff. Turn their heads without a second thought. Ever heard the acronym DBFP? Dogs! Bite! Fleeing! People! You have to creep away, always. Creep. Woman 2 crept away, running her backside across multiple seats before rising, walking away. How scared she must have been! Sujin could not help but admit she was brave. Woman 2 had just put her life on the line. (One subway poet wrote: The back of her head in departure / Will ever enrapture / Like a target for an archer.) If only we could turn back time. Sujin can feel her heart squeezing. She would risk her life too, if only she could. She would overtake Woman 2. Pull ahead! To 3-2. To the safe zone. To the car of dreams. Never running, remember DBFP. She would crane her head just a little, like someone looking for something. THIS CAR IS FOR PASSENGERS WHO PREFER LESS AIR CONDITIONING. Sujin would fan herself. That is how she will say, This car is too hot for me. I’m sorry, but I need to move to the next one. I am most definitely not trying to avoid you! What if there is no THIS CAR IS FOR PASSENGERS WHO PREFER LESS AIR CONDITIONING? Sujin will rummage through her bag and rub her arms to say, This car is too cold for me. I’m sorry, but I need to move to the next one. I am most definitely not trying to avoid you, the man will think: She must be a careless woman to not bring along a cardigan. You cold? Go on, then. Leave. Sujin goes. Quieckly. Quietly and quickly. Eyes always forward. To 3-2. To paradise. Keen awareness will save us. Us? Us. We, who know the two facts. “But what did you do?” Face I interrogates. 4 Sujin knows very well how a woman must subway. But whenever she gets onto the train, she ends up doing something else, and always regrets it. (I should have just done it . . .) What prevents her from putting knowledge to practice? Where is the break in the bridge between awareness and action? These are the thoughts of Face I, watching Sujin beg pitifully. “Is it humiliating?” Face II drops a newspaper in shock. “Don’t get angry. I’m fighting tooth and nail to try and understand here.” Hey, don’t talk like that. Sujin looks up. Do I look like a person who’d kill us all just to avoid humiliation? Face I studies Man 1. Now he is outright looking at her. He has gone from the Man With His Head Down to the Man With His Head Turned. (Note: Danger Rating based on head angles: slightly bowed – 10; turned – 7; bowed deeply – 6) “I thought you’d really changed,” Face I says, despondent. “But you haven’t. You still resist. You know as well as I do what you have to do on the subway. But you won’t do it. Not can’t. Won’t. Something within is stopping you, but what? I think it must be pride. The creature hurt your pride. It makes you sick to have to please it.” Sujin swallows a sob. From the depths of her memories, she hears a voice. The three Fs of fear. Fight. Flight. Freeze. Jab! Jab! One-two. Her head is about to explode. “You’re making a mistake,” Face I says icily. “If you try to please a man, you lose. Not just you, but all of you. Like crawling between his legs.” “No. I—” Face I tut-tuts with a wag of the finger. “That’s how you always put yourself in danger. Even a woman worse off than you slipped away, but you keep on hellishly struggling. I’ve watched and pondered for so long, and I learned that it’s impossible for people to let go of their pride. But you don’t have to. You never even lost it in the first place. Take a look at him.” Sujin allows her gaze to ever so slightly drift to the side. “Remember Protocol Groundward Ocular Angle,” Face I instructs. Sujin’s gaze drops to the floor. She cannot see the man, only his shoes. “What is that man thinking? That’s not the question you want to ask. The right question is: ‘What thoughts have been implanted in his mind?’” The train races along the aboveground tracks. Droplets of rain splatter and sparkle on the windows. Sujin thinks that it is a moderate sort of beauty. Not the imposing grandeur of auroras or arctic icebergs, but the slight kind that brings a smile to her face. Maybe I’ll take pictures . . . Sujin looks out the window, ignoring Face I’s question. Maybe I’ll just take pictures . . . Like someone who takes pictures of sunsets if that is what the windows show, or pink clouds if that is what the windows show . . . Just some pictures . . . All of them . . . Crush their skulls into pulp. Jab! Jab! One-two. Sujin falls back in shock. Sujin trembles again. “There, there.” The Faces draw near to gently pat her head. Face I continues, “How that man feels is up to you. You have to toy with his emotions. Look at the Fact Mirror and roll your eyes, and the creature will sympathize with you. Oh, that woman’s lens is sliding. She’s trying so hard to avoid wearing glasses. Must have worn one set of daily lenses all week, trying to save money. Good on her. Doing her best to live with red, inflamed eyes. Good luck to you, missy, go on living, he’ll say. But suppose you don’t roll your eyes. The creature’s opinion will do a 180. Sluts these days have the nerve to fix their makeup in public. Won’t learn their lesson unless you teach it to them.” Face I casts an uncaring gaze down upon him. “A rat.” Face I wears a look of utter conceit. “A lab rat running in circles through a maze you’ve made. Send an electric jolt into its paws, and it goes, Ouch! Give it food, and it goes, Yay! It’s all up to you. You shape their thoughts. You push your fingers in there and toy with their brains. Like a god. So why do you feel humiliated? Leave them to play forever in your maze.” “Squeak squeak.” Sujin scratches her cheek. Faces fly in from afar and cling to the windows. These half-faces hang off the slowing train and stare into the car with their single eyes. As though examining snails crawling across a pane of glass, Sujin examines the Faces out scouting. The Faces are always serious, which makes them all the more comical. Their owners—the discerning women who send in swarms of scouts before boarding—will head to other cars. 3-2 or 6-4. Full stop. Misty breaths. Open. No One. Don’t cry. The passage fills with new Faces. They have already heard the news and laugh at Sujin. Not once do they stop measuring the distance between themselves and Sujin and Man 1. When the balance is broken, they will instantly depart with a chorus of “Beware, be where!” (Face II is currently measuring the Sujin / Knitting Woman / Man 1 distances.) “Maybe you’re uncomfortable with surviving alone,” says Face I. “Running alongside a panicked crowd would make you feel better than slipping out quickly on your own. In your vast imagination, you’re the one who’d rather be the one getting shoved than the other way around. There’s a secret part of you that rejects reaching for the exit in favor of being trampled by the people reaching for the exit themselves. It’s altruistic. I don’t believe survival is the most important thing in the world. Some things are worth risking your life for. That’s right, do it. Put your life on the line, like you did back then. We’re leaving.” Jab! Jab! One-two. I’m sorry, Sujin begs. Please forgive me. “Squeak squeak.” Sujin scratches her cheek. A Face the size of a whitehead threatens to emerge from her cheek. It quickly grows to the size of a thimble—a Face with much to say, for the mouth is the first gap to form. “Men are women . . .” The eyes open— “. . . ’s playthings.” Mimics a dead person— “A variation on. Enemy of . . .” Hiccup. “. . . half-baked . . .” Hiccup. “. . . solidarity. Eliminate. Hee hee.” The newborn baby Face does cutesy things. Face I and II dote as the baby Face grows bigger and bigger—Look at the little baby go, the Faces cheer—and the moment the baby Face fully emerges—triumph brushes past—Face II bites. Crunches. A bloody chunk falls to the floor. The poor miscarried baby Face. A History Lesson for the Baby Face that Never Became Face III The Battle of SE was sparked by the words “Everyone is welcome” at the top of the community homepage. This took place in the year twenty-sixteen. Victory went to Team E, but it was close to a pyrrhic one. Team S, which made up half the membership, was driven out of the community (Team S breathed sighs of relief at their defeat), and what the remaining half—the victorious Team E—did was not show up to the meeting. The only difference was the fee. Team S no longer paid membership fees, for they were no longer members. Team E paid membership fees, as they were still members. And neither side showed up to the meeting. Sujin showed up alone. She went alone to open the regular meeting at the office in the gracefully aging alley, where disposable plastic bowls of feed left out for cats would be taken, with cat food spilled all over the ground. “Team S” referred to “Team Safety,” which demanded that the phrase “Everyone is welcome” be deleted from the homepage. “Team E” referred to “Team Equality,” which insisted that the phrase be left as is. As long as the welcome sign remained on the homepage, anyone could join their meetings, whether “dangerous people” (Team S’s words) or people who had “not managed to prove their harmlessness to people” (Team E’s words). Anyone could walk right in. They had the right to be welcomed. But after the incident, some people decided that was no longer acceptable, marking the start of the grueling Battle of SE. The alley with the office where it happened merits a paragraphs-long description. Gentrification had stopped at the alley just across the way, leaving local housing prices in limbo, and this area was the sort of decrepit place that might have expected to host young artists. Where expectations became manifest. The people in that alley preferred to live in the area rather than trying to make it live. There was a little supermarket surrounded by clusters of squat little flowerpots. A tattoo shop owned by an old artist. A railway crossing that was home to a pork rind restaurant and the twenty-year-old publishing house, Danmyeong. A place remembered fondly by Team S and E alike, but not one interesting enough for the dead baby Face to stifle a yawn. On both knees the Face scrambles up three paragraphs and angrily berates the eyes that slid down with the scroll bar without bothering to linger, hesitate, doubt. “‘Dangerous’ people?” asked a member of Team Equality, drawing quote marks in the air. “Dangerous” was jailed inside the invisible hand-drawn quotation marks. “That is not a label you throw around casually, damn it. Not something you just stick wherever the hell you feel like. You act like it’s something we all agreed on, like everybody already agrees with you and it’s an immutable universal law. I call bullshit. What exactly is a ‘dangerous’ person? If you’re going to use the word like that, start by telling us your definition!” Someone on Team S gave an easy nod. “All right, here’s the definition! A ‘dangerous’ person is . . .”—the Team S member was face-to-face with the Team E member—“The person you don’t want to sit next to. Simple, right?” “Anything but.” The Team S member gave a roll of the eyes. “All right, imagine somebody asks you to think of a dangerous person. You’d think of a politician, or some corporate chairman. But those answers are missing something: targets. The politician’s a danger to society, but he’s not a dangerous person. You can sit next to the politician you hate. If you met him at a publication party, you’d be half-dragging the guy into the seat next to yours. But what happened when POE showed up? Take a good, honest moment and think. I still remember, and so should you. Because you and me, we were all tripping over each other to sit as far from him as possible. That is the definition of ‘danger.’ The kind of person who makes you want to make a U-turn. The starting point of your escape route.” Without warning, Sujin rose and went to the bathroom. Not because she had to pee. People were staring too much. “That bullshit again?” asked a member of Team E. “So it’s just a gut feeling? You treat that stuff like science? Well, it actually is, according to Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear. But the point is,” said the Team E member, engines revving, when a member of Team S gave a shake of the head and interrupted, “Some people plucked up their courage when POE first showed up. The day after, they spoke up in the group chat, saying, ‘You know, wasn’t that guy the other day a little strange?’” “Courage?” “Courage. The courage to say what everyone was too scared to say.” “Don’t lump me in with that ‘everyone.’” “You’re acting like everyone else did back then. You all went, ‘Strange? I didn’t think so. And really, you can’t categorize people into groups like “strange” and “not strange.” Can you really say you’re not strange yourself? We’re all abnormal in our own ways, so enough of that talk!’ But I saw how it was when POE showed up. Everyone was crowding the seats by the door so they had an easy exit.” “‘Strange!’ There it is! There’s the word!” said someone from Team E, continuing before someone from Team S could cut in. “I was waiting for someone to say it. That is the most cowardly word in existence. Stop using euphemisms, because ‘strange’ means the same thing as ‘dangerous.’ It’s the word you use when you want to say ‘dangerous’ but don’t want to take on the risk of using that word. You’re hiding behind the two possible interpretations of the word—the scary and the alluring—to use the alluring element as an out, just in case.” “Words, words, words! Stop being pedantic and look at how everyone ended up sitting!” “All right,” said a man from Team E, raising both hands as though in surrender. Like someone feinting with a white flag before lunging for a surprise strike. “All right, fine. Let’s say you’re right, and there’s danger everywhere. We’re surrounded by danger, any one of us could die any second, and so on and so forth. Then what? Does that make it right to exclude people? Erase that ‘Everyone is welcome’ sign and turn this into an exclusive club? If we’re going to remove those words from the homepage, I’d rather just say it outright and be honest. Hello! We are a highly selective! Exclusive! Discriminating community! Members are safe! Don’t you get it? ‘Everyone is welcome’ encapsulates our values, our conscience, our past. Welcoming POE—let’s be honest. Because to be honest, we didn’t welcome POE, unless you think giving someone a cup of coffee counts as welcoming. Anyway, there’s a world of difference between allowing POE into the community and avoiding him, whether consciously or not. It’s a matter of whether or not we consider people equals before they even take any action. It’s about the pursuit of equality.” The Team E member trembled, prepared to rise to a challenge from the Team S member. But the Team S member had completely deflated, eyes on the doorway—and the sliver of the staircase through the ajar door, and the railings that flashed brightly depending on the angle. “You know what? This is no fun at all,” said the member, gaze locked on the exit and twisting around to lean on the desk. “You’re right about everything. Happy? I’m sick of debating what’s right or wrong.” The member tried to stuff the pens on the desk into a pencil case, but kept fumbling and dropping them—eventually just stuffing the pencil case into a pocket. “I’m going to be honest here. I just want to shut that door. That’s all I want, nothing else.” The team S member shuffled, grabbing their bag and walking out of the office. The sound of footsteps descending the stairs grew quieter until they were all gone. The absence of that noise—the remaining void—silently shook those who remained. The member was gone. No longer here. And that was okay. When the debate passed, the whirlwind of emotion rapidly subsided. The quiet serenity of unquestioned peace was terrifying. They had to do something, or else they would once more be plunged into their earlier hell. Should they shut the door? The open door was the very symbol of their message, Everyone is welcome. Anyone could walk in through that gap. “Ah-ah-ah. Don’t gloss over gender differences.” A new batter stepped up to the plate. He grabbed the currents by the corner to give a violent shake. The waves resumed. The people clambered onto the waves to flee the memories rooted in the depths. (But what was really important was the emotion. People would gladly despise one another and forget the fear that lapped at their conscious minds. They were separate branches of the same river.) “You argue that equality is an absolute, unquestionable value while devaluing safety—and that’s something you can only do because you’re a man.” “What?” The man from Team E paused mid-complaint and cast a glance around the room. He wanted backup. “What? What’s being a woman or a man got to do with anything?” asked a woman from Team E, catching his gaze. (At this point we must note the specific ordering of words, “a woman or a man”.) “You really need me to spell it out for you? All right, here’s the deal,” said the man from Team S to the man from Team E. “You and me, we went on that trip to India last year. Do you not realize what a privilege that is? We men shouldn’t be allowed to talk when it comes to safety issues. And I know what you’re about to say—that we were all there, just thinking about POE scared us all. And that part is right. We were scared. It was terrifying and maddening that you wouldn’t let us shut the door. But the fear that women have to face is qualitatively different from ours.” The Team S man paused and turned to his female comrades, brimming with emotion. He continued, “For you and me, our fear is limited to this space. The office. When we walk out that door, we leave our fear behind. But for women, fear is like an organ. A liver, or a pancreas. Something they can’t just drop on a whim. Where are they supposed to go? Men just have to leave the office, but for the women, the world outside the office is just a bigger office with thousands of kinds of POEs lying in wait. For women, there’s a history of terror. It’s layered, like sediments of fear. Not some shallow blanket of panic like the ones men can shrug off.” “Hey,” said a woman from Team S. But the man was deafened by his own passion. “Hey!” Finally, he heard. Turning with the smile of an innocent boy expecting his mother’s praise. “That’s enough out of you.” “Huh?” “You’re right about all that. But don’t say anything even if you are.” Taken aback, the Team S man nodded quickly. But he failed to completely erase the irritation on his face. “Yeah, why are you writing our declaration for us?” A woman from Team E joined in the criticism. “And please, don’t stuff us in the Woman Box whenever you feel like it. I’ll step in myself when I want to, all right?” The man’s mood was completely spoiled. POE-ness began to squirm in his mind. “I hate small houses,” said the Team E woman, pointing outside the door. The invisible line her finger drew enlarged the office. “Even a home half the size of your fingernail can be a mansion as long as there’s a sign at the door saying, ‘Everyone is welcome.’ The possibility of allowing anyone through the door makes the house infinite. It allows us to live in an endlessly large house. This whole debate is about whether we manage to protect this infinite house or lose it. We don’t stand to gain much. We get to keep our pride as inclusive, all-welcoming people, and the newcomers who join us might expand our horizons sometimes. What do we have to lose, though? What is the worst thing we could lose? Our lives. We’ve experienced a slight preview of that in person.” Everyone looked at the gap in the door, gazes tinged with fear. “But that doesn’t mean I prefer the little house. If someone tries to shove me into Team S just because I’m a woman with ‘sediments of fear’—which shrinks down not only my home but the Woman Box—I won’t stand for it.” “Let’s go,” a woman from Team S said to her, holding a pack of cigarettes. The debate had gone on so long that they had held in their cravings. Stepping out onto the balcony with cheerful laughter, they smoked and scanned the alley below like sentries. The woman from Team S said from the balcony, “Who was it, now? I keep forgetting his name, I swear my memory isn’t what it used to be.” “Give us a hint.” “He’s foreign, with a moustache. A professor from a country you don’t usually hear about . . .” The people inside the office also joined the game of twenty questions, murmuring. Sujin remembered the professor’s face too, but the name kept escaping her like the eye of a stubborn needle evading her thread. The Team S woman continued, “Anyway, this professor saw a man with a sword on the subway. An Arab man, with a sword in his belt. As soon as he stepped into the car, he drew the sword, and one by one, he stared carefully into each passenger’s face. Then for some reason he sheathed the sword and listened to religious music until he was taken away.” People were already talking about Norway. “The professor wrote a column about that moment of fear, how that fear is part of ordinary life for Arab immigrants. And then he concludes that even if he’d lost his head on the subway that day, he didn’t have any right to complain. Because his severed head was the price of the privilege he enjoyed and the wrongs he’d done as a well-educated middle-class white man. The execution would be payment for his wrongs. And even if the beheading would be a tragedy on a personal level, from a social perspective it balances out the equation.” Following the thin stream of smoke as it spread into the office, Sujin quietly listened to the women on the balcony. “The funny thing is,” said the woman on Team S, gaze running carefully down the alleyway, “sometimes I think about that professor when I’m on the subway. I put myself in his seat. And I wonder if I could think of something that deep if I were the one getting beheaded. Then I shake my head. Could I really think, ‘Oh, I’m going to die. It’s going to be tragic and messy. But I won’t complain about it because I’ve done stuff in my past and it’s about time for my just deserts’? Could I really be that calm? Dignified? Then I look around the car and I realize that my death would be different. I wouldn’t be a tragic martyr in a terrorist attack. I would die a cheap death to some petty crook. Suddenly, I can’t see myself objectively.” Someone raised their voice from inside the office. “A cheap death? That’s insulting!” “A death that’s packaged as cheap by society,” the Team S woman corrected herself, and added, “At least, the potential terrorist the professor met—yes, that’s the phrase he used, ‘potential terrorist(?)’ as if the mitigation of the word ‘potential’ wasn’t enough and he had to add the question mark in the brackets that could be either self-doubt or criticism. Anyway, the terrorist with the sword was almost transcendent in how serious he was, like he was on a real crusade. That wouldn’t exactly be comforting when he’s killing you, but still. My killer would be standing in a police lineup without the conviction or madness of a terrorist—nothing even approaching that determination—without even clear intention or premeditation—without that visual spectacle of a show—mumble a couple of words he picked up here and there until the cops hauled him off, flip-flops dragging across the floor. Those flip-flops are what bug me. The cheap flip-flops with his long, filthy toenails sticking out. Those fetid, disgusting flip-flops cheapen my death. It’s so stupid—stupid that people would feel embarrassed to mourn me. That’s why—” “Here,” said the woman from Team E, retrieving a piece of tissue from the office and handing it to the woman from Team S. The woman from Team S had almost literally flown herself into a frenzy. “It was a shroud. Burial clothes. I don’t want that snapshot of those ragged flip-flops to be the snapshot of my death. That’s why we wove her that shroud. The biggest, most beautiful and noble neon shroud in the world, fluttering into the heavens. That’s why. We put. Those post-its. On the walls. That’s what being a woman is like. So don’t you dare. Talk about equality—” “I just,” said the woman from Team E, who had until that point been a silent listener to her friend. “I’m just being emotional, okay? I’m being stubborn.” But inside, she was saying to herself, Don’t cry, my friend. Don’t cry. That wasn’t your death. That wasn’t your killer. What you’re doing now is . . . a sort of theft. But she could not say so out loud, for fear of the morality that coldly distanced itself from her rationality. Instead, she raised a fearless voice into the office: “There’s one thing we have to be clear on: Sujin is the bravest of us all. She always sat down beside POE.” 5 Crunch. Crunch. Whoosh. Crunch. Crunch. Whoosh. A black plastic bag. Yarn. Elbows jousting in the air. “Oh, so close!” The Faces sigh. “She almost got him there!” They are the audience of a fencing match. Once more, the yarn crunch-crunches up the black plastic bag, and whoosh! Her arms spread wide as if in a bunny dance. Another miss. Yet again, the Knitting Woman’s elbow fails to pierce the Man. If only she could get a good stab in. Then he would stab back, and we would go 3-2. Once again, the Man lowers his head—Danger Rating – 6 –and Sujin and the Faces are still 3-1 and every stop is a No One and Sujin is the Thinking Window. “Did you do a lot of reflecting?” Yes. “Now ending Thinking Window Mode.” Sujin stretches her neck. She makes sure to really roll her eyes, which had gone stiff from chasing the ads playing on the walls of the tunnel. Still splattered on the floor is the bloodstain from the baby Face. “Do you feel bad?” asks Face I. “Do you miss the baby Face?” No. The Faces cast piteous gazes at the (courageous) Knitting Woman sitting next to Man 1. “All things considered, I’m grateful that she hasn’t disembarked all this time,” says Face I, blowing a kiss. The Knitting Woman, who has a Danger Rating of 0.5, is the Decoy Woman. If the Man pulls out his blade, she will be the first to be stabbed. If the Man sprays acid, she will be the first to be burned. If the Knitting Woman disembarks, Sujin becomes the Decoy Woman. The chunk of meat tossed out by others to buy them time. Crunch. Crunch. Whoosh! Crunch. Crunch. Whoosh! Sujin is grateful for the distracting nature of the Knitting Woman. There is nothing more valuable than noisy bait. DBFP. Dogs! Bite! Fleeing! People! Crunch. Crunch. Whoosh! Crunch. Crunch. La-dee-da. Crunch. Crunch. La-dee-da la-dee-da lalala. Just two more stops. Sujin tries to turn to the scenery outside, but gives up. C’mon, keep up that focus! La-dee-da la-dee-da lalala. Sujin raises her head. The crunch crunch is gone. “Oh dear, where is my head at?” Suddenly, the Woman is behind Sujin. “Did I miss it?” The woman cranes her neck, muttering station names with eyes on the wall-mounted map. Sujin hears a distant Jab! Jab! One-two. Crunch. “Oh, not yet. Thank goodness!” The Knitting Woman turns. Stops. Where will she sit? The Knitting woman steps forward. And returns. To the Decoy’s seat. Who poured honey on my head? Relief trickles down from head to toe like sweet sweet honey. Honk honk honk. The train pulls into the station. Just one stop left. The Knitting Woman stops mid-step and turns. She casts Sujin a single glance. An impish look. Full stop. Misty breaths. Open. No One. Don’t cry. The Knitting Woman disembarks. Close. Departure. Outside the window, the Knitting Woman waves. 3-1. The Man and Sujin. Face I screams. The Knitting Woman set off a Routing Smokescreen. Pretending to examine the map, clearly saying out loud, Where is my head at, discreetly making a fool of the Man. This is the second time the Man has been foiled. Does he believe in third time’s the charm? Or does he believe in fool me twice, shame on me? “What do we do, what do we do?!” Face I bursts into terrified tears. Sujin is strangely calm. In a daze, she watches the curious pathway of her heart. Like a swimmer turning at the end of the pool, her fear has reached the point where it turns into anger. Maddening irritation draws near, cutting through roaring rapids. She grabs her bag. She can feel the glass bottle inside. My precious acid. “No,” Face I sobs. “I’ll get him before he gets me,” Sujin says, agitated. “Die,” Face II commands. “Die!” Face II turns into a giant hand and slaps Sujin. “Die!” Trembling, Sujin recites a magic spell. I am a tree. Sujin takes a seat. I am a deep, deep-rooted tree. She closes her eyes. Lowers her head. Lets her arms hang slack. Relaxes. Relaxes. Relaxes. Relaxes more. Like roots digging into the earth, she grounds her body deeper and deeper. Further and further down . . . Down and down like a corpse with cement shoes, sucked into the ocean depths. The Faces, too, shrink like pumpkin flowers at night. Going limp, like deflated balloons. Sujin and the Faces flatten and flatten until they are but wisps. Finally, a quiet prayer hums through the car. May whoever is listening up there take pity on my playing dead . . . The Eye-Closing Game “The next day, the people of France came out to the parks to take advantage of the sunny weather. Business as usual. That was how they stood up to terrorism.” The Norwegian professor’s column had been written in the context of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting. Team E delivered another argument. “I think about the people who went to the parks the day after the attack. I think about their resistance. All they did was refuse to shrink. Terrorism turns us into pill bugs. It makes us curl up inward. It disrupts our lives and makes us smaller. It holds up a bloody fist and offers two choices. Live closed lives in an open world or open lives in a closed world. I’m going to dare to say that we should live open lives in an open world. To be courageous, no matter how terrifying the situation. Courageous, like Sujin.” Then one day, Team E invited an instructor. The self-defense teacher said, “I’ve been told you had an incident. It’s only natural to be overcome by fear at first. But it will pass. Slowly but surely. Now, most people think there are two responses to fear, but there are actually three: the three Fs. Fight, flight, and freeze. Right now, you’re in the Freeze state. You’re frozen. So we’re going to slowly move up from there. Thaw out your frozen bodies, get to your feet, fly, and fight. We’re going to become fighters. Jab! Jab! One-two. Imagine your opponent in front of you. Jab! Jab! One-two.” Fist after tearful fist was driven in the direction of the open door. Then and now, they had no idea how they felt. In the office where principle had emerged victorious, Everyone is Welcome remained, but those who would do the welcoming were gone. Team S refused to show, and Team E said they would come but never did. Sujin sat alone in the office, bombarded by texts from people who suddenly had other business to take care of. She was the dumping ground for welcoming tasks. Just like with the 16’ POE. Whoever sat next to a newcomer became a mother bird. Sujin sat next to POE and became POE’s mother bird. She was always the one looking after newcomers. A veteran mother. The people who leaned out towards Sujin and POE eventually turned inward into cliques. Laughter erupted from the group. It was a funny story, and Sujin knew that one too. But she did not laugh. POE’s polite laughter had already given way to a sulk. You see, we’re laughing because—the mother bird could never let her attention flag, lest she miss hints from her baby. Like a mother bird feeding her young, Sujin talked to POE. You see, this is what happened. She would interpret the histories between friends in solitary conversations that saved POE from exclusion. It was like imprinting. POE had no one else to follow. POE would show up, and the first thing she would do was make coffee and ask, “How many shots?” and when POE looked up stiffly at the bookshelves, she would rush forward and prepare a gentle landing ground, “Everyone here’s from really good schools, don’t you think? They can’t go without displaying their PhD dissertations here. It’s kind of childish. I’m the only one who’s from a no-name university!” She was the one reading the room, casting discreet glances, apologizing (“I’m sorry, but you have to take off your shoes when you come in. It’s annoying, I know . . .”), and always readier than anyone to spring, voice one octave higher, “Oh! The bathroom is that way!” The important thing is, Sujin did not become a mother bird because she was special. Anyone can be a mother bird. It’s simple. Take a deep breath in, deep breath out. Shake out your hands, warm up your mouth. Breathe in to separate you from yourself, breathe out to layer yourself on top of the other. Now you can see through his eyes. You can feel his emotions. Almost there. Now you imagine what he wants to say and ask intricately crafted questions to draw them out. The baby bird chirrups in excitement. The mother bird nods diligently like a bobblehead. There is no reason for Sujin becoming the go-to person for this role other than her own will. No one forced the role upon her. That was why she had no other choice. This has to do with Article 2 of Community Bylaw 3: “Those who do no work may only be fed.” Unemployed members (and employed members whose incomes were below the national average) were exempt from paying membership and afterparty fees. It was thanks to this lauded rule that even those who couldn’t afford membership fees could participate (Team E’s words), and all sorts of POEs infested the community (Team S’s words). Sujin was one of these exceptions. Sometimes she could afford to pay, but in principle she had to be fed. She begged and almost wrestled in the kitchen, trying to keep her hold on the dishcloth. She wanted desperately to do the dishes. She knew that otherwise, something else—something no one wanted to do—would someday be foisted upon her shoulders. (But Article 1 of Community Bylaw 4 stated that the rotation of dishwashing duties would fall on those named on a list posted at the beginning of each month.) Sujin sat dipping plain crackers into truffle oil with the other exempt outlined in Article 2, Community Bylaw 3—who were unable to pay or do the dishes—and thought to herself. Nothing in this world is free. She looked at the person on dishwashing duty that day, who collected wineglasses and carried them into the kitchen as though flaunting the sight. Nothing in this world is free, and I’m all right. Then came the bright clatter of dishes in the sink. Because I’m doing my part. I’m doing status labor. Existence labor. My presence lets them savor their relative power. They can afford to give. People on the giving side are always better off than the ones on the receiving side. Someone opened another bottle of wine—wine that Sujin did not buy. I’m not going to be grateful. Ever. I won’t be grateful for anyone or anything. Someone took out a melon, another artisanal ham, and another humbly offered cherry tomatoes. Sujin consumed the wine and the melon and the ham and resolved once more to never be grateful, because doing that would mean she could no longer show up. But gratitude was an emotion, and emotions were not so easily held in check. Sujin ended up grateful. It happened over the course of many days and many instances. And gratitude—and shame—could make a person take on the most difficult and dangerous tasks. Sujin sits facing the open door. She sees the hallway. She sees the stairs. She sees the absence. Gone are the days when absence meant nothing more than absence, because today to her it is an omen of sudden arrival. Five minutes before the meeting, they arrive—the texts, filling her inbox with word of an emergency at home, at work, at the parents’ house. She rises. It is time for training. Throw yourself at the enemy! Jab! Jab! One-two. Wait, everyone, that’s not going to work, echoes the voice of the self-defense instructor. You can’t actually throw yourself at the opponent, remember, you’re not actually fighters. I mean, you’re fighters in spirit, but not actual fist-fighters. Yeah, I know, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s a mess. Anyway, let’s take it from the top! Jab! Jab! One-two! Go for the one-two punch! And one at full power! Sujin thrusts her fists forward and sings the training song. Ring. I got all the way across Seongsan Bridge, I swear, but then suddenly I got a call from the daycare . . .The training song is a set of custom lyrics on Yoon Hyung-joo’s “Dearly Despised.” Step-one-breathe, step-two-breathe, step-three-breathe and one, two, three, four! If you don’t got the cash, make up for it with manual labor. Oh, dearly despised. Jab! Jab! If you can’t do the labor, make up for it with your feelings. Oh, dearly despised. One! Two! Dearly despised. Oh, dearly despised. All my dearly despised. Sujin could have turned the Battle of SE upside down. She could have stood between the people fighting for Safety and the people fighting for Equality and said, But why won’t you people let me do the dishes? Why do you have a roster for dishwashing duty and not one for mother bird duty? Do you not realize what you’re doing? Spending money is easier than manual labor, which is easier than emotional labor. Do you not realize that emotional labor—actually making your heart do the work—sometimes takes the most effort? Did you really not know, or did you just not want to know? Why didn’t you sit beside POE? Stop laughing. I’m right, aren’t I? Admit it, you were all scared. Don’t give me your pity, and don’t get all excited. Then the people would have responded in their staccato voices: (Staccato) renounce our ignorance of systemic injustice in the form of an insidious class system buried in the cost of welcome delegation (Another staccato) sincerely reflect on the failure to incorporate intersectionality into praxis (Chorus) and thank our friend Sujin for delivering us unto enlightenment . . . She would have become a living case study. A function, not a being. And—and this not just for her, but everyone—it was better to become an example you aspired to than made an example of. Sujin did not want to be remembered as the person who had to sit beside POE because she was not only a woman but also poor. She wanted to be remembered as someone courageous. She dared to want to be a hero. That was why she showed up alone and thrust her fists at the open door. Once more, she takes a seat. Now is the time for real courage. She will set a timer and close her eyes. She will close her eyes and endure that darkness for one minute. And the fear chugging towards her in the dark. The POEs of the past and the future. She will look those Prices Of Equality in the eye. As though in a reverse staring contest, she will keep her eyes shut. But why do her eyelids bounce right back open? Why do they snap apart like a baby doll with functioning eyes? She blinked at the open door, watching the afterimages of her lashes flutter before her, seated as though bound to her chair. 6 “We made it!” “We made it!” Overjoyed, Sujin and the Faces bound up the station stairs. With each leap, the Faces flop like rabbit ears. The meaty red cross-sections clap loudly in the air, bouncing again and again off every part of her! The clouds clear to reveal the sun, casting a halo against Sujin and the Faces. They indulge in the joy of living. Face I sniffles, “Didn’t somebody say something? Like, today is a tomorrow that the people who died yesterday would have given anything to see?” Nobody chides Face I for being melodramatic. Sujin stands briefly on the pedestrian overpass and gazes at a closed-up-building—the sharpened nail sticking out of a piece of lumber in a drum canister in the building—and considers the weight of the old saying. Sujin and the Faces skip down the stairs and run to the office. Then walk. Then slow. All three are exhausted. The Faces drag behind her like sacks. They leave lengthy trails of water. The office is always endlessly far. Sujin cannot believe it. All she has done since leaving the house today was ride the subway for twenty minutes. She cannot believe it. *Ref. “Meditations on ‘Extremism’” by Pak Noja Translated by Slin Jung
byLee Misang
Quitters
Cats were resting their butts against the glass door. This southward facing glass door always became warm with the sun at this time of the day. The neighborhood cats that followed looked as though sunlight was the only thing in this world that they needed. I knocked on the door. The cats were no longer startled by my presence. They stared at me for a moment uninterested, then turned away. I opened the door, slowly pushing aside the throngs of cat butts, and went outside. The salty smell unique to a sea breeze hit my face. I pulled the zipper of my padded jacket all the way up to my neck. It was low tide, and the mudflat was extending all the way to the horizon. A person in rain boots was walking through the middle of the mudflat. They were, it seemed, heading toward Roe Island. The island was only accessible by foot two times a day, when the ocean waters receded. Locals went to the island to collect oysters, seaweed, and kelp. There were many islands like this in the area. They were all called “Roe Island.” I asked the old landlord why that was. “Because roe deer live there,” she said as she organized the recyclable waste. She said they were roe that had broken away from the herd. They ran in circles evading predators, she said, until they eventually ended up on the deserted island. “You can sometimes see at night.” “See what?” “The roe. They appear from the forests over there and swim through the waters at night toward the island.” “Why at night, when they need to swim? The land bridge is opened during the day.” “Because they’ll be seen!” she said as if frustrated. “But swimming at night seems just as dangerous.” “It is dangerous. They can die if the weather’s bad.” At night, I would turn off the lights, stand at the window, and look down at the ocean. The water was impenetrably dark during the new moon or when the moon was a thin crescent. Only when it was larger than a half moon could I see bubbles on the waves and fragments of light floating on the water. And when the moon was finally a full moon, only then could you see everything, including Roe Island. The dense forest of trees on the island would often sway to the sound of the waves. But one day, when the moon was approaching its third quarter, the wind died down, and thus so had the trees and the waves. The stars moved slowly across the sky as the earth rotated about its axis. I immediately recognized the deer when I saw its black shadow standing in the forest. The deer just stood there for a while, without moving. Then slowly, it dipped its body into the ocean water. This sent ripples through what had been placid waters. Bobbing its head back and forth, the roe waded forward. As it did this the ripples from where the roe’s neck met the surface of the water began to overlap with each other. These ripples spread farther and farther. I held my breath, and the roe moved at a steady pace. Then finally, it reached the island. The roe must have been exhausted because it slipped and rolled its ankle as it tried to get up. Finally, however, it lowered its head and jumped up onto the island. It then disappeared, just as quickly as it had appeared. I let out the breath I had been holding in. I had been waiting each night to see a deer, but I doubted I would really see one. The roe had arrived at the island without encountering a single big wave, but those moments in the water must have been the most stressful of its life. After all, I could see it so easily. It was exposed to the entire world. I felt a sense of wonder as I watched the roe risk its life for those short moments. After that night, I waited to see another roe. It had been so easy to see the first time; I thought for sure I would see at least one or two more. Another roe, however, never appeared. I walked the slanted road that followed the slanted coastline. I passed a sushi restaurant, a janchi-guksu restaurant, a seafood jjamppong restaurant, one after the other. All the lights were off. And there was no one in the streets. The restaurants only opened their doors and received customers from noon on Saturday to noon in Sunday. On the weekends, campers set up tents on the beach, and vacationers would come to the Eundol Condominium, where I was staying. A road appeared once you passed Eundol Shores. The road led to a forest. In the forest, the road transitioned to an unpaved path, and if you followed this path up for a while, you arrived, at Sabina Garden, located in the center of the forest. I fed a single bill into the ticket machine and headed into the garden. Black pines lined both sides of the narrow, well-kept dirt path. I followed the path of black pines and came upon a roughly seven-hundred-square-foot pond. There was fog on the surface of the water. I looked up at the bald cypress standing in the center of the pound. Sabina had bought this small pond in 1952. Sabina, an American who was recruited during the Korean War as an army nurse, lost a fellow nurse in the battle of Eundol Hill. The story of that nurse survived through letters Sabina sent to various individuals. Her friend wasn’t killed by enemy forces; she was killed after an altercation when she confronted friendly forces who were trying to desert. Her death, however, was reported as a case of suicide caused by PTSD and homesickness. Sabina worked for a long time to spread the truth of her friend’s death. Although she received permission to repatriate to America, Sabina remained in Eundol Village. She was also naturalized as a Korean citizen. She cut off all connection with the outside world and lived for sixty years on the shores of this small pond. She died at the age of ninety-one. She took her last breath alone in the workshed she made herself behind the pond. Sabina’s Garden was, in accordance with her will, opened to the public. Sabina had purchased over several decades a total of twenty-four acres of land around the pond, where she planted and maintained around twenty-seven thousand species of plants. A large number of endangered species and rare species that didn’t have colonies in Korea were discovered there after her death. Two roads diverged from the small pond. The path on the left led toward the seaside cliff, and the path on the right to a colony of camellia. Today, I chose the right-hand path. I passed the camellia colony, as well as colonies of mahonia and witch hazel, and arrived at a colony of horned holly. There were a lot of plants here that flowered and produced fruit in the winter. Camellia like Chansonette, cotton candy, asahi-zuru. Witch hazel like pallida and Helena. And horned holly like rotunda, D’Or, Rubricaulis Aurea. I sat in the rocking chair. Chairs were placed where visitors would usually become tired and want to rest. One chair was made of a single log with no back rest. One chair was hanging from ropes like a swing, and another chair was like a beach chair, half reclined with long extended legs. If you sat in the beach chair-like chair, your eyes naturally turned to the sky. From that position, you could see the glow of the setting sun as it unfurled across the sky. In the area closest to the shore where it was windy, strong pines served as windbreakers, and at the bottom of the hill where there was little wind, plants with fragile pedals were planted. There were nests of birds and ducks where the gravel path ended far away from the sound of footsteps. Everything was perfectly conditioned for the sun and the sea, like a wooden bedside table that was glossy from decades of hands touching it. But there weren’t many visitors who came to see this botanical garden specialized for winter. Every year, Sabina Garden lost money. Aside from the endangered species, all the plants in the garden were slowly dying. Placed throughout the garden were photo spots; they also built a souvenir shop and a cafeteria. These shops went through several changes, becoming cafés and then guest houses, before finally closing completely. There was a tall pile of fallen leaves beneath a dry, dead tree. I crouched down next to the pile and started looking for a leaf to take with me. I picked out a leaf with distinct veins and stood up. Today, I was going to tell Hyeri about this dead leaf. The first time I received an email from Hyeri was six winters ago. The email started with the words, “I’m not sure if you remember me, but . . .” And, indeed, I hadn’t remembered her. I searched for her email address in my inbox. I had just once sent her an email. It was for a final project for an elective: “Movies and Art.” Hyeri and I were doing a group project together. It was called a group project, but there was no collaboration. Each of our four members simply emailed each other our parts; Hyeri had the responsibility of combining our files. I knew nothing about her—what her major was, if she was older or younger than me, nothing. My only memory of her was her notebook. One day in class, I had seen her notebook beneath her elbow as she sat diagonally from me. A single word had been written on the page dozens of times in dense handwriting. It wasn’t a language I knew how to read. Hyeri said she remembered when I brought up the notebook in an email. I wanted to know why she had contacted me. Hyeri seemed happy when I brought up the notebook. The language in the notebook, she said, was Swedish, and she was currently studying in Sweden. She sent me emails every Sunday. It was around her fifth email that I realized she had no reason for emailing me. If there was a reason, it was simply that she wanted to tell someone how she was doing. I stopped replying after that. I had received similar emails from several other people. Someone from junior high whom I had been close with for just one semester; a former high school student whom I had once tutored for three months online; and a close friend whom I had lost contact with long ago. These people all had one thing in common: they had left Korea. I thought of their emails like letters from acquaintances enlisted in the army. People who entered the military in their early twenties sent letters to everyone they remembered, whether they were close or not. Everyone had the experience of receiving these types of letters; I also used to receive them. I also came to realize that, no matter how genuinely heartfelt my replies were, they always stopped contacting me once they were discharged. Every time I received emails like those from Hyeri, I would send an appropriately friendly reply. I was just friendly enough not to upset them, but I kept my responses short in hopes that the correspondence wouldn’t continue. They would quickly realize what I wanted and stop emailing me. Then two years ago in winter, I sent my first unsolicited email to Hyeri. It was raining today when I left. But then it stopped, and so I forgot my umbrella again . . . My eyesight has gotten worse, so I went to the optical shop today to change my lenses . . . I went to the dentist today to have my teeth cleaned, but because the dentist wanted to pull all four of my wisdom teeth, I just left . . . I stopped by the movie theater on my way home and watched a movie by myself . . . These were the types of conversations Hyeri and I had. Because we didn’t share any memories and had no topics that we could bond over, we just blabbered on about our individual lives. Having a beer at home while watching a television program on my notebook, or chopping up ripe kimchi for kimchi stew—these were the type of menial things that made me think of Hyeri and the type of things I wanted to tell her about. It felt like I was telling Hyeri every little action I did. When I did this, it felt just like I was spending time with her. It was true that there was no possibility of our watching a movie together or having a beer together. And we didn’t see the same weather or live in the same time zone. But I rather liked that. Hyeri told me she was getting her PhD in Sweden. When she first arrived, she intentionally avoided other Koreans. She had heard many times that Koreans abroad who hang out with other Koreans only ever hang out with other Koreans. But Hyeri hadn’t gone abroad to hang out with other Koreans. She actively started conversations with people of different nationalities, and, despite the fact she was sometimes ignored or rejected, she eventually made some good friends. Problems arose during a lecture, however. It was a Swedish language class for international students. Hyeri’s professor stared at her and said shamelessly, “Koreans eat with their faces buried in their bowls. Like dogs.” Hyeri wrote that she felt like this incident was almost too stereotypical. But what was even more horrendously stereotypical was what happened next. Hyeri told her friends about what happened. She wanted her friends to feel enraged with her. But those friends only seemed confused. “But why do your people eat with their head in their bowls?” They seemed genuinely curious. Hyeri calmly explained that the question was based on racist assumptions. Only then did her friends finally understand her. And after that, they were more careful around Hyeri. They were excessively polite to her. Should we tell her that she bought bad seats to a concert, or would that be racist? Should we recommend this café’s famous cinnamon rolls to Hyeri, or would that be racist? Hyeri regretted telling her friends about that incident. She decided not to talk to them any more about racism. She waited until her friends had forgotten the fact that she was an outsider. Things eventually went back to normal with her friends, but then a few months later, a similar incident happened in her class. The Korean community was already actively involved in fighting racism. They banded together to publicize incidents and sought ways to battle racism. But Hyeri didn’t ask other Koreans for help. She had already distanced herself from them long ago. It seemed like the Korean community thought Hyeri had turned her back on them because she thought she was better than them. Of course, Hyeri would get help if she asked for it, but that’s not all their assistance would entail. It also meant that she would have to become a member of their community. Hyeri didn’t want to become a member of that society. So, Hyeri became unable to speak to anyone about the racism she encountered. Her close friends were close but distant. And her fellow Koreans were distant but close. Hyeri sent me emails about the numerous insults she encountered. She needed someone like me who was faraway. She needed someone who couldn’t become close with her, who couldn’t interfere, someone who would just listen. Once I left the colony of horned holly, I could see the tallest hill in Sabina Garden. On this hill was Sabina’s workshed. The shed also went through several iterations—a place where visitors could experience woodwork, then a museum, and now an abandoned building. Hanging from the walls were picture frames covered in dust. Bits of sawdust and pieces of wood were scattered about the floor. Towards the back of the shed was Sabina’s desk. Lying open on the desk was her longtime notebook. September 21, 1991 The stiff pine needles are bent. Powerlessly wilted. The needles turned brown over the course of two weeks. The trees have been infected with mites from the south. I must fell all the infected. These mites travel through the wind; you must burn the trees to the root to exterminate them. It is not possible to pick out the trees that are in their incubation period. But must they all die? I cannot let that happen. The sign said that everything that happened to her trees, from the time she planted them to the time they died, was recorded in this notebook. It particularly emphasized the fact that this garden journal was written not in English but hangeul. A black-and-white picture of Sabina in a hanbok was shown next to the sign. At the end of this path was a seaside cliff. And on the cliff was a dense forest of pines. Some of the trees were as short as people, and others were as tall as buildings. It seemed like there was a mix of thriving trees and dying trees. A sign in front of a stump read: “For my fallen friends.” This place was where she raised plants and at the same time a grave. The sun was hanging high in the sky. The fog that had been floating on the surface of the small pond had dissipated. Sunlight was pouring down into the pond, but the water was still dark. I returned on the path I had entered. Just a small walk from the condominium was Eundol Port. There were no boats, and the maritime police station’s doors were closed. Placed side to side toward the back of the port were several freight container-turned shops, and these made up Eundol Fish Market. It was called a fish market, but they didn’t really sell marine products. Locals just sat together in their stands and cleaned what they caught on Roe Island. I went into the shop located farthest back in the market. This shop sold fishing tackle for the occasional tourist who came for the night fishing. This place was always open. This was because it was the only shop at which locals could buy daily necessities. Every day I would come here to buy things like eggs, instant rice, or toilet paper. The old lady at the counter, who sat on her electric bag and calculated change with her abacus, ripped me off little by little. Fish that had been 700 won one day, would become 800 the next, and 900 the day after that. “Can I see Moong-chi before going?” I asked the old lady as she counted my change. She told me I could. Moong-chi was sitting behind the shop. “Moong-chi.” Moong-chi slowly lifted his head and looked at me. He opened his glazed-over eyes and sniffed the air with loud snorts. It looked like Moong-chi was trying to figure out whether I was someone who was just calling his name or someone who was going to come play. Only once when I walked over to the front of the doghouse and crouched down did Moong-chi come out. He extended his back legs and stretched. He turned around a few times, then got on two feet to greet me. I stuck out my palm. Moong-chi licked my fingers and buried his face in my palm. Moong-chi lived here, a red leash always attached to his neck. According to the old lady, her granddaughter had left him for her to take care of. Also according to her, Moong-chi was living the most luxurious life of all the dogs in Eundol. She said that there was probably no other dog who was fed kibble. She even put a mat down for him in the doghouse. Her face was filled with self-satisfaction as she said this. But underneath Moong-chi’s long coat of matted fur was an emaciated body. His leash was short and there was no place for him to go to the bathroom, so he had to lift his leg and pee on the outside wall of his own doghouse. I would sometimes ask the old lady if she had ever thought about untying him. “My granddaughter raised him inside,” she said as she waved her hands in the air defiantly. “He’s never been outside, so who knows if he’ll be able to find his way back. He’s never seen a car before either. He won’t be able to dodge them.” Moong-chi brought his front legs together as he rolled over and showed me his stomach. I gave him a belly rub. This dog knew how to communicate its feelings to people, as well as how to read people’s emotions. I took my index finger and thumb, made the shape of a pistol, and pointed it at Moong-chi. He quickly got to his feet. He raised his two front paws as though surrendering. I could see the jet-black pads on his paws. I returned to the condominium. The cats that had gathered by the glass door earlier were gone. I fixed myself a late lunch and did the dishes. I took a shower, cleaned the room, and when I looked out the window, night was beginning to fall. Here, the sun began to set around four. And it seemed like the locals went to bed as early as seven. By eight, all the lights in the town were out, and everything went pitch black. I sat at the table, opened my laptop, and looked at my inbox. I didn’t read the unread messages, among which was an email from Jae-yeon. Jae-yeon had sent me an email four months ago. She wanted to include a similarly themed writing piece of mine in her private art exhibition. I replied to her saying that I would definitely collaborate with her next time. A few days later, I got another email from Jae-yeon. She said she really wanted to collaborate with me. But, she added, there probably wasn’t going to be another opportunity. Jae-yeon then told me the news of a fellow artist who had committed suicide recently. He was a relatively famous artist, and for the last several years, he had always been making his voice heard whenever there was controversy. He’d felt that he was always being excluded. He was cut from every project because he couldn’t find anyone to collaborate with. When he told Jae-yeon he was going to give up and start something new, Jae-yeon didn’t say anything to him. She regretted not being able to tell him that it was okay for him to quit and look for something else. Jae-yeon concluded her email by asking me how I was doing. I replied immediately. You once asked me what my dream was. We were at your workshop on Euljiro. You were taking a break from school, and I was just starting out as a writer. If you remember, I hesitated for a moment and told you my dream had already come true. And then you asked me how that could be. But it’s true. My dream was to write for a living. I liked living in a dream that had already come true. I wanted to live inside a dream and relive my dream over and over for eternity. I had never even imagined dreaming of anything else. I thought that no matter what kind of pain I endured, it would never affect my dream. I wonder, did I believe I was completely safe? Each time one of my literary friends quit, I felt like I couldn’t completely understand them. I sometimes concluded that they were talented but lacked the perseverance to succeed. Only now do I think of them again. It was about two years ago. My friend had received an invitation to be on the panel at a forum discussing the issue of abuse of power in the literary world. While preparing materials to present at the forum, she was contacted by the organizer of the forum. Although criticism was allowed, the presentation could only include information that had already been made public. ‘If that’s all you were planning on allowing us to do, why even have the forum in the first place?’ my friend asked. The organizer tried to persuade my friend by saying that what was important was change through vigilance, that they weren’t suggesting for anyone to become a whistleblower, that they didn’t need to put themselves in a dangerous position. My friend thought this forum was just for show. She felt like she was being used, like she was just a tool. Eventually, however, my friend wrote up her piece and included the organizer’s request for everyone to see. After that, my friend turned into Voldemort from the Harry Potter series: they dared not say her name. I’ve never talked about this to any of my other writer friends. Jae-yeon, if you were a writer, I wouldn’t be able to tell you either. This year was the first time I tried to write a proper resume. It’s not that I’ve never written a resume before, but every resume I wrote until now was something I submitted as a mere formality. With the hope of getting a job at a company, I looked up sample resumes, wrote down my desired salary, and even wrote a personal statement. I failed in the end, but I felt good. I had challenged myself to take a different path. I felt like I could change if I wanted. This is as far as I wrote before hitting the send button. But then a few minutes later, I decided to send one more email to Jae-yeon. It’s ridiculous to tell someone who wants to quit, ‘Just try a bit harder.’ I know that words like that put people through more pain. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to you and I’m sorry to your friend whom I didn’t know. I sent the email and sat there in silence for a moment. As I imagined Jae-yeon’s friend, who was a stranger to me, I was reminded of my own friend’s face. My friend, who quit writing and decided to move to Canada, asked me to plan a going away party for her. My friend gave me a bitter smile as she said to me—someone who was celebrating her leaving Korea—“And here goes another artist, silently vaporizing from the Korean peninsula.” I took out my cellphone. I looked through the messages that my friends and I had exchanged. She used to send me the same message every month out of nowhere. “Must continue living.” At first, I was thoroughly shocked by this message. I couldn’t tell if she was saying this to me or making a promise to herself. I thought she was just sentimental from being too drunk. But as more and more friends quit and left, I realized something. I realized that there was no deeper meaning to her text message. It literally meant whether you continue or quit, you must continue living. Perhaps my friends had figured it out before I had: I was no different from them. While all of my friends went abroad to study, went to graduate school, or got jobs, I chose to keep writing. Even when my bank account was looking dangerously empty, I chose to secure even more time for writing. I stopped drinking and quit all my hobbies. I stopped going out as much as possible. Even when I went out on walks through the neighborhood, I made sure to bring a tumbler filled with coffee so that I wouldn’t stop by a café. I didn’t meet friends or family. I had no weekends, no holidays. Once I finally debuted as a writer, I received a never-ending stream of work. I ate microwaveable meals and staying up late writing. All my income was money I earned from submitting manuscripts, but because I developed a bad back, I had to spend it on hospital bills. I worked myself sick, and I paid off my hospital bills with that work. But I was happy because I was doing what I liked to do. I considered poverty to be a prerequisite for being an artist. And then one day I was invited to a forum. After the incident, I started to become a person who forced herself to write to resist the urge to quit. I thought I could tell this to Jae-yeon, just as I had confided in Hyeri. But instead, I eventually changed the subject “I” into “my friend”. I was getting used to the excessive effort to conceal and protect myself. I was comfortable now that I joined with people who wanted to quit. I didn’t know them well, but I quickly felt a sense of comradery. I felt like I knew them well. Just like when I was a freshman in college and had felt closest to the students who, like me, passionately threw their entire being into literature. After that, Jae-yeon sent me several emails. But I couldn’t bring myself to open her emails. Two months later, I heard that Jae-yeon had opened her private exhibit. The entrance to the exhibition hall was located in a lonesome residential alleyway. The hall was in an open concrete building that looked half-constructed. When I entered the building, the whole place smelled of mold. There was no one inside, only an oilstove burning red. Light from a projector was shining across the room. The triangular beam of light was pouring out of the circular lens and forming a movie on the wall. I crouched down next to the projector. Water was falling from the sky. A person cupped their hands together. And with their hands, they received the falling water. Soon, the transparent water filled the person’s hands and flowed out through their fingers. Another person received the water with their hands. And then another person below that cupped their hands and received that water. Again and again… It looked like it was raining. It felt like those hands were catching the rain that was going to fall on my head. The poster on the standing signboard outside was wet with dots of water. It was actually raining outside. I extended my hand outside, beyond the cover of the eaves. It was a fine mist—hard to sense with your hand, but enough to soak your clothes if you walked long enough in it. “Practicing Walking on the Edge of Ice.” * Looking at the title of Jae-yeon’s exhibition, I imagined Jae-yeon stepping carefully on the edge of a piece of ice. I opened my umbrella. I then wedged my umbrella in the small gap at the top of the standing signboard. *This image was borrowed from artist Kang Jiyun’s private exhibition “A Practice for Walking on the Brink of Thin Ice” (Post Territory Ujeongguk, Nov 22 – Dec 3, 2019). I sent Hyeri an email. I wrote about Roe Island, about the fallen leaf I picked up in Sabina Garden, about seeing Moong-chi at the back of the fish market. I mentioned that I pretended to shoot Moong-chi with a pistol, just as she asked me to. I also mentioned that, just as she predicted, Moong-chi lifted his two front paws as if he were surrendering to me. But to me, it looked like Moong-chi was yelling “Hoorah!” Hyeri and I started making these small requests of each other last summer. It was in the middle of the Midnight Sun period in Sweden, and in Korea we were experiencing a heat wave. Hyeri’s friends all said that the Midnight Sun was much better than the Polar Night, when darkness and rain continued for several months. Her friends enjoyed the Midnight Sun by sitting on the grass, soaking in the sun, and drinking beer late into the night. There was a festival and tourists from all over the world came to see the natural phenomenon. But for Hyeri, she preferred the Polar Nights. She preferred endless darkness over endless sunlight. Because it was bright during the day and night, she felt awake at night even when she shut her eyes and tried to sleep. All day she felt lethargic like a drunkard. Hyeri heard that a Korean restaurant in Stockholm sold Korean cold noodles, naengmyeon, during the summer months. Hyeri heard this every summer, but she had never once gone to the Korean restaurant. Of course, there was the reason that it was expensive, but more than this, she wanted to rid herself of her yearning for Korean food. Indeed, the reason she had learned Swedish—in a country where everyone could speak English, and Swedish was only spoken by the natives—was because she wanted to completely move her roots. But even though she spoke and listened in a foreign language all day, inside her head, she was mumbling to herself in Korean. She couldn’t help but overhear the Korean of random people on the street; any other language required her to focus all of her mental power and translate in her head. Sometimes, she just wanted to speak Korean with someone, anyone. The anxiety that she didn’t fit in anywhere, be it Korea or Sweden, was always following Hyeri. She always felt at a lost as she wondered what would be left when her extended time abroad was finished. The thing that came to Hyeri abroad was not the freedom she left Korea in search of, but a sense of isolation. But Hyeri thought a sense of isolation was better than that tiresome sense of belonging. And yet, Hyeri was now for the first time going to buy a bowl of naengmyeon in Stockholm. She wanted to drink that broth with floating pieces of thin ice. She didn’t want soggy meatballs anymore; she wanted crisp shredded daikon radish. She felt like that would wake up all the cells in her body, which were feeling under the weather because of the Midnight Sun. The Korean restaurant had few customers. And the naengmyeon was more expensive than Hyeri had expected. It tasted worse, too. The broth was lukewarm and too salty. The Korean sauce, yangnyeomjang, tasted of capsaicin. And the noodles were soggy and stuck together. Naengmyeon that tasted neither like naengmyeon nor not like naengmyeon—this to Hyeri seemed just like her own wretched situation. Hyeri ended her email by asking me to get a bowl of mul naeungmyeon for her if I ever was near Eulmildae—if I liked naengmyeon, that was. I went to Eunmildae. I had always wanted to eat there, so I decided to stand in line and wait. I waited for an entire hour, but the mul naengmyeon they served wasn’t my cup of tea. The broth was too watery, and the noodles were slimy and broke too easy. Only one or two specs of chili powder were stuck to the clear, white shredded radish, which should have been red. I told Hyeri I couldn’t understand why anyone would think this restaurant was good. Hyeri seemed to enjoy reading this email of mine. She told me that my tone was enough to convey how bad the naengmyeon was. She also said she would read my email several times whenever she craved naengmyeon. Hyeri and I started making small requests to each other. They always started off with “If by some chance you ever go to . . .” I asked Hyeri to try Nobel Ice Cream for me if she ever went to the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm. Later, I got a reply saying that the ice cream, although beautifully decorative, had strawberry toppings that were so sour it was horrifying. Hyeri asked me to try frozen persimmon for her, and that was the first time I had tried the sherbet-like dessert. I asked Hyeri to go the house of Astrid Lindgren, and while she was in that area, she discovered the Stockholm Public Library, which she had never visited before. She said she was captivated by the grand, old-fashioned space which was surrounded by a circular bookcase. In order to complete Hyeri’s requests, I ended up going outside more than I usually did. I walked more, too. I contemplated what I would request of Hyeri next. I tried hard to think of anything, even trivial things I had never really wanted. About two months ago, Hyeri asked me to go visit Moong-chi. This email, however, started out with the words “I’m sure you don’t have any reason to go all the way to Eundol Village, but . . .” I got up without finishing my email to Hyeri. I put a pot on the stove. I boiled four eggs, cooled them off in cold water, and then peeled them. I mixed some soy sauce and yangnyeom spice and boiled them down with the eggs. As the mixture sizzled, the smell of soy sauce filled the room. I decided I would tell Hyeri about this braised soy sauce egg recipe when I was done eating. Because soy sauce was something she would easily be able to find at the grocery store, I knew she would be able to enjoy the recipe herself. I opened the window to air out the room. I stared out the window for a while. The moon had yet to enter my window frame. But deeper into the night, the moon would take its place inside the rectangle. This would be the second full moon I had seen through this window. I had already postponed my checkout several times. What had been a five-day-four-night trip had dragged on for nearly two months. I wanted to live here forever. That seemed like just as reasonable a choice as any other. I closed the window and started eating my braised eggs with some rice. Once I was done, I would continue writing my email. Tomorrow, I would go to Sabina Garden again to pick up another fallen leaf. And I would read the next page in Sabina’s diary. How, I wonder, had Sabina saved the pine forest? Where did she start cutting and burning, and where did she stop? How did she discern between those trees she would kill and those she would spare? Did Sabina consider herself as someone who left, or someone who remained? In America, Sabina would be someone who had disappeared. Tomorrow, I would get a new reply from Hyeri. An answer to my question, and Hyeri would tell me one more quirk of Moong-chi’s. That he had a spiral in his armpit, or that he knew how to howl to a song. I would stand at the windowsill day after day, waiting to see another roe deer crossing the water. I would wait, hoping that it wouldn’t be seen. Translated by Sean Lin Halbert
byLim Solah
Broccoli Punch
I woke up and checked my phone to see that I’d gotten two texts during the night. One told me that Wonjun’s right hand had turned into a head of broccoli, and the other informed me that Malja, who lived with Mrs. Ahn Pilsoon, had died. Malja was a gray parrot that Pilsoon received from her boyfriend on her sixtieth birthday. The bird was amazing at mimicking human voices and was so smart that it had somehow picked up the nuances of the human language. Malja had turned twenty years old this year which made it practically middle-aged in parrot years, as the birds only lived to be thirty or forty at the most. Due to her age, Malja had begun eating noticeably less a few weeks ago and could barely sit upright on its perch, even toppling over a few times. I could see its health was failing, and now I learned it had died last night. I read Pilsoon’s message again. MALJA DEAD COME PLEASE. For an obituary, it was fairly dry and straight to the point. Which wasn’t surprising, given how the two seemed less like an owner and her pet bird than two loudly swearing enemies whose idea of greeting each other was to ask when they were planning on dropping dead. One of them must have picked up the habit from the other, although it was unclear who. As I lay sprawled out in bed, musing over these thoughts, my phone rang. It was Wonjun. “Are you still in bed?” he asked sullenly. “My right hand has turned into broccoli.” “I saw your text. What happened?” “Don’t know.” I looked at the clock. It was a little past 10 in the morning. “You should get that looked at,” I said. “Yeah.” We fell silent. I realized what Wonjun must be thinking. He wanted me to go with him to the hospital, this big man-child. Wait, where was the nearest hospital anyway? If your hand turned into broccoli, do you go to an internist or an orthopedist? Just as I was about to ask him, my phone let out a sharp beeping sound. There was another call waiting on the line. It had to be Pilsoon. I ran some quick time calculations in my head. If I took Wonjun to the hospital then headed over to Pilsoon’s house right away, that could work out for me time-wise. After I hung up, I texted Pilsoon. Wonjun’s hand turned into broccoli. I’ll stop by the hospital before I go to see you. Her reply arrived by the time I was already showered, lotioned up, and pulling on my jeans. O NO POOR THING HOW DREDFUL. I imagined Pilsoon frowning at her phone as she texted those letters with the dead Malja beside her. Malja would look like she’d spring to life the moment she saw me walk into Pilsoon’s house, flapping her wings madly, and squawking, Get out of my house, you little bitch! But alas, the bird will never speak again. Most likely Pilsoon had covered the dead parrot with a handkerchief, the familiar rose-patterned handkerchief that I knew so well. The thought was sobering. I sniffled all the way to Wonjun’s house. When I opened the door, I saw Wonjun lying in the same position, in the very place I had expected him to be. “Hey.” Instead of waving, he lifted his right hand weakly, or rather, the head of broccoli where his right hand should have been. Gingerly, I navigated around the islands of garbage and dirty laundry on the floor and headed to the sofa bed where Wonju was lying on his side. I smelled a whiff of fresh cut grass from him. “When did this happen?” “I don’t know. I woke up to find myself like this.” I grabbed his right hand and gave it a good look. The skin from the middle of his forearm was a dull green, and the color gradually grew darker towards his hand, with small leaves sprouting here and there; his fingers were green stalks that turned into bunches of florets like so many tightly permed little heads—a perfect head of broccoli. Not only that, it looked incredibly fresh and firm, to the point where I might have eagerly picked it up had I come across it at the grocery store. Amazed, I couldn’t help but continuously stroke the thick stalks. It was a majestic specimen of vegetable, and my teeth tingled with the desire to crunch down on the fresh, juicy broccoli. “Wow, this is so cool,” I murmured as I continued to stroke the broccoli. Wonjun retorted, “Cool? This is definitely not cool for me!” “Why not? Looks pretty great.” I was being serious, but Wonjun, thinking I was teasing him, glared at me. “Let’s just hurry and go to the hospital,” he grunted. “Yeah, yeah, let’s go.” With that, I helped him sit up. I got him dressed in a hooded T-shirt and pants, wet my hands and brushed them through his hair, and finally removed the crust from his eyes. Only when I had wrapped his broccoli hand in a big towel did he get up to follow me. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. This could happen to anyone,” I said. “But my job is all about having swag,” Wonjun muttered as he shoved his broccoli hand, still wrapped in a towel, into the front pocket of his T-shirt. Swag. Psssh. You’re just a broccoli boy, I thought to myself as I locked his front door with my key. Ko Wonjun is a boxer. When I introduce him as a boxer, most people respond with Oh you don’t say? but give me a look like they don’t believe me. That’s because Wonjun doesn’t have any of the features one might expect from a boxer, say, a tall height or a strong physique or a sharp, menacing look. Wonjun had a round jaw and black, bushy eyebrows that hinted at a rambunctious childhood, and as an adult, gave the impression of being a mailman or a Chinese food chef if one had to guess his occupation. But if the same people saw him compete in a boxing match, they wouldn’t doubt that he was a boxer. As soon as he climbed into the ring and the match began, Wonjun transformed into a completely different person. On the outside, he still looked like the Ko Wonjun I knew, but it was as if he had been replaced by someone else on the inside, someone I didn’t recognize at all. The first and only time I saw Wonjun in a boxing match was a few years ago. I left and went home before the match had ended without telling him I was leaving. For a few days afterward, I let his calls go unanswered. I avoided him because I was terrified. Obviously, I wasn’t terrified of the fact that there had been two people in the ring hitting and punching each other. I knew what boxing looked like. Rather, I felt unbearable terror at the raw emotion that Wonjun emitted every time he punched his opponent. I could sense malice in every deadly punch he threw, at his footwork aimed to distract his opponent, and in the savage glint of his eyes. Till then, I had never imagined Wonjun to be the kind of person who could harness such deadly energy and hit another person. Others might call it spirit or even passion, but to me, it seemed like malice and nothing more. I felt like I was the opponent he was beating up in that ring, and my heart beat fast and hard at the terror I felt. I didn’t go to any of his matches after that. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I was afraid of him so instead I came up with a bunch of other excuses. But Wonjun never seemed to mind that I didn’t come to his matches and besides, there weren’t that many to begin with. Even so, I knew enough about Wonjun as a boxer. That much I learned from Pilsoon’s boyfriend, Park Gwangsuk. The small, thin-as-a-stick old man was a huge fan of all combat sports including boxing, UFC, and wrestling, and when he learned that Wonjun and I were dating, he became so inconsolably excited that I had to rush over with cold water to help him calm down. It was Gwangsuk who told me about the golden prime of Wonjun’s career. The old man talked at length about how Wonjun came out of nowhere as a young upstart with incredible fighting spirit and rushed at his opponents with no intention of ever letting go, and about that one time when Gwangsuk was rooting so hard for him in the audience seats that he didn’t notice how a temporary tooth he had gotten while waiting for an implant had come loose in his mouth. When I asked him what happened to the tooth, he opened his mouth wide and pointed to a slightly less yellow molar in a row of very yellow molars. I swallowed it, he said. Gulp. At that, Pilsoon and I—and Gwangsuk too—laughed so hard we had to struggle to breathe and didn’t get to hear the end of the story of Wonjun in his prime, so I decided to look him up on the internet after I came home. I found everything I could on his career, including information on his time as an up-and-coming amateur boxer who achieved consecutive wins before experiencing a slump, as well as an interview he gave where he revealed his training routine and weight loss secrets. I enjoyed reading them all. But I couldn’t believe that the stories were about my boyfriend. Although I liked to tell Wonjun all about the elderly patients I took care of as a long-term care nurse, Wonjun never told me anything about his work. When I asked him why, he said there was nothing to talk about. It’s always the same thing—training, sparring, losing weight, he had said, still looking more like a Chinese food chef than a professional boxer. I asked him if he liked boxing. For a while, he didn’t respond. Then he sucked in air through his nose and let out a snort, which I took for an answer and thought to myself, I shouldn’t have asked. He was fairly talkative about all other things and liked to talk about himself as well, so it was strange that he clammed up when it came to his career. I had to admit that I myself didn’t get into long-term care because I was crazy about the profession. Just as how I might not like everything there was to like about long-term care but still enjoyed keeping company with patients like Pilsoon, Wonjun must not have liked everything about boxing but still enjoyed some parts of it. Although, I wondered whether the parts he enjoyed including beating people up. That was the one question I really wanted to ask him, but of course I never said it out loud. I took Wonjun to a clinic I had seen near an overpass, not because we wanted to go to that particular place but because I remembered I’d seen it before when I passed the street. But when we arrived, we saw that the sign outside read FAMILY MEDICINE. I didn’t know if a family medicine doctor could help with a broccoli hand. Unsure of what to do, we stood there looking at each other, until a voice called out to us from inside the hospital, asking us to come in. So we did. Inside the small lobby a few moms sat here and there on the couches with their kids, their faces flushed and red. A nurse sitting behind the counter looked up at us with a friendly smile. “How can I help you today?” The nurse directed her question at me, thinking that if she had to guess which one of us was the patient, it would most likely be me. I removed the towel from Wonjun’s hand and showed her the stump of broccoli. “His hand is a little . . .” Seeing Wonjun’s hand, the nurse let out a sharp gasp. At that, the sick kids and their moms, who had been distracted by the TV and their phones, instantly turned to look at us. When they saw the broccoli, they all began gasping and reacting in turn, so that the entire lobby became as loud and confusing as an open-air market. Oh my gosh, I haven’t seen a broccoli like that in years! You know what, my father-in-law had that happen to him, too. His broccoli is huge! Oh he must be so uncomfortable! Blushing intensely, Wonjun grabbed the towel and hurriedly wrapped it over his hand. With a smile, the nurse handed us a form to fill out. When I wrote Wonjun’s address and phone number then handed it back to her, the nurse wrote Broccoli, right hand on the top right corner of the form in neat, round letters. Then we sat on the sofa and waited our turn. “You’re so young to have something like that happen to you,” smiled a kindly woman sitting across from us. A little boy with a runny nose, who was probably her grandson, was lying across her lap. “You must have a lot on your mind,” someone else spoke up. “Yes, yes, that happens when you have too many thoughts in your head.” As if they had been waiting for someone to break the ice, a chorus of voices chimed in after the old lady. But I was confused. Thoughts? Is that why your hand turns into broccoli, because you have a lot on your mind? I was about to ask the old lady with the grandson but someone called out Wonjun’s name. Ko Wonjun, the doctor’s ready to see you. His shoulders sagging, Wonjun got up and walked to the door. I leaned in to hear better, which proved unnecessary as the clinic was so small I could hear everything that was being said behind the door. Oh, broccoli! I haven’t had a patient with this syndrome in some time. How long has this been going on? I woke up this morning and found myself like this. That looks quite uncomfortable. Let’s take a look, shall we? Does this hurt? No. How about this? That tickles. Tickles? Yes. It tickles on the inside. I don’t know what to call this, the stalk? Where my wrist should be? It tickles on the inside of that, underneath the skin. The vessels? Blood vessels? That’s where it tickles. Oh, that’s completely normal. Sounds like you’re photosynthesizing. You know what photosynthesis is, right? I’m going to prescribe you some pills. Drink lots of water and get plenty of rest. That’s what you need most. Try to relax and think peaceful thoughts. You’ll be fine in a few days or so. That was a little too easy, I thought as Wonjun came out with the towel again wrapped around his hand. He looked sullen. He mouthed the words, I think he’s a quack. Wonjun remained in a bad mood even as we headed to the pharmacy on the first floor of the building to fill his prescription. As soon as I got his prescription, I tore open the bag and took out a pill. It was a long, green, translucent pill. It’s to help remove the chlorophyll, explained the pharmacist, as I stood by the water dispenser, filling a glass half with cold water and the other half with hot water. With his left hand, Wonjun took the pill I offered him and popped it in his mouth. Watching his Adam’s apple undulate as he swallowed the pill, I asked the question that had been bothering me. “What’s got you so stressed out that your hand turned into broccoli?” Instead of answering, Wonjun gave me a long stare. I remember having seen that expression somewhere before. Only after I had said goodbye to Wonjun and was walking to Pilsoon’s house did I remember where I’d seen it. Once, when I was little, I had gone to the markets with Grandmother (not another patient but my literal grandmother on my father’s side) where we bought a bag of peaches. When we got home and opened the bag, however, we saw that the peach on the top looked perfect but all the peaches on the bottom were covered in bruises. Angrily, Grandmother marched back to the fruit seller, with the bag of peaches in one hand and me in the other. When she thrust the bag of bruised peaches in his face, the fruit seller gave her the same expression I had seen on Wonjun’s face. Finally, he said, But that’s how it is with white peaches. White peaches bruise easily. That’s just how they’re built. That’s just how they’re built. That afternoon, Pilsoon, I, and Gwangsuk organized a simple funeral for Malja. The venue was Pilsoon’s front yard, although since Pilsoon was renting the first floor unit of the condo building, the front yard wasn’t really hers. But we all agreed, even the landlord who lived in the same building, that the yard was the best place to bury Malja in. The landlord found a rusty old shovel from his shed for us to dig the grave. My dog died last year. I buried her there, too, said the landlord, pointing at the shade of a yew tree, which made us even sadder and made the atmosphere more fitting for a funeral. Malja had always liked the color pink, so Pilsoon and I wore pink blouses while Gwangsuk wore a pink swim cap that he got from his swim club since he didn’t have any pink clothes. We chose a wooden wine chest to bury the bird in and placed several of her belongings inside, including her perch, some dried fruit, her toy ball, a wool bell, and five invoice statements for Pilsoon’s gas bill. Malja had always loved to tear those paper invoices into long, thin strips then parade around with the paper dangling from her tail. We arranged the items to make a small bed, on which we placed the body of Malja wrapped in the rose-patterned handkerchief. Then we closed the lid. His mouth firmly pursed, Gwangsuk grabbed the shovel and began digging below the spindle tree in one corner of the yard that he’d surveyed in advance. The earth was wet and soft so the digging couldn’t have been that hard, but even so, Gwangsuk let out a low groan each time he struck the ground with the shovel. Pilsoon and I crouched down on either side of him and picked out the pebbles and pieces of twig that were mixed in with the dirt. When the hole became deep enough, we placed the wine chest holding Malja and covered it with loose earth. Then we patted it down. Just like that, the funeral was over. It would have been a finer occasion had we read a eulogy of some kind but none of us had prepared any. Besides, we were all covered in sweat from crouching in the sun for so long. I thought, Sure would be nice to have a cold beer right about now. Gwangsuk, looking like he was thinking the same thing, stood there with sweat lining his upper lip. But because Pilsoon remained in the yard, neither Gwangsuk nor I could find it in us to leave. Pilsoon was still stroking the earth, which was already flat and smooth. Rarely had she stroked the bird when it was alive or said one kind thing to her; all the curse words that Malja hurled at people were picked up from Pilsoon herself. But neither Gwangsuk nor I saw fit to scold her with a Why weren’t you nicer to Malja when she was alive? Instead we left her alone to stroke the earth to her heart’s content. Later, we trooped into Pilsoon’s house and washed our hands. Black dirt was caked under our fingernails so we used an old toothbrush to scrub each other’s hands. I surrendered my hands to Pilsoon as I thought, What a peaceful scene for a bunch of people who’ve just been to a funeral, then looked up to see that the others were wearing the same look on their faces as we rubbed our hands dry on the towel. I was supposed to go off the clock that evening; that is, I was originally hired to care for Pilsoon until 6 p.m., but that rule had flown out the window a long time ago. It was already very dark but I found myself still hanging out at Pilsoon’s house. Pilsoon began roasting some dried jipo fish fillets so I eventually headed out to buy the beer I’d been craving all afternoon. Later, the subject of our conversation naturally came to Wonjun. When I remarked how concerned I was that Wonjun’s hand had turned into a head of broccoli, Gwangsuk looked upset. After a long time silently gazing at the thin strips of dried fish, he murmured, “That poor kid must be going through a rough time.” “What rough time?” Gwangsuk fell silent again and stared off into space. He opened his mouth, as if to say something, then heaved a heavy sigh instead. It was Pilsoon who eventually spoke up. “When I was young, I came across some folks suffering from that terrible affliction. People would wake up one morning to find their finger had turned into a string bean or a red chili pepper. It turns out they were suffering on the inside. Maybe they were consumed with hate for someone else or with some other bad feeling. Letting bad thoughts sit in your mind for a long time will eventually break you down, you know. Turn you into something that’s not human. The sick people got better after they ate some good food and rested for a few days, so we knew the disease wasn’t fatal. But you just look silly the whole time you’re sick and it inconveniences you something terrible. Awful affliction it is. I thought it was all but gone after they started vaccinating the kids. Wonjun must have gotten weak, poor child. Tell him to come over sometime. I’ll boil some chicken for him.” Weak? I was about to laugh and remind her that Wonjun was a professional boxer when I suddenly felt a lump in my throat that made me shut my mouth. Physically, Wonjun might be stronger and healthier than anyone, but could I really say the same for his mental health? Thinking of how Wonjun had gazed at me so painfully the way the fruit seller with the bruised peach had, I let out a low sigh. What was haunting him so much to make his body react in that way? I may be a nurse but I knew nothing about what my own boyfriend was going through. “I wonder what’s causing him so much distress,” I thought out loud, as I crushed my empty beer can flatter and flatter. Pilsoon didn’t say anything. As we settled into silence, the TV continued to chatter away. It was late by the time I set out from Pilsoon’s house when suddenly, Gwangsuk stopped me. He whispered, “Will you and Wonjun set aside some time for me tomorrow?” I turned and saw him peer intently into my eyes, his face made rosy pink either by his pink hat or the beer we had been drinking. “Time?” “Yes, time. I want to take you kids and Pilsoon to a mountain.” “Mountain? What mountain?” “That’s what sick people used to do back in my day. When you head into the hills and sing, you can cut down your sick days from ten to two.” “Sing? What do you mean?” “Wonjun has to sing from the bottom of his lungs. Really belt one out. Then you’ll see what I mean.” With that, Gwangsuk grabbed my hand and pressed it firmly, as if to compel me into joining him on his plan. His hand was so hot and wrinkled that I couldn’t help but agree. “Don’t brush off what I’m telling you as the foolish talk of some old man, and tell your boy to meet me tomorrow, you hear?” “Okay, okay.” Only then did Gwangsuk let go of my hand and slowly turn away. Singing? Boiled chicken sounds like a much better idea, I thought as I crossed Pilsoon’s front yard. I didn’t forget to take one last look at where Malja lay before I pushed open the front gates. That loud parrot used to croak, You leaving? Coming back soon? each time I set out the door. The earth was still flat and smooth where she was buried, and a soft darkness had settled over the place as if a knowing hand had spread out a nice bed for her to lie in. Gwangsuk would be giving Pilsoon a nice back rub right about now, probably whispering how he would bring her another pretty little bird to take the place of the dead one. He would tell her about tomorrow’s plan to take a walk up the mountain with us. I stood before the front gates and looked up at Pilsoon’s still-lit windows. After a while, I decided to head to Wonjun’s house. At first I thought no one was home, or at least I did when I pushed open the door to Wonjun’s place. The house was completely dark but more than that, there was a certain stillness over the place, like the feeling a house gives off when it’s empty. But Wonjun’s scruffy shoes that he would wear everywhere with the backs worn down like slippers were still by the front door. I called out, Wonjun, are you in here? before reaching down to remove my own shoes. Then I stopped. I could sense Wonjun was home. He was sprawled out on the sofa bed in the same position I’d last seen him. But in the dim light that filtered in through the window, I could see something wasn’t right. It was more a feeling I had than anything I saw with my eyes. I knew the body on the bed belonged to Wonjun but somehow, it felt like he wasn’t really there. It was as if someone had taken the different bits and pieces of him that I recognized and rearranged them to seem like the shape of Wonjun. Hesitating, I reached out to turn on the lights when suddenly, I heard his low, heavy voice. “Don’t turn on the lights. They’re too bright.” I trained my eyes, now accustomed to the darkness, on Wonjun’s broccoli arm. Just this morning, it was only his arm that was a broccoli stalk; now the green had spread to his shoulder and the florets had more than doubled in size. “Did you take your meds?” I asked. “No.” I felt a wave of anger at his nonchalant answer, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to yell at him. Instead, I felt my heart sink as if it were being sucked down from below. I crumpled to the floor next to Wonjun. I breathed in the smell of newly-cut grass from him. It was a fresh, green smell but it was also the smell of sadness, of a strong, lonely sadness. “Wonjun,” I said. “Yeah.” “Is something the matter?” “No.” “Gwangsuk said this happened because you’re going through something emotionally difficult. If something’s bothering you, please tell me. Tell me. Please.” Wonjun lay there silently, as if asleep or dead. I felt like I was alone in the darkened room. I thought I might cry soon, but I was wrong. I was in fact already crying. “Please tell me,” I repeated. Finally, Wonjun let out a low sigh. His breath smelled strongly of cut grass. “I’ll tell you, so don’t cry.” Wonjun pulled his mouth to one corner and became lost in thought. I waited, dabbing at my eyes with the ends of my sleeve. “To tell you the truth, I don’t want to box anymore.” Wonjun drew in a deep breath then let it out just as deeply. Then he began slowly telling me his story, as if unraveling something tightly coiled from within his stomach. “. . . Do you know what the most important thing in boxing is? Focus. You have to focus on wanting to beat the other guy to a pulp. If your left hand isn’t up to the task, you gotta use your right. If your right hand won’t cut it, you gotta use your head. You have to really focus to knock the other guy out. To have that level of focus, you have to think details. You’ve heard of image training, right? You have to imagine the other guy bleeding and slowly losing his strength. You have to imagine him getting knocked down from your punches. Have you ever imagined something like that in your life? I’m sure you’ve met some people you don’t like, but have you ever imagined beating someone almost to death, in really intricate detail? “But you know what really sucks? I don’t even hate the other guy! In fact, I like him! The other guys I’m up against in the ring, they’ve dedicated their lives to boxing just as much as I have and have built a career similar to mine. I want to be friends with these guys. And yet I’m standing there, imagining beating the other guy to a pulp. After a while, I found it hard to throw those punches. I kept telling myself that this is only a game, that it’s a sport, and that I’m doing my job, but whether it be a sport or a profession, I still don’t want to deal with pain. I don’t like pain. I don’t like feeling it and I don’t like inflicting it. It sucks. And that’s when I realized. I don’t want to box anymore. But of course, I couldn’t throw my whole career away just like that. I didn’t want to. Instead, I kept thinking and thinking about what to do. Then I came to a solution. I decided to start hating the other guy. I thought it might be easier to hit him if I came to hate him. “But it wasn’t easy to force myself to hate, just as it’s impossible to force yourself to like something when you don’t. I had to force the hate out of me. I came up with all kinds of reasons to hate the other guy, and repeated them over and over in my head. ‘He’s probably not as nice as I think he is. I’m sure he wants to beat me up, too. I have to knock him out before he knocks me out. I have to make sure he never comes crawling back to me again.’ Even on my days off, I kept thinking these thoughts. I thought of all kinds of reasons to make me want to throw those punches, and to contain those bad thoughts inside my right hand glove. Then one day, I woke up as broccoli.” With that, Wonjun threw a broccoli punch in the air. I saw the outline of the florets in the darkness. “After this happened, I can’t bring myself to feel angry at anything, try as I might.” He jabbed the air a couple more times. Then he dropped his broccoli fist to his side. “You’re probably thinking I should give it up. You probably don’t understand why I’m doing something that’s causing me so much pain. But I’ve been boxing my whole life. This is the only thing I know to do—hating someone else. Hating them enough to punch them to a pulp.” With that, Wonjun went quiet. The room was left with nothing but darkness, silence, and the sad smell of cut grass. I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. I felt like I should say something, some words of comfort or of disapproval or anything after listening to such a long and difficult story, but after gulping at the air a few times like a fish out of water, all I managed to say was one word. “Tomorrow.” Wonjun glanced at me. Even in the darkness, I knew there was no glimmer of hope in those dead, listless eyes. “Gwangsuk suggested we go hiking tomorrow. He says you could . . . You could do a few things that are supposed to help you heal. We’ll go tomorrow. Okay? We’ll have a good night’s sleep, and we’ll all go hiking tomorrow.” Wonjun didn’t respond. I reached out and felt around for his broccoli hand. Beneath the thick, warm stalk, I could feel the pulsing sensation of water coursing below the skin. The water will circulate around the head of broccoli then end up . . . where? Where exactly in Wonjun’s body would it go? I wondered. Would it go to the source of his hate and anger? If the hate comes into contact with pure, clean water, would it thin out as well? I stroked and caressed the broccoli stump for a long time. The insides of my stomach churned, as if my own hand was turning green. It was noon the next day when Wonjun and I met Pilsoon and Gwangsuk near the entrance to the Mt. Gwanak hiking trail next to the main gates of the Seoul National University campus. The elderly couple was dressed in matching hiking clothes in bright, sunny tones. We fussed over one another as soon as we met. I complimented the couple on their clothes and asked them where they had bought them, exclaiming over the pretty azalea color of their matching jackets while Gwangsuk grabbed Wonjun’s left hand, the hand that hadn’t turned into broccoli, and shook it up and down. I’ve been meaning to see you, boy, said Gwangsuk as he grinned a big, satisfied grin while Wonjun said, I’m Ko Wonjun and smiled shyly as if he were embarrassed or maybe a little tired. Even so, Gwangsuk refused to let go of his hand and held on to it for a long time. It was a weekday but there was a good number of hikers on the trail and the four of us looked like a nice, happy family. The weather was clear and bright, making it perfect for a hike. Gwangsuk had scampered up and down this mountain all the time from a young age, and Pilsoon had often joined him on these walks, so naturally the two of them led the way with their long hiking sticks while the rest of us fell behind. Since we were still near the entrance of the trail, the surrounding scenery was more like a park and less a big forest, with people kicking up dust on the smooth, firm trail. Wonjun and I walked in the middle of the path, holding hands. While walking, I thought of what Wonjun had said last night. I’ve also had times when I felt intense hatred for someone or was forced to do things I didn’t want to do, but the incidents somehow ended up working themselves out. At the time, I must have felt awful and angry, but soon the feelings went away on their own. The process might have taken some time or been quite complicated, but the feelings always went away in the end. Even the wildest of rages that built up inside me, that were so forceful that I’d bit down on my lips and tasted blood and swore never to forget the injustice, eventually disappeared as if nothing had happened. And it wasn’t like I actively tried to forget what happened. The incident that led to those feelings didn’t itself disappear, but the bad feelings ultimately did. I could later look back on what happened and remember how I felt at the time. Some mechanism must have been working deep inside me to help me forget those bad feelings. Otherwise, I couldn’t have become so numb to an anger that once felt so real. My body must have known that I wouldn’t be able to function if I kept those feelings inside me for too long, so the mechanism in charge of bringing a sense of calm and order back into my life went into overdrive in those moments. Perhaps Wonjun had been trying to stomach too much pain and anger for far too long to the point where his mechanism broke down. With nothing to filter out the hate and anger, he must have carried them in his body for too long, until one morning he woke up as broccoli man. Once his arm heals, what should Wonjun do? I thought as I walked up and down the rolling hills. I soon became out of breath. Meanwhile, Wonjun was walking serenely, wearing the same tired, sleepy expression, while Gwangsuk and Pilsoon were already far ahead of us as two azalea pink dots in the distance. I formed my two hands into a trumpet and shouted, Gwangsuuuuuuk! Are we there yet? At that, the two dots stopped and turned around and pointed to a spot some distance ahead as if to holler back, Just a little farther. They must have been thinking of stopping somewhere midway up the mountain instead of climbing to the peak. Thirty minutes later, we finally came across Gwangsuk and Pilsoon again, who were resting against a wooden fence. Pilsoon handed us an ice cold bottle of water wrapped in a handkerchief. You made it, you made it. Gwangsuk guffawed at the sight of me exhausted and barely keeping up. “This place seems as good as any.” With that, Gwangsuk climbed over the fence and wandered out beyond the marked path. I hesitated, not knowing if we were allowed back there, but Pilsoon also climbed over the fence, followed by Wonjun. Left with no choice, I gingerly climbed the fence after them. Gwangsuk kept venturing farther into the forest, brushing the long grass away from him. It wasn’t clear whether he knew where he was going. The rest of us followed him down a steep path that grew increasingly steeper. Suddenly, the path came to an abrupt end at a sharp cliff. Looking down, I saw jagged rocks reaching up from the bottom of the cliff. One false move and we’d be done for. It’s dangerous over there, so don’t get too close, said Gwangsuk as he reached into his bag to grab a rolled-up foil picnic blanket. He spread it over a wide, slightly bumpy rock, and we placed our bags on each of the four corners to weigh the blanket down. From her own bag, Pilsoon brought out several rolls of gimbab wrapped in foil, some drinks, and a Tupperware container holding fresh fruit. The food made for a nice picnic spread. We sat down and each grabbed a toothpick to use as forks. “Before we start eating, we have to do what we came here for,” Gwangsuk said. He stuck his toothpick into an apple slice and turned to Wonjun. “Now, take off that towel and start singing.” “Sing? Here? Now?” Wonjun said, looking understandably confused. “Don’t give me that and belt one out!” Wonjun glanced at me with a worried look on his face. I turned to look away, a smile working its way onto my lips. I felt bad for keeping him in the dark, but if I’d told him he had to sing, he never would have agreed to come along. Realizing what I’d done, Wonjun shot me a dirty look. But we were in the middle of a mountain. What was he going to do? “Just give it a try,” Gwangsuk suggested again. “What song should I sing?” Wonjun wondered. “Any song you want.” “But I don’t know any songs.” “Then scream. Scream as loud as you can.” As Wonjun hesitated, I took off the towel wrapped around his broccoli arm. The broccoli looked even greener and fresher in the sunlight. Gazing at the broccoli, Pilsoon suddenly spoke up. “Can I go first and shout something? I’m not going to sing.” “Sure, go right ahead,” Gwangsuk said. “Go ahead.” Pilsoon got up and carefully tiptoed to the edge of the cliff. About two steps away from the edge, she suddenly flopped to the ground, as if her head was spinning, and brought her hands to her lips. Inhaling deeply, she then let out a sharp yell. “Maljaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” I expected to hear an echo, but perhaps because the forest was not deep enough, there was none. And yet Pilsoon sat there, continuing her yell. “I didn’t mean it when I said those horrible things to you! I didn’t mean to hurt you! I hope you’ve gone to a good place! I’ll see you sooooooooon!” Pilsoon sat there for a while, staring off into the distance. Finally, she got up and dusted off the seat of her pants. Like a performer coming down from the stage, she returned to us with a shy smile on her lips. Gwangsuk and I greeted her with fierce applause. As Pilsoon sat down next to him, Gwangsuk gave her a big smile. “Wow, that made me feel good!” “Good job. Now it’s your turn, Wonjun.” I thought Wonjun was going to wave us off but surprisingly, he stood up and coughed a few times. He looked at us each in turn before cautiously walking to the same spot where Pilsoon had been. What was he going to do? I stared at Wonjun, my heart pounding. Wonjun took one step further from where Pilsoon had sat. Bending down, he looked down below. I jerked upright. The thought suddenly came to me that he might jump. Just then, Wonjun let out a yell. “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” It was an incredibly loud yell, at least ten times louder than Pilsoon’s scream. Taken aback, the rest of us exchanged glances with each other. A flock of birds took flight from a grove of trees below the edge of the cliff. Ignoring them, Wonjun brought his hands to his hips, inhaled deeply, then launched into song. “Until that day when the waters of the East Sea run dry and Mt. Baekdusan is worn away!” At his sudden outburst of song (or was it screaming?), the rest of us keeled over as if the wind had been knocked out of us. My goodness! So it was true he didn’t know any songs! But he’s singing the national anthem! Of all things! I laughed until my chest made strange hissing noises. Gwangsuk glared at me to keep quiet, but even he had tears in his eyes while Pilsoon was doubled over next to him, trembling with laughter. Ignoring the rest of us, Wonjun continued to sing the national anthem. “God protect and preserve our nation! Long live our nation!” Good! Good! Pilsoon shouted, as she clapped along to the song. I hollered, Keep going, Wonjun! Louder! Wonjun turned around and grinned. It was a grin beautiful enough to capture as a photograph, but also made me tear up for some reason. I was laughing so much that my stomach was getting itchy. Soon, Wonjun reached the end of the song. Clearing his throat, he walked back to us. I got up and gave him a hug. Good job, good job, I murmured as I patted his butt, stroked his head, and even pinched his cheeks. He downed a 500-ml bottle of water. “It’s strange. All I did was shout a little, but I feel so much lighter,” said Wonjun as he twisted his neck this way and that. “I told you that would happen,” smiled Gwangsuk. “You’ll feel better in no time.” I didn’t know how the yelling was supposed to heal Wonjun, but I for one felt great. In fact, I felt like I was going to burst into tears. It was just a little singing, just a little bit of shouting, but it made us feel so much better. It was like the feeling of switching from a thick, sweat-soaked winter comforter to a light and breezy spring blanket. I felt so much more relaxed. What was going on? Was it because we were deep in the mountains, surrounded by clear, cool air that sucked in all sound without giving off so much as an echo? I’d never heard Wonjun shout so loudly before. I didn’t think he had it in him, I thought, breathing in the clear mountain air. He can be so manly when he wants to be. Suddenly, a piece of kiwi stuck to a toothpick appeared before my nose. “Even the most majestic of vistas can wait till after we eat,” Pilsoon said, smiling, as she handed me the toothpick. We were in the middle of Mt. Gwanak, surrounded by scenery that was not exactly majestic, but I ate what was given to me. The kiwi’s tangy flavor made my mouth water and kept me wanting for more. Wonjun must have been just as hungry as he grabbed two pieces of gimbab with his left hand and tossed them into his mouth. I realized neither Wonjun nor I had eaten anything since yesterday. The gimbab soon disappeared but Pilsoon brought out plenty more food from her bag which I’d been regarding suspiciously because of how full it was: some fried tofu rolls, red bean jelly, popped rice, and even frozen barley tea for us to eat and drink and chew and swallow. The rice was a little warm and the fruit had turned slightly brown in some places but they were so delicious they brought tears to my eyes. Just then, Wonjun stopped in the middle of chewing his fried tofu roll. Groaning, he frowned and turned to stare at his broccoli arm. Thinking he might have bitten a grain of sand, I turned to look at him. “It’s bursting,” he groaned. “Bursting? What’s bursting?” I asked in alarm. The rest of us gazed at his broccoli arm, with our toothpicks in the air. Wonjun kept groaning and grunting. Suddenly, he reached out and grabbed his greenish forearm. “I can feel something bursting inside.” “Bursting?” I repeated. “I don’t know how to explain it. It feels like there are small fireworks going off inside my arm.” What? What does that mean? I was about to ask, feeling a growing sense of panic. Suddenly, Pilsoon and Gwangsuk began shouting and pointing at the same time. Gwangsuk grabbed Wonjun’s broccoli arm and brought it close to his face. “Look at this!” he yelled. I brought my face close and saw what he was pointing to. There were small, yellow dots on his arm. One of the broccoli florets had grown taller than the others, and was sprouting yellow dots on its tips. They were so tiny that we could only see them if we brought our faces close. But see them we could, and we instantly recognized what they were. “Those are flowers, aren’t they?” I asked. “Well, broccoli are flowering plants . . . that have been cultivated to grow bigger heads . . .” “Wait, you mean to say those small things are all flowers?” We brought our faces closer to Wonjun’s broccoli arm and spoke in hushed tones. Slowly but surely, tiny flowers were sprouting all over the broccoli tips. One of the earliest sprouts grew longer and longer until a tiny stalk emerged from the tip. From there, a bright yellow flower petal slowly wound its way upward and began to unfurl. Several minutes later, we saw the first fully blossomed flower. It was a tiny, simple flower with four petals forming a small cone. Soon, other flowers blossomed from the yellow tips. “Oh, those are so pretty,” Pilsoon exclaimed. “Yes, they really are,” I murmured. “What a sight!” We each murmured something in turn. I felt a wave of emotion come over me, as if I were seeing a newborn animal for the first time. I stroked Wonjun’s shoulder. “This feels weird,” Wonjun said as he looked down at his broccoli arm. His face was much more at peace, his eyes and lips more relaxed. “Yes, yes, you’re all better now,” Gwangsuk said with a pleased smile. About an hour later, Wonjun’s broccoli arm had turned into a big head full of flowers. Tiny flowers were adorning the head, with the flowers on the outermost tips drooping down while the flowers in the middle shooting up straight into the sky, altogether looking like a big, upside-down chandelier. When I held a flower between my fingers, it gave off a surprisingly strong peppery smell. It was a refreshing, very intense smell that was different from other flowers. We took turns carefully stroking the broccoli flowers, as if congratulating someone who had done himself proud. Each time our fingers brushed the flowers, they nodded and gave off their intense scent. It was a scent strong enough to last into our dreams. The sweet and spicy smell would likely carry through the wind and head out far and wide, all the way to the entrance of the Mt. Gwanak trail, I thought with a sense of pride. By the time we came back down the trail, the sun was setting. We went back the way we came and said our goodbyes in front of the campus gates. After sending an exhausted Gwangsuk and Pilsoon off on a taxi, Wonjun and I slowly walked to a fork in the road where we would have to say goodbye. Wonjun was carefully cradling his broccoli arm, still wrapped in a towel. He looked not unlike someone happily carrying a bouquet of flowers in honor of a joyous occasion. I walked home with a big bounce in my steps. I felt like bursting into song. Since I had worked up a big sweat that day, I showered and climbed into bed as soon as I got home. I thought I’d fall asleep immediately given how tired I was, but when I lay down, sleep didn’t come as soon as I thought. I was still excited from what happened that day, like a kid who had been to a picnic. Even though I closed my eyes, I could still picture the events of the day. I hugged my pillow close and tossed to my left, then to my right. I thought over what had happened. I realized I was disappointed at Wonjun for not confiding in me sooner about wanting to quit boxing. He’s usually so eager to talk about his thoughts and opinions, but when it came to sharing what he was feeling on the inside, he had kept me in the dark and suffered alone for all those months. Couldn’t he have told me how he felt? I felt myself pouting in the dark. I guess I couldn’t have offered him a solution even if he had told me. I might have attempted to cheer him up, by offering to take him out to a nice restaurant or maybe go on a trip somewhere, like what Gwangsuk must have done for Pilsoon last night. I felt embarrassed. I guess we’re all the same when it comes to comforting the ones we love. Would Gwangsuk offer to buy Pilsoon a new pet parrot? If he did, he was likely to buy a bird that was talkative and affectionate. The bird would be cute in a way that’s different from Malja, with a different voice and tone. But over time, he’d pick up curse words and start hurling them at random people, too. I was sure of it. I felt sleep finally come over me. The next morning, I woke up to find that Wonjun had sent me a text with an image attachment. I decided to quit boxing, he had written. The picture was of his right hand. There were still some flower buds near the tips that were withering away, and the hand was greenish in some places, but it looked like a proper human hand. I typed back, That’s great! And it really was. Translated by Amber Hyun Jung Kim Broccoli Punch Moonji, 2021
