It’s noisy. I like it when it’s noisy but not when it gets noisy. When it’s already noisy, no one notices me. When it starts getting noisy, I’m usually at the center of it. Surrounded by people starting to tease, taunt, and humiliate me—it’s a drag. I like noisy places. Even better when it’s already filled with noisy people.

      In those places, it takes effort to go unnoticed. Eyes averted. Never falling in line with anyone, just standing dead-beat, arms hanging like an ape. No one turns to that kind of sorry human for help. When anyone picks a fight, I stay still and bow my head to apologize. Staying still as an unnoisy human in a noisy place—that’s me at my safest.

      So this is the best place for me. 

      My thoughts trail off as I man the counter at Midopa.

*

Midopa is Seongdong Express Bus Terminal’s only tearoom. The sliding door framed with fake cherrywood has a sign reading MIDOPA, but everyone calls it Midopa Tearoom. It’s the only tearoom and diner in the building. The stubby, one-story terminal has space for only a ticketing booth, a restroom, and Midopa.

      Plastic chairs fill a central waiting area, with the ticketing booth to the left, Midopa and the restroom to the right. A privacy screen stands at the restroom entrance. It separates the side-by-side doors to the men’s and women’s rooms, but people rushing to the toilets keep bumping into it with an oof. Whenever an oof reaches me at the counter, I think, The screen must’ve slanted toward the men’s room. I step out, and sure enough, it’s slanted. Seongdong is a smallish town with only five bus routes from the terminal. But I hear that oof three, four times a day. Travelers tossing their bags down, sprinting to buy tickets and empty their bowels or fill their stomachs—they’re our patrons.

     Midopa has mock train cabin décor, tacky and tasteless. The cherry-colored cornice, thick and wavy, seems to lower the ceiling. All the windows and tables have the same cherry stain while the square sofas modeled on train seats are forest green. The dark colors set off the dust, forcing me to wipe the tables and lint-roll the sofas several times a day. Our most popular orders are instant coffee and ssanghwa-cha, a tonic tea with plenty of nuts sprinkled in. An egg yolk too, back in the day. Though rarely ordered, we do offer Americano and black tea. As a morning special, we serve bowls of bean sprout soup with rice; in the afternoon, we serve hamburger steak. But no pork cutlets. I like that. We sell everything except pork cutlets.

I’ve been working a year at Midopa, this tearoom that’s more than a tearoom. At first, I’d wanted to leave town after high school, right on graduation day. I was broke, so I planned on busing to a seaport instead of the city. I got the idea from all the teachers who used to scold, “If you don’t study, you’ll end up working on a tuna boat. Or on some godforsaken island farming spinach.” I didn’t care about commencement, college, or home. I wanted to get away from everyone and live alone.

      It was a week before graduation. On my way to school, a familiar figure stood by the main gate. Slight frame with long, skinny arms wrapped around. A familiar person I preferred not to become familiar with, ever. I backed up and walked away. It struck me that I could just leave. I wasn’t going to attend commencement anyway, so why wait till then? It struck, hit, seized me—I mulled over the words while heading to the terminal.

     To reach the terminal from my school downtown, I had to take a long, narrow path. It cut through a dry grass field. Earmarked for a new commercial center until the plans fell through, the site lay forgotten for over a decade. The path diverged into a graveled concrete footpath toward the town bus stop and a dirt path toward the express bus terminal. Right by that fork in the path stood an eerie, half-built department store. Built partway before the commercial center was called off, it became the town’s oldest eyesore. Construction had stopped at the seventh floor, the concrete formwork abandoned. I took the dirt path, trying hard not to look up at the top of the building.

     Once I arrived at the terminal, I bought their most expensive ticket. The bus was due to leave in an hour and fifty minutes. I entered the men’s room, trying not to kick over the privacy screen. I ripped off the name badge from my school uniform, wrapped it up with my necktie, and threw it away. I deleted the few contacts I had on my phone. Still an hour and thirty-eight minutes to go. The waiting area was cold. Frigid wind rattled the windows. I slid open the cherry-colored door and stepped into Midopa.

