Korean Literature Now - KLN

한국문학번역원 로고

Index

Authors

Index
Authors

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M

N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

PROFILEPark Seon Woo

made his literary debut in 2018 by winning the Jaeum & Moeum’s New Writers Award. He has published the short story collections In the Same Place and Waiting for Sunshine.

FICTION

Lingering Feelings Vol. 66 Winter 2024

Some memories refuse to be recalled. Because the memory exerts a repulsive force, and because we sense danger and retreat (even though it’s just the conditions of our brains), the act of remembrance can never be achieved. The memory only flickers like a fragile ember before sizzling out. Whenever this happens to me, I think: ‘We all deserve a proper takeback, just one per lifetime.’ One fall day when such a foreboding thought rustled my collar like a cold autumn breeze, I learned that she was pregnant. Of all times to receive this news, it happened just as the food was placed on our table to celebrate our one-hundredth-day anniversary at Osteria Sam Kim—rucola salad, anchovy oil pasta, and lamb chop steak from the kitchen, and a Cloud Cheesecake that I bought last-minute from Starbucks. “You can’t do without candles on a day like today.” As we stuck candles shaped like numbers we’d bought at Paris Baguette into a slice of pure white cake, we joked about marriage. I always wanted to get married before my thirties . . . One hundred days together . . . We’re basically married . . . At this point if we break up, we’ll be able to claim alimony . . . Bright moonlight pouring in through the window, humming conversations, heat from the open kitchen occasionally making its way to the far corner of the restaurant—these things made our cheeks perfectly flushed. After blowing out the candles in unison, you stared down at the cake for a moment before playfully scolding me for doing too much. I said I could have done more, that I wanted to do more, and then reminded you to take a picture with Sam Kim for Instagram before we paid. “We have to let everyone know that we were here.” “Is this one of the things you meant when you said you wanted to do everything that everyone else does?” I made a quizzical expression to pretend that I was thinking about your question. “Probably?” “Fine. I want what you want, hyeong. Do whatever you please.” As you said this, you smiled, revealing the dimple on your left cheek, and because I couldn’t help but smile when you smiled like that, we grinned together as we toasted with glasses filled half-way with Mountain Dew. Because you were born with a weak kidney, you couldn’t drink even one drop of alcohol. And I hated alcohol because I’d grown up with a father who was an alcoholic. So even on this trivial point, we were perfect for one another. Because of this, every time you talked about how you could see us in your dreams ten years from now, even though I told you that you were getting ahead of yourself and had fallen madly in love with me, at the same time, I was thinking we could, should, would be together for that long. Even though I knew I was being rash—after all, we’d known each other for less than a year combined—I was excited by the fact that, for the first time in my life, I could imagine a future together with someone. I wished that this excitement would last forever. Wishes. I thought I’d lost that concept for good, along with my childhood. I never thought that it would be returned to me so suddenly. But it wasn’t like our relationship was all smooth sailing. Before you started dating me, you were in the process of searching for your identity, trying to figure out whether you were into polyamorous relationships. You said that it was probably because of your past relationships that you couldn’t date me just yet. Because of this, on my way home after our date—while doubting whether it could even be called a date—I contemplated what kind of relationship I truly wanted. Did I really want a monopoly over someone else’s heart? I’d taken exclusivity as a fact of life until then; it was disorienting once I realized I wasn’t so sure. But the more I mulled over it, the more I became convinced that it was greedy for someone to try to fit several people in their heart at the same time, and that polyamorous relationships were invented by misguided souls who’d never been in a proper relationship. Of course, because I couldn’t tell you directly, I only said that you couldn’t impose your definition of love on me. “Right, of course.” You agreed, and gave a naïve, sheepish smile. Seeing this, it occurred to me that it was impossible to have a serious relationship with people like you. And once I realized this, I only sent half-hearted replies to your text messages and made a line in the sand about how personal I would allow conversations with you to become. Thinking that I wasn’t going to devote all my time and energy on you if you weren’t going to do your utmost for me, I started meeting as many other men as I could. Looking back on it now, those three or so months might have been the open relationship you’d been looking for. You met other men as you pleased—one reason for this was because you had no connections in Seoul and needed “friends”—and I enjoyed similar freedoms. And yet the more time that passed, the closer we became, and after a while, we couldn’t hide the fact that we enjoyed each other’s company the most. We’d never made any such