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  by Agus Sulaeman

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  Lingering Feelings

  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.

  by Park Seon Woo

• 

  Method of Mourning

   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    

  by An Boyun

• 

  Dear My Bias

  The day the two-month long monsoon ended with a heat wave warning, I went to watch Cresta’s second showcase. It was a four-and-a-half hour trip from Seogwipo to Seoul just to see my bias. I couldn’t feel even a stroke of wind, just humidity and heat that clung stubbornly to my skin. Only when I got off at Hangangjin Station did I allow myself to unbutton my sticky shirt and take out the fan with Hobin’s face printed on it. Before long, I noticed the young students who seemed to be heading the same way as me. There were also some fans who were proudly holding their Yaho-sticks and fabric banners bearing different members’ names. I finally let myself relax. There, much better.        “Excuse me.”       A girl scooched past and took the seat next to mine. She’d dyed her hair to match Jinil’s in the photoshoot for Cresta’s second full-length album—a shocking green at the roots which mellowed into a blue-tinted turquoise. Looks like Jinil’s in charge of the weird hair this comeback, I’d thought at the time. Who would’ve guessed there’d be Nivels who’d copy that hairstyle? Green Hair set down a shopping bag in front of her. As she fished out a reflective banner with Jinil’s name on it, the plastic antlers of a deer plushie sticking out of the bag poked my knee.       “Is that a Jinil deer?” I asked, furtively nudging the shopping bag aside.      “It’s not just any deer, it’s a roe deer!” Green Hair insisted, taking out the plushie to admire it. “Looks just like Jinil, doesn’t it?”      Her upper lip lifted as she giggled, revealing the row of shiny braces adorning her teeth.       “That’s a really pale roe deer.”       “Well, Jinil is pale.”       I’d never seen a white roe deer before. Maybe a roe deer with a butt as white as a mushroom, but never a roe deer that was white all over. Technically, the plushie was a chibi character with antlers attached so it was just weird to be arguing about the color of the fur. I guess you could call it a ‘moe-ified’ version of Jinil, as the kids say. There’d been days when my head would spin with new words that sprung out of god-knows-where along with terms that I was still getting used to. I’d made my fair share of mistakes, getting definitions and nuances confused. I swallowed the all-too-familiar sense of doubt and agreed enthusiastically. “It’s lovely.”       Carefully, Green Hair returned the roe deer to the shopping bag. She took out her Yaho-stick and slipped in some fresh batteries. Connected to the central controller, the lightsticks in the venue glowed, blinking slowly from orange to green, sky blue to purple.       I switched off my Yaho-stick for now and took out my Nashica binoculars from my bag. My seat was all the way in the left corner, in the last row of the second floor. The venue capacity was a mere thousand, but being so far from the stage made the space feel all the more massive. With my bare eyes, I wouldn’t be able to even guess if my bias was laughing or crying, or in which direction he was looking. It couldn’t compare to the front row seats on the first floor, where a fansite owner holding a bulky camera was uploading preview pictures on Twitter in real time. After I barely managed to buy a ticket off someone two days ago, the first thing I’d packed were my 20x50 binoculars.      I’d found them in the hotel where I’d worked before moving to Jeju. A Japanese tourist had left them behind along with a heap of albums. It was a common occurrence—foreign fans who bought multiple copies of the same album for the chance to enter a fansign only to end up tossing out the lot of them. As the maid-in-charge, it was my duty to discard any items that hadn’t been claimed after a year, but on the way to binning the binoculars and albums, something told me to keep them instead. Perhaps it started out as naive excitement in finding something to put in the CD player inside the used car that I’d just bought. On my first listen to Cresta, what struck me the most was their indecipherable lyrics. They were in Korean, clearly, but I couldn’t understand them any better than the foreign languages that the hotel guests spoke, and I found that strange, yet fascinating. I kept a CD in the car and one at home which I played on repeat as if I were learning a new language, not knowing there’d be no turning back.  After hurrying to take off the lens cap, I raised the binoculars to my eyes and studied the stage. Adjusting the lens before the concert was a given if I was going to catch every second of the show, starting from the very first song. But why weren’t my binoculars focusing? They’d worked just fine at last year’s fanmeeting. While my anxious fingers fidgeted with the dials in between the lenses, I mumbled to myself, “What’s wrong with this thing? Not now. . .” Green Hair tugged at my rolled-up sleeve.       “Unni, let me see.”       Before I knew it, I was handing over my binoculars. In Green Hair’s lap were a pair of her own, the same model as mine, along with a tripod that could support their hefty weight. So absorbed by her mechanical preparedness, I only realised later how naturally she’d addressed me as ‘Unni.’      After playing with the dials for a while, Green Hair reached into her bag and got out a spectacle cloth. She gave both lenses a quick and thorough wipe.       “All done. I think it just needed a good clean. Have a look,” she said, handing back my binoculars.      Once I peeked through the lenses, the stage came into view with stunning clarity. I could see the faint smudges of footprints on the lustrous stage floor, and if I looked close enough, I just might be able to see what my bias was muttering, what he was thinking, and what he was keeping to himself.       From the front pocket of my backpack, I took out a tangerine chocolate. The air conditioner was blasting hot air, as if someone had accidentally left it on the wrong setting, and the chocolate had long lost its shape. Still, it was the only thing I had on me that could express my thanks. Green Hair ripped open the wrapper and brought it to her mouth, squeezing out the chocolate with her fingers as if she were sucking on a piece of jelly. When I looked back at her after recapping my binoculars and putting away my ticket, I saw that some chocolate had ended up on her bangs. If she’d had brown hair like me, no one would’ve noticed, but that sliver of reddish brown against the bright green made it look like she’d missed a spot when she was dyeing her hair.       “You’ve got some chocolate there.”       I opened the front-facing camera and stuck my phone in front of her.      As I wet a tissue, she beamed. “Cool. Kinda looks like a twig, doesn’t it? Maybe I should ask for highlights like this.”       Humming a B-side from Cresta’s first album, Green Hair fixed her hair, using my phone as a mirror. “Oops, it turned off,” she said and tapped the screen to wake it. When the black screen turned on again, Hobin appeared on my lock screen.      “Heol!” Green Hair gasped before launching into a string of chatter. “Is Hobin your bias, Unni? I like him, too. But Jinil most, and him second,” she said, all smiles as she tousled her bangs. Feeling like we’d grown close, I confessed that Jinil was my bias wrecker.       “Really? So are we. . .”       Green Hair swallowed the rest of her sentence, clasping my hands in hers and pulling them into something like a handshake. I wasn’t lying. Jinil wasn’t the best at singing or rapping, but he danced like a pro. There was a huge gap in his skills, as if he’d sold his sense of pitch, voice, and soul in exchange for his dancing skills. The group could do without him in the tracks, but they needed him on that stage. In other words, he was a performer best watched on mute.      Since I’d heard Cresta before I saw them, Jinil only caught my attention much later. And not because he was a good dancer. The way he listened well to Hobin, who was two years older than him, and the way he, as Hobin’s roommate, would share little tidbits of Hobin’s daily life with the fans were the reasons I started to care for him. As if to prove my sincerity, I held out the fan I’d been using to cool my face. A Nivel had made customised fans of Hobin eating a hallabong and I’d paid 12,000 won for one, including shipping.       “Jinil was the one who took this photo of Hallabong Hobin,” I said. “Remember the last time he came on V App and promised to upload it? Jinil even printed it out to put in the back of his phone case so he could have it with him everywhere. You know this photo, don’t you, nim?”      I was sure Green Hair had never missed one of her bias’s livestreams. I’d spoken with such certainty and was fizzing with so much excitement that I hadn’t realised I’d gone and called her ‘nim,’ like she was a senior or my teacher.       Green Hair, who’d been intently watching me, leaned in suddenly.       “Unni, we’re in-laws, aren’t we?” she said, dropping her voice.       “Excuse me?”       “Well, you like Hobil too, don’t you? Everyone knows this photo. Hobin and Jinil? No?”       “Ah, Hobin and Jinil? Of course. Those two are my only joy in life.”       It wasn’t my first time hearing the word ‘Hobil.’ Whenever I searched my Hobin’s name on Twitter, a photo of him and Jinil would occasionally pop up and I’d see the word ‘Hobil.’ It didn’t happen very often, but sometimes I’d see a short paragraph brimming with wild imagination. I’d think, A fanfic, maybe? and scroll past. Typing out ‘Hobin and Jinil’ or ‘Hobin x Jinil’ could be too much of a hassle for kids these days who preferred to shorten their words, so it was only natural that they used ‘Hobil’ to refer to two of their favourite members at the same time. I nodded my head naively and Green Hair’s expression turned serious.       “Right? They make such a good couple. I hope we get good round one stuff today.”       “Wait, they’re dating? Is this confirmed? What do you mean by round one? Is there an event happening today?” I asked question after question, wide-eyed.       Green Hair sank back into her seat, scratching her head.       “Well, you know. . . in round two? Anything can happen.”       “Round two? Aha. . .”       I didn’t know what she was saying, but I turned back to the stage and faked a cheery nod. Someone must’ve finally lowered the temperature on the air conditioner because the wind against my nape was now icy. If the lights hadn’t dimmed and the intro music and screen hadn’t come on, perhaps I’d have blurted out, curious—So, what is this ‘round two’? Is that where Chu Cheolseon is sending our boys? Do the boys date in round two? Are they really making them do that? Sure, they suck as a company, but aren’t they taking things too far? Laughable questions. Had I asked them rapid-fire style with fury in my eyes, surely it would’ve made things awkward.   *      As the water rose without end, the peaks turned into islands.      The boys who remembered lived with the constant feeling of floating.  Against a rainy scene, the subtitles rose to the top of the screen like undulating waves while the members took turns strutting to the front of the stage. The show was about to start with a B-side titled “Cloud Hotel.” Dressed in a mint-coloured shirt, a brown bowtie, and white cotton trousers, Hobin was the first to catch my eye. There were also some members in shorts and suspenders. Were they going for the pageboy concept? Just then, the leader, Dawool, launched into an explanation of the song’s concept. A story about the host of a hotel that sits atop the last mountain peak on Earth. Really? A hotel setting? I sucked in a breath.       Walking on white clouds, every day I wait for you, let the blue-mint leaf surf the waves, welcome, welcome drink. . .      A chill dance song with unusually catchy lyrics and a melancholy melody.       If you’ll just say you’ll come, a late check-in is alright.      I gently eased my temples as Hobin yelled the lyrics of the hook, which included, of all things, a term I heard too often at work. Thank God this wasn’t the title song. To sum up, we’ve got a world where it never stops raining, a planet where the rising sea levels have left only seven mountaintops on which people can step foot, a day in the not-so-distant future when the seven members will each be left alone on their own mountains. Simply put, the concept for this second full-length album was a hopeless apocalypse. My issue with it wasn’t whether or not it was well thought out. Were our boys really going up the mountains? Here I’d thought we were way past the days when I had to worry about this. Who’d have thought they’d really send them up there? I was so sure I’d gleaned a hopeful sentiment from the teaser photos and videos. . . I mean, seriously? The two-month long monsoon ended just yesterday and the country was scrambling to restore areas that had seen a lot of flood damage. What was all this about torrential rains and deluges?       I managed to hold up my binoculars throughout the first half of the show, but when my arms went numb and my wrists started to ache, I set them down more frequently, which made a rustling sound. “Unni, want my tripod?” Green Hair offered, but I figured I’d be less of a nuisance if I just chucked the binoculars into my backpack. As I listened to an explanation of the components that came with all three versions of the album and watched the videos and B-side performances they’d prepared, the urge to pick up my binoculars gradually faded. . . And after watching them perform their title track which contained vulnerable elements that some fans had begged them over and over to take out, I put away the Yaho-stick that I’d been mindlessly waving and watched the rest of the show with my hand on my forehead or my chin cupped in my hands.  