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That Place
At the height of summer a few years back, I was caught in a flash flood while camping. I knew I shouldn’t have crossed the valley in the summer, but I brought an icebox and made the trip anyway. Within an hour, heavy rains left me stranded on the other side of the stream. I was even on the 9 o’clock news. I still vividly remember the sound of the rope the rescue workers tossed to me. I knew that sound would save my life, which terrified me. That summer was sweltering and often rainy. Dark spots marred my wallpaper and water overflowed from the toilet. In many ways, I was a woman for whom nothing seemed to go right. One night, I clicked on a video of a terrorist group carrying out an execution and got charged 250,000 won. Persuaded by a home shopping network host’s claim that Korea had reached the point of being considered a subtropical climate, I ordered a dehumidifier, but mold continued to bloom on the laundry I hung up to dry. One day a woman with tattooed eyebrows told me to come with her. She said the reason nothing seemed to go right for me was because I had an ancestor who had died a virgin. The woman gave me some red beans and bay salt and told me to place them near a window that faced a mountain. I was living in the same residential neighborhood at the foot of Mallisan, the mountain where ladies in waiting and eunuchs from ages past were buried. I shoved the beans and salt into my closet next to a moisture trap, and every evening I went from coin laundromat to coin laundromat with a bundle of hand towels in tow. That’s how I passed the days. The middle-aged woman up ahead wouldn’t stop crying. Sobbed that she was so scared, she wouldn’t be able to hold onto the rope. In front of me was a man holding a baby in a sling. A dog barked somewhere behind me. Broadcast vehicles sat parked across the way. I knew the rope before me was a lifeline, but for some reason, I still thought I might die. When one of my slide sandals came off and got swept away in the muddy stream as I clung to the rope, I peed myself. “It all happened in a flash.” When someone described the incident this way to the 9 o’clock news reporter in her plastic raincoat, everyone who had been there understood exactly what that meant. In a flash. I almost died that day. * As the air grows colder, people start walking around with their necks covered up. Seeing this brings me a sense of comfort. When the seasons change and people begin revealing their necks again, my heart starts to race. It races every day in the summer. I’m surprised at how easily people can go around with such a vulnerable part of themselves exposed. I can’t get much sleep with my heart beating so fast. My body’s heat-regulating center gets fired up and keeps me awake. My sympathetic nerves are invigorated, my melatonin secretion reduced. Of course, this is also due to the heat. I’ve been stewing in weather hot enough to rival my body temperature for days. Between 37 and 37.5 degrees Celsius. Probably more than 80 percent humidity. The high atmospheric pressure is trapping hot air, and a typhoon expected to move north is driving up the humidity even more. When the temperature exceeds 27 degrees Celsius, ginseng can’t grow, and when the temperature surpasses 35 degrees, chickens start dropping dead. Every time I walk past a thermal camera, I come out bright red. I can’t sleep because my body is burning up. Because it’s so hot.It sounds like I’m describing the dog days of summer, but it’s only June. The reason I ended up visiting the public sports center so often wasn’t only because it was deep in the hills. Nor was it because the park that formed part of the center was located at the foot of Mallisan. What was the reason, then? The incredible air conditioning? The sports center’s facilities were impeccable. The supply of nice, thick hand towels in the bathroom never ran out, and cushion-soft, eight-millimeter-thick yoga mats lined the stretching room floor. The showers were fully equipped with sunflower shower heads. The lockers were deep, the parking lot spacious. The center had eight ping-pong tables. A new squat machine had recently appeared in the weight room. Persons of national merit as well as women of childbearing age got a ten percent discount. And the convenience store there always had bungeoppang ice cream in stock. At first, I was the only one who bought them, but as the days grew warmer, one elderly man started buying them too. He usually works out with the dumbbells, and before he begins, he spits, ptt, into each hand and rubs his palms together. Then he grips the dumbbell bar with those hands. It’s a scene I end up witnessing right as I arrive at the sports center, and each time it happens, I file a civil complaint online. I can spot extremely repugnant behavior anywhere, anytime, and am proactive about reporting it. I reported countless people during the height of the pandemic. I’m this district’s top civil complainant. With today’s complaint filed, I head over to the endurance zone and start off with the weighted Hula Hoop. I keep the hoop spinning, sometimes gently, sometimes powerfully, sometimes in a daze. Once I finish with that, I head to the speed strength zone and do single-leg deadlifts. As elegantly as I can, focusing on the sensation in my glutes and the backs of my thighs, I find my balance on one leg. When my workout is over, I chug a liter of mineral water, staring all the while at the indoor rock-climbing wall that no one is using. This is my morning routine, the reason I come to the sports center almost every day. To build up my endurance and speed strength. After sunset, I run along the Mallisan track for about an hour. I run despite the rain, despite the stickiness of the day. When I still can’t sleep, when the evening becomes yet another summer night that my heart won’t stop racing, I think of that summer a few years back when I crossed the valley. I start wanting to tell someone about the humidity, the heat, the dampness of that day. About the rope and the life vest I’d clung to. About my three-line slide sandal. About the dog that had been left behind. I’m someone who finds it easy to talk about these things. When I want to chat someone up or when I’m drunk, sometimes for no reason at all, I talk about the time I almost died. When I mention how I was on the 9 o’clock news, most people don’t believe me, but there are some who do. The sports center was where I first met Sooseok-ssi. He lived in the area prone to flooding at the foot of Mallisan, too, and after running into each other at the sports center a few times, we became what some might call neighborhood friends. Friends who slide on our sandals and go out for beers under the outdoor umbrellas in front of the convenience store. Friends who contact each other only occasionally but never completely give up on the possibility or anticipation of the next message. Friends who have the same escape route and designated shelter to take cover in when it floods. —What are you doing? —I can’t sleep. —Too hot? —Too hot. When our thoughts align like this, Sooseok-ssi and I head to the highest point in our neighborhood, which is Mallisan Park. This summer, too, we met up there even though it was a Monday night. We sat and drank cans of Tsingtao in front of the park’s convenience store, which overlooked the sports center. Others who couldn’t sleep on account of the untimely heat wave and tropical nighttime temperatures were scattered throughout the park. I could see Mallisan straight ahead. Its walking trail, a part of the third course the city designed to circle the mountain, ran parallel to a track along the foot of Mallisan and fed into a nearby trail that encircled Bukhansan. “So do you still have those red beans?” Sooseok-ssi asked. “No, I ate them, but I still have the salt.” I’d checked around in my spare time over the years and found that no one else in this area had received red beans and salt from a woman with tattooed-on eyebrows. As most people know, red beans and salt are used to drive out evil spirits. The woman was still roaming around Mallisan Park and the trail around the mountain, but these days she was selling ice towels. Cold enough to cool you down with a single touch, she claimed. When she came by the convenience store, I bought a towel and handed it to Sooseok-ssi. “One touch really does cool you down,” he said, wrapping the towel around his neck. Once he’d covered up that vulnerable spot, I felt simultaneously relieved and at a loss. “Do you think she doesn’t remember? Giving me the red beans and salt?” “Maybe she’s pretending she doesn’t know you?” “Do you want to go to the mountain with me?” Sooseok-ssi acted as if he hadn’t heard. Unlike me, he didn’t visit the sports center often. He didn’t even go for walks in Mallisan Park unless I called him out. He’d been a victim of the heavy rains that summer a few years back, still the heaviest rainfall on record in the northwestern region of the metropolitan area to this day. Since then, the summers had grown that much hotter and came on that much sooner. But no nationwide heat wave advisories had been issued in June before. Nothing like this had ever happened. The cooling mist that was sprayed to reduce the ground heat settled like chilled steam over the residential area of the city at night. At dawn, ambulances transporting heat stroke patients raced down the same streets the sprinkler trucks had passed through earlier in the day. As the pipes heated up, the sprinklers malfunctioned and the concrete roads buckled. If you stopped and stood in the middle of a side street in the shopping district, you could hear the outdoor air conditioning units that filled the city humming like a vibrator in your ears. In late June, the average temperature hit an all-time high. The first time tropical nights were recorded in June. A chunk of a glacier broke off and struck a group of hikers in the Alps, and indoor events without functional air conditioning were banned in France. Words like deadly, unprecedented, and all-time could be heard on a daily basis. Right next to the banner promoting the sports center’s classes hung an additional banner from the local disaster preparedness team that listed precautions to take during the heat wave. I’m lucky enough to have successfully signed up for several of the sports center’s popular classes. My base body temperature is high. There must be something in me that evil spirits crave, and I know without a doubt that even more than being hungry, they hate being hot. I’m drinking beer with my neighborhood friend, who has an ice towel covering his vital spot. A glow-in-the-dark flying disc toy traced an arc through the air and fell to the ground. Over at the water playground, people were dipping their feet in the water despite the fact that the fountains had stopped running. Several delivery motorbikes rode up, off-loading fried chicken and trotters onto the mats scattered throughout the park. People lay sprawled out inside the gazebo. The squeak of sneakers, the sound of the wind—then the glowing disc that had been flashing through the sky suddenly changed directions and shot straight toward us. Sooseok-ssi and I shrieked and bolted up from our seats. A pair of bugs I had never seen before had flown over to our table and were rubbing their bodies together. Similar screams went up from all different corners of the park before dying down again. “Didn’t they say there would be a typhoon?” said Sooseok-ssi, returning to his seat. I stared at the lights from the residential area that ran along the base of the mountain. Typhoons always came. The same way summer was the season for bugs. And then there was the sports center. The place located at the highest point in our neighborhood. The place that had been designated as a temporary shelter in the event of a natural disaster. That night many people had gathered in Mallisan Park, but none of them had any idea what sort of disaster alert they would receive before the week was out. * I love myself in the moments when I’m standing on one leg. I like who I am when I’m gripping a decently heavy dumbbell and doing single-leg deadlifts. I lean my upper body forward as one leg supports the rest of me and form a T shape as I extend my other leg behind me. The moment my body trembles slightly as the curve of my butt and the lines of the muscles running down either side of my spine come into view. The moment I gain my balance as I get that tingling sensation in my gluteal muscles and hamstrings. I love my concentration in that moment. I know from experience that while I enjoy physical exercise and have a pretty strong pelvis, it’s endurance and speed strength that are the most advantageous for survival. When I look at men, I place a lot of importance on their buttocks, regularly thinking about how they’re sculpted, and when people step foot into the sports center, I’m quick to sense whether physical activity is a big part of their daily life or not. I was standing on one leg, the sweat running off me, when a couple of kids I had never seen before appeared by the foot of the indoor rock-climbing wall. From what I could hear, they seemed to be quizzing each other. “Do you know 50 plus 20?” “70!” “Then do you know 25 plus 25?” “Uh . . . 40?” “I don’t think so? Isn’t it 50?” “Come on, how can 25 plus 25 be 50?” I lost my balance. I approached the kids, trying to see whether they were up to anything that might warrant some quibbling, but they were properly wearing masks that fit snugly over their faces and covered their noses. The sports center didn’t offer any classes for children. Summer vacation hadn’t yet started, and today wasn’t the weekend either. “What brings you two here?” “It’s hot.” “Don’t you have school?” “We have the day off.” “Did you come by yourselves?” The kids pointed in the direction of the multi-purpose gymnasium. Only after walking over to the gym did I realize that the sports center had been converted into a heat wave shelter as of midnight the night before. The ping-pong tables had been cleared away and placed against the walls, and waterproof tinfoil mats as well as tents had been set up in rows throughout the room. As the heat wave advisory period stretched on, the city had seen a spike in electricity consumption and decided to implement rolling blackouts by district. They also issued an advisory to the residents of districts facing blackouts that day to take shelter in the designated locations. I observed the crowd of people standing near the fire extinguisher, each one holding a bag. From now on, I wouldn’t be able to use the showers or the locker room in peace. I thought about my house in the residential area down below. Mold spores had formed on the damp walls and were floating all around, but I hadn’t been able to ventilate for the last several days. Because the bugs that traveled in pairs had increased their numbers and started swarming the windows. Black clusters of them coated car windshields and building facades, flying away only to return again in droves. They found humid places to hatch hundreds of eggs each, and then they died. No one knew what they were, and no one had seen them before. The employees at the district office had lost their minds over the number of bug complaints that had been filed. I went down to my house and grabbed the go-bag I had first packed after the heavy rains a few years earlier. Then I returned to the sports center, sneaked into the stretching room, and claimed one of the yoga mats in the corner. About half an hour into sitting on that mat, I realized something. That no one gave a damn whether I was there to work out or volunteer or sit around like the residents taking shelter.Until the moment I set my go bag down on that yoga mat, I’d thought the sports center was the safest place around. * I began to sense a strange combination of energy and listlessness from the people sheltering in the sports center. They seemed both like they had come for the experience of camping out in an unusual place for the night and like they had shown up grudgingly after a long night of drinking as a group. People who hadn’t been able to see each other face to face during the two-plus years of the pandemic suddenly had to spend the night packed together in the same place. The person lying on the mat next to mine was a neighbor who had been the object of my wariness and fear as recently as the day before. We’d been told to take shelter, but it wasn’t as if our houses had collapsed before our eyes or as if a flood had swept through the neighborhood. A heat wave was such a silent disaster that people forgot they were evacuating and forgot that there were others who hadn’t been able to. All the indoor space to exercise was gone, so I ran the track around Mallisan in the mornings and the evenings. It was insanely humid in the mountains, and the sound of insect wings rubbing together stuck to my sweaty skin as I ran. A fleeting breeze sent the white flowers from the pagoda trees scattering onto the edge of the track. I stopped running and stood where I was, breathing in all the humidity at once, as if sniffing out the spirit of the mountain. Bones and tombstones are strewn all over Mallisan to the point that the trail through it was called Cemetery Road. Since I’d received the red beans and salt from the woman with the tattooed-on brows, I had never once forgotten that Mallisan was a burial ground. It couldn’t only be for ladies in waiting and eunuchs. No way were they the only ones buried there, right? Goosebumps sprang up on my skin at that thought, and to get rid of them, I ran down the track until I was out of breath, shouting aaaah. I ran, looked back, shouted Aaaah, ran some more, looked back again, and shouted Aaaah why did you die? Aaaaah how did you die? Aaaaaah do you have a lot of resentment? Aaaaaaah were you really a virgin? Aaaaaaaah can’t you look after me? When I made it back to the sports center turned shelter, I was drenched in sweat, surely not a sight for sore eyes. The drains in the shower room were clogged with hair and naked kids were shooting each other with water guns under the shower heads. I found myself strangely busy, standing by the water dispenser and telling people, “The drain tray is not the place to pour out your water,” standing by the hand towels in the bathroom and saying, “One towel per person is plenty,” and when I saw someone throw out their trash in the recycling bin, I went over and sorted out the garbage again, fuming the whole time. Right on the hour, I called the district office about those bugs. I’d just wanted to hide out quietly somewhere safer than my house, but at some point, even though all I was doing was standing near the stairwell, people started to approach me and ask me things. “What floor is the women’s changing room on?” “You have to go one more floor up.” “Can I call my ex and tell him I’m here at the shelter?” “I’m sorry?” “I wanted to call him when I got Covid, too, but I couldn’t. It should be okay to reach out to him now, right?” A member of the disaster preparedness team wearing a green vest asked me to come with him for a moment. I realized it was the old man who had spat in his hands before using the dumbbells. I couldn’t believe it. What was the disaster preparedness team anyway? Wasn’t it a local emergency response group organized around disaster prevention and safety? At the bare minimum, there needed to be some sensitivity to the current situation. Coating public-use dumbbells in your own spit in the spring of 2020 would have called for a public execution. “We’ve been watching you.” The old man I’d reported every day regarded me now with a serious expression. “You seem to have a real talent for it. Anyone twenty-three and older can join.” He held out an application form for the disaster preparedness team. I stared wordlessly at the pen he was also offering to me. I didn’t know how they’d been watching me, but honestly, I was an incredibly busy person. This month, I was teaching equations including the Gauss notation and quadratic equations involving two unknowns to three teenagers, and I had the written exam for becoming a licensed washing machine technician coming up. Not long before, I’d gotten my level-two certification as an organization and storage expert, and soon I would take on training to become a licensed auto mechanic and a certified rice cake manufacturer. Hours earlier, I’d also taken an interest in becoming a forest tour guide. I had to continue to build up my endurance and speed strength, and on top of being a woman of childbearing age incentivized by the powers that be to stay healthy, I needed to take care of my neighborhood friend. I stormed out to the lobby and called Sooseok-ssi. “Sooseok-ssi, when is the blackout? Which shelter will you go to?” Sooseok-ssi said he was just going to stay at home. “Come to the sports center,” I told him. “It’s safest here.” “I can’t.” “I’ll look out for you, okay?” Silence. “Sooseok-ssi.” More silence. “Sooseok-ssi?” As I was calling his name, a woman holding a baby approached me and asked for the location of the nursing room, and at that moment the fourth typhoon of the season was in the waters 250 kilometers southeast of Taipei and moving north at a speed of 30 kilometers per hour. At the same time, two bears had torn their way out of their cages and escaped a farm 6 kilometers away in the southwestern region of Mallisan. The baby in the woman’s arms looked at me and immediately began tearing up. Don’t cry, I thought. But the baby kept pouting, and again I thought, Please don’t cry, but shortly after, the baby leaned its head back and began to wail. It wouldn’t stop, sobbing as it raised its arm and pointed somewhere behind me. Everyone in the lobby turned to look in that direction. The sweltering heat had fallen over the empty parking lot. The heat, so overpowering that a parked car probably wouldn’t last five minutes in it, was baking the expanse of concrete. It was trapped and blazing in one place, as if all the stuffiness and fear of the June heat wave had been compressed into that square lot. People stared blankly through the glass at that unreal light as if they were blind. The baby was the only one crying. “Did you hear about the bears?” Residents of the lowlands came up the road through Mallisan Park carrying slightly bigger bags. A seasonal rain front was forecast to collide with the typhoon in a cloudburst. The volunteers with the disaster preparedness team had split up, some of them heading down into the village to help with installing cooling pads in a nearby livestock shed. Twenty thousand chickens had died that week alone. “I heard.” There was word that one of the two bears that escaped from the farm had been shot dead. The other was still loose, its whereabouts unknown. I went to a corner of the lobby to catch my breath. The fact that the bear was nowhere to be seen meant that it could be anywhere in the area. My back pressed against the wall, I kept reading the same parts of the alert text I’d gotten earlier.Refrain from entering Mallisan. If you encounter a bear, please report it immediately. * There was quite a stir once people learned that the missing bear was a moon bear that had been raised on a nearby farm. “Aren’t moon bears the ones that live in Jirisan?” Only after these two had escaped did most people learn that several bears had been living close by for nearly a decade. These weren’t the moon bears that were given names by the National Park Service and had surgeries performed on their fractures. Until they were ten years old, the age at which they could be butchered, these bears had been kept in confinement, living in an outdoor cage. According to the old man with the disaster preparedness team, who was caught up on the local goings-on, the standard price one might fetch for the gall bladder of a single bear was 10,000,000 won. As if to assuage their fears about the typhoon, the residents from the lowlands who had just settled into tents in the sports center focused for a while on talk of the bears. “I think the farmer might have made a false report.” “I think you’re right. There was a case where a farmer slaughtered a bear and filed a false report saying it had escaped.” “I don’t think so. I bet the bear went into the mountain.” At that, a brief hush fell over everyone. If the bear was on Mallisan, people were bound to be affected one way or another so long as they remained inside the sports center. But the CCTV cameras installed at the entrances to the walking trails hadn’t recorded any bears. Not a trace of one, no footprints or droppings, had been found, and all the food in the traps set up to catch the bear remained untouched. “Ajumma, where do you think the bear is?” I was sitting in the endurance zone when two kids came over and asked me this. Upon closer inspection, I realized they were the kids who’d been asking each other math problems earlier. “Why don’t you call me ‘teacher’ instead?” “What do you teach?” “I know what 10,000 times 10,000 equals.” “Really?” I picked up a weighted Hula Hoop and slowly began to spin it around. “Did you two hear?” “Hear what?” “That bears rip people apart. They’re not like Pororo’s friend Poby.” The kids didn’t breathe a word in reply. “Think about it. That bear is being chased right now. His friend that escaped with him was shot dead. And to make matters worse, he’s starving. Not only will he be extremely on edge right now, but his aggression is probably skyrocketing.” A woman who must have been their mother gave me a disapproving look and ushered the kids away. I kept the Hula Hoop spinning, a little more vigorously. Now that I couldn’t run along the mountain track because of this bear, my body was itching to move so badly I thought I would go mad. “You’re quite flexible.” A woman with short, bobbed hair had entered the endurance zone. She was wearing a beige linen dress with a square neckline and loose pintucks. It was exactly my style, to the point where I wanted to ask her where she’d bought it. “Want to try?” I lifted the Hula Hoop over my head and handed it to the woman. She readily accepted it and stepped inside. When she started to swivel her hips, her dress twirled in the same direction as the hoop, whirling around and around. I found that so funny, I gripped my knees and doubled over laughing. “I love this. The twirling that happens when you hula hoop in a dress. Just seeing it makes me happy. Seriously.”The woman laughed with me. I saw a woman with tattooed-on eyebrows watching us closely as she passed by. “Did you come here alone?” “I did.” “What number is your tent?” The woman gestured to the far end of the gym. “Where do you think the bear is?” The woman’s hula hooping came to a halt. “How about this? Try leaving Choco Pies by the entrance to the mountain tonight.” “Whoa. Do bears like Choco Pies?” “Hm. Maybe.” “Couldn’t a raccoon just eat them and leave?” Before we parted ways, the woman took me to the end of the mechanical room that led out to the trail around Mallisan.“I’ll show you something amazing.” There was a cement platform that sloped gently to the ground, and on top of the platform was a single footprint. Not a footprint from a sneaker that had stepped in the cement before it dried, but a bare footprint. The woman placed her own bare foot over the impression, the two an unmistakably perfect match. “That really is amazing.” She looked at me with a mischievous grin, then went back inside the gym. As soon as she was gone, I felt a sudden hollowness inside me and went down to the convenience store to actually buy some Choco Pies. Even as I paid for them, I couldn’t believe the bear could really be on Mallisan. It wasn’t fully sinking in, the fact that lives were on the line, that people were eating and sleeping in the multipurpose gym, that despite the blazing sun there was a typhoon on the way. * I don’t have anyone who would ask me something like this, but if someone were to ask me what I like, I’d want to say:Kind people. I like kind people. I have a habit of falling for people easily. Liking people is so important to me that I feel as if I’m sinking when I don’t have anyone I like. So if I can like someone, I will readily, undoubtedly fall for them.The nurse who held my hand and told me not to be nervous as I lay on the bed in the endoscopy room, I liked for that entire day. The guy who quickly grabbed hold of me and pulled me upright when the bus lurched to a sudden stop, I liked for a whole week. To this day I still like the rescue worker who came up to me when I was released from the rope, soaked in rain, tears, and urine, and wrapped a blanket around me. And now I think I’ve come to fall for the woman who hula hooped with me that strange, hot summer at one end of the emergency shelter. “Do you remember me?” It was still dark at that hour of dawn, but several people were already awake and sitting up. I approached the woman with tattooed-on eyebrows where she sat on her waterproof mat drumming on her legs and asked her if she remembered me. Now that I was sitting up close to her indoors, she looked older than I had guessed. After a brief pause, seemingly to determine whether I was talking about the red beans and salt or the ice towels, she said she remembered me from both. My chest grew heavy once again. When the water’s rising, you can’t have any lingering attachment to anything. In the summer you can’t cross the valley for fun. From where I sat on my mat, I scanned the gym. All the residents of the lowlands sheltering here must remember that summer a few years back. Even sitting around now like nothing is wrong, they must still have that fear of floods engraved in them. At least now that this was a pre-disaster evacuation and not a post-disaster one, everyone here must have had things hidden in their bags that they couldn’t give up even in an emergency. “The ice towel guy is still at home,” I told the woman, giving her Sooseok-ssi’s regards. “His dog is sick.” None of the emergency shelters allowed pets. Because of his dog’s poor vision and kidney problems, Sooseok-ssi felt he couldn’t just send his dog somewhere else and come to the shelter by himself.After I told her that, we sat there for a while, the woman studying me without a word. For some reason, I briefly thought she might want to hear about the woman in the linen dress, but oddly enough, since we’d parted ways outside the mechanical room, I hadn’t seen her again. “Back when those landslides hit Mallisan, all the bones were swept into a heap.” Some of the elderly folks who were up early had started talking about the floods from a few years back. That was around the time the sports center was preparing to move from its previous location to the current one. “Bones? Do you mean the bones of the ladies in waiting?” I cut in to ask, but one of the others waved their hands. “Why are you going so far?” “They tossed a ton of them onto the mountain. Women with no names, no homes. Women whose causes of death they tried to cover up.” “And it wasn’t suspicious because the mountain’s always been a burial ground.” Beyond the gym windows, the day was slowly dawning. Noting the time on the LED wall clock, 5:57, I leaned in to confess something to the elders gathered around on their mats. “Last night, I secretly . . .” “Uh-huh, you secretly . . .” “ . . . left Choco Pies at the entrance to the mountain.” For a moment, everyone was speechless. The wall clock struck 6:05, and we heard a sudden noise from outside. The sound of several people’s chatter muddled with that other sound, a deep hum like the wind roaring over a motor. Then the doors to the gym flung open and in burst some of the disaster preparedness team members, their faces flushed. “Starting now, everyone here is absolutely prohibited from going outside. You cannot use the outdoor physical fitness center. The parking lot is also off limits.” Everyone stopped in their tracks. I swallowed. The bear had appeared. “We’ve confirmed that the bear is on Mallisan. It came down close to the sports center.” The bugs infesting the area in pairs were running rampant on the mountain as well, and the city was hanging up huge flypaper traps between the trees like curtains to catch them. Apparently some tufts of moon bear fur had been discovered stuck to the traps alongside the insect carcasses. “Now that we’ve found traces of the bear, it’s only a matter of time until we capture it.” A drone equipped with a thermal camera had been launched into the skies over Mallisan. Hunters with the Wildlife Management Association had gone up the mountain with rifles. As the typhoon neared, the swaying of the trees on the mountain could be seen even with the naked eye. Only the park plaza, on which the morning sun was beating down, remained radiantly calm. I stared out blankly at the water playground where tiny puddles had formed. The woman in the linen dress and the little kids who were terrible at math were playing barefoot in the sprinklers, kicking at the water. Droplets flew up to their knees and disappeared, then flew up again. Suddenly it looked like the woman was waving to me. I wasn’t the only one staring out at them—the children’s mother shoved open the door and ran outside, shouting that they weren’t supposed to be there, that it was dangerous. Taking advantage of the commotion, I slipped quietly out of the gym. Wondering what color I might show up as on the drone’s thermal camera, I walked down the hallway, past the mechanical room and up to the entrance to the trail around the mountain. The three Choco Pies I’d placed on a disposable tinfoil plate had vanished. I picked up the plate, which reflected a round disc of light, and went back inside the gym. * I set the plate on a windowsill at one end of the gym and wandered around indoors looking for the woman in the linen dress. When I found her, I planned to show her the plate that either a bear or a raccoon had licked clean so that we could be amazed at something together yet again. But there was no sign of her at all. I was standing in front of the tinfoil plate like someone in prayer when the old man from the disaster preparedness team spotted me and came over to ask how things were going. The people who’d gone up the mountain making a fuss like they were sure to catch the bear soon still had nothing to report by the time noon came around. The mountain was disturbingly silent. The typhoon was due to hit soon, but only the wind and humidity had intensified and the sun was still blazing fiercely. We hadn’t heard so much as a peep about whether the storm had veered west or tapered off, so the people sheltering started to get fed up, feeling like they’d been taken hostage indefinitely. That was when it happened. First, the lights on the water dispenser flashed several times in warning. Soon after, the big ceiling fan in the gym began to slow down. The subtle but powerful vibration coming from the air conditioner died out and stopped at the same time the red numbers on the LED wall clock display went black. All of a sudden, everything inside the gym was