arrangements, and yet every weekend, we left our schedules open to see each other—although most of the time, we just went to the movies or read books at a coffee shop in silence. Of course, we would sometimes go shopping for clothes for the upcoming season, or go on drives through the suburbs, or have sex, and through it all, we could share a peaceful and intimate routine without having to explain what it was that we wanted from each other. But because I knew just how rare it was—especially as a gay man—to find a partner like you, the time we spent together felt both wonderful and sometimes painful. Then one day, you started sending me messages telling me too much about how you weren’t feeling well. Or you would start confiding in me about the fight you had with your parents. And when this happened, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do for you. I felt a sudden feeling of repulsion. We weren’t dating, so why did we need to expose our vulnerable sides to each other like this? Why were you trying to lean on me and seek my comfort? My goodness. Only then did I start to doubt whether we were anything more than close friends with benefits, and not wanting anything more to do with it, I put my foot down. “To be honest, we have so much in common. Personality, tastes, routines, cleanliness. It would be great to think of each other as companions. But if we’re only going to limit ourselves to fuck buddies . . . I’m not sure . . . What I’m trying to say is that I don’t want to waste my life on you anymore. Thanks to you, I’ve become certain of something. The kind of relationship I truly want is an exclusive relationship with another person. I want their absolute devotion.” The problem was that, even though they were words meant to inflict harm, and even though you made an expression as though you’d just been punched in the gut, it didn’t make me feel any better. The moment your lips contorted slightly and started to quiver, I felt for the first time in my life what it meant to feel your heart being torn apart. But because I didn’t want to let you know that I was that in love with you, my only choice was to get up from my seat as quickly as possible. I had to make it clear that this was a cold-hearted goodbye. It took a while for you to confess to me that this was the deciding moment that made you—at least for a while—give up on polyamory. The image that night of me getting up suddenly from my chair, the image of me storming out the glass doors of the café had sent an unfamiliar wave of emotion through your heart. “That’s when I knew. I needed to have the right to ask you not to leave, to run after you and try to stop you. But I couldn’t do that, not in the relationship that I wanted. I couldn’t cling to anyone. I couldn’t stop anyone from leaving me. That made me feel so very lonely.” After a few ups and downs, we eventually started dating, but even after that, you would still act like someone who didn’t understand what a “normal” relationship was, and whenever you did this, you would completely wreck me. On business trips to your hometown of Busan, you would call up your old boyfriends or find a stranger on a dating app because you simply needed someone to eat dinner with—“You know you can’t get a table for one at budaejjigae restaurants.” And all of this, you told me with a smile. Every time this happened, I would blow up, saying that you were making a fool of me, and you would say that you had no ulterior motive, that you simply wanted to meet people. “I know it’s hard to understand. But it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks. I’ve always lived this way. And all my previous partners live this way. Is that so wrong? I promise, I don’t have any intention of doing anything with anyone but you. Isn’t that enough? How can you say that my whole mode of existence is wrong?” “That’s not what I’m saying. It’s just that . . . I just want you to know that when you meet up with other men to spend time together laughing and talking, it hurts me. Even if I wanted to meet other men, I wouldn’t do it because I’m afraid it might hurt you, because I’m afraid it might have a bad effect on our relationship. That’s what I think mutual respect and love is.” “Well, I don’t. I’m all right with you meeting other people, hyeong. They’re them, and we’re us. Our relationship is ours and ours alone. Other things can’t affect it. They’re irrelevant.” “How are they irrelevant? How can it not matter that you’re having dinner and hanging out with a man whose name you don’t even know? How can it not matter that you’re spending your time with those strangers?” Our words hovered in the air, refusing to enter each other’s ears. Whenever this happened, I became terrified that my fantasy that this relationship might last was being taken from me—and we’d just started dating, too. But then again, all relationships come to an end. I’ve realized that much. And yet, if we weren’t willing to delude ourselves, if we weren’t willing to sweet talk each other with promises we knew weren’t true, what were we doing? If there was one good thing that came out of our frequent bickering, it was learning what the other couldn’t stand. Thankfully, we were able to wander through the dark until we eventually met somewhere in the middle. You agreed not to do those ridiculous meetups, and I agreed to give you my utmost trust. And yet when I was together with you—oddly enough, this didn’t happen when we were apart—I couldn’t