The show started at seven and ended later than expected. Before I got the chance to properly say bye to Green Hair, I was swept into the crowd and pushed out of the concert hall. My buzzing heart was finally starting to settle, and the weight of my body made me want to flop down in the middle of the street. I’d been in a frazzled state for the last two days. After my leave was approved last minute, I scurried to buy a re-sale ticket, booked a flight bound for Gimpo Airport and found a place near the concert venue to put up for the night. Just this afternoon I’d had to wait for my office meeting to wrap up before rushing to Jeju Airport to make my flight to Seoul. There were days when I wondered if I was living a busier life than the Cresta boys, and the past couple of days had been like that. On the way to the subway station, trudging one heavy foot after the other, I bumped into Green Hair again.       “Gangneung never gets this hot,” she said, holding out her portable fan to cool me down. “This Seoul weather is driving me up the wall.”      “It doesn’t get this hot in Seogwipo either.”       “Oh, you live by the sea, too?”       “Yeah. I guess if we were living in the boys’ world, our areas would be the first to go underwater.”       “You were really paying attention to the show, huh? I was too busy looking at my bias.”       We walked a few blocks in silence. The air was damp enough to breathe through gills, but my mouth was parched and I was in no mood to talk. As we passed a small Mexican restaurant selling draft beer, Green Hair spoke again.       “Unni, how about a beer?”       “Sure,” I said, my voice cracking with dryness. It was no question really when all I wanted to do at that moment was pour beer down my throat. Unlike our seats at the concert, we were lucky enough to find seats by the window and ordered a burrito bowl with a side of nachos. My hunger had kicked in after a whiff of food. I’d nothing to eat the whole day except a carrot scone and an iced coffee. Green Hair downed a pint of beer in one shot. Now that I was sitting across from her with the restaurant light shining in between us, the clear whites of her eyes and full cheeks made her look younger than I’d thought.       “You’re not a minor, are you? School hair policies are rather lax these days.”       “I’m about to graduate college.”       “Really?”       Green Hair said that she was in her fourth year of a Korean literature programme. As we talked, I gathered she was likely a decade younger than me. When a short silence fell over us, I blurted out a boring question. “Since you’re in the literature department, do you write novels?”       “Yeah”, Green Hair replied plainly, to my surprise.       “Not everyone who does literature writes novels. . . but I guess I do write things of that sort,” she said, waving her hand to order another beer. “Nothing worth talking about, though,” she added vaguely. “I just write shit that comes to mind.”      Unsure whether she’d felt obliged to answer a bad question or was hoping that I’d ask her to elaborate, I decided to change the topic. To one that every fan would surely want to discuss.       “How did you like the showcase? Did you enjoy the new album?”       “Yeah, I’d be okay if I died today.”       “Pardon?”       “Didn’t you see Jinil in those shorts? His calves were so pretty. On top of that, the suspenders and beret!”       “I was talking about the album.”       “The album? Well, I dunno. I don’t really expect anything from their music. I guess the album came out pretty well. Isn’t there usually better music to listen to?” Spoken like the fan of a performer who was better on mute, I thought. I wondered if I’d started a futile conversation, but since she was the only one around who could offer an opinion right now, I scooped some food onto my plate and carefully pieced together my thoughts.       “Hear me out. Cresta is Spanish for ‘mountain peak,’ right? And our fandom name, Nivel, means ‘altitude’ or ‘elevation.’ Even the name of our lightsticks—‘Yaho!’ is what we shout at the top of a mountain. Everything has been planned out since their debut. But why haven’t they said a word about their storyline until now? They’ve already released their debut album, three EPs, and even their first full-length which contained a completely unrelated story. But it’s only during their second full-length album that they’re introducing the seven mountain peaks in the music video? It’s such odd timing. Not to mention the whole Great Flood concept. Do you think they’re drawing the curtains? What if the company’s pulling the plug on their funding? I mean, they did forget about them for a while and this second album barely got released.”       “Unni. . . maybe you’re reading too much into this. There’s still a lot of time until their contract is up.”       “But they’re not promoting for as long as they used to, and they’re only going on a few music shows. . .”       Since Cresta had failed to make any profit from album sales or enter the charts, I could understand why their promotional activities were being cut. Besides, the new group that their company debuted had already doubled—no, tripled—Cresta’s debut album sales, resulting in a change of atmosphere. Cresta’s funding was being cut, and that was obvious even to a passive fan like me. It was only after I’d hastily bought my ticket that it dawned on me. I could’ve gotten better seats if I’d just purchased a ticket directly from the ticketing site. Since I had no friends who “stanned” the group, I was always late to new information and hadn’t noticed that the fandom was dying out.       “Unni, you know how this monsoon season dragged on for so freaking long this year? There were floods everywhere, things got washed away. The new vacation house that my aunt built was swept up, too—it was chaos everywhere. With all that’s been going on, I suppose Chu Cheolseon suddenly remembered this old lore and went, ‘Let’s roll with this.’ Maybe it took on a pessimistic tone, but it doesn’t have anything to do with abandoning the boys or neglecting them.”      “Well, I suppose pessimism is our thing. Like a fingerprint or something.”       Chu Cheolseon was the CEO of Ironship, Cresta’s entertainment company. No official criminal record, but a suspect who’d been subjected to a search and seizure. Can I really stan this group? Is it okay to consume their music and content? I used to wonder. I’d fall into a pit of guilt and shame at the thought of his name, and therefore, preferred to bury it deep enough to ignore.       “I doubt there was any real basis. The climate crisis is a hot topic, so maybe they started talking about it too. Probably thought of it as a trend.”       “The climate crisis and floods? As trends? That doesn’t make sense.”       “Why not? Look at the people who collect tote bags and tumblers. It’s all fashion to them. I mean, Chu Cheolseon named them Cresta because he was into hiking back then. I’m sure you know how the woman he dated in Spain was a hiking gear designer, and that’s why the boys were in hiking outfits for their debut performance. He’s the type who would put the boys in military outfits and give them toy guns if he were obsessed with some war somewhere. Wait, maybe I’m thinking about the group he put together before Cresta. ‘Happy Soldier,’ was it?”      I’d forgotten all about this since I mostly enjoyed their debut album by ear. Cresta had gone viral for being ‘hiking-dols.’ I’d been skeptical, too, seeing them perform in hiking gear when their song had nothing to do with mountains. I’d never rewatched any of their music show performances from the week they debuted. Hobin came on stage wearing a backpack with a 500ml bottle of water tucked into the side pocket, while Steve, the rapper, swung around a hiking stick with a paisley handkerchief tied around it. Jinil, who had the most difficult dance moves, was put in a rash guard. To this day, no one understood why they’d done that to the skinniest and tiniest member of the group.       “Chu Cheolseon’s the problem here. That ignorant asshole is to blame, not our boys. I’ll admit, things haven’t been going great, but at least no one’s getting hurt. Our boys are staying out of trouble, too.”       “No one’s hurt? I’m hurt!”       “Unni, you’re thinking way too deep. Let’s just have fun stanning this group. What else can we do, anyway?” concluded Green Hair as she clinked her mug against mine.        I’d become immune to the gnawing feeling that they would never break through, that they might stop promotions because their songs were always lingering at the edge of the charts. But the fear that this album would be their last, and the worry that there’d be fewer days when I’d see my bias, that he’d disappear soon, were feelings I couldn’t shake off as easily.  After Green Hair and I finished three beers each and left half of our food untouched, we stepped back out into the sticky night. I felt bloated. Trying to dodge the smokers coming from the restaurant entrance, we scurried down a few blocks and came upon a convenience store. A bug zapper buzzed in staccato somewhere.      “Will there be buses to Gangneung if you leave for the Express Bus Terminal now?”      “I was going to hang out at a 24-hour cafe and catch the first bus out.”       “How will you kill the time? I booked a room for the night, you should come and get some shut eye. It’s dangerous to be outside by yourself anyway.”       I didn’t want to go back to the hotel alone. I’d ended up in a business hotel out of necessity, but had I a bit more time, I’d have booked a different place. Because walking into the hotel lobby at this late hour felt too much like starting my night shift.       When I worked at the front desk at the Myeongdong hotel, I’d volunteer to be put on the night shift because I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t know then that terrible things tended to happen in the middle of the night. That night. When I’d dashed upstairs after receiving a call complaining about a burnt smell. When it felt like the muscles in my calves had melted, paralysing my legs, and I’d crawled along the corridor on my knees. When I’d forced open the bathroom door that had been sealed with duct tape, and I saw. . . Since that incident, I’d never worn heels. All I could remember was the feeling of someone grabbing my arm and raising it, someone slipping a pair of slippers onto my feet, and the afterimage of billowing white smoke. Welcome, welcome drink. The strangely light yet woeful “Cloud Hotel” melody danced around my ears. If you’ll just say you’ll come, a late check-in is alright. That was Hobin’s line, probably.       “You’re coming, right?” I asked once more.        The room barely had enough space for just one double bed, much less an extra bed. I’d expected as much, but once we were inside, I felt sorry for inviting Green Hair over. If I’d known I’d be coming back with someone else, I’d have requested for a twin bedroom—no, I’d have booked a different hotel in the first place. I went over to the phone beside the bed and picked up the receiver. But before I could dial the front desk, I paused, remembering how I’d been harassed by guests who demanded an upgrade for no reason or a change of rooms over the tiniest inconvenience. Those who were willing to pay extra for a change of rooms were just as troublesome to deal with. Regardless of the situation, any room that’d been entered had to be redone.       “Ooh, what a big bed,” said Green Hair cheekily as she set down her shopping bag stuffed with merch and her tote bag on the floor.       “Am I sensing sarcasm?”       “Oh, c’mon. This is way wider than our concert seats put together!” Green Hair laughed.      I couldn’t tell if she was serious or joking. In any case, we were both going to check out early the next morning, which left us with only a few hours of sleep after washing up. I opened the closet by the toilet and pulled out a bathrobe.       “You didn’t bring a change of clothes, right? You can wear this to sleep.”      “Am I supposed to be naked under this?”      “It’s up to you.”       While Green Hair showered, I took out a bottle of water from the mini bar and sat before the vanity. I pulled out my phone and went on Twitter to look at showcase photos taken by fansites. They’d already edited their photos to perfection and were uploading them in singles or pairs. I was sure they’d recorded videos of the members leaving the venue and getting into their van, too, so how had they been able to edit the pictures between then and now? I was always in awe at how quickly the fansites worked. Only those who’d poured their entire selves into liking their bias could work at a speed like this. Maybe Green Hair was right. Anything other than our present joy was not our problem to worry about. This became clear once I looked back on why I started stanning the group. While I was retweeting every picture on my timeline and saving the photos I liked into my gallery, Green Hair stepped out of the bathroom. She approached me, drying her hair with a towel.       “Are the pictures out?”       “Here, look at Jinil.”       I showed her a fansite photo of him. He was in a chestnut brown beret, mint shorts, and white knee socks. I zoomed in with my thumb and index, filling the screen with his face, which was shining alongside the blue pearl under his eye and his gem-encrusted in-ear monitor. The excessive glimmer of the photo made it look like there were tears pooling in his round doe eyes. Green Hair gave a languid sigh.       “I’m going to kill myself.”       “What?”       “I wanna die.”       “Why are you speaking like that all of a sudden?”       When I put my phone down firmly, Green Hair looked taken aback.       “What’s wrong? I’m saying I’m so happy I could die. It’s just an expression.”      “Still. Don’t say things like that. I’m serious. Don’t.”       Green Hair was silent.       “Do you understand? Promise me. Give me your pinky.”       Green Hair knitted her brows, but wrapped her pinky round mine.       “Didn’t know you were such a boomer, Unni.”       “You’re right, I’m a boomer. You better keep that promise.”       I went into the bathroom, peeled off my sweaty shirt, and looked into the mirror. I plucked out two strands of gray hair sprouting from the edge of my part and cleared the seaweed-coloured hair clinging to the floor. Once I was in the shower booth, I turned the water on full blast. Was I too serious? I wondered. But still, it wasn’t something I could let slide. Say something out loud enough times and it becomes a habit. Just like how our pessimism endures as fingerprints do. While I showered, I worried that Green Hair had already left the room without saying a word. At the same time, I hoped she hadn’t. After letting the cold water wash away the heat clinging to my body, I matched the water to my temperature and stood under the shower for a long time.        When I came out in my robe, Green Hair was already asleep, clutching her phone in one hand. She must’ve been tired, having taken the early bus from Gangneung, dyed her hair green, gone around outside the concert venue collecting fansite banners, bought the limited edition ‘roe deer Jinil’ plushie. . . I slipped under the blanket, careful not to wake her. With my back to her, I lay on my side and lowered the brightness on my phone. Dawool had uploaded a letter on the ‘from Cresta’ bulletin board on their official fancafe. While my eyes skimmed the letter that started with, “My oh-so-lovely Nivels, thank you so, so much for coming to our showcase” and continued to be littered with so many ‘so’s, a private message from Hobin arrived.        - Ajumma, are you still up?       - I came on here because I missed you.       - I wrote the lyrics to “Cloud Hotel.” Did you like it?  Hobin wrote “Cloud Hotel”? The song about the host of the last hotel in the world? I sat up, my heart racing. I hadn’t bothered to check who’d written and composed the songs since Hobin had never once participated in the song writing. No wonder I’d been hooked right away. Did that mean he would receive royalties? That should’ve been the title track! I typed into the text box despite knowing full well that in Hobin’s chat, my message would immediately be buried amongst the hundreds of others he was receiving. I sent a few more empty messages—This album’s going to do amazing. I’m so excited for you. As if he were reading the wave of messages, there was a wait before Hobin’s next message.      - Think of me in the day and at night. While you listen to our songs.     - If I want to keep seeing you, I have to do really well this time.     - As always, I love you, Ajumma. I’ll see you in dreamland.  For a while, I lay in bed, staring blankly at the orange-flushed ceiling before returning to the messenger app. For 7,900 won a month, I could receive private messages from any member of my choice. I could also pick my own pet name, which would automatically replace the default pet name in my bias’s message to me. It was an option that could be changed at any time. Clueless at first, I’d simply set it as my real name, but finding that sort of embarrassing, I’d changed it to the fandom name for a while. It was only recently that I changed it to ‘Ajumma.’ A guest who had lodged a complaint had once called me that and I wanted to cleanse that word. Now, I deleted ‘Ajumma’ and changed my pet name back to ‘Nivel.’ All was well, thanks to my bias.       This was enough for me. To enter my settings and change my nickname whenever I wanted. To read my bias’s expression through my 20x50 binoculars. To pick and save the images I liked, to pull up and admire at will. Though the both of us might be holding our phones, there was no need to take pictures of me, no need to share the discomfort of body heat or sticky bodily fluids, no need to spread viruses like high-risk HPV. This was something I could walk away from when I wanted. And therefore, it was sweeter, safer. The most perfect and comfortable distance away.       From the front pocket of my backpack, I took out my AirPods and slipped them in. I opened my music app, set the second full-length album on repeat, and hit the play button. How many times would I listen to this album? I’d streamed their third EP so diligently. I’d created three accounts on the music site and repeated the album on mute. During the back office meeting, when it was agreed that we should tap in on K-pop and create a playlist for the hotel cafe, I’d snuck a few Cresta songs into the mix otherwise ruled by BTS, Blackpink, and Seventeen. Of course, it was the genuine belief that they’d make it on the charts that’d driven me to do such a thing. After letting go of those ambitions, I only listened to their music when I wanted to, no matter how much my bias whined. I wanted everything that went into stanning my bias to be things that I enjoyed.       The thought of ‘Hobil’ suddenly crossed my mind. At the concert venue, Green Hair had given me a look. She had the eyes of someone who was focused on what she loved and fastidiously chasing after it. I typed ‘Hobil’ into the search engine. Just as I’d expected, there were short excerpts of fanfics and the occasional picture of Hobin and Jinil. While I was at it, I entered ‘round 2’ into the search bar. It seemed the term referred to content—stories, drawings, and comics—that were derived from original ‘round 1’ appearances and events. Why write about idols though? Was it because people thought of their personalities and actions as inventions? And that idols were all putting on a show? From what I could tell, stories based on real people were called RPS, or ‘Real Person Slash.’      Wouldn’t it be easier to call them ‘literature?’ I wondered, but there were people already doing so. Seonsaengnim, this is pure literature! Please write more, we’re begging!, they pleaded, urging the authors. Was Green Hair’s writing called ‘Hobil literature’ then? Did something like that really exist? Fiction that featured the kid I loved most and the kid I loved second most?       “You know, anything can happen in round two.”       Was that what Green Hair had said? Was that why she could so easily sigh about wanting to die? Because there was a world where her bias and her bias wrecker lived in the way she imagined them? Because she was creating that world?  * I forced my eyes open to a clacking sound. Through the slightly parted jacquard curtains, the sun was spilling onto Green Hair, sitting at the vanity. What was she writing so early in the morning? I found my phone and checked the time. Eleven o’clock. The nine o’clock plane that I’d booked was probably landing in Jeju now.       “No way. . .”       “You’re up.”        Green Hair shut her laptop and turned to me. She was fully dressed and her hair looked freshly combed, and she’d probably gone out to grab the takeout coffee that was sitting next to her laptop. The alarm that I’d set for six a.m. must’ve been ringing for a while—had she been waiting for me to wake up?       “I thought you said you had to go to your part-time job in the afternoon? That’s why you had to catch the first bus?” I asked.      “It’s okay, I was going to skip it anyway.”       “I’m so sorry.”       “I could use a cold bowl of buckwheat noodles. I’m starving.”  The hotel basement was connected to a shopping mall. We had two bowls of buckwheat noodles from a Japanese fusion stall at the food court and took the escalator down a floor. The second basement, which was linked to the subway station, was lined with shops selling accessories, stationery, and casual clothing. Green Hair, who was humming barely loud enough for me to hear, suddenly shouted, “Shut up!” I followed where her index was pointing to find a mannequin standing in a clothing store. I, too, gasped once I saw the T-shirt on the faceless white dummy. Before we knew it, we were already walking toward it.       A sky-blue T-shirt, oversized. Printed on it were waves crashing upon a vast beach, a surfboard with a hibiscus painted on, and a red Ferrari. The both of us recognised it at once. It was Hobin and Jinil’s matching T-shirt that they’d worn in one of their self-produced content videos that were spliced into snappy, fifteen minute long videos that were uploaded in four parts once a week. During the group’s downtime when there was no news or other content, all I had certain months were clips of my bias in the same outfit.      We went into the store and felt the fabric of the T-shirt. Sturdy, yet thin and soft.       After checking the price tag, Green Hair offered, “If I get two, will you wear one? I owe you for yesterday.”      I hadn’t realised we’d been wearing our sweat-stained clothes from yesterday. When I spotted the sign that read ‘Buy Two, Get 20% Off,’ I happily agreed. We looked for the fitting room, thinking we might as well change now. I took off the neat yet boring shirt that I wore to work. Just as I was about to pull the new shirt over my head, I paused. On the back of the T-shirt, following the curve of the seafoam, were a few words written in white:        It’s no real pleasure in life.[1]       I studied the sentence seriously. There’s no real pleasure in life? I’d completely missed the quote despite having watched the videos a few times. How had my bias and my bias wrecker ended up in shirts bearing this particular phrase? And as idols, of all occupations—people whose raison d’être was giving joy.       I went back and forth on whether or not to put the shirt on, but recalling Green Hair’s face, ruddy with excitement, I stuck my head through. It wasn’t so bad once I thought of it as no different from ignoring Chu Cheolseon’s existence. Besides, with my backpack on, the words would be covered up, and after that, I could always just wear it as pyjamas. Stuffed in the corner of my drawer, it’d end up as just another T-shirt.  As we stood in front of the subway screen door, Green Hair took my arm and pointed at our reflection.       “We look just like a couple.”       At the mention of the word ‘couple,’ my mind flickered to the word I’d looked up the night before.       “Yesterday. . . about ‘Hobil.’ Why did you ask me about it?”       “Ah. . . that? I guess I wanted to feel glad. There’s only a handful of us left.”       Not felt glad, but wanted to feel glad? Well, I supposed there weren’t many Nivels who liked Hobin and Jinil specifically, and even fewer who shipped them—a handful, like Green Hair said. And if those people started to leave, one at a time, soon the fandom would grow quiet, and it’d be as if nothing had happened at all. The water would rise, turning mountain peaks into islands. I thought about Jinil in the music video, standing alone, steeped in a never-ending wait for a visitor. I thought of the lyrics written by my bias.      “Is a late check-in okay?”       Green Hair failed to stifle a laugh. “Unni, you sure like getting deep into things,” she said, and gave me her Twitter handle. When I searched up her account, I saw that she had a white roe deer profile pic and twenty-two followers. Underneath the picture was a link to some website, P-something dot com, alongside a couple of hashtags like #Cresta and #Hobil. The nickname on the account was Shujin. Was that the pen name under which she wrote ‘Hobil literature’? Was her real name Juin or Sujin? I was curious, but didn’t ask. I hit the follow button.       “Hobbang-nim?” asked Shujin, looking up from her phone.      It was only then that I remembered my username on the account that I used only for following and retweeting. The day I quit my job at the Myeongdong hotel despite having nowhere else to go was the day I created my stan account. With my belongings all packed, I was about to leave the lobby when the room maid unni that I’d worked with for a long time brought me a hobbang that she’d microwaved in the pantry. The same unni who had found me huddled in the corridor, slung my arm over her shoulder, carried me out, and later returned to clean up the smoky room. The steamed bun she handed me was warm and fluffy, just like the white butt of a small animal. Picking at and nibbling on the soft outer skin, it dawned on me that ‘Hobin’ and ‘hobbang’ shared the same first syllable, and so I settled on ‘hobbang’ as my username. But since no one had called me by that nickname, I’d forgotten all about it.       “Hobbang-nim, drop me a DM.”       Shujin didn’t ask me for my real name or my phone number. Would we ever see each other again? I wondered. I couldn’t say for sure, but I might drop by her round two world. How did my bias look in the world Shujin had made? Was he smiling? Or crying? I hoped he wasn’t crouched somewhere, expressionless, with words like ‘I could die today’ hanging on his lips. The train heading for the Express Bus Terminal arrived first. I stared vacantly as Shujin got on. Before I could finish reading the white sentence teetering on the edge of the waves, Shujin turned around and waved goodbye.   Translated by Gene Png   [1]   From the last line of Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