     Warmth made my nose run. Noise drowned out my sniffling. Someone rustled through their belongings in a blue plastic sack. Clothes and slippers spilled out. Someone else slurped on their instant coffee while another person complained of having no dried pollack in their bean sprout soup. Then came objections to the ssanghwa-cha—“Where’s the yolk?” My eyes darted around and landed on a HELP WANTED sign. Handwritten with a brush pen, the sign mixed simple Korean letters with cryptic Chinese characters.

     “Ready to order?” A fortyish man served me water. He wore an apron stained from working in the kitchen. I glanced over the menu.

     “Do you have pork cutlets?” I asked.

     “No,” he replied.

     I scanned the menu again while he started clearing another table. “I’m busy enough cooking, and now this,” he grumbled. His clumsy stack of soup and kimchi bowls toppled over, clattering onto the table. A water cup clunked to the floor. The noisy diners didn’t bother to look. The man didn’t seem bothered either. I stared at my bus ticket, the destination and departure time. Then I watched as a box of dried anchovies emerged from the blue sack. The man started toward the kitchen with kimchi bowls in hand.

     “What do I need to get a job here?” I asked.

     With kimchi-stained fingers, the man pointed to the counter. There was nothing there. After wiping his hands, he pointed farther left. I saw a cherry-colored door. “Boss’s room,” he said. “Go see him for an interview.”

     I ordered bean sprout soup with rice. Sliced chili peppers gave the broth a nice kick. The next afternoon, the man cooked me hamburger steak to celebrate my first lunch on the job. No longer grumbling, he topped the patty with a triangle-shaped slice of cheese and gently added a soft-boiled egg. On the side, there was grilled pineapple and a mound of steamed rice. I ate everything with a fork. It tasted tacky, just right for Midopa.

A month into my job, I left work one day with an umbrella I’d stolen. A diner had left it under a table—a light and sturdy umbrella. The soft leather handle felt like a friendly hand against my palm. I’d slipped the umbrella under the counter, turning it over all day. As diners walked in, I studied their faces to see if they’d come back for it. Especially the ones who kept their eyes on the floor. Closing time arrived without the owner showing up.

     I was thrilled to steal such a good umbrella. I’d stolen it all right since I wouldn’t have returned it to the owner. The rain had stopped, leaving the night sky crisply clear. Breathing out mist, I took the narrow path home. Wet soil clung to my shoe soles, slowing me down. As I reached the forked path by the half-built department store, I opened the umbrella. I spun it around. Water drops scattered from the folds.

     With my view obscured by the large canopy, I sauntered down the whole path. I didn’t mind working there for at least three more years if it meant I could steal nice things. Things like sleek gloves or scarves. Things that made you wriggle your hands or rub your neck, distracting you. I imagined all the things, big and small, that I could steal. Good and useful things I could hold in my hands.

     Once the field was behind me, I closed the umbrella. The paved footpath was dry. With no more mud slipping me up, I trotted along. Umbrella in hand. And never looking back.

*

Midopa is reeking of garlic. A granny waiting for the noon bus has started peeling a whole bunch. With heating on full blast to counter the cold, the air turns hot and pungent. The granny curses her luck—a septuagenarian still peeling garlic for in-laws who gorge on them for their health and longevity. “All this garlic, and they’re still hardly human. Ungnyeo puts them to shame,” she tsks. The moment I suggest, “Maybe you could peel those in the waiting area,” she hurls a fistful of garlic peel to the floor. “You want to push me around too, do you? You know how freezing it is out there?” She keeps hurling peels at me until I back away. Dust swirls in the air and mingles with the thick smell of garlic and dirt. I grab a broom and start sweeping.

     “Dongju.”

     A person slides through the cherry-colored door and calls my name. I don’t care to look. I sweep harder to catch the fluttering garlic peel. They land under the sofas, not in the dustpan. I poke at them with the broom, circling the granny. She goes on peeling. “S’cuse me, can I have more kimchi?” asks a diner. Right. That’s how I’m called at Midopa. S’cuse me. Hey, kid. Hey.

     “Dongju.”

     The woman calls me again. She sits behind a pillar and opens a menu.