help but question your faith. Like that day. We made reservations at a restaurant I’d never consider just to celebrate our one-hundredth-day anniversary, prepared couple pajamas and bracelets with each other’s birthstones, sat across from each other and blew out candles together. But then when you got up from your seat saying you needed to take a phone call, I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was really a call from a recruiter looking to headhunt you from your company, whether that headhunter wasn’t really some bum trying to snipe you from me, whether I wasn’t becoming psychotic with jealous delusions, wondering what I’d done to receive this kind of treatment, while at the same time telling myself to trust you, that faith was always rewarded. So, I took out my phone to scroll through Instagram. I liked every post I saw, thinking it made me generous like Buddha and would rid me of the suffering caused by distrust. But then when you didn’t come back after several minutes—you were probably just trying to play hard-to-get with that headhunter—I stared up at the ceiling for a while in boredom and typed in her name. Sukyung Lee. I was only half-way through her name when it appeared as “recently searched.” I first searched her up a few months ago when she liked one of my posts. It had been a long time since I’d heard anything about her through the grapevine, so I was on the verge of completely forgetting that she even existed. And because we weren’t following each other, the fact that she had liked my post could only mean that she had been stalking my account. So, by the time I opened Instagram to check, she’d already deleted her “like,” but I still had the evidence as an alert on my phone. Sukyung Lee liked your picture. Disgraceful evidence that she couldn’t delete on her own . . . The kind of mistake that she would lose sleep over . . . And yet a slip of the thumb that people try to convince themselves won’t mean anything to the person who sees it . . . That probably happens all the time. So what if I was stalking? They won’t think much about it . . . But because I knew that she was the kind of person who brooded over embarrassment with clenched fists, that alert message made me laugh and put me in a good mood. And most importantly, I felt my heart flutter for a moment when I realized that she hadn’t forgotten about me. Was that why? After that, whenever I made a post, I couldn’t rid myself of the expectation that she would see it. I didn’t care if she saw it or not, and sometimes I would just upload things for her to see, but sometimes I would, just for the briefest of moments, become lost imagining what she might be thinking or feeling when she saw how I was doing, what I was doing. So of course, I started spying on her account as well. Because if she was doing well without any hardships, that would mean it was okay for me to also be doing well. According to her 140-plus posts and six highlight videos, she’d gotten married three years ago to one of the editors from the company we used to work at. After that, she got a loan for newlyweds and moved into Raemian We’ve Apartments in Dapsimni-dong. A few months later, she quit and opened her own small design company. And then last year, she adopted a Siamese cat named Bori. Nine months ago, she started a new hobby buying environmentally friendly wooden furniture and doing DIY interior design. Every August, she would travel with her husband to Gaya Island in Kota Kinabalu to go snorkeling. Her most recent hobby was making tea coasters with French embroidery. ‘She’s doing well for herself.’ Every time I saw her post, I was relieved. And at the same time, I didn’t know what this relationship was, this relationship where we couldn’t like each other’s posts, where we could only spy on each another. Nor did I want to know what it was, so I would often just close Instagram with a sense of disillusionment. That night was no different. I was just scrolling through her posts for a moment, ready to exit as soon as you came back from your phone call. But the moment I refreshed the app and discovered the post that she’d uploaded three minutes ago, I was unable to take my eyes away from the screen for a while. ♡♥Giving birth soon ♥♡ This was the caption under the picture of her hand clasping her husband’s with a hospital bed in the background. I hadn’t even known she was pregnant. But here she was, about to give birth. Was this the reason for her uploading that picture of a snowball with a child angel, or a mobile with colorful sea creatures, and the cover of Lim Seung-yu’s first poetry collection? Why hadn’t she just come out and said that she was pregnant? Was she afraid she might get less work? Or maybe there was some other reason? As I tried to think of why she might have hidden her pregnancy, I thought of myself as one possible reason, and even though this was obviously a conceited delusion, it was enough to kick up the sediment in my head. “What are you doing?” You’d returned to your seat, but there was no way I could answer your question honestly, so I just continued to look at my phone screen. “Just a minute. I have to check something.” Without lifting my head, I clicked on the location she’d added to the post. Baby Mom Obstetrics and Gynaecology. The hospital that her baby was going to be born in was located fifteen minutes from Exit 2 of Wangsimni Station. * Sukyung Lee. She was my old coworker, and, although it’s an open