byLee, Yuri
The Things We Eat in Summer
When Auntie called and said she was going on a trip to Europe next month, I was lying in my bed at the Human Gosiwon. I was lucky enough to have a window in my crammed little unit, and I could see the “man Go” part of “Human Gosiwon” printed on it in reverse. I was only at a gosiwon because my rent had expired and I needed someplace to stay before I found a new place, but the word gosiwon had a real impact on my life. Friends and acquaintances kept treating me to food or drinks. On those days, I would tiptoe back into the gosiwon halls at dawn, breathing a sigh of relief in knowing this was only temporary. On those days, I wanted to grab anyone I saw and ask, What do you think? This is just a temporary arrangement for all of us here, right, fellow HUMAN? It made me a little sad, though, that about the only places I could afford weren’t much better than Human Gosiwon. So one day, I just lounged around on my bed, staring at the back of the “man Go” on my window. Not “Mango” but “man Go,” of all things. The window must have been unimaginably thin, because the AC had no effect. I do want to go somewhere out of here. But where is ‘here’ even? The gosiwon? Seoul? That was when Auntie phoned me and said with no lead-up, “Honey, I want you to look after the shop while I’m gone.” “How do you expect me to look after it?” I replied. “Just open and close the shutters every day at the right times.” “What if people ask me how to knit and stuff?” “They’re all old hands. You can leave ’em alone to knit and chat.” “I’ll think about it.” Thinking about it on my own just gave me a headache, so I gave my old high school classmate B a call. He lived a little far away, so I waited alone at the pub for a while. The food wasn’t great, and neither was the interior, but the chilled mugs they used kept me coming back. I was munching on cuttlefish with beer when B finally showed up in a suit. The first thing he did was give me a scolding for the cuttlefish. “Do you even think about the markup?” “Yeah, but it’s not like I’d eat it at home.” B thought about it intently before replying, “That’s true.” Ironically, B ended up getting an order of assorted fritters. That’s a decent choice too, I thought, munching on my cuttlefish slice. Now that I think about it, how do people decide between all these decent choices? Making a choice means something gets chosen. Right now, even the side dishes for beer are getting chosen, while I’m still sitting here waiting to be picked. Just like my cuttlefish. People choose fritters and jjigae because they’re cost-efficient and mainstream, but the only people who order cuttlefish are the ones who don’t think about how much cheaper it is to buy at the store. So the cuttlefish is the story of my life, huh? That was when B asked, “So what’s the occasion, calling on a weekday?” “Eh. Nothing much.” “Be honest, you didn’t even know it was a weekday.” “Yeah, basically.” He gave me a sidelong look and said, “Shit, forgot to order beer.” I raised my voice through the din to place his order, then turned to ask, “So what’s the occasion, coming out in a suit on a weekday?” “Job interview.” “What?” “This guy I know said there’s a job opening for a designer at his office.” “What about that stuff you were doing?” “. . . I can always go back to that later.” “Damn it, stop trying to act all cool and serious like that.” We had a good laugh, and raised a toast for luck. But part of me wanted him to fail so he could keep going with his old project. I tried to drink away those feelings so B wouldn’t know, and before I knew it, I was as drunk as ever, being held back by B as I tried to dance in front of a nearby taffy stand. Then there was nothing. 2 So was my favorite conjunction. Somehow it seemed to make every sentence make sense. Even when listening to a boring conversation, just saying, So, and rewording what the other person said would make you look engaged. And that was why B knew that any time I used that tactic, I’d lost interest in whatever he was saying. He knew too many of my embarrassing secrets. Which is why you have to die for my honor, I’d joked once. More than once, actually, although I didn’t resent him in the slightest. There were other people I did want to kill. I dreamed often about killing someone and ruining my life. In my nightmares, I always made small, stupid mistakes that killed people. There wasn’t any resentment or hate. And because I didn’t want to ruin my life over something so small, I would always hide the body. But the truth would eventually come to light. Then I would wake up and let the relief crash over my body, knowing my life wasn’t ruined after all . . . Then again, was it really not ruined? Anyway . . . So, I went back to my hometown to move out of the Human Gosiwon and get an early start learning about running Auntie’s knitting shop. 3 The knitting shop was a tiny space in a long alleyway in the traditional market. To the left was the Original Oxhead Gukbap and to the right was the Classic Duvet Store. The gukbap place had good food and the duvet place had tacky blankets. The bad thing about the gukbap place was that they had a pig’s head in a basin at the entrance. Even setting aside the ridiculousness (a pig’s head at an oxhead gukbap restaurant?), the vague half-smile on the dead pig didn’t exactly whet the appetite. But one spoonful of the gukbap brought the appetite right back, and by that point the pig’s head didn’t matter so much. The duvet shop’s customers were mostly people who did business at the markets, so Auntie had one of their bright green ruffled summer blankets and a purple microfiber blanket with big flower patterns—which I pulled over myself as I thought, This is only temporary. One day I’ll have a place of my own with a stack of tasteful linens . . . The second I arrived at the markets, she took me around for introductions. Of course she’s my daughter. I raised her, you know. She’s in a band. She even has an album. What was it called? Anyway, it’s on YouTube. I’d trail after her, bowing to all the faces, repeating, I’m not that big on YouTube, but you can find me on Melon, but please, you don’t have to look for me. Please, you don’t really need my autograph. And that was how my autograph ended up on the walls of the banchan store, the fishmonger’s store, and the shoe store. As we made the rounds, Auntie bought mackerel, soybean sprouts, and tiny chilge crab stir-fry. I had to plead with her not to buy me shoes, because everything there was either behind the times or too far ahead. Auntie decided to close up shop early and have dinner together. Steamed kimchi and mackerel, stir-fried soybean sprouts, and stir-fried chilge crabs. “You used to love chilge,” Auntie said. “I did?” “You asked me to pack it for lunch every day.” That was true. She’d put it once in my lunchbox, and my classmates had gone wild. They’d never seen such tiny crabs, and couldn’t believe that you had to chew it whole. So I’d asked for chilge again and again, but eventually it wasn’t such hot news anymore, and I never liked the stuff to begin with. I forgot to mention that to Auntie. As I sat by the store entrance talking about chilge, Auntie tidied up inside. Three of the walls were lined from floor to ceiling with bundles of yarn in every color. In the middle was a large raised platform for sitting or lying down. A small low table had been placed there, and was home to a platter of Auntie’s various needles, sewing shears, and a ledger. I flipped through the ledger and asked, “So I have to order yarn and stuff for you while you’re gone?” “People buy everything online these days,” she replied. “Then what do they buy here?” “They shop here once in a while too.” Auntie gave a haphazard sweep of the store with a small vacuum cleaner, and once the loose threads were gone, taught me how to close up shop and bring down the shutters. It was decorated with little holes cut in the shape of birds. “I like this design.” “I got it done recently.” “People actually try to steal yarn?” “It puts my mind at ease.” 4 Auntie mixed up an assortment of spices and put it into the funny-looking electric steamer with the mackerel. “You bought another one?” “You can do so much with it! Just take a look at the booklet, Dear.” I picked up the black hardcover instruction manual. The dishes pictured inside were something else, I had to admit, but you needed an oven for pretty much all of those dishes. “Why didn’t you just get an air fryer?” I asked, looking up from the manual. That set Auntie’s mood on edge. Over dinner, I told her how great the steamed mackerel was, and how she could close the knitting shop and start a home-style Korean restaurant instead, although I didn’t mention that the steamer would take twenty-five minutes per dish and drive all the customers away hungry and impatient. After dinner, I lay down on the living room floor with a full stomach. Auntie kept trying to go and do the dishes, so I told her to leave it so I could do it later. She finally laid down beside me. There was nothing good on TV, so I handed the remote over. She picked the home shopping channel. The host and guest were applying foundation on their faces. “You want one?” Auntie asked, her back turned. I replied, “Nah, it’s trendy to not wear makeup these days.” “What kind of trend is that? You should dress up more.” “Why, because I’m not pretty enough already?” “. . . You’re older.” “Obviously. I’m past thirty.” “I wish you could look like a baby forever.” I hugged Auntie from behind and buried my face in her back. “Say, Auntie? Maybe I should just stay here with you instead of going back to Seoul.” “Gross,” Auntie joked. “What about that music career of yours?” Silence fell, forcing us to listen quietly to the home shopping host. 5 The next thing I knew, I was lying under a layer of blankets. They must have come from the duvet store next door. I didn’t care for the design, but they were fluffy and pleasantly soft. Rising to my feet, I opened the living room curtains. The balcony was packed with unfamiliar plants. One of the trees had grown all the way to the ceiling. Why does Auntie have to raise so many things? We had a dog, too, when I was young. A Maltese with the unoriginal name “Chorong.” She was sensitive and barked at the slightest noise. It was a different time, back when no one really cared how you treated dogs. I don’t think we took very good care of Chorong. She suffered from a uterine infection before she died. The kitchen was neat and tidy. On the dining table I found a 10,000-won bill and a note saying, “You owe me for doing the dishes.” I folded the note in half and put it into my wallet with the bill. After quickly washing my face and brushing my teeth, I stepped outside. It was hot. What do I do with ten thousand won on a scorching day? I found myself walking towards my old schools. My elementary school was right next to my junior high school, but my high school was a little far. So I headed for the elementary and junior high schools. B sent a text message saying, “I start work next week.” I replied, “You’re buying dinner right?” He asked when I would come back to Seoul. I angrily wrote, “I’m not,” but stopped short of sending the text. I didn’t know why I was so mad. Fuming, I eventually reached the elementary school’s athletic field. Across the way were the horizontal bars. I put my phone and wallet on the ground and hung from one. That was what we used to do, back in the day—chin-ups for the boys and endurance hanging for the girls. Back then, it wasn’t hard at all. I’d hung on until I broke the class record. Now, though, my hands kept slipping before I could even get tired. Were my palms too sweaty, or was my grip no longer strong? I turned, pulled my legs onto the bar, and hung upside-down with my knees. It was easy. Amidst the upside-down world, I spotted an upside-down sign that read “Youth Mall.” I climbed down, picked up my phone and wallet, and walked off the field. The first floor of the mall was home to Always Spring Leather Artisans, the 102 Salon, and a corn dog place just called The Corn Dog Place. I went to the 102 Salon to look at the candles. The shapes were surprisingly creative. My favorite was the one shaped like a pair of hands clasped in prayer. In one corner of the store was a schedule for one-off educational workshops, all of which were scheduled during the day. I gave the owner a bow and left the store. I considered Always Spring Leather Artisans before turning to The Corn Dog Place. It was 2,500 for the Original Corn Dog, 3,000 for the Chili Dog, and 4,000 for the Big Corn Dog. Affordable. The man who seemed to be the owner looked about my age. “One Original, please.” “Sure, let me just fry it up for you one more time.” He picked up one of the sausages from the display and flipped it around and around in the fryer, brows furrowed in concentration. Once he was finished, he asked, “Would you like sugar rolled on?” “No thank you.” Rolling sugar onto a corn dog was a little funny. I laughed a little. Who even does that? The man carefully squeezed ketchup and mustard from bottles with narrow mouths onto the corn dog before handing it to me. As I turned, he shouted, “Would you like a stamp card?” I declined and walked out of the Youth Mall, wondering what kind of a building it might have been before as I took a bite out of the corn dog. It tasted average, and not that great considering the heat. Could you even make a living like this? I wondered, but then again, it wasn’t my corn dog store. I kept on walking, all the way to my old high school while I was at it. On the way, I passed the store where I bought my first album. The sign was the same, but they didn’t seem to sell actual albums anymore. The old guitar class where I used to take lessons was gone, and I passed by the park where I had my first kiss, but although I remembered the kiss like it was yesterday, I just couldn’t remember who it was with. Around that point, I tossed the paper corn dog wrapper in a trash can and soon reached the school. There was a new building on the grounds. The long staircase that decorated the exterior looked impressive. I took a walk around the perimeter and went back home. 6 The next day, I went to the knitting shop with Auntie. She put a crochet hook into my hand and taught me to make a chain. “This is the first thing you have to learn,” she said, urging me to make a chain as long as I was tall, but it was harder than it looked. The yarn kept slipping no matter how hard I gripped, and the hook refused to budge out of the chain in spite of my efforts. I finally put down the hook and yarn and lay on my back on the sitting platform. “You have to loosen up,” Auntie said, crocheting a dish scrubber. “I did.” “You have to loosen up if you want to loosen the yarn.” “It’s not working.” “You have to hold the yarn like you don’t mind if you lose your grip. That’ll make space in the weave for you, enough to get the hook through.” I was silent. “Holding it tighter isn’t going to help you keep your grip. Take it easier,” she said, yarn and hook continuing to dip and rise. Before long, she had a strawberry-shaped dish scrubber in hand. She made a few more before moving on to oranges and watermelons. I couldn’t believe how fast she was. “I have a display outside for these, you know. One thousand five hundred won each.” “You make them to sell?” “Why else would I make so many?” Why else? If everything’s made to be sold, what does that say about things no one buys? If I was going to be born in this society anyway, I wish I’d been born able to make something that sells. But then again, maybe ability wasn’t the issue. It was more deep-rooted, like my insight, or my choices were what was wrong. My insight that led me to invest myself into things that didn’t sell, like a failing investor. The investor who knew what her problem was but still made the same mistake when given the same set of choices again. “Do they sell?” “More than you’d think.” Auntie, I guessed, wasn’t like me. A customer arrived just then, so instead of continuing my struggle with the yarn, I walked out of the store. Just one block from the end of the markets was the Youth Mall from the other day. I suddenly wanted to see the corn dog shop owner, grimacing over his work. I wanted to try it again—the corn dog I doubted would sell. The corn dog that tasted exactly the way it looked. When I brought the corn dogs back to the knitting store, Auntie complained that I had childish taste buds. She enjoyed the corn dog nonetheless. I bought the Chili Dog this time, which was a little better than the original—it had more character. “You like it, Auntie?” “Eh, I’m just eating it because you bought it. I’m not really fond of stuff like this.” “Do you think it will sell?” “Food like this is all about location.” “I got it at the Youth Mall. You know where it is, right?” “Bad location, then.” “Even though it’s right in front of the elementary school?” “How much for one dog?” “Three thousand won.” “Grade schoolers can’t afford that. The donut store across the way sells ten for one thousand.” “It’s a lost cause, then.” “Mhm.” I tossed the wrapping paper into the trash. Afterwards, I gave the crochet hook one more try before giving up again. 7 B texted to say he was going to be on YouTube. His company posted videos online, and the employees each took turns featuring in them. B offered to promote my album. I shot back that there was no point promoting something from half a decade ago. He gave me a call. “Aren’t you supposed to be working, B?” “I’m on the rooftop having a smoke. What’re you up to?” “Not much. Just at Auntie’s store.” “I asked ‘what,’ not ‘where.’” “Eating corn dogs and learning to knit.” “You’re taking over her shop?” “As if.” “I don’t have any drinking buddies in Seoul now that you’re gone.” “Oh, gross.” “Another month before you come back, right?” “Or maybe forever.” “No way. I’ll come visit next weekend.” “Don’t.” When I hung up, Auntie asked me who it was. She beamed when I told her it was B. Every time I mentioned him, she’d go on about how I should marry him. No matter how much I told her that wouldn’t happen, she would make plans to babysit her grandkids. Just thinking about having kids who looked like B gave me the shivers. A figure outside picked up one of the dish scrubbers and asked how much they cost. I went outside and saw the corn dog guy holding a strawberry-shaped scrubber. “One thousand five hundred won, please.” He pulled out his wallet to pay in cash when he saw my face. “Hey, you’re—that stamp card—” He asked me if I was the owner, and I told him the shop belonged to my aunt. He just stood there with the scrubber in hands, so I invited him in. He surprised the other customers and Auntie by stepping in without another thought. “You know him?” Auntie asked. “The corn dog—” Before I could finish, Auntie was already gushing at the man about how much she loved the corn dog. The man slowly looked around the shop. Without any lead-up, he asked how long it took to make one dish scrubber. When Auntie told him it didn’t take long if you knew the basics, he asked about lesson fees. “No such thing! Just buy some yarn and I’ll teach you everything you need to know.” The man bought some purple yarn and sat himself down. He also started with the chain pattern. It made me feel like I had to sit down to crochet, too. The man floundered a little, but quickly found his pace. At first Auntie told him to make a chain as long as he was tall, but because he was so tall, she quickly told him to make one that was my height. It wasn’t long before he had what she ordered. In the meantime, I also learned to keep a gentle grip. It was magical to see the hook weave effortlessly between the threads. So it’s all about keeping things loose, I thought with a nod, and laughed when I realized that was exactly the advice Auntie had given me. “You’ve got a funny laugh,” he said. I looked at the ground sheepishly. 8 He visited Auntie’s shop many times after that. I dropped by his place for corn dogs every day. The man was three years my senior, and had worked at an office job in Seoul before he returned to his hometown to sell corn dogs. He firmly emphasized the word “return.” It turned out we’d gone to the same junior high school, but we were too far apart in age to have known each other, and didn’t have any friends outside our grades who might be mutual acquaintances. The man took to knitting like a fish to water, mastering the art of dish scrubber-crocheting in a matter of days. He was probably better at this than making corn dogs. One day, I sat on a makeshift bench beside his counter with a corn dog in hand. “Wasn’t it scary? When you decided to return?” I asked, finding myself emphasizing the “return.” “Returning wasn’t so scary,” he said, and softly added, “But the thought that I might never be able to return always was.” I turned the words over in my mind as I munched on the corn dog. The sun shone overhead, and the Youth Mall was still deserted. 9 While I was cleaning out the closet, I dug out an old sweater Auntie had knitted for me when I was young. She always pronounced “sweater” the old way, without the “w.” When I showed her the sweater after she came home from work, she said she’d have to make me a new “setter.” She told me she had to take my measurements, so I sat with my back turned. Auntie took a tape measure to my back, my shoulder, and waist, and my arms. The tape measure tickled my neck and I hunched my shoulders. Completely undisturbed, Auntie made note of the measurements on a notepad in big handwriting. Then she brought some green yarn from her room and began to knit. The sound of the knitting needles reminded me of the sound of footsteps in the snow. “But really, Auntie. Sweaters at this time of year?” “I want to do it now before I forget. And I haven’t taken your measurements in forever.” I went back to cleaning out the closet. The stuff I used to wear at twenty had gone out of style, then circled right back to being trendy. Throwing out the Guess boot cut jeans was a little painful because it was just getting popular again. Things I thought would never return were roaring back into fashion. Thankfully, the short boleros weren’t part of that trend and I had no regrets about tossing them. Just as I got into the rhythm, the corn dog guy texted me. “Did you close up shop?” “Yes. Did you?” “No, come have a corn dog.” He then added, “It’s on the house.” I told Auntie I was going for a stroll. It was a hot evening. This time, I walked through the market streets. I loved it best at this time of day. The sparkling lights made everything look tasty or useful to have. My second favorite time of day to be at the market was at dawn, when it was silent and people closed their shutters or put up their tents. The Corn Dog Place was the only store on the first floor still open. The owner had his back turned as he tidied up his fridge. “I’m here.” “Oh. I just put everything away.” “You’re the one who invited me over.” “Oh. Right . . .” He stood there awkwardly for a moment before packing away the rest of the ingredients in the fridge and saying, “Then let’s get dinner together.” 10 We had oxhead gukbap that evening. The man wondered if it wouldn’t be too hot for it, but I replied that once we’d eaten and stepped out of the restaurant, we’d feel refreshed. We only learned each other’s names over dinner. It was funny, I said, that when we learned we were from the same neighborhood, we’d asked other what schools we went to before we even introduced ourselves over oxhead gukbap, of all things. “It’s so Korean of us,” I said, and he laughed silently. “You’ve got a funny laugh,” I said. He looked at the ground and laughed out loud this time. Once we’d sweated it out over the gukbap and stepped outside, the air felt pleasantly cool. When I asked him if he felt the same, he pulled out a handheld electric fan in place of an answer. He didn’t live far from Auntie’s. We decided to walk through the markets. Partway through, we saw a sign for a fortuneteller and stopped to study it. It read: “Hyeonjin Fortunetelling (formerly Hyeonmo Fortunetelling): Naming, Marital Compatibility Fortunes.” “You think the fortuneteller did a reading on her own business name and changed it?” I asked. “I bet. I got my name from one of these places too.” “Me too. I had three names.” “Really?” “The official register says I’m ‘Mihwa,’ but at home they called me ‘Mijeong.’ The fortuneteller gave me the name ‘Miju.’” “Wow, Miju. I can’t picture you as a Mihwa. But they all have the character ‘mi,’ don’t they?” “It’s ‘mi’ for ‘beautiful.’ I was born ugly, that’s why.” Most people would say, “But you look beautiful now,” or something about how being ugly as a kid actually meant something good for the future, but he didn’t say a thing. He just kept walking, deep in thought. “Your aunt says you’re a musician,” he said suddenly. I hated having to explain this. “I used to be in a band. It didn’t work out.” “Can I look you up and have a listen?” “No need to ask for permission.” “It would feel rude to not ask for it.” “You won’t find my name. You have to look up the song titles.” I gave him some of the titles. “Miju, do you sing?” “Yes.” “We’re going to have weekly night market festivals starting the week after next. You should give the singing competition a shot,” he said with a grin that declared that he wasn’t being serious. “Maybe I should. Is there a prize?” “Coupons you can use at the night market.” “If I win, I’ll buy you something.” The stupid jokes went on until we reached a fork. He turned into the alleyway with the rice store, and I turned into the alleyway with the bar. We waved goodbye to each other. Once I was home, I got another text message from him. “Check your teeth, Miju.” I ran to the bathroom mirror and found one large chili flake stuck in my front tooth. 11 B getting a job coincided with a mutual friend’s birthday, so they held a big celebration for them both. I bought two leather card holders from Always Spring Leather Artisans and two praying-hands candles from the 102 Salon for them. “Shame I can’t just give them corn dogs for presents,” I said as I told the man about my trip. “Then here’s a present for you,” he said, handing me a corn dog. 12 Everyone else was running late, leaving me alone with B. I couldn’t get used to seeing him in a button-down shirt. When I asked if designers had to follow a dress code too, he said that he was just being cautious because he was new. I made fun of his midsummer slacks and long sleeves, and how he was getting old. B looked me in the eye. “Did you gain weight?” “Yep.” “You look good.” “Feasting on corn dogs every day.” “Corn dogs?” I told him about the new Youth Mall markets in the neighborhood and how I was friends with the corn dog guy. B replied, “Making friends already? That’s just like you.” He didn’t say anything to me again after that. Whenever I got together with my friends, I became aware of the things that hadn’t changed—and the things that had—at the same time. For example, B was still terrible at raising his voice over the din to order beer, I ordered cuttlefish, and the birthday girl showed up with a stack of wedding invitations. She ordered a cola instead of liquor, and we blew out the candles three times—once for B getting a job, once for the birthday girl, and one last time for the birthday girl’s marriage and pregnancy. We got one another caught up about our lives until it was my turn. I opened with my recent move back to our hometown and was immediately showered with worried looks. Another free dinner, I groaned inwardly. Time seemed to fly by, because a few conversations after the gift unveilings, it was time for me to catch my bus. When I announced I had to leave, the birthday girl also rose, saying she was tired because she was early on in her pregnancy. That was the signal for pretty much everyone to get to their feet and go home. I ended up taking the subway with B halfway to the bus terminal because his place was on the way. B was still silent, and I thought of saying something but stopped myself again and again. We stood side by side with hands on the bars, like a pair of strangers. I glanced at his reflection through the window, but the glass was distorted and made it hard to read his face. When the person in front of us got up, he told me to take the seat. Before he disembarked, he leaned down and asked, “You really don’t remember who your first kiss was with?” It can’t be . . . B? I couldn’t bring myself to ask. So I made my way back watching the YouTube video B was in. The corn dog guy texted again. “I heard your music,” he said. I regretted asking, “What did you think?” He replied, “I don’t think you should join the singing competition.” He really was an honest man. 13 B posted a picture of the candle and card holder on his social media account. I pressed “Like.” 14 It was almost time for Auntie’s trip. As the date drew near, I began to worry if she would be all right on her own. She made a point of buying a stomach-warmer belt that doubled as a secret pouch. “You don’t need those anymore,” I said, explaining about European pickpockets and thieves. A Korean tourist was once dragged into an alley in Europe by a thug, I explained, and when the tourist stammered in English, “No money, no money,” the thug unfolded a scrunched-up piece of paper that said in Korean, “Hand over your stomach warmer.” Auntie gave a roar of laughter and kept on repeating “Hand over your stomach warmer” between guffaws. Worried I might have made her anxious, I quickly told her that I’d seen the story online. Which was probably true, because I didn’t know where I’d heard it. Auntie brought a freshly-knit green sweater from her room. “That was fast,” I said. “I’m an old hand, that’s why.” The fit was loose but comfortable. “I heard lose-fit is all the rage these days.” “You mean loose-fit?” “Yeah, lose-fit.” Could she really make it in Europe on her own? I wondered. It was so hot that I was wearing just my underwear and the sweater in front of the mirror. That was when Auntie handed me a green knit bag. “You made this too?” “Out of that old sweater you used to wear.” “How?” “What do you mean, ‘how?’ I just unfurled it and reused the yarn.” “You can do that?” “You can do that with anything that’s been knit. Just unfurl and reuse.” I had no idea. Who knew you could change yarn into something totally different than before? I thought, pulling on the bag. Now I looked stupid, wearing the green sweater, green bag, and my underwear. What am I, Peter Pan? Auntie saw me laugh to myself and said, “Laughing at night like that makes you a silly goose, you know,” as she went to her room. What does that make you, laughing over the stomach warmer? I heard the sound of English conversation practice from her room. So that’s what she’s been doing holed up in there, I thought, listening to her repeat sentences like, “Which way is . . .?” I decided to text the corn dog guy. “I think I’ll join the competition after all.” It wasn’t long before he replied, “Please, anything but that,” and left me rolling in laughter in nothing but a sweater and underwear. Auntie was about to go somewhere very far, and I had already come a long way. It’s like we’re never going to grow up. Translated by Slin Jung Song Ji Hyun debuted with the story “A Study on Punk-Rock Style Straw Design” which won the 2013 Dong-a Ilbo New Writer’s Contest. She has authored the short-story collection Like an Epilogue, So to Speak and the essay collection East Sea Life. She received the 2021 Hyundae Munhak Literary Award for the story “The Things We Eat in Summer,” which is carried here in full.
bySong Ji Hyun
Your Mom’s the Better Player
“Im not going back to school.” The child throws his book bag on the sofa the moment he gets in. You went to meet him, surprised, after hearing him stomping outside. Now you pick up his bag and follow him, holding your heart, which is sinking again at this announcement. “What happened? Tell me what was it this time, hmm?” “I already told you, you can’t just come into my room whenever you want!” “Jiseung, I’m not in yet. Look.” You carefully withdraw your foot from the threshold. The child stands erect again after flopping down on his bed, and he is staring at you, framed by the doorway, breathing hard in uncontrolled rage. “I don’t need my bag. I’m not going to school anymore.” “What are you talking about? Everyone has to go to school. What’s the matter with you?” He’s not yet grown, so his shoulders are narrow, and they go up and down in time with his breathing. With every expansion and contraction of the boy’s chest, you shrink a little. He has the bad habit of screaming he’ll quit whenever things don’t go his way. Come on, he’s only in fifth grade, what could be so hard? No, you’re an understanding mother. You don’t think like this. Whenever you feel yourself starting to resent the child, you turn the blame on yourself for not giving enough. Many of the things in his world didn’t exist when you were eleven, and most of them are more important than the things you knew about. You’re proud of yourself for being a mom who understands this. “The kids say they’re not going to play with me.” “Again?” He already went through this in third grade. It was because he was fat. You were giving him traditional herbal medicine. He had a history of being picky about food, and of course he didn’t like the smelly pellets, but he took them without a word twice daily for a month and a half for a total of ninety-nine pellets, holding his father to his promise to get him a smartwatch in return. Although his appetite gradually increased, and he even came to eat the crab sticks, green onion, broccoli and other things he’d rejected, there was a problem. He grew fatter but not taller. It’s all right. When you’re this little, the weight you put on all goes to make you taller. This was what your in-laws, husband, and friends all said, and you didn’t doubt it. But the boy’s friends had no interest in his future height. They focused on the fact that your child, the child before them, was a pig. You went to the school and met with the parents of the instigator. You enjoined the teacher to educate the kids on human rights, regardless of their age. You got some medicine to speed the metabolism from the same traditional medicine clinic that prescribed the growth supplements. You used reduced-calorie ingredients for the homemade gluten-free snacks that you fed your child, and you registered him in a kids’ fitness program. Nothing was easy. The bully’s parents resisted admitting their child was at fault even as they noted Jiseung was quite a mound of a boy, wasn’t he? The homeroom teacher didn’t take any measures until you filled a new wallet with department store gift notes and gave it as a present. The child kicked up a fuss screaming and crying, not wanting to go to school or to fitness class. After all of these efforts, you received an apology from the bully’s parents, and you managed to get the other students to stop making life hell for your child, but you couldn’t make any friends for him. Rather, after the apology, it seemed like he was on to season two: being an outcast. Other children used to talk to him, if only to tease him, but now they pretended not to see him, as if he were invisible. The more you complained to the school, the worse the situation became. The child was unusually depressed for his age, and he so hated going to school. It was a battle for you to get him ready every morning. His appetite was good and it was so nice that he did not balk at certain foods anymore, but at the same time, this aggravated your sense of why others were excluding him. Friendship is everything at that age, and if he didn’t learn how to get along, then think how hard it will be for him in the future. You were so upset about this that you considered having a second child—even then it wouldn’t be too late—and spoke earnestly with your husband about it. This went beyond talks to physical attempts, but nothing materialized. It took your child over a year to befriend someone and take him home for a visit. Over this time period, he grew over 20 centimeters and gained only 4 kilograms. It seemed that his problems were solved by the effects of the medicine finally kicking in, so that he could no longer be teased for being a pig. You always feel contrite, as this did not come about through your own efforts. It was your fault that he was bullied, but he was saved by his own strength. You have to repay him somehow. “What is it this time? Should I go and have a word with them?” The boy kicks his heel against the bottom of the bedframe, looking down, tears filling his eyes. “They say I suck at the game. They won’t play with me.” You are struck dumb. You should scold him. “You were at the PC bang again?” But somehow the mood is wrong. You should ask him where he picked up a word like “suck,” but that too has to be put off for the time being. The hardest thing to grasp is that he can be excluded, not for being a poor student or a poor athlete, but for being a poor gamer. “Well, so what if you do? That’s okay. It’s not the only game in the world, right? You can play many games well. Ask them to play something you’re good at. Let’s invite them over and you can all play together in the living room. I’ll serve up something good to eat, too.” Your husband works at a Korean branch of a Japanese gaming company. The other kids would give their right arms to have the game consoles and software you have in plenty at your house. After surveying these and going home, they’ll resent their parents. And as much as they resent their parents, they’ll envy your child, perhaps even more. But the boy bursts out crying before you’re even done speaking. “They played a match, and no one wanted me on the team. Gyeongheon’s good, so they wanted him.” Uncertain if you understand what he’s saying through his tears, you feel like crying yourself. “You don’t understand, Mom. You’ll never understand.” You rush over and take him in your arms. “I’m sorry I didn’t know. I’ll see what I can do, okay?” The child has already caught up to you in size. He cries audibly in your embrace, and you are thankful he looks to you even if it is only in times of sadness. You wonder when he will calm down enough to get washed up and sit at his desk for the English tutor who will soon be over. All the while, you murmur, “I know what to do” over and over again. You did all you could. In the future, also, you will do all you can. If it is worth it, you will even try things that you can’t do. You have this kind of mindset about your child. Your child is special. This isn’t a joke or an exaggeration. Little by little, he has shown talent in a variety of domains, and he can persevere longer than other kids. Only, his ability to get along with others isa little weak. In your judgment, however, this isn’t a failing. It’s because he can’t relate to his peers. He’s innocent like a child, but he’s mature for his age in other ways. Should you homeschool him? Should you get his father to apply to a foreign post, or tell him to stay, like a “goose dad” while you take the boy abroad to study? At the height of the bullying last time you had these questions, and you still haven’t made a decision. And after a year of being ostracized, he made friends, and his new friends liked him although they said he was “out there.” That’s it, he has to master the art of making friends. And it’s true, he should make many Korean friends even if we plan to go abroad. Emotional intelligence is intelligence, too. There’s a time for everything. Our child will do well. The child has everything. You can’t give as much as the so-called “helicopter moms” in Gangnam do, but you do well for your neighborhood. The child learns two instruments and attends classes at an art studio even though you don’t intend for him to major in the arts. And as for his studies, since tutors seem superior to afternoon cram schools, you get him tutors in Math and English. Thanks to this, he is among the top students at his school. He’s no slouch at sports, either. When you granted his wish to attend classes at a K-Pop dance studio for a couple of months, he learned so quickly that they said he could join the teen class. He sings well like his father, and he’s good-looking like his mother. Neither parent is very tall and that used to be cause for concern, but he’s now the second tallest in his class. He grew so fast in two years that you rather thought that might be a problem, but the growth clinic says that it will be okay as long as you look after him. One afternoon your child announces, “Today in class, one of the kids cried. Someone called their mom a pig.” The next day you begin attending the skin clinic again. You can’t just do nothing if the kids are evaluating their mothers on appearance. Up till high school, you’d hoped to major in Korean traditional dance, and you still have a straight, upright frame that you’ve managed to keep trim. Your hair, however, is a little on the thin side, and you have visible spots from a flare-up of atopic dermatitis. “I like you because you’re different from the women who get married and then just let themselves go.” Thinking that your husband’s appraisal and your child’s report that day complemented each other perfectly, you order the entire line of organic black bean hair loss prevention products that the salon owner recommended. This isn’t to prevent balding, but to protect your son from being teased about you until he cries. To be honest, sometimes you’d like to be your child. No one in his class lives in an apartment finer than his. None of the fathers drives a car as nice. Your mom never stood up for you through all of the things you had to endure. And as for your father, you don’t want to think about him, and you can’t come up with a single memory of him. Therefore, everything you do for your child is at the same time more than that: it’s something you do for yourself. Not for the person you are now, raising an eleven-year-old child, but for your inner child, who cannot receive compensation from anyone. You love your child even as you are fully conscious of this. This is why even as you do everything you can, at the same time, you believe that there’s nothing you can’t do. But all of the sudden, games? How can I solve this kind of a problem? Your child has just blurted out a story that confronts you, for almost the first time, with a problem you can’t solve through your own efforts. But you felt the same way when he confessed to being bullied the first time around. You have already faced a challenge like this. Last time, the problem was not solved entirely to your liking, but this time things will be different. Prevention is key. You won’t let him be bullied again. “Get a tutor.” You usher the English tutor into the child’s room and find the answer in a chat you are having with a friend on messenger. There it is, right under your nose! And because it hits you as your child is having a lesson, it seems all the more obvious. Why didn’t you think of it? You are living in an era when you can get tutoring in pet grooming, why not gaming too? “But will he really need tutoring? If these guys say they’re going to shun him for playing badly, then doesn’t it just reflect badly on them? Don’t you think it’ll pass?” “If you haven’t raised a child, you don’t know. You’d think they’d forget, but children at this age never let things go. Jiseung, too. He’ll remember it if I don’t do something, and he’ll keep bringing it up.” You think back to something your child said. Wasn’t Gyeongheon supposed to play well? Gyeongheon is in fierce competition with your child in a number of areas. Although his family circumstances are not as good as your son’s, they are good enough, and he’s the tallest in the class. He is the third tallest in the school, and the tallest in fifth grade. He’s a point above or below your son in each individual subject, and he’s so popular that he’s been through three girlfriends so far this year. Your son adores him, but he’s also jealous. He’s often reported on Gyeongheon’s activities, especially going into detail about the new girlfriends. You think this is something very cute about your child. He has no experience of love games and pretends to think it’s silly or repulsive, but at his age he doesn’t yet know how to hide it when he’s drooling over grapes dangling above just out of reach. When he was little, he told you that you were the most beautiful and that he’d marry you, and it would be a lie to say you don’t think back on this, but still, you are more or less happy to confirm his naturally occurring interest in the opposite sex. You’ve always been disgusted by the phenomenon of overprotected city kids becoming abnormally attached to their mothers—relationships like your husband’s with your mother-in-law. It’s too bad. Just as you can’t artificially create a friend for your child, you can’t choose his love interest. Your first thought after hearing the words “gaming lesson” is to coax Gyeongheon into teaching your son. But with a shake of your head, you dismiss that idea almost as soon as it occurs to you. Your son is already taking middle school second-year English. There’s no reason for him to allot time to learning something from Gyeongheon. They say that if you set out to draw a tiger you will at least draw a cat, but if you try to draw a cat, you might not draw anything at all. You have no idea how well Gyeongheon plays, but it’ll still be better to learn from an expert. You download the app for locating private tutors that you used a few years ago when you were learning French cross stitching. Under what category will you find teachers for the game your child mentioned? IT, Other, Novelty, Hobbies? In the upper half of the subcategory list under “hobbies,” you find “games.” It’s really here, and I’m not the first person to hire a private tutor in gaming, either. You make a big fuss telling your friend. “Of course it’s there. Didn’t you know there are even private academies for pro-gamers nowadays?” “So there are.” You pride yourself on being part of the younger generation, so you feel awkwardly ashamed for not having regarded this as professional work. You thought jobs in this field only existed in games distribution or game creation, your husband’s line of work. Let’s see. League of Legends, Overwatch, Battleground. The game your son mentioned is listed directly above “Other.” You merely have to enter his age bracket, location, preferred time and day, and press “Register.” You peel some fruit for a snack and bring it into the boy’s room. You come back and check your phone to find you already have three tutors offering services. Detailed background information is available for each. Oh my. Even students at prestigious S University and K University tutor in gaming. Granted, nowadays a good gamer has to be smart, too. This somewhat allays your worry that the venture will somehow affect your son badly. A total of seven tutors have made an offer by the time the English lesson has finished. You check over their credentials and look up “Challenge League” on the internet. You find that players are ranked Challenger, Diamond, Platinum, and Gold according to their percentage of wins. You choose a tutor and send a message. Jiseung, you’re lucky. You have someone like me as a mother. The boy sits down and turns on the game as soon as the teacher has been sent off. Watching him from behind, you smile in satisfaction. There’s nothing to worry about. I’m your mom, and I’ll see to it that you get good at that game. “So, does your son want to be a pro-gamer?” The tutor you chose is a K University student with a Challenge League ID. He also has a winning record in the University League. Your son won’t be done with class for a while, but you call the tutor in early for an interview and to warn him about some things when dealing with the child. You choose your language carefully, hoping to give an accurate description of the problem without insulting the child’s dignity. “It’s not that. He’s unpopular at school because of his poor gaming ability, I guess.” The K University student looks sympathetic. “These days, boys lose status among their peers if they can’t play games. You know that status is important to boys, right? But now they don’t fight with their fists. Their ranking is decided by their gaming ability. To be honest, the reason Faker’s up there in popularity with elite entertainers is not because he’s good-looking like they are. But, I mean, guys in their teens and twenties worship him. And the reason is simple. It’s because he’s a good gamer. That’s it. He makes money, and girls really like him, too. In the performance itself, there’s a charm that’s kind of hard to explain. He’s like an athlete in that regard. They don’t call it esports for nothing.” I seem to have chosen well. Proud of yourself, you nod and agree throughout the speech. You don’t know if Faker is the name of a person or what exactly, but if your child follows the lead of this student you feel certain he can develop some charisma. You smile as you glance back and forth between your teacup and the tutor’s K University student ID on the tea table in front of you. Your husband also graduated from K University. The tutor is my husband’s fellow alumnus, and therefore a safe bet. He could also somehow inspire my son to advance to a Korean Ivy League school. Hope springs from this feeble premise. The child will find someone closer to him in age to be more of an inspiration than his father. The fantasy becomes more gratifying as it goes on. Your child, gaming champion, going on to a famous university like his father. Being good at games can mean you’re also good at other things; it can be an asset. But you don’t need to get carried away. Even if getting tutored by a top university student doesn’t mean he will go on to such a university himself, Jiseung could certainly do with learning self-confidence. You believe that self-confidence is the most important thing that money can buy. “Have you tried it, Ma’am?” “Me? Why should I?” You wave your hand to brush him off, and the student looks a little ruffled. “You shouldn’t be dismissive of something so important to your child. What if your child were to ask you about an English word? Would you say that you don’t know English? It’s the same thing.” He hits the bull’s eye. You want to be the kind of mother who makes the effort to learn the answers to her child’s questions. You’ve kept pace with your son as he’s studied English, and you’ve also looked down on mothers who dither when their children ask them something. And although your child hasn’t asked you for the answers to any English questions so far, your studies haven’t been in vain. You imagine taking him on a trip to Europe or America around the time he enters high school or university, and this has kept you motivated. “What good is gaming to an ajumma like myself?” “Ajumma? What are you talking about? I don’t think there’s much of an age difference between us.” The K University student exposes all of his teeth in a gaping laugh, as if he hadn’t just now been frowning. Feeling out of your element, you take him into the child’s room and turn on the computer. It’s password protected, but you know the code. The child doesn’t know that you know. “Let’s start off by creating an account.” You input your email address and phone number and go through the identity verification process. A message appears. You already have an account. Would you like to make