     I know who she is. Seunggyu’s mom, short and wiry. When upright, she hugs herself with her skinny arms. When seated, she balls her hands into fists. She let her short, ponytailed hair grow out, and then she chopped it short. I’d seen her often enough. In classrooms, by the school gate, by my front door, at the police station. I never knew how to address her. A friend’s mom was usually called Aunt as if they were family. Or Ajumma if they weren’t as close. Neither seemed right. But I never had to call her anything. She was the one who kept calling at me. Seeking me out. Even when I answered all her questions with “I don’t know.”

     “Tell me the truth.”

     That’s what she said one day, sobbing. By the school gate too, which made students crowd around instead of heading home. “Him again,” a boy muttered. “You think it really was his fault?” another boy wondered. “Cut it out. He’s been through enough.” That last remark—was it pity? It clawed at the scruff of my neck.

     “Please, Dongju. Please. The truth,” she wailed.

     She hunched over as if her whole body were a spindly speakerphone. I took a few steps back and ran. For days, I stayed home. It happened a handful of times in middle school.

The woman orders instant coffee. It tops the menu as the cheapest item. The most popular too. Ready to serve in less than a minute. Empty two instant coffee sticks into a white cup and add hot water. Give it a stir with one of the old-fashioned teaspoons, and you’re done. The ssanghwa-cha is served with a mini yakgwa, the Americano with a butter cookie, and the hamburger steak with corn soup. Midopa is generous with their free sides, but instant coffee comes with nothing. I grab a tray for the coffee cup. And two butter cookies.

     She stops calling out for me and drinks the coffee. She downs every drop, unwraps the two cookies, and finishes them too. In that noisy, hot, pungent tearoom, she eats and drinks with just enough of her own noise. I wash cups, rinse the cleaning cloth, and sort the receipts. I peek into the kitchen and line the trash can with a new bag. The woman soon approaches the counter. She pays with three bills and fixes her eyes on me. I know the look on her face. The look you get when you hide something slimy in your mouth. Unable to spit it out.

     “Dongju,” she insists on speaking. “I have something important to tell you.”

     She leaves a note with a phone number. I put her change on the counter, but she doesn’t take the five hundred won coin. I wait until the cherry-stained door slides open and the woman disappears. Once the door chime dies down, I throw the note away. I pocket the coin. It’s abandoned, not stolen. I imagine hurling the coin onto the withered grass field. Maybe I imagine, maybe I remember.

Seunggyu always carried his coin. A 1988 Seoul Olympics coin, large and heavy like the five hundred won coin. It had a mugunghwa flower on the head side; on the tail, the round-faced tiger Hodori. Head tilted and wearing a sangmo streamer hat. No, maybe tiger on heads, flower on tails. Seunggyu changed his mind about it every day.

     He held out the coin whenever he wanted.

     “Heads or tails?” he asked.

     “Heads,” I replied.

     Then came the toss, and onlookers bobbed their heads as the coin flipped up and down. Seunggyu snatched it mid-air and pressed it against the back of his hand.

     “Heads or tails?” he asked again, head tilted like the tiger.

     “Heads.”

     Seunggyu’s hand flew off the coin to slap me with full force across the face. It happened in a flash, too fast to see which side was up—heads or tails, flower or tiger. My earlobe burned. Blood pooled inside my cheek. I clutched my ringing ear in a daze while Seunggyu simply walked away. As if nothing had happened.

     I got slapped every time he asked, “Heads or tails?” Within seconds and without fail. He slapped me without hesitation as if kicking away a pebble. I got slapped in the toilet. I got slapped during the vaulting exercise in PE class. I got slapped in the cafeteria while scooping stir-fried mushrooms onto my tray. I got slapped by the incinerator while taking out the trash. Day in day out, always drawing a noisy crowd. Even as Seunggyu walked away, the noise would stay. With me at the center of it. Surrounded by people starting to tease, taunt, and humiliate me—it was a drag.

     Like Seunggyu, I simply walked away.

     I copied his move to escape the noise.

Getting slapped in the face. I wasn’t exactly ashamed of it. The thing is, I got slapped around all the time and not just in the face. What embarrassed me to death was my own verbal reflex, the automatic reply I gave whenever Seunggyu snickered, “Heads or tails?” Whichever way, I’d reply only to get slapped—truly mortifying. To reply was to play his game. That held up the hierarchy between us.

*

“Aren’t you that boy? From the pork cutlet diner?” asks a wizened old woman.