secret now, the first person I’d told that I was gay. Actually, that wasn’t true. She was the one who asked me, and I simply said “Yeah” in a halting voice after a long silence. And yet that simple reply became my first coming out. From that day on, I felt my heart opening up slowly, one bolt at a time. “Yeah” turned into “Right” turned into “That’s who I am.” And then eventually, after three years, I was able to declare, “Mom, I like men. I only like men. That’s not going to change. Really.” It always felt insignificant once I said it aloud, but people were always surprised—not that I was gay, but that I was telling them that I was gay. Thankfully, no one rejected or tried to cut me down. But perhaps it was because I only revealed my sexuality to people who wouldn’t do that to me. Or maybe it was that, after a while, I’d only surrounded myself with people who would accept me. But it didn’t really matter, I guess. In the end, I hadn’t really done anything. I hadn’t gone around telling everyone I was having sex with men. I was just happy to escape the feeling of guilt about constantly deceiving people precious to me, and happy that I could now upload pictures of me and my boyfriend to social media. The joy of not feeling a wall between me and another man was a large project with many phases. First, I needed to take a picture with him. To do that, I needed a man who wouldn’t be opposed to taking pictures—that is, creating digital records of the two of us that made it clear that we weren’t just friends. So, the first order of business was the daunting task of getting into a relationship with a man who was okay with such pictures. Thankfully, you weren’t opposed to that. The next issue was releasing those pictures online for everyone to see. You made it clear that you were a bit uncomfortable with this. That was understandable, so I said that I wasn’t going to do anything that you didn’t want me to do. And that I wasn’t going to blame or resent you for not giving me permission. After two-ish hours of thinking it over, you gave me permission—on the condition that I didn’t mention your name or tag your account. Of course, you were aware that people could figure out who you were by searching through the accounts I followed; you just wanted a bit of a buffer. The last matter to resolve had to do with me. Once everything was prepared, the question remained: Why did I need to upload these pictures? Who was I doing this for? Did I really need to take such risks? (Then again, I didn’t know exactly what I was risking by uploading these pictures.) I didn’t want to take on society’s lack of understanding, nor did I want to announce my sexuality to the world. So what was the real reason I wanted to make these pictures public? I didn’t need to think for long. What I really wanted were “likes.” I wanted to receive that little heart from friends and acquaintances who saw pictures of me with my boyfriend. Did I really need a reason for that? Then I realized that this form of enjoyment might have been the thing that I’d been denied for the last thirty years: completely trivial pleasures. That bit of happiness you got from doing small things, like locking arms with your boyfriend or girlfriend as you walked down the street on a sunny day, receiving relationship advice from school friends, or wearing a ring on the proper finger at home or at work. All of the oppression, scorn, and overly cautious treatment that I’d had to endure living as a gay man would have been trivial had I been able to enjoy the aggregate of all those simple pleasures. The realization that I’d been denied the small things that everyone else took for granted filled me with unbearable anger. This anger became the only reason I needed. That day, with a heart full of resentment, I uploaded a photo to Instagram of me and my boyfriend smiling for the camera, our faces so close that our cheeks touched. Sukyung had probably seen this picture, too. I first met her four years ago. I’d just graduated from an art college and was hired at a publishing company near Hapjeong Station with a recommendation from my thesis advisor. Sukyung and I were the same age, but she was already three years into her career as a designer. And even before I’d entered the company, she’d been dealing with the design department’s difficult team leader. I became close to her when we just happened to have lunch together one day. Because most of the senior editors either brought their lunch from home or skipped it altogether to attend yoga class, I was eating by myself just three days after joining the company. I’d kind of expected as much—I mean, the rumors that I’d been hired solely due to connections and because I was a male had already spread throughout the company—and since the vibe was that you only ate with members of your own team unless for special occasions, I had no choice but to eat lunch alone for a while. Eating alone didn’t bother me much. I was used to being a loner since college—in fact, I was never really a people person and had only a few friends after coming back from the military because I’d switched majors with the goal of learning how to write—I had no problem going through another loner phase. But there was someone keeping an eye on me from afar . . . It was Sukyung Lee, who’d left her cohort because she didn’t want to eat at the same table as the team leader from Design. “Hey, hey, you don’t need to tell me. Whenever we have a deadline, she’s