uncannily quiet. In the hush that swept over them like an ambush, people stared at each other in confusion. But they soon realized it was a blackout. Outside, impossibly bright sunlight poured down and the trees still swayed in the gusting winds. It seemed as if only things inside the building had come to this sudden halt. People who had been inside their tents came crawling out one by one. Once the air conditioner went silent, even the soft sounds of other people rustling around came to grate on my ears. My breathing grew stifled, like something was plugging up my nose, and the humidity under my armpits began to build. People started to sweat, breathing each other’s stale air as they sat gathered in the huge auditorium. The number on the thermohygrometer was changing rapidly. Someone realized we needed to open the doors and went over to the entrance but stopped short. They remembered they couldn’t open the doors after all. There was still a bear that hadn’t been captured roaming around outside. Thinking the windows should be fine, several people went over and flung them open only for the bugs that had amassed on the face of the building to immediately rush in. As bugs the size of hornets paired up and flew inside, people began screaming and running around the gym. Once the windows were hastily shut again, people realized they were isolated in a building that was quickly turning into a steamer. The sports center, now experiencing a blackout and a lockdown, had become the most dangerous place around. A woman who seemed to be having a panic attack grabbed me and shouted in anguish. “We won’t be able to breathe. We need to get out of here!” I conjured up a rough map of the indoor areas of the sports center in my head and brought the woman to the area that felt the least enclosed. The body heat being emitted by the people around me was becoming painful. The temperature kept climbing. Some people stripped off their clothing and others told them off for doing so. Some people wept and others covered their ears. When someone coughed, others quietly backed away from them. Still mired in all the trauma they’d accrued during the worst of the pandemic, people searched for their masks again and put them on, swallowing their breaths. As if they believed all their problems could be solved with the bear being caught, the voices calling for its immediate capture grew louder and more impatient. But there were also people who hoped the bear wouldn’t be captured. As the sound of babies crying tore through their ears, some people pleaded for something they could use to block out the noise. At the same time there were others who offered to take the crying babies from their sweat-drenched parents and calm them down. Some people begged anyone who was coughing to please go out into the hallway, but there were also people who were quicker to offer them thermometers and first-aid medicine. As time went on, I became more aware of other people moving around. People who’d been scattered, not speaking a word to anyone else when the shelter was still comfortable, began looking to the people around them as the situation worsened. Several people gathered the ice they had scraped from the freezers in the convenience store and gave it to the elderly. They grabbed everything in the supply room that could be used to hold water and brought in cold water from the showers. When people learned that they had the same ailments, they shared anti-anxiety meds and first-aid tips. I and a few others found some people there who knew how to use the AEDs and put them on standby, then went around to all the tents and checked to see if anyone was laid out inside. We separated the people who had a cough but no fever into the stretching room. Then we went back to the gym and made our rounds again. I went around to all the tents. I kept going around and around until I was drenched in sweat from head to toe, and because of the sweat I couldn’t open my eyes at all, which meant I didn’t see the woman in the linen dress anywhere, and all these kind people looking out for each other kept grating on me, so I couldn’t stay there a second longer and stumbled out to the lobby entrance. I stood in front of the glass door, thinking about how badly I wanted to undo the latch that had a ‘Watch your hands’ label on it. Only then did the awareness that I was trapped in an enclosed space come flooding in all at once, and suddenly I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Now that I was completely sweat-soaked, now that this had become an emergency situation, I couldn’t help but experience it all over again—the sensations vividly engraved in my memory, the fear that the sound of the rushing water in the valley had instilled in me, the feeling of the rope I kept gripping and letting slip, another person’s struggle to quickly hoist me back up. Someone came up to me and asked if I was all right, and as I sat before the glass door gripping the handle, I answered that I wasn’t all right, I couldn’t breathe, I needed help. As I watched the person rush off to grab something, I realized that it was now, and no other time but now, that my endurance and speed strength should have been operating at their peak. Consciously evening out the pace of my breaths, I picked my body up off the ground. Once I was upright again, I looked outside. On the other side of the glass, standing in the beaming white sunlight, was the woman in the linen dress. As soon as I saw her, I shouted. Asked what the hell she was doing out there, told her to hurry back inside, it was dangerous to be out there right now. But I soon realized how meaningless these words were. The woman regarded me with a calm expression, then smiled her mischievous smile. “I don’t have all that much resentment,” she said. Maybe because the wind was blowing behind her, the woman looked as if she were standing in the one spot where time was passing by. She watched me for a while, then slowly held out her right arm to me. She kept her arm extended for so long that I couldn’t even tell how much time passed like that, her standing there, arm out, reaching for my neck. Soon enough, two of her fingers came to rest below the right side of my jaw, touching the carotid artery. She stood like that for a long time, fingers pressed against my vital spot, feeling for my pulse. Confirming that I was alive. At that moment I heard a gunshot ring out on the mountain. People folded up their mats. They returned all the things they had taken from the supply room. They put the trash in trash bags. They gave back the medications they had borrowed and rounded up all the towels they had used. They unzipped their bags and zipped them shut again. They sat on the edges of the gym stairs and stared blankly down at the landing. They lay with their backs on the floor. They opened their eyes and stared at the ceiling. The plate I had set on the windowsill in the gym that morning was still where I’d left it. It crinkled despite not being touched. Tinfoil plates were noisy by nature. Looking at the noisy plate made me want to bow to it. I wanted to bow so badly I couldn’t bear it. So I stood before the plate and bowed once, then twice. I got on my knees and leaned forward until my forehead touched the floor. Several people came over and bowed beside me. Someone filled a paper cup with water and set it beside the plate. Someone else placed a bunch of blackened bananas on the windowsill. Yet another person left behind a key ring shaped like a bird. There were My-Chew candies and hard-boiled eggs. Hairbands and hand lotion. When a group of people had finished bowing and stepped back, another group came over and got on their knees. By the time the sun set that day, everyone had left the building. Unable to leave right away, people stared at the emergency shelter where they’d been confined. The late afternoon sun was descending from the foot of Mallisan down to the park plaza and at last onto the residential area below. Standing there like that, people seemed like they were maybe looking at something. As though trying to check whether or not it was raining, someone held out the palm of their hand and said, “I think it’s snowing in June.” Hearing that, others reached out their hands one by one, as if to confirm that it was really snow. “These look like the flowers from the pagoda trees.” “Isn’t it fine dust?” “They’re soap bubbles.” As each person chimed in, they turned their head to look at something in the distance, like they were giving a group performance. Then they all held out their palms toward that place. * Around the end of the summer, I passed the written exam for my washing machine technician license. I’d had to walk past a hilly road on my way to study for the test, and whenever I was going by, I would always see a delivery truck coming down the road on the right. If I was passing by first, the delivery truck would slow down, and if the truck was passing first, I would pause. Later when I lay down to sleep, I would suddenly remember that and tears would come to my eyes. Because I knew the truck would stop when the driver saw me.These days I like the delivery truck driver. I didn’t end up joining the disaster preparedness team. Instead, I introduced the old man to Sooseok-ssi. Around the start of autumn, the old man said he had something to show me and played me a video. It was footage of Mallisan at the end of June captured on a surveillance camera meant to monitor for wildfires. There was a bear in the video. Wandering around the mountain. It was walking over the dirt when it stopped to sniff the air, then continued to roam around before pausing to nibble on some food, after which it pressed its nose to the ground a few times and then continued to saunter about, unhurried. Nothing out of the ordinary for a bear. I still go to the sports center every day. Alone, I spin the Hula Hoop and run the mountain track. There are some things I would be better off forgetting, but I still cherish certain memories. Things like a phone charger left on top of a waterproof mat or the impression someone’s head made on a pillow. And the rainbows on the water playground. And someone’s footprint that would fill with water when it rained. I think of all the colorful body temperatures of the Mallisan wildlife that would have been captured on the drone’s thermal camera.And of the moments of kindness I relied on. And of the things that saved me.All of them still remain there, in that place. Translated by Paige Aniyah Morris
by Choi Eunmi
Representation and Presentation
A Pile of Dirt by a Pile of DirtHe was breaking. He was swinging his massive fists, breaking the Neot before him. How long had he been doing this? He was breaking. Each time his fist made contact, thud, thud, the ground on which he stood seemed to quake. Come on, please. When the ground shook, he looked at his feet and looked up to appraise the right end of the Neot. Raise it up high. Hold tight. He did not see the end of the Neot. Don’t let the light go out, please. He took several backward steps. When it all disappears, you’ll still be. More of the Neot seemed to come into view. The asteroid is due. He took several further steps. More of the Neot came into view, but it did not grow more distant. This time, he appraised the left end of the Neot. What do dancing and kissing have in common? Perhaps the Neot was the edge of a city. As he could not see the end of the Neot, he pictured it bisecting a city. A Neot dividing one city from another. Dividing one city in two. One day, the Neot reached toward the border of a country. How exhausting it is to watch over time. A Neot dividing one country from another. Dividing one country in two. In truth, the Neot had no left or right, but in his imagination, each day the Neot was a border between something new. A Neot dividing one time from another. A Neot dividing one person from another. He was breaking. When I watch over time, I feel like time stares back at me. He swung again and drove his fist against the Neot. He considered cases and numbers, distance and necessity, and the Neot refused to crack. He was breaking. He raised his fist and threw all his weight behind the swing. Sappho once sang, But in pity hasten, come now if ever / From afar of old when my voice implored thee. He believed that each time his fist made contact, some inner part of the Neot would crack. From the outside, the Neot was unyielding. He glared silently at the unmoving Neot, breathed heavily, and swung again. From now on, this is a mango. He was breaking, although only he knew the purpose for which he first set out to break the Neot. The Neot’s size was incalculable and his fists soon began to miss their mark. He needed accuracy, he thought. Remember to wash the backs of your hands too. He took several steps back. To him, the Neot was a Neot, nothing more. He placed his hands on his hips. I mean sex, games, liquor. He glared silently at the Neot. If he could mark one point of focus, one point to strike consistently, he thought, it might be possible. Although only he knew what he wanted to be possible, no one knew what exactly would be possible. I’m talking about someone’s life. He wanted something to mark the Neot. It was impossible to remember the exact point of the many he had punched. Neglect seeps in soft and wet as a tongue. He could not be certain that the spot he just struck was the place he’d struck a moment later. I’ll wait for you. Any more of this, and his fists would break before the Neot. Silence was golden. Unconquerable. His fists would lose their function. He was solitary. He did not know how long his fists would last. It’s just like. Therefore, marking out a specific spot was also an act of self-preservation. Solitude was a hermit. If only I could take proper aim. He looked around, but found nothing at a cursory glance that might mark the Neot. Before him, the Neot stood in his way. Be silent on the matter of transcendence. Because he stood facing the Neot, the Neot stood immovably in his way. If the way ahead is blocked, just turn around. He turned with ease. The sound of lips parting from lips. And because he turned, in front of him now was a plain. There were no trees or grass, dogs or cats, birds or water. Only a plain. If I go to the end? Because he saw no end, for a moment he thought of the end and walked to the middle of the field—that is, he walked forward. It’s less romantic than it is destructive. His two feet make their way across the plain. The plain is all dirt, and the occasional gust of wind sends dust whirling up and forces him to shut his eyes. Who will it be today? Dotting the plain are massive stone statues and their shadows. That one looks like a mammoth. He thinks as he passes the first. If we cannot discern between deception and belief. We would choose to believe. Not long after passing the statue that resembles a mammoth, not far from the statue that resembles a mammoth, he spots another stone statue. Not a mammoth. Not a quinkana. Not a dorudon. He stops briefly, and gazes at the statue. Having noted on the mammoth-like statue a mammoth’s tusks, short hind legs, and hump above the head, he gazes on at the statue. That’s. I think. That’s. That thing. It. The gap between the lips. It reminds me of. The concept escapes him and frustrates him. Two and one. Bearing the other. More than two. Pigeons? Next to the black statue he sees another black statue. Emily. Sunja. Caudron. Alexander. Yao. Could they live? About fifty meters away, he sees a statue smaller than the statue he has just seen. Kuesi. Clouded angelshark. Kongthong. Melody. No. The truth is, when he first walked the plain, he saw uncountable numbers of statues at once. Something. Something. Similar. Similar. To the edge of the plain. From the rightmost edge to the leftmost edge. Though his right and left turned to left and right the moment he turned, both right and left and left and right were all plains. Pierce the hole. Pierce the sky. Slowly he walks fifty meters onward, during which time two strong gusts of wind ruffle his hair. A small statue. It resembles a Neot. Though clearly smaller than the two statues he examined before, it reminds him of a Neot. Let’s look at this small Neot. He remembers that he’d set out to find something with which he could mark the Neot. He stands tall in the center of the plain. Wherever he is, he cannot keep going like this. He is anxious. He looks at his dirt-encrusted feet. Not like this. The plain stands in his way. Without walking, he returns immediately to his original place, as in truth, he had not taken a single step. He had only considered the idea. What if? He had no idea what might have happened if he had actually walked that plain, and not just in his thoughts. But he was glad that he did not. If I can’t find something to mark it. Without hesitation, he turned. And because he turned, in front of him now was the Neot. Acknowledging that he could not mark the Neot in any way, he resolved to lock his gaze on the point he would strike. 1 rhythmic slip XI lonely yet laid-back $ reverberations that fill the gaps between extremes. It was not possible to mark the Neot with any number or symbol or letter. He considered the center of the Neot. I know you too. The heart of the Neot. With his mind, he went on picturing the center of the Neot. Everything has a center and outskirts. The center of the Neot. The center of the Neot. With his mind, he pictured the center of the Neot. One. Two. Three. He went on and on and on. The first sound was in a minor key. Again, he pictured the center of the Neot. Going so far. Then he pictured the center of the Neot again on top. I swear, it’s on the tip of my tongue but the word won’t come out. In one single spot, he went on picturing the center of the Neot. The center, again and again and again. Value and quotient. Faster than everything. And finally, he saw the center of the Neot. The center he had painted on the surface with his mind was finally real before him. His heart leapt, for he had brought forth the center of the Neot. He had discovered the center of the Neot. It had emerged before him. Having exposed the center of the Neot without assistance, he nearly succumbed to ecstasy. He heard nothing. Joyfully, he punched the air. He had clenched and swung that fist countless times, and yet it somehow felt as though he had never made a fist before. Both fists were clenched. He was now more confident than ever. He stared silently at his fists, then closed his eyes. He heard no voices. When he opened his eyes and looked at the Neot again, its center was still burned into his sight. It had not disappeared. Heat shimmered around his arms. He saw his fist strike the Neot squarely in the center. Thud. He saw the Neot. Thud. Again, he swung precisely at the center of the Neot. This time with more force. Thud. He got warmer, and the heat around him shimmered even more. Thud thud. He was getting faster, he thought. Thud thud thud. He did not think he was witnessing his own power, but felt tremendous satisfaction at the act of witnessing. The more he delighted in himself, the Neot seemed to break, just a little more at a time. Sweat ran down his brow, but he did not realize it. He was elated, seized by a sense of stilted accomplishment, and the heat around him warmed him further. He heard nothing. He did not watch his actions. He did not think about himself. Thud thud. Thud thud. He was nearly reduced to his fists and the Neot, and he was breaking. The ground quaked each time his fists made thud thud contact with the Neot. Each time the ground quaked he felt himself quake. But he simply trembled with each synchronized quake. Now he could punch precisely at the center of the Neot. Each swing found its mark at the center of the Neot. He punched the center of the Neot, then punched the center of the Neot again. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Faster. Thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud a gust of wind sent dust flying into his eyes, but even as he blinked he refused to tear his eyes away. His eyes were locked on the center of the Neot. Countless repetitions later, he swung once more, and the Neot cracked. The crack emerged across the hollow core and grew instantly. Because he had swung his fists endlessly at that particular point, the center of the Neot, he witnessed clearly the moment the crack spread across the Neot. In that second, the crack extended like a bolt of lightning. One handspan, a handspan and a half, three handspans, more than three handspans and a half. The crack went on to the underside of the center. He wished he could see that moment again, for it had been so quick he could not savor it. Disappointed, he silently looked at the crack. Then he took several steps back to look again. Even from this distance, the crack was clearly visible. He looked up to gauge the potential direction of the crack. He craned his neck all the way. He found himself shutting his eyes because of the sun. It was a new day. He had punched away at the Neot all night. In the middle of the unlit plain, he had watched the center of the Neot throughout the night. He had not seen night, dawn, and morning. But he was breaking. All that mattered to him was that he had a goal, actions to take, and that there would be an outcome. With eyes shut, he stood tall before the Neot. The undersides of his eyelids were dry. Tears ran down his face. He realized that he had scarcely blinked throughout the night. Eyes sufficiently moist, he slowly opened his eyes. Before him was the Neot. The Neot he had watched all night. The center of the Neot was nowhere to be seen. What he now saw was the clear line. A line that had not been there before. The line had no color. Then he was struck by an insurmountable urge to drink water and relieve himself. He wanted to shout. It was a historic moment. He had achieved success with his own two hands alone. Although only he knew how long it had been since he’d last felt this accomplishment, he could not hold back his cry. He swallowed. Saliva kept on pooling in his mouth. He looked at the line. Once drawn, the line would not disappear. He wanted to witness his own power again. To the Neot, to the world beyond the Neot, he shouted, as though there was anyone there to hear, to watch. I made this. I made this. I made this. He was breaking. The act of witnessing his own power drove him to work without rest. The sound of himself was everything now. He swung a little harder, a little faster. Dawn broke and darkness fell and dawn broke again, on and on. Dawn broke and split and shattered and the dirt was blanketed in snow, which blanketed the statues and melted away. Streams of water ran down the statues. Stains were left behind. The statues were bathed in a red glow, then in darkness then in sparkling light. Meanwhile. Which statues resembled which and which statues were eroded by sand and which statues disappeared forever, he did not know. He did not think of the values he had never considered. To him, what was not was not, nothing more. He went on swinging his fists at the Neot, and his body grew neither cold nor hot. The cracks spread in every direction. Each traveled further than he expected. Thud thud. Thud thud. Thud thud. Uncountable nights later, he saw a hole. As he had driven his fists into the same spot over and over again, he had pictured the Neot splitting apart. It refused. He no longer thought about the Neot. The Neot was the boundary between yesterday and today. The Neot was the boundary between fear and fear. The Neot was the call of temptation and temptation itself. Soon he would see beyond the Neot and soon he would travel beyond the Neot. Nothing would stop him. With such thoughts in mind he swung his fists at the Neot without rest, then swung his fists some more, at which point he finally saw the hole. The end of the Neot. It could be nothing other than a hole in the Neot. There was no beam of light or whistling breeze, but he knew it simply had to be a hole. Rain hammered at the statues on the plain. In that moment, he could feel it, the Neot had been fully penetrated. Though unlike the moment the first crack appeared in the Neot, he felt his fist break through. He remembered clearly the sensation of his fist being stopped by the Neot. His fist would fly into the Neot with no more or less than all his power, then stop against the even greater power of the Neot. Tens of thousands of repetitions had taught him thus. Emil Cioran once said, Nescience is older and more powerful than all the gods combined. The Neot seemed rigid. The Neot seemed unyielding. The Neot seemed immense. It’s not not any of those things. He nearly lost his balance and fell. Quickly, he pulled back his fist. He had dug a sizeable cavern into the Neot. Please. Just once. Please. The fact that the base of the cavern was still blocked by the Neot had filled him with renewed determination each time. Zzbbkkiibb. But now there was a clear hole at the end of the cavern. He peered into the hole, slightly larger than his two fists. People everywhere made love. And stories. The hole was perfectly blocked. He scrutinized the blockage for an age before deciding to touch it. Gingerly, he reached toward the hole. When the tears well up, we reflexively close our eyes. He guessed at the texture of the thing he was about to touch and had a realization. He was already inside the Neot. I dig and I dig. His hands had touched the Neot countless times. With his fingertips he felt the thing blocking the hole in the Neot and realized. That his fists had never felt. Change of usage. He pulled back his hand. Stared intently at the hole. A texture. To his eyes, it looked clearly like a textile of a certain texture. Thanks for all your hard work. The texture he sensed with the tips of his fingers. He stared down at his swollen red hands. Quit talking and get back to mopping the floor. At his calloused knuckles. The temperature of the thing he touched clung to his palm. He clenched his fists. The panting of a dog running into its master’s arms. That’s. I think. That’s. A thin woolen coat. That was what it felt like. The greater the mass, the greater the friction. A low-quality woolen coat. A black coat. Although only he knew if he possessed such a coat. The mass of ancient disregard. To his eyes, it was clearly a black coat. Though he had no idea why a black coat blocked the Neot, it was clearly a black coat. I can tell from just the laugh. And if someone was wearing that coat, the coat was someone’s back. There are all sorts of twists and knots here. If he swung at that coat, it would instantly turn, swing back at him, and faces would break and blood would flow and someone might die. Why won’t you think of the kids? He stared at the coat, the thing that might be someone’s back, the thing that blacked the hole he’d given all to make. Hello? Who’s there? He almost asked, but did not. Instead, he strained his ears. Instantly, all was silent. He was still on this side of the Neot, and he still did not know who was beyond. It was quiet. With the fists he’d swung, he gave the black coat a push. It refused to budge. He reached out with both arms, heaving all his strength into his palms. It refused to budge. He placed all his weight behind his palms and pushed. The black coat did not move or turn or make a sound. He heard nothing. Fuck. What the fuck. He shook out his arms, hopped two or three times on the spot, and spoke nonsense to himself to relieve the tension. What the fuck. Fuck. The curses tumbled from his lips. Fuck. He clenched his fists tight. Felt his body cool. His hands even felt cold. That the Neot was wearing the same kind of coat he might have owned did not make the Neot not a Neot. It’s almost like. He no longer needed to concern himself with such things. He sensed blood in his fists. He shut his eyes. And just like before, he swung at the Neot. He heard no words. He swung at the Neot. He swung at the Neot. Clouds of dust rose into the air. He held his breath and swung. He heard nothing. He swung. The moment his fist went through without bouncing back, he opened his eyes. He strained to pull back his fist. It was stuck and refused to budge. This time, he put all his weight into the pull. The Neot’s hold on his fist was so strong that his shoulder nearly popped. He placed his soles against the Neot and lay back. He was afraid. Cold sweat ran down his body. Fuck. He screamed. He heard nothing but his own voice. He took the center of his gravity entirely off the ground. In that instant, his fist came dislodged, and he fell. His whole body ached as he lay there. He panted loudly. Looked at his dislodged fist. Though it was unharmed, he was furious. He wanted to howl. The Neot is a Neot. The Neot is a Neot. The Neot is a Neot. Inside the cavernous Neot was silence. He rose. Glared at the Neot. Before him now was a hole as big as he. He wound back and swung again, this time avoiding the point where he’d driven his fists before. Because he swung more softly than before, it slipped free easily. He whipped his fists in and out. He swung. Swung at the Neot beyond the Neot blocking his way. The Neot that had swallowed his fist again and again soon became pulp. Penetrated. So natural and quick was the process that it seemed almost like a fleeting future glimpsed long ago. In an instant, he made it through the Neot. Beheld the pulp that remained. His heart seemed to hold its breath. He clenched his fists. He heard nothing. Fuck it, what the hell. This was the end, he thought. He threw his entire weight behind one final punch at the air, driving his fist faster than it had ever flown. In that moment, he nearly fell forward. It was because he’d lunged without an iota of fear of the Neot. Therefore he nearly lost his balance. His fist hit nothing. The black coat. There was no black coat. He had reflexively shut his eyes a moment before contact and therefore had not seen when it disappeared. The beginning and end of the work. A certain singular determination, imagination, and thought. The puncture was effortless. Nothing stopped him or made demands. The thing before him. What the. He turned to face the hole through which he entered. He spat in the hole. He swung another fist at the hole. He was empty. He took a step. Passed through the hole in the Neot as though crossing a line in the dirt. The second he made it through, he whirled around. Again swung his fist. The hole was definitely there. Again, he passed through the hole. The second he made it through, he turned again. He had to see the Neot. The cavern he made, before he left through the gap. Beyond the Neot he had crossed. When he turned, he still faced the Neot and the darkness that seemed to be the hole. He was exhausted. Heard nothing. Mm. He intoned. The sound disappeared without returning to him. He took several steps back. Mm. It was silent. He thought he could see more of the Neot now. Mm. Because he stood facing the Neot, the Neot was before him. There must be a center and outskirts. He thought back yet again. The hole he made. The center of the Neot. In an instant, he crossed the darkness. With the hole in the Neot behind him, he walked forward. Quickly escaped the cavern. A dusty wind came blowing. He held his breath. On the top of his head, his shoulders, the tops of his feet, Neot. Neot. Neot. Neot. The sensation of swinging his fists tugged at his arms. Thud thud. Thud thud. He thought he could hear something. Thud, thud, thud, thud. Maybe it wasn’t a hallucination. In the darkness would be the statues. The rain had long since ceased. In the darkness, he recognized a familiar statue. Lhotse. Makalu. Manaslu. It’s a. White. Black. Of the soul. He absolutely knew of something resembling it, and that was Thuja. Forsythia. Hornbeam. Destruction. Perhaps he mixed up the statue for something else because of the darkness. More different things. Sexual. Romance. Sexual. A short distance away were slightly smaller statues. Evens and odds. A row of identically-sized statues. This is. Actively. Disintegrated. Oblivion. In the end, he could not recall its name. All he could repeat was that it resembled something. He went on. Circling around Determined, perversion, ancient, fantasy, something resembling it. Something. Something. That doesn’t exist. A more familiar statue further ahead. There was a statue that reminded him of a Neot. But now it looked nothing like a Neot, he thought. It was much too long ago. Something that was not. No such thing existed. He had succeeded in breaking the Neot, and the Neot clearly had a hole through it. When he thought of the hole in the Neot, he swelled with accomplishment and his vision seemed to clear. He wanted to see it once more. The hole in the Neot, as big as he was. The power. The drive. Without walking, he returns immediately to the Neot, as in truth, he has not taken a single step. The return journey is omitted. Without staring further at the darkness beyond the Neot, he whirls around. In an instant, the statues on the plain, the statues dotting the darkness, disappear. But before he can complete his turn, A strike. He falls. He is lying flat. Stopping him is nothing. Was not nothing. Was not nothing. Was not nothing. As though still lost among the statues, he thinks yet again in repetition. Of forgotten. Forgotten things. The smell of burning mackerel. All he knows is that it has been piercing the same point for a very long time. Perfect accuracy. Unerring aim. Vaguely, he thinks. You. His arms remember his fists. Remembers him, who was almost entirely his own fists. The push. The bend. The plain. Statues, endlessly littering the darkness. One black statue next to another. One big statue next to an even bigger statue. Statues dotting the plain. Black statues and black statues. Dark statues and even darker statues, endlessly on a ground swept by gusts of dirt. One after another. The wind ruffles his hair. His eyes are shut. He hears nothing. He can no longer escape into reality. Although only he knew what exactly he had wanted. Despair will not break. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud thud thud thud. It may not be a hallucination after all. He does not think. Translated by Slin Jung
by Yun Haeseo
Anatomical Part