a new one? You are a little taken aback. You realize for the first time that your child has used your personal information to create his account. “It’s okay. You can make several accounts.” Your right hand is on the mouse, and the K University student enfolds it in his. He easily finishes up the account registration and leads you on to the tutorial. “There aren’t many champions you can choose for the tutorial. Try any of them. Just to get the feel of it.” The K University student sits flush against you for the tutorial, and moves your hand to guide the mouse. “Move with a right click, right click, right click, yes, you’ve got it.” You can’t bring yourself to shake his hand off, even though you feel awkward. His left hand stretches around your back onto the keyboard. It’s as if he’s embracing you from behind. While you advance through the tutorial, you wonder, suspiciously, whether you are getting things wrong or if this is just how gaming is taught. Your heads are so close, you worry that the tip of your nose will brush against him if you look at him for some reason. “You’ll get text neck sitting like that. Draw your stomach in.” When he bends his left arm in from the keyboard and places it on your stomach, you bolt up from your seat. “Why did you do that?” It is he who is asking you this, laughing cunningly. As if you are acting strangely, and not the reverse. You can’t think of the right words to confront him on the spot, so you sit down again. The K University student stretches out the left arm that had encircled your back and shoulders, and places his hand on the keyboard. Just as the second stage of the tutorial is about to start, he jogs his elbow unnaturally, brushing it against your chest. “What, what are you, what do you think you’re doing?” you ask, your voice quaking. The K University student raises his hands and shrugs, smiling. Athletes wear this expression when contesting a foul. His face is hateful. You can read right through him. You think the world will bend to your will. Every time you’ve made that face and claimed to be innocent, people have believed you and deemed the girl in question to be a bad sort. So you thought you could have your way with a housewife who appears to know nothing of the world. But you’re much older than him. You’re too mature to be afraid of him or get caught up in this. “I need you to leave now.” “Pardon? But I have so much more to teach you.” The K University student keeps grinning stupidly, unable to read the mood. “I have nothing to learn from you. I said, get out.” Again, he adopts the stance of an athlete claiming no foul, hands held high. But finally, his smile fades and he withdraws. If you were a teenager getting tutored instead of the mother of a child getting tutoring, you’d have been tricked very badly. You wouldn’t have known what to do or how to react, and you’d have tried to convince yourself nothing more would happen, only to regret it. You have already been through this growing up. You know this isn’t a delusion or misjudgment on your part; this is the other party’s misconduct. You’re able to tell someone to stop. You have proof in that you just did so. Perhaps you were lucky. You are now a married woman with lots of experience, and the offending party is in his early twenties. He’s diminutive in size, and unpopular from the looks of him; an Ivy League student with a lot to lose. This doesn’t change the fact that you succeeded in blocking him, but on the other hand, a single victory doesn’t mean you have come out the winner in everything you’ve experienced in your lifetime. An hour after the tutor leaves, the child again comes home almost in tears. You’ve been squatting on the floor of his room until then, but you calm and comfort him, even though you lack energy. He asks for a snack, and going out into the living room, you spy the K University student’s ID card still on the tea table. You put it in the trash like you’re throwing down a winning card hand. This time, I’ll try a female teacher. Unable to share the day’s events with your husband or your child, you download the app for locating private tutors once more. When you think about what happened, you’d like to abandon the idea of games and tutors altogether, but your child came home crying again and you really can’t bear to see it. And what’s more, you want him to run for school president in the fall election. It doesn’t really matter if an ordinary child lacks friends, but because Jiseung could be president, he should manage his popularity. You are doubly concerned because his secret rival/idol, Gyeongheon, also seems to want to run. If your child intends to win against Gyeongheon, he could really lay the grounds for this by beating him at gaming, a field where he is confident. A woman will be better, even if she has less ability. You recall that of the seven tutors who contacted you yesterday, two were women. Even if they did not have the vaunted Challenge League status, they seemed like they had more than enough ability to teach anyone. You turn on the app and find that continuing on from yesterday, a total of ten tutors have offered their services. You also see the K University student’s post-teaching review, and recoil in fury. It reads, “Don’t teach here; the lady treated me like a sex offender when I accidentally brushed her.” You can barely hold back from cursing as you report this to customer service. The new female tutor is a Diamond League player enrolled at S University. Her academic standing is better than that of the miscreant who came yesterday, but her gaming ability is slightly lower than his. You meet her at the door at the same time as the last tutor, and grade her on her bowed shoulders, blemished skin, and dark under-eye shadows. You think, “She could never be my child’s first crush,” but rather, this is for the good. What puts you at rest more than anything, of course, is that she doesn’t have a penis. That is what caused problems yesterday. You quickly explain that your son is being excluded, and you start to tell her about him when she interrupts you. “Seonsaengnim, I was under the impression I was here to teach you.” “Teach me? Why would I learn gaming?” The woman is as uncooperative as she looks. Looking back and forth from the tutor to her student card on the tea table, you still don’t feel inspired to trust her. “If you think gaming is for kids, then why are you hiring an adult tutor?” “Well, I don’t need to learn it. My son does,” you say, making an effort to smile, but the tutor will not bend. “I know full well what you’re saying. But, Seonsaengnim, I also think you’ll have to understand gaming in order for you to understand your son. If you want your son to learn gaming, it would be best for you to learn from me and then teach your son what you know. If a child becomes better at games his parents don’t know, it can lead to them growing apart.” “I have no talent for games, either,” you say, waving your hand and thinking it odd that the person here to teach you gaming is calling you “Seonsaengnim.” She must have some experience teaching games at her clients’ homes, though, as she’s discussing gaming ability and its effects on parent-child relationships, so you’re inclined to follow her advice. “First, give it a try. Today is the interview and trial lesson, so I won’t ask to be paid. If you really don’t like it, then I’ll just teach your child from next time.” Although she isn’t entirely convincing, you can’t refute what she says, either, so you turn on the computer in the child’s room. She locates the designated tutor’s chair in a flash, brings it alongside you and sits down. After finishing the tutorial, you win the first of the regular matches you play. You follow the tutor’s directions as to where to go, whom to attack, and what to buy. In a daze, you ask, “That’s how you do it?” “Yes, and to be honest, you’re doing much better than I expected,” she replies, without overtly trying to be flattering. You feel yourself blush. You haven’t heard words of praise in a long time. “Has your skin always been so nice? The pores are so tight, you really outshine most celebrities.” “You could be a hand model. Your fingers are pretty, and the nails are well-formed.” The difference between this compliment and the things you hear at the skin care clinic or the nail salon is that the tutor isn’t talking about your inert body, but something you’ve managed to do. “This kind of game is known as a MOBA game. So, like League of Legends or DotA or Heroes.” “What are those?” The teacher looked at you as if you were perhaps a North Korean spy with a patchy knowledge of the culture of the South. “I can understand Heroes and DotA. But you’re telling me you’ve never played LoL? The game has been number one in Korea from the early 2010s until last year.” “My husband’s probably played.” “It doesn’t matter if you haven’t tried it. It’s just an example I gave so you could understand more easily. Basically, for these games, you choose a character and join a team. You build experience and collect gold or jewels on a small map, strengthening your character, and then destroy the opposing team’s base in order to win. Now that you’ve played once, you’ve got the idea, right? You have good reflexes and good dynamic visual acuity, so I don’t have much to teach you. If you study the minimaps to learn the flow of the game, and memorize the item tree, then you’ll quickly get the feel for it.” You heard you had good reflexes and vision when you studied dance, too. So, I’ve still got it. Your heart is pounding, and you’re trying to compose yourself. “Do you think I can outplay my child at this?” you ask. “For this kind of game, the amount of time you play isn’t important. It’s the same with studying. Kids who sit at their desks for long periods don’t all go to famous universities. The important thing is how quick you are on the uptake. You’ll be the best in the neighborhood in no time.” The first day the tutor comes, you order pizza for your child. For a long time, you forbade it because not only was he at the age when he could start getting acne, but the year before last he’d been obese. If he really demanded it, you’d make him some yourself, with gluten-free, whole-grain flour and high-calcium, low-calorie lactose-free cheese. He clears away a regular-sized pan by himself, licking his fingers. Now his face is oily, as if he used the whole surface of it to eat the pizza, and he leaves to go into his room. After you have confirmed that he has polished it off, you get around to your work. You hear your husband coming in around midnight. You’ve installed the game on the computer in the study and you’ve been playing it until he comes home. “What are you doing?” “Oh, I have some studying to do.” You minimize the game screen and look at him, flushed. You aren’t doing anything wrong, yet you feel awkward. Without much more talk, he goes into the bedroom, washes up, and falls sleep. One more game and I’ll go lie down, you promise yourself. I’ll win a match and then go to sleep on a high. This is what you resolve, but you lose the match. Another player kept getting cornered by the opposing team, so it seems to be their fault and not yours, although you can’t be sure. You play two more matches before you win. It’s good that your team is lucky and you win easily, but you’re dissatisfied that the game takes only 15 minutes, short of the average playing time. So you play another match. You win this one too, but now you’re feeling thirsty for more. Ultimately, the session ends when your eyes are so dry you can neither close them nor open them very well. A faint bluish light is coming in from the veranda. After feeding your husband and child and sending them off, you collapse on the bed and fall asleep. “You’ve already finished building up your pre-competition experience. How many hours a day have you been playing?” Back for your second lesson, the tutor is amazed to see your stats. That you’ve worked so hard at a game you originally declined to play is somewhat embarrassing, but you take the tutor’s words as praise and smile a little. “I played for three to four hours while my son was at school and then for two more hours after he went to bed.” “To already have this record playing just six hours a day means you must have won a lot. Oh, yes, your wins record is quite good.” You feel elated, like a child being told she has done her homework well. “Would you like to try a game with me today?” “Pardon? How could I take you on?” “We aren’t at the point where we’d play against each other, but we could form a team together.” “Okay, then I’ll just go to the study.” “No, then I won’t be able to give the orders well enough. Do you know where we can find a PC bang around here?” Even though you’ve lived in this neighborhood since you got married, you don’t know where the PC bang is. The tutor locates the nearest one on an app. You follow her into the room sluggishly, blinking your eyes. The PC bang is in the basement of a private academy. Your senses are assailed by loud sound effects, a neon sign boasting of top-of-the-line equipment, and the smell of food—ramyeon broth, roasted squid, and cheap sausages. The smoking room is some distance from the entrance but still directly visible, and when some stocky men inside seem to be eyeing you, you bow your head and quickly follow the tutor to your seat. She signs into a beginner account created so that she can form a team with you in the lowest league. The two of you are invincible. The tutor takes on a variety of characters to complement yours, and you play the characters she recommends in search of the one that best fits your playing style. The teacher is true to her role. She doesn’t miss a single prize in her lane, and she even checks the prizes available for you in your lane. Every time you have built up enough prize money to purchase something, she calls out the items that will best suit your champion, Dragon Girl—the one you ultimately go with. Together with the tutor, Dragon Girl wins five matches in succession. When the congratulatory message appears onscreen, the tutor wants a high five. “Is it really the first time you’ve done this?” she asks, her hand clenched, lingering in mid-air. You nod, never having felt more euphoric. The teacher looks sexy. While it isn’t something you want to think about, you recall the K University student holding forth ad nauseum on the topic of good gamers being charming. The dark shadows under your teacher’s eyes catch the peculiar light of the room, and the effect is mysterious and beautiful as the color changes from neon blue to neon pink, and from neon pink to neon green, reminding you of Dragon Girl. “But who’s Hyeji?” you ask of a name that was texted during the game. The teacher’s face was lit up by a rare smile, but now it stiffens again. “It’s a bad word.” “How can someone’s name be a bad word?” You recall a friend from your middle school class called Lee Hyeji, and also nine-year-old Kim Hyeji, a neighbor’s kid who attended the same fitness class as your child. You’d think there’d be some players with the name, too. Perhaps the other players were just texting the name of someone they knew, but from the tone, it did sound like they were cursing. “You know, if you drive badly, they call you “Mrs. Kim.” This is the same kind of expression. If you play the game badly, other players call you “Hyeji”, because it’s a common girl’s name. It doesn’t matter if you’re a boy. You’re as bad as a girl if you can’t play. It’s kind of a double insult.” You wonder if girls really play worse than boys. It’s true that your tutor belongs to a lower ranking league than the K University student. “How much difference is there between the Challenge League and the Diamond League?” You tread carefully, hoping she doesn’t find out you’re comparing her to someone. She changes the settings in your account to block comments from players you haven’t friended, and answers quite casually. “There’s no big difference. You’re just lined up according to your wins. The players in the Diamond League are all ranked in the top 0.1 percent, and the top 500 of these are considered Challengers. If your win percentage is in the top .0001 percent, then you go back and forth from Challenge to Diamond. For example, I’m promoted and demoted a few times in a single day when I play solo in a competition.” She clicks on the button to join the queue for the next match. “Actually I’ve never met anyone who could outplay me at this game. Of course, if someone texts ‘Hyeji’ when we’re playing, I know the taunt isn’t aimed at me, but I get mad. What if I just randomly chose some guy’s name and taunted my opponent with it if he couldn’t play as well as me? Because I think it’s obvious that men can’t play at my level.” In the next match, too, the teacher really kills it. And this time, without the name Hyeji or any curse words at all appearing in the chat window, you also engage as best you can. You become a Gold League player the first time you play at the competition stage, meaning that your wins record is in the top 40 percent. Your score is high for someone who only recently started playing, and you’ve done unexpectedly well in your first placement. This can partly be chalked up to playing with the tutor, but she attributes it to your own talent and skill. You recall that your child is in in the Bronze League, and Gyeongheon, the child he so envies, is in the Gold, the same as you. “How do you get to be a Diamond player like yourself?” Your teacher grins. “Just keep doing what you’re doing.” The Dragon Girl Item Tree: Novice Spell Book. Rose Flame Seal. Vampire Cloak. High Gnome Shoes. Sell Novice Spell Book, Get Strange Goblet. Chamma Sickle Sword. Dragon Girl Intensive Attack Item Tree: Novice Spell Book. Cry of the Commander. Pay 200 gold pieces and upgrade to Intermediate Spell Book. Footprints of the Black Wizard. Uriah’s Wrath. Victory Report of Blood. You memorize the item tree like you would a recipe. You also take preventative measures in case you miss out on your preferred lane, or your main, Dragon Girl, is taken by another player. You memorize alternate strategies to the point where you can wake up the next morning and recite them. After a month, your skills become such that you can win games on your own strength even if your team is on the weak side. Your tutor says that a player who does this is called a “carry.” You can carry the team, and you want to tell your child. After coming three times a week for a total of ten visits, the tutor no longer accepts money playing games with you, and she appears on your buddy list under her nickname. “I’m not running in the election.” The child makes his explosive announcement towards the end of September, during the sign-up period for contenders. And as is his bad habit, he hurls his bag onto the living room floor. “What is it this time?” “I’m not going to win, so why would I run?” “Why don’t you think you’ll win? I’d vote for you. You’re nice and sweet and you study well and dance well.” “Gyeongheon is running, so why would the kids choose me? Gyeongheon can do everything I can. He can even do things I can’t. I’ve told you this so many times, why can’t you understand?” “How do you know how it will go when you’ve never even tried? Just running in the election will be a good experience.” You don’t know how to be a good mother at these times. Should you say, “All right, you don’t have to do it,” or push him not to give up? As far as you know, he has an interest in running. He knows what a big deal it would be for a former outcast to be elected president. “Gyeongheon said not to run.” “He did? Do you want me to call his mom?” The child bursts into tears. “He said . . . let’s make a bet . . . Whoever wins the game will run . . . and I said no thanks.” You steel yourself to not break out laughing in front of your crying child. “He’ll win . . . anyway . . . just like he always does . . . It’s just not fair . . . Fuck it.” You leave him be for a while. You should ask him where he learned his manners, swearing in front of his own mother. You should say, If Gyeongheon has made this bet, then it shows he’s afraid of losing the election to you. The child can’t stop crying for some time. “Then how about I play the game in your place?” The child looks at you blankly for a minute and then cries even harder. “How can you beat him, Mom?” “I’m good at that game. I’ll do better than him. Make the bet and I’ll win for you.” You take your child to the PC bang. You’re uncomfortable bringing him here as it seems so decadent with the lighting, and the smoking room on top of that, but you know he comes here often with his friends, so he won’t be shocked. “First of all, play a match with me.” You friend your child, and you each pair up with AI players and fight a battle against one other. The boy loses, unable to even coordinate his hand movements. He stares at you for a while in surprise, but he won’t relent. “Gyeongheon is still better than you.” You laugh a little at his stubbornness. He adores his friend as much as he hates him, so he cheers for him against his own mother. The child is at an age when he wants to one up his parents and become more deeply connected to his peers, so he’d feel Gyeongheon’s loss as his own. But even if the child can’t bring Gyeongheon down himself, he needs the experience of seeing him brought down. If you beat Gyeongheon, the child will realize that Gyeongheon isn’t on his side, you are. “Okay. Well, tell him you’ll play a match. I’ll play under your ID. I’m curious, too, to find out who’ll win.” The child sends Gyeongheon a message as you instructed, agreeing to the bet. The winner of the game will run for president. Soon a blue light appears next to Gyeongheon’s nickname, which is listed as a buddy on your child’s account. This means he’s logged in. You feel a growing sense of anger as you imagine his howls of delight. You don’t want a contest over grades, or a dance battle, but a fight where you have the upper hand. Somehow, you learned to be mean, and I’m going to teach you a lesson. You trade seats with your child. You obliterate him, as you’d set out to do. In the first match, you use Dragon Girl, your main, and in the second, you use the Inspector from the High North, a character your tutor sometimes tried out. You tail Gyeongheon’s character, blocking him from getting any prizes, and then you destroy him, showing no mercy. You sense that Gyeongheon is not at all good at the game. He isn’t much different from your child, whom you just played. You can’t help but think that either he has been very lucky, or he has had help from someone to earn the points to put him at your level in the Gold League. You’re happy that Jiseung takes your victory as his own, as you expected he would. When he asks you when you became so good at the game, you pat him on the back and tell him you practiced hard so that you could teach him. He’s so overjoyed that he throws his arms around your neck, as if he can’t wait to learn. Gyeongheon has maintained a more or less sportsmanlike attitude for two matches, but when you invite him for a third, a message pops up in the chat window. Hey Piggy-seung, did you get a ringer? LOL WTF “The kids are still calling you Piggy-seung?” you ask in astonishment, and your child nods. You think to yourself, This Gyeongheon, I thought he was a good kid, but he is nothing but a spoiled brat. You type your reply leisurely into the chat window. Does ringer mean someone that you pay to play your games for you? I don’t take any money. LOL Cause I’m Jiseung’s XXX. What’s happening here? XXX. You clearly wrote “mom,” but the word keeps getting erased in the onscreen dialog. “Why is that?” “Any swearing in the chat window gets X-ed out.” Your son replies, in irritation that you don’t know that, either. “I know. But is ‘mom’ a swear word?” “It’s used as a swear word, so it gets erased.” You strike Gyeongheon’s champion one more time, enraged at finding this out so unexpectedly. You feel a little ashamed, aware that you’re taking out your feelings on a child your son’s age. The character was only resurrected for a minute before he was killed again. Gyeongheon sends another text. BG You are NOTHING but a Hyeji-seung Hyeji-seung Piggy-seung YerXXX is a bch YerXXX is a bch YerXXX is a bch YerXXX is a bch YerXXX is a bch YerXXX is a bch You remember the taunts of “Hyeji” from your first day at the PC bang. Gyeongheon combines Jiseung’s name with Hyeji to mean he plays like a girl. Hyeji-seung. Then there is that detestable word, Piggy-seung. And the last item? “What does this mean? YerXXX is a bch?” The child hesitates a little and then tells you. “Your mom’s a bitch.” Gyeongheon is copying and pasting it in the chat window on and on ad infinitum. “Do you guys really use the word ‘mom’ as a swear?” Because your tutor had the all-chat function turned off, you had no way of knowing that a word bound up with your identity was a swear. “Hyeji” and “Piggy” were one thing, but “Mom,” too? Feeling deflated, you take your character safely to shelter and reopen the chat window. If you can’t take it anymore, ask your XXX to play. She can’t play, can she? Your child gets a call on his phone, perhaps signaling that Gyeongheon has surrendered. He looks back and forth from you to the phone, paralyzed with fear. You keep entering “Mom” into the chat window. XXX, XXX, XXX, XXX. Your son grabs your wrist. “Mom, stop that. If someone keeps swearing, their ID gets suspended.” “What makes ‘mom’ a swear? I’m your mom, right?” Your Dragon Girl goes out on the battlefield and blasts the last guardian stone. The words your child can barely muster are spinning around in your head. XXX, are you crying? XXX, are you okay? Although the victory message appears on the monitor, you don’t feel like the victor anymore.
byPark Seolyeon
I Won’t Go Home Just Yet
*The title is derived from a line by the character Mechthild Großmann in Pina Bausch’s performance Walzer: “A little more wine, and one more cigarette, but I won't go home just yet.” See Jochen Schmidt, Tanzen gegen die Angst. Pina Bausch., trans. Lee Jun-seo et al. (Eulyoo, 2005), 15. “On Sundays, you’ll mow the lawn.” “And you’ll buy beer and meat for the barbecue.” Their conversation took place in a car on a gridlocked road, over a medley of children’s songs. They would fantasize about life in one of the single-family houses near their condo complex, the home with the red roof that she liked best. Discussing the house had become one of the only ways Heeju would talk to her husband, with whom at some point she’d started to have less to talk about. She’d first spotted the house not long after moving into the condo last spring, when she went to the kindergarten for the first time to drop off their eldest. No one had forced her to take a detour through the neighborhood of luxury houses in the area, but she went that way every time. Strolling past the perfectly trimmed gardens and the fancy porches of the two-story houses had become one of her greatest joys ever since having a second child had practically chained her to her home. “Mommy, are we moving?” asked their eldest, pausing mid-sing-along. “No, later.” Their second child slept soundly in the car seat behind her husband, clutching tightly onto a rice cracker. They were returning from a visit to the zoo. “Later when?” “I don’t know. When do you think, Honey?” she asked with a laugh. She turned to her husband in the driver’s seat. If they wanted to move into a house like that sooner, maybe she would have been better off not quitting her job. But then she remembered that hiring a nanny would cost them almost as much as she might have made at work, so going back to work would have been nothing more than selfishness. She’d had two miscarriages after their first child, so her husband had wanted her to quit anyway. And more experienced mothers had drilled into her how important it was for a mom to be there for school-aged children, too. Kids whose mothers went back to work were bullied, they said. No matter how hard a working mother tried, from rushing to pick up school supplies at the stationery store over lunch breaks to sprinting from the subway station to see her beloved child as soon as humanly possible, she would always feel guilty to her child and to her own mother for babysitting for her. She chose to quit her job when she became pregnant with her second. “I’m gonna dance! Olé!” Their eldest went back to singing along to the music. “By the way, say hi to Hanna for me.” Tomorrow would be her first time going out at night without the children. Hanna was holding an opening party for her restaurant and had invited all her friends. Heeju and Hanna were “BFFs.” They had been inseparable in university and had clearly defined roles in their friendship. Hanna would scout out famous restaurants and cafes from hair salon magazines, TV shows, or the internet, or make a list of theaters screening interesting movies, and it was Heeju’s job to make a schedule for visiting the places. The scope of their roles went beyond just eateries and films. They were faithful to their parts when they ordered food and even when they looked into travel destinations, without a single word of complaint between them. Hanna never ran out of things she wanted to do, and as for Heeju, she was always more comfortable with making choices within parameters set by someone else. They were happy with the balance. They met as freshmen studying the same major and always stuck together. They’d found work at different places after graduation, but even then, they would get together multiple times each year to travel to other cities like Gunsan or Tongyeong. Then Heeju got married, and Hanna took off to Italy to learn Western fine dining. She studied cooking and worked at a restaurant, then came back to Korea almost four years later. The last time Heeju had seen Hanna, she had just given birth to her eldest and gone back to work. She’d sworn to Hanna that she would raise her child in no time and then go visit her in Italy. It was a different time, a time when she hadn’t even dreamed about having another baby. ⁎ The restaurant was small but charming. The first thing she felt when she stepped inside was the warmth. Then the aroma. Savory and sweet. The interior was dim and already bustling. Some of the faces were familiar, while others she only knew by name. But because they were all close friends of Hanna’s who had gathered for the shared purpose of congratulating her, they had little trouble switching gears from awkward to friendly. Dressed in a mermaid gown and bright red lipstick, Hanna stood in the crowd looking more like a hostess at a dinner party than a chef. Which, of course, wasn’t inaccurate. Hanna recognized Heeju and beamed, pulling her into a hug. “Thanks for coming.” A woman who introduced herself as Hanna’s old coworker leaned over and said, “Isn’t the food amazing?” “It really is.” From the carpaccio with truffle mayonnaise to the tagliolini with tremella mushroom, everything was flawless. “Hanna is a force of nature,” someone else at her table said, taking a sip of wine. “We never said so out loud, but we were all worried when she quit her job without a backup plan.” It had been too long since Heeju had eaten so well, and the hue of the wine was tempting. But she didn’t forget that she had a baby to breastfeed, and so picked up a glass of water instead. Just when the plates started to empty, Hanna joked, “By the way, I’m married to cooking now, so I expect my gift money in the box on the counter. You’re going to feel guilty all the way home if you don’t pay as much as I did at your weddings.” Everyone burst into laughter. Hanna was always good at being honest without making it sound antagonizing, and that was something Heeju appreciated about her. She looked out the large window framed elegantly by curving ivory curtains and gazed into the darkness that had settled quickly on the world. It filled her to the brim with joy. She was proud of her friend for studying cooking in a foreign country and for achieving her goal of starting a beautiful restaurant of her own. The conversation drifted toward the topic of real estate, about what areas were going to rise and how condo prices fell in another area. This wasn’t what she’d left her kids at home for. She remembered earlier how the baby started sobbing hysterically when she got ready to leave. Her husband would be taking care of them, but the baby had gasped for breath, wailing as if being abandoned. The guilt pained her. Deciding to excuse herself early, she looked around to find Hanna when the door opened and a man stepped inside. The man was in tidy business casual attire. He had a trim, agile build with no hint of fat and carried a luscious bouquet of roses. The blooms were an unusual shade of light violet. “Congratulations,” he said, immediately making his way to Hanna and placing the bouquet in her arms. In the blink of an eye, the roses were put in the most prominent vase on the wooden console by the counter. Hanna warmed up food for him, and he sat across the table saying hello and diving into the conversation. Heeju had never met this friend of Hanna’s or heard his name before. He must have been about twenty-six, twenty-eight at most. “Oh, this is the friend I was talking about,” Hanna said, gesturing to Heeju, “the one who named this restaurant.” All eyes fell on her. “The name of the restaurant comes up in a movie we watched together back in university. I completely forgot about it, but when I told Heeju about wanting to study cooking and opening a restaurant, she said I should name it ‘Café Müller.’” Heeju gave an awkward smile. She’d never been bad at socializing, but it was as if spending the past ten months with no one but her children had drained her of all social skills. That was when the man spoke. “I thought so. Do you dance too?” “No, not at all.” “That’s a shame.” “What’s a shame?” It was like the stranger had suddenly pushed into something personal. She’d retorted more sharply than she’d intended. Some wounds never healed; they just stayed hidden until even the smallest of provocations brought them bouncing back to the surface. “I just meant to say that you look like you have the right build for dance. I’m sorry if I offended you,” the man said, genuinely apologetic. Now it was her turn to be sorry. “Don’t take it personally, Heeju,” Hanna said warmly. “It comes with his job.” As a child, Heeju had gone to the hair salon with her mother and spotted a ballet lesson taking place in the building across the street. She had always admired ballet, but because her parents had never given her permission, she never even got the chance to try. Hanna knew that full well and tried to smooth things over with humor while putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” the man said, coming up to her as she walked out of the bathroom. “I must have offended you. I want to apologize.” “It’s all right. No harm done. Are you a dancer?” “I am.” He had a smooth, fresh-shaven jawline and carried himself with the confidence typical of a man in his twenties. She sensed the faint hint of cologne on his body. From up close, the man looked even younger. Then he said a few more things to her. As they spoke, the confident young man kept looking down shyly. It made him look boyish. Wanting to reassure him that she had no hard feelings, she let him pour her some wine and drank. The man smiled, and she smiled too, blushing because of the alcohol. ⁎ Her mornings always started the same way. The baby would wake her with a fuss, so she would go through the breastfeeding routine and wake up her husband and then their eldest to get ready for kindergarten. While the baby listened to “Baby Shark,” she would quickly change her eldest and prepare boiled eggs or sweet potatoes for breakfast and the baby would climb up the plastic toddler slide or bang on the TV cabinet or get into some other adorable mischief. Everything up to sending off her husband and eldest was a long, singular ritual that took place quickly and mechanically, so it was only long after saying goodbye at the door and breastfeeding the baby that she realized that she had spent the previous evening not at home but at Café Müller. It was only two glasses, and she had pumped out milk overnight and tossed it, but wine was still wine. She only calmed down when an older friend with a school-aged child texted to say she had been forced to breastfeed her own child after drinking too, but that it hadn’t hurt the child. I bet he had no idea that I was carrying a breast pump in my purse. She remembered going to the bathroom to use the pump and how the man had spoken to her the moment she stepped outside. She laughed. After laying the sleeping baby down and eating a quick lunch, she cleaned the house. She took out the breast pump from her bag and looked up the man online. He was even younger than she’d thought, and even more famous than she’d expected. A ballerino who performed contemporary dance. She saw phrases like “Korea’s first,” “youngest,” and “domestic premiere.” The baby woke up again and started crying. “There, there, Mommy’s right here,” she said, putting down her phone and wiping off the baby’s sweat. It was time to pick up her eldest, so she put on the baby carrier and strapped the baby in, and then stepped outside. It was three in the afternoon, and the springtime air was gentle and clear. Honey-hued sunlight dripped over the back of her hand and the baby’s backside. The baby happily babbled on. But the placid, unchanging landscape grew distorted when she walked by the alley with the red-roofed house. Trucks lined the curb and workmen hung about the property. Were the owners moving? Luscious climbing roses in full bloom grew on one side of the house’s brick fence, half-covered by the trucks. She paused and peered into the yard. The house did look a little empty, like the family was moving out. Between the hustling workmen, she spotted the chestnut tree in the garden with its swing still hanging from the branches. What she wouldn’t give to live in a house like this! It was her dream home. She went back into her imagination, to the middle-aged life with her children that she always fantasized about. They could hang two swings from the tree, and the children would come home after school and ride them side-by-side. Mom, if I roll on the ground and then go up into the air, my tummy tickles, they would say with a giggle. In the summer, they could buy charcoal and have a barbecue, just like her husband said. On the weekends he would wash the car in the garage, and she would hook up a hose to the garden faucet to water the roses. Sometimes she would invite Hanna over; she almost never saw her friends after having children. With her eldest, she’d gone back to work and at least been able to meet friends working downtown over lunch breaks. But she could barely remember the last time she’d gone out for a fancy evening for hours at a time with them. Last night’s excursion was a surprising pick-me-up. Even going to the toilet with the sleeping eight-kilogram baby still strapped into the carrier in front of her was bearable. She’d always thought that accepting her stage in life and the role she had to play was more mature than agonizing over the things she couldn’t have. She was grateful and happy enough for the fact that she’d made many fun memories to look back on with Hanna while she was still single. Like watching ballet performance DVDs together in the dark media room in the central library basement. Truthfully, it took some effort to make friends with Hanna. It was February of the year she started university, just as the incoming freshmen attended orientation before classes began. That day, the red-faced and still-unfashionable high school graduates sat around the empty lecture hall together, looked up at their twenty-something upperclassmen, and learned to sign up for classes and learned about symposiums and introduced themselves. And on that day, she’d made up her mind to become friends with Hanna, who introduced herself as an art school graduate who’d practiced ballet until the previous year. Although Hanna had stopped dancing, she was still the first ballerina Heeju had ever seen. Hanna had hurt her leg in high school and was forced to switch to the humanities, taking an extra year before applying for university. But Heeju was surprised to learn that Hanna didn’t have many regrets about ballet or any grief about not being able to continue. “It’s a shame, yeah. But I don’t regret anything.” Heeju asked her how she could stand to watch performances after her career-ending injury, and Hanna replied, “I’ve spent my whole life doing ballet, so I never actually tried anything else. It’s nice that I can get out there and do everything I’ve always wanted to do.” They spent their early twenties as a unit. They’d gone on just one group date together, but the men from the nearby universities were boring. It was World Cup season, so the group got together at a pub to watch a game and immediately went their separate ways. After she got married, Heeju saw a TV show introduce a restaurant in Gunsan as one of the country’s top three jjamppong restaurants. She’d tapped her husband on the shoulder and said, “Honey, honey, I’ve been there before with Hanna.” Those were good times, she thought, watching her eldest spot her at the kindergarten entrance and run over. Her eldest had grown so much that a running hug into her legs was strong enough to push her back. “Sweetie, you’re going to knock me over,” she laughed, caressing the child’s head. “I think they’re moving out,” she told her husband that night after putting the children to bed. “Yeah?” he replied, taking a gulp of beer. When their eldest was just born, she’d cry or get angry at him for drinking without her. But now all she did was give him the side-eye. Did he think she had become more lenient? No. She’d simply learned that she didn’t have the energy to spend on complaining about something that wouldn’t change, so she was better off just letting it go if her husband—a salaried cosmetic surgeon at a franchise clinic—said he needed beer on days after finishing a grueling procedure. At least he was more of a family man than other husbands. Right after she gave birth, he had given her chest massages for mastitis and wrung out the rags so her wrists wouldn’t hurt. He would brush their eldest’s teeth before bed, and although the child always became more talkative on purpose when the toothbrush came out, her husband never once gave a scolding the way she did in the mornings. She took a seat next to him, picked at some of his potato chips, and unlocked her phone. Hanna had called, but she hadn’t noticed because she had been playing with the kids, feeding them dinner, and bathing them. It was late, so she decided to call back tomorrow. She put the phone on the table. “It’s probably out of our price range, right? Should I check?” “Do you want to?” “Nah, let’s not.” “Why not?” “It’s obviously going to be too much for us.” Her husband said playfully, “And that would be sad?” She replied with a smile, “And that would be sad.” She finally spoke with Hanna on a Monday, more than a week later. She’d wanted to call back right away, but it had slipped her mind as she wrestled with the children the morning after. Her eldest had thrown a fit and cried, demanding to wear an outfit that was already in the wash, and the baby had at some point pulled out all the picture books from the shelves and moved on to sucking a shoe in the entryway. One day led to another, so it was only after she’d put the children to bed and checked her missed messages at the end of the evening that she even remembered Hanna, and by then a week had gone by in the blink of an eye. If she hadn’t remembered the night at Café Müller on her way to pick up her eldest on Monday afternoon, she might have contacted her even later. Tiny birds flitted over the upright trees. The weekend of rain had given way to clear, late-spring skies, and the air was as warm and soft as fresh Castella cakes out of her mother’s rice cooker. The postman leisurely passed by the alley on his motorbike, and when she walked by with her baby, some of the large dogs in the yards recognized her and greeted them with a gentle bark. She finally reached the house with the red roof and heard an unfamiliar noise. It didn’t take long to learn what was happening. Chinese workmen exchanged incomprehensible words as they tore down the building. This can’t be happening. The house had been perfectly fine before the weekend. Shaken by the sudden change, she looked over the brick fence with the baby still in her arms. An excavator had taken over the front gates and part of the fence had been torn down. As she stared in horror, she sensed movement behind her. A young Chinese workman was trying to get to the site. “Excuse me,” he said with a heavy accent and slid past her into the garden, his tall, trim and muscular back reminding her of the man she’d met at Café Müller. Later, as she wiped saliva from her baby’s lips with a piece of gauze, she called Hanna. “You don’t make it easy to reach you, huh?” Hanna grumbled. They exchanged pleasantries. Hanna went on to explain how she’d met the ballerino. “He went to my high school.” But for some reason the baby started fussing and Heeju couldn’t focus on the conversation. All she heard clearly was, “He said he felt really bad for offending you and sent tickets to his performance.” “Really?” “Yeah. I’m busy with the restaurant, so I’ll send both of them to you.” Then she added in her usual playful tone, “I didn’t tell him you were a mom, so don’t take your husband, okay?” She chortled. “Hey, don’t say that,” Heeju replied, but she felt good. “Isn’t Auntie Hanna such a tease?” she asked her baby. It reminded her of when they used to go clubbing together; when the clock hit midnight and Friday turned to Saturday, they would try to catch a cab outside the club. “Look at that guy, I bet he’s gonna talk to us before I count to ten,” they would joke, and quietly start a countdown. “I can’t. Who’s going to watch the kids?” “Just ask someone else to take care of them. You can’t be with them twenty-four-seven.” She knew that Hanna had her best interests at heart. But Heeju had already quit her job to raise her kids—it would make her anxious not to pull off her new responsibilities perfectly, and she couldn’t explain that properly to Hanna. “Isn’t it hard on you?” “It’s okay.” She would be filled with an indescribable joy when she looked down at her baby’s profiled face—grimacing with the effort of sucking—and when she looked at her sleeping eldest cling to the baby. But when the baby unrolled an entire roll of toilet paper or overturned the garbage can with a smile while she pacified her eldest’s demands for attention—on those occasions, she wanted to throw them both into the toilet and flush them down the drain, but because she couldn’t put words to those impulses, she simply said that she was okay. “It’d be nice if you could go anyway. You love dance.” On the way back from picking up her eldest, she passed in front of the house with the red roof again. “Mommy, Mommy,” said her eldest, eyes wide with surprise. “Why are they breaking the house?” “I don’t know.” The young man from earlier cut an unmistakable figure among the workmen. His arms broke down the walls rhythmically and powerfully, young and fresh and chiseled to perfection. ⁎ “I got free tickets to a contemporary dance performance for next Friday. Want to go?” Hanna had sent her a video of the young man’s performance at dinnertime, so she remembered to ask her husband after he came home from work. “What about the kids?” he asked, watching the golf channel. The sink was still filled with dishes she hadn’t gotten to. “Could we ask your mother?” “Her arm’s been acting up recently. You know that.” “I want to go, even if you don’t come,” she said. It was then she realized—to her shock—that she didn’t want her husband to come along. “Again?” She knew her husband didn’t intend to sound mean. She sat next to him and stared at the unremarkable scenery of the golf course for a time. “They were tearing down the house.” “Yeah?” When she saw the house being torn down, all she had felt was surprise. But sadness and fear flooded into her the moment she spoke the words out loud. “They’re tearing it down.” “I’m sure they’ll build a new one.” “How can you be so calm?” “What do you mean, how?” Scraping away fat from the bellies, thighs, and forearms of countless people each day exhausted him. He didn’t understand why she was so fixated on the house. Was it hormones again? He felt a pang of fatigue. When she rose from her seat without a word, he said, “Go watch the performance with your friends. I’ll take care of the kids.” But she never ended up going to the performance. That Friday, her husband called at eleven to say that he was booked for an unexpected surgery that day and would come home late. “Okay.” She hung up. Still carrying the baby on her back, she went back to dishwashing. She wiped down the sink with a dry cloth, shook the water off the rubber gloves, then hung them from the handle of the overhead cabinet. She had fallen asleep without cleaning up last night, and the living room floor was littered with toy pots and silverware, and sketchbooks of unrecognizable figures in crayon. Colorful pieces of clay sat slowly drying on the plastic desk for toddlers. The shocking silence of the house was contrasted by the even more shocking mess. As she picked up the things from the floor one by one and put them away in a tub, she sat on the sofa and looked at the living room wall. It hadn’t been long since they moved in, but the wallpaper was already yellowed and fading, the patterns endlessly going on and on and decorated in one corner by the children’s doodles. They reminded her of her own, the ones she and her brother used to draw on all the doors with marker, hidden away from their mother’s eyes. At least, they’d thought so, but her mother mysteriously—not so mysterious now that she herself was a mother—managed to find them all and scold them both. But she’d never been scolded to the point of tears. How old had her mother been then? With curled shoulder-length hair tied in the back, she would boil the laundry or clean the bathroom tiles with a sponge. She would look back and tell her, “Go play with your brother.” Whenever Heeju talked about her mother, Hanna would get jealous. Hanna’s mother had weighed her every morning, packed her low-sodium lunchboxes, and picked her up from the dance studio by car every night. “I was sick of all that attention,” Hanna said, shaking her head. She said she wanted a mother like Heeju’s—a little thoughtless and decently warm. “But my mom didn’t care about my life. She didn’t invest in my future like yours did,” Heeju had replied. Her mother had cleaned her room each day and made soup with seasonal vegetables. If Heeju had gotten sick, her mother had put off everything else to take her to the doctor; but she had let only her brother go to cram school, refused to let Heeju take an extra year to try for a better university, and when Heeju had her first child, asked her when she was going to quit her job. As usual, the weekend went by in a flash. Then Monday came again, and as always, she took the baby and went to pick up her eldest at the kindergarten. She wanted to take a different route so she wouldn’t see the collapsed house, but she became lost in thought for a moment and found herself back there again. And she saw it. The house, reduced to a skeleton with no windows or walls. With metal framing exposed to the air and the brick fence half-demolished and covered in dirty old rags, it was a complete mess. But the ruined house was beautiful in the light of May, like a stage stripped of all frills. It must have been break time. The neighborhood was silent. The front gate was uncovered, left wide-open like an invitation someone had read and left. She paused for a moment, then like a woman possessed, stepped into the garden with the baby in her arms. The baby fussed in discomfort, but she gave a shush and a comforting pat. She’d walked past the house and peered into the garden many times, but she had never set foot inside the property. When she stepped into the garden littered with iron bars, mounds of bricks, and haphazardly scattered tools, she was afraid. There was a faint but smoky scent in the air, like someone had burned something. But in one corner of the garden, she found the big chestnut tree where the swing used to hang, and the red climbing roses on the still-intact back fence. She’d thought it was empty, but the man was there too. Not in the garden dotted with objects, but deep in the house, standing behind what was once a window but now an empty rectangular hole, eating alone while facing the garden. She almost screamed when she spotted him. Framed by the windowsill that he used as a table for his bowl of noodles, the man—wearing a sweat-drenched tank top—looked up. Lost for words, they spent some time simply staring. He had a head full of curly hair that covered his forehead, making him look almost boyish—his eyes brimmed with both tyrannical intensity and innocence. She didn’t know if she wanted to run or stay. The man stood up straight and faced her. She remembered his muscular back, clad in a white tank top that reminded her of a leotard, as he tore down the wall like a wild beast. It’s just that you have a beautiful build. You’re really beautiful. I just wanted to tell you. An image of that moment came flashing back—the moment she’d come out of the bathroom at Hanna’s restaurant with the breast pump, when the man looked down shyly. It was like he was looking straight into her breast, the breast she would bring out at her child’s every call, sagging from the repetition of expansion and contraction and topped with sore nipples. She thought she’d forgotten, but she remembered what a face like that meant on a man. She gazed fiercely as if to undress him. She imagined the rest of the body obscured by the window frame. She was confused and ashamed at feeling this sexual impulse for a strange man in such a dirty, dangerous place. After giving birth, she’d never felt any such impulse when her husband touched her. The afternoon sunlight spilled over the naked house, and the roof sizzled as if it were on fire. The first—the youngest—domestic premiere— He must have put his life on the line for his desires. In that moment, she realized that she’d never once demanded anything of anyone before. She’d pretended she was above it, that she’d matured earlier than others, but she realized that her entire life had been one massive act of resignation. She took a deep breath. The smell of smoke mingled with the dizzying aroma of roses. She remembered things she’d forgotten. Drinking orange iced tea on the fourth floor of a café near the theater on a certain afternoon after watching the movie featuring Café Müller. The sparkling glass, the aromatic orange slice, the transparent pieces of ice clattering in the tea. The sky was clear and endless, and from their window seat, Hanna had said emphatically that what was in the movie wasn’t real love. “It’s not love. How do you even call it that?” Then what is love, really? she’d asked herself. The man looked down and slowly went back to his noodles, and the quiet stillness of the world around them was occasionally broken by a naked shadow. I don’t really know love. That still held true for her now. ⁎ When he returned home that evening, he was greeted by his eldest, who had been reading a picture book to the baby in a corner of the living room when the lock clicked open. As his child clung to his leg, he saw his wife sitting on the living room floor cleaning up the colorful blocks littered about her. “I’m home.” He’d felt guilty about not letting her go see the performance on Friday, so he brought fried chicken for the family. Their eldest leapt for joy and did a lap around the living room. The baby waddled over to the table in diapers, babbling in agreement. “Everything all right today?” he asked, lifting up the baby, who had been trying to climb up the high chair. “Yeah. Same as usual.” Once he seated the baby, his wife had the eldest sit at the table and brought cups and plates from the cupboard. When he opened the box, the smell of salt and grease filled the house. Elated, their eldest began to explain to the baby, “This is the chicken, and this is the pickled radish.” The baby fussed for the fried chicken despite never having tasted it before. He held out a drumstick for their eldest, who grabbed it and took a big bite. His wife went to the fridge for pureed squash to pacify the baby. She didn’t say much, but he assumed that she must have been sulking. “They finished tearing down the house,” he said, hoping to cheer her up from a weekend of low spirits. After the children were born, he would often come home tired only to find her complaining about trivial things and getting angry for no reason, but he did his best to be good to her. “They’re going to rebuild it into something better,” he said, but she already knew that the house would be rebuilt. “Yeah.” But the new house would be nothing like the one she’d known. Nothing like the one she’d seen that afternoon. “It doesn’t matter now,” she said, spooning the puree into the baby’s mouth. In that instant, she felt indescribable pain and joy balloon inside her. In that instant, the direction of their lives changed almost imperceptibly, but because her husband could not realize it, she simply took the cup her eldest held out to her without saying anything more. But the baby, who had grown more mature by learning in the span of a day that a mother could perfectly forget her child for even an instant, sensed the unfamiliar beauty in her face and burst into tears.