  by Ryu Si-eun

• 

  The Substitute Teacher

  On sunny afternoons, when the child woke from his nap, Ms. P would take him by the hand and head outside. The neighborhood, which was filled with luxury condos, had a nice playground in the middle of the complex, but Ms. P always walked to the nearby park just beyond. As she neared the park, holding the hand of this boy, this five-year-old with a bowl haircut and big monolid eyes, she felt again the pure joy these moments gave her. In the center of the park, there was an open area with a manicured lawn where children could run and play. Ms. P spread out her mat on the edge of the grass and sat down with the boy. Nearby, young women had also brought their children to the park and were chatting in small groups or watching their children play. Ms. P exchanged polite nods with them but kept to herself. When the boy asked, “Can I go play?” she smiled and nodded. Once he dashed off, she took a book from her small canvas bag and began to read. Sometimes she would stop reading to watch the boy. The children played well together. Occasionally, when he tried to take another child’s toy or overpower a younger one, Ms. P would fold down the corner of the page and go to him. She would place her hand gently on his shoulder and say in a firm but soft voice, “You’re not being a good boy.” The young women watched as Ms. P reprimanded the child. At this point, it might be good to mention the boy’s mother. According to her, she had “been tricked into marriage” by her husband, but that was just a playful complaint. From the moment she realized she had an eye for art, she had hoped to work in France. She had actually gone to Paris during high school and studied art history at a college there. However, weary from years of living abroad, she returned to Korea as soon as she finished graduate school. She hadn’t planned to remain in Korea permanently. Her intention was to stay with her parents for about six months to recuperate and then leave again. Yet, somehow, nine months later, she found herself walking down the aisle in a wedding dress.     “The friends I studied with ended up in New York, Amsterdam, or London. I had this crazy idea that I’d go back to Paris one day, even after I got married,” she once told her colleagues. “You have no idea how good he is to me. He adores me.” But the climax of her story was this: “Two lines showed up on the pregnancy test. I was so shocked!” Every time she got to this part, she’d almost burst into tears. “I love my little boy. I’d never trade him for anything now. He’s absolutely priceless to me. But was it hard raising him? No, no, it was pure joy.”      Indeed, she stayed home for three whole years to take care of him. When she announced she was getting married, her mother had felt a sense of betrayal and declared she wouldn’t help with the child-rearing. Her mother kept her word.       Anyone who heard the boy’s mother tell this story always marveled at her appearance, as there was no sign she had given birth or raised a child. Her thick, glossy hair had attractive curls that fell over her shoulders, her skin had a vibrant glow, and her limbs were long and slender. Around the beginning of spring that year, she secured a job at an art gallery—even though it was just an internship—and hired a nanny, Ms. P, to take over caring for the boy. Sometimes, those listening asked about the nanny. After thinking for a moment, she would say, “Oh, her? Hmm . . . she’s a good person.” If Ms. P had known that someone would ask the boy’s mother about her, she would have wanted her to answer this way: “Oh, the nanny? She used to be a substitute teacher.” Of course, it would be possible to leave out the word “substitute,” but that somehow felt dishonest. Ms. P had taught history—sometimes social studies, sometimes geography—for twenty long years, and she loved her job. In her younger days, there must have been a time when she’d longed to become a full-time teacher. Thankfully, there were many schools that needed substitute teachers, and until last year, Ms. P was able to move from school to school, teaching history—sometimes social studies, sometimes geography—to middle and high school students. However, after filling in for a female teacher on maternity leave last spring, no schools had shown any interest in hiring her. When she was finally forced to accept that she would never stand in front of a classroom as a substitute teacher again, Ms. P didn’t feel particularly upset. She wasn’t the type to blame others. And whenever someone begged on the subway, she never turned them away.      When she first arrived at the apartment for the nanny interview, the boy’s father said, “I heard you used to be a teacher.” He had passed the bar exam a few years ago and now worked on the legal team of a well-known company. For some reason, he felt a mix of sympathy, pity, and even a little guilt that Ms. P was sitting in his living room, applying to be his child’s nanny. However, she simply said, “There are substitute teachers younger and more capable than me. How could I stay on? That would be shameless of me.”      Ms. P thought of the students she had taught, those who’d listened attentively, nodding along while looking into her eyes. As these memories floated through her mind, she glanced around the room—the lilies in the vase on the coffee table, the geometric patterns on the curtains covering the balcony window, and the glass cabinet in the kitchen filled with decorative tea sets. She also took in the family—the handsome, polite young father, the lovely, elegant young mother, and the cute, intelligent-looking child. Perhaps at that moment, Ms. P thought of her own home with its modest wallpaper, synthetic fiber curtains, and narrow bed. She imagined herself eating alone, getting dressed alone, and sleeping alone. But these thoughts lasted only a moment, so brief she hardly registered them. Instead, her mind quickly filled with thoughts of her desk—a huge mahogany desk. It was actually a dining table, but Ms. P used it as a desk. It didn’t matter. It was the most expensive and beautiful thing she owned. Beautiful. Ms. P repeated the word in her mind. Then she straightened her back. “That’s just the way the world works,” she said, fiddling with the metal button on her tweed jacket, the best piece of clothing she owned.     Ms. P’s job was relatively simple. Around two in the afternoon, on her way to work, she would stop by the daycare to pick up the boy and bring him home, staying with him until one of the parents returned. The parents didn’t like leaving their child with someone else after dark and made sure at least one of them had dinner with him every evening. Frankly speaking, Ms. P contributed nothing to the dinner table. The weekend helper made all the side dishes, and the mother (sometimes the father) cooked after work. So, Ms. P watched the child until the father (or mother) set the table, but she never joined them for dinner, and she didn’t particularly mind.      On her first day picking up the boy from daycare, he insisted on staying until his mother came for him and ended up crying. This happened several times. Each time, Ms. P gave a nonchalant sigh and said, “All right, let’s do that.” She had twenty years of experience. Eventually, the boy would hold Ms. P’s hand and head home. While the child took a nap, Ms. P took out a book from her small canvas bag, along with some food she had packed. She didn’t help herself to even an apple from the refrigerator. When Ms. P was hired, the first thing the boy’s mother had done was to show her the tea box with its assortment of teas, the medicine cabinet, and the fridge filled with fruit. “Please, consider this your home,” she had said. But Ms. P never turned on the TV or radio, used the phone, or even touched a bottle of pills. Apart from the child’s room, the living room, and the kitchen, she didn’t look around the apartment or handle any of the books on the shelves in the study.      After their stroll in the park, the boy usually played with his toys, but sometimes asked Ms. P to read him a book. When she read aloud, he would repeat after her in a small voice. Watching him, Ms. P recalled a song she’d once heard: The seagulls stir the heart because while sinners sin, the children run and play. Because the children run and play.      Why did that song come to mind? She turned to look out the window. From the apartment, she saw the bridge that crossed the Han River, the rows of apartment complexes beyond that, and a giant Ferris wheel spinning in the distance. Sunlight sparkled on the river’s surface, and the spring breeze made the water ripple, like hundreds of pages were turning. Suddenly, Ms. P’s heart sank, and she was filled with fear.      She turned back to look at the cute, intelligent little boy who was repeating after her. She patted his head affectionately.     One day, the boy came holding a large sketchbook and crayons. “Do you know how to draw?”       “Of course,” Ms. P said with a gentle smile, taking the sketchbook and crayons from him.       “Can you draw a ball?”       “A ball?” She drew a large circle with a black crayon.       “But that’s not a ball.”       Ms. P felt a little confused. “Yes, it is.”       “Soccer balls don’t look like that,” he said, shaking his head.      What did a soccer ball look like? How were you supposed to draw a basketball? And what about a baseball?       At the boy’s insistence, she turned the page and drew another large circle with the black crayon, but she couldn’t figure out how or where to draw the lines. She tried to focus on all the different balls floating in her mind.      That night, on her way home, Ms. P stopped by a store and spent a long time looking at soccer balls, basketballs, baseballs, golf balls, rugby balls, and beach balls. At home, she copied each kind into a small notebook and practiced drawing them over and over again. The next day, she studied different types of flowers, then different colors, and then different cars. One day, she even bought a book on raising children around the boy’s age and started reading it. Sitting at her large desk, which was actually a dining table, in the corner of her small room, she felt overwhelming happiness as she organized these things. When was the last time she’d felt this way? But soon she realized that such thoughts were blasphemous. She reminded herself to be thankful for each day. However, after a moment, she compromised a little and thought, “I’ve never been this happy.” When spring ended and summer began, everything was a mess. It rained almost every day, and the air was muggy. Ms. P didn’t wear her tweed jacket anymore. Instead, she wore a light cotton blouse with sleeves that came just above her wrists. One day, while it was pouring outside, the child struggled to put on his rain boots at the daycare entrance and said, “My mommy is home today.” It was true. The day before, his parents had a big fight. They had been discussing their summer vacation. For months, they had planned to go to Rome with the boy, but now the father said he couldn’t go because of work. He added angrily that he didn’t see the point of taking such a young child to Rome. The mother thought he was being unfair and insulting toward her, so she went into the boy’s room where he lay sleeping, gathered him up in her arms, and burst into tears.     Ms. P knew their fight was none of her business and that she shouldn’t interfere, but what about the boy? What would happen to him? What if their fight affected him negatively? Would he be able to forget his mother holding him while sobbing? What if this memory became buried deep in his heart? Was there any guarantee it wouldn’t resurface somehow later in life? Ms. P thought of the delinquents she had taught. Where were they now? The ones who’d smoked, used foul language, and shouted. Their raspy voices. The thought made her heart sink, and the recklessness of the boy’s parents angered her. But when she arrived at the apartment and saw the mother lying in bed, in her pajamas with her luxuriant hair disheveled, Ms. P’s heart softened a little. She went to her and asked if there was anything she could do. The mother shook her head and spoke in a choked voice. “I’m so embarrassed.”       Ms. P shook her head.       “Since I started working, we haven’t had any proper time together. I know it must be hard for him too, but still. . .”       Ms. P patted the mother’s shoulder and went to the kitchen to bring her some warm milk.      “Drink this and get some sleep. You’ll feel better afterward.”       Watching the mother blow on the hot milk like a child, Ms. P felt a complicated emotion that was hard to describe and struggled to suppress it. She said, “Sorry, but I need to say this. It’s not good to fight in front of children.”       