always breathing down my neck and telling me to put this there, change that to yellow, make this font smaller. If she’s so picky, she should just do it herself. Why make me do it? It’s her design after all. Was I the one who came up with it?” That day, when I was practically dragged by Sukyung to an old-fashioned Korean restaurant, it was Sukyung’s fiery temper and the way she looked like she was going to flip the table in rage every five minutes that endeared her to me. Until then, we’d never crossed paths because we worked in different areas. Lightly made-up skin, rosy cheeks, long black hair with thick curls, and a penchant for wearing flare skirts with Doc Martens loafers—these were what most people pointed to if they had to explain her charm. But as for me, it was her ability to express her anger so openly—something I envied—that drew me to her. “Just pretend like you’re collaborating with her,” I said. “That’s what most people do these days.” After a few lunches together, we became close enough to talk about our real feelings. She squinted. “That’s your problem,” she said as she stuffed a wad of stir-fried spicy pork wrapped in perilla leaf into her mouth. “Hey, you have to look after yourself. No one’s going to do that for you.” “Please finish chewing before you talk.” She shook her head, picked up a perilla leaf and started shaking off the moisture. “Hey, people’s personalities show even when they’re eating. A fistful of spicy stir-fried pork wrapped in perilla leaf. That’s me. That’s my identity. It’s not like me to add onion or garlic. And no lettuce. Just perilla.” “But this place specializes in its onions.” “That’s your problem,” she said as she prepared another perilla leaf for herself. “You shouldn’t follow the crowd. You should ignore it.” “Do you know the nickname we have for you in editing?” I asked, purposefully pausing for dramatic effect. “‘So-in.’” “‘Social introvert?’” “No. ‘So intense.’” “So, you don’t like me?” Having not expected this question, I just sat there for a moment blinking. “What are you talking about?” “You don’t like me?” “Well, it’s not a good thing.” “Ugh, you’re hopeless.” She took the pork wrap she was going to eat and instead shoved it into my mouth. “Shut up and eat.” After lunch we went to a place called Mangwon-dong Café located near our office. When we rounded the street corner and saw the shop sign, we talked about why there would be a café named Mangwon-dong Café in Seogyo-dong. “Are we not in Seogyo-dong? It’s not Mangwon-dong.” “You’re right. Let’s go to a place that’s neither Seogyo or Mangwon.” It was always like this. Thirty-five minutes for eating, and twenty-five minutes for coffee. This was the lunch schedule that we fell into without any verbal agreement. One hour a day, five times a week, until three months later when she twisted the team leader’s wrist for taking her mouse, and screamed, “You really crossed the line!” That’s how we spent lunch together, just the two of us talking. We talked about everything from our frustrations at work, TV shows, and celebrity gossip to apartment prices in Mapo-gu, tips for negotiation raises, skin problems we were secretly dealing with, parents, and the future—everything. “What’s your dream?” she asked me. “Hm?” “What’s your plan. Do you even have any plans or goals?” We would often make jokes, recreating memes we’d seen on the internet when we ran out of things to talk about. That one was from “Cinderella’s Stepsister.” We could watch Moon Geun-young and Seo Woo, Go Hyun-jung and Choi Ji-woo, and Ha Yumi without getting tired of them. I sometimes wonder if she got early hints about my sexuality from my interests and sense of humor. “Do you practice? Are you doing it until you can’t do it anymore? But then why are your hands so immaculate and pretty?” This line, another one from “Cinderella’s Stepsister,” was what she liked to say after I told her that I was writing every night in preparation for entering a writing competition. “Why is your voice so loud. Act more cultured.” “Cuuuultured? You’ve got to be joking, right?” She rummaged through the tote bag next to her before placing on the table a dark-green box the size of her palm. “This is my culture.” I stared down at the box until I gave in to her pestering and tore off the wrapping. Inside was a silver Faber-Castell fountain pen with my name engraved on it. “I know it’s not much. Just a birthday present.” “My birthday isn’t until next spring.” “I’m giving it to you early. You said the deadline for the competition was soon. Use it when you’re writing your novel.” We didn’t know it at the time, but that was our last lunch together. Or perhaps she’d known something I hadn’t. Perhaps she knew that she’d reached the end of her patience. Was that why she’d bought me an early birthday present? Was that why she suddenly started acting like a big sister giving me advice? “I may not know what I’m talking about but just hear me out. It’s important for authors to write their stories honestly. I read manuscripts all the time to design book covers. I like it when you can tell exactly what kind of person the author is. It also makes designing their covers a lot easier.” “That’s not what writing novels is about. You think that way because you usually read essay manuscripts. Fiction is different. It’s like . . . you’re writing to convey the truth through a made-up story.” “Why take the long way around when you can write the truth from the beginning?” “What