Eunha’s onni sat on the edge of Eunha’s bed. She wiped Eunha’s face with a warm, wet towel. She asked if she’d had a good dream. Eunha reached out to the bedside table. She groped around the top. “Where is it?” “In the drawer,” her onni replied, wiping the corners of Eunha’s mouth clean. Eunha opened the bedside table drawer. She took out the glass bottle. She put the bottle on her chest and looked at it. “It’s scary,” Onni said as she wiped Eunha’s hands. Eunha liked all things that her onni found scary. The opposite was also true. Her onni was afraid of all things Eunha liked. Horror movies. Taking the dark alley home at night. Staring at the endless depths of the ocean while snorkeling. Bungee jumping. When the two of them were together, no one guessed that they were sisters. It took a careful look to see their common attributes. Like thick earlobes and large kneecaps, wide feet and fingernails. They only shared features that went unnoticed. Eunha was exceptionally tall while her onni was exceptionally short. Her onni had unusually large eyes while Eunha’s were unusually small. Eunha liked to wear t-shirts with skulls or motorcycle jackets with studs, while Onni liked chiffon blouses and pastel-colored trench coats. They wondered themselves how two sisters could be so different. Any time the subject came up, Onni would explain how firstborn children are socialized to be dependent while the youngest grow up more free-spirited. Eunha would nod in agreement, thinking to herself that her onni’s theory made as much sense as the blood type and personality correlations that people spouted over drinks. When Eunha proposed that they hop on a scooter and fly down to Ban Kum Waterfall, her onni said it sounded scary. Eunha liked to scare her scared onni even more. She yelled—Boo!—in the middle of a horror movie, suddenly disappeared and ducked behind a car on their walk home after dark, made the signal for shark while snorkeling, warned her about the dangers of bungee jumping while bungee jumping. Onni, scared, couldn’t laugh again until she reached the next level of fear. Eunha hit the gas and Onni wrapped her arms tight around Eunha. She laughed and pulled the throttle harder, and she hugged her tighter. The tire lost traction on the road. The scooter skidded as it fell over. Warmth spread over the top of Eunha’s foot. Onni flew into the shrubbery by the road. “What do you mean it’s scary?” Onni applied the rest of the lotion on the back of Eunha’s hand without an answer. Eunha turned her eyes back to the glass bottle. Eunha was due for a dressing change in the morning. Eunha got out of the bed and sat in the wheelchair. In front of the treatment room, her onni gave the wheelchair over to the nurse. Eunha reached out and tugged at Onni’s arm. “I’m scared,” Eunha and Onni said at the same time. Onni freed herself from Eunha’s grasp. The top of the foot was unveiled as the gauze came off one layer at a time. The toes emerged. The thumb toe was the only one intact. The second toe was cut off at the joint, the skin pulled over, and sewn up. The third toe was gone. Stitches lay like a centipede where the base of the toe would have been. The fourth and pinky toes were rotated, toenails now facing in toward the thumb toe. Each had a pin sticking out the top like a cherry stem. The stitches were as dark as a swarm of ants on an apricot pit. “Does it hurt?” the nurse asked. Her onni stood by the door as Eunha was wheeled out of the treatment room. Her eyes were bloodshot. They were puffy like Eunha’s eyes. * The early mornings began with the sound of scooters. Eunji looked outside. A few scooters were racing down the eight-lane road. This was the sound she had to live with from this time of day to the late hours of night. Wheels turning like the blades of a blender, the scooters raced down the street, ready to mow down everything in their way. Thousands of blender blades would zip along today as well. Her dongsaeng was asleep under the white, fluffy covers. She could hear her even breathing and the howls of the scooters at the same time. Eunji left the hospital room. She waited for the hospital administration office to open. The blinds went up at the window and the office door opened. The documents she needed for the insurance claim weren’t ready yet. Kanchana said firmly that the documents would be ready before Eunha was discharged. Eunji pleaded with her again to hurry. She could not have anything else go wrong. Kanchana was obviously vexed by Eunji’s visits. Eunha wasn’t able to eat dinner the night before. She said she couldn’t swallow a thing. The doctor said that she had to eat well for the bones to reattach. The cart arrived in time for breakfast, and Eunji pulled out the tray table on the bed. The kitchen worker wearing a cap passed her a meal tray. Watching the food get cold, Eunji woke up her dongsaeng. Eunha took the glass bottle out of the drawer and put it on the tray table. Looking at the glass bottle, she picked up her fork. She pushed around the macaroni in the hot peach yogurt, and licked the bit of yogurt off the fork. She said the peach yogurt tasted like cilantro. Eunji took her dongsaeng to the treatment room and went by the hospital administration office again. She bought a Wi-Fi pass, followed up on the documents she needed for insurance, and asked if there was a supermarket near the hospital. Kanchana retrieved a map from a drawer and circled a spot with a red pen. She wrote “TESCO” under the circle. With the map in her pocket, Eunji waited outside the treatment room. Through the open door came the cries of dozens of people. Dozens of nurses asked in response, “Does it hurt?” When the scooter was lifted off her dongsaeng’s foot, one of her toes was split at the end and had turned into red pulp. The other toes had been mashed. The bone was sticking out of one, and another was dangling by a tendon. Eunji took her dongsaeng back to her hospital room, crossed the lobby, and headed out of the hospital. She stood before the eight-lane road. Hundreds of scooters were flying by like arrows. Eunji took out the map and placed her finger on the circle. Far in the distance stood a huge building bearing the sign, TESCO. The pedestrian light came on. Like a kindergartener, she raised a hand to signal she was crossing and limped across the road. Among the burn and amputation patients, she couldn’t ask someone to have a look at her knee. She didn’t get a chance to tell anyone that she’d hurt her knee, either. The light turned red. Eunji stood on the midline and waited for the light to turn green again. Scooters honked at her as they passed by. Blender blades charged at her. Scooters flew past the front and back of her. Her shirt flapped against her. The scooters weaved acrobatically ahead to pass one another. They were all charging ahead wearing flipflops like the ones her dongsaeng had been wearing. ‘Sickening.’ She pictured all of them falling over and all of their feet being ground up like her dongsaeng’s. Eunji shut her eyes tight and opened them again. Restaurants were lined up in a row at the food court. The Italian restaurant smelled like tom yum goong. The Chinese restaurant smelled like tom yum goong. All the dishes in all the restaurants bore a whiff of tom yum goong. Eunji found a Japanese restaurant that did not smell like tom yum goong, but it was an udon place for vegetarians. Her dongsaeng needed to eat meat. She needed protein to recover. The udon restaurant owner said that there was a sushi place in another building nearby. Eunji thought sushi might work. The sushi chef opened the refrigerator. He got out a large bundle wrapped in cloth. The cloth was pulled back one layer at a time to reveal a chunk of flesh. He placed it on the cutting board. The sharp blade cut smoothly into the soft flesh. Lining up the pieces of flesh on the cutting board, the chef said with a broad smile that he specially cut them into thick slices. When she returned to the hospital room with a shopping bag, Eunha was hunched over, staring into the glass bottle. Eunji asked her to put it away at least for meals, but she did not respond. She produced the sushi from the shopping bag. Eunha put a piece in her mouth and chewed. She kept chewing and didn’t swallow. She ate two pieces and said she couldn’t eat anymore. Eunji peeled the fish off the rice. She encouraged her to at least eat the balls of rice. Dongsaeng ate a few of them saying she could smell the raw fish on them. Eunji called the insurance agency. They said that the policy might not cover scooter accidents. She called the airline. She confirmed her standby tickets had been booked, and requested wheelchair service. She called a clinic in Korea specializing in reattaching digits. She begged for them to move up the appointment date. She called the credit card company and asked if she could have her credit line increased. She received a message that her cell phone roaming charge had exceeded one million won. * It felt as though someone was pulling out Eunha’s toenail and turning it over. Eunji was asleep on the sofa. Eunha picked up the bottled water and painkillers. She swallowed four tablets of Tylenol. She had to take Tylenol every three hours. That was thirty-two tablets per day. The nurse flat out denied that there was any such thing as a morphine drip in Thailand. Two cups of water with three tablets of Tylenol was pretty filling. Her fever went up and down and she felt sick to her stomach all day long. When she tried to sit up, all the blood in her body shot toward her foot. She lay flat on her back and drew her knees up. She craned her neck and looked through the space between her knees down at her foot. The foot was bandaged, but she could feel the wet alcohol-soaked cotton balls between her toes. It felt as if dozens of tiny needles were being driven under her nonexistent toenail and suddenly ripping it out. Eunha held her breath. The pain was palpable, but the toe was gone. Eunha reached over and groped around for the bottle. Her onni had put it away in the drawer again. She never touched the bottle directly without wrapping it with a towel or tissue paper first. Like someone afraid of making direct contact with a bug as they try to pick it up, she held the bottle by the tips of her fingers and put it away in the drawer. Eunha wrapped both hands around the bottle. She stared hard at it. The bottle contained something ambiguous. It was not as important as a finger or as unimportant as a hair. The pain came like a door bursting open and disappeared like a door slamming shut. The memories of that moment worked in the same way. Each time the phantom pain came over her, she had to look at the bottle to convince herself that the toe was no longer there. When Eunha woke up, she was laying in the dark recovery room waiting for the door to open. The door opened, white light poured in, and a nurse came over to her. She put something in Eunha’s hand. It was a glass bottle with Eunha’s toe floating in it. Her onni came in. She had long blades of grass in her hair. “They cut it off.” She held up the bottle for her onni to see. Her white T-shirt stained with mud, grass, and drops of blood read I LOVE THAILAND. “Why are you giving this back?” Eunji asked the Thai nurse. The nurse, who was pushing the bed, stopped to gather her hands together in prayer and said, “Because it is part of your body that god gave you. Here, we give removed body parts back to the patient.” The physical therapists picked out a pair of crutches. Eunha tucked the crutches under her armpits and tried walking one step at a time. The armpits quickly ached when she put her weight on them, and her wrists hurt when she pressed on the grips. The physical therapist explained that not letting the muscles turn stiff was just as important as the bones reattaching. She warned that Eunha might end up with a limp if her muscles hardened. * Eunji bought rolls of bandages at the drugstore. She wrapped the bandages around the grips of the crutches. Eunha said that her hands still hurt. Eunji took out sanitary pads from her backpack. She wrapped one on each of the grips and armpit rests on the crutches and bandaged them up again. Eunha clapped. She laughed to think what they would say if airport security asked what they were hiding in the crutches. This was the first Eunji and her dongsaeng chuckled together in a long time. Eunji took her dongsaeng to sit out in the hallway while the cleaning staff cleaned the room. Eunha practiced walking on her crutches. She said that her phantom pain occurred less frequently now. The cleaning staff came to the door holding up a bar of soap and asked if they wanted to toss it. Eunji and her dongsaeng shook their heads at the same time. The cleaning staff held up a broken hair tie and asked if they wanted to toss it. Eunji and her dongsaeng nodded at the same time. They shook and nodded their heads at the same time. The cleaning staff returned with the glass bottle. Eunji nodded. Dongsaeng shook her head. Temperatures hovered above 30 degrees centigrade outside. The toe in the bottle expanded. The details became clearer as if seen through a magnifying glass. Little bits of skin came off the surface of the amputated toe and floated in the bottle. * As Eunji said, she couldn’t bring it home with her and display it like a souvenir. Still, she couldn’t throw it in the trash as she would a snapped hair tie. Eunha held the bottle up in her sister’s face. Eunji turned away. Eunha glared at her. Her onni glared back. Her eyes turned red around the edges. On the television, a close-up drone camera shot of a beach filled the screen. Yellow parasols stood in a row on the sandy beach and colorful canoes floated in the water. The shot continued as the drone flew over the canopies of palm trees and dove deep into the jungle. A praying mantis snatched up a katydid eating a snail. The praying mantis held the katydid with its front legs and tore into the katydid tail first. Its abdomen gone and half its thorax ripped out, the katydid continued to eat the snail with unwavering focus. More developed organisms have more delicate senses, and mental faculties based in cognition and intuition are crucial, said the voiceover. The katydid’s lack of sensitivity was characteristic of an inferior organism, the voiceover added. The katydid reminded Eunha of her onni; she only focused on the facts in front of her. The whole time as they watched the documentary, followed by a tourist attraction advertisement, and then a TV drama, Eunha and her onni kept their distance like boxers circling each other in a ring. * Each time Eunha left the hospital room to see the doctor, she grabbed the glass bottle along with the crutches. Everywhere she went, she wanted to get up off the wheelchair and practice walking, and she wanted to look at the toe. The sizzling asphalt was cooling. Eunji got off the bench. She walked along the line between the road and the adjacent field. A pack of stray dogs roamed the field. Their backbones were poking out under the skin and their tongues hung out of their mouths. They saw Eunji and barked at her. She kept her head down and walked on, one foot on the field and the other on the road. She looked back each time she heard a scooter coming up. ‘It’s scary.’ There were scary things that needed to be done and scary things that needed to be avoided. Her dongsaeng could not tell the difference between the two. Eunji thought her dongsaeng was like the katydid: blinded by the impulse of the moment, she could not think of the possible consequences. This scared Eunji. She was scared of her dongsaeng’s inability to sympathize with others’ fears. Eunji shook her head and clenched her fists. When she thought of that day, she was reminded of the bottle, and the sight of the bottle brought back images from that day. Eunji went into a shoe store. She looked back and forth between a pair of pastel canvas shoes and vintage washed canvas shoes. She chose a bright white pair of canvas shoes. * The bottle left a ring of water on the table. The fluid was starting to leak. Eunha carried the bottle into the bathroom in the palm of her hand. She opened the top. The skin of the toe was in tatters, bloodless and dark. Veins spilled out of the severed section like noodles from a spring roll. Eunha moved the toe into a cup they had used for rinsing after brushing teeth. She filled the cup at the tap. The toe swam in the swirl of water. Eunha was glad to see her toe move, if only in the water. * Eunji filled the tub. She stirred in shower gel to make a bubble bath. She brought a chair into the bathroom and sat her dongsaeng in it. She slowly helped Dongsaeng lower herself into the tub and lie back. She washed her hair and wiped her down all over. Streaks of grime flowed down her body. She squeezed toothpaste onto a toothbrush and put it in her dongsaeng’s hand. She turned the tap and picked up the rinsing cup. Eunji screamed and threw the cup. The cup fell on the bathroom floor. The toe rolled away. Eunha reached out from the tub and strained to reach the toe. Eunji dried off her dongsaeng and dried her hair with a dryer. Eunha sat in willful silence. Eunji took out the canvas shoes and put one on the uninjured foot. She got two bottles of yogurt drinks from the refrigerator, put one in front of Eunha, and drank the other. Dongsaeng poured her yogurt drink down the drain. She rinsed the bottle with water. She put the toe in the bottle. She stretched a plastic bag taut over the rim and sealed it with a rubber band. The yogurt bottle read SWEET PU! PU! Under the writing was a cartoon red panda in relief drinking yogurt. Behind the winking red panda, the toe floated. Eunji turned on her cell phone and pulled up the calculator. She calculated the cost of the hospital bill to date, the plane ticket, and the physical therapy her dongsaeng would need over and over. She had already made up her mind to sell the car when she returned to Korea. She would have to take the bus and transfer twice on the subway to get to work by public transportation. She would have to get up an hour early and go to bed an hour late. She would not be able to drive anyway. The image of her flying into the shrubbery at the side of the road would replay every time she hit the gas. Eunji wanted to protect her dongsaeng, and Dongsaeng wanted to protect the bottle. * Eunha watched as her onni made a list of things to throw away. She took inventory of the contents of the backpack and checked each item. She put the throw pile at the foot of the sofa and lined up the things she would pack in front of the backpack. In order to carry the backpack and push the wheelchair, she needed to consolidate their things down to one bag. Looking at the objects lined up by the backpack, Eunha wondered if she should add the bottle to the ranks. The passports were placed right by the bag. Next to them were a pair of underwear and socks folded neatly in a zipper bag. The chargers were tied together with a rubber band. The “Emergencies” chapter of the Thai conversation book was cut out and held together with a paper clip. “What are you going to do with that?” Eunji asked, pointing at the bottle. Eunha squeezed it tight in her hand. “It’s my body.” “No, it’s an anatomical part.” “Does this look like a piece of flesh to you? Like sashimi?” “Does it not look like a piece of flesh to you?” Eunji squatted and returned to packing. She wasn’t willing at the moment to accept that some things could not be thought of in terms of utility. “Can’t you think of it as a souvenir?” Eunji was about to put a bundle of Tylenol boxes in the bag when she stopped and looked over at Eunha. “You’re taking it home as a trophy.” Eunha thought of a bull with spears stuck in its body like a sea urchin. The bull fighter would unsheath a long blade and drive it in one breath right between the bull’s eyes. When the bull fell, the bull fighter would cut off its ears and tail. They were his trophy. Eunha thought of the people in black-and-white photographs posing proudly with the heads of enemies they’d decapitated with scythes. The thought of the horrifying severed heads and the even more horrifying joy in the smiles. Eunha shook her head. “I’m taking it with me.” “And then what are you going to do with it?” Eunha didn’t know what to do with it. Or what to do with herself without a toe. “I’m taking it with me.” * Kanchana said she would give her the documents after the bill was settled. Eunji passed her credit card to her. The credit card was maxed out and declined. She gave her another card. This too was maxed out and declined. Eunji called the credit card company. She raised the limit as high as it would go. The concern in Kanchana’s eyes finally dissolved into a smile. She put the hospitalization record and documents for the insurance company in a clear folder and passed it to Eunji. Eunji smiled as well. Kanchana gathered her hands together and bowed at Eunji. Eunji did the same. “Khop khun kha.” This was the phrase Eunji said the most during her time at the hospital. Eunji returned to Eunha’s hospital room. She put her backpack on. She pushed her dongsaeng’s wheelchair. Eunha had just been wheeled out into the hallway when she looked back. Eunji fetched the crutches leaning by the bed and passed them to her dongsaeng, who hugged them with both hands. Kanchana and the nurses were waiting in the lobby to see them off. Residential areas fell away as the taxi got up onto an overpass and an open road appeared before them. Billboards bearing resort ads appeared from time to time as they passed through the outskirts of the city. Eunha felt around in her pockets. “I forgot my toe.” Dongsaeng insisted they go back for it. Eunji checked the time. They would miss their flight if they went back. If they missed their flight, they would miss the appointment at the digit reattachment specialist and the podiatry clinic at the university hospital. They would have to get another appointment and buy new plane tickets. If there were no seats available, they might not be able to return for a few weeks. * “One point fourteen million won for the plane tickets, 470,000 won a day for the hospital room, food, and treatment. That is the cost of going back for your toe.” Eunha watched as the number on the cab meter climbed fast. “And it’s not just 1.61 million. 1.14 million for the plane ticket you wasted. Another 1.14 million for the new tickets. If there are no seats, we’ll have to stay for at least three days. International roaming fees for booking a flight and a spot at the hospital will be 200,000 at the very least. Ten thousand a day for udon and snacks.” The numbers that Onni listed implored on her behalf. “Five thousand per day for Wi-Fi. Forty thousand for roundtrip cab fare. A total of 3,975,000 won. It’s 485,000 won for every extra day we are here. Do you have 4 million won? Is that toe worth 4 million to you?” Eunha thought about how her onni said many times over that she was scared. Fear was a sort of desire, too. The desire to avoid damage costs. She thought of the toe that her onni was so afraid of. For the first time, she guessed at the price of that bottle. How much value could be assigned to a body part that one could not use? She thought about the price of the second toe that was half gone and the thumb toe that was fully attached. If it was Eunji’s toe in the bottle, would Eunji have gone back for it? She would have left it. If it was Eunha’s heart in the bottle, would Eunji have gone back for it? Probably yes. If it was Eunji’s heart in the bottle, would Eunha have gone back for it? Four million won was a huge sum that would take Eunha three months of working eight hours a day to earn. It was more money than Eunha ever had at one time. Even so, she would not have given up her onni’s heart for it. What if it was Eunji’s toe in the bottle? Eunha couldn’t say. How was a heart different from a toe? When they returned to Korea, Eunji would get pedicures once in a while on her pretty, intact toes and toenails. Once a month, she would pay 40,000 won to get her feet done. The cost of Eunha getting her toe back was tantamount to her onni getting her feet done for the next eight years and change. Each of their pleas was a desire to protect what was theirs. A plea was a desire of sorts. Each of their pleas would only resonate within themselves. Eunha became scared of the pleas. No. She was scared of the plea trapped in the bottle. The isolation of a plea was the scariest of all. * In the end, Eunji had the cab driver turn back. The hospital room had been cleaned out already. Eunji went to the cleaning staff. She was directed to a large bag containing all the trash from the countless hospital rooms. Eunji went through the trash. Among the bandages stained with blood and pus, used toilet paper, and a disposable plate with food still clinging to it, Eunji found the bottle. Eunji and her dongsaeng stayed near the hospital for another four days. Eunji did not put the bottle away in a drawer. Dongsaeng ate dutifully. Upon arriving at Incheon Airport, Eunji took out the hooded jacket from the bag and helped her dongsaeng put it on. She placed the bag through the baggage scanner. “Please open your bag.” The security check agent ordered her to take out the bottle. Pointing at the bandaged foot and then the bottle wrapped in a towel, Eunha said, “It’s my toe.” “May I see the embalming documentation, please?” Eunha said that it was not embalmed. The security screening agent informed them that it was a violation of quarantine law to enter the country with an anatomical part that was not embalmed. Eunji asked what she had to do to get her bottle back. “It will be registered as an infectious biohazard waste and incinerated by a specialized waste disposal company.” The agent handed her a waiver form. Translated by Jamie Chang
by Lim Solah
Low Resolution
pixelWinter was fading away. Following nature’s
course. Little by little, winter was fading away. Little by little, the days grew longer,
allowing me to witness the sunset from start to finish on my way back from
work. The scenery outside the subway window shifted rapidly before fading away.
It faded away, but I, watching it fade away, did not. Far out into the
distance. My gaze remained locked, the sun now about to fade away from my
locked gaze. Following nature’s course. The sun slowly faded away.
by Seo Ije
September Is a Prayer for the Estranged
It’s September. You haven’t forgotten our promise. . . have you?
by Kim Byungwoon
Circle of Light
Sumin heard from Jeong-woo while she was reading a concert program that began: “Enrique Granados disliked traveling.” She’d seen a banner ad for the solo piano recital on a reservations site and bought a ticket on impulse. The pianist performed seven pieces by Granados, playing for over seventy minutes without an intermission. He received long, loud waves of applause, but he did not grant the audience’s request for an encore even though he came back to the stage three or four times. He placed his right hand on his heart, maybe to ask them to understand that another song could spoil the lingering feeling. Sumin came out of the auditorium and was walking around the foyer when, belatedly, she purchased the program. She put it in her bag and forgot about it until the bright orange color suddenly came to mind a few days later, and she perused it carefully.The Spanish composer Enrique Granados disliked travel, only leaving his home country twice. At age twenty, he went to Paris to study, but he contracted typhoid fever and the trip ended in disappointment. He took his second and final trip in the spring of his forty-ninth year, when he went to the US for the premiere performance of an opera. It was during WWI, and the ocean liner that he and his wife took for their return voyage was attacked by a German U-boat. The ship cracked apart. Granados had the good luck to be rescued, but when he saw his wife struggling, he dived into the water to save her, and they both ended up drowning. The write-up went on to add that Granados was especially scared of boats. Working as an editor for the last six years, Sumin had the habit of searching for the crucial point of any kind of texts. In this case, she struggled whether to locate it in the tragedy sensed beforehand, or in love overcoming the fear of death. Ultimately, for her, the main point was that she’d only found out the context for the story after the concert had finished. She’d attended the recital without knowing anything beforehand, not even that the suite Goyescas meant “in the style of Goya,” having been inspired by Goya’s paintings. Sumin frequently learned things after the fact; this had also been true when she studied in France.
by Kim Eugene
The Phantom Schoolgirl Army
The married couple next door invited me over for dinner last month. I had only ever exchanged silent greetings with my eyes, when one day we started talking; I was unable to refuse their sudden invitation. This was my first time exchanging names with anyone since moving down to Suncheon. Her name was Bo-kyeong Bu, and his was Mok-won Park. Both beautiful names. They had skipped the wedding, and said they had no plans for children. Like an idiot, I said they’d be even happier with kids—something I didn’t even believe. I wondered if an idiotic comment like this was the consequence of getting older or just a product of awkward interactions between strangers. I’d lived close to twenty years with a man myself; I didn’t have children, and I used to believe that I didn’t need them.They prepared some pollack roe pasta and a dish of stir-fried tomatoes and scrambled eggs. I chewed the food slowly as we sipped beer and conversed quietly. The food didn’t taste as good as it looked, and whenever I needed to laugh because they said something cute or funny, I had to be careful not to let bits of food escape my mouth.“I like that album, too,” Bo-kyeong said as she turned toward me.“Do you really?” Mok-won asked her.“Why are there so many things you don’t know about me?” Bo-kyeong glared at Mok-won with slivers for eyes.“There are a lot of advantages to being ignorant.” Mok-won laughed sheepishly as he looked at Bo-kyeong.Seeing these two bicker over my T-shirt, which had an Andy Warhol banana on it, I took out my phone, opened YouTube, and started playing “I’ll Be Your Mirror” from The Velvet Underground & Nico. They turned to me once the music started and smiled.Bo-kyeong brought over a Marshall Bluetooth speaker and connected it to my phone. As the two bobbed their heads and asked me a slew of questions, I became a DJ and played for them “Chelsea Girl” by Nico, “Chelsea Hotel No. 2” by Leonard Cohen, “I am a Fool” by Gilli Smyth, and “Hurt” by Johnny Cash. Mok-won got up from his seat and went over to the window. As soon as he opened it, a refreshing evening breeze entered the room and washed over us.“Do you mind?” Mok-won asked as he pulled out a cigarette. I shook my head.Bo-kyeong went over to the window as well.“Smells like summer. I think the air’s gotten cleaner. It must be because of COVID. Give me one.”He stuck a cigarette between her lips. The smoke consumed their heads. Unable to control myself, I went over to the window, too.“If you don’t mind—” As I exhaled a steady stream of smoke I continued: “My doctor told me I’ll die if I keep smoking.”They looked at me with wide eyes.“I’m just kidding. I quit four years ago.”“Maybe we should quit, too.”“You think so? Or maybe we just continue living this way till we die.”My doctor once told me I needed to quit both smoking and drinking. “What about the smell?” I asked the doctor. “Can’t I at least smell them?” The neurosurgeon frowned. “I’m not sure what to say. I don’t think I’ve ever had a patient ask me that before—”After staring out into the darkness for a while, I returned to my seat and played “Night Flight” by Affinity.“Can I call you Unni?” Bo-kyeong asked me as she came back with another beer from the refrigerator.“Of course not.”Bo-kyeong and Mok-won were both documentary filmmakers. They started living together after co-directing a film about Suncheon Bay. They’d moved their home and business to Suncheon earlier this year. Bo-kyeong’s hometown was in Incheon, and Mok-won’s in Seoul. I’d been born in Suncheon but left a long time ago; I only came back just two years prior. When I told them this, they batted their eyes, oohing and ahhing in admiration.“What did you use to do?” they asked me.“This and that. Whatever I could find.”“You seem like you have a lot of secrets. When I first saw you, I was a bit wary of you.”Bo-kyeong’s face was flush, probably from all the beer.Mok-won picked at the green tablecloth for a while before speaking up again. He was a bit tipsy and his voice was louder than before.“People are so strange. They criticize our experimental works for being too experimental, and our nature documentaries for having too many landscape shots. I wonder if they’ll accuse us of being too political this time.”“Why are you worrying about that already? We haven’t even started.”“What kind of documentary are you filming this time?” I asked.“Have you heard of the Phantom Schoolgirl Army?” Mok-won asked.“No.”“Don’t you have any older relatives in Yeosu or Suncheon?”“None.”“Stop it. You sound like you’re interrogating her,” Bo-kyeong said, critical of her husband’s tone.“It’s fine. What’s the Phantom Schoolgirl Army?”“You know about the Yeosu-Suncheon uprising, right?”Seeing the look on my face, which was saying neither yes or no, he began to explain.“In 1948, after suppressing the uprising in Yeosu and Suncheon, the government made something called the Writer Investigation party, which they dispatched to the area to ‘document’ what happened. The group was made of authors, painters, photographers, and illustrators. Among the things they found was a story of female students who’d fallen prey to communist ideology. According to these stories, the girls would lure soldiers to them with water and then pull out a carbine from their skirts and shoot the men. These stories were serialized in the papers and later made into a book titled Uprising and the Resolve of the People. Oh, that reminds me, Bo-kyeong. We must find that book. Anyway, the book was used for political purposes, to fear monger and justify the massacres. It was recently revealed that the story, which was referred to as the Phantom Schoolgirl Army, was actually a made-up story—it never happened. But they didn’t know that at the time, so it continued to be told and embellished. There were also stories of schoolgirls who seduced soldiers, calling them oppa and what not, before shooting them with a Type 99 rifle. All of these were different versions of the same story intended to frighten people about the threat of communism.”“They say some schoolgirls were arrested and interrogated,” Bo-kyeong said, adding onto her husband’s explanation. “We want to interview those who are still alive. But COVID has made that difficult. Perhaps we could do it virtually. Of course, we’d need to be cautious when approaching them, as it’s probably a traumatic experience for them. I’m positive that the stories were influenced by the war films and novels of the time. I want to find those sources. It’s a really strange and terrifying story.”“I think my mother must have been attending school in Yeosu around that time.”“Really?”“She died, though. When I was young.”Silence filled the room. After turning on the song “I Hate You” by Jung-in—like a person who believes there’s a song for every situation—I played one last song: “Restless” by Bibi, which was one of my favorite K-pop songs at the time. Bo-kyeong vibed to the music, and Mok-won cleared the table.“How about we go to your place next time,” Bo-kyeong suggested as they saw me out the front gate.“Of course not.”“Then it’s settled,” Bo-kyeong said in a cutesy voice while she locked arms with Mok-won, as if to say she understood my sarcasm. “Treat us to some more good music.”