It didn’t take the mother long to think about Ms. P’s words. That very night, when her husband gave her a bouquet of roses to make her feel better, she told him while in his arms, “She had the nerve to give me advice.”       “What did she say?”       “She said it’s not good to fight in front of children.”       “It’s probably because she’s never had kids. To her, everything’s theoretical. But not everything goes according to theory.”      The mother fell into thought. Why do some women grow old without marrying or having children? But she soon stopped thinking about it because her life was too far removed from such a reality, and her imagination couldn’t grasp it.      “Did she say if she has any family?”       “On her first day, she mentioned her brother and his wife run an auto repair shop out in the country. Don’t you remember?”       “Oh, I remember now.”      “She paid for her brother’s college education and even helped with his wedding expenses.”      That was true. Ms. P had supported her brother through college, and she had given him a significant portion of her savings when he got married and started his auto repair shop. However, she had not seen or spoken to him and his wife for several years. Even though she didn’t know these details, the woman said, “When you think about it, she’s had such a sad life.”      But about a month later, when she had to make an awkward request to Ms. P, she had already forgotten this conversation with her husband.      The boy’s mother worked at an art museum that was getting ready to hold a fall exhibition called “Contemporary Art of Eastern Europe.” Nearly everything related to the exhibition was proceeding cautiously and slowly, as if walking on thin ice. Just when they thought they were on solid ground, a problem arose. A Romanian artist announced he no longer wanted to send his work to the exhibition. To make matters worse, several other Eastern European artists wished to withdraw as well. The boy’s mother and other staff had to stay at the museum until late at night to speak with the artists in Romania, Poland, and the Czech Republic, where the time zones were significantly different. The mother had no choice but to call Ms. P and explain the situation. As Ms. P was about to hang up, she made a joke without thinking, “Eastern Europe can be difficult.” After hanging up, Ms. P recalled a student from her days as a substitute teacher who always got confused as to whether Portugal was in Eastern Europe or not, and she laughed. She believed she knew more about Eastern Europe than the boy’s mother.      That evening, Ms. P took out the soybean sprouts and eggs from the fridge and taught the boy how to trim the sprouts. She had recently read that handling plants and vegetables was good for a child’s development. The boy sang, sloppily trimming the bean sprouts, while she mixed the eggs, chopped the scallions and carrots, and made an omelet. Afterward, she cleaned up his mess and made bean sprout soup. Other side dishes were already prepared. A short while later, Ms. P and the child sat at the table and had dinner. It was the first time she had eaten there. She patiently waited until the boy finished feeding himself. After dinner, she washed the dishes and bathed the child. When it was time for him to go to sleep, she sat next to the bed and read him a story.       “When you wake up tomorrow, Mommy and Daddy will be here,” she said.       “I know,” the boy said, nodding.       Ms. P pulled the blanket up to his neck. “What a good boy you are.”      Long after he fell asleep, his parents still didn’t come home. Ms. P sat on the living room sofa where she usually sat when the child napped. But tonight, she felt uneasy. She wanted to wake the child. At the same time, she felt like an intruder in an empty house, doing something very wrong. In the end, Ms. P turned on all the lights in the apartment—the living room, kitchen, and even the empty rooms—before she sat back down on the sofa. She was afraid. Why?      That night, Ms. P went home, lay down on her small bed, and then suddenly sat up. She knelt by the window and prayed.      After that, the couple often failed to follow their rule of coming home before sunset to be with the child. On nights when they returned late, Ms. P would have dinner with the boy, help him brush his teeth, and inspect his mouth. She would change him into pajamas, tuck him into bed, and read him a story. She cared for him more diligently than ever. The couple offered to pay Ms. P extra for overtime, but she refused. “There’s no need for that.” Those weren’t empty words. “This is my job.” Or she said, “Don’t worry about it.”      A few days later, after putting the boy to bed, Ms. P went to the kitchen. She hesitated, but then opened the cabinet. She recalled what the boy’s mother had said on her first day: “Please, consider this your home.” Ms. P took out her favorite teacup, the one with a delicate little bird painted on it. She put it back, then took it out again. She poured hot water into it, got a purple tea bag from the tea box, unwrapped it, and placed it in the cup. After a while, she removed the tea bag, threw it in the trash, and walked into the living room. She carefully placed the teacup on the coffee table and this time turned off all the lights in the apartment—the living room, kitchen, and empty rooms—leaving only the decorative lamp on in the living room. She sat on the sofa, pulled out the book she had brought, and began to read. Please, consider this your home. For the first time, Ms. P felt she truly understood what the boy’s mother had meant.      Several days later, Ms. P opened the door to the study and went inside. She hesitated a little before taking a book from the shelf. She no longer needed to bring along a book in her small bag. There were plenty of books to read in that home. How would one describe that fall? Six years later, a group of well-dressed women were having lunch and chatting in a restaurant with a small porch. They had just begun to open up, sharing their struggles and bonding with each other. They talked about their children’s falling grades, big losses in stock investments, the promotions their husbands didn’t get, and bad real estate deals. Of course, they planned to enroll their children in more classes at their cram schools, make other investments to recoup their losses, and buy new cufflinks to raise their husbands’ spirits. The boy’s mother showed signs of aging, but she looked more elegant and beautiful because of it. She wondered why they had to talk about such things on a day when sunlight bathed the streets and the leaves rustled in vibrant colors. Yet, as she listened, that fall suddenly came to mind. Actually, it wasn’t a sudden recollection. The first time she recalled that period was three years ago in the summer. Since then, that fall had often crossed her mind, whether she wanted it to or not. Many things happened that season, as if they had all been orchestrated. She’d been busy preparing for the “Contemporary Art of Eastern Europe” exhibition, their weekend helper had quit unexpectedly to care for her grandchild, and her husband’s legal team at work was in crisis due to the deaths of several factory workers. Most shocking of all, her mother-in-law was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Her husband’s only sister lived abroad, so they had to take in her mother-in-law. Her husband said they had “missed the window” to intervene, which led to several arguments between them. But did they ever have a chance to intervene? She’d never mentioned her mother-in-law’s diagnosis to anyone. She vaguely knew Alzheimer’s could be hereditary and worried that it wasn’t just her mother-in-law’s illness but a foreboding mark on the genes of her husband, who held a fairly high position for his age, and her son, who was now over eleven and enjoyed being alone.      Her thoughts naturally turned to Ms. P, who had cared for her family and mother-in-law. Perhaps she had always wanted to think about Ms. P. Her memories spiraled back to the night when she had wondered about the lives of “those kinds of women” while in her husband’s arms. She believed that autumn was the most difficult time of her life. But that was naïve of her. Every time an unforeseen hardship invaded her life, she felt cursed, but in this case, who was cursing whom?      Now it was her turn to speak. She didn’t want to say anything but also didn’t want to seem odd or boastful.      “A few years ago, my mother-in-law came to live with us because she was ill. You see, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.”       She was shocked to hear herself say “Alzheimer’s” out loud for the first time. But she quickly realized the other women were more shocked. They had never wanted to hear such things. Yet they recovered quickly.      “Oh my, taking care of a sick mother-in-law isn’t easy.”      “At the time, I was working as a curator at an art gallery.”     “She studied art history in France,” added another woman, who knew her well.      Someone sighed in admiration. “Do you speak French well?”     “Qu’est-ce que c’est, ça va, merci beaucoup,” she said playfully.     The women laughed heartily, drawing the attention of others in the restaurant.     “Taking care of my family and my mother-in-law on top of my job was really tough.”     “Oh my, I can’t even imagine. You’re amazing.”     “Our nanny helped a lot with our son. I don’t know what we would have done without her,” she said humbly, quickly adding, “But no matter how much help you get, you know how hard it is.”      No one asked how her mother-in-law was doing now, and she was relieved. Her mother-in-law had passed away last year.      She cleared her throat. “But now, it’s all over.”     If Ms. P ever had the chance to talk about that period, what would she have said? She might have said, “That family had only me. They were so grateful. You couldn’t find a couple with such grace and elegance. They never forgot a kindness.” However, Ms. P would probably never have the opportunity to share that story, because no one is  interested in her past.      Even after many years, Ms. P could still remember the day she first met the elderly woman with Alzheimer’s—a patient wearing a navy cashmere cardigan, pearl necklace, and pearl ring. One morning, much later, when Ms. P was about the same age as the old woman had been, she was washing her face when she looked in the bathroom mirror and became lost in thought. It was then that she decided to erase the old woman from her memory. But this was far into the future. That fall, however, Ms. P was simply amazed that a nearly seventy-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s could look so neat and elegant.      Ms. P arrived early every morning to help the couple get to work. She did the shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and took care of the boy and the elderly woman. Sometimes, she took them for walks or to the hospital. After the couple left for work, Ms. P picked the elderly woman’s outfit—a different one each day—along with a necklace, clip-on earrings, and a ring, until one day the woman hit Ms. P in the face while wearing the ring, and it was never taken out of the jewelry box again. Sometimes the elderly woman got angry at Ms. P, saying she’d chosen the wrong clothes and accessories, but soon forgot she’d even gotten angry.       “My mother is so lucky to have you. I don’t know what we would have done without you. Thank you so much. We didn’t know what to do…” the father often said.      The young couple, floundering with fear and sadness, gradually found their balance again with Ms. P’s help. By the weekend, Ms. P was exhausted. Her back ached, and her shoulders throbbed so much every time she lifted her arms that she needed to apply pain relief patches. Luckily, the child liked the smell of the patches. Just by seeing the mess in the apartment on Monday, Ms. P could tell what kind of weekend the family had. She couldn’t bear the thought of the young couple struggling without her. So, one Saturday afternoon, when the father called, sounding completely defeated and anguished, Ms. P felt a deep sense of relief.      When she arrived, the father looked half-crazed, and the mother—Ms. P was shocked by her appearance—had a puffy face, messy hair held back by a headband, and was still in her nightgown. The boy sat on the couch in his pajamas, clutching an encyclopedia, looking as if he hadn’t even washed his face. The old woman was locked in her room.     “We had no choice,” the father said, his voice full of shame, guilt, and sorrow.      