byBaik Sou Linne
Downpour
Her husband worked as a salesperson at an electronics store when one day, while wandering through the empty aisles, he suddenly fell. Because he was always clowning around and rather enjoyed the spotlight, his co-workers assumed he was pulling one of his pranks again. For this reason, there was a brief delay in getting him to the hospital for proper treatment—though the delay couldn’t have been more than a minute or two—a detail she found so upsetting that she burst into tears. Fortunately, he was diagnosed with nothing more than a minor concussion, and the doctor said he should be fine after a few additional tests and a week’s rest at the hospital. Her husband looked unusually relaxed during his stay. In fact, he went so far as to say he’d never felt better. She was a receptionist at a small trading company, and each day after work she headed straight to the hospital to make sure he had all that he needed. Several days later, her husband wished to be discharged, and on the evening of the fifth day, she brought him home. As she watched him leave for work the next morning, cheerfully cracking jokes as he’d always done, she sensed certain emotions come alive again. After leaving work early that day to prepare a special dinner, she looked back on their married life and sank into regret. Even so, she couldn’t help feeling a glimmer of hope that things would be different from now on. They had some money saved up. Maybe her husband could enroll at a community college. With a college degree, he would be able to find a better job than what he had now. Maybe they could have a child. She wanted a boy . . . All evening she was in high spirits, but from time to time, a sense of foreboding would hit her without warning. Still, she thought nothing of it. That’s why she didn’t see (or chose not to see) the many signs—he knocked over the decorative scented candle several times at least, he neglected to use his chopsticks, he dropped his spoon, and his cup slipped from his hand more than twice—each detail an essential element to the construction of our story. From that day on, she felt simultaneously happy and anxious, and couldn’t shake the sensation that she was floating in space. It wasn’t until four days later in the morning, when her husband said tearfully, “Honey, I can’t see anything,” that she finally returned to solid ground. When they went back to the hospital, one doctor started by saying, “No abnormalities could be detected in the eyes,” and delivered the rest of the diagnosis in cold, precise language, while another doctor opted for a more figurative expression: “If we just flick on the correct switch, I’m sure his sight will return.” Both statements filled the couple with hope, and it was this hope that spurred them on to undergo three surgeries in the next two years. In order to come up with the money for the final surgery, they had no choice but to move to a smaller, shabbier apartment, as well as take on debt. The day her husband received his third—and final—surgery, she sat tensely in the waiting room, looking as if she were expecting an important guest. She wiped her nose repeatedly with the sleeve of her worn sweater and began to leaf through the magazines strewn about the room, as if the very act of reading would somehow hide her pilling sweater. But unfortunately, almost nothing she read interested her, and in one magazine, not even a single word was able to hold her attention. Her mental state may have been to blame, or possibly the fact that the selection of magazines in the waiting room—they were about golf or tennis, or had to do with classical music, ballet, or lifestyle—was too sophisticated for her crude taste, but such judgments would be unfair. The truth was, the magazines were old. The director of the hospital believed buying magazines was a waste of money, and so had cancelled all his subscriptions years earlier. The only one there that she found somewhat interesting was a blues music magazine called Blue Shoe. (First published in the US in the 1990s, Blue Shoe ran for a total of eight issues in Korea from 1994 to 1995 until it was cancelled due to insufficient revenue. What she read was the Summer 1995 issue.) She had no idea that blues was a genre of music, and had believed it to be nothing more than a seductive, sultry dance, but for years to come, she would remember the song lyrics she read in the magazine that day. Please don’t leave me here. Won’t you help me fight gravity and rise up? I’m not that kind of woman. Soon after, a resident let her know the surgery was finished and asked her to come with him to receive a full report from the surgeon. She shoved the magazine she’d been reading into her bag, and slowly followed the resident down the narrow corridor. ⁎ They made their way through the heavy rain and arrived at Gourmet Restaurant. They hadn’t cancelled their reservation; they had run a little late, that’s all. The couple liked to dine there on the last Tuesday of every month. “It’s really pouring out there!” said Mister Jang, the restaurant owner, as he passed them each a towel. “I heard a typhoon’s headed this way.” Soon after, he brought over a bowl of olives and a bottle of wine. The couple was in the middle of discussing the same topic yet again—whether they should bring their son home from junior boarding school—but they stopped talking as soon as Mister Jang approached their table. Mister Jang was in his late forties and a bachelor, or so they presumed. His regulars had been the ones who’d given him the nickname “Mister Jang.” “I take it that your child lives far away?” he said in a friendly but polite manner as he poured the wine. “We’ve never mentioned it before?” said the wife. “Our son is at a private boarding school—one of the best middle schools in the country. They only accept students with the top scores. He’s in his second year.” “You must miss him.” “Oh, yes. Very much. He’ll be coming home this summer break.” Everyone thought they made a very nice couple. The man was in his early forties, and though he had a tired appearance and didn’t look exactly young for his age, he had a trustworthy face with clean-cut features. His wife was five years younger, and while she wasn’t a typical beauty, her face called to mind a bookcase made of a rich dark-colored wood and filled with books, brass hinges polished to a high shine, and perhaps a small, but elegant tea table. Mister Jang’s intuition and years of experience told him at once the meaning behind her words “this summer break,” but he was shrewd enough to refrain from probing any further. Long after the restaurant closed for the night, the couple was still engrossed in conversation. This sort of thing happened often. The man gestured angrily once in a while, and the woman wrung her napkin with both hands. After sending the staff home, Mister Jang went to the couple’s table to refill their water glasses. Only then did they realize there were no other customers in the restaurant. “We didn’t realize it was so late! Sorry about that. We’ll be off soon.” “No, that’s quite all right. Can I get you anything else?” Mister Jang smiled as he waited for them to respond. “We’re the only ones here,” the man said. “Why don’t you have a drink with us?” “I’m afraid I’ll have to pass on the drink,” Mister Jang said at last. “But since business hours are over, I’ll join you for a bit, if you don’t mind.” He took a seat at their table. “I was up last night, watching a show by myself,” the woman said. “You see, he was out late drinking with his fellow professors.” Then lowering her voice, as if spilling an important secret, she added, “He recently received tenure.” The man let out an embarrassed laugh. “A famous actress was on the show—now what was her name? She starred in that movie recently . . . you know, the one where a thief breaks into the post office to steal the mail. Honey, do you remember it?” Her husband shrugged. “Anyhow, she’s divorced and has a son who has trouble focusing. He has ADHD. And he’s only eight years old.” “So many kids have the same issue these days,” the man said. “Does it worry you to hear stories like that?” Mister Jang asked. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Well, don’t you wonder what you’d do if that were your child?” “Hmm, not really. Our son has never caused us any trouble. He does well in school. You could say he’s a model son, actually,” the man said, looking toward his wife. However, the wife ignored his words and turned toward Mister Jang, saying in tongue-in-cheek fashion, “Shouldn’t you marry first before you start worrying about those things?” “I guess I’m just a worrier,” Mister Jang said. The woman laughed. “Oh, you’ll be fine. You’re a clever man. If you get married and have a baby, I’m sure your baby will be clever, too.” “And how do you know if I’m clever or not?” he asked a little sarcastically. “I can tell just by looking at someone. I learned a bit of physiognomy back when I was in college. Believe it or not, the reason I married this man was because he had a good face.” The man laughed. Mister Jang laughed along. “Well, the actress talked about how her son grew extremely close to the old woman who lived alone next door. He’d go play there almost every day, even when the actress was home, and wouldn’t come back for hours. The actress obviously didn’t have time to get to know the neighbor—I mean, you can imagine how busy she gets. They barely talked, but just from what she saw or heard, it seems she didn’t have a good impression of the old woman. She probably thought it was strange that her boy was spending all his time next door. So do you know what she did? She asked the old woman to stop seeing her son. Now don’t you think that was going a bit too far?” Mister Jang nodded. But her husband asked, “You mean the actress said all that on the show?” “That’s right,” she said flippantly, as if the question annoyed her. Soon after, the couple stood up to pay the bill. The rain had stopped at some point and the late summer breeze that smelled of rain drifted in through the open door. Mister Jang thought the couple’s faces looked drawn and angry and somewhat sad. For a long time, he stood watching after them as they walked toward their car. ⁎ After her husband lost his sight, she played the role of the good wife without a single complaint. When she returned from work, she put dinner on the cramped table, and when dinner was finished, she painstakingly calculated their expenses. She wanted to pay off their debt quickly, but it was impossible with what little she made, even with all of her husband’s severance pay. While she wrestled with the calculator, he read a Braille book or listened to the radio. He enjoyed one program in particular where multiple guests came on to read funny anecdotes sent in by listeners. He asked her to add Braille stickers to the computer keyboard, and while she was at work, he typed up his own funny stories. When she returned from work, he asked her to print them out and mail them to the radio station. She never read his stories—not even one—and though she sent about half to the station, she lost the other half. In any case, not once did any of her husband’s stories make it on air. One day, tired of listening to the same station all the time, he started fiddling with the dial when he happened to catch the words of a public relations representative from their district. “We wish to cultivate an appreciation for arts and culture among our residents, so as part of this plan, we will be offering unparalleled classes at affordable tuition fees.” The district rolled out its most ambitious programming yet, holding courses with titles like “The History of the Library,” “Italian Cuisine,” and “Flaubert and Dickens” taught by experts on the subjects, who received generous remuneration for their services. The district’s efforts became publicized in local news as “Humanities for Citizens” or “A High-Quality Cultural Tour for Residents,” and received widespread praise. He told his wife about these classes, and suggested that she attend one once a week. In the end, the class she chose was “American Popular Music.” It was a subject she was somewhat knowledgeable about, since she had a good impression of the United States and enjoyed listening to the radio, especially after her husband lost his sight. Every Wednesday evening, she put on the only coat she owned and pushed her way through the chilly wind to the district office building, located two bus stops from her home. She loved the evening walk to her class, the smell of the lecture hall, her perfectly square desk, and the professor who always came dressed in an expensive cashmere coat. He had attended college and graduate school in America, and fittingly, he possessed extensive knowledge of not only American popular music, but also American film, fiction, poetry, and drama. She took copious notes, cramming her notebook with text, and when she returned home, she told her husband all that she had learned. With his eyes closed, he sat in his chair and listened. She always wondered why he felt the need to close his eyes when he couldn’t see a thing, but she never asked. About three months into the class, the district chief suddenly summoned the department heads and over a long meeting, made the decision to cancel all classes. One Wednesday evening, the professor of “American Popular Music” informed his students that his class would no longer be running and that “Everyday Yoga” would take its place the following week at the same time. He was kind enough to add that those who were interested should take the course, but if not, they should request a refund. There wasn’t a hint of disappointment or regret on his face. In fact, he looked relieved, as if a weight had come off his shoulders. After class, the woman sat alone in the empty classroom. She felt as if she’d been abandoned, even humiliated. About twenty minutes later, she put on her coat and walked slowly out of the building. She always walked through the parking lot and back gate since she got home much faster this way, but when she stepped out of the building that day, the professor of “American Popular Music” was standing in the middle of the parking lot. Dressed in his camel cashmere coat, he was talking on the phone, shaking his clenched fist in the air, as if the person on the other end of the line were standing in front of him. He was so agitated he dropped the car keys he’d been holding, and though he picked them up right away, he would shake his fist, drop his keys, and be forced to stop every few steps. She watched him repeat this comical routine several times. She waited until he finished his phone call to approach him. “Hello,” she said. It took him a while to place her. “I’m in your ‘American Popular Music’ class. I have to say, I respect you so much, Professor.” She was anxious that he might not recognize her, so when he said at last, “Ah, of course, hello there,” she felt enormously relieved. ⁎ Inside the car on their way home, they argued again about their son. As soon as they pulled into the parking lot of their apartment building, his wife slammed the driver’s side door shut and went up to their suite. He stayed in the car, staring blankly at the silhouettes created by the row of shrubs by the entrance, at the puddles gleaming in the streetlight, and at the end of the wet sidewalk, until his gaze fell on the fire lane. A few years ago, there had been a fire in their apartment. When he’d rushed home after receiving the news, he’d found several fire trucks in the fire lane preparing to leave. “Are you the father?” someone asked. His son, then twelve years old, stood clasping the hand of their elderly next-door neighbor, looking unhurt. At the time, the old woman had been living alone; her husband had passed away from a heart attack several years earlier and all her children had married and moved out. Whenever the couple needed last-minute child care, they left their child with this neighbor, but on the day of the fire, his wife should have been home. “Thank God it wasn’t a big fire,” said the old woman, as if she were making an excuse. His son’s room was the most damaged by the fire. To be exact, apart from his room, the rest of the apartment was fine. “The fire started in your son’s room,” the firefighter had said. The boy’s photo albums, clothes, journals, awards, and report cards all disappeared. “He kept saying he wanted to go home, said he wasn’t a little kid anymore, so I just gave him some dinner and sent him home, but who knew something like this would happen?” the old woman said. “Where did your mom go?” he asked his son, but the boy merely shook his head from side to side, staring at the ground with his lips pressed tightly together. Twelve years old. For the first time, the man realized the boy was growing up. He couldn’t bring himself to embrace the boy or hold his hand. The old woman said with a smile, “He’s very mature for his age.” The year before, she had passed away from lung cancer. After she’d received the diagnosis, she hadn’t lasted a month. Now her youngest son and his wife lived in her apartment, but the two families barely talked. After the incident, he and his wife—no, their entire family—spoke not a word about the fire. He tried, however, to spend more time with his family. A few months later, the boy said he wished to transfer to a prestigious junior boarding school just outside the city. The tuition was high and only top students were accepted into the school. Because his family had lived in the US until he was seven years old, the boy’s English was better than his peers’. The couple fully supported their son’s desire to transfer schools. If he were admitted, he could go on to the senior high school endowed by the same foundation, and if that were to happen, he was pretty much guaranteed a spot at one of the elite universities in the country. Their son passed the middle school entrance exam, and the couple became the envy of everyone they knew. But when did it all start to go wrong? His wife started believing it had been a mistake to send their child away, insisting at every chance that they bring him home and transfer him to a middle school nearby. Then he would calm her down by saying that keeping their son at the boarding school was the best thing they could do for “his future,” and somehow manage to persuade her. But at times, they would argue fiercely. Each time they fought, she would get up and leave, slamming the door behind her. If they fought in the living room, she would disappear into the bedroom and slam the door shut, and if they fought in one room, she’d go into another room and slam the door shut, and if they happened to be fighting inside the car, she’d slam the car door shut and go up to their apartment. He believed that her closing the door this way meant she saw the situation in an entirely different light. In other words, she wasn’t merely expressing her anger; there was a deeper significance to her action. Even so, in the end he always opened the door, making it so that they—that is, he and his wife—stayed trapped inside together. He went up to their apartment and found his wife sitting vacantly at her vanity table in the bedroom, still dressed in her outside clothes. When he saw her, a scene from a certain American book came to mind. It was about a man, who, at the end of failure, has the realization that his greatest treasure in life is his wife. A strange emotion came over him, but it didn’t take long for him to grasp that what he was feeling was desire. “What’s wrong?” “He was here. He left his laundry behind.” At some point, their son, if he needed to drop by the apartment, would come home only when he knew his parents would be out. They didn’t know how to interpret his actions. The couple remained silent for some time and then his wife started to dial a number. “Who are you calling?” he asked, but he knew exactly who. There had been several incidents like this. Six months ago, she had barged into his office at the university and insisted that they go get the boy. She said she had already let his school know. It was always like this. But not once did they actually succeed in bringing their child home. He gazed at her back, as she held the phone up to her ear. “No, don’t. The more we act like this, the more he’ll end up hating us.” But she ignored him, and put down the receiver soon after, saying, “It’s strange. He’s not picking up. We should leave right now.” She then added, “You’re coming, aren’t you?” ⁎ All they did that day was stand beside the parking lot steps and have some coffee from the machine. She showed him her lecture notes and he nodded appreciatively several times. All at once, she recited the lyrics she had read in the magazine on the day her husband had received his final surgery. “Please don’t leave me here. Won’t you help me fight gravity and rise up? I’m not that kind of woman.” She talked about Blue Shoe, and asked if he recognized the song. The professor gazed into the bottom of his paper cup and asked if the article had mentioned the song title. She couldn’t remember. “Sorry, I don’t have a good memory. But there wasn’t any other explanation about the singer or the song. It mentioned only the title and a part of the lyrics. But I forget what the song was called.” She felt her face grow warm, and for that reason, she grew upset. The professor said the words didn’t ring a bell at the moment, but that the title might come to him sometime later. He asked if she still had the copy of Blue Shoe, and she nodded, saying she could even give it to him if he liked. And then once more, she said earnestly, “Your class was incredibly valuable. I’ve learned so much.” When it was time to go, she tore out the last page of her notebook and wrote down her phone number. “If you happen to find out about the song, would you mind giving me a call?” That night, she read her class notes to her husband, and told him how she’d had coffee from the dispenser with the professor. “He’s such a smart man. Truly. More than we can possibly imagine.” However, she didn’t mention that the class was cancelled. When the following Wednesday came and her husband asked why she wasn’t leaving for class, she said she wasn’t feeling well and wanted to rest. They ate supper and listened to the radio together. She then helped him type up a funny story he wanted to send to the radio station. The following Wednesday came, and she remained at home once more, and again the following Wednesday, and again the Wednesday after that. Still she didn’t reveal that the class had been cancelled, and her husband no longer probed her. One evening during dinner, she asked him, “Do you remember how I look?” He tried to recall her face. Once in a while, she would gaze at her reflection in the mirror. Though she was only thirty-three years old, her hair was already going white in places, her cheeks sagged, and her skin was rough. She sometimes even woke in the middle of the night. She would look around at their cramped, dingy room, the kitchen sink that reeked of food, the bathroom where cockroaches scurried about, and finally at her husband’s sleeping face. Her husband, who didn’t do much except stay at home, had gained a lot of weight, particularly in his belly and back. She often thought about herself on the day of his final surgery, how she’d sat in the waiting room, and though she didn’t know the reason why, she felt a slight pain in her chest. Toward the end of winter, she received a call that her husband had been in a car accident and was in the hospital. He sometimes went out by himself with a cane. When she arrived at the emergency room, he lay in the hospital bed with his left leg in a cast and his eyes closed like a corpse. She felt her pulse begin to quicken. Her husband’s injuries were minor, and he fully recovered two weeks later. But for a long time after that, she vividly recalled the way her heart had pitched in her chest. After the accident, he stopped venturing out alone, and always stayed indoors typing, but he no longer asked her to send his stories to the radio station. Whenever she heard the sound of typing, she sensed something inside her shatter, and she couldn’t help but feel as if she were being punished. On the last Wednesday of March, she received a call. As soon as she heard his voice, she knew who it was. It was the professor of “American Popular Music.” He said he’d been away on a trip, and he’d called because he’d suddenly thought of her. “I know this might be crossing the line, but I was wondering if I could see that issue of Blue Shoe?” She turned her place upside down, but wasn’t able to find the magazine. Still, she went to see him. They met at a shabby coffee shop near the district building. She told him she would bring the magazine next time. And so, she began to go out every Wednesday evening once more. She told her husband she’d decided to attend the class again. In a way, what she told him was the absolute truth. The next time she and the professor met, they had coffee at a café far from the district office. He told her about music, film, fiction, poetry, and drama, and she diligently took notes. She even told him about her husband. When she told him that her husband was blind, the professor told her about famous blind musicians. That night, she read out her notes to her husband as she had always done, asking him at the very end, “Can you understand everything I’m saying?” ⁎ The rain started again, heavier this time. The sound of the rain hitting the car was deafening. The wipers moved incessantly, but the scene outside the windshield kept blurring. Because of the late hour and all the rain, the perimeter highway was deserted, which filled him suddenly with fear. His wife had been driving with her mouth tightly shut the entire time. He felt that what she was doing was madness, but he didn’t dare say anything. All he knew was that they needed to go home. “He’s not going to come with us,” he said. “How can you be so sure?” she said. “Did you forget what happened last time? How he called us and told us to stop humiliating him?” “We have to bring him home, even if we have to drag him all the way back.” “Let’s turn around. It’s raining too hard. We might get into an accident. It won’t be too late if we go in the morning.” “No, we have to get him tonight.” He gazed at her profile. She looked extremely angry, but she also looked unbearably sad. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps he’d been wrong about the desire he’d felt for her earlier, and that what he’d actually felt was the urge to hit her. He realized a certain emotion was trying to push its way through and drag him to some far-off place. “He’s not coming back. We need to give it time.” She pulled over to the side of the highway at once. “Give it time? What do you mean?” she said, her voice shaking. He didn’t know what he’d meant either. “Turn on the hazard lights,” he said finally, and closed his mouth. If they wanted to talk about their child, they needed to go back to the night of the fire. He needed to ask her where she had gone that night, why she hadn’t been home with the boy. But he didn’t ask. If she had been home, there wouldn’t have been a fire, and in that case, their son would have never left them, but even if there had been a fire, their son wouldn’t have had to fend for himself. These words threatened to spill from his throat. But he wouldn’t ever bring up any of this with her. He had no desire to blame his wife. The rain was coming down harder. Lightening tore across the sky, followed by a distant crash of thunder. All of a sudden, the thought that their child may have been the one who’d started the fire flashed across his mind, but it was an awful thought, a thought he needed to immediately discard. She had her face buried in the steering wheel. He reached over to turn on the hazard lights, but she stopped him without lifting her face from the steering wheel. “This is dangerous. The rain’s coming down hard. Please, let’s head back.” “I don’t care.” “Honey, please. We might get into a big accident. We might even die.” “Why didn’t you ever ask me where I was on the night of the fire?” she asked, lifting her face from the steering wheel. It was dark inside the car, but the light from passing cars created bizarre patterns and then disappeared. He felt numbed by the noise of the rain pummeling the windows. “It was for you. For your sake,” he said. “For my sake? How?” He hesitated, not knowing how to respond. “To protect me from your cheating?” she asked. “What?” He looked at her. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. “What are you talking about?” “On the night of the fire, do you know where I was?” “Where were you? If only you’d been home that night, our son would have never left. For the last three years, I’ve tried so hard not to say this to you. So what are you saying now?” In the darkness, her face crumpled, and she said nothing for a moment. It seemed her eyes were filling with tears. “What are you saying? Are you saying it’s my fault our son is treating us this way?” “You left him on his own that night.” “Then what about you? Didn’t you leave him behind? Didn’t you leave me behind, too?” “What are you talking about?” “I followed you that night.” She glared at the wipers that were struggling to sweep the rain away and said once more, “I followed you.” She turned off the wipers, and swiped at her tears with one hand. He couldn’t see a thing. Everything was water. “God, I never wanted to bring this up,” she said. He didn’t know what to say. “You went to her house that night,” she said, choking back her sobs. “I parked in front of the house and was trying to decide if I should go in or not. Then about two hours later, I saw you come out—with her.” ⁎ It was her husband who had suggested inviting the professor to their home for dinner. “I’d like to listen to that intelligent professor myself.” She had no desire to show the professor her impoverished, miserable life. But unfortunately, her husband took the matter into his own hands, taking care of every last detail. He called the professor himself, and was insistent, yet polite, until his invitation was accepted. Knowing her husband was intending to be cruel, she wanted desperately to cancel the dinner, but in the end gave in. She cleaned, sprayed insecticide in every corner of the house, and threw out the food waste. While she did these things, her husband didn’t bother to help, but merely listened to funny anecdotes on the radio, and typed something on the keyboard. She put a few potted geraniums she’d bought from a flower shop on the shelf. She managed to find the copy of Blue Shoe at the back of the shelf, but she crammed it back in the shelf. As she was preparing dinner, she recalled how she had cooked a special meal for her husband the day he was discharged from the hospital, but the sound of his typing put an end to the memory. That evening, the professor came to their home. Years later, when his wife pressured him to talk about that night, the first thing he recalled was the smell. An unpleasant, peculiar smell. Before they ate, they sat around the cramped table and listened to the few CDs that the professor had brought as gifts. They were the albums of blind musicians, like Stevie Wonder, Diane Schuur, and Ray Charles. “Honey, all these musicians are blind,” she said to her husband, but he said nothing. The last song they listened to was called “Defying Gravity.” It wasn’t by a blind musician, but from the musical Wicked. The professor was kind enough to translate the lyrics for them. “The words are lovely,” he said. I’m through accepting limits ’Cause someone says they’re so Something I cannot change But till I try I’ll never know I’d sooner buy defying gravity Kiss me goodbye, I’m defying gravity And you can’t pull me down! “Aren’t these lyrics very similar to the ones you mentioned before?” the professor asked. While they listened to the music, her husband kept his eyes shut. “Honey, what are you doing?” she asked. “I’m listening. Isn’t that what we’re doing—listening to the music?” They played “Defying Gravity” once more, and she brought the meal she’d prepared to the table. She noticed that the professor was staring at her husband throughout the whole dinner, but she said nothing. “Please don’t stare at me like that,” her husband said abruptly. Before she could say anything, he continued, “Professor, tell me this—how are you so smart? How is it that you know everything? Please, you must tell me.” He set his spoon down on the table, locked his fingers together, and then rested his chin on his clasped hands. It was certain he couldn’t see a thing, but he acted as if he could indeed see. As she watched her husband, she recalled how, after the car accident, he had lain with his eyes closed like a corpse, and she felt the emotions from the hospital that day come alive again. “I’m not a smart man,” the professor said. “There are many more people who are smarter than I am.” “I suppose. Just like how I keep sending stories to the radio station, but there are so many stories that are funnier than mine.” “What kind of stories did you send in?” “Funny stories, of course.” “Do you think I could hear one?” The woman, seated beside her husband, shook her head from side to side. “If you’d like.” Her husband started to tell his funny stories, but none of the three people sitting around the small table laughed. Soon after, the professor received a phone call and left. She walked him out and watched him drive away in his car. Watching his taillights disappear into the night, she thought about what the past three years had meant to her. When she went back inside the house, her husband was listening to “Defying Gravity” while typing on the keyboard. She turned off the music. “How is it that he knows so much about everything?” she asked. “Apparently, his wife is also very educated. They have a son, and he’s very smart.” She added, “Honey, if we have a baby, do you think our baby could be as smart? Do you think it’s possible? I don’t think so. You know why? Because we’re stupid.” It was then that she realized the reason for her husband’s blindness, the reason they couldn’t afford to have a baby, the reason for their entire unhappiness—it was all due to their stupidity. It was simply a part of them, and it would continue to be a part of them for the rest of their lives. But her husband couldn’t care less what she said, and kept tapping away at the keyboard. ⁎ He thought back to that night. While they were eating, the blind man’s hands had struck him as remarkable, but the wife seemed to accept her husband’s behavior as perfectly natural. In fact, it was hard to believe he was blind. “Why didn’t you just ask me where I was going? Do you mean you left our son at home every Wednesday evening to follow me?” “I guess it’s all my fault then.” “Let’s go back. We need to go home.” But they stayed on the side of the highway, without turning on the hazard lights or wipers. The rain kept pouring down. “Honey, it’s madness to stay like this. We could even die.” “I don’t care.” “It isn’t what you think. The woman told me about a song I’d never heard before, that’s all. Plus, she mentioned Blue Shoe. You know how rare that magazine is. I wanted to see it for myself, and I wanted to know what song she was talking about. That’s the only reason I saw her. I’m telling you, it isn’t what you think.” His wife said nothing. “When I went inside the house, I noticed a bad smell—a strange, bad smell. I just wanted to come home. That’s what it was like for me. I swear it isn’t what you think. A sad, miserable couple lives there, that’s all.” “I know. She has a blind husband.” “How do you know that?” “Did you sleep with her?” She bit her lip. He observed in the darkness her forehead, the sharp line of her nose, and slender neck. “You must have seen her. She’s an ugly, poor woman. She doesn’t suit me at all.” Her eyes glinted in the darkness. At last she opened her mouth. “How can you say that?” She collapsed onto the steering wheel again. He thought about the downpour, the distant thunder, and their motionless car. Because their car was occupying a very small space in this world, it seemed they could very well disappear. “That was the last time I saw her. In the middle of dinner, I received the call that there had been a fire in our apartment, so I rushed home. I swear that was it.” “You didn’t call her again?” his wife asked, without lifting her face from the steering wheel. “That’s right.” That, however, was a lie. He’d called the woman a few days later, but she hadn’t picked up. And then he’d gone to her house a few months after that, except he hadn’t been able to ring the doorbell. “Fine, let’s go get him. Let’s go get him right this minute.” All he wanted was to get away, to flee, to go back to the beginning. But his wife didn’t start the car. He thought maybe now was the time he needed to hit her. “He isn’t coming back,” she said. “We both know it. We’ve lost him forever.” Their car stayed this way for a long time, hidden temporarily from the world. ⁎ After the couple left, Mister Jang began to clear the table. First, he took the dirty dessert plates, wine glasses, and forks and spoons to the kitchen and put them in the sink. Next, he removed the tablecloth and spread a fresh one over the table, spraying some water on the linen to smooth out the wrinkles. Napkins folded into triangles were set at each place, and the chairs were pushed in. After flicking off all the lights in the dining room, he headed back into the kitchen to wash the dishes. When he finished, he turned off the rest of the kitchen lights except the halogen lamp and made himself an instant coffee. He dragged a patio chair over to the sink and sat down. The rain was pouring down; lightning flashed and thunder crashed. Mister Jang thought about the world’s unhappiness—so much unhappiness, which had nothing to do with him. He thought about those swept away by torrential waters or wounded by broken signs and trees, those who lost homes and cars from flooding. He thought about all the crimes happening somewhere in the world at that very moment, about parents who lost their children and children who lost their parents, about people lonely and dying from sickness, about women giving birth to children they did not want. And he thought about all those caught in the downpour, stopped by sorrow and rage. Mister Jang took a sip of his coffee and was deeply grateful for the peaceful life he had.
bySon Bo Mi
A Remote Place
It was the first night after we moved. The wind whistled outside, and cold air seeped into the room with every shake of the windowpanes. It was so bitterly cold a bowl of water sitting out would be frozen solid by morning. My younger sister and I turned out the lights and lay down on our mats. We had two comforters apiece, which we layered over our bodies and pulled up over our faces. Her body curled up and her teeth chattering, my sister suddenly screamed out, “It’s fucking cold! Let’s get some bubble wrap and cover the windows tomorrow.” It didn’t sound like she was swearing, maybe because her voice was buried in the comforters. Preoccupied with getting our boxes and bags in order, I’d neglected to get heating oil for the boiler. This spelled disaster for our tiny room. “An oil-fired boiler is going to mean high heating costs. Should we just get an electric heating pad and use that?” “How’d we wind up here? I’ve never seen a door made of paper before.” “Yeah, that’s one old-fashioned door.” The room was about the size of our old studio apartment, folded exactly in half. We’d needed to get our deposit quickly, and with only half of the original amount to spend, we “wound up here,” as my sister put it. We were so rushed moving our stuff that I felt dazed. We had to vacate the studio that very day. I’d gotten it wrong and thought we were moving a day later, so we ended up having to clear our things out while the new tenant was moving her things in. We were in the middle of lunch when we had to start moving. A toaster was placed where our rice cooker had been. The shoe closet was stuffed with high heels and boots where just four pairs of sneakers had enjoyed ample space. With nowhere to go, our crates lay exposed on the cement floor for hours. It was the middle of winter, and we were quite literally out on the streets. Passersby looked down their noses at our shabby household items. To make everything worse, it snowed, and we had to cover our belongings with towels and handkerchiefs. We didn’t have enough to require a moving service, so we rented a small delivery truck and called up a buddy from university to drive for us. We hit so many bumpy, unpaved roads that we jostled against each other a few times and rocked around in the vehicle. My sister even drew blood biting the inside of her cheek and lip. By the time we had unloaded everything in a haphazard pile and recouped for a bit, it was already well into the evening. We were in a remote location for ordering delivery food and the address was hard to explain, but with the landlord’s help we managed to order pork lettuce wraps and fried dumplings. Then, waving her foot as if kicking something, my sister screamed again. “How are we going to catch and kill that son of a bitch who conned us?” In a muffled voice, I replied, “We have to kill him. We will, one day. And we’ll get all our money back.” Our conversation did not go on. It was as if even our mouths were frozen solid. We went to sleep slowly, each under our own comforters, slowly warming ourselves with our own breath. After the first week passed, there was one thing we still couldn’t get used to. Although we’d lived in one-room rentals our whole lives, these rooms had always had bathrooms attached as a common courtesy. Here, however, the bathroom was far removed, in another place altogether. In order to go to the bathroom, we had to first collect the toilet paper, open the door, go outside, sit down on the maru, put our shoes on, and cross the long courtyard. And not only that, because this was a shared bathroom, every time we went we were reminded of the fact that we’d moved. If we used the bathroom six times a day, it meant that six times a day we crouched over the toilet and thought about our poverty and its indignities. Not only that, but it took a great deal of resolve to go to the bathroom with the days being cold. To the best of her ability, my sister tried to hold it, or cut back on drinking water to limit the number of times she went. Even if you told her she’d get sick if she kept on like this, she didn’t listen. When summer came, things would be a little better, but we didn’t want to stay until then. The day we signed the contract, the landlady seemed to acknowledge the poor living environment, saying in low tones lest someone overhear, “Don’t stay long, just a little while and then move on.” The owners were a couple in their sixties. They called the place the nemojip, “the square house,” because of how the rooms were laid out to form a square. I heard there was a time it wasn’t rented out, when their family of six had occupied the whole space. The landlady, who’d fancied herself an aristocrat in the imposing old hanok, would now look mournfully at the sky and sigh, as if her family’s fortune had fallen. But I couldn’t sympathize with her. From my perspective as a new tenant, she was the owner, and if the rent was even a day late, she’d be knocking on the door. The old couple had been living grandly in the old style, but when their second son lost big on a business gamble, they decided they were wrong to count on their children for help, and they renovated the rooms to provide for their own livelihood. They hastily spent all their money on fixing up the house in case their son came asking for it. They built a communal bathroom and shower stalls, and a laundry room with three coin-operated, front-load washing machines. They connected the water supply lines to the rooms without kitchens and put in separate boilers. There were nine rooms in the nemojip, not counting the one they occupied. Rent was slightly higher for the rooms with kitchens attached. Each door was numbered, and we lived in number nine, in the farthest corner of the house. The landlady also told me she’d be changing the doors the following spring. I somehow got the feeling she’d given the previous tenants the same line. Holding the roll of toilet paper in my hand, crouching with my legs apart over the old-fashioned squatter, I was thinking about my poverty for the second time that day. In a communal bathroom, using the old rubber shoe-shaped squatter was more sanitary than having to spread your bottom over a sit-down toilet. The downside was that your legs went numb if you had to squat for a long time. I hurried to finish my business before this happened, disposed of the toilet paper, and pressed the lever with my foot. And thus, the second reminder of my poverty that day was sucked down with the water into the void. Then I heard someone enter the bathroom. I tried my best to avoid run-ins with other tenants, but the structural design of the nemojip—with its shared bathroom and shower room and doors that opened out onto a central courtyard—made this all but impossible. In this way, our living arrangement differed from that of a studio apartment. I emerged from the stall and there was a woman about my age with bobbed hair washing her hands at the sink. She said hello, looking at me in a mirror flecked white with toothpaste and soap. Forgetting my initial resolve, I bowed my head in the direction of the speckled mirror without even being conscious of doing so. The fact that someone was a tenant here meant she was in the same predicament; I knew without asking that she’d been pushed out here from somewhere else. No matter the source of one’s power, without it, one is pushed out to a remote place. Out from the center to the suburbs, and from there to the dark, stinking middle of nowhere. “You moved into Room Nine last week, didn’t you?” “Ah, yes.” “I’m in Room Three.” “Oh.” “Room Nine may be drafty, but it’s a lucky room.” “Really?” “All the people staying there did well and got out.” “You seem to have been here for a while.” “For two years. It’s a little inconvenient, but the rent is cheap.” I nodded as if in agreement. After washing her hands and wiping them on her clothes, she asked for some toilet paper. I wondered if she’d had designs on the toilet paper all along, and that’s why she’d greeted me and made conversation. Hesitating, I held it out. She wound it around her hand about ten times and went into the stall. The roll was reduced by about half. How wasteful, I thought. Her voice came brightly from the direction of the bathroom stall behind me. “Can you ride a bike? If so, feel free to take the one by the front door when you need it. It’s a long way to go to even get cup ramyeon. And try not to go out alone at night.” She may have been wasteful, but she wasn’t out to get something for nothing. I rode Room 3’s bicycle and picked up cup ramyeon and hamburgers from the convenience store. Just to give an idea of how secluded the area was, we were one stop from the end of the bus line. Anyone who’s been to the end of a bus line knows this, but at some point, the landscape becomes dominated by old, dilapidated buildings spread farther and farther apart from each other. Night comes early, and the streets are empty of people. Given the location, there was no way a convenience store would be nearby. Nevertheless, I pedaled hard, and water had just started to boil above the feeble burner by the time I got back. My sister and I could pour it directly over our cup ramyeon. While enjoying my ramyeon and pickled radishes, I told my sister what the woman from Room 3 had said about Lucky Room 9. She smiled brighter than she had in a long time, and said, “Then we’ll be able to catch that pyramid scammer, too.” “Yes, she said everything will turn out well and we’ll get out.” Not normally superstitious, we found ourselves pinning our hopes on her words. “Maybe it’s the effect of what you said, but the room doesn’t seem cold at all.” Dipping cold rice in her soup, my sister stared at the dull gray windows covered in bubble wrap. Since the entire wall was covered in plastic, we couldn’t open the windows or see the ashen outdoor landscape until spring. We didn’t have clear, thick glass for that. “Oh, did you ask at the convenience store?” my sister said suddenly, as if she’d forgotten, swallowing a mouthful of soup and setting her dish down on the table. “They’re not hiring.” “Even for the sunrise shift?” I nodded. My sister had loved Japanese animation and TV dramas since middle school, and she’d majored in Japanese at university. After graduation, she’d been hired at a travel agency and worked as a travel guide for Japanese tourists. One day, unable to stand her boss’s tyranny and abuse of authority, she’d flipped over her desk and run out of the office. Now she was working at a convenience store, but the owner there was also hard to please. She tried to study by watching Japanese videos on her smartphone when no customers were around, but he’d always catch her on the CCTV and call her up and tell her off. Moving to the nemojip, the rent was lower, but transportation fees had gone up accordingly, so my sister wanted to find work at a convenience store nearby. She liked a daytime schedule more than anything, so the fact she would accept a sunrise shift meant she was really dissatisfied with her current boss. “What day next week did you say you’ll find out your scores?” “Friday.” “Just think how awesome it will be if you pass.” “The interview will also be hard. Many of my seonbae have failed the interview.” I’d taken the middle school teacher certification test, and the results would be announced next Friday. This was my second attempt at it, after majoring in history education at university. Now I was working as a teaching assistant at a daycare owned by a friend’s relative. The salary wasn’t bad for part-time work, and since I only worked four hours a day, I had time to prepare for my exam, so the job was all right. But like my sister, I was having a hard time since we moved, as my commute time had lengthened by one and a half hours in each direction. My sister finished the ramyeon, but skipped the usual cup of water to wash it down. After cursing the convenience store owner to her full satisfaction, she watched a Japanese drama on her phone. I logged into an online library, borrowed a novel I hadn’t been able to read while preparing for my exam, and started reading. We lay on our stomachs with our comforters pulled over our heads. Then the wind picked up, rattling the windows and the door covered in thin mulberry paper. It sounded like they’d fall out of their frames. The bubble wrap over the window rustled, remaining attached at the top but billowing out from below like a curtain in the wind. Inside the room, we had the feeling we’d been hit by a landslide. Well, everything seemed like a threat to us, because we had nothing. Through the thin walls and paper screen came the sound of the wind rattling the doors of the other rooms in sequence, at different times and angles. I wondered why I found myself caring about the doors to the other rooms. Then I had a premonition that we weren’t going to do well and get out. Granted, things couldn’t get any worse. My sister’s eyes met mine, and I could see she was having the same thoughts. That night, the wind didn’t die down until we went to bed. Determined to forget its howling, I raised the temperature on my electric heat pad. I picked up some groceries on the way home from work, and then made a rolled omelet, stir-fried fish cakes, and seaweed soup with clams. I also grilled a piece of laver and cut it into six pieces. While the rice was cooking, I got the landlady to teach me how to use the washing machine and loaded in the pile of laundry that had built up over the week. The noise of the machine rocked the quiet nemojip. Even though the structure of the house made it impossible for us to avoid meeting other tenants, I’d still only met the woman in Room 3. It had seemed like the three of us, this woman, my sister, and I, were the only tenants around, but the night before when I went through the courtyard to the bathroom, I’d noticed lights glowing in all nine rooms. Light shone gently through the old paper doors, illuminating the courtyard, and for some reason, I relaxed and felt at peace. The sound of a chest cough came from one room, and the strains of the radio playing came from another. Strangely, seeing every room lit up like this, I felt acquainted with the residents. They had the same address as me. At the thought that they’d all finished work and were safe at home, I momentarily forgot about going to the bathroom. I stood in the middle of the courtyard and turned around once, taking in the view of the house’s interior. Although I already knew there were nine rooms, I counted them out, pointing in turn to each door awash with light. It seemed like the tenants only signaled their existence through lights and sounds—through the lights that limned the doors and the sound of them opening and closing. Through the sound of shoes being pulled out, and of paper-thin sighs. The tenants here wouldn’t stay long. They’d move straight away once their situations improved. So, they thought, what would be the point of developing a relationship if I’m just going to leave? I wondered if they’d even acknowledge me if I met them in the bathroom or the laundry room, or out in the courtyard or by the front gate. Perhaps greetings were a bother, so they carefully sidestepped each other when they were out, or listened to find out the times when others were active and deliberately avoided making the rounds then. Maybe they considered this to be polite. That’s why I, too, wondered whether I should greet them if we met. I was hanging up the laundry on the drying rack in the courtyard outside our room when my sister came home from work. She looked exhausted, and her expression was troubled. I didn’t ask any questions. After hanging the rest of the laundry, I hurried to serve the food while my sister changed clothes. I’d bought groceries and we hadn’t enjoyed so many side dishes in a while, but my sister didn’t say a word throughout dinner. It was in her character to confide every detail of her day to someone in order to release her stress. When she didn’t speak, it seemed like my efforts had been wasted. She only picked at her meal, and then poured herself a cup of instant coffee and began drinking it. It was only after that she calmly made her announcement. “I quit the store.” I didn’t ask why. I just listened. “I gave him the finger on the surveillance camera. I’d put up with his crap for so long and finally couldn’t take it anymore. Of course, he called right away and began cursing me out. So I just let him have it. He was left speechless. A lot of the words I used he’d never even heard before. No one swears like me. I’ll look into what there is for convenience stores around here. They’re everywhere. One of them’s got to be hiring.” My sister was in the habit of swearing whenever she felt like crying. She’d used every bad word she could think of that day, and it showed just how much she wanted to cry. “Good for you.” This seemed to be what she wanted to hear. “Good for you.” Looking relieved, she finished her coffee and did the dishes while I swept and washed the floor. After cleaning up, while we were brushing our teeth and rubbing on hand lotion, we heard two men open the door to the next room and haul luggage out. It seemed like our neighbor was moving. Here, this seemed to happen suddenly or be decided without any advance notice. I didn’t know where he was going, only that I hoped it was a little more central. I’d never seen the man in Room 8, but my sister had seen him from behind a couple of times smoking a cigarette and sighing. He was in his fifties living alone, and according to the Room 3 woman, he worked as a plasterer. It seemed like people were only here provisionally, crouched forward with their rear end sticking out. Like sprinters at the starting line, they were ready to spring forth at any moment. After a few frenzied raids, it was all over. The room next door was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Maybe they’d left the door wide open to draw attention to their leaving. My sister removed a black pore strip she’d placed over the bridge of her nose. Cautious lest her voice break the stillness or send vibrations into the empty room, she whispered, “This place is like a motel, isn’t it? Somewhere to stay for a while and then move on.” “Have you ever been to a motel?” I, too, spoke in a hushed voice for some reason. “Do you have to have been to one to know? You see them all the time on TV dramas. And if I have, then so what?” “If you’re going to do it, go someplace nice. Like a hotel, not a motel.” “Eonni, have you ever done it in a hotel?” “Are you kidding me? If someone’d taken me to a hotel, I’d have married the bastard.” Maybe you’re renting by the month or putting down key money. Whatever the case, if you don’t own your place then it’s no different than a motel. You’re just a long-term guest. That night, no light would filter through the door of Room 8 and it would lie empty. Our room felt colder because of this, as if it were taking on its chill. Somehow, I felt betrayed that the man had left. I thought my sister would take a day off, but the next morning she went around to find other convenience stores to work at. She rode the bicycle from Room 3 and visited all the convenience stores within biking distance, but no one was hiring. She hit an ice patch on the way back and the bike went down, but luckily she wasn’t hurt too badly. While returning the bike, she befriended the woman in Room 3. She stayed for hours talking and snacking, and it wasn’t until I came home from work that she crossed back to our room. She told me about the Room 3 woman, who was a nursing assistant. Fed up with getting lower wages and worse treatment than the nurses, she was prepping to go to nursing college. My sister went on to tell me about all the tenants in order of room number, but I wasn’t really listening, maybe because they’d just be here for a while and then leave anyway, and we didn’t plan to be here long either. Or maybe it was because I felt like the stories were all too familiar. I didn’t think my sister was really injured, but after finishing dinner she frowned and said her knee hurt. She rolled up her pant leg, revealing deep bruises. We didn’t have a first aid kit, so she went and got a medicated patch from the woman in Room 3. My sister had had an exhausting day, and with the effect of the medicine, she fell asleep at once. I left quietly and went to the laundry room. I thought I’d wash our underwear that day. I liked to launder it separately from the other clothes. I entered the laundry room to find a thin, spare man using one of the machines. He was sitting hunched over with his chin in his hands, gazing into the washing machine through the window on the door. He was watching the bubbles smash and fall against the window; it was like watching a tempest through a porthole. Perhaps he was looking ahead to summer, when he’d miss going to the seaside again. He turned at the sound of my approach, and our eyes met. I hadn’t seen him before. I was confused and almost greeted him, and it seemed like he hesitated too, but we both chose not to speak. Once having said hello, you have to keep doing it, and sometimes this can mean stress and inconvenience. If you forget once, people might misunderstand and think you have a gripe with them or that you’re rude. In other words, if I broke protocol and said hi in the confusion of the moment, it could make our relations more awkward. The man moved shyly to let me pass. I was at a loss because of the underwear. Not only would the items be visible in the window of the machine, but several of them had menstrual stains. I wondered if I should come back in the evening, and then thought, to heck with it, and put my coins in the machine and threw the laundry in. We wouldn’t be seeing each other long. When I got up to look for detergent, forgetting that soap and fabric softener were added automatically, the man was gone. He was giving me space. I felt touched by his consideration, and almost regretted not listening to what my sister had said about him earlier. I didn’t know what it was that had pushed him out here, or what he did, or when he’d started living here, but the item he was washing so intently was a thin comforter. I couldn’t fall asleep, plagued by my thoughts. My sister beside me was oblivious, snoring soundly as I thrashed around. I put on warm clothes and went outside. Snow was piled high in the courtyard, as it had been