by Kim Tae Yong
Daydreams of a River
The new workshop at the factory was built on what was once the paddock at the old ranch. At the end of the paddock, two animal sheds stood in a boomerang shape. Instead of being torn down, these plastered, concrete structures were now used to store saw blades, oil drums for machinery, and stacks of imported wood. One could easily guess the number of blocks that went into each shed. Some rattled loose, as if they hadn’t been laid cleanly. The ventilation windows near the roof were exactly the size of those blocks. Throughout the village were these types of bare-bones sheds, assembled like LEGO houses. A tour bus and several cars with Seoul license plates traveled along the unpaved road to the factory. Red dust, as if bricks had been ground to powder, wafted up from the lane. Rolling hills spread beyond the pasture. Here and there, short trees grew sparsely. Someone sitting at the front of the bus boasted it was an ideal location for a ranch, adding that if a cow happened to escape, you’d be able to find it easily enough. The red dust clung to the black dress shoes of the Seoul staff, even to the bottom of their carefully pressed trousers. The director and factory manager stood side by side at the factory entrance to hang up the sign. Since the young CEO from the main office was on an overseas business trip, he couldn’t attend the sign hanging ceremony. The wooden placard on which the factory name was inscribed in large cursive letters still reeked of varnish. The main office and factory staff stood in a circle and clapped. The director was so short his head barely came up to the shoulders of the tall, skinny factory manager. The difference in the length of their arms was the problem. It wasn’t easy to put the two men at both ends of the sign in one camera frame. If the focus was on the director, everything above the factory manager’s forehead was cut off, as well as the first letter of the sign. But if the focus was on the manager, the director’s stomach would be cut off. In the end, symmetry was barely achieved with the director holding the bottom of the sign and the factory manager holding the top. The manager didn’t shake hands with the people from the main office, though he was meeting them for the first time. He walked hurriedly, hands jammed inside his pants pockets and his torso leading the way before his feet. His unusual gait made him stick out from the rest of the people. A saw blade had taken off two segments of his left middle finger, as well as his right ring finger and pinky, when he’d learned his trade at the sawmill. The director was a vigorous man in his early forties. He always had a hard-sided leather briefcase in his hand. The weight of it was something. Several employees complained of having had their knees or thighs stabbed by a corner of his briefcase while passing him in the hallway. All year round, he carried his suit jacket squeezed under his armpit. He gave off the tired air of a traveler who had just stepped off a plane. Even when going between the CEO’s office and his own, or coming back from the bathroom, he took short, hurried strides, as if late for a meeting. There were too many people at the ceremony to fit all of them in one picture. About a third of the seventy or so staff ended up with the backs of their heads taken, and out of those whose faces were captured, five or six had their eyes closed. A few had taken their sweet time, not realizing the ceremony was beginning, and were caught running belatedly toward the entrance. The hands of those applauding enthusiastically were blurred, as if they’d been rubbed out with an eraser, or were clasped together, as if in prayer. Caught also on the bottom right corner of the photo was a dark smudge. A black dog had come out of nowhere. There were many stray dogs in that area. But it was the woman and not so much the dog that ruined the photo. The woman stood three people over from the director, alongside the other female staff from the main office. As though conscious of the camera, her gaze wasn’t directed at the director or factory manager hanging up the sign, but at some point beyond the frame of the picture. And those eyes glowed red. Much later, in a book titled The Basics of Photography, she learned what causes the red-eye effect. In short, her eyes had been looking directly at the camera when the flash went off. And while she’d been gazing at Y, Y had been gazing back at her through the viewfinder. Y wasn’t in the picture. He’d been holding the camera, pressing the shutter button some five meters away. It had been Hanil Trading’s most prosperous year. Every six months, the company posted a recruitment advertisement in a trade newsletter. On the day of the sign hanging ceremony, all the employees from both the main office and the factory had attended, except for the CEO who was away on a business trip. During this period, Hanil Trading had the most employees in its history since its founding. Among the staff lined up on the factory manager’s side stood a man with a white Yankees cap set crookedly on his head, his long legs spread like the pegs of a clothespin. A was a year younger than the woman. He didn’t look at all interested in the ceremony. Not only was his face hidden in the shadow of his cap brim, but the camera had captured only one side of his face. He was the last young man left in that village. Everyone who worked at the factory was from there, except the manager. There were two middle-aged women responsible for making lunch for all the factory workers, cleaning the factory, and other odd jobs, four men with Class 1 commercial driver’s licenses, and nine men who operated the machinery at the workshop. Over fifty workers from the main office trailed the factory manager like a herd of cows, ambling around the two sheds, workshop, and office. At sunset, the rancher would have opened the paddock gate and led the cows scattered around the ranch back to the sheds. The sheds had probably been arranged in a boomerang shape to prevent the cows from going astray. The workshop was as spacious as a hangar. To allow large trucks to come inside, a wide opening was created in one wall and double doors installed. The director and a few female staff members cheered in front of oversized machines equipped with circular saws about a meter in diameter. A plank of wood was placed on a machine workbench for a demonstration. Judging from the deep reddish brown of the heartwood, it looked like a type of cherry wood. When the manager switched on the machine, the conveyor belt started moving and the stainless-steel saw began to rotate. They had to shout above the noise. The wood moved closer to the blade. The noise grew louder. The cherry wood slipped back a little, resisting the saw, but the spinning blade only whirled faster, its edge drawing dozens of circles in a blur. The woman felt dizzy. “Cherry wood is a dense hardwood, so it isn’t easy to cut. And this is a cross grain piece, which makes it hard to plane. Even veterans get nervous handling this.” The manager barked in a near shout, as if angry. “But there’s no better wood than this!” The blade dug into the wood. Dark sawdust flew out from both sides of the blade. Her nostrils tingled. But the director was more interested in business than in the type of wood or its characteristics. “I hope you’re not planning to throw all this sawdust out. You can still use it, can’t you? Maybe mix it with a kind of glue and make things like particle boards?” The manager laughed silently, showing his yellow teeth. “Sure, it’s got lots of uses. But I don’t recommend making particle boards out of it since the boards are flimsy and bend too easily. Pretty low quality, I have to say. But in the winter, burning sawdust for heating is the best.” Meanwhile, the wood was cut in two and came to a stop at the end of the workbench. However, her ears continued to ring, even after the machine stopped and the workshop grew quiet. The two concrete columns seemed to have been hastily erected to meet the date of the ceremony, for there wasn’t even a gate, let alone a chain link fence. Elderly folk from the village, as well as the stray dogs, flocked into the yard. Most of the old people were related to the factory workers. Straw mats were laid down between the sheds and workshop, and tables of all shapes and sizes were set up. The middle-aged local women who’d been mobilized for the ceremony rushed about, carrying foil-lined plates of boiled pork slices and layered rice cakes with red beans, the slapping of their plastic sandals especially loud. The elderly folks became tipsy off just a few shots of liquor. A few rose to their feet and started swaying back and forth, though there was no music. Whenever they lifted their legs, their white socks flashed, stained with reddish dirt. The faces of the elderly who were seated were also ruddy with drink. An old man poured liquor for another old man, who was actually his nephew, and this nephew, observing all formalities, politely received the drink with two hands and then turned away to swallow it. Dogs circled the tables, eyeing the people. The elderly showed their few remaining yellow teeth or danced with their eyes closed, as if listening to distant strains of music, occasionally flying into a rage at the dogs who tried to sneak some food. They’d stamp their feet or hurl a rubber shoe at them. The dogs arched their backs like bows, their tails raised and rigid like poker sticks. If a woman serving food tossed them a slice of pork, they’d all rush to pounce at the dirt-covered scrap of meat. They shoved their snouts into the dirt, planting their paws into the ground so that they wouldn’t get pushed back. A cloud of red dust rose. But it was the black dog who managed to get the scrap of meat each time. It had long legs and a pointy snout. An old man pointed at the black dog. “Now that’s a clever dog. He came from our dog and that one over there.” The old man next to him tossed back his shot and shook his head. “How can your dog be the daddy? Your dog isn’t even the right breed.” “Look at those eyes,” the first man said, not wanting to lose. “They’re definitely from our dog. I saw it with my own eyes, saw your dog jump over my fence to get to my dog.” “You can’t even tell the difference between a piss pot and somebody’s head without your glasses.” “Who cares who the daddy is?” a third man said, interrupting. “They’re just dogs for crying out loud. You just worry about yourselves.” An old man slapped his knee. A man seated near him stuck his foot out and poked him in the side. Then another old man sitting amongst them raised his cloudy eyes and glanced about, and began to snicker. Low laughter escaped from between his crooked teeth. The boiled pork smelled bad. Men who could stomach it topped it with garlic, wrapped the whole thing in lettuce, and then crammed it into their mouths. Even before they swallowed, they opened their mouths that were still full of food and knocked back some soju. With a low Formica table between them, the people from the main office and the factory workers were standoffish with one another, like groups holding a labor-management negotiation. Assistant manager Lee from the main office got to his feet, rattling an empty soju bottle into which he’d stuck the end of a metal spoon. He stabbed the end of his necktie into his shirt front pocket. A flush had spread down to his neck from the drinks the factory workers had poured him. A factory worker who’d exchanged a few words with him shouted, “Hey there, looking sharp!” Laughter burst from the people sitting down. Caught off guard by the sudden noise, a dingy dog that had been lingering by the tables started barking at no one in particular. Of the seventy plus people in the group photo, Mr. Lee, the assistant manager, stood out. He wore a navy-blue double-breasted suit, with gray pinstripes and gold buttons embossed with an anchor. If he had a pipe in his mouth, he would have looked like a sailor. Comments about Mr. Lee’s suit erupted all over the yard. Someone gave a long whistle. He waited for the laughter to subside and then rattled the soju bottle again. The factory manager and director had been whispering with each other for some time, their heads close together. Urged by Mr. Lee, Miss Kim from the trade department stood up. She was nicknamed Kitty because of her big eyes and unusually small mouth. “Sing! Sing!” the men hollered, loosened by drink. Flushing a deep red, Miss Kim introduced herself briefly and sat down. The men cheered. She kept tasting dirt in her food. A yellow dog was watching her, crouched down on the ground across from her. The dog had baggy skin, as if she’d recently given birth to a litter, and the corners of her eyes were crusted with sleep. The woman tossed her a piece of meat, but the black dog appeared out of nowhere and intercepted it. Instead of lunging for the food, Goldie cowered and shrank back. Her ten sagging teats swung in different directions and came to a stop. Holding out another piece of meat, she called Goldie over, but only after quite some time did she come, swinging her teats. Instead of snatching up the food right away, she licked the woman’s hand for a long time before she took it. Her teeth seemed weak, too. Bits of meat fell out from between her teeth. When she finished, Goldie went and sat behind a young man, her teats swinging from side to side. He was wearing a Yankees cap pulled low over his face, drinking quietly. It was A. Several older men sitting across the table from him scolded A for not removing his cap before his elders. A woman who’d been bringing over some meat and soju glanced at the men. “Everyone’s got their reasons, all right?” One of the men glared at her with bloodshot eyes. Since A’s expression was hidden by his hat, she couldn’t see his reaction. The water tap was behind the sheds. Goldie followed the woman, her flesh swinging. As she moved forward, the baggy flesh on both sides struck each other, causing ripples to break out on her skin. She looked uncomfortable, as if she were wearing a coat several sizes too big for her. If the woman were to pull down a zipper somewhere on that hide, a small puppy just might spring out. It seemed the tap was supplying water to the sheds. A long rubber hose, filled with sand, was connected to the tap. Inside the hose was a tiny maple leaf. She twisted open the tap and waited at the end of the hose for the water to come out. The water was so cold her hands went nearly numb. Piles of junk lay behind the sheds. Bricks and Styrofoam pieces mixed with silt. There were also pots, rubber tubs, and a deflated child inner tube. She turned around, but Goldie was gone. She clicked her tongue, but she didn’t appear. It was dark inside the shed, even in the middle of the day. A pile of North American walnut logs was stacked on one side. When they first started at the company the previous year, Y and the woman had spent all winter at the Incheon Port. Forklifts roamed constantly between the huge containers. It was so cold that her skin bloomed red under her pants. Lumber arrived from North America once a week. Logs as long as twenty meters and as wide as an entire arm span were heaped like a mountain on the loading dock. From the top of the logs, she could see the Incheon pier. Ships carrying containers were anchored. The pier was chaotic with constantly moving cranes, trailers, and longshoremen. She and Y’s job was to check the number and type of logs against what was written in the invoice. Y hopped from log to log. The woman followed. For a moment, when her body was airborne, the pier seemed to loom closer. The soles of her shoes wore down quickly. That winter, she went through three pairs of shoes. Though she wore gloves and boots, her hands went numb and she couldn’t feel her feet either. If she couldn’t bear the cold any longer during log inspection, they’d leave the docks. Instead of walking all the way to the overpass to get to the food stall across the street, they’d jaywalk. Y held her hand. His hand was lukewarm. When she drank a hot cup of oden soup, her skin began to itch as it thawed. She wanted to see Y from that time, but Y wasn’t in any of the pictures. The shed smelled of animal excrement and tree sap. Under the dark ceiling, sockets without lightbulbs dangled from cords both long and short. You could see the village across the street through the brick-sized ventilation windows. When night fell, the cows locked up inside the sheds would have watched the blinking lights of passing cars through the windows. There were many animal sheds at the base of the mountains. She could easily tell they were no longer in use. A tongue licked the back of her hand. It was Goldie. Further inside the shed on the pile of walnut logs sat A. How long had he been inside? He was smoking. “Don’t get the wrong idea. I wasn’t following you. You see those old farts out there? I can’t even have a smoke around them. They’d all get up in my face if I did.” He flicked the cigarette butt from between his fingers. Drawing an arc in the air, it flew out the window. “There was an outbreak here. White spots showed up on the cows’ brains, like the holes of a sponge. All the dairy cows died. We dug pits to bury them and used excavators to transport the bodies. For two weeks, the excavators went around here. The spots where they’re buried are spongy. We filled the pits and tamped the dirt down, but as the cows rot, the pits keep sinking.” A got up from the logs. He was much taller than she’d thought. Goldie went to him, her flesh swinging. A heaved a deep sigh. She caught a whiff of liquor on his breath. “I’ll be on a boat by next February. A tuna reefer. Once you set out to sea, it might be two years before you come ashore.” He walked toward the shed entrance with Goldie. Before he stepped out, he turned and looked at the woman. He heaved another sigh, as though drunk. And then without any explanation, he said he was the type to see a thing through if he put his mind to it. The elderly men caused a commotion trying to find their shoes. There were over twenty pairs of white rubber shoes in the yard, turned over and lying askew. Even when the men flopped down on their behinds, drunk, they snickered like children frolicking in the water. Since every one of them was dressed in a white hanbok, it was difficult to tell them apart. They looked different, and then all at once like the same person. “Aigo, Father!” Daughters-in-law, who were elderly themselves, came running, wiping their wet hands on their baggy trousers. Red dust rose from where they’d dragged their sandals. The factory manager accepted every drink that his staff poured him. Drunk, he kept urging more liquor on the director who sat across from him. Liquor sloshed out from the shot glass he held with his four fingers. The finger that had its tip severed was blunt, with new skin having grown on top of it. The director stubbornly turned down every drink. He blamed it on the meeting he had to attend the next day. Though he hadn’t had a single drink, he looked tired, as though he’d just gotten off a long-haul flight. A fine layer of reddish dust covered his hair that was slicked back with pomade. Every time, the manager slurred, “Ah jeez, not even a single drink?” The director’s car was the first to leave the factory. Those returning to Seoul by bus scrambled to the entrance where the tour bus was parked. The yard offered a clear view of the people climbing aboard. Drunk men staggered to the side of the road and urinated for a long time. Their suit trousers were wrinkled and the shirt collars grubby. Darkness was moving in from the direction of the bus. The stray dogs from the village roamed the yard and thrust their noses into the ground, sniffing for meat. The rest of the city people split off into different cars. The woman and Y were supposed to catch a ride with Mr. Lee, the assistant manager, but Y was still snapping photos of the factory. Loosened up with drink, the factory manager had taken his hands out of his pockets and now went so far as to wave at the camera. In less than a year, he would lose two more fingers out of the remaining four on his left hand. The circular saw was cutting through cherry wood when it hit grain running in a different direction and jerked up. In the blink of an eye, two of his fingers flew off, spraying like sawdust. The accident threw the main office into chaos. As soon as he heard about the accident, the CEO called the factory manager, a man twenty years his senior, a “fucking idiot.” He then made countless calls to check if the manager had broken any laws by neglecting to use a safety device. He also asked Mr. Lee to secretly investigate whether he’d been drinking on the job. The woman called out to Y, who was taking his time. As she was getting in Mr. Lee’s car, she looked toward the sheds and workshop, but A was nowhere in sight. The village women were clearing away the mats from one side of the yard. The stray dogs swarmed toward morsels of food that had dropped on the ground. The factory workers stationed on one side of the yard would probably keep drinking well into the night. The tall young man in the Yankees cap wasn’t by the entrance either. The bus pulled farther away from the factory. The woman continued to scan the surrounding area for A, like a farmer looking for a cow that had escaped from his paddock. Wondering if he was hiding, she scrutinized the trees and then laughed at herself. Being so tall, A wouldn’t be able to hide behind such small trees. She’d wanted to wish him good luck at sea. She’d even clicked her tongue for Goldie, but there was no sign of the dog either. It quickly grew dark. Animal sheds flickered in the darkness. There wasn’t a single streetlight along the road. They had to go slowly, since the headlights lit only a short distance ahead. Mr. Lee kept sticking out his tongue to lick his dry lips, as if he were thirsty. The road had many sharp curves, and Mr. Lee hit the brakes at every bend. Y seemed tired. Sitting in the backseat, he slept with his head bowed. Though they were unable to catch up to the tour bus that had left much earlier, they should have been able to see at least the lights of the other cars. At first, they thought nothing of it, assuming they couldn’t see the cars ahead because of the bends in the road. But after driving for twenty minutes, they realized they must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. The road was completely empty. They were the only ones on the road. It was pitch black everywhere, with no houses in sight. They had no choice but to keep going until they came to a sign. Mr. Lee started driving a little faster. Just as they were going around a bend, a white object darted out from the opposite side of the road. Mr. Lee slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. The object hit the bumper and flew into the dark rush field. The car stopped after it had hurtled forward for another five meters. Mr. Lee peered at the road behind them through his rearview mirror. He could hardly see anything in the glow of the taillight. Y, awakened by the impact, glanced about with puffy eyes. Mr. Lee made a face. “Shit.” He rolled down his window and spat outside. He left the engine running and climbed out of the car. Through the rearview mirror, she saw him move farther away from the car. He was soon swallowed up by darkness. Y said it was most likely nothing and yawned. “Probably a badger or a squirrel.” She’d caught only a flash, but it had seemed much bigger than that. The object in the headlights had been white. About ten minutes later, Mr. Lee came back to the car. Instead of getting in the driver’s seat again, he stood beside the car and smoked. When he climbed inside, he reeked of liquor and cigarettes. “It was a dog,” he said. The village had an unusual number of stray dogs, but the woman’s gut feeling was that it hadn’t been a dog. Back at the factory, the elderly people had been wearing white. They flashed across her mind, and then vanished. Mr. Lee scrubbed his face with both hands. “No, actually, it’s too dark to see anything.” The bottom of the hill about three meters below was as black as a well. It was impossible to search every spot with a flashlight. “Mr. Lee, are you sure it went in that direction?” Y called out from the dark. “I don’t think it was over there.” The dark was disorienting. They couldn’t tell where they’d hit the object. After crashing into the bumper, it had hurtled off the road. It wouldn’t be easy to find where it had landed. Mr. Lee raised the flashlight above his head and raked the light over the field. The light punched holes in the darkness that was like a vast carpet. Dense clumps of rush grass. Dry bushes. Animal sheds no longer in use. The flashlight moved over the field again. Right then in the light, the woman saw the grass shake. “Over there! It’s alive!” She started moving before she finished speaking. The slope wasn’t steep, but the soil was so dry she slipped and tumbled down. “Don’t move the light!” she shouted without looking back. “Yes, there! Keep shining it there!” Because it was the dry season, the rushes were dry. They wrapped around her legs. She heard Y come up behind her. The ground was firm underfoot, but it would give way suddenly into spongy spots. She recalled what A had said. That there were many holes throughout the village where the dead cows had been buried. As the bodies decomposed, the holes that had been covered with dirt turned soft. Maybe it had been a joke to scare a city girl. She walked toward the spot the flashlight revealed, a flattened area. The broken rushes shook. It was a dog. Thinking it was Goldie, she brought her face close, but it wasn’t her. It was panting. The tongue that lolled out of its open mouth looked unnaturally long. “So it actually was a dog?” Y said, catching his breath. He then yelled in Mr. Lee’s direction. “It was a dog! A dog!” It was still warm. When she touched it, its breathing grew quieter. She buried her fingers in its ruff and stroked its fur. It must have been hit in the stomach. Every time her hand went near the stomach, the dog silently bared its teeth. The rushes were sticky. She felt something mushy next to her. The entrails that had spilled from its stomach were splayed on the trampled rush. “Let’s go.” Y said, turning around. That second, the dog’s eyes that had rolled back into its head flashed toward Y. The dog shot up and clamped down on the woman’s wrist with every last bit of strength. Its fangs pierced the woman’s flesh. Her arm turned numb. When she raised her arm, the dog’s head came up as well. Her arm felt so heavy she felt as if it were going to snap off. Once the dog had latched onto her wrist, it refused to let go. She saw its eyes then. Rolled back to show mostly whites, its eyes were welled up with tears. Its saliva seeped into her veins. She remembered those eyes about ten years later, when she herself bit down on someone’s arm. The man clobbered her repeatedly in the face with her purse. The buckle on the purse whacked her in the eye. She tried to get a good look at his face, but she couldn’t, because one of her eyes had swollen shut. Even as she was dragged along the side street, she bit down harder and refused to let go. The dog’s fangs seemed to have pierced through her muscle to the bone. She couldn’t help thinking that if she continued to stay this way, her hand may have to be amputated. The factory manager’s blunt fingers crossed her mind. She shook her arm frantically, but the fangs sank deeper into her flesh. Y, who had been on his way back, heard her scream and came running. Though it was dark, she saw Y leap through the rushes. The dog’s saliva seeped into her bloodstream, and she had the thought that she’d perhaps become half dog. Like a dog, she stared into the darkness. It seemed she could hear, even see, the rustling of a small insect inside the rushes. Y kicked the dog. Her arm was also kicked in the process. The dog would not unlatch from her. Y felt around the rushes. There was a large rock inside his hand. The woman was dragged deeper into the side street by a man whose face she couldn’t see. She lost a heel along the way. Her socks ripped and her skin scraped along the cracked sidewalk and started to bleed. The narrow street that led to her house was always deserted. Even though low-rises with basements lined the street and every detached home was filled with people, she was always the only one in the street. The security light had gone out a long time ago, but no one had replaced the bulb. When she’d sensed someone behind her, it was already too late. The man had been hiding behind the stairs of a low-rise and had come up silently behind her. A strong hand clamped over her nose and mouth. His other hand grabbed at her purse that was slung over her shoulder. She couldn’t breathe. She tried to twist away, but his hand only tightened over her nose and mouth. His palm reeked and was damp with sweat. She had no choice but to bite his hand so that she could breathe. Ahh! He clutched his hand and jumped back. Right then, she could have fled in the opposite direction. But she dashed toward him and bit his arm. Her teeth didn’t sink easily into his muscular arm. She bit down with all her strength. Her teeth pierced his flesh. His muscles seemed to be crumbling between her teeth. He jumped up and down in pain. His blood flowed between her teeth and down her throat. It tasted fishy. The man bashed her face with her purse. The buckle on the purse hit her in the eye. Still she didn’t let go of his arm. His fist pummeled her face. Her nose collapsed and something hot gushed down her face. The crunch of several top teeth breaking off reverberated in her head. Strangely enough, she remembered the eyes of the dog that had bitten her wrist and would not let go. She felt no pain. He dragged her along the street while smashing her head against the stone wall of a low-rise. Once, twice, everything turned white. She wanted to open her mouth, but she couldn’t. She believed her dog nature had finally shown itself for the first time. “Once a dog bites, it rarely lets go,” said H, whom she had run into ten years later. He rolled up his pant leg. She saw the pink keloid scar that was shinier than the rest of his skin. It was a dog bite wound. The man whose face she hadn’t been able to see threw the woman down at the end of the street and hurled the purse at her face. “You fucking bitch!” As if still angry, he stomped on her stomach and thighs with his boots. He then spat on her. H scratched at the keloid scar. “If I got this hurt, can you imagine what happened to the dog?” “Why didn’t you just let him take your purse?” Everyone who came to the hospital said the same thing. They shook their heads, as they gazed down at the woman lying in bed with a mashed eye, fractured nose, three broken teeth, and bruises all over her body. Some asked if there had been valuables in her purse. However, she’d had only a single ten-thousand-won bill inside her purse that day. No one could understand. Each time a visitor offered a comment, her mother, who had been caring for her, added, “Stupid, stupid girl,” and let out a big sigh. The woman looked down at her feet which were sticking out from under the sheet. Her skinned heels were oozing blood and a toenail had fallen off. Y frowned as soon as he came to the hospital. Y was wearing snug leather pants that looked uncomfortable and boots that came up to right below his knees. He glanced at her face a few times and sat on the end of her bed. “You look like a different person.” She gave him a small smile. “Don’t worry. The swelling and bruising will go away. The doctor straightened my nose and as for my broken teeth, I can get implants.” “See?” Y said, slowly shaking his head from side to side. “You still don’t understand.” Until then, the woman had no idea that Y had joined a motorcycle club. She came home a day earlier than her discharge date. That night, Y didn’t come home. Y, who returned late the next morning, didn’t wash up or eat, and went straight to bed. As though he had roamed about all night, she smelled on him the winter wind she’d smelled at the Incheon Port. “You’ve changed too much. You’re not the same shy girl who couldn’t even look at a boy.” Her bruises disappeared and she got dental implants, but Y’s complaints continued. When she asked him why he was always out, he said it was because he was bored. Soon, Y no longer came home in the morning. The office of High Speed, the motorcycle club, was located at an auto body shop right outside Seoul. A sign that said, “We remove dents!” stood in front of the shop, the ground stained with grease and motor oil. The garage owner was around Y’s age. He said that in the daytime he restored vehicles that had been in collisions with the help of his two employees and then on holidays or late at night, he took out his motorcycle. Y wasn’t there. Even the club members couldn’t get a hold of him. Once members were notified of the date, time, and place by email, those who were able to make it gathered and rode their motorcycles together. The owner added that they liked to go on the newly built road in front of Munhak Stadium these days. In one corner of the body shop was a bulletin board for High Speed members. “I need to talk to you, so please come home.” She put up her note where it would be most noticeable. Y didn’t come home. The woman’s uterus, which had been as small as an apple, became the size of a melon. Blue veins spiderwebbed over her breasts. When she rose to her feet or sat down, her groin strained. As he was doing the ultrasound exam, the obstetrician let slip, “What a handsome fella!” It was a boy. The baby inside her belly grew hair, as well as fingernails and toenails. They said that around this time, fingerprints formed on the fingers. As soon as a stethoscope was placed on her belly, a fetal heartbeat echoed in the examination room. The body shop owner recognized her. He said he’d seen Y once on the new road near the airport about two weeks before. On the bulletin board was a message from Y. “Please let me go. Stop hanging onto me for Christ’s sake. I’m so sick of it.” It was his last message to her. While staring at the note, she thought about what Y had said about being bored. According to the body shop owner, Y had gotten a new bike recently. She headed for the road the owner had jotted down for her. The new road in front of Munhak Stadium was connected to the Yeongdong Expressway. The taxi driver stopped several times and asked where exactly in front of the stadium she’d meant. She also went looking for Y around the Jayu Motorway, but there weren’t any spots for the taxi to stop. Motorcycles sped along the night road. There were many that crossed the median line. The cab chased after them, but they were too fast. It wasn’t easy to find Y’s motorcycles from the others. Many members of the club stored their bikes at the body shop. The owner had pointed at one in the corner. “That there is Y’s new girlfriend.” Y’s girlfriend was a 1,450cc model, made of light titanium. If Y had gone around with a woman in the backseat, perhaps one with long hair, she would have been able to catch Y. She stuck a new message on the bulletin. “I’m so bored. Come back.” More than a week passed, but Y didn’t call. The clinic that had been recommended to her on the phone was small and shabby. There didn’t seem to be any women of childbearing age in the town where it was located. The clinic’s only patients were pregnant women who’d traveled from far away and a few bargirls. When she’d called, the nurse hadn’t bothered to ask her the basic questions, like how far along she was. But she added the woman would have to pay for the disposal of the specimen in addition to the surgery cost. She didn’t tell her mother. All her mother would say was that she was a stupid girl. The operating room had missing tiles and holes in the floor, like an old bathhouse. Perhaps her feet had swollen, but she felt better once she’d removed her shoes and climbed onto the operating table. There were metal containers containing bandages by the head of the bed. She placed her feet in the stirrups and lay down on the table. She saw black mold growing in a corner of the cement ceiling. Everything felt so surreal, as if it were someone else’s life. The stirrups felt cold. As her belly tightened, something squirmed inside. She decided to think it was a melon that was inside her belly. How could she have carried such a big thing around? The crash of stainless steel came from the consultation room, as if the staff were handling metal tools. She whispered to herself: “It’s okay. You tried your best.” The factory was quite far from Seoul. The reason she was able to get the job was because all the local young girls had left for the city. The boss added that there was no such thing as a maternity leave because of the worsening recession. Power saws operated non-stop from nine in the morning to nine at night. At first she couldn’t hear the person on the other end of the line because of the saws, but she got used to the noise soon enough. Naturally, her voice grew louder, too. When she would lie in bed at night, she’d hear the saw. Sometimes when she called, her elderly mother would complain and say she was about to go deaf. The factory was always full of itinerant workers. The boss didn’t care about the backgrounds of the workers, but she didn’t like dealing with them. Afraid she’d come across the man she’d bitten, she developed the habit of examining the arms of the new laborers. Even if no one else knew, the one bitten and the one who’d done the biting would no doubt recognize each other. A trailer loaded with North American oak arrived. The laborers who’d been scattered around the sawmill swarmed toward the trailer. A red pennant flag was attached to the end of the longest log on the flatbed. The center of the oak was light pink or dark brown. Compared to cherry wood, oak was easier to cut and nail down. The driver’s door opened and a giant sack of a man hopped down. His hair was disheveled, as if he’d had the windows rolled down. “Ah jeez, you were bitten by a dog?” After observing the scar on her wrist, he suddenly pulled up the hem of his pants and thrust his knee at her. “Look, a dog bit me, too. When they get a hold of something, they don’t let go,” he said with a wince. “If my scar is this big, imagine what happened to the dog! I made sure it would never chew meat again.” The logs on the flatbed matched up with the invoice. While she checked the flatbed, the man joked around, shaking his leg. “Excuse, but do I know you? I feel like we’ve met before.” She started heading back to the office, but he blocked her way. “I’m sure I’ve seen you before . . . Are you sure you don’t remember me?” His face was unfamiliar. He walked back to his trailer, hitting his gloves against his leg. The flatbed tilted up and logs spilled down onto the ground. The noise of the saws coming from the workshop was deafening. The driver came running, his belly bouncing. Very briefly, she recalled Hanil Trading’s sign hanging ceremony. But the man recognized her first. “Hanil Trading, right?” She recalled the Yankees baseball cap. “A?” The man looked disappointed. “You asked me how I’d gotten bitten by a dog. You were so cold you were shivering, so I even lent you my pullover.” It was H. But his face was unfamiliar. “It was a green waterproof pullover . . .” In the group photo, she’s wearing a green pullover. She has red eyes, for she’d been looking directly at the camera. So fixated on her red eyes, she must have forgotten about the borrowed pullover. She’d remembered A as being the only young factory worker there that day. He went on a reefer ship that February, just as he’d told her. About a year later, the company received a letter saying all traces of A had disappeared from an island in the South Pacific archipelago when his boat had been anchored at port. When the wooden sign was unwrapped from the newspaper, it smelled of fresh varnish. Some parts of the sign were sticky since the varnish hadn’t completely dried. People around the yard started to gather. The director raised the sign with a sly expression. Exactly ten years later, he had a heart attack. He always had the air of a traveler who had just stepped off the plane. The CEO was eventually conned by the assistant manager who’d looked like a sailor. Assistant Manager Lee had conspired with a friend at the American branch to steal some imported lumber. A year after the sign hanging ceremony, Hanil Trading began to fall into decline. The seventy plus employees dispersed and the name of the company disappeared from the trade newsletter. The factory’s sign that had been carved out of walnut wood was probably burned up a long time ago, used as firewood for some house. While learning photography, she learned that the red-eye effect tends to happen when the pupils are dilated. Why were my pupils dilated? Was it really me that Y had been watching through the viewfinder? Other female employees from the company had been standing next to her. Miss Kim, who resembled a cat, was very popular with the men. The woman’s gaze had been directed at some point beyond the frame. Was I really looking at Y? She couldn’t even remember borrowing H’s pullover twenty years ago. Y may not be the one she’s watching. Y takes a few steps back with the camera in his hands. He puts the camera up to his eye, hesitates, and backs up some more. Now he’s standing about five meters away from the group. The pasture spreads out behind him. As seventy plus people scuffle about, red dust rises to their knees. Above the pasture is the deep autumn sky. The workshop was built on what was once the paddock. The workshop door opens and a cow makes its way out of the paddock. Soon other cows come out of the paddock. The dairy cows amble toward the sheds. The woman blinks. The cows vanish and only their mooing lingers in the air. There is no pasture or workshop. What she is looking at is herself in twenty years. Her pupils are dilated. That’s when Y presses the shutter. The assistant manager, who’s dressed in a suit with gold buttons, backs up the car and parks in front of the factory entrance. The woman is looking for A to say goodbye. But she can’t find A or Goldie who had followed him around. Y looks as young as he had at the Incheon pier when he leapt between the logs that had arrived from North America. Several cars carrying the main office staff leave the factory and a cloud of red dust rises around the tires. She and Y cannot fathom how much they will change in twenty years. Her wrist is still smooth, unmarked with the dog’s bite. Nothing has happened yet. At this point, her belief that biting and being bitten is part of life has not yet taken root. In the pictures that Y has taken, a young H is wearing a green pullover—the same green pullover she’d borrowed and is wearing in the group photo. H’s face is still a stranger’s face. He leans forward, listening to what the factory manager is saying. When Y raises his camera, the factory manager waves his seven fingers. A part of the shed wall is showing. The white brim of a hat pokes out from the shed. Goldie’s tail seems to be showing below. A is hiding, watching the woman leave. She cannot remember H’s face for the life of her. It’s as if a man from the distant future has leapt into the past. She can’t remember the keloid scar H said he’d shown her. She calls out to Y, who is taking his sweet time. Her round forehead is smooth. She was at her most beautiful then.