The elderly woman burst into tears upon seeing Ms. P, saying she wanted to go home.      “But Mother, this is your home!” the father said.     Ms. P told the father to clean the living room while she bathed the elderly woman and the boy. She told the mother to wash her face, brush her hair, and get changed. The mother came back shortly after, dressed in a knit shirt and slacks, and asked Ms. P what she should do next. Ms. P told her to air out the elderly woman’s room and put the bed covers in the wash. She did as she was told. Ms. P first bathed the child, dressed him, and sent him to his mother. Then she helped the elderly woman bathe, took out a green sweater and skirt from the closet, and dressed her—later on, the father would recall how his mother had looked like a Christmas tree that day—not forgetting her pearl necklace and earrings. After a day filled with intense emotions, the elderly woman ate a large helping of the meal Ms. P prepared and went to bed early.       That night, Ms. P had dinner with the boy and his parents for the first time. The couple felt as though they’d just been rescued from a disaster. As Ms. P watched those poor kids—the young couple who’d been so distressed just moments before but now sat neatly and elegantly eating their meal—she recalled that song again: The seagulls stir the heart because while sinners sin, the children run and play. Because the children run and play. Because the children run and play. Because the children run and play. . .      “I’m so sorry. We didn’t even think to call a doctor. We just thought of you,” the father said for the fifth time, looking at Ms. P.      “No, no, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it,” Ms. P said, helping the boy eat. The boy sat next to her, practically hanging onto her shoulder. Normally, she would have insisted the child eat on his own, even if it took a long time, but that day she spooned the food into his mouth.      “My mother doesn’t recognize me. She doesn’t recognize her daughter-in-law or even her grandson,” the father said.      “She’ll get better soon,” Ms. P reassured him.      “What if she doesn’t? What will we do then?” the mother asked.       Ms. P didn’t know the answer. She couldn’t possibly know. Yet, she felt she had to give the young mother some kind of response.      “She’s very ill,” she said.      “She’s ill,” the boy repeated after her.      “It was awful. We didn’t know what to do. Mother was doing well, wasn’t she? She was perfectly fine until yesterday,” the father said, rambling. “My wife and I are so busy these days. Just look at the boy.  Of course, you’re taking great care of him, but what I’m trying to say is. . . I don’t know. . . everything’s a mess. Did you hear, Ms. P? People who worked at our company factory died. But we have so many documents to review and draw up, so what I’m trying to say is. . .”      “Honey, you don’t have to explain anymore,” the mother said, trying to comfort her husband.       But the father kept talking. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m just so scared. What happened to Mother? I mean, I know she’s sick, but what are we supposed to do. . . I couldn’t think of anything except to call you. I . . . we . . .”      The father started to cry. The boy, seeing his father cry, began to cry too, and soon the mother joined in. But Ms. P wasn’t flustered at all. It was as if she had expected this moment, or felt it was her duty to resolve the situation, and she calmly comforted each one of them.      “I’m sorry. We didn’t know what to do. . . everything’s falling apart. . .” the mother said, sobbing.       “You poor things, don’t say any more. Nothing bad is going to happen.”      Ms. P looked after them until they stopped crying. After they finally finished their meal, she cleaned the table and did the dishes. She took out the teacups painted with a delicate bird and heated three cups of milk, making one cup of tea for herself. They all sat together at the coffee table and drank. Ms. P stayed at the apartment until the family went to bed.      For the next two months, Ms. P went to their home every single day without fail. The couple tried to hire a professional caregiver, but Ms. P insisted it wasn’t necessary.      “I can manage everything on my own,” she said.       One Friday night near the end of fall, as Ms. P was leaving, the mother said, “You don’t need to come in this weekend. Please get some rest. You’ve been working so hard lately.”      “No, it’s all right. Who’ll take care of Grandmother if I’m not here?”      “Don’t worry about it. You need your rest, too,” the mother said, taking Ms. P’s hand for a moment before letting go.      Later, Ms. P found out that the elderly woman had been sent to a nursing home, one of the best and most expensive, according to the research done by the boy’s maternal grandmother.      “We’ll be visiting her every weekend,” the mother said, as if justifying their decision.      And indeed, unless something special came up, the family visited her every Sunday until she passed away. Ms. P felt a little hurt that they hadn’t asked her opinion about sending the elderly woman to the nursing home, and she had a question for them, but ultimately, she couldn’t ask it. Later, much later, Ms. P felt thankful she hadn’t asked.       With the mother-in-law gone, Ms. P finally had her weekends to herself. It’s not bad. It’s good, everything is fine. It’ll be okay. Nothing bad will happen. Ms. P muttered these things to herself, almost as if she were praying, as she applied pain relief patches to her shoulders and back.      There were still many tasks Ms. P did for the family. She did the shopping and cooking, ate dinner with the boy, and read books by the light of a small lamp while sipping tea after he went to bed. They couldn’t go to the park anymore since the weather had turned cold, but reading to the child or playing indoors wasn’t bad. Soon after, the “Contemporary Art of Eastern Europe” exhibition at the museum where the mother worked ended successfully. Actually, “successful” was an understatement. The exhibition was a huge hit. Articles about it appeared in local newspapers and women’s magazines. There were even pictures of the mother, smiling confidently at the camera. The father’s work issues were also resolved without the company having to take any action. Just as Ms. P had said, nothing bad happened. Though not as often as before, the couple now managed to have dinner with the boy more often than not.      As Christmas approached, the couple decided to make up for the summer vacation they had missed and flew to a small island in Southeast Asia with their boy for a few days. For the first time in a while, Ms. P also had a long break. She planned to go on a trip as well, but ended up going nowhere. On the last day of her vacation, she stopped by a bookstore, bought a stack of books for the child, and then sat alone in a downtown café, sipping tea and watching the snow drift past the window. It snowed a lot that winter. The café was filled with a mix of post-Christmas fatigue, lingering excitement, and vague anticipation for the new year. Across from Ms. P sat a couple in their early forties, having tea and sharing a fruit tart with a girl who seemed to be their daughter. The girl checked her phone every now and then, but also laughed, complained, or talked at length to her parents. Ms. P watched them for a while. How long did she watch them? Suddenly, the girl looked up, and their eyes met. Ms. P quickly gathered her things and left the café. It wasn’t because she’d been caught staring, but because she wanted to call her younger brother all of a sudden. Having left her cell phone at home, she had to look for a payphone. She walked over five blocks, and her socks became soaked and the ends of her hair froze from the snow, but she finally found a payphone.      At last, when winter ended, Ms. P resumed her walks. She asked the boy if he was happy, and he said he was, holding her hand tightly. In the park, Ms. P still didn’t talk to the other young women. As always, she read her book, watched the child, and taught him what was appropriate and what was not. The family hired a new helper for weekend housework, giving the mother more free time, so Ms. P no longer needed to cook or clean. Sometimes, though, she still prepared snacks until the boy’s parents returned. They ate together a few times in the winter, but when spring began, they didn’t have a chance to share another meal. Occasionally, she stayed late when both parents were delayed, but that was rare. Ms. P wasn’t disappointed. She believed her life had entered a new phase of stability.      The couple also felt their lives had entered a new phase. The father sometimes went golfing with his superiors on Saturdays, an invitation that wasn’t open to just anyone. The mother’s dedication during the “Contemporary Art of Eastern Europe” exhibition earned her high praise. The family dined out often and visited the nursing home on Sundays. The father believed his mother’s condition was improving, and it actually was.      One day, when the mother punched in the door code and entered the apartment, she was struck by a strange feeling. Why does Ms. P always leave only the small lamp on? Why does she keep the apartment so dark? She watched as Ms. P greeted her, folded the corner of the page, and put the book back on the shelf. Why doesn’t Ms. P use a bookmark? It was hard to believe that she had seen this scene many times before. After Ms. P left, she looked at the teacup left in the sink—the teacup with a delicate little bird painted on it. The set was from England and her favorite. She had inquired at the department store several times, waiting two months for it. It had been worth the wait.      That night, she told her husband they should enroll their child in full-day daycare.      Ms. P’s job as a nanny ended.      A few months later, the father got promoted, and the mother became a permanent staff member at the museum. Everything was perfect, and nothing was wrong. Truly, nothing bad had happened. The night she was let go, Ms. P lay in bed, recalling the night view from their apartment. She had enjoyed the pleasant autumn breeze while watching the bridge and its lights across the dark river, the procession of car lights, and the giant Ferris wheel in the distance. She had wondered: What would happen if all those lights went out? If that ever happened, she’d believed she would know exactly where to run.      Had she been wrong?      She thought about the wrong choices, the misguided thoughts, the futile hopes, the resignation, and the losses that marked her life. It had always been that way. She had always thought it was courage, only to realize later it wasn’t. So what was it then? There were times she wanted to cling to something. She felt that life—her life—was a series of struggles and prayers. A prayer not to pray anymore. Please help me not to make another foolish decision. She had wished desperately that she would stop praying.      Back when she was young, she should have continued studying for the exam to become a full-time teacher. She thought of her parents, her incompetent parents who had depended utterly on her, yet whom she had loved dearly. And her younger brother’s family. They had a child, too, but she had never seen him. She had been happy once, too. There had been times when she had loved and been loved. Times she thought would never end. In the end, there was no one by her side, but that wasn’t a life she chose—just as anyone wouldn’t. Yet she believed that someday, a small event would resolve all the wrongs.      The young couple told her that they were moving abroad and wouldn’t need her anymore. Ms. P knew it was a lie. But what did it matter if it was a lie? For them, nothing bad would ever happen. That adorable boy would grow up well, loved by his parents. How smart and wonderful he would become! Maybe one day, he would become a dashing teenager and talk about her. The young, elegant, cultured couple might have once been her students in history—maybe social studies or geography. But Ms. P knew that was a stretch. Still, she hoped the children she had taught were growing up somewhere, elegant and in good health, living in tall, clean towers, driving nice cars, speaking with refinement, and holding important roles in society.      That’s life, she thought. It’s going to be all right. Someday, all the wrongs will be made right, like one pull on a string that would untangle the knot. Ms. P thought of these things as she closed her eyes. Falling asleep was always easier than she expected. Translated by Janet Hong   