     “Oh no,” a woman next to her sighs. After tugging at the older woman’s sleeve to no effect, she squeezes her hand to make her stop. “Mom’s getting old,” she says with a rueful glance. The granny seems to have more questions, but her daughter steers her to a table. Once seated, the granny forgets about me and groans about her knees.

     “My body’s all rotten.”

     “Mm-hmm.” The daughter eyes me again. As I set down water cups and menus, I hear them whispering. Words slice through the noise.

     “Oh, Mom. The diner’s boy is dead.”

     “Dead?”

     “He’s the other one. The one the dead boy used to . . . never mind. Keep quiet.”

     Keep quiet. Don’t talk. That’s what my mom and the lawyer kept saying. At the police station, they gripped my arm all through the questioning. Don’t make it worse. Keep quiet.

     I bring the granny and her daughter their food, setting down the dishes one by one. I serve the bean sprout soup in a brass bowl, piping hot. I serve the sides—radish kimchi, pickled garlic, and braised quail eggs. The daughter scrutinizes me while the granny warms her hands on the hot water cup. I pretend not to notice and set down the rest. Soy sauce, napkins, and utensils. The kitchen bell rings. It alerts me of other dishes ready to be served. The worn-out bell makes a dull noise—more of a thunk than a ding.

     I overhear the daughter while heading to the kitchen.

     “I thought he left town for good. If he’s still here, maybe the rumors aren’t true.”

     “What rumors?” the granny asks.

     “About the dead boy. They say he killed him,” she replies.

Seunggyu, whose parents ran a pork cutlet diner, died in an accident.

     A plausible accident. Two middle school boys were hanging around in the half-built building when one of them fell to his death. The dilapidated building had none of the necessary safety measures in place.

     Details emerged, turning the accident into a tragedy. The two boys happened to be on the rooftop that wasn’t exactly a rooftop. It was the seventh floor of a building that was supposed to be ten stories. Plywood formwork for molding the concrete floor had been left behind. The boys mistook the plywood for a solid railing. One of them leaned against it and fell to his death when the plywood gave way. The wood had rotted by then, making it unclear who was to blame. That was the talk during Seunggyu’s funeral.

     The accident became an incident when information surfaced on how the two boys were linked. I was summoned to the police station, the counseling center, and the hospital.

     “Is it true that Seunggyu bullied you since grade school?”

     “Is it true that classmates reported him, but you refused a school violence inquiry?”

     “Is the report true that Seunggyu beat you on the day of the incident?”

     I mostly answered no. I took my lawyer’s advice in saying I wasn’t sure, that the shock made it difficult to remember.

     “Did you ever wish Seunggyu would die or get hurt?”

     I said no. Judging by their faces, no one believed me. But they wanted to close the case as an unfortunate accident. My mom and teachers too. Mom bristled at the interrogators.

     “You want to pin a phony back story on my boy?” 

     She swelled up in anger like a pufferfish.

     “There is no past. Just boys being boys. They play-fight, that’s what they do. Who says my son was bullied? How dare you pin that on him and treat him like a murderer?” 

     While she hollered, I stood still. Eyes averted, never falling in line with anyone. I let my arms hang like an ape, and when anyone tapped on my shoulder, I stayed still and bowed my head to apologize. Noise led to rumors. They were either believed or dismissed. Word had it, I’d either kicked Seunggyu in the shins or shoved him from behind. Those things wouldn’t have mattered in the hallway or cafeteria, but they did on a rooftop without any railing. “After all the bullying, it’s no wonder.” “Bullied or not, it’s inhuman.” Some sympathized, others condemned. Every day filled with noise. I stayed silent, the only one who did nothing and said nothing.

* 

It was my first spring in high school. The woman came to see me two days in a row. Instead of calling my name or wailing like before, she simply watched. She stood across the street, hunched under the awning of a stationery store, and as soon as I emerged from the school gate, she followed me without a word. Like a huge lump on my back. I didn’t run or swerve; I just walked. By the time I reached home and walked up the stairs, she was gone.

     On the third day, it rained. The woman stood under the awning with a huge umbrella. It looked more like a garden parasol. I walked out the gate, straight to the stationery store. I stood by her under the awning. I didn’t know how else to escape her scrutiny. Being next to her or behind her seemed like the only way to avoid her relentless stare. She stayed still.