falling since morning. The snow was pristine, without tracks, and I felt like the first astronaut to walk on the moon when I stepped out on it. I was startled when my foot sank deeper than expected; I could feel the depth from the crunch of the snow. I stood in the middle of the courtyard, and as had become my habit at some point, counted the number of rooms with lights on. A low number made me feel somehow desolate whereas a high number brought a smile to my face. If all nine rooms were lit, I gave a little cry of wonderment, as if all nine rooms had given the same answer to a question. On this day, there were two rooms lit. With an empty feeling, I picked up some snow in my bare hands and formed it into a hard ball. I bent down and rolled the snowball in the snow until it gradually got bigger. With the snow so thick on the ground, I hadn’t rolled it many times before the fist-sized lump was as big as a basketball. At that moment, I heard a door open behind me. I turned around to see the man from the laundry room coming out of Room 5. Maybe he was confused to see someone alone in the courtyard rolling a snowball at night, or maybe he had his own reasons, but he ducked back inside and shut the door. He seemed to be following the unwritten rule that we avoid direct meetings. I’d feel bad if I was preventing him from going to the bathroom, but I didn’t stop rolling the snowball. Then it happened. The door to Room 5 unexpectedly swung back open, and the man came out and formed a snowball and rolled it in the snow, just as I was doing. He was wearing gloves. We finished rolling our balls in silence. Since my ball was a little larger, it went on the bottom, and the man lifted his on top. And then he went back to his room. Without him, my bare hands would have been even colder. Our snowman was in the courtyard a long time. No one poked at it or knocked it down, and it melted and dissolved quite naturally. Perhaps it was because we lived in the nemojip that we didn’t do it any harm. Around the time the snowman melted back into a handful of shapeless snow, a new tenant entered Room 8, my sister lost her limp, and the results of the teacher certification test were announced. I told my sister how I’d done, to which she responded, “We’re still young.” Was it because we were still young and pliant that we were so often crushed by failure and frustration? If the antidote to despair was a youthful spirit, then how would we overcome setbacks and failure when we got older? What could give us hope for the future? I felt a sudden dread at the thought of how I’d cope with the innumerable defeats waiting in store for me. My sister listened quietly to my concerns and responded after a while. “By then, won’t we have experience? Growth rings from the lives we’ve lived?” She stared into space for a minute and then continued. “Patterns are carved into your life as you age, and they appear like the growth rings on a tree.” At times like this, I thought my sister seemed two years older even though she was two years younger. Patterns absent in my life seemed to already be carved into my twenty-four-year-old sister’s. An inerasable pattern was formed during the course of some forgotten life event, and it appeared in bold whenever you were in difficulty. That night I learned it’s the people close to you and their words of comfort that help you to overcome life’s trials. You can’t salvage your youth as you age, but you can seek out wise words. The patterns in your life that are invisible to others can be known through words. And these patterns then benefit others as well as yourself. If you lacked youth, and the benefit of anyone close by or their words, then you just had to endure. Each day, something chipped away at you. You lived in turmoil, searching for ways of coping without letting on that your problems even existed, be they internal struggles, worries, or the consequences of what you did. If all these issues were on view, if they could be seen through clear glass, then your life would appear unbearably noisy and chaotic. The tenants of the nemojip seemed peaceful because they endured failure and adversity, not because it didn’t exist in their lives. Maybe people here lived with more despair than anywhere else, but they held on. Even still, every so often, your struggles became apparent. This was due to sound, not visibility through glass. Like, the sound coming from outside right at that moment. The owner’s second son had come over late after drinking and was threatening his parents. He hurled abuse at the old couple and threw things. The son’s grievance with the couple, and the couple’s wish for their son to live an upright life were carried directly over to us without any filter. Even as we sat in our rooms, we came to know all about their problems. But none of us opened our doors and went to quiet them or stop them. We were familiar with these problems, but they were not our problems. With our lights on, or maybe off, we’d nod in sympathy and think about the seasons of our own lives. We were reminded of past trials, ones we’d endured privately. I thought the son was like my little sister—he swore when he felt like crying. How he wanted to cry. The old couple didn’t curse their son; they cried instead. “We can’t do any more for you than we’ve already done,” they protested. It was Christmas Eve. In other years, we’d get together with friends or lovers and carouse around downtown, eating and drinking. This year, though, the weather was cold, we couldn’t shake the prevailing mood of failure and frustration, and downtown was just too far away, so my sister and I decided to spend the day in our room, just the two of us. Come to think of it, it was the first time I’d spent Christmas Eve with a family member since my elementary school days. We clinked our beer cans together, observing that there’s a short phase in everyone’s life when their perspective is warped and they prefer spending special days with friends and lovers over family members. To create a more festive mood, perhaps, my sister rummaged through boxes of knick-knacks and took out a scented candle. It looked like a gift, but I didn’t know when we’d received it or from whom, or when we had last used it and put it into storage. Inside its discolored glass holder, the candle was covered in dust. Although it seemed to have hardened to the point that it wouldn’t light or give off a scent, once we placed it in the middle of the room, it filled the space with incandescent light and a pleasing aroma. It was only a single candle, but it lent our pitiful space a bit of Christmas cheer, and when our hands got cold holding our beer cans, we moved them near the candle to warm them. As we were discussing what came to mind when we thought of Christmas, we heard a group of people coming into the courtyard all at once. My sister and I held our breath and listened for what would come next. In a moment, we heard someone announce, “A blessed Christmas to all,” followed shortly by the sound of a group singing “Silent Night.” It appeared they were young carolers from a local church going from house to house. On a night that couldn’t be any more silent, we listened to this song with great solemnity. The space grew cozy and we felt at peace. Christmas can come here, I mused. Perhaps somehow there were people who hadn’t known it was Christmas tomorrow, and the carolers were informing them. Even if you had no one to meet and no events to attend, Christmas would exist for you through knowing that it did. Right when the song ended and I was feeling sorry for myself, wishing they would stay, they continued with another song. A quiet song, of course. They usually abided by a rule of one song per house. I wondered if they sang two because they knew more than one family lived here. At any rate, these were songs you could hear at home without having to go downtown, songs for the people left behind. The carolers left and we had almost finished the beer. I had to go to the bathroom anyway, so I stopped in the courtyard. It was snowing, and to my surprise, lights were ablaze in all nine rooms. I let out an involuntary cry of delight. Why aren’t you downtown this evening? We all have different reasons, but we all prefer to be home. I felt like I’d heard them give the same answer to my question. Lit rooms. They looked like a string of bulbs around an old tree—a Christmas tree. Around midnight, however, there was an incident and one of the bulbs went out. It was time to go to bed, so I’d gotten up to clear away the scattered dishes and beer cans. Suddenly our door swung upon and someone came running in. The woman from Room 3. Wearing pajamas, her wet hair wrapped in a towel, she looked at us in terror and implored us to hide her. We didn’t have any hiding space in our tiny shoe box sized room, but she found somewhere sufficient. Opening the cover of a cheap plastic wardrobe, she climbed inside and my sister zipped it up. We quietly sat back down and pretended to drink as if nothing had happened. We heard someone opening each room door in turn, beginning at Room 1. Finally, the last door opened. Ours. A mountain of a man, reeking of booze, cast his bloodshot eyes over the room as if looking for someone. “Ajeosshi, who the hell do you think you are? You can’t just go around opening people’s doors!” My sister cursed the man, but rather than say sorry or give an apologetic look, he glared at us for a while and then shut the door. When he was gone, my sister unzipped the plastic cover to find the woman crouched down shivering like someone who’d been out in a snowstorm. Even though we assured her it was all right, she wasn’t ready to leave the wardrobe. Only when we stuck a spoon through the rings on the door to lock it did she come out and relax a little. “My ex-boyfriend. He says he’ll never let me go. He’ll die first.” She’d been tracked down by her ex on Christmas Eve, one of the days when you’re supposed to go out with your partner on a fancy date. Her eyes wild as if she was having a nightmare, she feared for the future. How had someone she’d loved and depended on change into an apparition from whom she wanted only to escape? We asked if she would like police assistance, but she shook her head as if for some sad reason this was impossible. She said she expected him back, so she slept with us in our room that night. The room was so small our shoulders touched, sleeping three abreast in an area that had formerly slept two. The woman started if the window rattled even slightly, but my sister and I took turns making conversation and she soon felt calmer. Then in the dark, as if to herself, she said, “As long as I was here, I didn’t think he’d be able to find me . . .” So that was why she’d stayed here for two years. Not just because the rent was cheap. “Even this place is a home to some.” “Was it because Christmas could come here?” The day after Christmas, she moved somewhere else in the middle of the night, as if she were running away. Maybe she’d found somewhere even more remote—a place where Christmas didn’t come. We no longer had the bicycle available to ride. The man from Room 5 did his laundry often, perhaps because he wanted to watch the soap suds. Was it that he wanted to watch the waves crash in the ocean? The laundry room was the one place we always bumped into each other, but we didn’t say hi. We just attended to our laundry. Somehow it felt natural, perhaps because we’d done it from the outset, and not acknowledging each other became a manner of greeting. I found out that simply seeing a person and thinking, “There he is” was a way of sharing space with someone that minimized awkwardness. Well, it was because we hadn’t needed words yet. After someone first spoke, maybe unintentionally, the time we’d spent not acknowledging each other would be erased. Maybe I was also betting as to who would break the silence first. After her knee healed, my sister had gone out every day seeking work, but for the past few days she’d been lying idly on the heat pad, not moving. She was furiously exchanging text messages with someone. A problem arose at my daycare that day. A child abuse complaint was filed, and the police came to our facility to secure CCTV footage. They said that pinch marks had been discovered in multiple places on a boy’s thighs and forearms. The supervising teacher was under suspicion. She jumped up and down insisting it had nothing to do with her—the marks had come about when the children had been fighting over a toy. The daycare was in chaos. The panicked director was barely hanging on after fielding dozens of calls from concerned parents. Amid the turmoil, the teachers were delayed leaving by two hours or more. I got home to find my sister waiting for me. After shaking off her lethargy, she’d gotten up and hung the laundry, and set the dinner dishes out and covered them with a cloth. I had quite an appetite after coming home so late, and I helped myself to a second serving. I was just savoring my first bite of it when my sister said, “Eonni” in a low voice. She had something to tell me. “You know Fumiko, right?” Fumiko was a Japanese exchange student who’d attended university with my sister. Wanting to speed up the language learning process, my sister addressed Fumiko often in Japanese. And Fumiko, too, took every chance to address my sister in Korean. Foreign languages brought them together. Even though Fumiko returned to Japan after graduation, they were close enough to still exchange greetings over email. I bit off a piece of soft rolled omelet made with milk. “Fumiko says the economy is booming. They have a shortage of workers there, not a shortage of employment. Shops have to close because they can’t find staff. She even says they’d like to have Korean university students trained and sent over.” I quietly set my spoon down on the table. “Fumiko says lots of young people work hourly jobs, and they do as well as salaried employees because the wages are so high. I’d be much better off doing the same thing in Japan. I’d improve my Japanese working there, and I could look into the prospect of salary work, too. If things were really hard, then I could fall back on teaching Korean.” My sister had an enterprising spirit; she was more fearless than me and less anxious about the future. She thought you could worry about obstacles once you came to them; for her, there was no point in dreading the future. Her plan wouldn’t work for me, but it would work for her. She already seemed excited. Was it that she was just happy to be out of here? “And living arrangements?” “Fumiko said I could stay at her house for a while.” I thought, Was this all because of the bathroom? Was it simply because she wanted to drink water more freely? But, Japan . . . For some reason, it seemed even more remote than where we were. “There are lots of earthquakes, and then there’s the radiation problem to consider. Won’t your health suffer? Don’t you think it’s dangerous to go there?” “Fumiko lives in Osaka. It’s a ways from Fukushima. It’ll be okay.” “Even so.” “If you’re calculating it that way, then Korea isn’t far from Japan, either.” It looked like she’d already decided. “Is Fumiko a good friend?” I asked out of concern for possible anti-Korean sentiment. “She’s fair-minded, and she likes Korean people.” I was quiet. “Are you worried for me?” “Yeah.” “Just think of it as me going abroad for language training.” “Language training?” “Yeah, language training.” “It sounds much better when you put it like that.” “I really wanted to go when I was in university. I was the only one of my friends who couldn’t.” “I know.” “It’s also weird that someone who makes their living speaking Japanese has never been to Japan.” “But you said there aren’t many swear words in Japanese. How will you get by?” “If there’s something to swear about, then Korean it is. I have to use Korean to feel like I’m really swearing.” “It’s great for the Japanese that there are so many jobs. But it’s not so great to be exposed to radiation.” “Won’t Korea be entering this economic phase soon, too? We aren’t just going to stay at the bottom forever. And when more jobs open up, I’ll be back.” My sister was younger than me, but she was bold and mature. She was going to live in a country fraught with misfortune and disaster and come back alive. In a roundabout way, she showed she was worried about leaving me. “Will you come, too?” she asked. “How can I go? I don’t know Japanese.” “Even if you don’t know the language, there’ll still be more job opportunities there than here. The economy is booming, you know.” For a minute, I was lost in thought. I was concerned about the daycare situation, but I didn’t bring it up. I understood full well what she was saying. She knew I wouldn’t come, but she asked me along anyway. She asked because she was sorry to leave me here alone. “Are you feeling uneasy about the radiation?” I didn’t reply. “Eonni, you want to live a long life, don’t you? I don’t.” I knew her reason for going to Japan. Even if she didn’t want to live long, she had to live for the time being. “My dreams are here,” I said. If you were where your dreams were, wherever that was, you could endure. My sister could, and I could too. The daycare would cease operations the following day, and it was to be formally shut down. The supervising teacher had been going through depression, and her guilt had been confirmed. Two more victims had been discovered among the children. Actually, it didn’t matter that the school was going to be shut down; parents weren’t sending their children there anyway after hearing of the police involvement. Most of the children were absent that day. Because I was just an assistant teacher without a lot of belongings stored there, I came out of the school relatively unburdened. On the way home, I could stop at the market and fill my arms with groceries. I walked fast, worried the food I bought would get cold. I was breathing hard, puffing clouds of white breath between the fluttering snowflakes. Thinking it’d be great to have a bike, I recalled the face of the woman in Room 3. The lights grew sparse, and the darkness deepened as I got closer to home. The north wind was cold and harsh. But here, too, there were houses, people living, and streaks of light. I had the feeling that a pattern had formed on my body after I’d moved out here. It would be manifest in my words at some unknown future point. I walked more quickly with the conviction that the pattern would be of help to someone. I was almost home. Thank goodness the food was still hot. The dishes were all things my sister liked and would miss. Since this was the last night before she left for Japan, she’d be packing her bags excitedly. Soon she’d be able to drink all the water she wanted. I decided not to dampen her spirits by telling her about the daycare. I passed through the rusty open gate and stood in the center of the courtyard for a minute to catch my breath. When I was breathing calmly, I counted the number of lit rooms. There were five. After my sister left, I’d spend more time counting the lights on in the nemojip. Then I heard someone call me from behind. The sound, low and quiet like someone talking to himself, skimmed past me. “You’re a little later than usual.” It was the man from Room 5. He went into his room and flipped on the light switch, suffusing his door with yellow light. Now the tally had come to six. Calling my sister’s name, I opened the door to Room 9.
byJang Eunjin
Madame Myeong-du
I’m dead. I’ve been here for twenty years standing as a dead body. I look pretty much the same as I did when I was alive, except I don’t have an leaves. And this helps people better remember me, since I look the same throughout the year by not having foliage that seasonally alters my appearance by blooming and shedding. Villagers who were born and lived here for over thirty years remember me as an Asian oak tree. But people who see me for the first time stare as if I were some kind of specter though some come closer and touch or tap my bark while muttering, “What kind of tree is this?” Frowning, they then brush off their hands or wipe them against their trousers, fearing that my dead energy might spread to them. Thus, those people never discover what kind of tree I am. In fact, they don’t care to know anything more about me. To them, I’m just a dead tree. And what good is it to know the species name of a dead tree. But twenty years ago I was still flourishing with thick leaves. In those days, like the other trees, I lived a peaceful life; in spring I bloomed new leaves and nurtured them during the summer before shedding them in the fall. The time came, though, when a large- scale development swept through the poor village here. And during this upheaval, the whole village at the foot of the mountain was razed and a new village, consisting of tidy concrete houses, was built halfway up the mountain. A wide paved road was also constructed and butted against my feet. Before I stood aloft and looked down upon the village, but now I have to look up at it. And this is how my domicile suddenly changed from woods to a desolate roadside. If it weren’t for Madame Myeong-du I would have probably been cut down or uprooted and disappeared without a trace. Myeong-du literally used her body to protect me. She placed her own life in harm’s way for my sake. So this is why I’m still standing here next to this road looking rather unsightly. In one way a huge oak tree towering next to a newly built road could have been seen as something grand and beautiful, but because of me, the road now needed to bypass me and this interfered with someone’s plans. A man was dreaming of becoming wealthy by opening an upscale restaurant alongside the new road, and I, causing a detour and thus thwarting his plan, angered him. Anticipating that the road would be constructed as originally planned if and only if I were dead, one night the man came to me and drilled two large holes at the bottom of my trunk and poured four cartons of chili pepper powder into one hole and two bottles of herbicide into the other. So I died that summer. But regardless of my death, the road was never built the way the man had hoped for and that was because Myeong-du saved me from being cut down by hugging my dead trunk tightly and thus blocking anyone from harming me. No one in the village would stand up to her. And that’s how I ended up standing here, alive for one hundred and fifty years and dead for twenty years. Grass fields surround me. A long narrow path snakes across it and stops shyly at my foot. The other end of the path vanishes behind a distant hedge of spindle trees. After building the asphalt road, they planted grass all around me. And of course, at that time there wasn’t any path. After two years, though, they suddenly ceased maintaining the grass for no particular reason. Soon dandelion seeds floated in and put their roots down, as did wild lettuce and fleabane plants. Golden foxtails and wiregrasses also grew thick and tall. Dandelions in spring, wild lettuce in summer, and wild chrysanthemums in autumn bloomed everywhere in the grass. Even though the grass was giving ground to these plants, it also thrived. As the grass and flowers flourished, a narrow path appeared and grew wider, like a living, breathing creature. And it was Myeong- du’s daily visits that created and widened the path. But since she was the only person who used it, the path no longer grew once it reached a certain width, and this helped maintain its slender and delicate shape. And the path helped the plants and wild flowers alongside it look more friendly and beautiful. This was because the person who used it daily to visit me didn’t forget to also look affectionately at them. Myeong-du won’t visit me today. She has come to me every day for about fifty years, thirty of those years when I was alive and living in untamed woods and twenty of them since I’ve been dead, but this will finally end. Rain or shine, she came to me. When sick, she walked slowly like the ticking hand of a clock. During droughts she brought water in a jar and poured it on my feet and during holidays she brought special offerings from ancestral memorial services or from other ceremonial rituals, such as apples and pears. An aspiring movie director who was born in our village once recounted a legend where a dead tree bore fruit after it was devotedly watered for three years. A famous Russian movie director also told the same story in his last film. But Myeong-du has never prayed for such things to happen, like my dead body sprouting new leaves or bearing fruit. She just came to me and left. She did this throughout her life, and now she is senile and about to die. Yes, soon she will be dead like me. But since she’s a human, she won’t be standing through the years as I have. Anyway, she is about to enter the world of death. Several village women rushed to her cottage some time ago. Even though I’ve seen her throughout most of her life, or maybe because of that, I don’t have such an urge to see her now as they do. No one but me knows this story. Maybe the trees that populated the woods with me did at one time, but for sure no villager knows it. Myeong-du buried her three babies under my feet. Each baby was less than ten days old. She buried the first one under my southern roots, the second and third under my northern and eastern ones, respectively. But during each of her pregnancies, people did notice her bulging belly. And the day would come when her swelling abdomen shrunk, and the village women seemed to know when this would happen. But they had no idea where the babies ended up once they arrived in this world. Before the new village was constructed on the mountainside, I was still living in the woods with the other trees. It was rather a cozy grove, where a small woman could hide herself if she squatted down. And when Myeong-du, hidden by the trees, madly dug the earth beneath my roots, it was always at midnight. The soil was soft and her hands were tough like rakes, and so it was easy to bury an infant. She would pick a moonless night and leave her baby on its face throughout that day. Later, when the night turned pitch black, she would run to me and dig a hole at my feet, huffing as if she were angry. And when the baby’s still warm body touched my roots, I would shiver. By then Myeong-du already had two children around ten years old. She gave her eight-year- old daughter away as a babysitter to a woman in a neighboring village over the mountain, a woman who was the second wife of an impoverished nobleman whose fifth-generation ancestor had passed the first stage of the civil service examination. And her other child, a son, would accompany his father in a work trade arrangement with neighbors or strip away pine bark to eat or make brooms out of bush clovers. Since everyone in the village was more or less poor, no one could really afford to offer them work for any kind of payment. Doing things like that meant increasing the risk of starving themselves. It was such a remote mountain village, Toet-gol, a place where people rarely owned any land and even tenant farming was very hard to come by. It was a village founded by drifters and wanderers who had bountiful stories to tell but no house to live in. And after they formed a village, it was an unwritten law that the landlord of the mountain and the surrounding land would evict them if they didn’t bribe him with gourds of rice every year. The neighboring villages weren’t better off. To see a decently roofed, thatched cottage you had to walk a long way, long enough to become hungry. Toet-gol was such a destitute village that the majority of villagers who had been born in the village and fortunately survived hadn’t seen a tile-roofed house throughout their entire lives. And they were often so hungry that they would huddle around the village well, seeking to soothe their empty stomachs with water, but their concern about losing face restrained them from drinking to their hearts’ content. Parents, in a desperate effort to reduce the number of mouths to feed, would give their children to strangers or would offer their underage daughters to widowers with several children just because they were able to feed their families. Actually, there was recent media coverage of this very matter; a fifty-six-year-old woman, Ae-bong, who had been born in the village and left when she was a young girl, appeared on a morning TV show where long-lost family members were reunited and she had a tearful reunion with her brother after forty-four years. If children didn’t die right after being born, many would die either of diseases or of starvation before they reached the age of ten. Nonetheless, women’s bellies would rise and fall for the simple reason that they were women and alive. But the population of Toet-gol didn’t grow. Villagers either died or were abandoned or sent off somewhere. And parents, who prolonged their miserable lives by killing or deserting their own children, were in turn killed or abandoned by their offspring before reaching a ripe old age. Others, having lost their minds after sixty or so, were left alone to freeze to death or to drown. Numbed by the endless births and deaths, people simply had no room left in their hearts to be happy or sad. It was all willed, they said, by the King of Hades and the Three Goddesses of Procreation. When a child died somebody would say, “The Three Goddesses of Procreation must’ve given it a short life cord,” and then others would respond by saying, “Yes, that seems so,” and the child then would fade from their memory. When an old and malnourished villager silently starved to death, the most they could say was, “The King of Hades must’ve been impatient for that soul.” And some of those who had said this would later be possessed by ghosts or go mad before they suddenly died. And all the deceased, young or old, were soon forgotten. Nowadays people view all these tales as if they were some kind of ancient horror stories, but they aren’t that old nor are they the tales of others. The destitute couple, Myeong-du and her husband, who barely fed their own mouths, had no other option than to let their son go hungry, even after reducing one mouth by giving away their daughter. And, of course, they went hungry more than their son did. But often, when the season changed and the persimmon tree beside the village well bore fruit, a baby would find its way into Myeong-du’s hungry belly, and when the persimmons fell to the ground, the baby also would drop out of her crotch. And while she was burying two of her babies at my feet, as if throwing out bitter tasting persimmons, her famished husband would grab his empty stomach and sprawl out on their mud hut floor like a dead body. Her last baby’s father was unknown, since she had conceived it two years after her husband had died of snakebites. And even though other families in other villages may look better off than Myeong-du’s, it didn’t mean that they had a very different life. Maybe they hadn’t buried three babies as she had, but they were all poor and couldn’t bear the long nights, so it was common that couples ended up having sex and unwanted babies that would soon disappear. And this was just an open secret that the villagers dealt with while reciting the names of the Three Goddesses of Procreation and the King of Hades. Villagers were bound together by these deeds, making them all accomplices, and an old taboo silenced their mouths, and if by any chance someone questioned such practices, that very person would suffer the wrath of the earth gods. As long as they were not free of poverty and hunger, their fear of death was an ordinary part of their daily lives, menacing them at times like a sharpened blade. Fearful, villagers would breathlessly hug whoever was next to them, as though trying to escape death or trying to hasten it, or maybe they would just make love without thinking of the result, and so naturally new unwanted lives arrived with their predictable wretched end. Yes, death endlessly bore new lives and new lives delivered endless death. Thus, their stories were not really confidential but rather common knowledge. Only the precise time and place of their deeds were hidden. And only persons who were involved remembered them, but even they forgot as time passed. Their desperate attempt to escape death made them forget even the time and place of their deeds. They buried the dead here and there; sometimes a new burial was made at an old burial site. And throughout their lives they lived not knowing if they stepped or rested their heads on the land of the dead. Well, actually, they didn’t want to know. Myeong-du, though, didn’t forget the time and place of her babies for fifty years, not even for one day. But the villagers, who grew old while burying and forgetting others, didn’t know that she had buried her three babies at my feet. One reason people didn’t know about Myeong-du’s burials was because of a false rumor that Myeong-du didn’t bury her babies but mummified them in earthen jars. This eerie rumor began circulating after she showed signs of possessing a miraculous power to cure crazed villagers and the ghost-possessed. Traditionally, it is believed that people with shamanic powers kept body parts of the dead hidden somewhere on them. Body parts from a person who died unfairly and bore a great grudge were considered to be highly efficacious. On the other hand, body parts from someone who died in bed after living a full life, experiencing their share of life’s pain and sorrows, weren’t efficacious at all, since these people would be satiated after living their lives to the full and thus would harbor little or no vengeance or bitterness. Only a ghost consumed by vengeance would continuously drift about in this world, endlessly intervening in people’s affairs. The less somebody suffered from worldly afflictions before meeting with an unjust and untimely death, the higher the purity of malice their ghost harbors. So a newborn baby who dies with its soul bearing a deep grudge was considered the best. Thus people who possessed shamanic powers would speak like a baby with a songbird’s voice while healing the sick. Encountering such a death required luck, but some people couldn’t just wait forever. They had to make it happen. And rumor had it that Myeong-du made it happen. What has to be done first is for a mother to stop nursing her baby. But a newborn doesn’t die easily, even without milk. After three or four days of not being fed, the baby finally cries frantically, its limbs writhing. The mother then puts the baby in an urn and places a cover on it before putting it in a dark corner. The baby now intuitively realizes that it will soon die of hunger and cold in the darkness. After a couple of days pass, even this little baby will push at the jar top fiercely in order to escape from the urn. At that point the mother places a large stone on the jar’s cover. But innocent of this world, the baby’s fear is immaculately pure. It soon moves the lid with the stone on it up and down. Next to the jar, though, the mother waits holding a honed knife, and when the baby’s hand sticks out of the jar, she instantly cuts off a finger. Falling back into the jar’s darkness, the baby cries out. The mother then adds several more stones atop the jar’s lid. In pain and fear and without knowing why, the baby dies. And this death bears fruit as the purest kind of vengeance. The mother then wraps the baby’s finger in a silk cloth. When it’s halfway dried, she then keeps it for one hundred days on her bosom, still wet with milk meant for her dead baby. All this is done so that she can manipulate the baby’s vindictive spirit as she wishes. This finger fetish is called myeongdu and that is why she was called Madame Myeong-du. People knew that the reason her magical power was so strong was because she possessed three myeongdu. But although the villagers knew she had jars for soybean sauce and paste, there was no way for them to verify whether she had urns with bodies of babies in them. Nonetheless, it was true that she did have a small white porcelain jar, resembling one containing ancestral tablets, enshrined on a rack at one corner of her room. People believed that she must have kept her babies’ three fingers in the jar. What they didn’t know was that Myeong-du had buried her three babies intact at my feet. And so of course they also didn’t know why she visited me every day. While she treated the sick in the village, using the power of her myeongdu, her daughter, who had been sent off as a babysitter, married a male servant of the house, and had two sons and two daughters. What enabled her to take care of four children and even furnish her home with a TV set and a refrigerator while living such a slavish life was not only her hard work, but more importantly the changed times. Myeong-du’s son, on the other hand, left the village after his father died and drifted about, but as villages grew into towns and towns into cities, he managed, one way or another, to feed himself. Like a fish that has left its old home and like a bird that has left its nest, her children lived their lives as best they could, riding the fluctuating waves of life, and thus she stopped worrying about them. Toet-gol changed a lot, too. Electricity and phone lines were installed. And when the water supply system was established, the village well was left to the frogs. Bus service began and a public health center opened nearby. Villagers could also get to a modern hospital by bus. And no more children or old folks were abandoned or starved to death. But the number of sick people coming to Myeong-du didn’t diminish. And that’s because they preferred her to the public health center or the Western-style hospital. As time passed, her well-fed face bloomed like a cherry blossom flower above her well-rounded neck. And as her face widened and her cheekbones sunk deeper into her ample flesh, she gradually began to look like a Bodhisattva. Her tranquil but piercing eyes and imposing presence contained the power capable of expelling any evil spirit at the first encounter. Sitting with dignity like a grand mountain, she would shout out her mantra “Never Forget” at patients with ghastly pale faces due to blockages of chi energy. She would also ask her patients, those who had fits and became absentminded, “What is it that you forgot?” And she would tell them, “There is something that you have forgotten that saved your life but you’re oblivious to it.” While building the road, the construction crew cut away large sections of the mountain and were about to cut down many more trees, including me, when Myeong-du began railing at them. She stood right in front of me, a tree five or six times taller than her, and acted like a wild-eyed protector. “Who do you think saved your lives? Have you all forgotten what has kept you alive? Are you all that stupid?” Hearing her irrelevant questions, the villagers and the construction crew, who were all directly facing her, looked at each other, bewildered, feeling that they maybe had to answer her questions. They looked at Myeong-du as if watching a masked bogeyman in a survival game show, where participants can’t move in any direction unless they answer questions within five seconds. Baffled, the people at the construction site asked themselves, Has that tree saved our lives? Is she talking about nature? Maybe she’s saying that the forest itself saved us. So she must then be a conservationist. What do you think? The people shared such absurd speculations. Meanwhile, Myeong-du tied her body securely to my trunk, with her back pressed against me. The people there continued to puzzle over what the forest and trees had contributed to their survival during the harsh years. Soon they remembered that during the famines the forest shared its fruits and roots with them, along with firewood and water and lumber, and that it also enabled them to meet clandestinely with their lovers beneath its shade. By swaying the bushes and branches, the forest breeze muffled the ecstatic groans of women and the sounds of their men climaxing. Much of the forest is still there, with its mighty vegetation covering up the whole mountain, but people no longer pick fruits or collect fire wood or make spur-of-the- moment love there. After pondering things over, the people there first nodded yes and thought that the forest did help them but soon they shook their heads. Removing Myeong-du from the tree by force wouldn’t have been difficult at all. Many construction workers and heavy equipment operators looked strong enough to battle an army. But they couldn’t defeat her, and even the chief of police and the governor of the province stood there, dumbfounded, sighing and shaking their heads. Grasping the situation, the field boss finally made a timid suggestion that they detour the road and bypass the tree, and no one disagreed. Standing there, they all seemed to recall an event that had happened half a year ago. It was when the Korean War was nearing its end. It was the time when the village at the foot of the mountain, where people had lived for generations in poverty, was demolished. Before that happened, they heard that the government was planning to build a new village on the side of the mountain. It wasn’t that difficult to tear down the old village and its flimsy structures. Like tanks, giant tractors plowed through the village. And the demolition workers just followed the tractors leisurely like lazy infantrymen. As they passed by, everything crumbled into ruin. It was a war without any chance of victory for the occupants, as they were not the owner of the land and thus had no other option but to leave when asked to do so. But villagers who had no place to go gathered and put up tents at the site and protested, and later they built an iron tower in the middle of the village, with the idea that they would make their last stand on top of it by threatening to jump off. But as there is always internal discord in such situations, one by one, villagers, worn out by the lengthy resistance, were bought off and gave up the fight. The number of those who surrendered and accepted half of the originally requested compensation steadily grew. Only the iron tower stood wretchedly in the middle of the now destroyed village. An angry young man, the last protester, smashed the ladder that was the only way to the top of the tower and barricaded himself up there. But when one of the tower’s iron beams collapsed and lay perilously on its side, it provided a new bridge to the tower’s top. It was too dangerous, though, for people to climb up or for the young man to climb down. Villagers threw a rope up to him, but it didn’t even reach half way up before dropping to the ground. And so, three weeks passed and he was still up there. But no one knew whether he was alive or dead. And it was then that Myeong-du suddenly volunteered to rescue him. Considering her age and body, she wasn’t the right person for the task at all. The iron beam was so narrow and at such an angle and height that even professional rescue workers only looked up at it without even thinking of climbing it. But Myeong-du, holding one end of a rope, climbed up on the beam. Way up there, her plump body looked like a small black bird. With their mouths agape and their heads tilted up, people anxiously held their breath watching her. Regardless of the concerned and astounded crowd, Myeong-du proceeded slowly but surely up the beam. Upon reaching the top of the tower, she tied the rope to it for the rescue workers to hold on to while climbing up, and, as if performing a tightrope walk, she stepped down the beam, freely and easily, and soon landed on the ground. The rescue workers found the young man so exhausted that he had collapsed. Even though they had witnessed her magical balancing act, they still couldn’t believe it. Her amazing feat was captured by a hastily-dispatched TV reporter and it was aired throughout the country six times. When the reporter asked Myeong-du how it was possible for her to perform such a feat, she answered in two short sentences: “I just couldn’t let him die” and “I’m not afraid of death.” “But how is it possible that you don’t fear death?” the reporter then asked her. “It’s because I never forget,” she answered. When she again said that she never forgot, the people there saw her gleaming, razor-sharp eyes, eyes that didn’t look like they belonged to a person of this world, and this made people shiver in fear. In other words, the reason people didn’t cut me down and had the road bypass me wasn’t because I, a tree, was that important or because of the soundness of her answers or because they didn’t have the means or manpower to force her away from me. No, it was because of the unearthly and piercing gleam that shot out from her eyes. It scared people into believing that if by any chance they disregarded her, they would no doubt meet with the worst kind of fate—an odd and sudden death not only in this world but also in the world beyond. It was the same when I died because of four packs of chili pepper powder and two bottles of herbicide. People thought that Myeong-du would now give up on me since I was dead, but she remained fiercely protective and this stunned them. Obviously, no person existed in the village who could stand up to her. But she wasn’t that way in the past. She had appeared then to be a woman whose soul had departed, with sunken eyes not focused on this world. After her husband died from snakebites, she was like a dumb mute and a helpless victim until the village men raped her in turn while the whole country was engulfed in war. Her husband died after being bitten by snakes on his way to an herb patch, but oddly enough the snakes were nonpoisonous. The field he had to pass through just before reaching the wild bellflower patch was thick with water pepper plants and infested with swarms of garter snakes. It was as if the snakes were guarding the patch from the villagers seeking out its medicinal roots, and so the roots had time to fatten up, year after year, and grow as big as radish roots, all the while radiating a licentious aroma. Of course, Myeong-du’s husband knew about the snakes, but becoming blind with greed for the herb roots, he entered the snake field and tripped over a group of snakes copulating and fell and hit his forehead on a rock on the ground, resulting in quite a serious wound. Angry, he gathered up whatever firewood he could, torched it, and burned the whole field. Afterwards, he dug up the herb’s roots to his heart’s content. The following year he went back and had to once again pass through the snake field, but this time he lost his life after again tripping over entangled snakes. The water pepper plants were thicker than the last time he’d passed through and the number of snakes hadn’t diminished at all. But even though the snakes killed him, he didn’t die of snake poisoning. What happened was that after tripping over the snakes he lost consciousness and the snakes, like bamboo roots, coiled around his neck and body and strangled him to death. When found, his dead body looked ghastly. Not only did the snakes thread through his eye sockets but they also slithered through every other bodily orifice: his mouth, ears, nostrils, anus. And the once burned up field was again blanketed with thick vegetation and bulging herbs and copulating snakes glittering in the sun. During the Korean War, when half of the village’s mountain was consumed in flames, the snake field was again burned. And people who fled to the mountain and were hiding there, people whose dead bodies were dumped in the snake field after being shot, and people who were being taken away with their hands tied, all were incinerated and turned into ashes, along with the pine, oak, and alder trees. What followed this was soldiers stealing cows and dogs and butchering pigs and goats. In ruins, the village and the mountain became uninhabitable, but the water pepper plants gradually grew back and new trees sprouted fresh leaves and all together they cloaked the horrible memories. And once again baby goats bleated and dogs barked and the brooks trickled. What the male survivors of the war did first, as soon as they were able to get back on their feet, was to rape Myeong-du, now living all alone. Like thieves, they would sneak into her cottage and knock her down, or drag her to the straw pile in the barn, or get her on the ground while she was collecting wild herbs, or they would snatch her away from a lonely mountain path and drag her into the forest. These men would sympathize with her in public but turned into rapists when alone or at night, thrashing her with their cock-clubs. The third baby Myeong-du buried was conceived in this way, and after this burial, she suddenly changed. A man named Se-geun, who abused Myeong-du the most, had a clandestine visit from her one night. He was knitting a rush mat under a dim kerosene light when he felt someone’s presence and stopped what he was doing. But he heard nothing. So he went back to his work, but he soon again felt someone close by. Cautiously, he opened his door. There, in the middle of his dark yard, stood Myeong-du, like a totem statue. Taken aback at first, he, a man who would jump at the first chance to perform any evil act, soon grinned wolfishly. He murmured to himself, “Well, there you are. And you already know the taste of my manly stick.” At that moment, Myeong-du, without saying a word, turned around and began walking away. Flinging aside his knitting, he followed her. Arriving at her front yard, Myeong-du, for the first time since her husband’s death, suddenly spoke and said, “I need your help.” She then entered her barn. Bearing himself haughtily, Se-geun said, “Of course I’ll help, no problem” while walking behind her. What was waiting in the barn was a huge man sprawled on the ground. Even in the darkness it was obvious he was dead. Right then, the clouds cleared away and blue moonlight seeped into the barn through a big gap in the partially collapsed roof. The corpse had deep horrifying gashes on it. But since its heart had already ceased beating, at least the bleeding had stopped. The gashes’ wide furrows, clogged with coagulated blood, gleamed like ebony under the moonlight. Terrified, Se-geun stood motionless at one corner of the barn. “Can you come here and help me,” she said, nonchalantly, while lifting up the body’s head. She was composed as if she were just taking away a bothersome trough. Finally, Se-geun managed to grab the body’s feet. When he lifted up the heavy, still flabby corpse, it drooped. This caused Se-geun to tumble down to the ground and land on his rear. It was a time when discovering dead bodies lying about was not unusual. It later came out that the man found dead in Myeong-du’s barn was the last surviving communist guerilla head in the area who had been pursued by the army for over a year. Myeong-du carried the corpse almost by herself to the hilltop where the village shrine was located. While dragging the body, she now and then stopped and stretched her back while staring at Se-geun as if he was pathetic. It was then that he noticed her unearthly eyes. While dragging the huge corpse, she appeared sluggish and languid, but he felt an unnatural power in her nonetheless. It was more than physical strength; it was closer to being psychic power. And this power of hers wasn’t emitted from her body but rather from her eyes and spirit. Even the night’s dreadful chi energy that pervaded heaven and earth couldn’t challenge her. Yes, that night Se-geun witnessed Myeong-du’s unyielding spirit and stately physique, something no one would even think of defying. On the hilltop she took care of the corpse by covering it with stones, and afterwards, she shoved Se-geun, who was standing there benumbed, to the ground. As if a mountain landslide had slammed against him, her shove toppled him over, and when he landed on his back, Se-geun pissed in his pants. Afterwards, he couldn’t imagine ever being anywhere near her nor could the other village men. The unyielding power that enabled her to perform the miracle of climbing the iron beam during the demolition protest and the menacing spirit that guarded me faithfully, dead or alive, germinated in her from that time onward. After that night, Se-geun soon died of a jaundiced liver that hardened like a stone. No one died of starvation anymore, but people still died of old age, shock, and pent-up anger. While others suffered from waist and knee conditions, abdominal and heart ailments, and many other internal diseases, Myeong-du’s body fattened and her skin whitened, giving her a noble appearance, and both her voice and shamanic efficacy deepened. Mysterious but solemn, with an elusive facial expression and looking like a bodhisattva in a Buddhist temple fresco, she expelled numerous ghosts afflicting people with diseases. During those sessions she pounded a stone block with a wooden club and like a ventriloquist, she spoke in a baby’s voice. If this voice was heard from outside her room, it would sound like a songbird chirping in a high note from a distance, and the pounding sound resembled that of a monk’s wooden gong. The patients who needed her help were mostly womenfolk. They were the ones who had already sought a cure for their lingering illnesses from Western doctors, but nothing worked. Upon kneeling down next to her stone block, they would prostrate themselves. But Myeong-du didn’t tell them ghosts possessed them or that she would expel them. What she instead said was, “There must be something you’ve forgotten, correct?” Her patients, though, couldn’t understand what she was talking about. But after Myeong-du spent half a day pounding the stone block and summoning the baby spirits that would rant and scold the patients in harsh language, they then would finally manage to remember long suppressed events in their lives. They remembered babies that had died naturally or that they had killed. They remembered parents who died of old age or were murdered. Some even remembered ancestors who died during the Japanese or Chinese invasions hundreds of years before. “I forgot about the baby that I sent off from this world years ago.” “Why did you do it?” Myeong-du would ask. “. . . I had to live. Sorry Madame, but you remember, don’t you? Didn’t we all live like that?” “And that’s how you survived.” “Yes, Madame.” “But did you really forget?” “Maybe I wanted to believe I did. Shouldn’t we forget such things?” Dialogues like this continued endlessly between the pounding sounds and the bird-chirpings. Myeong- du would shake her head and say, “You killed your baby in order to live, and so you have to live well so that your baby’s death won’t be in vain.” The sick women would then cry while nodding in consent. “Why the hell have you become sick then?” Myeong-du would shout. At this point the women would not only have flowing tears but also runny noses. “Do you know how you can live well for the dead?” Myeong-du would ask. The women would raise their heads and look at her. Myeong-du would then thunder at their faces, “Never forget!” Her voice was so loud that most of the women would fall on their backs. “What good is it having killed your innocent baby if you get sick and die? If you killed your baby in order to survive, you have to live well, even as you request forgiveness from your baby’s ghost.” “You’re certainly right, Madame. Yes, I would like to be cured of my illness, and this is why I’m here before you.” “If you don’t want to die, you should stop being afraid of death. It’s your fear of death that caused all your shitty chronic diseases. And to be able to overcome your fear, you shouldn’t run away from it or forget about it, but rather you should learn how to live with the bastard throughout your life. If you ever try to escape from it or dismiss it from your mind, fear will enter you and then you’ll either go crazy and die or dry up and die. Understand? Forgetting is dying. If you die like that, you blockhead, what good came from killing your child? You better know this: If you drop dead now, it’ll be the real death of the child that you killed. If you die now, your child’s ghost in the afterworld will feel that its death went for naught, understand? You killed your child to save your life, and so you have to survive. In order not to die of illnesses, insanity, or despondency, you ought not to be afraid of death, and in order not to fear death, you ought to make friends with death. You must understand the provision behind death sparing lives. Let me repeat, you dumb women, since your dead child saved your life, you should live well so that its death won’t be in vain. And if its death isn’t in vain, then you can say that it is alive in you, understand? If you forget your child, you’ll become afraid of death and you’ll want to flee from it, and when this happens, you’ll get sick and die, and this will result in your child’s real death. Don’t avoid death but get acquainted with it. And swallow it and keep it inside you forever. Remember! Never forget!” Myeong-du would yell out all this, but it didn’t really help the women folks understand what she was saying. “How can I stop forgetting, Madame?” “Are you ready to do as I tell you?” “Yes, by all means.” Myeong-du would point to a small white porcelain jar and say, “Bow deeply to that jar nine times. You bitches should come here to bow until my doorsill wears out, but I know that probably won’t happen, so instead, bring me things like your baby’s birth clothes or dried umbilical cords if you kept them. No need to fetch me the whole thing; a little piece is enough. I’ll then swallow them and keep them inside me. And as long as I’m alive, I’ll be walking around here, and so whenever you see me, bow nine times in your mind as if you were seeing your baby’s ghost and welcome me as part of your family. Don’t run away, understand?” Myeong-du ranted. As she had ordered them to do, women reverently brought her a piece of cloth from their baby’s birth clothes or a bit of their baby’s dried umbilical cords. People who didn’t have any of those things brought parts of their baby’s pillows or a little dirt from their burial ground. Every first day and every full moon of each month, they would visit Myeong-du and bow down to the porcelain jar under the ceiling. With so many remains of the dead supposedly inside her, Myeong-du became well rounded, and when she strolled through the village, it looked like death was tottering about. Catching a sight of her, women would silently bow from a distance, with their palms pressed together on their bosom. And as before in the village of Toet-gol, babies of villagers and domestic animals were born and died, plants were cut and burned and others soon sprouted and bloomed, and people grew up and caught diseases and maybe cured them, but sooner or later, all the villagers died of old age. Meanwhile I, too, died. And now the time came for Myeong-du to also die. It is early in the evening and it’s overcast, so the darkness is deep, as if it were midnight. Blue light shines out from the village windows. Sitting on decent-looking sofa chairs, villagers are watching on TV a qualifying soccer match for the World Cup next year. Only a few streetlights know that several village women hurriedly rushed to Myeong-du’s cottage. Myeong-du’s son, who has come home after receiving news of his mother’s impending death, sits at one corner of her room. Her daughter, now sixty, sits at her mother’s bedside with her now grown-up children. Upon the arrival of the village women, Myeong- du’s son and daughter stand up. “How is she doing?” one of the women asks. Lying straight on her back on the warmest part of the room, Myeong-du moves her eyes slowly. “Can you recognize me, Madame?” another woman asks. But Myeong-du only smiles faintly. “Can she speak?” one woman asks her son. Not answering, he gazes at his mother. “I’ll be leaving soon,” Myeong-du says, her words sounding weak and dark and heavy. “What will we do without you?” a woman laments, tearfully. Myeong-du then gazes at the rack at the corner of the room for quite a while. Seeing this, her son carefully takes down the white porcelain jar. While doing so, he pauses for a moment, giving his mother a chance to look at it. Since Myeong-du doesn’t respond, he puts it down on the floor. “Everyone, take what belongs to you,” says Myeong-du, in a voice that has already changed into that of a baby’s. Some silent moments pass before her son carefully tears open the jar’s seal. He then takes out the items inside the jar, one by one, items like small pieces of baby clothes, parts of dried umbilical cords, bits of pillowcases, dirt wrapped in medicine paper, thin strands of baby hair, tiny plastic noisemakers, an old woman’s ornamental hairpins, fingernails, parts of stained collars, gloves, eyeglass cases, rings and necklaces, lighters, and three ultrasound scans of fetuses that were only recently printed out. They are the items of the deceased that villagers believed Myeong-du had swallowed. Her son and daughter and grown-up grandchildren and village women gaze at the items strewn on the floor. “What is this?” one woman wonders, picking up a strange object. It is a small piece of wood from a tree’s branch that looks like a baby’s fingers. Its bark was peeled away and the wood was sandpapered smooth. Looking also like a chicken’s foot, the wood has three stems forking out of it. And there are three such wooden pieces. But Myeong-du doesn’t react to anything. She’s now crossing death’s threshold. But I know that she took the wood pieces from me each time she buried a baby at my feet. She then peeled and trimmed and sandpapered them. They’re now over fifty years old, but they look as though they’re still filled with life compared to my dried dead branches. Actually, they are her myeongdu. “What should we do with all these things?” a woman murmurs. By then, Myeong-du is taking her last breath. “Where do we send you next? And what do we do with the oak tree by the road? Who will guard it now? The path to it will soon disappear. Would you like us to visit the tree for you and keep the path open?” the women ask. But Myeong-du doesn’t answer. The night is dark, so dark that it can’t possibly get any darker. One by one, the lights from the village windows fade away. But the light from Myeong-du’s cottage remains lit. No longer breathing, Myeong-du is pale but looks as peaceful as white snow. And maybe that’s why those around her dead body don’t cry out loudly. I know they won’t hear my words but I still speak to myself in the dark while looking at the village: “You see, we needed death in order to continue living, but we don’t need it once we die. The many myeongdu and Myeong-du’s body are now the concern of the living. What you do with them does not concern us dead. That’s probably why Myeong-du didn’t answer those last questions, even though she may have been still conscious. And don’t feel sorry about the path being run over with weeds and grass. You all now have your life path within you to tread.” Translated by You Inrae, Louis Vinciguerra