by Ha Seong-nan
The Enemy of Capitalism
Here is the true enemy of capitalism. This is not a statement about my parents who were socialists. As known to all, my parents were not theoretical or armchair socialists like some student activists in the 1980s, but real warriors who fought against capitalism in actual warfare, armed with carbine rifles and operating all over Jirisan Mountain during the Korean War. After I was born, however, they did little to stand up against capitalism. At most, they spent long, long winter nights longingly reminiscing about their early days when they had been the living enemies of capitalism, whispering under their comforter to avoid being eavesdropped upon by others. To be exact, therefore, they might well be called former socialists. They were eternal socialists at heart, though. But who gives a damn about heart? Apart from their fight against capitalism during the Korean War, they didn’t have any skill, money or even youth, and after their release from prison, came back to the world ruled by capitalism, where they barely made ends meet as inexperienced farmers at the bottom of capitalist society until their deaths. They had a great cause in their minds, but didn’t reveal it to others, and even if they had revealed it, the great cause would have become a dagger that would end up stabbing them. Thus, since my parents were already old when I was born, they were merely the dead enemies of capitalism. All they left me were persistent poverty, a considerable amount of debt and an abstract concept called socialism that was as persistent as poverty. Nonetheless, the word socialism, which was only an abstraction that I was fed up with, was imprinted on all the memories of my life like a branding mark, and inevitably I ended up having a peculiar interest in its enemy, namely capitalism. Holy crap!
While the name Jeong Ji A will remind most readers of the partisans’ daughter, I am repeating this obvious story over and over again while sober, since I would like to show my real self in order to help readers believe that the unbelievable and unreal story which I am about to tell is, in fact, based on absolutely real facts, just as my parents’ story was based on reality. Thirty years ago, I began to feel the urge to write the story about my friend and her family who were deemed the true enemies of capitalism. They were rare human beings in the capitalist age, whom I termed the “autistic family.” Being a realist, however, I dared not write about them because their life seemed too unreal to be true in the eyes of others. Only recently have I made up my mind to write this story, but not because I have some noble and brave aspirations to tell the world about the emerging true enemy of capitalism in this age when socialism, the only former enemy of capitalism, has collapsed. Rather, I write it because I just want to play, free from being the partisans’ daughter and also from being a realist, more and more lightly, like the dust or like the wind, into thin air and without a trace.
Now, let us proceed with the story. But first, I would like to ask for understanding on one point. The story of this family is unbelievable, but not exciting. Otherwise, they would not be the autistic family. There is no narrative in the life of this family. It is highly likely that this story will end up as a monotonous report on their everyday life. The inability to dramatize their monotonous everyday life shows the limitations of my capabilities as a writer, which I deeply regret, but this task is beyond my capacity at the moment. Hence, I would appreciate it very much if readers could read it through, feeling a sense of wonder or relief in the fact that these human beings were also our contemporaries, and taking comfort in these small feelings.
The pillar of this is my friend, Bang Hyeonnam, who was born the second daughter of a family desperately longing for a son because her father was a fifth-generation only son, as observant readers may have already guessed from her name. Her parents were sincere enough to name their first daughter Hyeona, which was quite an elegant name for a girl at that time, since eldest daughters were considered to be fundamental to the keeping of a household in Korea. Faced with the tragic reality of having another daughter, however, they were overwhelmed by the pressure to have a son at all costs, and when naming their newborn daughter, could not help using the word nam, which means “man” in Korean, in obvious hopes of having a son the next time. In short, the birth of Hyeonnam was a sheer tragedy totally unwelcomed, which didn’t need to happen and should not have happened. It is uncertain whether her self-consciousness as a purposeless being was the primary cause that drove her to become an enemy of capitalism or not. Still, it is certain that it inevitably affected her growth. Having unintentionally aggravated the conflict between her paternal grandmother and her mother with her birth, Hyeonnam mastered the mysterious secret of going unnoticed wherever she was early in her childhood, since her grandmother used to lose her temper whenever she saw her face. Due to her mysterious secret, I also could not notice her existence even though both of us had gone to the same college and taken the same courses in a class of only forty-six students in the same department for three years.
I clearly remember the moment when I first became aware of her existence. That day, drinking with several other students, I had one glass too many and kept swearing at the dictatorial government to go with my drink and finally made arrogant verbal attacks on my friends, seniors and juniors who were there with me, all of whom were greenhorns just like myself. While the unfortunate victims were trying to calm their anger with a glass of cheap maksoju, my eyes were searching for the next victim. Then, Hyeonnam came into sight, who seemed half invisible, disappearing into the background. I immediately sobered up. My drunken bravado was only for those who were used to it and I even regarded it as my strong point, like an occasional charm performance for fans, and therefore, the mere appearance of a stranger instantaneously made me feel ashamed of my act. While I was blushing and perplexed under the influence of alcohol and shame, she faintly smiled at me. It was a really thin smile that I’d never seen before. I used the word ‘thin’ to describe the sparse and watery nature of her smile, although I was unsure if it was a proper adjective to describe it, but I felt like her smile might turn into something like clear water at any minute. With that smile on her face, she spoke to me.
“I like college. . .”
She said this, although I could not understand how it was related to what I’d just rattled on about, and then I replied to her despite myself because her low voice, which always required an ellipsis as I would later discover, had a magnetic pull that drew in listeners in a weird way.
“Why?”
“Because we don’t change classes. . .”
I was, and still am, burning with an unsatisfiable desire for the unknown world, and couldn’t understand what she’d said at that moment. For many readers feeling like myself, I’d like to make a superfluous interpretation about the meaning of her words that I finally deciphered years later. Hyeonnam has a fear of all that was new. In addition to her natural timidity, the primal experience of her birth, had developed into a fear of all new things. Thus, she lived in fear for twelve years, from elementary to high school. Since she was afraid of having to meet strangers, she had diarrhea every day and also had indigestion whenever she ate something, and consequently, weighed only 36 kilograms at the time of high school graduation. For reference, she was 163 centimeters tall, the same height as me. She’d weighed even less, but gained about three kilograms by the end of the semester. She’d relax a bit around December, but the winter vacation began at the same time, and then the school and classmates became unfamiliar to her again. She felt awkward when school started again in February, and to make matters worse, had to change classes again in March. Her priority wasn’t studying, as her school life resembled a fierce battle for survival. In college, however, time passed by while with familiar faces. It was almost a miracle to her. The first sign of the miracle was revealed in the form of weight gain. She started gaining weight in her sophomore year. She even weighed as much as 53 kilograms when I first met her during my junior year. College life was as good to her as the Garden of Eden. Without clearly understanding what she meant, I thought that her remark was just a symptom of shyness, and asked back with a giggle.
“By the way. . . Who are you?”
She casually answered as if this were a common reaction.
“I also started my undergrad in creative writing in ’84. . . My name is Bang Hyeonnam. . .”
It was a dreary fall day in my junior year, but I didn’t recall that name. Her face was also unfamiliar, of course. I hadn’t even heard of her name, and it was not because of her secret skill, but because of my laziness, since I didn’t remember when I’d attended any class for the last time. However, her next words were another story.
“I’ve seen you often at drinking parties. . .”
Even at this historic moment when Hyeonnam and I had our first conversation in three years, the others were enjoying their drinks as if we weren’t even there. All seemed to have completely forgotten about my existence even though I’d just made a fiery speech in front of them. This was absolutely due to her secret skill. Then I finally realized her secret of camouflaging her existence. There’s nothing special about it. As with all secret skills, however, she’d put great effort into mastering the method over a period of years. First of all, her facial expressions and gestures never showed any anxiety or fear. If so, all eyes would have been on her immediately. Then, without a word, sound or move, she vaguely mimicked the behavior of the others, such as laughing and drinking. When done simultaneously and naturally, people weren’t aware of who was right next to them. It turned out that she’d shown up at various department events more often than I had. Still, most classmates, like myself, couldn’t remember her. Being her roommate, I was the only one who knew that she never wore a skirt during all her college years. She came from a poor village in Sanggye-dong, Seoul, and spent four winters with a single jacket made of thin cotton. Only I knew about her shabbiness. She was always around others, but like a shadow. I’d never seen such a quiet person. And I’ve yet to meet another.
From that day on, we lived together until graduation. She was having difficulty commuting long distances from her home in Sanggye-dong to Anseong. I didn’t know why, but she nodded right away when I asked her to live with me. My cohabitation with her was neither bad nor good. I would rather say that it was weird. I’d never seen such a lethargic person before. My parents lived like ghosts without any power in this capitalist society, but in their hearts, they lived on a battlefield where bullets rained down, with a firm belief that both body and mind must be strong. I lived with such parents for twenty years. Back then, I felt no respect for them, but their way of life must have seeped into my life, like the way many drops eventually make an ocean. I couldn’t understand her lethargy at all.
We were roommates for about a year and a half, and I had no memory of seeing her do something. Truly, she did nothing at all. Except for one thing. She read lying on the bed. That was hard to believe. At that time, we were young, only twenty-two years old. Eager to write a good story, I couldn’t sleep well at night when I felt humiliated by a brilliant story written by one of my friends, which was better than mine in terms of metaphor or writing sense or whatever. Then, I started to read anything I could get my hands on, but the great masters of literature drove me to drink out of despair; simultaneously, I also engaged in on-campus protests, marching arm-in-arm with other protesters, sometimes shouting slogans in the street as well. I was constantly doing something, filled with a desire to know more, to do something and to become someone, seething like magma in my mind. Despair and hope repeated like the four seasons during my youth. Meanwhile, Hyeonnam always kept still wherever she was, like at the drinking party. She studied creative writing in college for four years, but never wrote a single story. The only evidence that she was a creative writing student were a few, quite elegant sentences in the three or four letters she sent to me during breaks. She was capable of writing such good sentences, but she never tried. I once asked her why she didn’t write at all, and she just shrugged it off without a word.
She was young and did nothing. I thought that it was an insult to youth, and further, to life itself. It somehow felt like an insult to me or to my way of life, too. One day, I could no longer refrain from asking.
“What on earth do you live for?”
Hyeonnam answered languorously with her typical thin smile.
“Well. . . If I stand up, I want to sit down, and if I sit down, I want to lie down, and if I lie down, I want to sleep. . .”
Her answers were always like that, either ludicrous or annihilating the question itself. I once asked her if she’d ever write a novel.
“Do I have to?”
A typical answer.
“Why’d you decide to study creative writing, then?”
“Just because. . . I thought that all I’d have to do was read books. . .”
In retrospect, she was right. You don’t need to become a writer just because you have a bachelor’s degree in creative writing. Becoming a writer doesn’t change who you are. Anyway, in those days, it was inconceivable for me not to become a writer. I also couldn’t understand a person who studied creative writing in college, but didn’t try to become a writer. From my perspective, living meant becoming something different, something better than the present—becoming a writer, a wife and a mother.
Hyeonnam didn’t try to become anything. She didn’t want to. Most of the time we lived together, she wanted to sit when standing, lie down when sitting and fall asleep when lying down, as she herself said. While we were living together, she spent more than two-thirds of her time sleeping. She lay in bed almost all day long during weekends. Until then, I hadn’t known that humans could sleep so long, and that it would be all right. Only later did I realize that every moment spent outside was stressful for her, that sleeping was the only way to relax, and that she felt so comfortable with me she could fall asleep beside me. I shook her awake many times, worried about her, since she kept sleeping without eating or going to the bathroom for two days in a row.
Her favorite place was her temporary bed made of a metal frame with a plank of wood on top of it. Even when awake, she would lay motionless in bed as still as death. The level of stress she experienced in her everyday life was beyond my imagination. I’ve been friends with her for thirty years, but still cannot fathom the extent of her difficulties, and I can only assume how hard it must be for her.
One sunny spring day, I was making gimbap for our picnic lunch. Lying in bed like a still life as usual, Hyeonnam blurted out, “I guess I was a fifth-grader when I had the test. . .”
I assumed that it must have been very hard for her because tests were stressful for everyone.
“That day, I flipped over the test paper, and the letters were upside down. I freaked out. . .”
I had no idea what on earth she was about to say. If the letters were upside down, she could simply turn the test paper upside down, which was no big deal.
“I couldn’t read the letters because they were upside down. I thought that I could read them properly if I moved my chair to sit on the other side. . .”
If you’ve already understood what she said, you’re either a genius or have an autistic family member. Or you just didn’t think about it. It took me twenty years to fully understand the exact meaning of her words. Anyway, the point is this: in the old days, most test papers were printed on both sides. They were handwritten by teachers, of course. Since the paper orientation wasn’t automatically set by a computer, sometimes you had to flip over your test paper from left to right like turning a page of a book in order to properly read the letters on the reverse side, and at other times, had to flip it from bottom to top to read them properly. It was absolutely up to the teacher. In her case, she flipped over her test paper like turning a page, and the letters were upside down, which was a common mistake. The problem could’ve been solved simply by turning it in the proper direction. Yet, our Hyeonnam couldn’t do it. It never crossed her mind that she could turn it herself, and instead, she just sat there and gave a deep sigh, gazing blankly at the upside-down paper throughout the test; she thought that she had to move her chair to the other side of the desk to read, but couldn’t do it because the seat was occupied by another student, and so she didn’t know what else to do. Toward the end of the test, the teacher finally figured out what was happening, and turned it for her with a sigh deeper than hers. She was finally able to read it. It was a miraculous moment for her.
I came close to shouting, “Are you serious?” If her ability to understand had been a little lower, I would have had doubts about her. Her letters sent to me, however, had shown the fact that her understanding and insight were probably better and never worse than mine. Consequently, she was not a fool, but I wondered what kind of thinking process had prevented her from even considering turning the upside-down test paper, and that day’s conversation was to be my big doubt for the following twenty years.
Twenty years later, her son resolved my big doubt. Since we lived within a five minutes’ walk from each other, we were on our way to the market one day when we ran into her little son on his way home from school. Seeing us together, he briefly hesitated and scuttled away into an alley without saying hello. He didn’t know how to face his mother’s unexpected appearance in public, and therefore, sheltered himself in the alley in order to avoid the awkward situation. At that moment, the whole story of the test paper incident was finally revealed, which had been a mystery to me for over twenty years. To an autistic person, people can seem like strangers, and they must prepare their hearts or make a firm resolution before facing an unfamiliar situation. Even their own family members can cause unbearable stress, not to mention outsiders. Then, more serious problems can be caused by things or situations, as exemplified by the test paper. Most people feel stress in new situations, but in the case of Hyeonnam, it took at least a year for her to adjust to a classroom and to stop having diarrhea. Things can also be triggers sometimes. When the most technophobic person is faced with a new machine, or when an exceptionally timid person sits behind the steering wheel for the first time, machines are not mere objects but the cause of fear. Yet, Hyeonnam was afraid of a test paper. Test papers don’t go into reverse if touched the wrong way, nor do they delete the manuscript you wrote all night long the moment you click the wrong button. Yet, she thought that she couldn’t move the test paper, just like she couldn’t move other people as she pleased, and that she should move herself instead. Everything was like the test paper, to her.
Shy as she was, Hyeonnam didn’t come back home one night toward the end of the last semester. I called her parents in Seoul to see if she’d gone to their place, but she wasn’t there. After four days, she came home nonchalantly, as if she’d left home that morning.
“Hey!” I shouted in anger. Her calmness triggered me after being worried about her for the past few days.
“What’s wrong?”
I would’ve smacked her on the back if she’d been my daughter. We used to share a self-deprecating joke with each other that our faces were our weapons whenever we heard people speak ill of classmates just because they were good-looking. Still, she’d been missing for three days without any notice, and dared to ask back, “What?”
“Where have you been? You didn’t even tell me!”
She answered in a thin voice, taking off her dark blue cotton jacket and crawling into bed.
“The National Security Agency.”
“Where?”
Her tone was so matter-of-fact that it sounded like she’d been to a friend’s house whose name was National Security. It took a few moments for me to realize what she had just said, and I was even more shocked by the fact that someone like her had done something to be detained by that kind of agency.
“What for?”
“They were looking for our senior, Gihun. . .”
He was a senior student in the same department, allegedly wanted for his union activities.
“Why’d they ask you about him?”
“I was in his study group. . . A long time ago. . .”
Startled by her answer, I pulled the blanket off her in haste. Back then, detainees at the National Security Agency usually weren’t released uninjured. I checked her forearms and back, but her body looked perfectly clean.
“Are you okay?”
“I didn’t know anything anyway. . .”
“Were you in his study group? You of all people?”
“He insisted so much. I went there about three times, and just sat there without saying anything, and then he didn’t call me again. . .”
In those days, everyone and their mother participated in the student movement, but there were also people like her who was accidentally mistaken for an activist for such an absurd reason.
“Did they just believe you and let you go?”
In fact, what else could they do but believe her? In addition to her camouflaging secret, she also had a skill in making others believe her completely. Her tricks weren’t that special; those who looked at her face couldn’t help but believe her in the end. She nodded casually.
“I told them that I had no money to pay the fare, and they gave me a ride home. They told me over and over not to make friends with bad people in the future. . .”
I burst out laughing. I felt like I could understand the confusion of the agent who’d interrogated her. One of her various nicknames was Bang Beobeo. It came from her habit of gawking and stuttering in a very difficult situation. Those who saw her only in this situation regarded her as a simpleton. She must’ve been gawking and stuttering at the National Security Agency, too. They must have sighed heavily, regretting that they’d arrested such a kid in vain. Thus, they just let her go. In those days, she was probably the first to be detained by the National Security Agency for three days and four nights, and treated with such kind consideration when she left the premises. Both the dictatorial government and the National Security Agency couldn’t do anything to her. The activist group that recruited her also couldn’t change anything about her. She was barely noticeable, but turned out to be as strong as a martial arts master if one judged the strength of human beings by their changelessness.
Our college life came to an end with the National Security Agency incident. I didn’t search in earnest for a job to become a writer, and she didn’t, either, since there was nothing she wanted to do. Then I started working for the publishing team of a social movement organization and got her involved, suggesting that she should keep up with the changing times, which was silly of me in retrospect. She hesitated without giving an answer. I didn’t understand that her hesitation was a refusal, and made my suggestion stronger. To my shame, it actually wasn’t a suggestion. Rather, I was criticizing and blaming her as an intellectual for living a life that avoided the troubles of our times. And intellectuals don’t know jack about it. For reference, I voluntarily withdrew from the organization immediately before its dissolution that resulted not only from government repression, but also from radicalism and many other organizational limitations which can’t be revealed here. Her insight was always better than mine. Without realizing it, I spoke to her impudently and passionately all day long until she grew weary and finally gave in.
“Well, if you insist. . .”
She nodded unwillingly. I mistook this for agreement or sympathy. I realized much later that she rarely said no. A refusal would take considerable energy, and there was nothing so hideous that she had to refuse by exerting so much energy. In short, there was nothing she earnestly strived after nor anything she’d rather die than do. Life has taught me a lesson about this. If you’re earnestly striving after something, it also means that you hate to do something else to death. Ironically, it was this aspect of her personality that made her stay in the world one way or another, although she had no intention of getting involved in it.
Hyeonnam met her husband in this organization. He was also her first boyfriend. That didn’t surprise me. Having a relationship was too much for her, afraid as she was of all things unfamiliar. At the beginning of any relationship, a lover is only a stranger, too. It would take a few years for her to feel closer to a stranger. Most men wouldn’t wait that long, and usually didn’t even notice her. On the contrary, this man noticed her very quickly, and followed her day and night. He did it over a very long period of time to let her grow familiar with him. Six years later, she told me that she would marry him, but I vehemently opposed it.
“You’ll starve to death. At least one of you has to earn a living.”
I knew him well. I even liked him. He was, however, too similar to her. He was way too poor, just like her. Furthermore, he was a blue-collar worker.
“We’ll take care of ourselves. . .”
It was the firmest expression I’d ever heard from her. I still believe that her firmness came from the great power of love.
She married a man most similar to her, and had two sons similar to her, eventually forming a family that passes by unnoticed in the world. I’d like to describe the everyday life of this family about ten years ago which isn’t much different even today. I’d appreciate it if readers could understand my inevitable decision to give up the novelistic structure and to make a statement this way. Nothing changes in this family’s life except for the fact that they grow older every year. Thus, I cannot but catch a certain moment in their life on a certain day, which is just like any other day, and show it as it is to readers.
Anyway, late one night, her husband is reading Marx’s Capital in the living room of their 600 square-foot apartment. He reads it for no particular purpose. Having graduated from a decent university, he became a blue-collar worker to participate in the labor movement, but eventually stopped being an activist to become an ordinary worker, doing his best to make ends meet. I haven’t asked him why he still reads Capital. I can only vaguely guess. He has been disappointed with something, but still cannot give up the dream that is already in his heart. In this, he’s different from Hyeonnam. It’s very fortunate for her family. Those who cannot give up their dreams, even though they know they’re unachievable, are hard workers. The same was true of my parents. Thus, he works hard to earn money. His annual income is 30 million won. He reads Capital every night, like reading the Bible, which is the only remaining evidence that he’s a college graduate, that is, an intellectual of his times.