     “That uniform looks good on you,” she blurted out.

     The awning overhead bulged under the weight of water. The light spring rain had pooled into a puddle.

     “It would’ve looked good on my Seunggyu.”

     I imagined poking that bulge in the awning with my umbrella. “Now tell me the truth!” I expected her to yell. I had no way to tell her the truth she wanted. Or the truth my mom and lawyer wanted. I didn’t have it.

     “It struck me as strange. It grew stranger and stranger.”

     She paused.

     “When Seunggyu had the accident, you called 911, right? ‘A person fell.’ That’s what you said. Why ‘person’? Why not ‘friend’ or ‘Seunggyu’? Then there was the paramedic. He said he got Seunggyu into the ambulance and turned to you. Telling you to get in if you were a friend or family. Even then, you . . .”

     With the ambulance doors still open, the paramedic said, “Get in with your friend.” I told him no. I wasn’t the person’s friend or family. Once they drove off, I took the long, narrow dirt path home. Like any other day, I brushed my teeth, washed up, and went to bed. My phone ran out of battery, but I didn’t charge it. The next day, Mom told me Seunggyu had died. When she heard the police were coming to ask questions, she immediately found a lawyer.

     “What were you really doing there?”

     The woman asked the same question Mom had asked that day.

     “Nothing,” I’d told Mom and the lawyer every time they asked. “I was doing nothing. Nothing happened.” The bulged awning seemed ready to burst.

     I replied to the woman, “I picked up a coin.”

The coin fell. From way above, I heard it clink to the ground as it slipped from Seunggyu’s pocket. It rolled along the dirt with a jagged, scraping noise—skritch, skrit, skriii.

     I climbed down the stairs. Concrete dust hung in the air. Seunggyu lay near a pile of construction debris. I tried hard not to look that way. I used the flashlight on my phone to search the ground, and a shiny spot caught my eye. Close-up, I saw the round-faced tiger. Head tilted and grinning. “Heads or tails?” I muttered, picking up the coin. No reply.

*

The woman orders hamburger steak. She cuts the grilled pineapple into pieces but doesn’t eat them. She breaks the yolk of her soft-boiled egg and mashes it into the patty, but she doesn’t eat that either. She throws that look at me. The look you get when you hide something slimy in your mouth, unable to spit or swallow. “Dongju,” she says under her breath every time I pass by. I pretend not to hear. I make plenty of noise, clattering plates as I clear them away and rattling tables as I wipe them clean. By mistake, I break a coffee cup in the counter’s small sink.

     Closing time arrives but the woman doesn’t budge from her table. She sits there with meat mashed on her plate like a grotesque display. The cook steps out of the kitchen, eyes the woman, and asks if I want him to call the cops.

     “You know her?”

     “No. Don’t know the person.”

     My reply gives him a stern look. He grips his rolled-up apron and moves toward her. “Get out.” He never minces words. “We’re closing.” She gets to her feet. The cherry-stained door slides open, the rusty chime jangles, then silence. He clears the messy plate, fuming.

     “Wasting good food. You really don’t know her?”

     “I don’t.”

     I mean it. There’s no way I know. I’ll never know how a person can insist on mashing up once more what’s already been mashed.

Midopa closes ten minutes after the ticketing booth. When the ticketing employee drops by to say good night, I fill his thermos with leftover corn soup. Or sometimes bean sprout soup. The elderly employee is a distant relative of the cook. I once heard diners say the employee’s young boy had been playing at the terminal when a bus in reverse gear crushed him to death. “The old man used to be a motel cleaner across the street. But when his boy died here, they had to compensate for his loss. So they offered him the job,” they said while wolfing down bean sprout soup. “How can he work where his boy died?” “Got to pay the bills or starve. You want him to die too?” Blame and pity flared up in no time. “Must be horrible for him. Let’s leave it at that.” Solemn faces nodded. The cook stalked out of the kitchen and nearly slammed down a bowl of rice puffs on their table. He declared the ticketing employee had celebrated his thirtieth work anniversary last year and was rewarded with a watch. His son had only caught his leg under a rear tire. He was alive and well but never came near the terminal again. The customers turned sheepishly defensive.

     “We got it wrong, that’s all. Doesn’t matter.”