byKu Hyoseo
The Old Diary
It was Gyu’s wife who gave me the news that he was in such a critical condition that there was nothing the hospital could do for him. Having lost contact for God knows how long, I failed to recognise her voice straightaway when she said, ‘This is Jun-young’s mum.’ Besides, it was embarrassing that I did not immediately think of Gyu on hearing his son’s name, ‘Jun-young’. Although the fault was not entirely mine, I couldn’t help but feel ashamed. In a lifeless voice, she asked me to drop by the hospital before the worst happened. She wasn’t sure how much longer Gyu would hold out. Puzzled, I asked, ‘What do you mean?’ She was surprisingly calm as she explained the situation. After suffering from indigestion and having a bloated stomach for some time, Gyu had gone to the hospital, only to be told there was nothing the doctor could do. The cancer in his liver had already spread into his blood. It was too late. How could he have let things become so serious before he finally thought of seeing a doctor? To be fair though, the symptoms of his disease must have only surfaced in the more advanced stage. Still, as far as the doctor was concerned, Gyu’s carelessness made no sense, for his body must have sent quite a few warning signs given the state it was now in. Since all that the hospital could provide him with was a prescription for painkillers, Gyu and his wife decided to seek some peace and quiet in the countryside, but in the end their plan never worked out. With only one day left till his discharge, his internal organs suddenly ruptured, causing massive bleeding. Gyu had an emergency surgery and was transferred to the ICU. He regained consciousness after a few days, but now no one could be sure what else might happen. ‘He may last another month. There’s no guarantee though’, said Gyu’s wife in a voice so calm it almost sounded serene. Perhaps she could not get her head round to it yet, or perhaps she had already given up on him. She spoke with nonchalance, but I was instantly swept up in a whirlpool of emotions. Memory is not flat. It consists of high mountains and deep gorges. The whirlpool spins around a hollow spot. To me, that’s where guilt lurks. Surely, we have all been subject to agitation caused by the fear of being punished for a mistake or a misdeed. In some cases, the fear reaches an extreme pitch, as when a child grows up in a household that is particularly strict about rules and morality, either due to religious influence or something else. Whatever the truth may be, I remember that in my youth I was extremely sensitive about my mistakes or misdeeds, not to mention the punishment I would receive for them. In other words, my fear of punishment far exceeded the ordinary, but back in those days, it didn’t occur to me that I was already being punished by that very fear. Such extreme fear and anxiety often took on a new form: I began wishing that my punishers would vanish into thin air. If only those who had the authority to deal out punishment would kindly disappear, I could get off scot-free. With them gone, nobody would find out about my mistakes or misdeeds. I would no longer be burdened by the pressure to confess or come up with excuses, thereby avoiding all sorts of criticism. Whenever these thoughts entered my head, my heart swelled with excitement and started beating a little faster. One morning, when I realised I had not done my homework, I fantasised that my teacher would call in sick or get transferred to a different school out of the blue. I turned to similar fantasies that time when I happened to lock gazes with a classmate while stealing a few marbles from the shop in front of the school. ‘Our class captain is a thief!’ he would say to everyone in the imaginary scene that played in my head over and over again, driving me insane. For some reason, however, he chose not to breathe a word. Yet, my mind was not at ease. Convinced people would start calling me a thief any moment, I grew even more frightened and restless. I began wishing for my classmate to disappear with all my heart. It didn’t matter how. He could either fall sick or simply die. ‘My God! How could this be?’ I could almost hear the lamentations. However, I don’t think the devil resided only in my mind. Truth be told, we must not lay all the blame on the devil after all. The common faith in children’s innocence is a misconception with which grown-ups knowingly fool themselves. Well, even if they are innocent, that does not change anything. Sometimes innocence takes on the role of a devil precisely because it is innocent and thus unaware of what is evil. What difference is there between a devil with an innocent demeanour and innocence with a devil’s heart? Desperately hoping he would disappear in one way or another, I even chanted a spell. Of course, my spell did not work, nor was my wish granted. But that was not always the case. One summer’s day, I stole a 1,000-won bill from my father’s wallet to buy myself an ice lolly. At first, I had no doubt that he would never find out. It wasn’t like there was only one 1,000-won bill. There were five after all. How could he notice one missing out of five? My father was not that meticulous, was he? So I took the money, ran to the store, and at last put a sweet, cold ice lolly in my mouth. The whole time I was fully convinced my crime would go unnoticed. That firm conviction had sprung from my desire. I had been longing to taste a sweet, cold ice lolly in my mouth so desperately that my desire had overpowered all other concerns. As the ice lolly got smaller, revealing the stick hidden within, my fear and anxiety slowly returned. In no time, my confidence melted away like an ice lolly. I was soon overwhelmed by the thought that my father was bound to realise what was going on. The presence of five bills, which had thus far been a source of comfort, now pointed to the opposite. There had only been five of them. How could he not notice one missing out of five? My father was not that careless, was he? By the time the melting ice lolly had run down my hand and the stick hidden inside had become almost entirely visible, my mouth felt numb and I couldn’t even taste the ice lolly. The fear that I had forgotten about began creeping back. When a cousin of mine spotted me licking the ice lolly and asked me where I had found the money for it, I turned deadly pale with fright. I was sure she would tell on me. It would only be a matter of time before my father realised some money was missing from his wallet. The ice lolly stick I held in my hand now felt like a cudgel, so I quickly chucked it to the ground. Naturally, the wish that I had previously harboured against my teacher and my classmate came back to me. Don’t let Father come home. Please make him disappear. My prayer was almost subconscious. I didn’t even know exactly what it was that I wanted. All I could think about was breaking free from the fear of the rod that would come down on my calves and buttocks. What happened next was difficult to believe. My secret wish that had never once come true was granted this time – of all occasions! My father did not come back. To be more precise, he did make it back home but in a state that made it impossible for him to reprimand me. Apparently, the neighbour’s truck he was riding in tumbled down a hill. He was drunk and so was the neighbour behind the steering wheel. It was alright for my father to be drunk but the same could not be said for the driver. At the hospital, my father remained in a coma for a week before disappearing into a place where he would not and could not ask about the missing 1000-won bill. My father’s unexpected death stunned and upset our relatives as well as others who knew him, but was nothing compared to the shock I received. He had ended his life so prematurely, as if he couldn’t help but grant the wish of his only son! The notion that he died only because I wanted him gone solidified into a firm conviction as time went by. It began taunting me, saying that my father would not have died had it not been for my wish. What else could have made him jump into a truck that he’d never ridden in before? Can you really say you’re not the one who caused his death? In my head, I had fathered and nurtured that conviction, which went on to cross-examine and interrogate me. No one came to my defence. I faced an unfair trial. I held out a faint hope that my guilt would fade with time, but to no avail. In the courtroom of my mind, even time was not on my side. Instead, time testified against me. As days went by, my sense of guilt grew even more vivid and oppressive. One day, my Sunday school teacher promised that God would hear all our prayers and therefore we did not have to pray out loud all the time. In other words, if we so much as yearned for something in our hearts, then the Almighty God would remember all our wishes and grant them in due course. The teacher was a devout and passionate man for sure, but he never realised how his devout and passionate preaching drove one poor, fear-stricken soul into a pit of guilt. Of course, it was not his fault. * Gyu and I were born on the same day. He was born in the early morning of September 7 and I was born in the evening of the same day. The elders in our extended family agreed that Gyu was my senior since he had come into the world before me, albeit by a margin of only a few hours, and instructed me to address him as hyeong, or elder brother. That he was the firstborn boy of the family’s eldest son also came into play. Naturally, I found it difficult to accept their reasons and so refused to call him hyeong. Gyu, for his part, did not blame me. We grew up on an equal footing. Some even said that he and I looked like twins. Although I did not think that we looked that alike, I remained indifferent to such observations. After my father passed away, my uncle became my de facto guardian, since my poor, sickly mother was struggling to make ends meet. My uncle had us move into the guestroom of his house. Living under the same roof, Gyu and I grew more and more twin- like. Many were amazed to note that not only did we resemble each other in our physical appearances but our voices sounded the same too. Sure, we wore similar clothes, but I didn’t think we could pass for twins. I was not particularly impressed, but nor was I offended. However, my uncle would say from time to time that he wished our grades were the same too. That irritated Gyu and made me feel ill at ease. We went to the same primary and middle schools. All throughout those nine years, I was a straight-A student. Except for a year or two out of the nine years, Gyu never excelled in his studies. He wasn’t jealous of me, and I wasn’t proud of myself. Even when his parents scolded him for his low grades, he would laugh it off, often calling me sissy for fretting about it. Although Gyu never envied me, there was a time when I felt envious of him. Having joined the literature club at high school, Gyu took to carrying poetry books instead of textbooks. He grew his hair long, matched casual clothes with smart shoes, played the guitar, and spent hours memorising incomprehensible sentences. I often caught him scrawling gibberish in his notebook. More often than not, Gyu grew his hair past school regulations and ended up having his head shaven clean. His solution each time was to wear a beret pulled all the way down to his eyebrows. As far as I remember, he was always surrounded by girls. On top of all that, Gyu was away from home for several days on end. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine doing anything like that. Needless to say, my uncle and aunt were seriously concerned with their son’s preening and strutting, missing no opportunity to chide him for being a useless show-off. Yet, I couldn’t help but develop a certain admiration for him. Once, in his absence, I took out his notebook and mimicked him. But then afterwards, I could never bring myself to repeat such a pathetic attempt. It didn’t seem to suit me somehow. I too wanted to grow my hair or wander about the streets at night wearing my smart shoes, but I never took any action. To this day, I cannot put my finger on the exact reason why I envied Gyu. Was it because he learned and wrote poetry instead of memorising English vocabulary and maths equations? Was it because he dressed and carried himself in a way that was entirely inappropriate for a high school student? Or maybe I was simply jealous of the unfettered spirit with which he directed his preposterousness. I went to university and Gyu didn’t. My uncle ended up paying the admission fee for his nephew instead of his son. To be fair though, it wasn’t my fault that Gyu never got into university. Failing the preliminary exam meant he wasn’t even qualified to sit for the main entrance exams. So my uncle paid my tuition not because he chose his nephew over his son, but because he couldn’t pay Gyu’s tuition no matter how much he wanted to. However, I felt guilty for many years afterward, thinking I had stolen Gyu’s tuition. My conscience tormented me because I believed my success had condemned Gyu to failure. Gyu flunked the preliminary exam, so he couldn’t apply anywhere. It’s not my fault he didn’t get in. In my mind I tried to argue otherwise, but to no avail. I was well aware of the truth. Had I been blind to the truth, I might have succeeded. Knowing the truth though, I remained unconvinced. I could not be persuaded all over again to believe what I already knew. Upon entering university, I left my hometown. Buried deep inside my luggage on my way up to Seoul was the secret hope that I might be able to escape the guilt associated with my father’s death. I was mistaken. How naïve I was to think that physical distance could be equated with emotional distance! Even so, there exists a kind of desperation that drives us to knowingly rely on childishness. Along with my father, I carried Gyu in my suitcase. Despite the extra baggage – no, because of it – I chose to adhere to the childish notion of the correlation between spatial distance and consciousness. Faith is a leaning heart. When it leans a lot, your faith is great. When it leans a little, your faith is small. Your heart could lean heavily toward a juvenile concept or only slightly toward a noble idea. Of course, the opposite is also possible. Thereafter, I consciously avoided visiting my hometown. Unless I absolutely had to, I chose not to return, and even when I absolutely had to, I occasionally came up with excuses for my absence. When vacations came around, I reluctantly spent a day or two in my old home before rushing back to Seoul on the pretext of my studies. On some national holidays, I lied about having to accompany my professor on a research trip, and ended up alone in the university dormitory, cooking noodles for myself. Come to think of it, it was probably the year after my mother had passed away. When I was in my second year at university, my mother suddenly fainted while working in the field. I was later told she had a myocardial infarction, otherwise known as a heart attack. At the town clinic, which was a handsome five- storey building complete with an inpatient ward, the head doctor explained that contraction of coronary arteries could cause sudden death by reducing the amount of blood flowing into the heart. According to him, my mother must have suffered chest pain, often breaking out in a cold sweat. I searched my memory but did not recall anything like that ever happening to her, so I just remained silent. Meanwhile, my uncle nodded gravely to show he agreed with the doctor. Thus, I became an orphan overnight but I didn’t really think twice about it. My mother would have been upset to hear me say this but I’ve been an orphan since the day I lost my father in the fifth grade. Death has provided the strongest connection between me and my father. As is always the case, nothing reveals presence better than absence. The state of being an orphan is the best reminder of one’s parents. My uncle was not going to stop being my surrogate father, a role he had taken on after my father’s death. He never blamed me much for keeping distance from home, but that didn’t mean he acquitted himself of his paternal duties. Rather, I believed he acknowledged that I was a grown-up orphan. I saw Gyu in passing from time to time. Even when I visited my hometown, half the time he would be away. Gyu wandered here and there, trying his hands in this and that. By the looks of things, he didn’t fare so well. Each time I went down to my old home, I often found my aunt sighing and my uncle scolding his son. One day, I chanced to glimpse some books and notebooks in Gyu’s bag and asked him if he still wrote poetry. My voice immediately took on a cautious tone, lest he thought I was mocking him. ‘Poetry is difficult. Not only that, I can’t make a living out of it. I know my father won’t be supporting me forever. My family isn’t that rich anyway. Well, I can’t mooch off my parents for much longer. It’s not like I went to university like you.’ At that, I became desperate. My mind insisted to me that I had to prevent both my guilty conscience and his victim mentality from rising to the surface. The only reason I asked him again if he no longer wrote poems was because I just could not think of anything else to say. ‘Well, I’m writing novels now’, answered Gyu gleefully, flicking through his notebooks before my eyes. I wondered if novels weren’t difficult to write. Above all, I was curious and doubtful about whether he could make enough money with novels. But I knew better than to speak my mind. It might have been alright for me to be curious, but showing doubt didn’t seem like a good idea. Besides, having no reason to dishearten him, I figured it wouldn’t do me any good after all. So I said nothing. * Every once in a while, the unexpected cuts in and determines important aspects of life. Life is made up of unforeseen disruptions. Or perhaps there is nothing to be called life to begin with. The only concern is whether such intrusions occur early or late. Without all the things that cut in, there can be no life. When I returned to my hometown after completing my fourth year at university to fulfil my mandatory military service, Gyu had only recently been discharged from the army. I got assigned to work for the Army Reserve at the district office. I was mainly responsible for sorting out the dates for reserve force training and distributing letters of notice. The district office was about three kilometres away and I commuted by bicycle. I would get there by eight o’clock in the morning and leave at six in the evening. Occasionally, I worked late hours but for the most part I arrived home on time. In the evening, I either lent a hand on my uncle’s farm or turned to reading. Gyu usually kept to himself in his room, writing something. Assuming that he was working on his novel, I didn’t ask him anything. Instead, I borrowed books from his bookcase. Every now and then, he would show me his manuscripts, sometimes even reading them out loud. His writing had come a long way. Unlike the poems he had written in high school, his novel had a clear style. When he asked me what I thought, I eagerly offered my critiques. The story is interesting, if a bit superficial. The message is too obvious. These sentences are rather awkward. These were just some of the things I said to Gyu, and he was always all ears. In fact, his response was so sincere that I felt pressured and resorted to mumbling something self-effacing: ‘But what do I know? Don’t take me seriously.’ Yet, it appeared he did take me seriously after all. He said I had a sharp eye for analysing fiction and asked if the Department of Public Administration taught creative writing too. One day, he suggested in all seriousness that I try my hands at writing novels. I merely grinned. I was sure he was only kidding, so I didn’t give it much thought afterward. Something strange happened next. It was to bring this up that I mentioned earlier how life could be interrupted by the unexpected. One day, I was seized by an impulse to write. Gyu’s suggestion couldn’t have been the catalyst though. Well, I couldn’t be sure. As much as I had resolved not to take his words to heart (and believed I really didn’t), perhaps his suggestion lingered in my mind in one way or another. However, the final push came from a certain novel I read around that time. My heart was stirred, not by the plot, but by the vibration of emotions within me while reading the novel. The novel answered the question ‘Why do we write fiction?’ The protagonist was a writer who perceived his thirst for revenge and desire for control to be the genesis of his writing. For all the injustice he suffered in reality, he sought revenge outside reality. The way he maintained control had nothing to do with power, which was a mechanism of reality. He even claimed that the order within freedom was his means of control. To be honest, I did not share the author’s view that the official role of fiction was to liberate readers through this means of control. What disturbed my peace of mind was the final impact that the writer was aiming for – and probably did achieve in the end – by incessantly repeating his tedious and lengthy self-justification. I couldn’t give it a clear name but at that moment, I felt like I fully grasped the reason for writing fiction. I was not sure how much my consciousness also played a part, but at any rate I quickly came to regard the novel as a diary. Maybe novelists don’t keep separate diaries. Well, at least this author doesn’t need one. The thoughts that struck me were as abrupt as a sudden downpour on a summer afternoon. The downpour continued for a bit. I wanted to discard my old diary and get a new one. The impulse threw me into confusion. Gripped by an unexpected passion I had never seen coming, I began scribbling something down. Still, I was not expecting my words to turn into a novel. My mind was simply drawn to the idea of writing a new type of diary. To begin with, I decided to write about the time when I realised I had not done my homework and fantasised that my teacher would call in sick or get transferred to a different school. I also wrote about how I had once stolen a few marbles from the shop in front of the school, remembering the relentless fear and anxiety that took hold of me the moment I happened to lock gazes with a classmate. ‘Our class captain is a thief !’ he would say to everyone in the imaginary scene that played in my head over and over again, driving me insane. For some reason, however, he chose not to breathe a word. Yet, my mind was not at ease. Convinced that people would start calling me a thief any moment, I grew even more frightened and restless. I began wishing for my classmate to disappear with all my heart. It didn’t matter how. He could either fall sick or simply die. ‘My god! How could this be?’ I could almost hear the lamentations. However, I don’t think the devil resided only in my mind. Truth be told, we must not lay all the blame on the devil after all. The common faith in children’s innocence is a misconception with which grown-ups knowingly fool themselves. Well, even if they are innocent, that does not change anything. Sometimes innocence takes on the role of a devil precisely because it is innocent and thus unaware of what is evil. What difference is there between a devil with an innocent demeanour and innocence with a devil’s heart? Desperately hoping he would disappear in one way or another, I even chanted a spell. Of course, my spell did not work, nor was my wish granted. I wrote through the night and went to work in the morning. Again and again, I would erase and rewrite what I had written the night before. I revised some parts more than ten times. Sometimes, I would stop writing halfway through only to start all over again. Bit by bit, my sentences crawled forward. While writing, I became aware of the fierce inner battle between the desire to reveal and the desire to conceal. Clashes broke out among my sentences, which were at odds with one another. They emerged contradictory and drenched in blood. All my energy went into the process of writing by finding new sentences to cover up those previously written. I was plagued by fatigue, hunger and lack of sleep but, consumed by an inexplicable, sadistic longing, I persevered with my struggle against sentences. I kept going as if possessed. I had no idea Gyu was reading my work. Every morning after I left for work, he went through the blood-stained sentences I had coughed up the night before. Once, late at night, he came into my room drunk. Feeling light-hearted at having finished a long diary entry a couple of days before, I was lying on my back reading over my sentences – not that there was much to call editing. Gyu barged in without knocking, intoxicated. I sat up straight and closed my notebook. Gyu shot me a quick glance and flung himself down on the floor. His breath reeked of alcohol. ‘You went to university and I didn’t. Is that such a big deal? Well, maybe it is, huh? Look here, my dear cousin. What do you think is the most important thing in life? University for you but not me . . . Aren’t you sorry?’ It was difficult to make sense of his drunken rambling. More than anything, I was thoroughly taken aback since he had never said anything like that to me before. But I chose not to attach too much meaning to his words. If there was one thing I had learnt from my years of living as an unwelcome guest, it was that grave situations never worked in my favour. I made a remark about how he must be struggling with his novel, seeing as he had been drinking so much, hoping he would understand that I was trying to cheer him up. It didn’t take me long to realise I was mistaken. He stopped lamenting over his misfortunes. He shut his eyes and clenched his teeth. The room fell into silence and the air turned icy cold. It was suffocating. I gave him an awkward smile. ‘I’ve read your novel. When you left for work in your military uniform I came in here to read your writing from the night before. I felt like a reader of some serialised story. My heart beat faster with excitement. There were even times when I had to gasp for air. And then I decided to quit writing. Well, I realised I didn’t have what it takes. It’s not about what you write and how. All that is important, of course, but that’s not the most fundamental thing. In fact, it doesn’t matter at all. The way your consciousness turns at the very thought of writing . . . Is that what you call a genuine wish of the heart? Something like that anyway. I could see that it mattered, except I didn’t have it. All I’m saying is that I realised it was impossible to write just by sleight of hand. Besides, my sleight-of-hand skills aren’t that impressive anyway . . .’ Gyu let out his usual hearty laugh, which echoed and spread gloom throughout the room. Louder than it would have been at other times, his laugh had a hint of exaggeration. Perhaps it was his loneliness that he was emphasising despite himself. I had hitherto deliberately ignored Gyu’s question – ‘Aren’t you sorry?’ – but now it hammered the back my head. The situation called for me to say something but I could not utter a single word. When I got back from work the next day, Gyu was nowhere to be seen. My aunt sighed and said he had left home to join a distant relative who was running a small business constructing houses in another district capital. Gyu was on his way there to ‘make a living’. His room had already been cleared out. That night I realised my notebook was missing. * It pained me to see Gyu suffer at the hospital; his face was thin and wan, while his belly was bloated due to excessive fluid in his stomach. The IV line and the rubber tubes that drained the urine from his body looked as if they were tying him down. Even when I got closer to him, his face showed hardly any reaction. I doubted whether Gyu recognised me at all. ‘Honey, Mr. Chang-gi is here to see you’, said his wife. To this, he only responded with a little nod as if to acknowledge my presence. Moments later, he gave an instruction with his eyes, and his wife pulled up the duvet from around his feet to cover his hard, swollen belly. In an attempt to distract myself from his gaunt face that had become so skinny that the cheekbones were now strikingly pronounced, I gently held his hand in mine. His hand felt like a dry twig devoid of all emotions. ‘Hey you, what have you done to yourself . . .’ My words sounded meaningless. There are situations where everything you say becomes meaningless. Even so, you can’t help but cling to meaningless words. In fact, those situations are precisely the times that truly call for meaningless words. To my relief, Gyu’s wife replied. ‘Not a day went by without him hitting the bottle, and he was such a chain smoker too. No matter how much I nagged him, he never bothered to get a medical check-up. He must have thought his body was made of iron. It’s no good talking. I’m guilty of being a bad wife. My in-laws are blaming me, but . . .’ She stopped talking, but I felt like I could take over: But I had a tough time too. My husband never put food on the table. I worked all sorts of odd jobs. On top of everything else, every now and then he would be gone from home for months. I could never find time to go for a medical check- up either. I knew she had been a health supplements saleswoman, a day care centre teacher, a caretaker for the sick and even a local bus driver – all because Gyu hardly made any money. As a real estate planning consultant, his job was to connect end-users with constructors and oversee property refurbishments. The nature of the business meant there were extreme ups and downs. Once in a while, he might come into a considerable sum of money but other times he could go a year without landing a single 10,000-won bill. In the end, working in that unprofitable industry turned people wasteful and pretentious. To make things worse, Gyu was often out of contact for several months on end. He repeatedly promised that once his various construction projects were completed, he would receive billions of won. In most cases, the construction dragged on, and because he couldn’t pull out halfway through, he invested more and more money in them. Unsurprisingly, he fell into debt. The worst cases were those projects that got suspended. Years passed and still there was no sign of the promised fortune. The problem was that those worst cases occurred frequently. Yet, Gyu just could not bring himself to quit altogether. The huge sum of money he could be getting for the successful completion of just one construction project was too alluring. The dream of hitting the jackpot one day made it possible for him to withstand a series of failures. Almost out of habit, Gyu would talk of twenty million won being paid into his account in a month’s time or fifty million won that he was getting in a couple of months. Months turned into years. ‘At first I knew no better than to wait for the money he mentioned. But now I pay no attention to whatever comes out of his mouth’, Gyu’s wife had said three years ago. As far as I knew, their situation had not improved one bit since then. To pay for food, clothes and their children’s education, she had to do everything she could. As soon as she stopped talking, her eyes welled up with tears. Gyu closed his eyes, as if to hide his embarrassment. After she stepped outside to get some water, the hospital room fell into silence. The bed on the other side of the two-person room was empty. Suddenly feeling awkward, I let go of his hand. ‘Should we watch TV?’ Gyu nodded. I found the remote control and turned the television on. A comedy programme was showing. I turned the volume down a bit. For some time, I was left to endure moments of discomfort and embarrassment. The air in the hospitable room felt stale and stifling. The stench from Gyu’s medicine and excrement seeped into the air. I could no longer think of anything meaningless to say. I blankly stared at the television, secretly hoping for the speedy return of Gyu’s wife. The comedians on TV talked in loud voices and made exaggerated gestures, but I couldn’t see or hear anything. Gyu was making me uncomfortable. Even before entering the room, I had started hearing his voice in my head, asking, ‘Aren’t you sorry?’ I shouted back at the voice. ‘I never wished for you to disappear, so get up at once!’ Yet, Gyu’s voice was louder than mine. ‘Aren’t you sorry?’ His question muffled my answer. I thought I heard him say something, so I turned around only to find that his eyes were still closed. Gyu kept his mouth shut tight. His thin and sickly face looked like a lifeless object. Gyu’s wife had explained that he was prone to dozing off in the middle of a conversation, because he had very little energy left in him. Perhaps he had just muttered something in his sleep. Or was he really asking if I was sorry? It crossed my mind that perhaps he did not welcome my visit. In that case, he must have felt as uncomfortable around me as I did around him. Who could say for sure that wasn’t the reason why he kept his eyes and mouth closed? I turned the volume down again. As if short of breath, Gyu opened his mouth and began panting heavily. His jaw was shaking, as was the rest of his body. I grabbed his arm and called out, ‘Are you alright? What can I do for you?’ Gyu raised his hand and made a drinking gesture. The glass I picked up from the bedside table had a straw in it. I held his head up at an angle and put the straw in his mouth. He drank only a tiny bit. But it must have done the job anyway for his breathing seemed to calm down. I was about to let him lie down again but he asked me to help him sit up. I turned the metal wheel attached to the bed frame to raise the top half of the bed. He writhed about in an effort to sit up straight. When I leaned in to hold his waist with both hands, I could feel his breath on my ear. For a brief moment, the idea that he might bite off my ear popped up in my head out of nowhere, sending a chill down my spine. I must have inadvertently poked his body with my clumsy hands. He uttered a sharp cry and his face twisted in a grimace of pain. Not sure what to do next, I quickly let go of him. Gyu rested his head on the pillow and closed his eyes. For a little while, he continued breathing heavily with his face still scrunched up. My mind instantly conjured up some horrific images; I pictured his big, round swollen belly bursting and the slimy, filthy liquid inside it pouring out. The phlegmatic reddish-black fluid would spread all over my face and even stick on the walls like some hideous millipedes. Next, the stains on the wall would turn into grey mould and start decomposing. My face too would become mouldy and putrid. I hastily shook my head to get rid of those images. ‘I enjoyed your latest work, ‘Cassandra’. The one about a doomed soothsayer who is destined to make prophesies no one believes’, said Gyu. I was overcome with vertigo, as though I had been standing under the blazing sun for too long. My vision became blurry and I felt dizzy. ‘You mean you read that story?’ I managed to ask him in a choked voice. ‘Cassandra’ was the title of a short story I had recently published in a quarterly literary journal. It hadn’t yet been a month since its publication, and as with most other literary magazines, the journal had hardly any readers, save for some authors. Was he saying that he read it? His pitiful body was already half conquered by death, and he slipped into unconsciousness several times a day to take a peek into the afterlife. What was he telling me? ‘And you know what else? He hasn’t missed any of your works, Mr. Chang-gi. Even here at the hospital, he asked me get him a copy of that magazine. With his body in that condition, God knows where he gets the energy from.’ The answer came from Gyu’s wife, who had just slipped back unnoticed. ‘You should come around to our house one day. You’ll find every magazine that published your writing, not to mention all your books.’ She adjusted his gown. ‘We even have your debut story that came out twenty years ago’, she added. ‘Do I need to go on?’ Gyu gave us a faint smile. In the spring of my twenty-fifth year, with ten days left till my discharge from the military, I received news that I had won an award from a literary journal. I was told that my short story, which I’d never submitted in the first place, had won the journal’s New Writer’s Award. Although bewildered at first, I soon figured out what had happened. The day Gyu had left my uncle’s house, my notebook had vanished too. He must have typed up my work and sent it off to the magazine. Just like that I stumbled into a new chapter of my life as a writer. I had never set my heart on writing novels for the rest of my life, which did not change even after I had received the award. All I needed was a diary. I thought that would be enough for me. ‘This is it’, I thought to myself. Before long, I realised I was far from satisfied. There were other things that I wanted to write about in my diary. Some things had to be dealt with more than once, repeatedly yet differently. Eventually, the irony dawned on me: I had to keep a diary precisely because I possessed one. The diary liberated me, but only insofar as I continued writing. Freedom came with its own shackles, and those shackles upheld freedom. Because I was free, I had to be fettered. Since my liberation was to be renewed again and again, I had to be fettered again and again. In due time, I came to accept this as my fate. I must admit that I consciously tried to turn my back on Gyu for the sake of my soul’s freedom. For instance, I willed myself to believe that he was not the kind to read novels. That I felt the need to cast him out from my mind like that meant I was always conscious of him beyond reason. When writing, I always wondered what Gyu might say about my work. I could easily picture his face. Gyu was always the first to read my sentences, the kind of reader whose thoughts were written on his face. Since it was difficult to discern subtle changes in his facial expressions, I had to channel all my energy into reading his mind. I focused on detecting even the slightest change in his countenance. In the end, I could do as I wished. Some sentences I erased and some I contorted. In other words, Gyu was actually the one doing as he wished. More often than not, my sentences were often written in whatever way he wanted. In fact, the reader was the author. * The third time I went around to the hospital was five hours after Gyu had woken up from a two-day long hepatic coma. He looked even thinner and paler than before. His speech was so slurred that it was difficult to understand him without paying close attention. ‘Pardon?’ I had to ask again and again. Feeling rude for making him repeat himself several times, I later resorted to nodding and pretending I knew what he was saying. Gyu’s wife was worried that the internal haemorrhage he had suffered might have pumped blood into his brain. According to her, Gyu’s doctor was of the same opinion, though he still did not consider doing anything about it. The doctor was not the only one who had already given up on Gyu. When I arrived, Gyu’s wife was discussing something with a man sitting next to Gyu’s bed who appeared to be in his mid-forties. She introduced him as her brother. His body underneath the jumper he was wearing looked hard and muscular like that of an athlete. ‘We’ve met before’, he said offering his hand. He had a firm grip. I couldn’t remember when I had seen him before but nodded quickly, mumbling something in agreement. Gyu was lying on his bed with his eyes fixed at the ceiling. His wan face looked somewhat languid. It was the face of a man with no passion or regret left in him. Compared to the two by his bedside who were impatiently ranting about something, he looked oddly calm and relaxed. It nearly made me wonder if he had already departed from this world. ‘So honey, listen to me carefully. You must get up. You really must. I know you will. For me and for our Jun-young. You’ll get through this.’ Gyu’s wife continued talking to him. ‘But then, suppose . . . just suppose you can’t move about and have to stay here for a bit longer. What if you become unconscious like you did yesterday? Then somebody will have to fill your shoes. So please think carefully and tell me. You worked day and night on that project for several years. You said it was nearly finished, didn’t you? Who should I call? How much is your share? How do we get hold of it?’ Her brother more or less echoed her words, though he sounded slightly intimidating when he said, ‘Just trust me, mae-hyeong!’ Gyu’s lips parted a little to let a sound escape. Yet, his words were so inaudible that it was difficult to tell what he was trying to say. ‘What was that?’ asked Gyu’s wife, bringing her face closer to his mouth. Gyu mumbled again. She drew back her face, looking sulky. ‘The same answer again! He doesn’t know what’s gonna happen in the next ten minutes, but still insists that he’ll take care of everything.’ Next, it was her brother’s turn to have a go. While he was talking to Gyu, she turned to me and lamented over her predicament. For many years, Gyu had been involved in two concurrent construction projects. One of them was nearing completion while the other was due to finish in three or four months’ time. Although he had frequently talked of coming into big money before, it seemed he wasn’t bluffing this time around. To prove her point, she mentioned the four-bedroom apartment in the Songpa-gu district that they had decided to purchase some time ago. In less than a month, they were supposed to leave their rented townhouse in Uijeongbu city that had been their home for ten years, and move into a newly built, spacious apartment in central Seoul. She said the two of them had viewed the apartment together. That meant he was really on the brink of reaping the rewards of all his hard work that had destroyed his health. The money should have been paid into his account by now. ‘He couldn’t have chosen a more perfect time to get sick!’ she cried and immediately tried to read my face, adding what sounded like an excuse: ‘He’s ended up like this after working for it all his life. It’s not fair on him if he dies here.’ She glanced at her brother who was still trying to persuade Gyu and then at her husband who still remained expressionless. ‘Me and Jun-young. How are we gonna survive . . .’ she said in a sullen voice. ‘So just leave it all to me, mae-hyeong’, continued her brother. His voice seemed to be coming from somewhere afar. I wasn’t sure who, but one of them whispered, ‘Those left behind must get on with life.’ Gyu was already no longer among the living. I realised he hadn’t been listening to us for some time. I figured it was for the best. Maybe his claim that he would soon come into a substantial sum of money was true, or maybe it wasn’t. That was important no doubt. Yet to me, it didn’t seem to matter right there and then. The loneliness Gyu must have suffered living in a world where no one understood him became so vivid that it almost felt tangible. As if electrocuted, a shock zapped through my body. Gyu had lived in a world that was neither understandable nor understanding. I vaguely came to realise that the only way for him to survive in this world was to float in the air. To avoid turning into a ghost, the bare minimal form of existence, he had chosen to float. When my thoughts came to this, his face that had thus far only seemed drowsy looked like it was now putting up with humiliation. Unable to fight the heat that erupted at the bottom of my heart, I shouted, ‘Stop it! Just stop it, you two!’ My voice came out as if it had been squashed. I longed to cry on behalf of Gyu’s dry eyes that had never shed a single tear. Perhaps I was trying to shake off the anxiety bubbling up inside me. Perhaps I was only trying to get on with my life. In that respect, my tears were far from innocent. Could I have been the one who had just now mumbled that those of us left behind must get on with life? As I shook my head in denial, I felt a sharp pang in my heart. The room plummeted into silence. The two of them shot me an incredulous look as I teared up, and kept their mouths closed. Moments later, Gyu’s brother-in-law left the room, followed by Gyu’s wife. Gyu started panting heavily so I filled a cup with water and put the straw in his mouth. The moment our eyes met he tried to say something, but he was incomprehensible. ‘What is it?’ His lips moved again, but I couldn’t hear him properly. Once he got his breathing under control, Gyu pointed at something under the bed. The cardboard box I pulled out contained paper cups, tissue, disposable chopsticks, a fruit knife, socks, tea bags, and towels. He made a gesture with his hand. I understood he wanted me to search for something in the box. One by one, I took out the items and showed them to him. There were other things in the box. I found a ballpoint pen and a newspaper from a few days before. Gyu did not respond to any of them. Right at the bottom of the box, there was a faded envelope. When I held it up, Gyu nodded. I found an old notebook inside. I hadn’t seen it in such a long time that I failed to recognise it at first. Gyu motioned for me to open the notebook. I turned to the first page. My own handwriting, familiar yet long-forgotten, revealed itself like footprints left in fossils from the dim past. The pages were nearly worn out. I grew restless, as if I had just dug out a sin buried deep in the ground. He had been holding on to it all this time. Why did he keep my notebook? The thought that I had buried it in Gyu’s heart in order to forget and move on sat heavily on my mind. ‘What have I done to you?’ I groaned. I had done nothing wrong. Yet, if someone suffered because of me, was it fair to say that I had done nothing wrong? He spoke once more. Again, his words were inaudible, but I figured out what he was asking. ‘Read this?’ I asked him for confirmation. I looked down at his face. He stared back at me as if to hurry me on. Come to think of it, he had always been my one and only reader. It occurred to me that all my sentences had been written for his reading. I opened the notebook and began reading the very first sentences I had written. My hands were shaking and so was my voice. One summer’s day, I stole a 1,000-won bill from my father’s wallet to buy myself an ice lolly. At first, I had no doubt that he would never find out. It wasn’t like there was only one 1,000-won bill. There were five after all. How could he notice one missing out of five? My father was not that meticulous, was he? So I took the money, ran to the store, and at last put a sweet, cold ice lolly in my mouth. The whole time I was fully convinced my crime would go unnoticed. That firm conviction had sprung from my desire. I had been longing to taste a sweet, cold ice lolly in my mouth so desperately that my desire had overpowered all other concerns. As the ice lolly got smaller, revealing the stick hidden within, my fear and anxiety slowly returned. In no time, my confidence melted away like an ice lolly. In tandem with my awkward reading, his mouth opened and closed ever so slightly. It was evident that he knew the sentences by heart. I became frightened. I felt like I was committing a sin. The sentences I was reading didn’t seem to be mine anymore. His voice faded and his lips stopped quivering. His eyes were closed. He was asleep. Yet, I continued reading my sentences for him while he slept. Tears filled my eyes. They fell on the notebook and blotched the pages. I kept reading to the end. I was desperate. I never got to say sorry [About the Book] This story is from the short story collection The Old Diary (Changbi, 2008) by Lee Seung-U, which explore themes such as sins unconsciously committed or the repayment of debts. In the title story, the narrator keeps a diary to rid himself of guilt after his father’s death. The story reveals how writing a novel (or writing in general) is a reflective process that addresses some of the most profound existentialist issues in modern society. The question of guilt or ethics takes on a religious dimension here as it does in much of Lee’s work. In “Whatever Happens, No Matter What,” the protagonist is unable to withstand the violence prevalent in the world and is confined to a rehabilitation center where he spends his days prostrate on the floor. His family considers him a burden, with his father calling him his “cross.” Only his elder sister realizes that the protagonist perhaps bears the weight of his family and the whole world on his back as he lies prostrate on the floor. “The Room” is the story of a man who falls out with his wife after bringing his ailing aunt home to live with them. His wife moves to the States with their son in tow, turning him into a long-distance father. After selling his home and quitting his job in order to become a full-time writer, he rents a room in his now vacant former home as his work studio. There, in the space he thought he would be familiar with, he encounters a hitherto hidden space. “The House of Others” is the story of a man whose home is taken over by his father-in-law on the pretext of the man’s marital discord. He is thus forced to sleep at the public sauna. By chance, he ends up living at the long-vacant house of a woman he broke up with six years ago. There, he finds that absence and death fill the house. “Missing Case” is based on a real-life subway fire tragedy. The protagonist lends his down payment to a close neighbor couple, but they make off with the money. Over time, the cheap piece of land he’d received from them as collateral exponentially increases in value, more than compensating him for the loss. Many years later, as he’s watching news on TV of a subway fire in another city, he catches sight of his neighbor’s wife wailing onscreen. With mixed feelings, he prepares to offer them condolence money and visits the city. There, his sense of debt is resolved in an unexpected manner when he encounters a surprising truth. “A Journey to Jeongnamjin Part 1” starts with a phone call the narrator receives from an ex-girlfriend from the past. She suggests they travel to Jeongnamjin together just as she had three years ago, as if nothing has happened in the interim. The protagonist declines and a few days later he hears news of her death. Overcome, he heads to Jeongnamjin. There he meets the protagonist of “Sky Burial: Jeongnamjin Part 2,” who has also returned to his hometown to deal with hard-to-face truths. Lee’s writing exposes uncomfortable truths hidden under layers of accumulated memories. We must come face to face with the violence we have or may have unconsciously inflicted upon others. However, at the same time, we must forget or ignore such sins in order to survive. The Old Diary can be seen as the author’s confession of our reality that makes us numb to the absurdity found in everyday life. The Old Diary (Changbi, 2008)
byLee Seung-U
To Believe in Love