Around that time, Hyeonnam and I have a drink at a covered street stall in the neighborhood. We go about once a week. Every time we eat there, she receives calls from home. Her ten-year-old and seven-year-old sons take turns calling her. To think that Hyeonnam could have sex before marriage. She was carrying her eldest son at the time of her wedding. Such is the exquisiteness of human life. What’s more, it’s also the beauty of history. Greedy people are not the only survivors. Autistic people also survive in the world, hiding themselves and silently blending into others or into an era, like Hyeonnam, and secretly staying alive to preserve their primordial genetic structure. Maybe owing to them, this greedy world can go on without exploding.
Anyway, her two sons call her every five minutes to ask her the same question.
“Can I play on the computer for just five more minutes?”
“No, you can’t.”
I feel so frustrated that I take her phone to talk to them.
“Hey! You can play. Your Mom will be home in about an hour.”
Even after I tell them what to do, they’ll call her again in five minutes without fail. Whether their mother is watching or not, there’s no way for them to do what is forbidden without her permission. Their honesty is incredible. If I were them, I’d play on the computer, and simultaneously call my mother to tell her to come home right away, blaming her for coming home so late. That way, I could pretend to be waiting for her while at the same time play computer games behind her back without being anxious. All the members of her family, including her two sons, are awfully honest. That much honesty may well be described as such. Their honesty is beyond an acceptable level.
Their apartment was once infested with flies, and Hyeonnam devised a clever solution. The deal was ten seconds of playing computer games per fly. They killed flies with flyswatters all day long, counting the number of dead flies. If they got confused by the time they caught the thirteenth one, they would count from ten again. It was frustrating enough to do that all day long only to spend a few more minutes on the computer, and on top of that, they were recounting from ten, which made me worry whether they’d be able to make a living in a world like this. Unlike before, however, I didn’t say anything. I’d worried that Hyeonnam and her husband might starve to death, but they even had children and were still alive and well. These honest children would also survive one way or another. After all, they didn’t have any unattainable dreams. The eldest son’s dream was to become a Yakult lady.
“You’ll never be able to become a Yakult lady.”
“Why not?”
“You’re a boy.”
After a moment of distress, the boy gave an answer.
“Then, a Yakult gentleman.”
He also knew that he needed a job to make a living. Yet, he was afraid that he’d have to get a job working with strangers in an unfamiliar world. A Yakult lady, however, stayed in the background. She delivered Yakult products through delivery slots, and that was it. He didn’t give up his dream of becoming a Yakult lady even after he went to middle school.
Later on the same day, the eldest son couldn’t fall asleep in his room. He was afraid of having to go to school the next day, and also afraid of having to join the military someday. After he’d learned the fact that all South Korean men are drafted into the military, he could hardly get to sleep at night, and if he fell asleep, he had dreams about being forced to join the army. In his dreams, he was taken away from home to an unfamiliar world filled with strangers. Having a nightmare every night, he became afraid of falling asleep. The second son, who was only seven years old, couldn’t get to sleep, either, tossing and turning in bed beside his elder brother. He didn’t know what the military was, but being a boy, he knew that he’d be also drafted someday, and his elder brother’s terror got into him, too.
Hyeonnam could hardly get to sleep, either, worrying about doing lunch duty at her sons’ school the next day. The school was full of unfamiliar kids. (I’d appreciate it if readers could understand her fear. When it came to kids, she was scared of unfamiliar kids as much as unfamiliar grownups.) In addition, she had to face other parents and teachers. Being near them was frightening enough, not to mention facing them. Still, mothers in general were great. Hyeonnam had changed, too. If it had been her own problem, she would have avoided the situation by making herself almost invisible, but as a mother, she was determined to face them anyhow. As to how she did that, I’d better leave it to readers’ imagination. Her husband fell asleep in the living room, with his head resting on Capital. He was no less sensitive than the other members of his family. His sleep was the result of hard manual labor.
After a few more years, they were living in a country house in Yongin. In the end, the family moved there because they transferred their sons, who had trouble adapting to school, to an alternative school. It was a small, combined elementary and middle school with less than thirty students. Located in the mountains, the school didn’t provide school buses, and since there was no suitable house they could rent nearby, Hyeonnam hastily took driving lessons just before they moved. The autistic family’s challenge to driving was so turbulent that I once considered writing a book about it. Whenever she made a right turn at the driving school, her car got stuck in a flowerbed. She was so nervous that the driving instructor gave a deep sigh instead of getting angry. She’d learned from all the instructors of the driving school one by one before she got her driver’s license. A week after her move to the country house, I called her up.
“Did you go shopping?”
“Not yet. . .
“Why not?”
“I’m afraid of driving. . .”
“What have you been eating, then?”
“Just. . . this and that. . .”
They were eating “this and that,” as if the Korean War were still going on. I rushed to Yongin immediately. She got into my car to go to the market, making endless exclamations.
“You’re so great.”
“What do you mean?”
“How can you look backward?”
When she was behind the steering wheel she could only look forward. She couldn’t change lanes. When she tried, the whole family screamed in the car, looking backward and to the side. “Now! Now! No!”
“You’re so great.”
It was the nicest compliment that she’d ever paid me. And just because I could look in my rear-view mirror and side mirrors. I was perplexed, not knowing whether I should be angry or pleased. When I won an annual spring literary contest, or when I received such-and-such literary award, she didn’t care at all, showing neither admiration nor acknowledgement. Aside from that, she rebuked me on every occasion. Each time I published a collection of short stories, she called me about two months later.
“You wrote again.”
What did she mean? I kept silent wondering if she were reprimanding me, and then, her next words sounded ridiculous and heartless.
“You keep writing on and on.”
She was reprimanding me, indeed. The problem was that this made me reflect on myself. I must have been influenced by her and her family. I kept silent as I did, and then, she threw a stronger punch.
“If you really want to write, write in private. Then throw it away.”
She was telling me not to waste resources and not to cause trouble to society for trivial things. Holy crap! I might not have looked it, but I was not a prolific writer! I was on the verge of flaring up in anger, but suddenly felt ashamed of myself. Yes, I could have done what she said, and then, why did I insist on publishing it somewhere to be read by someone?
Having screwed me over like this, she now told me I was great. She meant that I was great because I could look in the rear-view mirror. Was she kidding me? Anyway, her driving experience ended after a year. I gave her my Daewoo Lanos that I’d bought for 3 million won and driven for three years, and she had many bitter experiences with the car for a year until it met its fate. Her insurance premium was 1,870,000 won at the time. For reference, while the car was in my ownership, my insurance premium was less than 400,000 won. I’ll leave it to the readers’ imagination what kind of accidents might have happened. Still, there was nothing fatal. Meaning that no one was hurt. The reason being that she never drove faster than fifty kilometers per hour.
But as I itch to talk about her numerous accidents, I’d like to bring only one of them to light. Her car was approaching the entrance of a parking lot. The driveway was wide enough to be a two-lane road but without any marked lanes, unfortunately. She couldn’t figure out where to go without visible lanes. Trembling in fear, she made a right turn. There was a food stall covered with transparent vinyl on the left side of the entrance. While she was trying to make a right turn on the broad and wide road, her car pulled to the left and hit the stall. She was driving five kilometers per hour. There was almost no impact, of course. Customers in the stall were wondering what had just happened, drinking and watching the incident. She hit the plastic curtain on one side of the stall, and in surprise, backed up her car without turning the steering wheel. Then, she drove forward. She hit the stall again. Even more confused, she backed up straight again. Then, she drove forward again. She hit the same spot three times. Unable to bear the sight of her driving, a meddlesome customer jumped out.
“Ma’am! Get out of the car!”
That day, thanks to the drunk customer, she safely entered the parking lot. Luckily, there was no claim for damages because she’d only hit the stall’s plastic curtain. We made little jokes about it: “Ms. Bang is scarier than Ms. Kim.”1 “Ms. Kim is running, but Ms. Bang is flying above her.”2
Living in a remote area in Yongin, the family seemed to be so helpless that I visited them often. One Saturday, her sons welcomed me by jumping up and down in joy. Only when I visited the family, they could enjoy a barbecue party, namely the taste of country life. Hyeonnam washed home-grown vegetables, while her husband went out into the backyard, saying that he would be the one to fire up the grill that day and call us when ready. The children had made great efforts to grow those vegetables. At first, the backyard was not an ideal place to grow vegetables because there were too many stones. They made a deal: ten seconds of computer games per stone. They picked up hundreds of stones, counting them as usual. If they got confused by the time they picked up the twenty-sixth one, they recounted from twenty, of course.
We finished all preparations and waited for quite a while, but her husband didn’t call for us. I got impatient and went outside. In his navy-blue company uniform, he was tearing up a magazine page by page and throwing the pieces onto the grill. I watched what he was doing. Many pieces of charcoal were placed in a row at the bottom of the grill so that none of them overlapped with one another in a truly aesthetic way, and he was tossing flaming pieces of paper onto them. I came close to shouting, “Are you a nitwit? Flames naturally burn upward!” I restrained myself with clenched teeth, since I couldn’t dare call him names as I wouldn’t even dare to do so to Hyeonnam that. Silently, I put charcoal starters at the bottom, and then placed charcoal on them to light the grill.
“Wow! There’s nothing Ms. Jeong can’t do!”
The novelist Jeong was able to become the savior of the family for such a thing. That kind of compliment always made me feel uncomfortable. My heart was saying, “Who are they?” Behind this question lie my true feelings about them. They admire petty skills that most people learn for living convenience. The family, however, only admires them without bothering to learn them. They’re not desperate enough to make an effort to learn. If I weren’t with them, they’d simply not have a barbecue. Regarding cars, they would simply not drive at all. Thus, it feels like there is a hidden meaning behind their admiration, as if they were saying, “You have so many unnecessary skills.” From the viewpoint of the family, therefore, I am a person who keeps writing banal novels for no good reason and who has many petty skills for no good reason. They have a point.
Of all the technologies developed since the beginning of modern times, only two things have attracted the genuine admiration of the family. One is the flush toilet, and the other is the computer, or the internet to be more exact. The former needs no explanation, while the latter has become the best protection for the family. Ever since Hyeonnam discovered a whole new world in online shopping, she has purchased everything online. She doesn’t have to go to crowded shopping malls in this new world. Frankly, it drives me nuts to see her in a shopping mall. She loses her mind in front of a myriad of products. Presumably, it is similar to standing in front of millions of people. Usually, she cannot buy what she wants, and comes back empty-handed. The reason is that she doesn’t know what to choose out of so many products. A local grocery store equipped with basic necessity goods will suit her needs much better than a large superstore.
Anyway, after the barbecue party, we were doing the dishes, and her husband was reading Capital while the kids were looking at the new Nike sneakers that I gave them as gifts. They continued looking at them for hours. They didn’t wear them, though. They kept the brand-new sneakers intact in the shoe cabinet, and would get familiar with them slowly as time passed. In the meantime, they’d keep wearing cheap sneakers bought online, which were already small for them and even had holes. I knew that they’d do that, and had bought sneakers two-sizes bigger than their actual size.
The shoe cabinet of the family was quite a sight. A lot of worn-out shoes were piled up there, shoes that hadn’t been worn for a long time. They couldn’t throw away those old familiar shoes which had become almost part of them. The absence of desire for novelty is connected with the attachment to familiarity. I get rid of old things very rationally, as soon as they are no longer needed. To me, a new thing means something that I don’t know and also need to discover. As it turns out, there are so many things that I want to become, to have and to do, and therefore, I’m a capitalist human being full of desires. Me, the partisans’ daughter.
Once, a student of mine demanded her boyfriend present her with a designer handbag in celebration of their one thousand day anniversary. He flatly refused, saying that a luxury handbag was not for a student, and then, her next remark was on everyone’s lips in the creative writing department for quite a while.
“Even the partisans’ daughter has a Chanel! Why not me?”
An older female colleague had given me the Chanel for free, since she was fed up with it. Yet, I secretly felt guilty. I like luxury goods. I just don’t have enough money, and just can’t buy them because it’s difficult and bothersome to save money to buy them. If I were rich, I’d buy any amount of Hermès, Manolo Blahnik and whatnot. Someone once criticized me for wearing high heels, saying that perhaps the partisans’ daughter had become a turncoat.
“Capitalism is sustainable as long as capital is accumulated. I never accumulate it. Isn’t this a true anti-capitalist life?”
Thus, I refuted the ridiculous criticism with a ridiculous sophistic argument. I was ashamed of my inner desires that were unworthy of the partisans’ daughter, but I still didn’t want to give in to the absurd criticism.
The family members also have an eye for beautiful things and good machines. Whenever Hyeonnam finds something nice, her reaction is always the same.
“It’s nice. Chomp, chomp.”
She has turned the onomatopoeic sound of “chomp, chomp” into a word of her own, which implies an immediate renunciation that it is nice, but not hers. It means that she likes it, but doesn’t want to spend her energy on accepting it as hers and giving up the attachment to the previous one. They’re hungry, but don’t want to eat; they like nice things, but don’t want to have them. This is the life pattern of the family. They manage to live a life that is not uncomfortable on a worker’s income.
Now, her husband’s annual income is about 35 million won. The couple’s parents are as poor as a church mouse, and they give a monthly allowance of 500,000 won each to both families to supplement their parents’ living expenses. Their eldest son is in high school, and the second son in middle school. They don’t own a house, and the long-term rental deposit for their house increases every two years. Still, they manage to scrape by. I’m sure that there are people in worse economic condition than theirs in this country. What matters is not the economic status but the self-sufficient status of the family. They do not have difficulty in the status quo. Their only hope is to live as they are without being bothered by anyone. The eldest son is so stressed out by school life that he is 172 centimeters tall but weighs only 46 kilograms, suffering from chronic indigestion and diarrhea, just like his mother. For health reasons, he doesn’t even think of going to a cram school, far from making his parents worry about paying for his extracurricular lessons. It’ll be okay if he goes to whatever college accepts him, and it will be also all right if he does not go to college. Their priority is his survival. The second son is no different from the eldest, except for the fact that he’s still young. What about expensive imported cars? Fearful of driving, they cannot drive any car, imported or not. What about traveling abroad? They may well try if they travel with a friend like me, who’s very close to them and has many petty skills, but it’s highly likely that they’ll give up after dwelling on it for two or three months, and they would not dare to dream of it on their own. Their only hobby is reading books, and they can borrow a lot of them from the library. They want to own a house because they’re tired of moving, but don’t dream of it, either, since their income is nowhere near enough to buy one. They hate big houses because cleaning is tedious, and also hate big gardens because they’re difficult to tend. A 700 square-foot apartment is good enough for them. These days, every day is sunny for Hyeonnam, apart from a little suffering that she inevitably has to interact with the world.
One day, when we were about forty-three or forty-four years old, Hyeonnam was getting a cup of coffee with home-ground beans, and talked to me in a languid voice.
“It’s so good.”
“What is?”
“I used to wonder if I could live like others.”
“Me, too.” (I agreed with her in the sense that I also wondered if she could do it, of course.)
“But now, I drink freshly brewed coffee, live in an apartment that is warm, have a husband that gets paid every month and also have a duck down parka. . .”
So-called duck down parkas first came to the market during my college years. I didn’t know how much they cost. I only remember that they were too expensive for me to even think about buying one. Shivering with cold in cotton jackets, Hyeonnam and I felt envious of other friends in duck down parkas. Today, goose down parkas are in fashion instead, but it doesn’t matter. Duck down is warm enough for me. I don’t know what Canada Goose is, which allegedly costs way over one million won per jacket. If Hyeonnam knew about it, she would surely just pass by, saying, “It’s nice. Chomp, chomp.”
Today, as usual, she’ll drink coffee and read a book at home, and whenever a delivery person rings the doorbell, she’ll nervously stutter and receive her package. Her husband will work all day for his family, come home to have simple dinner and read Capital. Their grown-up sons now want to become freelance programmers who are deemed better than Yakult ladies, and will pester their mother for five more minutes on the computer. Presumably, they won’t be much different twenty years from now.
Maybe there are some readers who think that they’d rather die than live such a life, frustrated and driven almost insane by the story of this family, just as I did when I was young. To those readers, I’d like to say that suicide is a kind of desire, too. A frustrated desire causes a suicidal impulse. The family members have no desire, and therefore, feel no suicidal impulse. I’d like to ask readers to focus on this point.
I’ve seen Hyeonnam’s life for over thirty years. She’s my dearest friend, but I have to confess that she frustrated me sometimes, and baffled me at other times. There were times when I seriously agonized over what meaning such a life had. I could have easily concluded that the life of her family had resulted from social maladaptation. Whenever this idea occurred to me, however, something troubled my mind. It wasn’t just because her words made me feel somehow uncomfortable by hitting the nail on the head: “Do you really have to write?” “Write it, and throw it away!” It’s not clear which came first, whether it was the insight to objectively see my inner desires, which I gained as I grew old, or the lessons that I learned from her life. Whichever it might be, as soon as I identified my desires, I finally realized the truth. The autistic family is the true enemy of capitalism.
How can I define capitalism in a word? I’m not an economist, just a writer. Hence, I will follow the definition that common sense tells us. Driven by boundless human desires, capitalism is expanding like a monster in the system of reproduction on an enlarged scale based on mass production and mass consumption. People voluntarily throw themselves into unlimited competition for a slightly more convenient life—for a bigger refrigerator, a faster car and a new smartphone whose functions are hard to grasp. Socialism, the traditional archenemy of capitalism, propagates the idea that it is better for us to share old things together than to own new ones individually. At which point, the family will probably ask a question:
“Why do we have to own these things?”
Humans can live without a bigger refrigerator, a faster car or a brand-new smartphone. The family members deny desires, that is, the driving force of capitalism. Without gasoline, cars cannot move and boilers will not operate. Socialism suggests that we should keep our desires in check with our rationality in order to enjoy equal rights together. More fundamentally, this family turns off the power of capitalism by the absence of desires themselves. There is no stronger enemy of capitalism than this family. May these desireless humans be prolific!
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, they do not perceive themselves to be the enemies of capitalism, nor do they want to be. The desire to do something is absent. Ah! There exists only one desire. It is the desire to stay still as they are. This family can be the enemy of capitalism due to the absence of desire, but cannot be an actual threat to capitalism due to the absence of desire. I cannot tell whether I should be sad or glad. Nonetheless, I think of them when I feel tired of unlimited competition, or when I get knocked down by my own desires. One may live the same way as they do. Sometimes, I take comfort in the very fact that they exist in the same world as I do. Hence, I would like to recommend readers to recall Hyeonnam and her family when your kids pester you to pay for their language training abroad for their future careers, when you are passed over for promotion by a younger colleague, when your wife compares you with her friend’s smart husband or when you feel like your life sucks for such-and-such reason. If you ponder over the difference between our frantic lives in the midst of the formidable waves of capitalism and the ordinary life of this family, you will find out that the gap between the two is smaller than expected, feeling strangely relieved and consoled. If you can take small comfort in it, I’d like to ask you to do as follows: on your way home from work on the subway, if you run into members of an autistic family, looking like war refugees and lowering their heads toward their antiquated cell phones for fear of facing strangers, please maintain a distance, neither casting uneasy glances nor giving an encouraging look, so that they can carry on incognito. They’re commas in the miserable life of humankind that can never stop running forward with burning desires, and therefore, deserve to be left alone by themselves to rest.
by Jeong Ji A
Martian Child
I was the only survivor of the twelve lab animals sent to Mars.
We were launched into the future, frozen at -270° C in liquid helium.
While my shipmates changed course for the afterlife as they dreamt, I continued to faithfully send my healthy vital signs back to Earth. My duty was hibernating inside this pulseless, frozen body. And as I crossed the solar system, Mars metamorphized into red bugs, red clothes, red clouds, as it danced about in my subconscious. I was a bowl made of ice; only my dreams remained animated. Multiple centuries passed like a long nap.
I was discovered lying down—by only myself.
I could feel the slow pulse of a planet that was matching my heartbeat.
How long had I been like this? When had the spaceship arrived? Was I alive? Or was this the afterlife and not Mars?
As questions filled my head, my brain commanded me to close my eyes and open them again. But nothing changed. I probably wasn’t hallucinating. I squeezed my eyelids once more then peeled them apart. Centuries of time screamed out between my eyelids. I made eye contact with the spaceship’s black pupil. I could still remember the shrinking image of Earth outside the circular observation window.
Memories crossed the vast expanse of time, docking with me in the present. Soggy feed and fresh fruit. Sweet meat dripping with juice. We were the pride and jewel of our research center. I was given the royal treatment leading up to the day of the launch, like a sacrificial lamb being fattened up for the gods. We were clones, the result of years of experiments that killed countless lab animals in the name of science. We were humanity’s dream.
And humanity was our dream. My language, my intelligence, my thought patterns, my longing for home—everything about me seemed “human.” But were these things, was my longing for home, the result of natural processes? Or was it only something that had been transplanted inside me like a chip? I was born in a lab; I did not know what kind of organism I truly was.
I received tests and training all the way until the day of the launch. I never got to properly say goodbye to Earth. All I remembered of my last days on that blue planet were but a few snapshot images: people waving their hands at me; powerful vibrations at launch; the pressure on my chest and ears; the heat of the engine, which was so intense that we thought the ship had caught fire; cables floating in space.
Men drenched in conceit.
Houston.
Countdown.
Ants slowly circling the observation window.
If everything went according to plan, this wouldn’t be Earth.
If everything went according to plan, this would be somewhere on Mars.
If everything truly went according to plan, this would be the future. After all, the clock was set to five hundred years in the future.
I turned, and a harness constricted my body. I forgot they had tied me up to protect me from the impacts of takeoff and landing.
My instincts kicked in. I had been trained on how to free fall, how to move in zero gravity, how to take care of my excrement in space, how to find the button and release my harness.
Button. Where was that button?
Before I could even finish this thought, my fingers found what they were looking for.
Just because I was awake didn’t mean I was completely on. I had released my harness, but I didn’t have the courage to get up. My body wouldn’t be as awake as my mind was. Something might have been damaged in the process of being frozen and thawed; it was possible my nerves might never come back to life. The low gravity could have weakened the valves of my heart, and my vision might not be as good as it used to be. I needed to move slowly and carefully, like a fish just thawed in early spring. I inspected each body part one at a time. After all, I was the only one who could conduct this process.
Right arm. Check.
Left arm. Check.
Two legs and two knees. Check.
My sense of vision, hearing, and touch were coming back to me.
It was now time for me to lift my body and get out of this capsule. And yet, despite knowing what I had to do, I just continued to stare up at the ceiling of the spaceship.
Bark.
Bark, bark, bark, bark.
Bark, bark.
Bark.
I could hear a dog. The barking lasted too long to be a hallucination. The dog was barking clearly and in rhythm. It also sounded like only one dog. Was there an open hatch on the ship somewhere? I realized I couldn’t lay here any longer; I had to get up and check the ship. When I stood up, my vision went dark from the sudden drop in blood pressure. But I was an expert in surviving in the dark.
I breathed in and visualized the pain spreading throughout my body. As soon as I pictured the synapses and neurons reviving, the black cloud began to lift.
When I opened my eyes, there was a Siberian husky in front of me wagging its tail.
Laika.
The dog casually opened its mouth and spoke. It talked in a foreign language that I didn’t understand. When I didn’t respond, it barked once, then switched to English. “Welcome. My name is Laika.” Her English had a thick Russian accent.
“How—”
I pointed to the closed hatch behind Laika but was unable to continue speaking. I couldn’t tell which was more surprising: that a dog was talking to me, or that it had opened and closed the hatch on its own.
“You want to know how I got in here?” Laika asked, reading my mind. “There’s not a door in the entire universe I can’t open.”
Later, I learned Laika could pass through walls. And not just walls. She could pass through entire planets and stars. Not even gravity affected her. Laika was dead. When I asked her what happened, she said it was a long story. But she did tell me about the moment she was reborn and what happened after that.
“When the spaceship blew up, my body disintegrated and fell to Earth like a spritz of consecrated holy water. I’ve been wandering the cosmos ever since. But damn. Once I was dead, I realized there was no god, no heaven, nowhere for me to go.”
Something about Laika seemed familiar. An image appearing on a monitor. I knew Laika. She was one of us, the first lab animal sent to space. On October 4, 1957, the Soviets launched her into space with the Sputnik 2, making her the first living creature to leave Earth.
“I was born three centuries after that,” I said. “That makes me your successor.”
“Where are you from?”
“I was made in the US. I launched from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.”
“I’ve seen many Americans before. I think it was when I passed the wrecked spaceship around Venus. I saw an old, white-haired astronaut at the window. He was licking the walls like a crazy person. When I asked why he was doing that, he said it was because he was afraid of the moon. This to me seemed ridiculous for someone floating in space to say. He said that he’d heard people would go crazy if they went to the moon. And then just as he arrived on the moon, POP! The engineer exploded, but the machine he was operating was perfectly fine!”
“What a fascinating story.”
“Right?”
Silence fell between us for a moment. It was the talkative dog who broke the silence.
“These all seem related. A crazy astronaut, a test animal that wanders the cosmic afterlife in death, and a frozen mammal resurrected in the future.”
I realized the last one was referring to me. I crouched down, looked Laika in the eye.
“Tell me, Laika. Am I a machine?”
“No.”
“Then do I look like a human?”
“Well, you talk like a human. You walk on two legs. But you’re not one hundred percent Homo sapiens.”
“Am I dead? I mean, you’re dead, not to be rude. So does the fact that we’re talking like this mean I’m dead, too?”
“I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.”
“Where are we? Is this space? The afterlife?”
Laika stared into my confused eyes. If she were human, she would have shaken her head. But instead, she did the equivalent in dog mannerisms by turning in place twice.
“It seems like by asking where we are you’re asking who we are.”
Laika elongated her body as if she were stretching. She preoccupied herself to give me time to dwell on the profound nature of what she had just said. It took a while, but eventually I came to realize that Laika was similar to a theater actor in many ways. She was a dog with a strong ego. In fact, she seemed high on her own ego sometimes. Perhaps it was because she had wandered alone through space for such a long time, just like me. I didn’t know how to react to what she said, as though I’d just heard a bad joke.
“Do you want to see my pet fleas?” Laika said, suddenly changing the subject.
Laika showed her back to me. At first, I didn’t see them, but Laika directed me to each of her pets one by one—on the back of her neck, on her right front leg, three fingers left from the center of her back, and on top of her tail. The fleas were able to jump and stay in the air for a long time, probably because the gravity on Mars was less than on Earth. Each of the four fleas had been given the name of a former astronaut: Collins, Irwin, Schweickart, and Aldrin.
“You used to be a pet yourself,” I said to Laika. “And now look at you. Raising your own pets.”
“Do you know what the two conditions of a good lab animal are?” Laika put the fleas back in her fur, where they started sucking on her blood. “They need to be intelligent and healthy, and they can’t have a master. I ran away from home to wander the streets of Moscow. I considered myself lucky when I was taken into the lab and fed until my belly burst. But the next thing I knew, a million wires were hooked up to my body and I was being sent into space. Damn, it was just like that David Bowie song, ‘Space Oddity!’ You know rock and roll, don’t you?”
Laika started humming as she crinkled her eyes. I didn’t know rock and roll; I didn’t know what this had to do with raising fleas; and who the hell was David Bowie? And yet I nodded anyway. It was weird; I was accepting everything without any resistance, as though I were in a dream. A ghost with fleas for pets? Where did she get the fleas anyway? Had they been on Laika when she disintegrated in the atmosphere? Did they turn into cosmic particles and re-form into fleas so that they could suck on her nonexistent blood?
“We don’t know where here is. We believe we’re on Mars, but we don’t know which dimension this Mars belongs to. Don’t think about it too much.”