  by Son Bo Mi

• 

  Summer

  1It started about a month ago.Something in my ear clanged open and shut every time I swallowed. I didn’t know what it was.The sound continued even when I chewed. In the early hours, I rubbed my ear in my sleep. In the morning, I could sense my left auricle and the heat inside my ear.When I rose from where I’d been lying, my head felt heavy.When I walked, my body seemed to list to the side. I bet it’s due to my ear.It’s my ear, it’s my ear. I chanted it like a spell. Nothing outside of my ear concerned me. For a month after A left the house, she didn’t keep in touch.If she contacts me, I’ll show her my ear. I’ll tell her she can turn the auricle inside out if she likes. I’ll take her hand and hold it to my ear. Warmer than my cheek, isn’t it? I’ll say.A told me she wanted a slightly different version of me. She didn’t want a different me. Just a slight change.I told her, You change first.What did she say then? Maybe she said, Okay, I will. Or maybe she said, Why should I?Whenever she had a meal, she’d take out the mayonnaise and squirt it around on her food.She squirted it onto scrambled eggs, ddeokgalbi, salad, and boiled potatoes.She’d also mix it into plain rice together with a dash of soy sauce and sesame oil. She spent four months at this house. It filled the spring.My you and your me.We also had this conversation. We were sitting at the foot of the bed.What am I to you?And what are you to me?The light was off in the room, but we could see everything there was to see.We slowly examined each other’s eyes, nose, lips, hands, feet, fingers, and toes.It seemed like our hands and feet were similar even if they were a different size.Perhaps we were brother and sister in a previous life.Or if not, the inner organs of sperm whales.You the heart, and I the liver. It could’ve been like that.  2The doctor stuck a long, thin steel tool in my ear.I was sitting in the examination chair with my head braced against the headrest. An enlarged image of my ear canal was visible on the monitor facing me. If you put water in flour and knead it and put water in and knead it again, what does it become? the doctor asked.Gooey dough, I answered.Yes, like earwax. The doctor began scraping and removing the buildup, and inside my ear, the noise was terrific. I recoiled and winced. At some point a nurse appeared. It’s all right. You’re in good hands. Don’t worry, she said, patting me on the thigh. She looked to be past middle age, her hair gray with a few brown strands. She was wearing a purple cardigan.How is it? Is the sound still muffled? the doctor asked me.I tried a few vocalizations. Ah. Ah. I rose from the examination chair, setting my feet on the tiled floor and standing up.My back was damp. Maybe I’d been sweating during the procedure. I tried rotating my head and walking on the spot to test if my head was heavy, or if my body was leaning to one side. I couldn’t yawn properly, but I tried. I also tried clicking my teeth together a couple of times to find out if the sound was still ringing on the inside. I couldn’t tell whether my hearing was clear or muffled.At any rate, it’s not back to normal. You have some inflammation of the eardrum. The doctor proceeded with his explanation after showing an image of my eardrum next to a normal one on the screen. Mine was a little thicker and redder.I’m giving you a prescription for antibiotics. Take the medication and come back on Friday, the doctor said.The nurse beside me said it was time to go.I paid for my consultation, pushed open the glass door and left the clinic.The hot stuffy air in the hallway wafted against my face.I went into Yang’s Pharmacy directly next door.It was bright and spacious. The light coming from the ceiling fixtures was neither too blue nor too yellow.The pharmacist went by the name of Yang Yu-jin.She stood there wearing a plastic name badge with her name on it.Yang Yu-jin was always alone behind the counter.Was she a few years younger, or my age exactly?Perhaps she was 5 or 8 centimeters taller than me.Generally speaking, she was lanky and pale. Her head appeared to be big and solid.She always widened her eyes a little when she assisted me. Her eyes were both fierce and affable.I wonder why she left an impression on me.This person, and that one, making one kind of impression or another, it tired me out.You’ve been to the ENT specialist today, she said, taking my prescription.Yes, I replied.She lined up fifteen little sachets across the counter with three pills in each: a painkiller, an antibiotic, and a pill for stomach ailments.She went over them, and concluded, You’ll have to reduce your stress level.Yes, I said, turning and walking out. Just as I was approaching the glass door, Yang Yu-jin called out to me and I stopped.Take this, she said, proffering a warm bottle of Ssanghwatang. 3Pretend I don’t exist. A buried her face in her hands. You do. In fact, you’re very real, I thought, looking at A in front of me.How can something stop existing?Take this. A held out the thin thread-like necklace she’d been wearing and dangled it in front of me.What’s that to me? I asked.Take it and put it on. I think it’ll suit you. A fastened around my neck what had just been around hers.I bent my head forward slightly. I felt the cold, light weight of the chain and the brush of her fingers on the back of my neck.A and I walked together toward the only mirror in the house. She went first, and I followed behind.The sound of our steps on the wooden floor was somehow magnified. We stopped in front of the mirror and looked. My neck and the nape of my neck, my face and hair, my wrinkles and blemishes.It suited me just as A had predicted. It’s platinum, she said.She rested her whole palm on the nape of my neck.Now if something amusing happens, who can I tell? And who can I talk to about something sad and stressful?Tears streamed down A’s face.I looked in the mirror at the image of her crying. What’s wrong? I asked,But she didn’t answer.I looked at the image of myself standing there wearing A’s necklace.I stood there awkwardly with my arms hanging down.Whenever I made eye contact with myself in the mirror, I felt distressed.   Shall we go somewhere? I asked her.How about going to the supermarket, or a bookshop? We could buy something new. Even just talking about something new would distract us. They’re too far away, she said. 4I was far away, and I had to take the bus home.While waiting for the right bus, I drank the Ssanghwatang I’d got at the pharmacy. It was hot and sweet.I lived in a remote place, far from anywhere else. To get to a café or playground, school or clinic, I had to take a bus or walk for twenty to thirty minutes.I had to walk along a dirt path or a narrow two-lane street.I always wanted to be farther away.It was difficult, even impossible, to just be mentally distant.I needed to physically distance myself from everyone and everything. I left the place I’d rented securely for five years and signed a contract to live somewhere a little further from the outskirts.No one was curious about my move; neither did they try to dissuade me.A was amused.Do people really reside there? At that time, A used the polite language form to address me.Yes. I will attempt it myself. I used the polite form, too.We didn’t have any trouble conversing even when we were formally addressing each other. A didn’t talk too much, but she talked enough.  Sudden gabbiness from people who were quiet, sudden quiet from talkative people, extreme quiet from people who’d merely been quiet, volubility from people who’d merely been talkative—the people I met generally knew no moderation. Either they nattered on, or they kept their mouths shut, expressionless, the whole time they were facing you.A was someone who both spoke and kept quiet in moderation.I did not feel any discomfort with the way she talked or with the timing of her silences.She was the only person who asked about my new place. I told her all about it.The living room doubles as a kitchen with a large window that takes up most of the wall. It faces north, but it’s bright.There are two rooms and one bathroom.The walls are white, the wooden floor is brown, and there’s no bathtub.It has a large yard and my contract will last for two years.Are you having a housewarming party? A asked.I’ve got to, I said.There were some old, deserted houses at scattered intervals around my neighborhood.Empty lots outnumbered the houses that were inhabited.Weeds grew in every lot. They flattened easily in the wind and rain, and then one day they’d rise anew. Small flowers like grains of rice bloomed at their tips, and on sunny days I could see their bright luster.On clear days it was eye-piercingly bright, and on overcast days, the surroundings were dark.There were spiderwebs around wherever you looked.Among the weeds, between branches, between the railings and the ground, in sunken hollows in the earth.I loved seeing dew on the spiderwebs.Aren’t you scared of living here? A asked.Living here—these words sounded so strange. When she first visited my home, A’d shown a lot of interest in it. She said it was magical, free, and fascinating, and not just the house, but the road leading up to it, the view of the low mountain in the distance and the dirt road. The things you stepped on whenever you walked, the big and small pebbles along the way, the refreshing breeze dancing in if you opened all the windows in the house, the sounds of the leaves rustling and the bugs you’d never heard of before, and the light and the shadows.Scared? What’s scary about it? I asked her.A listed all kinds of scary things.It was strange because nothing she listed seemed scary to me. How can you not be scared of anything? I’m starting to hate you, A said angrily.You’re so unfeeling, she sighed.What about you? How can you say you’re a feeling person when you put mayonnaise on everything you eat? I asked her with a smile. I wasn’t meaning to pick a fight. I said it hoping she’d laugh.But I don’t think she was