are you talking about?” “I don’t know.” She leaned back in her chair and shrugged. “I’m just rambling.” That afternoon, with forty minutes still left in the day, she stormed out of the office and never returned. She took only the handbag she brought to work with her every day. Not knowing whether she was just taking a break or if she was leaving the company for good, I came in a few days later a little earlier than usual and went to her desk. I stood there for a while, staring down at the objects on her desk that had just been left there: a mug with old, cold coffee and the brown leather diary and light-green Blackwing pencil that she’d brought to weekly meetings. After taking a picture of her desk with my cell phone, I was about to send her a message asking what she was doing, but stopped myself. For the next ten days, I repeatedly looked at the picture and wrote and deleted a message to her. It was the first, sudden parting I’d experienced in the workplace, and because of this, I didn’t know what I was feeling or how to react. All I knew was that I didn’t want to do something rash. So, I did nothing, and it took a little while before I realized that she was thinking the same way. I started eating lunch alone again. The only difference was that I wasn’t the same confident loner that I’d been before I met her. The intensity of the solitude that I now had to endure had transformed markedly. After work, I would sit in front of my laptop in my room unable to type a single word. And even if I managed to squeeze out a few sentences, when I read them the next day, they felt so immature that I had no choice but to delete them. Because the deadline for the competition was imminent, I took out an early novel I’d written in the past and turned it in, but as expected, it didn’t make the cut. After that, I stopped writing. I’d lost interest in writing stories with satisfyingly sugar-coated endings. Then one day I received a phone call. Her tone was so nonchalant it completely nullified her two months of absence. We exchanged some of our usual playful banter before an awkward silence fell between us. It was then that she suggested we meet for coffee. She admitted to sometimes missing our coffee breaks after lunch. I was relieved that not once during the entire phone call did her voice ever sound critical—then again, why would it?—or like she was hiding something. A few days later, we met for the first and last time, not during the day, but in the evening, on a Saturday near Dangin-ri Intersection. Because she said she wanted to go to a café that served British-style afternoon tea—“Didn’t you watch last week’s Master of Living? They’ve got authentic clotted cream.”—we wandered alleyways for almost an hour until we gave up and went into an Oppadak for fried chicken. “And stop using honorifics with me. I’m not your superior anymore,” she said. “. . .Yeah?” “Of course, you only remembered to use them half of the time anyway.” Among a crowd of pleasantly drunk customers, we found a table in the corner of the restaurant and ordered a plate of Crispy Bake Chicken and two Sprites before finally catching up. I relayed in detail everything she’d missed—the clouds of war that were still looming inside the Design Department and how the other designers had finally had enough of the team leader’s constant interfering. And yet all the while, she was just stripping meat of chicken legs with a look of apathy. “I guess this is all behind you now, isn’t it?” I said. “All right. What have you been up to?” “Not much. Just a big fight with my mom and breaking up with my boyfriend.” “What happened?” “I don’t know. Everyone’s so eager to piss me off, ya know? You wouldn’t have lasted long even if you’d stayed. You should get married while you’re taking a break. Have a kid and settle down. It might fix your stubborn personality.” “What is this, the Gojoseon Dynasty?” “At first, I just listened. After all, it wasn’t like I was in the right. But the more I listened, the less they respect you. It worked out for the best in the end. I closed my savings account, took out a loan, and got my own place. Besides, he was only good in bed. I’m glad to be rid of that airhead.” “But still. It’s a small industry and rumors spread fast. You can’t just up and quit like that if you want to work again making book covers.” “Hey—” She flared her eyes and squeezed the fork in her hand. “Taking a designer’s mouse is taking everything from them. I wasn’t going to stand for it.” The ajumma who looked like she owned the restaurant came over to our table and filled our plastic basket with corn snacks. “Aigo, you two make a great couple. Aren’t you going to drink?” “He hates alcohol.” She gave the ajumma a peppy smile as though she hadn’t just been angry. “But do we really make a good couple? Today marks our one-hundredth day anniversary.” Sukyung winked at me. “One hundred days? Two lovebirds.” “I guess? Anyway I’m thinking about just marrying this one. Men are all the same in the end.” Seeing my eyes open wide in surprise, the ajumma waved her hands in the air and started laughing. “No need to rush. Give it a year before you jump into anything.” “But I want a daughter already.” “Well, aren’t you forward. I’m feeling generous. I can’t give you a daughter. I’m not Samsin Halmeoni after all, but I can give you two glasses of beer on the house. To celebrate.” That night, one drink turned into two, turned into three, and before we knew it, we