     It does. Words about people always matter.

I step out of the wooden door, turn the OPEN sign around, and leave for the day. It’s dark inside the terminal. And outside too. I step only where streetlamps leave pools of light, and my mind wanders to the umbrella. The sleek object I’d stolen, the soft leather that warmed in my hand. And yet, leather is nothing but dead animal skin.

     I walk home. Across the dry grass field, down the long, narrow dirt path. Small fires had left burnt patches here and there. Flames had flared at dawn when no one was out, snuffed out naturally by the dirt. No damage aside from the charred blades of grass. I walk, inhaling hints of smoke. The woman trails a dozen steps behind me. She’d been waiting in the darkened terminal, her skinny arms wrapped around herself. I keep walking without looking back. Her pace quickens as I near the fork in the path. “Dongju.” She takes a deep breath. “Dongju.”

     I slow to a stop. I’d always been the one to stop, listen, and reply, so I do it again. Back in the noisy space of Midopa, I could pretend not to hear, but not now. Right by the half-built building, in the dry silence of the field, I stop.

     “I have something to tell you.”

     She comes closer to stand before me. I slouch over with my arms hanging like an ape. Eyes carefully averted. She reaches out to hold my hand. Her hand is cold and stiff, like a dead animal’s limb. “I’m sorry,” she begins. She apologizes for hounding me all those years. She says she’s leaving. Her husband’s staying to run the pork cutlet diner, but not her. She’ll be on her island hometown farming spinach in the sea breeze.

     “I’m sorry about everything. I mean it,” she tells me.

     The woman turns and walks away. Her steps aren’t heavy or light. Just ordinary steps, as if everything that happened might be forgotten down the path.

     For the first time, I want to tell her the truth.

Seunggyu and I were the last two left together that day. There’d been six of us at the run-down building. The usual gang that cheered whenever Seunggyu tossed his coin. They started leaving around sunset until it was just us two, the ones who weren’t called home. Seunggyu climbed the stairs, beckoning me like a dog. “C’mon, Dongju. Here, boy. C’mon.” Once we reached the rooftop, he pulled the coin from his pocket.

     “Heads or tails?”

     “Tiger.” 

     He stopped flipping the coin in his hand. “Tiger?”

     “Tiger.”

     “Oh yeah?” he snickered, tossing the coin. He threw it higher than usual and couldn’t tell when it would fall. It clinked against the concrete. He stomped on the rolling coin. “Here, boy. C’mon, Dongju,” he beckoned again. “Let’s say it isn’t tiger. Then I swear I’ll bust your lip. And break your teeth too. Last chance. Heads or tails?”

     “Tiger . . .”

     Seunggyu lifted his foot in slow motion, revealing the mugunghwa flower on the coin. “You unlucky bastard.” He came closer, sniggering. I backstepped. I kept going until I reached the railing. Seunggyu tucked the coin away and loosened his shoulders, rolling them one at a time. He shook out his wrists. Then he held up a fist in the other hand as if stepping up to a punching machine. He wound up and launched a right hook.

     I crouched down.

     I didn’t want to get hit. Just didn’t.

     Seunggyu lost his balance and lurched forward. His legs flew up as he tripped over me. The rotted plywood crumbled against his weight. Without a second to scream, he plunged.

     The scenes stayed vivid in my mind. But memory kept shifting, drawing me back in. Forever summoning me to the rooftop. Sometimes Seunggyu’s right hook hits me in the jaw and breaks my teeth. Those jagged edges rip my tongue, filling my mouth with blood. I stagger down the stairs with Seunggyu. Sometimes I get knocked off my feet and fall to the floor. Sometimes I catch Seunggyu by the legs as he topples over me. I hold fast, bearing his weight. And sometimes I stay crouched, pushing his legs over. Pushing hard.

    Imaginings were harsher than reality. Again and again, I’d either hold on to Seunggyu or shove him over the edge. Out of sheer desperation. And I’d mean it each time.

The woman makes her way down the dirt path. She  takes long, steady strides forward. She’ll go on not knowing about Seunggyu’s final moment. She’ll tend to her spinach on the island not knowing the last look he gave me. She’ll live out her days in peace and quiet. To that end, I do nothing. In the end, I say nothing.

Translated by Sunnie Chae