Becoming a regular at a bar in your neighborhood might be a disaster as far as everyday life is concerned, but it is a boundless blessing when it comes to memories. It was late one evening this past February. Even I was surprised that I had dropped by this bar alone. I didn’t enjoy soju or makgeolli, and this didn’t seem like the kind of place to sell wine or beer. Yet I opened the door, went inside, took a seat, and ordered a drink. I was served some kimchi and seasoned greens before the bar food I had ordered came out. I got the feeling that I had come to the right place, or rather that I had been hooked well and good. The kimchi and greens alone were more than enough for me to finish off half a bottle of liquor. From that time on I was a regular at that bar, dropping by two or three times a week. As I drink alone—mung bean pancakes and makgeolli, or stew and soju, with some seasoned greens and kimchi—the thoughts that come to mind are trivial bygones, such as, That’s right, that’s what she said then, or, I wonder why she did that. The moment I enter that bar I am free of any uncertainty about the future or urgent problems that require my immediate attention. It has become a place that simply whispers to me: Memory . . . memory. As I drink slowly, images from my life flash before me like slides, and within my memories I lead a clueless life, like one who does not know his left from his right. Though it is really night, here I live in the midday of my memories. The one for whom I wait now beneath that scorching sun is a woman, one I adore in secret, like a favorite bar you keep to yourself, but who would now probably think of me only as a friend and has long since forgotten me. It is here I learn that indulging in my memories shows that I am waiting, and the memories themselves are a way of waiting for someone who is not coming. There are times when losing love feels as hopeless as losing everything. Not all human beings experience this. There will be those who get over it easily and those who grow old without ever knowing that there even was such a thing. On rare occasions—though I dread to even imagine such a thing—there will be those who experience nothing but this until the day they die. It’s impossible to say which life is better. What is possible to say, though, is merely that I had such an experience three years ago. At the age of thirty-five, it is nothing to be proud of, or anything to keep secret. I once believed in love, and I suffered as much as I believed. When I think back on it now, it feels absurd to admit that I once believed in love. Love and believing, they are quite a difficult combination. Even if we set aside hope, it is hard enough to handle just one of these two, faith and love, and yet I have linked them together as predicate and object. It would be as bewilderingly vague and abstract to say that I had once loved faith. Such a timid and cautious person as I, so stingy with my emotions, once believed in something? Isn’t that as pitiful and ridiculous as a teacup puppy daring to take on a dragon? There are times in life when something that seemed so far out of reach unexpectedly appears to be easily within reach. I was merely caught in one such moment. Even more amazing is that there is no guarantee that these things might not happen again in the future. Yet that doesn’t mean we can prepare for them as we might pack an umbrella or bring along some medicine. This is because this strange experience of believing in love is a personal experience that does not follow the rule of “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure,” an experience that charges in on us like a door suddenly swinging open. It is a pain against which we are helpless and must suffer in full. But there is something even more amazing. And that is that I once swung open the door to someone’s life, left her with this pain, and then quietly slipped out again. At the time I had no idea what I had done. Yet that does not make my sin any less serious. Because I didn’t know, my sin is doubled by the addition of my ignorance. The sin of not knowing her love, a sin for which the soles of my feet should be beaten. As far as I remember, she wasn’t bad-looking but she wasn’t unattractive. This is just the way I talk, so clumsily and stingily. It isn’t easy for me to say that someone is beautiful or attractive. The moment I say that someone is beautiful or attractive, I grow uneasy, worried that some tiny part of my description might not fit that person. So I am more comfortable if, instead of saying that someone is beautiful or attractive, I use a sloppy double negative like a footnote, saying that it isn’t that they are not beautiful or it isn’t that they are unattractive. But there is one thing I can say for certain about her: that although my first impression of her was plain, the groove running from the tip of her nose to her upper lip is so straight that it looks as if it was carved, and it captures the eye like a target. That people then concentrate on the movements of her upper lip—in other words, on what she says—might have given her numerous advantages that a vaguely pretty face would not have had. She was of medium height and slender build. Like her figure, her personality left no aftertaste at all but was as refreshing as peppermint. She wasn’t dim-witted or lazy. That isn’t to say that she came off as being sharp, only that she was gracefully shrewd and clever, like an antelope ewe. After thinking this much about her I was momentarily bewildered. I thought maybe the alcohol was making me too generous toward her. That might be true. I knew that she was just as clumsy and timid a person as I. I also knew that hers was a stingy character, one that would choose a shred of pride over the earnestness of overflowing emotions. But what can I say? The way she has existed in my mind since the last time I saw her brings to mind the silhouette of a ceramic jar, always elegant yet lonely no matter where it’s placed, no matter what it holds. That might be because of the curious story she told me back then. It is a story of when J saw her again for the first time in three years, a story of the time when my heart was broken by another woman three years ago. It is also a story that involves a three-story building, so the law of threes seems to hold. As soon as we met, she said that we had to walk about fifteen minutes to the bar where she had reserved a table. “That’s okay, isn’t it?” I said that of course it was. She had no makeup on, and her complexion was dark and her cheeks were slightly swollen, making her look like she came from Southeast Asia. She wore a hooded jacket and sneakers, and her quick stride fit her outfit. She turned toward me when we stopped briefly at a crosswalk. “My eldest aunt died last week.” I said, “Oh, is that so?” but she laughed dryly, a short gust of breath escaping from her closed lips. I thought it was strange that she would say an elder relative had died and then laugh like that. When the light changed, she stepped out into the crosswalk, mumbling as if to herself. I couldn’t hear her clearly but it sounded like she said something was odd, or something like that. I looked around, but there was nothing odd. If anything was odd, it was her. Why would she laugh when her eldest aunt had died? Then again, she often used to do things that I found strange. The bar she led me to was really narrow and long like a train. I was surprised that we needed to reserve a table at such a shabby, secluded bar. There were only four tables in single file on the left and an open space along the right wall that was just wide enough for a person to pass through. Opposite the entrance, at the head of the train, was the kitchen. In the left wall next to our seats at the third table, there was a small glass window, but it was a window in name only, being only a square piece of glass stuck in the wall that didn’t slide or push open. Outside was a small parking lot. In the dark parking lot beyond the glass, I could see a few hunched-over cars and the faint light of the parking lot office. “Give us half pork, half seafood, please.” The young-looking waitress blinked rapidly at her request. “Half and half? Half and half what?” She seemed to have trouble understanding Korean. “Half of this and half of that,” my friend said, pointing at each item on the menu posted on the wall. The waitress stared at a corner of the stained ceiling above the menu. The expression on her face was tortured as if she were doing some complex calculation. Just then, a woman who looked like the owner rushed out of the kitchen. In three seconds, my friend reached an agreement with the owner to pay 25,000 won for a combination of pork stir-fry and seafood stir-fry. “I ordered whatever I wanted . . . that’s okay, isn’t it?” I said it was fine. To tell the truth, l didn’t really like frozen ingredients stir-fried briefly in a red, spicy sauce, but I didn’t care either way when it came to bar food, so I didn’t object. She lowered her voice and muttered, “This place is great, but they keep changing the staff. Every time I come here I order this combination, but if I get stuck with a waiter who doesn’t understand me I have to start all over again, so I never feel like I’ve made any progress.” “You seem to have gained quite a bit of skill in ordering, though.” “I guess so. It does seem that I spend less time arguing back and forth now.” “You must come here often.” “Not really. It’s too expensive.” She seemed to have changed a little, and she was becoming a little unfamiliar to me. All the side dishes in the bar were 20,000 won. You could say that was on the expensive side compared to the way the place looked, but it was still only 20,000 won. For an extra 5,000 won, she had ordered a combination of two different 20,000 won dishes, just the way she had always done it. We had spent a lot of time together in our late twenties. We got together as many as two or three times a week, or at least once or twice a month. I don’t remember ever arranging a meeting in advance. We did the same type of work, and so we ran into each other often and became close thanks to our similar tastes and styles. We stopped getting together when she changed jobs. I had just begun seeing someone else at that point, so I never made any attempt to contact her. The fact that she had developed a sense of economy, the fact that she ordered what she preferred, perhaps these were the parts of her that had changed? I don’t know. Judging by her attire, it was clear that she had become more modest than she used to be. Back then, even if she didn’t wear a necklace or ring, she loved to go around wearing unusual earrings, but on that day she wasn’t wearing a single piece of jewelry. I didn’t want to fall back on the prejudiced idea that frugality was a result of poverty. But the fact that she ordered what she preferred, that was something to think about. It could mean that she had suddenly become a gourmet, or it could be because her concern for others had diminished. It could also mean, though I didn’t really want to consider this possibility, that she had so little opportunity to eat what she wanted these days that she had to satisfy her appetite when she had the chance. If that were the case, what could that mean when coupled with her surprising new frugality? Wouldn’t that mean that she had become poor, not only in material things, but in spirit as well? All in the three years that we had not seen each other. “What has it been, two years?’’ she mumbled as if to herself. I was going to correct her and say that it had been three years, but she gazed out at the parking lot beyond the window and added, “Since I last came here.’’ I just said, “Really?’’ After a short while, she spoke again. “I found this place, thanks to a friend who had her heart broken.” I flinched at the mention of heartbreak, as if I’d been suddenly attacked. I was reminded once again of the simple fact that a woman I’d been engaged to had left me, and I felt as if a bitter shoot of pain was sprouting in the bottom of my heart like a poisonous plant. “A heartbroken friend?” “Yeah.” From what she told me, her friend had been bitterly betrayed by a man and had come to her for advice and comfort. The moment I began to show some interest in her words she shot up from her seat. She walked along the narrow passage toward the kitchen and gestured to the waitress, pointing to the refrigerator and the cabinets. She seemed to be ordering something to drink. It was indeed the kind of story that required a drink. Especially for me. I sometimes think about the bond of heartbreak. There are some people in this world that I just don’t get along with, the kind where I wish I or the other person would just leave for another planet—it didn’t matter which one of us had to do the leaving. But let’s say that by chance I found out that one of these people had had their heart cruelly broken. Though only a few seconds ago I hadn’t even wanted to live under the same sky as this person, I could take them home, give them a drink, and sleep under the same roof as them. I would even be prepared to give them a goodnight kiss on the lips, though they still reeked of alcohol, so they wouldn’t dream sad dreams. There are bonds such as the bond of hunger or the bond of poverty, as well as the bond between those under the strain of taking a test, the bond between vegetarians, and the bond between parents of missing children. Maybe I’m strange, but I can’t imagine a bond so hopelessly drenched, so beautifully without judgment, as the bond of heartbreak. Perhaps that was why, as I watched her order the drinks in that train-like bar, I felt very close to this friend of hers though I had never even seen her face. My heart was restless with the mere expectation of the bond of heartbreak that would form between her friend and me. Of course, we needed my friend as a mediator. She came back to her seat and said, “Since you didn’t bring your car, you can have a drink or two, right?” Of course I told her that would be fine. “I ordered beer and soju, okay?” “Oh, really?” I didn’t like soju, but I didn’t object. I could just drink beer. And with the train-like mood, I might want a glass or two of soju while listening to a story about heartbreak. “Let’s mix the beer and soju. That’s okay, right?” It was a frightening thing to mix beer and soju, but I told her it was okay before I even realized it. She only asked my opinion as an afterthought, after she had already made up her mind. I thought this might be another part of her that had changed. I felt as if all I had done since we’d met was repeat the phrases, “Oh, really?” and “That’s okay.” “So, did you say anything that helped your friend?” “My friend? Ah.” She smiled, turning up a corner of her mouth. “I didn’t need to help her.” “Why not?” She said that her friend had reserved a place at this bar the day before, while still swept up in despair. ‘‘Isn’t that evidence that she had enough hope?” “Hope? What hope?” “As long as we have the will to live, we have hope. All I had to do was pretend to subtly interfere with that hope.” I had no idea what she meant by interfering with hope. She explained simply. “Only then do you realize that you have hope. Just like you have to scatter things about to realize you have space.” This was again another of her odd qualities, in which I felt even more confused after she explained something. Only by interfering with hope do you realize that there is hope? Only by scattering things about do you realize that you have space? What kind of explanations were these? The waitress brought out a tray. I glanced at it, and my gaze came to rest on the liquor bottle. Only then did I understand what she meant when she said that she couldn’t come here often because it was expensive. She hadn’t been talking about the side dishes but about the drinks. Next to the soup bowls and side dishes were two bottles of beer and a longnecked ceramic bottle of the high-quality Andong soju. So she had been talking about mixing beer and Andong soju. This was also very odd. She told me that her friend, the one who had first brought her here, had taken pains to emphasize that the side dishes here were not prepared elsewhere and delivered, but that the owner went to the market every day for the ingredients and made them herself. At this, her friend poured her a beer and then mixed in Andong soju without even asking. Pain will win forgiveness for an offense. Her friend tossed back her drink first while my friend sipped her soup. Like a creditor who barges in, downs a glass of cold water, and cuts straight to the chase, her friend put down her glass and asked urgently, “What was it like for you then? What are you supposed to do to keep breathing and living at times like this?” Seeing my bewildered expression, she took a slow sip of her drink and spoke. "I went through something similar the year before." It was the first I had heard of it. My head was a jumble of confused thoughts. If someone had seen me then, they would have seen a tortured expression similar to the one on the face of the waitress trying to understand what a combination dish was. If her friend had her heart broken two years ago and she had her heart broken a year before that, then that meant that she'd had her heart broken three years ago. Three years ago we were twenty-nine years old, and we got together every now and then, though not frequently. An absurd suspicion began to well up inside me as it suddenly occurred to me that I might know the man who had broken her heart. Yet once again I merely said, "Oh, really?" One year ago, how had she kept on breathing? Did she also cling to a hope to keep on living? Of course she would have. It only took her some time to realize it since it wasn't really hope in any recognizable form. "The moment that you feel you've lost it all . . ." Her friend had lifted her head sadly upon hearing these words. "You will realize, when you take the time to look back, that something is still left." "What on earth could be left?" "Well, how can I explain it? I suppose they're fairly worthless things." "So what does that matter? I wouldn't care even if you said something great and wonderful was left!" Her friend waved her hand exaggeratedly through the air. "No! It's all worthless! It's true, only the worthless things are left!" Her friend looked at her with dazed eyes. Within those eyes was the expectation that my friend would be able to offer a message of salvation and the resignation that nothing at all could save her, mixed half-and-half like a combination dish. "But those worthless things can change everything. You might say that they can turn things around." Her friend suddenly leaned forward. "How can I turn things around?" Her friend had misunderstood her. It just wouldn't do for her to understand the idea of turning things around to mean a trick that would somehow make her lover return. My friend felt the need to speak coolly. "For example, you might go on an errand to a relative's house, or offer congratulations or condolences to colleagues. Take on those sorts of tasks." In an instant her friend's eyes filled with the hurt of betrayal. A relative's house? Congratulations or condolences? Her friend thought that she was not taking her seriously, or that she was even mocking her. Her friend leaned back. "I have no idea what you are talking about. If you don't have anything to say, you should just keep quiet." Her friend suddenly started to cry into her soup. She normally cried a lot, but she started crying even more after she began dating, and you could say that she cried as much as she drank after her boyfriend broke up with her. My friend took a sip of the beer mixed with Andong soju and concluded, "There are things that, though not invisible, are so wretched and worthless that we don't feel like even trying to tackle them, aren't there? These worthless things are scattered all around you. Whether it's people or work, concentrate on the things that are left. If you can't concentrate on them, create an ever so slight angle so that you'll be compelled to care about them. Just slightly tip the motherboard of your heart." But her friend didn't listen to what she had to say and she didn't say any more. When she thought about it, even she hadn't made any effort to tilt her mind or body a year ago. Though she writhed like a wounded creature, inside she held fast to the beaker of despair, taut with surface tension, and struggled with all her might to not let a single drop of that bitter pain fall. Inside she did not listen to any comfort or understanding, and in a state of immobility that could be called an insane balance, she glared straight at the impatient rampaging of her body. If she could just endure this time she would inevitably become brutal, and that brutality would be an exceptional and beautiful brutality, like Andong soju diluted in beer. She thought that her friend, crying in front of her, would be feeling this as well, if only faintly. That she enjoyed this pain more than anyone. That she wanted to commemorate it for as long as possible. That it would be even more difficult to bear once the pain was gone. I drank the alcohol she had poured for me. The fragrance of the Andong soju was embedded like a sharp spike within the blandness of the beer. Her friend had already faded into the background. Now the bond of heartbreak was between the two of us, her and me. My tongue still bitter, I stammered. "How did you overcome, I mean, how did you cope then? What did you do?" She put her spoon down next to her soup bowl and spoke. "I was lucky." Her mother had played the role of an excellent interferer. My friend finally decided to visit her eldest aunt's house. If her mother had not badgered her for days, and if her head had not been filled that morning with the delusion that perhaps her lover had left because of money, she probably would not have visited her eldest aunt's house carrying that heavy gift. "You had your heart broken because of money?" I was even more surprised than when I heard she had been heartbroken. The embarrassing and absurd suspicion that I had been the one to break her heart disappeared without a trace. In its place was remorse like an older brother might feel, wondering what I could possibly have been doing that I didn't know she was seeing some jerk who would betray her because of money. "At least that's what I thought," she said, and pushed her empty soup bowl to one side. Seeing my still doubtful expression, she shook her head. "Now I can say for certain—it wasn't money. But if you're pressed hard enough, you think those sorts of things." The moment I heard her words I was suddenly seized by the delusion that perhaps my girlfriend had left me because of money. It was possible. It was more than possible. If that were so, then did that mean I was really cornered right now? Absurdly enough, it was true. She grabbed my glass and said, "Drink slowly." Her oldest aunt's house was on the very fringes of the city's edge, over an hour away by subway. Her aunt had moved there about a year before her visit, and she hadn't visited her once since then. According to her mother, the building was four stories high, and her aunt and uncle lived alone on the third floor. "After all, they don't have any children . . ." Her mother's words trailed off. It was not that her aunt and uncle had never had any children. Her cousin had died not as a child, but while he was still young. It was right before he turned thirty, and not long after he had passed the CPA exam, for which he had studied for three and a half years after completing military service. It was an unexpected accident—-he was drunk, and on his way to the bathroom he fell from a staircase that had no railing. He struck his head when he fell and was found dead a day later, his head covered with blood. Her mother thought there was a good chance that the four-story building owned by her aunt and uncle would be passed down to my friend, their only niece, so she wanted her to visit them often, play the part of a kind daughter, and look over her future property. Her mother tried for days to convince her to visit her aunt's house and take a present she had bought during a ten day trip to America. "I'm still not sure what it was, though. It was really heavy. I doubt she would have brought a jar of honey back from the United States, but that's what it felt like." "Well, in that case, maybe it was jam?" "Jam? Isn't it a bit strange to give jam as a gift to old folks past their sixtieth birthday?" "But old folks really like sweet things." "Is that so? Well, let's say it was jam, then." With the heavy, wrapped-up jar of jam and only a rough map, she went out in search of her aunt's house. Even though it was on the outskirts, it was still a four-story building. Since her boyfriend had so obviously left her, she needed to carefully take account of what he had left behind. She became absorbed in examining the value of each and every one of her possessions at that time. It was as if every time she took a penny for herself, he lost a penny. Such empty, greedy actions were her only way to take revenge on a person she would never see again. I thought it was fascinating that she had been engrossed in such arithmetic. If I could learn one thing from her, it would be that arithmetic. When she arrived, she discovered that the commercial building owned by her aunt and uncle was unfortunately not a four-story building, but a three-story building. As with every other building, there was a small, matchbox-shaped room on the roof, and her mother had naturally included that in her calculations as one floor. The building was, in fact, located near an intersection packed with shops and stores, but it had a smaller square footage and was more run-down than the buildings around it. On the first floor was a restaurant that sold pork ribs, and on the second floor was a small travel agency. The rooftop room, or so-called fourth floor, had a fortune teller's sign on it. She went up the stairs, practic1lly dragging the heavy jam jar in its wrappings behind her. The door on the third floor where her aunt and uncle lived was ajar. Next to the doorbell was a small, red plastic sign that pointed toward the fortune teller's house on the roof. She thought about ringing the doorbell, but instead opened the door all the way. Once in the small foyer, a pleated gray curtain blocked her way. She had never seen a house with a curtain drawn over the foyer entrance. To her left was a shoe closet with a mirror on top. The small, square space with the curtain and the mirror looked so much like the interior of one of those automatic photo booths for taking ID photos they had in underground shopping arcades that for a moment she imagined she might have to put some money somewhere in the shoe closet and push a button. She put down her burden and started to take off her shoes but then hesitated. She had no idea where to put her shoes. The red copper-colored tile floor of the foyer was already cluttered with several pairs of shoes. There were a pair of men's shoes and a pair of slippers that she assumed were her uncle's, a pair of women's shoes, a pair of rubber shoes, and a pair of sandals that she assumed were her aunt’s. Judging by the shoes alone, it did not seem as if her aunt and uncle lived lonely lives, but that they lived with a large, bustling family. She took off her shoes, put them in a corner of the foyer, and then pushed aside the wrinkled gray curtain. She couldn't say why, but the moment before she pulled aside the gray curtain, an unfamiliar and unsettling feeling washed over her. The moment she pulled aside the curtain and put one foot inside she felt the gazes of those in the room fix on her. Though she had only stuck her upper body through the curtain since she was trying to drag in the bundle of gifts, she was still powerfully aware of their stares. A thick gray curtain had been drawn over the window as well, so the room wasn't that bright despite the fact that it was midday. Three women, sitting hunched over on the sofa to the left, stared at her with eyes filled with unbridled curiosity. The combo-dish we had been waiting for arrived. The round plate, completely devoid of any garnish like lettuce or broccoli, held half a portion of each dark red food. "Try it. Once you taste it, you'll never forget it." She was smoking a cigarette. Feeling like a guinea pig, I took a sip of my drink then took a bit of pork and squid. How can I describe it . . . it felt like all the taste buds in my mouth had leaped up in surprise and were shouting for joy. The ingredients and seasoning were wonderful, but there was a smoky flavor after the spicy and rich taste, maybe because it had been pan-fried and then cooked over an open charcoal flame. The drink and the food joined together in a unique harmony of flavor, alternating in intimate layers. "It's great!" It occurred to me that this was the first time I had honestly expressed my feelings that night. She smiled as if she had known what my reaction would be, and then dropped her cigarette on the floor and ground it out with her shoe. Apparently this old-school method of putting out cigarettes was allowed here. I was suddenly cheerful. "So? Who were those women?" "Hold on, hold on. I want to eat a little, too." "Yes, of course. Eat up. Eat, then tell me." It wasn't me speaking, though, but my taste buds. She had greeted the three women in spite of herself. The woman sitting furthest away nodded. My friend set her bundle of gifts by the wall and stood there silently. She could never have guessed that so many guests would have come to visit her aunt and uncle, who were supposed to have lived as quietly as water in a bowl. When she looked closer, she saw that the women were each of vastly differing ages. The one who had nodded in greeting was an old woman who was well past seventy. The woman in the middle, whose eyes were ringed thick with liver spots, looked to be in her late thirties. Only the woman sitting closest to my friend, the one with the corners of her eyes swept upward, looked to be nearly sixty, like her aunt. "Sit over here," the old woman said. But, at odds with the word "here," her finger pointed to a round, backless chair across the room. It was probably the brightest spot in the room. For a moment, my friend wanted to refuse. "Is Auntie here?" At her question, the three women reacted as one. "Auntie?" said the old woman, and the woman in the middle replied, "I know," while the woman with the ferocious eyes stuck out her neck toward my friend and said, "If she's your auntie, then you must drop by often, right?" The words "drop by" rubbed her the wrong way, but for some reason my friend felt the need to explain herself. "No. I haven't been able to come often, and this is my first visit in quite a while. Has Auntie gone somewhere?" At this the women came alive. Why would she have gone anywhere, the door was open, wasn't it, another guest was here when we arrived, we have been waiting, so you should sit there and wait-the words came out in a jumble and she couldn't tell who had said what. The old woman pointed once again at the chair across the room, so my friend sat down on the edge of the chair in spite of herself. They all seemed to be waiting for her to speak, so she added, "This is the first time I've come to see my aunt since she moved here." The women were agitated by her words. It was the same no matter what she said. The woman with the liver spots said, "It must not have been long since she moved here." The old woman replied, "Indeed," and the woman with the ferocious eyes stuck her neck out again and asked, "Do you know when your aunt moved here?" "I think it's been about a year. " "Where did she live before that?" "She lived in Hwagok-dong, in Seoul." "Oh my, that's where my sister-in-law lives. We should have visited her then." The woman in the middle cried out as if pained. "So, did you visit her a lot when she lived in Hwagok-dong?" This time the old woman asked in a wheedling voice. "No, not often . . . maybe once or twice a year." She exaggerated the figure slightly. The woman with the ferocious eyes pressed the point. "Once or twice a year isn't often?" "You can't really call that often. " The old woman spoke meaningfully, as if scolding my friend. "So, what brings you here?" the woman in the middle asked carefully. My friend didn't know how to answer. "Isn't that a rude question to ask someone you've only just met?" At the old woman's question, the sixty-year-old woman with the ferocious eyes chuckled. My friend began to grow annoyed. Then the woman in the middle lowered her head and her shoulders began to bob. It looked as if she were about to burst into tears, but when my friend looked closer she saw that the woman was holding her knitting in her hands and had begun knitting. She had apparently set her colorful yarn and needles down on the lap of her colorful dress, but my friend had had no idea they were there and thought that her lightning-fast knitting actions were some sort of magical gesture to suppress her intense emotions. The woman in the middle knitted quickly as she spoke. "When I saw the name, I thought it was a man." The old woman muttered. "I told you it's a woman, a woman." "It's actually better if it's a woman," said the woman with the ferocious eyes. They spoke as if they had talked about this before my friend had arrived, and they watched her for a reaction. My friend lowered her eyes and pretended not to hear. She even wondered if it wouldn't be better to just leave the present and go before her aunt came. When she lifted her head, the three women looked at her expectantly. It felt like she was in the spotlight in the middle of a stage. "All I really have to do is give this to my aunt. If I leave this here, will you let my aunt know?" The old woman waved her hands in the air, as if the very suggestion were shameful. "What are you talking about? If you've come this far you should at least see her. " "Well, she has a lot of guests . . ." The old woman had no intention of hearing her out. "You've set aside a day to see her anyway, so you should relax and wait. It's not like you have pressing business elsewhere. Won't your grand-aunt be terribly disappointed? And who knows? Maybe she will give you a nice present." The woman with the ferocious eyes chuckled again at the old woman's words. It was a laugh that didn't suit her advanced age. Although there was no way they could have known, my friend wondered if the three women hadn't figured out her intentions in visiting her aunt and were taking turns sizing her up. And she couldn't understand why the old woman would call her eldest aunt her "grand-aunt." Seeing that they didn't know when her aunt and uncle had moved here, they couldn't have been all that close to them. My friend thought that they might have even come to ask a favor about business matters such as paying the rent for a shop below or housekeeping duties. So it seemed that they were trying to unfairly cast suspicion on her and figure out if she had an ulterior motive, so she decided to say as little as possible. The old furniture that filled the house, the bric-a-brac that lay around, and the stained linoleum floor all spoke of the owners' long neglect. She felt a little insulted that she had to sit there in that dilapidation with those strange women. The women finally began to talk between themselves, as if they had grown sick of her and her silence. "What on earth is going on at home that you've come here?" the old woman asked. "I really had no intention of ever coming," the woman in the middle replied, knitting quickly as if her life depended on it. "Well? What brought you here, then?" Ferocious Eyes asked. "My sister-in-law says I shouldn't be so stubborn." "That's so true! This must be the sister-in-law that lives in Hwagokdong." "Yes, that's right. She's a schoolteacher. But even schoolteachers all go around just looking for the next best thing." "That's the truth!" Ferocious Eyes tossed in her two cents. "So here's what she says. There is nothing on earth that should never be done, and nothing that absolutely must be done. Those words cut me to the bone. Isn't it true? Don't people say that they would never do something, or that something absolutely must be done? But really, is there any such thing? Once I started thinking like that, I realized that there was no reason for me not to come." They were now absorbed in their own conversation and paid her no further attention. This only stirred her interest in them. She tried to find some hint of a friendship between them and her aunt and uncle, but the substance of their conversation was so hard to follow that it was not easy. They took turns speaking as if following some predetermined order. First the old woman talked about some odd disease that sounded like it came out of an old storybook, then Ferocious Eyes talked about a kidnapping that had been reported in the papers not too long ago. Finally, the woman in the middle heaped criticism on the inconstancy of men. When they had each taken a turn talking, the old woman started again with a long-winded explanation of a folk remedy that used rats or bugs, and the woman with the ferocious eyes gritted her teeth and lamented the incompetence of the police in this country. The woman in the middle simply knitted quietly even though it was her turn to speak, and a silence fell over the room. A short while later the woman with the ferocious eyes asked in a frail voice, "How many children do you have?" "One." "One? It must be a son." The old woman interjected. "Yes. He just started the third grade." "He's one grade ahead of my youngest grandson," the woman with the ferocious eyes solemnly intoned, and then added, "If my grandson is still alive, that is." On cue, the old woman sang the praises of a cure-all salve like one possessed, the woman with the crooked eyes mumbled to herself, either in prayer or incantation, and the woman in her thirties began to sob softly. And yet she continued to knit quickly with both hands, except when she wiped her nose. My friend felt like her mind was going blank. There wasn't any meaning in their conversation that she could decipher, rather an energy that she sensed in it. It was like the pull of misfortune, sucking her in like sticky honey or jam. Their conversation went around with such a sadly rhythmical fantasy that she even forgot where she was. She only woke from her reverie when the old woman complained in a hoarse voice, "She's taking quite a long time, I'll say." The sixty-year-old woman with her upswept eyes replied. "The person before us must be taking a long time." "Everyone has plenty to work out." This was the woman in her thirties, who had stopped crying already. "I'm parched." "She doesn't even have a vending machine." "Yeah, I know. " My friend thought that was a bit odd. Who puts a vending machine in their house? Then, from beyond the curtain, came the sound of the front door opening and labored breathing. The women's heads turned as one. Her head turned as well. She heard the sound of sniffling and the smacking of lips as the curtain swung open, and there stood her uncle. She hesitated and then stood up. She could see in her uncle's dim eyes that he did not recognize her. He looked down at the women sitting there with a toothpick in his mouth. The old woman nodded and, as she had done with my friend, said, "Sit over here." Her uncle ignored the old woman and mumbled. "You all seem to be here for something . . ." He looked further into the house for a moment. "Is she still sleeping?" He turned back toward them and gestured lightly for them to leave. "If you're here for the fortune teller, you need to go up another floor." "What? It's not here?" The three women stood up at once. The ball of yarn rolled off the colorful dress of the woman in the middle. "Can't you tell? This is a private residence." The old woman sat down on the sofa again, bent over, and pulled on the heavy socks she had taken off. "Oh dear. People are setting up shrines in their homes these days, so we thought this was one of those places, too." Her uncle slowly picked his teeth as he spoke. "I'll have to tell him to take down that pea-sized sign and put up a big one right away." She didn't know why, but my friend followed right behind the three women as they left. They stared at the red sign next to the doorbell, looking for an excuse for their misunderstanding. On the sign was the name of a man—the name that had caused the woman with the liver spots to say, "When I saw the name, I thought it was a man"—preceded by the word "Guru." Beneath the letters was a thin arrow pointing upward, but the thin line earned the ire of the three women. They went up the stairs and my friend went down. Although the fortune teller in the roof-top room might not know that he had been called "a grand-aunt," she knew what sort of gifts the three women were looking to receive from the grand-aunt fortune teller. With each step she took she muttered prayers for them. She prayed for the complete recovery of a relative suffering from a rare disease, for the safety of a kidnapped grandson, for the return of a profligate husband, and for the peace and happiness of an old couple who had lost their only son. She had never prayed so earnestly for anyone. When she reached the bottom of the stairs she felt that she had become a different person. All she had done was go up and down some stairs, yet it felt like she had left not only the heavy jar of jam at her aunt's house on the third floor, but the small chip that held the code to her nature as well. Her uncle had died a year before we met in that train-like bar. Then she had heard word last month that her aunt had died. At least it had been a natural death. It was one year after her uncle had killed himself. Just one day before the anniversary of his death. Her aunt, who had been listless and in a constant trance after their son died, and who had never prepared a proper lunch for her husband, got up early to buy ingredients for the meal after her husband's first memorial rite. Frozen from a sudden late cold spell, she struggled up to the third floor and once inside, drank some hot water to thaw out. That was the beginning of the end. The moment she swallowed the hot water she fell gravely ill, and she died that evening. The owner of the first-floor pork rib restaurant, where her uncle had gone down to eat lunch every day, waited by her aunt's deathbed. Her aunt's last words were, "I should have drunk cold water." The three-story building passed on to my friend. That was where her story ended. It took three or four hours to hear it all. We had emptied one bottle of Andong soju and countless bottles of beer, and every twenty minutes we had taken turns going to the bathroom located in the parking lot. If someone were to ask me about it, I would only be able to sketch the outline of her story. Yet with a story like this, an outline is meaningless. Just as a faded antique yields the shape and colors of its detailed decorations when the dust is swept off of it with a fine brush, the meticulous description that flowed from her sharply cleft upper lip painted a perfect picture of what had happened in the living room of that house around noon in that old, three-story building. But this is the best I can do in retelling that story. I don't know what happened inside her as she sat facing those three strange women. She wasn't able to express that either. Whatever it was, if we were to try to tackle it head-on, it would probably end up being something worthless. But it was clear that it had changed her. When we left the bar I realized that she had already taken care of the bill. She should have let me pay for the drinks since I was the one who had called and suggested we get together. When she saw a hint of reproach in my face, she laughed dryly. That dry laugh. That was it. In an instant I understood everything. My absurd suspicion had been right. That was why she had laughed when she told me that her aunt had died. I laughed then as well, but it was less of a laugh and more like a quiet spasm at the corner of my mouth. I thought about what she had mumbled as she was crossing the crosswalk. Sure enough, it was the relationship between her aunt and uncle and me that was odd. When I began dating another woman while unaware of my friend's love, she had visited her aunt's three-story building bearing the pain of heartbreak, and when I looked her up three years later after having my heart broken by that girlfriend, she had inherited the three-story building from her aunt and uncle. I thought of the old three-story commercial building that might have been mine. The peculiar entranceway with the gray curtain across it, the dark interior, and the red plastic sticker on the wall pointing up to the roof top all were vivid in my mind. She waved off the old man who came out from the parking lot. She was letting him know that she hadn't brought her car. She looked as relaxed as the hands of a clock that read seven o'clock. If she was relaxed, then I was glad for her. But now, no matter who she met, her heart would not leap in anticipation. And she would not want anyone's heart to leap for her. She seemed to have passed on to a place far beyond the pain of love. She had become much more cordial and natural, but it seemed she no longer believed in love. This thought made me sad. Where had that twenty-nine year old woman gone, the one who had been engrossed in that powerless arithmetic, examining each and every one of her possessions and taking each and every one of them from me? I thought that my heart would break after the fact, thanks to the twenty-nine year old woman I had lost without even knowing it. It would be so late that it might not be too severe—it could not be too severe, and so I would not bite my lips till they bled—but I had a foreboding sense that this was the beginning of days I would spend groping about in a trance until I wore my fingers down, as one traces silhouettes in a faded photograph. That premonition became true when I stopped by that bar last February. Becoming a regular at a bar in your own neighborhood is a blessing for your memory, but it is a death knell for your youth. It means that the days you believed in love are over, and you are of the age where it is only possible to go forward by looking back. Now, at the age of thirty-five, I am passing the noon of my life. The sun blazes above my head, but already it is ready to set and leave me in darkness. This is the brightest time of my life. There will be no brighter days in my future. If my life was a mountain whose summit was at the midpoint of my years, after which the slope fell off sharply at a right angle, then her life was like a high mountain ridge with a peak a third of the way up and a gentle descent beyond. Everyone has their own personal melody. The song she sent my way in her late twenties, when she was as timid and stingy with her emotions as I, must have been in a very low octave, so faint that I could barely hear it. I thought of that as one of her odd traits, something that had nothing to do with me. At the peak of twenty-nine years, she grew up too soon and her eyes adjusted too quickly to the coming darkness. Through those strange women in that dark three-story building, she must have seen the ridge of her future. Three years ago she already had the weary eyes of one who lived in the afternoon. So she failed to recognize my midday waiting. And all this came about because of the deafness of my ears, the ears that had failed to hear her soft song and were led astray by the shrill song of another woman. Even I know that losing love is not losing everything. But the odd thing is that the persistent relationship between her aunt and uncle and me was not over yet. Passing by an old three-story building with a rooftop room on top always made me pause, and whenever I made a simple mistake or regretted something, I would say, "I should have drunk cold water." Before we parted, she asked me one last time, "Was it okay?" "It was fine." Of course, she was asking me what I thought of the long, train-like bar, but as I listened to her story I felt the pain of the heartbreak I had suffered gradually grow duller. As I repeatedly told her that it was fine whenever she asked, I had begun to imagine that she was asking about me and I was telling her that I was okay. Are you okay? I'm fine. And I truly was fine. Everything was now the trivial past. I sat alone in my regular bar, the bar that reminds me of the train-car bar, and thought, That's right, that's what she said then, wasn't it, or I wonder why she did that. I thought of her name, her story, her face when she laughed dryly, her graceful upper lip and the groove above it. She is not coming and I do not believe in love. Looking back on it now, there was no need for any great consolation. If love is worthless, then consolation should be worthless as well. That worthlessness changes us. All I needed to do was accept that chilling truth like cold water. Translated by Charles La Shure
byKwon Yeo-sun
"Mothers" by Kim Yi-seol
“You’ve been screened for hepatitis, rubella, syphilis, AIDS, and cancer, and all test results are normal,” the nurse said. She gave me a professional smile and handed me the medical report. The woman had instructed me to come to this hospital, where she’d booked the assessment. From here, my university was an hour away. I now needed to get a copy of my proof of enrolment and transcript. “Do you really have to do this?” he’d said the other day, when I’d applied for a leave of absence. According to him, what I was doing wasn’t right. “What do you suggest I do? Sell an organ?” He had nothing to say and turned away. He stopped following me around. The end of our relationship couldn’t have been clearer. Scrawny trees dotted the campus. I knew tiny buds bearing moisture were hiding somewhere, but there was no trace of green. I walked faster to avoid being late. This was my second leave of absence, and my grades only went up to the first semester of my junior year. As I walked past the entrance gates, several girls burst into laughter. They looked cold in their thin skirts. I had never liked spring. She had large pupils as deep as wells. Her navy-blue business suit accentuated her gaunt frame, making it look as if she were barely holding up her clothes. Even her voluminous wavy hair made her appear unsteady. She told me to drink kiwi juice. I handed her my medical report, proof of enrolment, and transcript. She scrutinised each document. The coffee placed before her smelled strong. I didn’t want to drink my juice. What I wanted was a cup of coffee, bitter enough to make my head hurt. She pushed the contract toward me. “You have no objections?” “No,” I said. I took a sip of the juice and signed. Kiwi seeds got stuck in my teeth, bothering me. “I booked an appointment for tomorrow. Please don’t be late.” She was the first to leave. Steam rose faintly from the coffee. I got up only after I’d drunk the rest of her coffee and smoked two cigarettes. Though it was a short procedure, my body felt noticeably heavier. She tried to take my arm, but I shook her off. She grabbed hold of my arm again. I couldn’t stop her this time. She opened the car door. “I’ll drive you home.” From a certain point, she had started to address me informally. It was her way of letting me know I now worked for her. Her sedan looked out of place in the dark, narrow alley. Somewhere, a baby cried savagely. She frowned. She strode through the metal gate I pointed at. Below a set of stairs, small doors were huddled closely together. She straightened her shoulders and followed me inside. She spread open a blanket. “Lie down.” I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t refuse her. She placed two pregnancy books and a plastic bag filled with kiwis by my feet, and strode to the kitchen sink, where she found a fruit knife. She sat down next to where I was lying and started to peel the kiwis. It seemed she meant to leave only after she had watched me eat. Her hands were clumsy, as if she had never peeled a thing in her life. “You don’t get much sun here.” She was wrong. Not even a single beam of sunlight made its way into the basement suite. She gazed around the room. In the corner sat two suitcases that I still hadn’t unpacked. “Let’s move after the implantation. Stay here for now. I’ll come by often.” She left after she’d watched me eat two of the kiwis. It seemed she might call or visit every day and never leave me in peace. After all, I had signed the contract. Regardless of whether it had any legal power, if I wanted to get paid, I needed to follow the conditions it outlined. I forced myself to sleep. If all went well, I’d be getting some money soon. Maybe it wasn’t much to her, but it was a large sum to me. I breathed in the smell of kiwi and mould. The transfer was a success. I was moved to a studio apartment. There was a convenience store and food court opposite the building, and a grocery store nearby. I felt as if I’d landed in some remote vacation spot, but instead I’d officially entered the woman’s territory. Maybe I’d got lucky this time. Compared to my first client, this woman was an excellent employer. The first intended parent had demanded I abort when she learned the baby wasn’t a boy. Such circumstances hadn’t been clearly outlined in the contract. I objected and said the fact was immaterial but was unable to reach her after that. Preoccupied with trying to track her down, I ended up terminating the pregnancy at five months. From the very start, the contract had been little more than a formality. Less than three months after the abortion, I had to post my profile once more: Twenty-six years old, L University law student, single, 165 cm, 54 kg, non-smoker, non-drinker, no history of genetic diseases/psychiatric disorders, direct transaction without agent required. All I had to do was hide out for a year. It didn’t matter that getting paid for my services was illegal. Becoming a surrogate was the only way to make 50 million won in one go without racking up debt or falling into a pit from which I’d never escape. I’d do it another ten times if my body allowed it. I read the emails of intended parents and went back and forth with several, discussing whether I could be paid in instalments upon a successful transfer and at different points during the pregnancy, as well as receiving a monthly allowance for living expenses. Until I actually signed, I had the right to choose who I carried for. I needed to be extra thorough, in order to make up for my first mistake. The woman began her first email by saying she liked me because her husband was an alumnus of my university. After we exchanged a few emails, I chose her, mainly because she agreed to my conditions. And I didn’t mind the things she proposed. At the very least, I was prepared to bear it all, since she was meeting my requests. She called every day and drove me to the hospital every week. After five weeks, an abdominal ultrasound produced a clear image of the uterus. A single speck was embedded in the black well. That day after the doctor’s appointment the woman dropped me off at my new studio apartment. It was already furnished. She said she would cover the rent and utilities, on top of the monthly bill for the new phone she handed me. I had nothing besides food to spend the monthly allowance on. “I’ll fetch your things for you.” The two suitcases containing clothes and books were all I had in my basement room. I didn’t answer. Suit yourself. After all, isn’t my body yours for these forty weeks? The woman turned on some Mozart and left. I stood to the side of the window and watched her in secret from two stories above. Before she went into the parking lot, she glanced up, her eyes narrowed. The unforgiving June sunlight, which revealed everything in sharp detail, flooded the alley. I watched my mother scrub the tiled walls through the misted glass door. I took off my clothes and stepped into the bath. The water was lukewarm, and I could feel every draft of cool air. My skin broke out into goose bumps. The empty bathhouse at the start of summer was bleak. My skin started to prune once I poured hot water on myself. Mother came to scrub my back after she started refilling the four baths with clean water. Her hands weren’t as strong as they used to be. By the time I came out of the baths, it was past two in the morning. There were a few people in the sauna, but most were sleeping in the resting area. I spotted a young couple tangled together in a corner. “You might as well have your birthday soup while you’re here,” Mother said. We sat across from each other with bowls of seaweed soup in front of us. My right side up to my armpit prickled. I rolled up my short sleeve to find that blood had gathered under the skin. She had given birth to me and my little brother in the spring. On top of that, her own birthday was a week later. All of a sudden, I was struck by the sad picture we painted: mother and daughter sitting opposite each other at the bathhouse, hunched over bowls of soup. Mother gulped hers down, as though she had skipped dinner. She straightened her back and let out a burp, and then immediately started to peel the hard-baked eggs. I barely touched mine. “What’s the matter with you? You don’t look good,” she said. She looked worse. It wasn’t easy for someone who had been a homemaker all her life to start running a bathhouse past the age of fifty. I was going to ask about Father but decided not to. He’d told our anxious relatives he would find a way to live somehow, sounding much too confident for someone who dumped his debt on us and fled soon after. That was the last time I saw him. I suspected Mother kept in touch with him, but she always said the same thing: If you’re alive, you’ll find a way to live. So just like that, my family dissolved. How could blood ties be so flimsy? I didn’t get the chance to be baffled. Hate, rage, and even resignation disintegrated, like limp seaweed. The present was the problem. Mother left one egg for me and ate the remaining three, one after another. If you’re alive, you’ll find a way to live. Is that why she could keep eating? I watched her, thinking it was a good thing she could eat like this. The fishiness of the soup didn’t agree with me, and I found it difficult to swallow. I put down my spoon before I finished even half. I thrust my new phone number, what I’d saved of the allowance, and the entire implantation payment toward Mother. She no longer said sorry or thank you. This meant she was leading an exhausting life too. In the end, weren’t we all in the same boat—Mother pushing sixty and scrubbing the backs of young things, me in my mid-twenties carrying the embryo of two strangers, and Father roaming aimlessly without friends or family? It was all the same in the end. No one knew what would happen next. Happiness or unhappiness, it wasn’t something you could choose, so wasn’t everything fair after all? Mother watched television, clutching the bills in her hand. Snores reverberated softly through the resting room. Mother was drunk with sleep. They say women get sick every year the same month they gave birth to their children. Since she had two kids in the spring, her joints probably felt as if they weren’t even hers. I reached out to stroke her face but stood up instead. I was scared I’d start feeling bad for her. Outside the bathhouse, the thick fog rose, almost tickling me. I stuck a cigarette in my mouth while I waited for a taxi. Nausea welled up. It was the night of my twenty-sixth birthday. “Now this is rather problematic.” The woman’s abrupt switch to formal language signalled her anger. “It would be helpful if you explained where you went and why, so that there’s no misunderstanding.” I knew this was part of the agreement but didn’t want to say. I didn’t want to tell her about my elderly mother’s appetite, or the last time I saw my father, or my little brother, who was finishing his army service soon but would no longer have a place to live. If I could win her pity from talking about these things, I would do so gladly. But I knew from experience that pity wouldn’t solve reality. I told the woman I’d gone to the bathhouse. That, at least, wasn’t a lie. “The bathhouse? What if you had got an infection? Did you even look at the books I gave you?” I said nothing. She didn’t question me further. She left, muttering about how she couldn’t believe I’d spent the night out. Inside the shopping bags she left behind were two housedresses, vitamin supplements, a bag of walnuts, and a bag of pine nuts. I had read the pregnancy books, so knew the walnuts and pine nuts were good for the development of the baby’s brain, and the folic acid in the vitamin supplements was good for me. I had nothing else to do other than read those books while listening to Schubert and Mozart. Or look out the window or skim the take-out menus and decide what to eat. My days passed the way they must for a terminally ill patient. After the woman had waited up for me all night, she started coming to the apartment every day. I had brought it on myself. But it didn’t affect my life; it was all the same to me. The housedresses were splashed with bright pink flowers. Around the time the woman started coming every day, I started experiencing morning sickness. This overlapped with the withdrawal symptoms of quitting smoking. I didn’t try to quit; my body rejected cigarettes. Still, the cravings were bad. A habit your body remembers can be terribly stubborn, even when it’s trumped by an instinct of the body—or in this case, the uterus. My morning sickness worsened. On top of that, I started getting migraines accompanied by pelvic pains. They said these were common symptoms as hormones increased and the uterus expanded, and so there was nothing the woman nor I could do. The egg and sperm weren’t mine, but the uterus was. Therefore, I had to deal with all the signs that went along with the embryo settling into the uterus. When I could no longer keep down restaurant meals, the woman started bringing me food. It was probably her housekeeper’s cooking, but I was able to eat it. The only thing was, when I finished eating, I was back to feeling queasy. I would have felt better if I’d vomited, but I wasn’t able to do even that. Every time we went to the hospital, the woman held me by the arm, supporting me. I limped because of the pelvic pains. I grew used to the women’s smell. When I lost two kilograms in one week, the doctor said it was common in the first trimester, and that I would start gaining weight once the morning sickness stopped after three or four months. The woman put her arm around my shoulders, her expression brightening. I gazed at her blankly. She stayed glued to my side whenever I spoke to the doctor or received an ultrasound. Anyone would have assumed she was a devoted sister. It was probably that same day the woman asked about my mother. “Did she have bad morning sickness as well?” My mother had stayed in bed the entire time. She vomited everything she ate, and for a few days all she could tolerate was a few sips of water. She found every smell in the world nauseating. And so, compared to her, my morning sickness wasn’t at all bad. “Is she still alive?” A shadow flickered in her eyes. “My mother had only me. Imagine not being able to give birth to a son back then. My grandmother brought in a surrogate, and eventually that woman established herself as the wife. Tired old story, isn’t it? They say a woman shares her mother’s fate, and look at me now.” Even as she drove, her gaze seemed empty. “Still, my mother remarried and in the end everything worked out. So who knows? Maybe the same thing will happen to me.” She gave a small smile. The expression was free from bitterness and contained vestiges of hope. It was not the bright smile she had flashed when the doctor said the appearance and location of the gestational sac were normal, as were the yolk sac and foetal heart rate. For some reason, I was relieved. It made me feel she could somehow understand the gloom inside me. “You see, my mother didn’t have morning sickness.” With those words she was letting me know that while the embryo was hers and her husband’s, carrying the embryo was up to me. I wished she hadn’t said anything. An awkward, uncomfortable silence settled over the car. We were stuck in traffic, and I began to feel queasy. As soon as we returned to the apartment, I crawled into bed but then had to get back up to eat the orange she gave me. She stood with her back turned, gazing out the window. Standing at the window was her daily routine. I would often fall asleep watching her and, when I woke, I’d be alone. While I was still suffering from nausea and groggy with sleep like a sick hen, summer arrived. Climate change meant that this year the sweltering nights started before July. My phone rang as I was working on a patch of sky above the Mediterranean Sea. The woman had left behind the 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle, saying it was a good prenatal activity. The sea and islands were finished, and just the sky was left. Because all the pieces were the same color, the going was slow, but the puzzle helped me focus during sleepless nights. If she hadn’t called me that night, I might have finished the Mediterranean sky. Outside my window the sky was already brightening. Though her voice sounded different, I knew right away it was Mother. I waited all morning for the woman to arrive. It was the first time since our family had scattered that Mother had called me. I didn’t want to make the woman anxious like the last time, so I had no choice but to tell her. “Your mother?” she repeated. I was already dressed. She looked at me, as if she found it unbelievable that my mother was still alive. “I just need to check on her. I won’t be long.” “I’ll go with you.” There was no need for that, was there? I might have worked for her, but she didn’t have control over my personal life. No, that wasn’t right, I had sold off my personal life. I followed the woman in silence. Since I was in my first trimester, I still needed to be careful. It was the woman’s duty to protect the embryo. Perhaps because of the sudden onset of tropical nights, the entire bathhouse was empty. Mother was sick, alone in the corner. She was lying flat on her back, gasping for air, her mouth wide open. I shook her by the shoulders, but she didn’t open her eyes. The woman was standing behind me. I looked at her in desperation. Mother, whose fatigue and drawn-out cold had turned into pneumonia, was discharged after four days. Mother and I decided to each have a bowl of oxtail soup in the cafeteria. We hardly touched the rice and meat but refused to get up until all the broth was gone, as if we were honoring a vow. If you’re alive, you’ll find a way to live. I needed to repeat these words over and over. I knew the only place she could go back to was the bathhouse. In front of the bathhouse building, I put a few 10,000-won bills in her hand and turned away. The air smelled fishy. I felt a little faint, as if I had a slight fever. As soon as I stepped inside the apartment, I was met with the savory smell of beef bone soup. “What a rough couple of days. You must be tired,” the woman said, helping me to the table. Though I’d just eaten, I started salivating when I saw the minced scallion in the hot milky broth. I paid no attention to how her sympathy bothered me, or how she marvelled, watching me polish off a whole bowl. But being full felt similar to being anxious. Yes, it was a good thing I could eat like this. “How do you feel?” she asked. “Is the nausea still there?” I told her my morning sickness was gone. As she cleared the table she mumbled, “Looks like your mother got sick so you wouldn’t have to.” I didn’t feel grateful for those words. The seascape puzzle was finished. Even though I was full, I still felt hungry. A terrifying appetite raged through me. I broke the puzzle apart, the pieces scattering into a thousand pieces. (Excerpt from pp. 37-51.) Translated by Janet Hong “Mothers” appeared in The Lifted Brow #39. Reprinted with the permission of The Lifted Brow. Illustrations ⓒ Amy Shin
byKim Yi-seol