were mixing soju with Pocari Sweat. I’d been swept along by the ajumma’s clever ploy and Sukyung’s binge drinking. I forgot most of what we talked about and did after that. Except for one sequence that I’ll never be able to forget. To be honest, even then, I didn’t fully remember the events before or after it happened. All I could do was crudely stitch together the fragmented words and images that remained in my head. I don’t know how we got on the subject, but she told me in slurred words to stop resisting and just live my life. I laughed sheepishly. “What? What are you talking about?” She rested her chin on her right hand and turned toward the entrance. Neither of us said anything for a while. “Are you drunk?” I reached across the table and tapped her forearm. “Hello?” She turned toward me and stared at me in the eyes. “You are, aren’t you?” “What?” “Really, truly?” She dropped her eyes before mumbling again: “ . . . I’m right, aren’t I?” The problem was that this question and its vagueness had caught me off guard—not to mention the fact that my guard was already lowered because I was drunk for the first time in a long time—and so I missed my chance to laugh off this attempt to out me. Every time this had happened before, I’d been able to deny it with a practiced response. As the seconds passed and things began to get awkward, she made an expression of regret—although it’s possible this was just a part of my imagination, something I added after the fact. Either way, what I do remember clearly was my response. I just stared down at the broken edge of the table, not knowing what to do. She didn’t try to cover up the incident by changing the subject or making light of the matter. Rather, she bit the bottom of her lip like she was enduring great pain, and because this reminded me exactly of how I was feeling, I knew she hadn’t had the slightest ill intent. Yes. Perhaps she didn’t want to interrogate me about the truth. Perhaps she just wanted confirmation. Or perhaps it wasn’t that she wanted confirmation, but rather that she wanted to give me confirmation. She was doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself. But no one should do that. I knocked back another shot of soju and slowly began to speak. It wasn’t that I had heroically made up my mind or resolved to come out. I was simply benefiting from the alcohol, something I always abstained from. “Yeah.” Try as I might, I can’t remember what face she made after I said this, or what I said or did afterward. I sometimes wonder what was contained on that strip of film that was snipped from my mind with a pair of scissors. Much later, I got the feeling that I must have erased those images, either consciously or subconsciously. And now, I’m almost certain of another thing. I had also tried to erase her from my memory. The next morning, I opened my eyes to find myself in the bed of a motel with a sore throat. I had no memory of walking out of the bar on my own, no memory of paying for the room at the counter, no memory of taking off all my clothes and underwear, but here I was, lying by myself butt-naked in a motel bed. The sensation of unnaturally cool bedsheets. The mildewy smell coming off the light-purple wallpaper. These things, along with the thin afternoon rays leaking in through the blackout curtains, remain in my memory as an unforgettable scene. What happened to me? No, had anything happened to me? Because I had no memories of what happened, I spent that day grabbing at my throbbing skull and waiting for her to contact me. I practiced various responses depending on everything from the nuance of her words to when she called me, what she said first, whether her voice was shaking or not, how often she paused. I even consider the unlikely chance that I would have to follow her directions. But she didn’t text me, let alone call me. Three days passed like that, and then I suddenly realized that she might be in the same predicament as me. If she also couldn’t remember what happened because she was too drunk, and thus was unable to decide what she should do—perhaps she might not even remember her question or my answer—then maybe the only way to end this long period of silence and uncertainty was for someone, anyone, to speak up. And if that was the case, then my calling her and honestly telling her how I felt might have been the best solution. But I didn’t do that, of course. And this was because of the awareness that we had passed a point of no return—just like that time I took a picture of her desk and composed a text to send her after she left the company only to suddenly delete both. Even if I resolved any misunderstandings, what then? What lay in the future for us? To be completely honest, I must tell you that I had nothing more I wanted to talk about with her. I had nothing more to confess, no desire to meet with her anymore. I felt that we’d shared and accomplished enough. And that wasn’t because of the moment I answered her question. There was a sense of severing not between me and her, but between my old self and my current self. I didn’t want to go back to who I used to be, that person who habitually denied himself. If possible, I wanted to distance, if not completely delete, myself from everything that reminded me of that period in my life. Whatever her reason for asking that question, I needed to delete her along with everything else because she was the one who’d heard that repressed voice that hadn’t been heard