Laika stared lazily at the dancing fleas.
by Kim Seong Joong
A Future as Ordinary as This
1 Every time I hear someone say that the world has ended, I think of 1999, of the things that happened that year and the things that didn’t. Since elementary school, I’d always been interested in mysterious abilities and supernatural phenomena—astral projections, doppelgängers, prophetic dreams, spontaneous human combustion, levitation. While I’m sure reading articles about such fantastical topics had something to do with it (children’s magazines back then published articles like that at least once a month), the truth of the matter was that divination, fortune telling, and Dahnhak’s Brain & Body meditation were everywhere in society. Times were unpredictable and everyone was having financial troubles. The country was still in shock from the Seongsu Bridge collapse, and the IMF crisis was bringing about mass layoffs. So it was natural to look to the supernatural for reassurance. The prophecies that everyone was talking about back then were grim, although perhaps that’s more a reflection of what people were drawn to than it was a sign of the times. Case in point, Nostradamus. His most famous prophecy, that the world would end in 1999, naturally gained more and more attention as the end of the century drew nearer. And then, when it turned out the world was in fact not going to end in 1999, Nostradamus was all but forgotten—until he reappeared in 2012. This time, another one of his prophecies had entered the public eye: “From the calm morning, the end will come when of the dancing horse the number of circles will be nine.” Claiming that the prophecy referred to Psy’s “Gangnam Style” hitting one billion views on YouTube, people were yet again signaling Armageddon. There is perhaps no better example of the questionable symbol searching and backwards reasoning that plagues people and their prophecies than this. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that in Korean, the word for “horse” and the word for “end” are homonyms. But I’m not trying to make puns here. As a novelist, I’m less interested in the content of prophecies than the fact that they must be formulated with language. Even if some prophet sees the future in a vision, they have no choice but to express that vision in their own vocabulary, which might be limited by their intellect. That wouldn’t be the case if they could physically show people their vision, but as long as the prophecy is being transmitted via language, the true meaning can never be completely conveyed. Translation only makes matters worse, inevitably leading to further distortions. In the end, there are a million opportunities for form to obscure the meaning of a prophecy. In that sense, the “sleeping prophet” Edgar Cayce is unique. It is said that Cayce would enter a trance as though he were sleeping, lying down with his eyes closed. He would then deliver his prophecies as if he were reading a book placed in his mind’s eye. This might be the reason why his prophecies are not hard to understand. He left behind a legacy of prophecies about great movements of land and water; among these was the prediction that the western coast of the United States and the Japanese archipelago would eventually be consumed by the sea. But you don’t need to enter a trance to know this. Just open any book on geology. The only difference between him and us is that we can only read books that everyone can see, whereas he could read books that no one else could see. The fact that prophecies are a product of form is telling. Kwon Tae-hun was a famous Korean clairvoyant. A teacher of Dahnhak, he once said that in 1999, North and South Korea would be reunited, and the civilization of white people would end, bringing about a new world paradigm led by the “yellow” race—Korea, China, India, etc. The so-called White-Yellow turning point. Because prophecies are formalized by language, they change based on one’s point of view. In other words, whereas 1999 might have seemed like Armageddon to Caucasians, to a Korean prophet that year could be interpreted as the beginning of a new epoch. Just like prophets of different personal backgrounds and intellect interpreted the year 1999 differently, we all experienced our own version of 1999. As for me, 1999 was an unforgettable year. In the summer of that year, I was on my way to meet my uncle on my mother’s side when I stopped at Kyobo Bookstore and discovered a piece of paper. As usual, I was in the religion section and looking at books with meditation or enlightenment in their titles when something that looked like a bookmark fell out from one of the books. When I opened the piece of paper, I realized it was a flyer: “Welcome! THE MOMENT in Seoul Center – The spirit medium Julia comes to Seoul this July. Come ask life’s deepest questions. The spirit will give you answers. For further information, call the number below.” The reason why I remember this so vividly is because of the girl I started dating that summer. After a semester of unrequited love, I finally confessed my feelings to her, but instead of accepting me, she made an unexpected suggestion. It was spring of my second year in college, and we were at the semester-end party; I discovered the flyer that following week. I put the flyer in my pocket, found the girl—Jimin was her name—and we left the bookstore together. In the distant future, I would come to remember that summer as the summer of the fire tragedy at Sealand, as the summer that I saw The Matrix for the first time, as the summer a spirit answered my life’s deepest question, as the summer that sparked a long and beautiful relationship with a girl. But at the time, it was just another ordinary summer, no different from any other. The publishing office my uncle worked at was located in an alley just behind the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts. I heard that a long time ago, the building was home to a famous cram school. Other than that, it was just another ordinary office situated in just another ordinary building. Walking down the epoxy coated hallway, I opened the door with the publisher’s sign hanging on it and found a small room on the right where my uncle worked. He sat at his desk with a compression sleeve on each arm, editing a manuscript as if he were some master horologist looking at a broken watch through a loupe. He told us to sit at the table in front of his desk, which we did. “How’s school these days?” he asked as he took a cup of instant coffee from a yellow plastic tray and placed it on his desk. Jimin was sitting next to me, and my uncle looked like he was trying his best not to ask what kind of relationship we had. “The semester ended last Friday.” “Already? Time sure flies. Have you made plans for summer break?” “Not really. I don’t have any special plans aside from continuing my part-time job at the library.” “Did you say you two are classmates? I’m sorry, I forgot your name. Oh right, Jimin. Do you have any summer plans?” I was nervous that she might say something like, “Your nephew and I are planning to do something together.” But thankfully, Jimin gave an ordinary answer. Unlike when she and I were alone, Jimin didn’t like to reveal herself in front of others. “Enjoy it while it lasts. You can have all the money in the world, but nothing will buy you the freedom of a college vacation. Even better if you can spend it with someone in love. Speaking of which, you two seem like—” I cut my uncle off. I didn’t like revealing myself in front of people either, even if they knew all about me. “My friend had a question that I thought you might be able to answer,” I said. “That’s why I brought her here.” “Well, what do you want to know?” My uncle took a sip of coffee, and so did I. The taste of that coffee still remains pungent in my mind, as though I’d sipped it only yesterday. With liquid coffee beans in my mouth, I motioned with my head toward Jimin. “Joon told me you’ve held, if not read, every book that has been published in Korea since Liberation. I was wondering if you knew about a book I’m looking for.” “What’s the title?” “Ash and Dust by Ji Young-han.” My uncle stirred his coffee with a teaspoon. It was already well mixed, so there was no need to stir it any further. The superfluous gesture meant my uncle—a man still in his forties whose glasses looked like thick white eggshells when viewed from the side, a man who’d been a poor bookworm his entire life, who, despite being a famously meticulous copy editor, had seen his usefulness disappear along with the twentieth century because of the popularization of internet searches—was searching his vast memory for an answer. “The one that won first place in the category of fiction for Modern Woman’s inaugural writing competition in 1974? Or was it 1975? I can’t remember.” “I think that’s the one. I heard that she became a star overnight because she won that competition.” “Then that must be the one. Why are you interested in that book?” “Her mother wrote it,” I said. “But she can’t read it. She doesn’t have a copy at her home, and she can’t find it at the library.” My uncle nodded in a knowing manner. “I’m not surprised. The book was banned as soon as it was put into print and disappeared from bookstores.” “I never knew. None of my family told me. Why was it banned?” “Well, the main idea of the novel was that October 1972 was the end of time. Kids these days must know about October Yushin, right? After Park Chung-hee dissolved the National Assembly and gave himself emergency powers, he enacted the Yushin Constitution. Even the universities were closed. It’s impossible for such events not to seep into the literature of the time. I’ve always been interested in publishing books based on history, so I’ll go out of my way and pay a fortune just to buy them. For that one, I had to call the publisher to get a copy. I still remember the first sentence: ‘We called October 1972 the end of time.’ The censorship office probably didn’t like that sentence.” “A book could really get banned for just one sentence like that?” “When a military dictatorship bans a book, they don’t need to give a detailed explanation. The book just disappears one day. That’s what a dictatorship is, after all. We’re left figuring out the reason why the government didn’t like it ourselves. That’s why people living in a dictatorship make their own internal censorship office. People are often shocked when they finally get their hands on banned books and read them. Ash and Dust is a perfect example. You said your name was Jimin? Your mother was ahead of her time. If the book had been written now, we would have called it science fiction or fantasy because it dealt with time travel and the end of time. It was a really peculiar novel for the age, so I remember the whole plot.” When my uncle told us the plot, we couldn’t help but be surprised. In the novel, there were two lovers without a future. They realized that their time together was coming to an end. So, in that sense, the “end of time” wasn’t the end of the world but the end of their love. It was just a coincidence that it happened to take place at the same time as October Yushin. That coincidence got the book banned. Anyway, because the lovers in the novel realized that life without each other was pointless, they decided to commit suicide together. Just before they died, their lives flashed before their eyes. But the flashback wasn’t simply visual; they felt like they were reliving their whole life, as though they were experiencing a long vivid dream. The only difference was that time was running in reverse. The day they decided to kill themselves became the first day of their new life, and now when they went to sleep, they woke up not the next day but the day before. Only when they figured this out did they realize they must be getting younger by the day. “No way. I can’t believe it. It’s almost like the novel predicted the future,” I said. “Predicted what future?” Before I could say anything, Jimin spoke up. “Joon and I were planning to commit suicide together this summer vacation.” My uncle and I both stared at Jimin. 2 When I finally read the book for myself, it was in autumn of 2019, twenty years after that day in Gwanghwamun. Perhaps influenced by my uncle, I had transformed myself from a student who just liked reading books to a serious novelist over the course of those twenty years. I came to know many editors from various publishing houses, and I would receive books from them that they’d edited. Among them was the collection of essays, Free Heart. The book started in a bold manner with the line: “I’m an enlightened person.” Although the author Kim Won introduced himself as a farmer, he originally had managed an investment consulting firm just a few years prior to the book’s publication. But, when he turned fifty, he realized there was something he absolutely had to do. He left the company and retired to the mountains in Gyeongsang-do province where he had no family or friends. The thing he absolutely had to do was achieve enlightenment; when I entered my forties, I was surprised to find out that there were a lot of people around me who wanted to achieve enlightenment. I guess it’s because life is hard and most people realize they’re too old to start something new. Anyway, life in the countryside wasn’t as easy as he thought, and he spent three years without any free time to look at the books he’d brought with him. Then one day after finally managing to get settled in his village, he finally had time to look at some of his books. He opened some of the Buddhist scriptures and writings of the sages he’d brought with him, and when he realized he understood everything he was reading, he knew he had already reached enlightenment. Free Heart’s introduction went like this: People say that life is a sea of hardship, but the essence of our existence is happiness. Life is in fact a sea of happiness. But waves emerge on the sea to hide its true appearance. Waves may originate from the sea, but they are not the sea itself, and they eventually hide its true nature. Likewise, language comes from reality, but it is not reality itself; it obscures it. We have all experienced the unease that appears the moment we say to ourselves, “I’m truly happy.” But why? We say we’re happy because we’re happy, right? So why would we feel uneasy? The reason is because the word “happiness” isn’t happiness itself; it is nothing more than language, a substitute for the real thing. The meaning of language can change immensely depending on how we express it. Humans create their identity through the stories they tell. And stories are formulated through language. Therefore, a person’s identity will change depending on how that identity is formulated in words. In this way, our identity is an illusion. But even this requires language to express it. This only furthers the illusion. This is why life is so painful. Even if we gain a million insights, they are nothing but an illusion of language. This last section pierced my heart. This is why life is so painful. Even if we gain a million insights, they are nothing but an illusion of language. Now that I think about it, the summer of 2019, which I’d spent engrossed in Free Heart, was the last summer before COVID-19. While I read the book, I became interested in the author, and I would often visit Kim Won’s Facebook page, which I found linked to Heo Jinho’s account, the editor who’d sent me the book. For a person who wrote a book about personal enlightenment, he was surprisingly interested in politics and often posted his opinions on current issues on his Facebook wall. The postings were a bit inflammatory, so much so that I wondered if he wasn’t doing it on purpose to incite reactions in the comments. And then I looked at his other postings. Among them was a picture of an old book. The title was printed in jagged font: Ash and Dust. When I clicked on it, I was confronted by a post that recounted how Kim Won came across the book. One summer twenty years ago, Kim Won, who was a graduate student at the time, was waiting at Gohan Station in Gangwon-do province for a train to Cheongnyangni. There was an hour left before the departure time, and the sun was just beginning to set over the mountains. Normally, he would use the time to eat dinner at one of the restaurants in front of the station, but that day, he decided to venture into an alley he’d never been to before. He passed restaurants, hardware shops, and clothes stores until he discovered a used bookstore at the end of the street. The store didn’t seem as if it received many customers. When Won entered and picked up a book, the owner of the shop, who looked to be about Won’s age, gave him barely more than a perfunctory nod. Won idled away his time by pulling random books off the shelf and reading them under the dim light of the bookstore. But no matter what book he picked out, he couldn’t focus on anything he was reading. There was this fire raging up from deep inside his heart, a fire that threatened to ignite his entire body. At the time, he had been into casinos. He only played games with 50/50 odds. And he had a rule to only join a game when he’d seen one side win five times in a row. He’d enter the game and bet on the losing side. Why? Well, the odds that a coin will turn up heads six times in a row is one in sixty-four, or about 1.5 percent. Conversely, the chances of the opposite happening (not getting heads six times in a row), is 98.5 percent. But in gambling, anything is possible and sometimes, even 98.5 to 1.5 odds will end up losing you money. In fact, it happens quite often. But for Won as a graduate student, that was fine. Because next time, all he had to do was stick to his guns and double his bet. After all, the chances that a coin won’t turn up heads seven times in a row is more than ninety-nine percent. And yet, it’s still possible to lose. That’s gambling for you. But it’s fine. All you need to do is keep at and double your bet one more time. There’s no way you can lose this time. There are a lot of factors at work at the casino, but this was Won’s basic strategy. That day, however, against all his expectations, he’d lost five times in a row and was down 310,000 won. He’d joined a game of dice. The rules were simple. Roll three dice. If the sum of the dice was ten or less, the result was called so. If the sum of the dice was more than ten, the result was called dae. The reason Won decided to join this particular game that day was because he had just seen the dice on the table come out so five times in a row. But after he bet dae, the dice came out so five more times, making that ten times in a row. That was when the trouble started. He had three options. He could keep betting dae, he could bet so, or he could stop. According to his own rule, the best option would have been to stop. He would need to bet at least 310,000 won to win back what he’d lost, but that was about all that he had left. The next best option was sticking to his guns and betting dae. But there was one other man who kept betting so. That man was betting with the same conviction that Won had when he’d entered the game. Because the man kept winning money every game, one by one the other people at the table started copying him. After thinking about it for a while, Won also changed and bet dae on his sixth bet. He lost all his money. On the train back to Cheongnyangni, Won read the book he’d bought from the used bookstore for 1,000 won and thought hard about what he’d done wrong. His biggest mistake was losing all his money; he didn’t even have enough left to buy himself dinner. If you want to win money at the casino, you must discern between the things you can control and the things you can’t. Although you can’t determine how much money you’ll make through gambling, you can set a limit on how much you’re willing to lose. It’s never a good idea to lose all the money you bring with you. When Won’s thoughts reached an impasse, he turned his attention to the book. The lights of the train were dim, his eyes were blurry, and his mind was a mess. Likewise, the paper was rough to the touch, the sentences alien, and the plot bizarre. And then he realized something. The past doesn’t determine the present. The future determines the present. If he kept losing, the chances of him winning on the next turn approached one hundred percent. As long as he didn’t give up on the future, he would eventually win. The only problem was he didn’t have enough money to make another bet. In the novel he read on the train, there was a couple that attempted to commit suicide together. Miraculously, they got sent backwards in time and were made to relive their lives. As they went further back in time, they realized that they were converging on the moment of their first meeting. They remembered the year, month, and day, how excited and thrilled they were to meet. As they lived their second lives in reverse, barreling toward their first meeting, they were able first to experience all the things that happened because they met. They could actively imagine their future or, as we would think of it, their past. And then they realized how imagining the best thing coming at the end changes the present. This gave the two hope: hope that they could live again; hope that when they converged at the moment of their first meeting, time would start to flow in its original direction again; hope that at the end of time, when the world looks like it’s about to end, they would be able to imagine the best future. Time continued to run in reverse until the time of their first encounter, and they were able to experience that moment again. They couldn’t believe it. They had been so surprised, thrilled, and excited to meet. As soon as they realized this, the two of them looked at each other as though they were meeting for the first time all over again. And then time started to flow in its original direction, and then their third life began. 3 After reading Kim Won’s post, I emailed Heo Jinho asking if I could borrow Kim Won’s copy of Ash and Dust. He responded that he would look into it. A few days later, I got a response saying that Kim Won didn’t need the book anymore and was willing to give it to me. Feeling bad that I was always asking him for favors like this, I wanted to at least buy Jinho a meal. I thought about where to take him when I remembered the old Korean barbeque restaurant in an alley next to Gwanghwamun. I’d gone there a couple times with my uncle. I had no idea that Jimin would tell my uncle about our plans to commit suicide together that day. Then again, it was her contradictory attitude toward life, which was at once bold and pessimistic, that drew me to her in the first place. After hearing this, my uncle just stirred his coffee with his teaspoon. “Jimin, do you have any memories of your mother?” my uncle finally asked after a long while. Jimin shook her head. “I was fascinated by your mother’s works, so I remember feeling sad when I saw on the news that she died a few years after the book was banned. There were probably lots of reasons for her death, but the banning of her book must have hurt her greatly. There’s nothing more demoralizing for an author than to have their book erased like that.” Until then, I had no idea that Jimin’s mother had distributed flyers in the middle of Jongno street criticizing the Yushin Constitution, or that she had been sent off and locked away, or that she had killed herself. “I can’t forgive my father and the rest of my family for what they did. They drove her to insanity.” “I’m not suggesting that you forgive them, but can we talk a little bit more about this? I’m almost done with work. We can talk over dinner.” Jimin nodded. She was trembling. I extended my hand and held hers. She didn’t take her hand from me. That was the beginning. Just as I had done twenty years ago that summer, I was now headed to Gwanghwamun to meet an editor in his forties. When I got off the bus, Gwanghwamun was packed with two groups of protesters, one condemning the newly appointed Minister of Justice, and the other defending him. I stopped by Kyobo Bookstore; the time on the clock was about the same as when I’d visited the store twenty years earlier. Back then, Kyobo Bookstore had a lower hanging ceiling, was less well lit, and had more variety of books. It had felt like every book printed in Korea was on the shelves of Kyobo Bookstore. I went to the religion section, just like I had all those years ago, and picked out whatever book caught my eye, but nothing fell out of the bookshelf like before. Suddenly, I wondered to myself, what was that American named Julia, who had grey hair even back then, doing now? And where were those other people, the ones who had listened to the spirit’s voice through Julia that night? The Korean barbeque place in the alley behind Sejong Center for the Performing Arts was just as I remembered it. I had another memory of the restaurant other than the one with my uncle and Jimin. I’d come here with my mother to meet my uncle. I think I was in junior high at the time. My mom and I were there to “see Seoul,” but she went back to the province the next day, and I stayed for three or four more days. We had shown up at the publishing office without warning, and my uncle, as always, was furiously stirring his coffee as he sat in front of us. Now that I think about it, that was the first time I’d gone on a train trip with my mother. Many years after that, I realized that my mother had made up her mind to divorce my father on that trip. At the time, I was too focused on the food to listen in on the conversation my uncle and mother were having. Because of this, I have no way of knowing how my uncle persuaded my mom. And yet, I have a hunch about how he did it. He probably told her the same thing he told Jimin. After eating with Jinho, he and I came out onto Gwanghwamun intersection to find the streets still bustling with protestors. “How long is it going to be like this?” I asked. “If there’s no reason for change, these scenes probably won’t change either,” Jinho answered. “Not next year, nor the year after that.” “If there’s no reason for change?” “A long time ago when I read that sentence from Wittgenstein’s book—you know the one: ‘But you do not really see the eye’—I was completely blown away by the insight. We can see whatever we want. But we can’t see the eye that we use to see. Our invisible eye decides what we see and what we don’t. In other words, we like to say that we see everything, but in reality, we only see the limits of our eyes. While editing books, I’ve come to think the same thing about writing. Every sentence of a book can only exist within the limits of the extent of the author’s thoughts. Every book is its author. In other words, you must first change the author to change the sentences inside their book.” “So, what you’re trying to say is that I have to change for these sights to change?” “That’s how you change the world in front of you. Try doing something different. Or try doing something you don’t usually do. Like learning to surf or volunteering. Or just make up your mind to do something different. Like deciding one day for no reason at all that you’re going to start loving classical music. As long as you make up your mind to live differently from how you’ve been living, no matter how small the change, the sights in front of your eyes will start to change.” Jinho’s words shocked me. 4 After meeting with Jinho, I came home and showed my wife Ash and Dust; her reaction was calmer than I had expected. She had escaped somewhat from the childhood trauma of her mother’s suicide, I guess. In fact, she was more interested in Kim Won’s losing all his money at the casino than she was in the book. With the book lying on the kitchen table, we enjoyed cold beers as we talked about that summer in 1999, when we’d met with my uncle. We filled in the holes of each other’s memories, and slowly I began to vividly remember the way I looked all those years ago, so flustered by the way Jimin told me, “I’m going to die soon. Don’t get close to me if you’re not prepared to die with me.” My uncle, who was still in his forties at the time, sat across from Jimin at the restaurant table and spoke to her: “The novel your mother wrote ends with the two lovers living out their third life. Because time in their third life flows in the same direction as their first life, it appears as if they’re living their life once again. But there’s a difference. They’re living life thinking the same way they did when they lived their second life in reverse. In other words, their whole awareness pattern changes, and they start to think that it is the events in the future, not the events of the past, that are the causes of the events in the present. What kind of things would happen if you thought like that? Jimin, let’s say that you and Joon get married in the future. If we think that the two of you sitting in front of me like this is the cause of your future marriage, how would that change us?” When I heard this, I tried telling him we weren’t dating. My uncle told me this was just a thought experiment. “And if not that,” he continued, “then what if you thought that your sitting here was a result of your mother’s unfortunate suicide in the past? What then?” “They’re both just thoughts in the end,” Jimin answered. “I wonder, is that really true? If I said that both of you are here right now because you’ll get married in the future, you’d laugh at me and tell me I’m crazy. But if I said that your mother’s unfortunate death was what caused you two to decide on committing suicide together this summer, would you still laugh at me and call me crazy? They’re both just thoughts, but there’s a clear difference.” “The past is something that I definitely experienced, but our marrying each other is just a probability.” I don’t quite remember Jimin saying this, but she says she did. “You can easily imagine the past because you’ve already experienced it, but because the future only exists in probabilities, you can’t imagine what it might be. It’s this thought that bears human tragedy. What we must remember isn’t the past, but the future.” “Remember the future? What does that mean?” “That’s what your mother said in her book. By traveling through time, the couple in the book realize there’s no such thing as time. And because time doesn’t exist, neither does the past or the future. Only the present moment exists. And yet, humans only put significance on time that has passed; they only look for the causes of the present in the past. It doesn’t matter whether time flows from the twentieth century to the twenty-first century or backwards into the nineteenth century. The regrettable thing is that even after writing such an amazing novel, your mother wasn’t able to remember the you from twenty years in the future. If in her most painful moment, she could have remembered her daughter as a mature young woman, she might have changed her mind. Forgiveness is only possible when we remember the future, not the past. I hope that by remembering the future, you can forgive your father and your family for driving your mother to despair like that.” A few days after meeting with my uncle, Jimin and I went to meet Julia and get one final opinion from the spirit-medim. It was my idea to ask Julia about our committing suicide together. I didn’t expect much when I pulled out the flyer and showed it to Jimin on our way back from the barbeque restaurant, but she agreed to the idea. A few days later, we were outside Grand Hyatt Seoul, just in front of Namsan Mountain. We met late in the evening and got on a bus; by the time we entered Sowolgil Rood, the sun had already set. It was a summer evening, so we opened the bus window. It wasn’t like we were on our way to get into trouble, but we were still a bit excited when we thought about how we were going to meet an American spirit medium. Looking out the bus window, I could see Yongsan district, the Han River, and the lights across the water that sparkled like scattered jewels. As I did this, I thought to myself that the world had never been so clear. Taxis were lined up in front of the hotel, and there were suspiciously dressed women smoking near the public payphones. We called the number on the flyer and gave them our names and where we were. They told us if we walked down the hill to the side of the hotel, they would send a person out to meet us. Holding hands, we started walking down the street. Most words disappear without a trace after you hear them, but some words are like seeds, taking root in our minds. My uncle’s hypothetical statement about Jimin and my getting married was one set of such words. After hearing them, we acted like people who really believed what he said. We missed each other when we weren’t together, and when we were together, we didn’t want to say goodbye. Every day, we embraced and touched one another. At the bus stop, at the corner table of a partitioned café, at an empty double-feature movie theatre—wherever it was, we were always in contact that summer, unable to bear a single moment of separation. If she were to kill herself, I was prepared to follow her. Jimin laughed at this statement of mine just as she had twenty years ago. “Really?” she asked. “Of course. But you remember what Julia said to us. She told us we can’t die.” “I can’t believe we went all the way up to the top of Namsan Mountain that night just to hear that.” “But those were the words of the spirit.” “There’s a possibility it wasn’t actually the words of a spirit.” “Then whose do you think they were?” Jimin answered by reminding me of something else from that night. After we walked down that hill for a while, we saw a man waving to us from below. We followed him to a two-story, stand-alone house with a large front yard. He said the house was the Korean branch of THE MOMENT. Originally it had been the residence of an American who’d worked at the Seoul branch of a foreign bank, but he’d agreed to only use the second floor for himself and let THE MOMENT use the entire first floor. Seeing how much this man knew about the place, Jimin thought he must work for THE MOMENT, but like Jimin and me, he was just another person who had come here to get an answer from the spirit after seeing the flyer. “Remember that story you told me about Kim Won? In a game in which you can only pick one of two choices, the more you lose, the closer your chance of winning on the next turn converges to one hundred percent. That man said a similar thing. He looked at us with a look of regret on his face and said, ‘The people in the house right now are all people for whom nothing is going right. The two of you both look like college students. I don’t know how the two of you got here, but there’s this major league pitcher who’s quoted as saying, You can learn a little bit from winning and everything from losing. A life in which you only lose isn’t a bad life. As long as you don’t change your choice in the middle.’ ” “He said that?” I asked, not remembering this part. “The man said one other thing. He said it was a quote from Paul Valéry. ‘We enter the future backwards.’ The man said he was a graduate student, too. For all we know, he might have been Kim Won. Anyway, when we entered the room, the people asking Julia questions really were all failures. But do you remember? What the spirit that entered Julia’s body referred to itself as?” “No.” “It said it wasn’t a spirit. That was just what they called themselves. It said they were from the future, a collective consciousness without physical form.” “Right, right. I remember now. The spirit said it wasn’t a spirit. It wanted us to call it an ‘integrated mind’ from the future.” “It claimed that some mysterious being, neither ghost nor spirit, had entered Julia’s body. I almost believed this, but then I realized it might not be true.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Do you remember what we asked the spirit? We asked two questions. Will the world end? This was your question. And is there a reason for me to keep living? That was my question. And this is what the spirit told us. The world will not end. And the two of you will get married. You can’t die.” “I’ll never forget that moment.” “Did you believe the spirit?” Jimin asked me. “Of course I did.” “I didn’t.” Jimin stared at me in silence for a while. Looking into her eyes, I eventually confessed. “Actually, I didn’t believe it either. How could I believe something so surprising?” We both laughed. “Right? But after all these years, I realized it wasn’t so surprising. That prophecy was so ordinary. The world didn’t end and we didn’t die. We got married and are now drinking beer together. It’s these ordinary, unremarkable facts that Julia said to us. The only extraordinary thing was that she’d said them to us twenty years before they happened. It was the time difference that made it sound like something supernatural. My mother said to remember the future in her novel. So, why did she die? I’ve always wondered about that. But now I think I know. If only my mom could have remembered such a future as ordinary as this.” In summer of 1999, when Jimin told me at the semester-end party that she was going to die soon, I never would have imagined this future. The future I imagined as a kid was either filled with terrible things—the end of the world, cataclysmic earthquakes, a pandemic caused by a mutant virus, World War III. Or it was filled with wonderful things—space travel, magnetic levitation trains, artificial intelligence. But now I know. I know that even if we keep losing, the thing we must choose is this ordinary future. And as long as we don’t give up, the probability of that future coming true will converge to one hundred percent. In 1999, there were things that happened to me and things that didn’t happen to me. But if I hadn’t remembered the future, the things that happened to me wouldn’t have happened to me, and the things that didn’t happen to me would have happened. Translated by Sean Lin Halbert
by Kim Yeonsu
When I Start Weeping
I once formulated a number of hypotheses on life after death. I was in high school and a few of us had skipped evening study hall to hang out on the steps of the middle school next door, on the corner side where the streetlights didn’t reach. There were the usual complaints about our plight as high school students in Korea, on the meaninglessness of life, how death put an end to everything anyway. We were a mixture of Christians, Buddhists, and atheists. I was more of an agnostic. The conversation continued in a desultory way, with no one holding back their opinion.