by anyone in over twenty years. The moment I came out of the closet, she became the gateway to that period in myself, the biggest reminder of what I used to be. That was why. After that, I didn’t go looking for her, and for whatever reason, she didn’t come looking for me. Severance inevitably leaves marks. And with time, that night that we shared morphed into a thin, uneven patch of scar tissue that I would occasionally run my fingers over to remind myself of her. Of course, I never wanted to remind myself of her, but I did it anyway, and then I would feel disappointed in and confused with myself. And the cycle would repeat. Then one day, I was on my way back to the office after eating lunch alone, when, while waiting at a crosswalk for the light to change, I saw a gingko tree across the street swaying in the wind, its yellow leaves falling gently to the ground. And as I followed their languid, transient trajectory, I realized that some relationships last forever—not in spite of breakups, but because of them. * Ten days later, when the picture of her newborn baby was uploaded to Instagram, I didn’t, couldn’t, like the photo, and had no intention of going to the hospital where she and the baby were staying. There was nothing I could do, nothing I was allowed to do, and this fact surprised me, even though there was nothing surprising about it in the least. It was just a reminder that we were nothing special. And yet I couldn’t stop imagining myself going to see the baby. I would go up the subway station stairs and walk along a quiet street, open the doors of the hospital and walk over to the front desk and say her name, take the elevators up to some floor, walk down a hallway that smelled faintly of alcohol, and stop in front of a large glass pane. There I would look down at a baby lying in a plastic bassinet with a pink ankle band with the name Lee Sukyung written on it. Quietly, I would watch her, the way she wiggles inside the swaddle, her pinkish skin, the spittle around her mouth when she yawns, the wrinkles on her tiny feet. These imaginations continue until I’m running into her daughter on the street, both as a young girl and as a beautiful lady. The image of us crossing paths on a busy city street, completely unaware of each other . . . I don’t know what it meant, but I locked away this chance meeting in my heart, like a vague wish. Wishes. As such, I couldn’t confess this story to you, the embodiment of all my current wishes. While we sat side by side in a café and momentarily put down our books to stare at the afternoon sun coming in through the far window, we eventually made eye contact. I started this story as if I’d been explaining the plot of a drama I’d watched yesterday, and you quietly leaned in to listen to me. I told you about the name that I search on Instagram every time you get out of your seat, about the baby, and about the night I’d spent with her. I tell you that telling you these things is the respect and love that I was talking about. And then I add that I now somewhat understand the type of relationship that you wanted from me, which you still might be wanting from me. That is, being able to fit two or more different people in one person’s heart, with mutually exclusive feelings of sadness. “I don’t think they’re quite the same . . . but I guess they’re similar.” That’s what you said in response. I wanted to ask you to explain to me again exactly what kind of relationship you wanted, but because I got the feeling that we could remain together without understanding each other, because I had the premonition that we could only persist if we didn’t understand each other, I shut my mouth. Instead, I pulled out from my coat pocket a silver fountain pen with my name engraved on it and showed it to you. I told you that I wanted to write about this one day, that it would be the last time I would recall the memory of her. “Good.” You nodded with a faint smile. You then took a sip of your coffee, put it down on the table, and started reading your book again. It was as if nothing had happened. Watching you do this, I suddenly felt both loneliness and warmth. I wanted to say that even if we eventually broke up, even if we couldn’t make it last six months or a year, let alone ten years, even if you left me because you couldn’t stand the type of love that I wanted from you, that I wouldn’t forget this moment, that I wouldn’t lose those days I’ve spent with you. But I realized that because I’d probably cry if I said that, and you’d probably leave me if I cried, that there were some things that you couldn’t tell anyone, not even the person you were the closest to. I had to accept the fact that even if I managed to say it, the main character of that story would never be by my side. Translated by Sean Lin Halbert Park Seon Woo made his literary debut in 2018 by winning the Jaeum & Moeum’s New Writers Award. He has published the short story collections In the Same Place and Waiting for Sunshine.

Sign up for LTI Korea's Newsletter

to stay up to date on Korean Literature Now's issues, events, and contests.

ABOUT

KLN
ARCHIVE

Newsletter Notice

LTI Korea's Privacy Policy Location Rejection of unauthorized e-mail collection LTI Korea Website

Family Site

06083 LTI Korea, 32, Yeongdong-daero 112-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea
TEL: +82-2-6919-7714 / FAX: +82-2-3448-4247

Copyright(c) 2019 Literature Translation Institute of Korea. All Rights Reserved.