Maybe dying is just your heart shattering to pieces, someone said in the darkness.
What does that mean? someone else asked.
After your body stops working, your feelings don’t have a place to return to, so they just scatter away. And that’s when you’re really gone. Because you’re a kind of collection of all these different feelings.
I wondered who had said that. Six or seven of us were on the steps. At first there were two of us, but others had joined in. Only their footsteps announced them in the darkness as they came and squatted down. No one bothered to say their names and there was no light to show their faces, so there was no way of knowing who was who. Then someone muttered that a teacher had spotted us. I clasped my knees to my chest, trying to disappear into the darkness as I thought about the last remark that had come out of the conversation. “Because you’re a kind of collection of all these different feelings.” Could it be that those feelings already existed before I was born, traveling around the world, from the ends of our Milky Way to the ends of the Andromeda galaxy, searching for a place to stay until they finally found my body? Some feelings might still be on their way. My body might actually be the deepest part of me. My body was my deepest self. An abyss of feelings. No, my train of thought did not go as far as that at the time; I was just thinking what a nice voice whoever made that remark had.
All of us were waiting with bated breath when the teacher’s flashlight shone over the steps where we were. Just as I thought that we were done for, the yellow light disappeared and I looked up to see the teacher walking the other way.
Didn’t they see us? someone whispered after we were sure the teacher was gone.
I thought we were busted for sure.
Me, too. How could they not see us?
We snickered and the conversation picked up again. I was hoping we’d continue where we had left off, but the subject changed to the latest scandal in the class next to ours. I didn’t really listen, hoping to hear that kid’s voice again, but they didn’t speak up after that. And so I never found out who made that remark. By the time evening study hall was almost over, most of us had scattered off and there were only two of us left again.
Aren’t you coming? my classmate asked, dusting themself off as they got up. Coming, I was about to reply, when someone else spoke.
Coming.
Is that all of us? A shadow stood up next to me. I remained squatting, watching the shadows of the two as they slipped away from the school grounds, walking side by side.
One day after my death, I feel as if I have lost an abyss.
*
Sahm’s real name was not Sahm, but that was what he asked me to call him not long after we started going out. It wasn’t a name I would have called a boyfriend and I flatly refused, telling him to stop being ridiculous. Sahm persisted, however, until I ended up calling him that a few times, to the point that I got so used to it that I forgot his real name.
Sahm and I first met at a drawing class. Sahm would come over and talk to me, mostly about whatever I was working on. You draw a lot of trees. You must like blue. Maybe you could try cutting down just a bit on the straight lines? At first I thought he was a teaching assistant. He only drew straight lines for days on end, but I assumed he was just doing it to keep his hand limber. So I tolerated his comments until I saw the teacher come up to Sahm, who was still practicing straight lines, and suggest that he was ready for spheres, at which point I realized he was a complete beginner. I quit listening meekly when Sahm spoke to me after that. In the hopes that he would shut up and clear off, I spilled out my deepest thoughts without any filter, especially stressing the point that I was going to kill my ex-boyfriend. Why, Sahm wanted to know, and I told him in graphic detail. Sahm nodded and agreed that he could see why I would want to kill him. For his part, he wanted to kill his father. He thought about how he might do it often enough. Those were only thoughts, however, and you couldn’t be punished for thinking them, Sahm said. The two of us bonded over our murderous desires, swapping ways we might kill our respective victims. Most of them were impracticable and didn’t interfere with the spite we held so dear.
Sahm did not attend the class long. He quit as soon as he finished the basic course, as if straight lines and circles were all he needed to learn. I quit as well, as it seemed like my drawing wasn’t getting any better. It also wasn’t easy to spare the tuition on my salary as a part-time cram school teacher of elementary school students. I put my drawing things away when I quit the class, never to take them out again, but Sahm continued to draw at home. His drawings consisted solely of lines and circles. Sahm did not draw things that he saw, but rather things he did not see, or things that were visible only under a microscope.
The only things on top of Sahm’s small, tidy desk were a microscope of the kind used in school labs, Kent paper, and well-sharpened 2B and 4B pencils. When Sahm came home from work, the first thing he did was to check if the microscope was still there. Since he lived alone, in a semi-basement apartment that hardly seemed a target for burglars, I asked why he bothered and Sahm told me it was because he still couldn’t believe he had actually bought a microscope that cost that much. My curiosity aroused, I asked Sahm how much he had paid for it, but getting no answer, I decided it must have cost around one hundred thousand, no, two hundred thousand won, which seemed like an astronomical price to me.
When I wasn’t working I spent most of my time at Sahm’s place. Sahm would sit at his desk and draw tiny things he placed on the stage of his microscope, peering at them through the eyepiece. He would pick up sahmnamu1 leaves on our walks in the park to draw. Sahm said it was because sahmnamu was his favorite tree. I asked him if that was the reason he asked to be called Sahm, but all he said was that it wasn’t just because of that. When I asked Sahm why he liked sahmnamu, he reached for a book called Kinds of Minds from the shelf under his desk where he had been resting his feet, and began to read aloud:
We are mammals, and all mammals have descended from reptilian ancestors whose ancestors were fish whose ancestors were marine creatures rather like worms, who descended in turn from simpler multi-celled creatures several hundred million years ago, who descended from single-celled creatures who descended from self-replicating macromolecules, about three billion years ago. [. . .] You share a common ancestor with every chimpanzee, every worm, every blade of grass, every redwood tree.2
Sahm finished his recital with every appearance of satisfaction, but I could only ask again, why sahmnamu, then? Why not chimpanzees, worms, or blades of grass? Sahm made no answer but went back to his drawing. Long, straight lines, a few circles, and ovals crisscrossing over each other like a tangled web appeared under the sharp point of his pencil as he silently drew. His eye pressed against the ocular lens, Sahm drew his spidery lines and circles across the Kent paper over and over again. Once, I compared Sahm’s drawing with a sahmnamu leaf under the microscope and found it to be a flawless reproduction, without any mistakes I could see. He was good at this. What was the use of it all, though? That’s what I found myself thinking more often than not.
Sahm didn’t have much time for drawing. He worked as a collector for a thrift organization. His job consisted of knocking on the doors of debtors and doing surveillance in front of their houses, either in his car or standing outside, to cut off any attempt at running away. Sahm worked hard but was always short of money. Besides still paying off his student loans, he regularly sent money to his grandmother, while his younger sibling often came to borrow money from him. I told him he shouldn’t, that he should just ignore them, but Sahm said he couldn’t do that to his only sibling. He added that they never asked for a large sum but only fifty or one hundred thousand won at a time. Even so, all those times must have added up to at least ten million won.
While Sahm drew, I would lie on his bed and connect my phone to his Bluetooth speaker and play music. One time Sahm said, Look, they’re trembling because of your music. He meant that the cells would tremble because of the vibrations. I told him to draw that, too. Is trembling something you can draw? I certainly didn’t know how. Sahm didn’t either. I would ask if he wanted me to turn off the music, but Sahm said no, he didn’t mean that. I was used to Sahm’s way of speaking by then, so I knew it was his way of asking me nicely. I once asked him if he was like that at work, too. When he went to inform a debtor that he had come to collect, if they asked if they really had to pay the money back, would he say, no, that he didn’t mean that? Sahm said that was work, so if someone were to really ask him that he would tell them yes, they absolutely had to pay the money back. It was a relief to learn that he could act so decisively when it came to work.
Another time, Sahm told me about the etymology of Bluetooth. According to Sahm, the technology was named after a tenth-century Viking who unified the Scandinavian Peninsula. It stood for a unified wireless technology standard, he said. As for the Viking’s name, he was called that because of the way his teeth were so white that they gleamed blue on moonlit nights. Just like his blue teeth that served as a guiding light in the night, Bluetooth technology guided wireless devices to each other. Really? I asked, and Sahm paused in the middle of perusing leaf veins through his microscope. Lifting his face from the ocular lens, his pencil moved across Kent paper as he replied, Just kidding. When asked why he had bothered to come up with such a silly story, I was a little surprised to hear that he wanted to make me laugh. Then he said that actually, it was because he wanted to see if I was paying attention when he was talking. I stopped myself from asking why he felt the need to check up on something like that. Sahm told me anyway, though, as if he’d read my mind. I didn’t really listen to his answer as I hadn’t asked the question in the first place. When Sahm told me that Kent paper was named after Kent, England, where it was first produced, I nodded and said, Oh, really, but looked it up on the internet afterwards.
I didn’t switch off my music and Sahm said nothing more about it. Perhaps he had managed to capture the trembling of the cells. Or learned how to ignore it. Later, after growing used to drawing to music, he would sometimes hum along with a familiar tune or ask me the singer or title of this or that song. I took note of those songs and created a new folder called “3” for him.3 I would play those songs when Sahm was busy drawing, and sometimes listened to them on my own when I was in the mood to ponder what was going on in Sahm’s head.
You wanna hear a song? Sahm said.
Yeah, I replied.
Sahm sang it for me. The song, which I’d never heard before, went on without stopping every time I thought it was over, so that in the end it felt like an old friend.
It’s nice, I said simply, and Sahm stopped singing to ask, You like this singer?
No, I don’t know them. I meant your voice, not the song. Your voice is nice.
Sahm laughed a little and that sound was nice, too. Kind, gentle Sahm. Sahm who got up every morning and went to serve collection orders somewhere.
Sahm’s job meant little to him. He rarely mentioned work, as if it didn’t matter to his life at all or ever cause him any stress. When I brought it up to him once, Sahm said that I was right, that he considered his work meaningless and felt no need to talk about it, as it didn’t influence his life in any way. Yet he spent at least nine and sometimes up to fifteen hours a day doing that meaningless job. Half of Sahm’s day was spent on meaningless work-related tasks, and the rest of the time he mostly slept. His few remaining hours were dedicated to meaningful activities. Eventually Sahm got used to it all. Isn’t it hard? I asked, and Sahm lifted his head up from his drawing of stomata and said that it wasn’t. Sahm’s eyes, seen up close, were pink from all the veins that stood out against the whites. When he stayed up all night drawing, his eyes would be completely bloodshot.
One summer night, lying in bed watching Sahm’s back as he drew, I fell asleep and woke in the early hours of the morning feeling parched. I asked Sahm whether he had stayed up all night, and he said he was waiting for the streetlights to go out before going to bed. Still under the covers, I looked up and noticed a streetlight outside the window next to the bed. The sky was still a deep indigo. Soon the streetlight went out. It did not go out at once, but dimmed slowly. Sahm said it was an optical illusion that made it appear as if the streetlights brightened and dimmed slowly instead of coming on and going out at once. It was the eye that failed to catch the light or lack of it, because it happened too fast. I didn’t need Sahm to tell me that he was kidding then. Sahm added that an average of five people a night passed under streetlights in an alley like this. I was thinking in my sleepy state that five seemed too small a number when Sahm said that it was the law to have streetlights in places as dark as this, no matter how few the passersby. A surprisingly humane law, I thought, filing it away to look up on the internet later, only to forget about it by the time I woke up. I said I was thirsty and Sahm fetched a bottle of water from the refrigerator and poured me a glass before burrowing under the covers, saying that he had not seen a single passerby all day. I was too sleepy to ask if he meant it and snickered instead, to which Sahm replied, Just kidding. I gulped down the water. The piercingly cold liquid seemed to flow into every corner of my body. It must have been thirst that made the water taste so sweet. My parched tongue was soon wet again.
Sahm kills his father that day. Strictly speaking it is a failure, as his original plan was to run as far as he could after making sure his father was dead. Instead, Sahm is discovered in the dark living room in a catatonic state and appears on the news. I go to visit him in jail and Sahm says he regrets it. Why didn’t he run away? He could have run and he didn’t. He can’t stop dwelling on the missed opportunity.
I woke up from my dream and embraced Sahm who was sleeping next to me. As I breathed in his smell, slightly sour after a sticky summer night, the reality that Sahm had not killed anyone sank in. It may have been funky, but his odor was not unpleasant to me. I could bury my face against his shoulder and take in deep breaths without gagging. It was a fact, however, that Sahm smelled even from a distance. He needed to mask his odor to keep it from spreading. Sahm, who smelled after just a night’s sleep. Sahm, who diligently showered every morning, washing away the smell of the night before.
I was telling Sahm about my dream and suggested adding another item to our list of ways to murder people when Sahm told me to stop. What was the point? We no longer needed to kill anyone. A few days later, we were watching an American series together when the scene shifted to a teenage girl, about fifteen years old, pointing a gun at a man. The girl had just discovered that he had murdered her mother and was about to shoot him dead. That was when a cop showed up from behind her and started to talk her out of it. Her mother wouldn’t have wanted this, if she pulled the trigger she was no different from that murderer. Her resolve broken, the girl burst into tears and dropped the gun. If I were her mother I would have wanted her to do it, I told Sahm, who asked if I didn’t think that was too cruel for a child. It was the law that was cruel, I explained. It was only the law that refused to recognize the difference between the girl’s actions and those of the murderer’s. Sahm continued to shake his head, however. You say that, but there’s no way you would ever want that. Sahm was right. I would go through the rest of my life unable to kill anyone. I didn’t need to kill anyone. That was good, wasn’t it? But at night, lying in the dark with the soft covers pulled over my head, wriggling my toes as I waited for sleep to come, unwelcome memories would swarm into my head, making it hard for me to remember why I shouldn’t. There being no way for me to carry out those impulses, however, not now, not ever, I contented myself with breaking Sahm’s freshly sharpened pencil leads or rubbing my palm across a carefully finished drawing. That was all. Sahm would sigh when he saw the snapped pencils and ask if I had any idea how much they cost as he got out his box cutter again, but wouldn’t say a word about his smudged drawings. Sahm always spoke by telling jokes and avoided any kind of confrontation.
Sahm said that people who borrowed large sums of money that they struggled to pay back usually had a terminally ill family member. If you wanted to live, you’d better make sure you have a lot of money. The more money you had, the better chance you had at beating the kind of misfortune that could happen to anybody. If poverty were an illness, it was the government that allowed what could be a minor illness to become incurable, Sahm said. Tell me something I don’t know, I retorted. For someone who criticized the government, however, Sahm didn’t watch the news, didn’t vote when elections rolled around, and had no expectations whatsoever that anything he did could possibly make a difference. He simply showed up for work every day, sent texts and made phone calls to debtors, and went to their homes to serve them with collection orders. Every time, Sahm said, it made him feel as if he were blaming them—Why are you still poor? To which Sahm knew the answer better than anyone, being poor himself. He could have worked twenty-four hours a day and still would have fallen short of the bare minimum for survival. It didn’t pay to fall sick, Sahm concluded. He made it sound like a choice.
After that, when Sahm asked after my parents, what I had once taken for polite concern felt more like inquiries into how much money they had. One day, in answer to his question, I finally told Sahm that my father had had an upper endoscopy that showed he might have a problem, and that he was awaiting the results of a biopsy.
We broke up not long afterwards. Not because of Dad’s biopsy, but because I ended up feeding Sahm dry ice. I didn’t really mean for him to eat it, but Sahm, waiting for me to pop a spoonful of ice cream in his mouth with closed eyes, sensed its chill as the spoon approached his mouth and snapped it up, only to spit it out immediately in shock at the sensation that his tongue was on fire. Sahm opened his eyes to see the lump of dry ice on the floor, where it would sublimate without a trace, leaving only a spot of damp cold. Eventually it would be impossible to tell that it had ever been there. I really don’t know, Sahm said. Of course he didn’t, I thought. I don’t think I’ll ever know, he continued. That was unexpected. Then he buried his face in his hands and said we should break up. I wondered how many times he had thought of saying that before finally getting it out.
Sahm called me after some time to say that he seemed to have lost his sense of taste, and asked if I knew that dry ice absorbed the heat of everything around it. He also mentioned that his tongue still felt cold. Was that a joke, too? When I didn’t say anything, Sahm said that he had called just because. So I began to talk like we always did, about everyday things. The head of the cram school was now making the teachers clean the toilets without compensation in the name of cutting down on maintenance, a duty from which he excused himself from. Oh, that asshole, Sahm chimed in, but I couldn’t be sure if he was really listening.
At one time the two of us had shared everything. There was a special attraction between the two of us. We created lists of things to do together, went out for meals, had coffee, laughed, went to bed, spent time together. We had no other reason for being together other than that we wanted to. We did all the usual things most couples did. I probably shouldn’t use “we” to refer to us anymore, but I’m too lazy to think of another word. This way, I don’t have to. It’s like saying “I love you” to mean approximately what you feel, because it’s too hard to find another way to say it.
If we loved each other, as I believed we did, we didn’t show it that much. We never said “I love you” out loud. Why didn’t we? Of course I loved Sahm. Sahm must have loved me, too. He showed it to me in every way except in words. I still longed to invent a secret language for us. It was so we could better communicate our feelings to each other, I explained, and Sahm said that the whole point of language was to deceive the other person. To lie to them. To say that your face was flushed because you were too hot, not because you were embarrassed. To say that you loved them when you didn’t.
We were silent for a moment and, groping for something to say, I told Sahm that my father had been diagnosed with stomach cancer. That the cancer itself would not have been too bad, but that it had spread. Sahm didn’t say anything for a long time before wishing my father a swift recovery. I cried after hanging up, unable to believe he could have really meant it. Except that Sahm probably was sincere. I was the one who struggled to wish my father well, even in that situation. What was wrong with me? I cried all over again, and when I was finished it was as if all the worries that had been preying on my mind had dissolved away. Crying like that took an untold amount of effort and pressure. It felt as if my darkest, most persistent thoughts had been wiped out by sheer force. If tears sometimes have a cleansing effect, it might be because it is also a kind of obliteration. For the longest time I stared blankly at the ceiling of my room, my eyes burning from all that crying, before rising to pack my bags. I told my boss that my father was in critical condition and headed home for a few days.
Nobody cried except my aunt, and even she cried just a little. Not Mom, not my younger brother, not Gran. If grief could be measured by how long and how loudly a person cried, the only person who grieved my father’s death was my aunt. She was also the quickest to get over her grief and bounce back to her regular self.
After Dad died, Mom practically stopped eating, my brother chain-smoked, and Gran suddenly aged overnight. I always used to say to her, you haven’t aged at all, Gran, when I saw her over the holidays, and then Gran would say that it was because she had pretty much finished aging by the time I was born. After my father died, however, it was as if the rest of her had aged all at once. On the way home after the cremation, I held hands with Gran in the backseat of the taxi and said, You’ve gotten old, Gran, but she was as quiet as if she were asleep. You’ve gotten old, Gran, I said again, when Mom shushed me from the front seat, Shh, Gran’s sleeping. My brother leaned his head against the window and kept his eyes on the scenery outside. Come to think of it, it was the first time I had ever used informal speech with Gran.
My father died soon after receiving his diagnosis, having shown few symptoms prior, which made me think that it was the diagnosis that had killed him. Mom wondered if it was the meals she’d served. Gran blamed herself for passing on poor genes. My brother thought he had contributed to Dad’s stress and worried that he might be predisposed to stomach cancer, too. You know that family history is the first thing they look at, Noona, he said. I replied that he should give up smoking if he really cared about his health, which earned me a smile as he said, I just smoke the odd one now and then.
Over the few days I stayed at home, the two of us shared a beer every night, facing each other over the kitchen table. My brother went out on the balcony to smoke, and every time the apartment security would call over the intercom to inform him that someone had made a complaint. Mom spent a lot of time lying down. She had the TV on but didn’t seem to be watching it. When I mentioned I was worried about her being so listless my brother said it was only normal. We might have only seen them fighting, but our parents had dated for eight years before marrying, against Gran’s wishes. I hadn’t known that. I knew that theirs was a love match, not an arranged marriage, but eight years? Could something that had happened so long ago have any influence on one’s feelings now? I didn’t think so, but acknowledged that there might be something left over. I think that’s called a grudge, Noona. Only if you mean hard feelings, I said, and my brother took a swig of his beer and went out for a smoke. There are things that sink to the bottom, undissolved even after a good cry. If a grudge is what’s left after hard feelings, what might the residue of good feelings be? My brother came back inside and said, I’ve thought about it, Noona, and I don’t think good feelings would leave anything. It would all melt away. The intercom buzzed again, and then, as always, my brother gave his usual perfunctory reply. So the days passed as we each coped with our grief and I didn’t return to work as scheduled, after which I was told I was fired.
I no longer had a job, but decided to go back to Seoul without telling my family. My brother begged me to stay, saying that Mom would miss me so much. I refused, reminding him that our hometown held no good memories for me, and he apologized. Mom slipped me an envelope of cash. It must have come from Dad’s condolence money.
While I was waiting for the express bus back to Seoul, Sahm called to tell me he had sold his microscope. I was shocked when I heard how much he had gotten for it. I didn’t know it was worth that much, I said, and Sahm said that it was. I asked why he had sold it and Sahm said that he needed the money. I didn’t dig any further but Sahm told me anyway. He had quit his job. Oh, I said, and when I didn’t say anything else Sahm also told me why he’d quit. Someone had died. Who? A debtor. Why? It was an accident. What kind of accident? She was crossing the street early in the morning, drunk, and was hit by a car. So why did you quit your job? Sahm had gone to see the debtor the day before she had gotten drunk. A single mother, she had begged Sahm on her knees. Sahm’s boss, who had gone with him, excused himself to go out and smoke. Sahm had no authority whatsoever, was more of a debtor himself when it came to the company he worked for. Please don’t do this, Sahm said. The woman must have known that Sahm couldn’t do anything, either. She wasn’t crying at that time, but Sahm said she must have cried before he’d gotten there, or after he’d left. I asked why he thought so, but Sahm couldn’t explain. Well, you see, um, he muttered before changing the subject.
Sahm said that he had a drawing of one of my hairs that he wanted to give me. I asked if he was sure if it was my hair, and he said that he was since it measured over thirty centimeters long when he picked it off his pillow a while ago. I didn’t want the drawing. Why would you want to draw your ex-girlfriend’s hair under a microscope, anyway? I blurted out. Sahm said he did it in a moment of boredom. He couldn’t be bothered to go outside to collect leaves when he found the hair, which reminded him of the leaf of a conifer, so he decided to draw it. It looked even more like a conifer leaf under the microscope, he said. You mean we share a common ancestor with every blade of grass, every redwood tree, I said, and Sahm laughed. The familiar sound of his laughter made me laugh, too. Sahm said he needed something to concentrate on to get rid of the nagging thoughts of cause and effect that wouldn’t leave his head. Even drawing my hair, however, couldn’t stop those thoughts, so he shared them with his boss, who told them he had gone through the same and worse. Sahm knew then that if he stayed in his job, he would face the same thing, so as he was drawing the outline of my hair he decided to quit. The microscope was a luxury he could not afford to keep now that he would not be earning for the time being. Was it really necessary to sell it so quickly? I asked, and Sahm admitted that he was going to stop drawing. I asked why. Sahm made no reply except that he hadn’t thought that I’d ask him that.
I told him about quitting my job at the cram school, then, and Sahm hesitated for a moment before asking after my father, so I said that he had passed away. Sahm offered a few words of condolence that came out almost mechanically. It felt as if the words were second nature to him, and therefore somehow more sincere. It was because of that feeling that I was able to find real comfort in those conventional, set phrases. When he had finished saying them, Sahm asked if I was alright. When I heard that it was as if something inside me melted away, and I began to weep on the bus going back to Seoul. I didn’t make any noise, but as the silence grew, Sahm guessed what was happening and asked if I was crying, so I said that I was. Sahm didn’t tell me not to cry and waited for me without hanging up until I had finished. After crying myself out, I hung up without saying anything and sent Sahm a text to say thank you. Sahm replied to take care of myself. I couldn’t in the end, though, for which I am sorry.
I’m also sorry that I wasn’t able to offer Sahm any comfort when he was down. I don’t feel sorry that I wasn’t able to understand him. At first I thought it was because I hadn’t made the effort, but that wasn’t it. Sahm said that going all the way back, all of us shared a common ancestor, and that we could all be traced back to the explosion of a single dot. It was always possible to find similarities with others, no matter how alien they might be in their present state, since all of us started out from the same point anyway. Wouldn’t it be equally true, I asked, to say that we were descended from a single entity that had split, no longer able to cope with an alien sensation? In the beginning, there was something that kicked off a great division one day. One became two, two became ten, splitting faster and faster into irreconcilable parts that spilled out without an end. And so I believe that if there was something in the beginning, and if that something exploded for whatever reason, it was because it had found something it could not possibly understand or relate to.
One person dies by suicide in Korea every thirty-seven minutes, it said on the news we were watching one day. Sahm asked me if I had ever thought about it myself. We were demolishing a half-gallon of Baskin-Robbins at the time, which prompted me to say, No, because I wouldn’t be able to have any more Mom is an Alien or Gone with the Wind.4 Sahm, who had been shaking his head at the company that would give such strange names to its flavors, asked me if such a trivial reason was enough to keep living. Not only are trivial reasons enough, they’re why people keep living, I said. People might have dozens of reasons for wanting to die, kicking themselves for being useless, crying themselves to sleep every night, but in the morning they got up and ate and drank to satisfy their hunger. Sahm gazed at my face for a minute before telling me to close my eyes and say, Ahh, so I did, and then he popped a spoonful of Gone with the Wind in my mouth. Was this sweetness why I wanted to live? Sahm asked, and I nodded, feeling the cool sweetness melt away on my tongue, but to tell the truth, I was the kind of person who would rather be alive even if it was only to drink plain water. So it wasn’t suicide.
All of this was a very long time ago.
*
On the second morning after my death, I wish that someone would come wake me up. This is unlikely, though, as I lived alone. There is a cacophony of birdsong at daybreak that recedes while I am not paying attention. Someone’s front door opens and closes. I hear another door about thirty minutes later. I hear footsteps crossing the alley, motorcycles, someone singing. Apart from these sounds, all is quiet on this residential street. During the daytime it is virtually silent except for the rattle of screen windows from the occasional gust. It comes back to life in the evening, when people come home from work. Then I hear the noise of TVs, rice cookers, phones ringing. My phone also chimes that a message has arrived. It sounds one, two, three, four, five times in a row . . . and then once more. I wish I could check my messages, see who sent them not knowing I was dead.
On the third morning I am still optimistic. Surely somebody will come find me soon. Life still has a certain hold over me. At night, the glow of streetlights shine into my room. It is a nice kind of glow. Anyone who has witnessed the instant a streetlight goes on as day gives way to night will know what I mean. A yellow ball of light, determined to hold on even in the midst of darkness. On the fourth day, the smell of baking bread wafts through the entire neighborhood. It’s not a smell I was familiar with before my death. On the fifth day, there is a metallic taste on the tip of my tongue. I can taste something like it in the air. On the sixth day, tiny bugs swarm out of my body, so perfectly formed as to be off-putting. I keep thinking about certain things. I place them on my tongue, rolling them slowly until they melt away. On the seventh day, the smell of baking bread is gone completely, leaving only a nasty odor. Is it my smell? And then I give up on counting the days.
The person who found me might be Sahm. He makes a phone call somewhere and sinks to the floor, weeping as if helpless to do anything else. His sobs, hot with hard things molten and dripping away, tug at my heart, and the thing that used to be me shatters to pieces. At the time my feelings still had a few places to return to, though, so people going about their lives as usual were reminded of me from time to time.
Translated by Yoonna Cho
[1] Translator’s note: Japanese cedar, also known as Japanese redwood, or sugi.
[2] T/N: This passage, from Daniel C. Dennett’s Kinds Of Minds (1996), is quoted in its Korean translation in the story, which translates “redwood” as sahmnamu.
[3] T/N: The number 3 is pronounced “sahm” in Sino-Korean.
[4] Originally called Puss in Boots and Twinberry Cheesecake, respectively, the flavors were renamed for the Korean market.
by Kim Ji Yeon