amused. A and I decided to go out.We decided to have some coffee at a cafe and break up for good.It was a twenty-minute walk to the nearest coffee shop.In this twenty-minute span, I expected she’d change her mind.I couldn’t make A change her mind. Not even twenty minutes could do it, and when we arrived at the coffee shop, she still thought the same.It seemed as if something was settled in her mind. She didn’t appear to be looking at me but at the glass behind me.You seem to have made up your mind about something, but what? I asked.The truth of our relationship, she answered.What truth? I asked.She didn’t reply.Her eyes were almost closed in response to the sun streaming through the glass exterior of the coffee shop. I bet I looked like a shadow with the window behind me.I wanted to ask her if she could see my expression. We left the coffee shop and walked down a nearby alley.After a while, we sat down on a bench at a school’s playing field.The sun was about to set.It’s getting dark, so why don’t you stay over? I asked her.No. Over the next week, I’m going to collect my things and leave for good, A said.I didn’t want this to happen. At the same time, I wondered whether it’d really take a week. The few things she had would only take a single trip. Even if I brought to mind all her clothes, make-up, books, stationery supplies, and other sundry items, it seemed like there’d only be enough to fill a ramyeon box.A got up abruptly from the bench as if she were really leaving.Will we meet again? I asked. You go find your own happiness, A answered.Happiness? Oh, whatever, I said. By the time I’d said it, A had already turned her back on me and disappeared. So I was the only one to hear those words. Even after she was completely gone, I sat there a little longer.I sat for a long time, as if someone was pushing down on my shoulders and I couldn’t get up. The playing field slowly darkened, and the seesaw and the iron bars and the small number of trees there all turned the same color in the darkness. What kind of tree is that? Watching the leaves and branches sway, I wondered if it wasn’t time for me to go home.Alone, I walked five times around the playing field.My speed increased as I walked, so that by the last lap, I was almost running.5I feel like there’s still something there, B said, as if he knew all about my situation.I can tell by your face. B looked at me with a smile.We were surrounded by thick smoke from the grilling meat. B’s words were buried in all the noise.He asked about my ears. So they’re fine now?I thought, Yeah. My ears, they were uncomfortable until just three mornings ago.But now look. I’d gone and forgotten about them.How could I forget so easily?From day one, I hadn’t taken the medication. Where had I put it? I hadn’t thrown it away. I’d even gotten that Ssanghwatang.B flipped the meat over in front of me and chewed it noisily before washing it down with some soju.Something kept spraying me in the face.Like grease from the meat, or drops of soju, or B’s spit.The doctors said my eardrums weren’t normal. Were they normal now?I recalled the doctor telling me to come back on Friday.That would be tomorrow.Did I have to go? It didn’t seem necessary.Look. It’s too bad. Call her. I think she’ll answer. B seemed entertained by my plight.Is this amusing to you?Yes, B said.B was going through a divorce, but he didn’t bring it up.He appeared to be absorbed in my story, giggling. He didn’t look at all like someone going through a divorce. I wasn’t curious about how he felt during the divorce or how it happened, or even why he considered my situation amusing.B had been chattering excitedly, but as time wore on his expression became gloomy, and when we had finished our food and drink, he was crying.Even so, I loved her, B said, in a tone of confession.He said he didn’t want to get divorced.If you love her then why did you do that, I muttered.I don’t know the answer myself, B said.So you loved her, but what are you going to do now? I asked him.I really don’t know. I don’t know, B replied.He was pretty drunk, so he asked if he could stay the night at my place.I refused.He asked again and I refused again.B and I decided to part ways before midnight.He called a designated driver service. I felt like walking a little.I estimated it would take me an hour to get home. B fell asleep in the passenger seat of his car, and I began walking.I walked for ten minutes, and the rows of lit-up signs and the hustle and bustle disappeared.I walked a little farther and the damp smell of the earth and the scent of the chestnut blossoms became heavy in the air. I heard the frogs and the toads croaking. The sound was a continuous bombardment, like that of falling raindrops. I didn’t see anyone out there, but then I saw the outline of a person. It was so dark that I couldn’t tell if I was seeing them from the front or the back. After walking a little more I could tell I was viewing them from behind.I thought I recognized them. It was Yang Yu-jin. Was it really her?I’d never seen her from the back.No, on second thought, I might have seen her more frequently from the side and the back.The longer I walked, the more certain I felt.It was her limp hair and her long gangly frame.She was holding something in her hand. Was it Ssanghwatang? I wondered.I almost called out to see if it was really her, but I didn’t.I walked slowly, letting her get farther away.  6Am I allowed to swim? I asked the doctor.I was sitting with my head against the headrest of the examination chair.The doctor poked the long, thin steel tool in my ear and studied it this way and that.The eardrum is still red. The infection hasn’t gone away yet. If you really have to swim, make it short, the doctor said.People’s ears aren’t made to be submerged in water, he continued.Is he mad now? I wondered.I wanted to see his face, but I couldn’t turn my head. I was told that if I moved my head I could get hurt.The human ear, the human body—they’re not empty vessels. They’re not made to hold water. He seemed to be scolding me.Then what is the ear made for? I asked him.Could he answer that?It didn’t seem like he knew much. He was just good at poking instruments around in the ear. Human eyes, noses, and lips were all made for a reason, the doctor answered without really answering.Do you swim a lot? he asked.It’s not that, I said.He issued me a prescription for three days worth of antibiotics. He said that if there was no discomfort, I didn’t have to come back.The elderly nurse was wearing the same cardigan as before. With a nod, she indicated that it was time for me to go.  7A packed her bags in one go and never came back.Her belongings appeared from time to time.In the morning, things that hadn’t been there like plastic bracelets and earrings, hairpins, hand cream and fuzzy socks, popped up here and there around the house as if someone had come and deposited them there.I got a clear acrylic box, put all of A’s things inside, and set it on the kitchen table. From 1 until 4 pm, the box shone in the incoming sunlight. At 6 o’clock, light passing through the box formed pieces of rainbows on the white wall. I sat at the table facing the wall.When I sat at the table eating my meals looking at A’s belongings piled haphazardly inside the transparent box, I thought of her eyes, her nose, and her lips. Sometimes she smiled, but more often she was expressionless. Was it so?  Many things seemed to have already faded. There were only uncertainties. I stopped eating and pulled the acrylic box from the side of the table over in front of me.I stroked the smooth surface of the box. Bright light reflecting off the box dazzled my eyes.I thought, what should I do with this box and its contents? I recalled the things that A said had scared her—things connected to the house. The stillness within the house, the things that brushed against the windows, and the mysterious bursting sounds. And also her parents, A compared her parents to rotten flesh that had to be removed from her body without anaesthesia. And the things she couldn’t shake off—the anger she had inside. The recurrent dream she had of riding a high-speed elevator up high and then crashing. The future she seemed to have seen. Occasionally, she talked about our future. She said, You don’t comfort me at all, and the you she spoke of was me. You don’t say anything. When A said this, what had I said in reply?Perhaps I said, What? I’ve talked a lot.Or perhaps I said, I’ll talk more from now on. 8The doctor said people were not empty vessels.But I didn’t mind being an empty vessel.I’d actually like to be one, if I could.Above the pool, in the middle of the ceiling, was a heavy square glass pane. On bright days, light streamed down from it.The pool had a glass wall facing out on a mountain. While swimming underwater, I saw patterns of light rippling along the blue tiled floor. If I were an empty vessel, I could hold them too.I swam fifteen laps mostly underwater, hardly coming up for air.After swimming like that for so long, I was dizzy and almost gagged.My throat burned I was so thirsty.  In the shower room, I realized that the thread-like necklace had disappeared. When I was washing myself to a slippery shine, I felt there was nothing hanging from the nape of my neck. I checked the drain in the shower stall but didn’t see anything.I went to the change room and checked inside the locker as well. I put on my swim trunks and cap and goggles once more. I began a lap in the swim lane. I sliced through the water, looking only at the bottom of the pool. I was swimming for so long that it seemed I’d learned how to breathe underwater.Maybe with my ears. It seemed like I was breathing with my ears.  The whistle sounded. Everyone left the water.I did too.Outside the window, the mountain was getting wet.When did it start to rain?Outside the window, the rain sprayed like it was scattering in the air instead of falling.The mountain grew a little darker in the spray. For a long time, I looked blankly at the mist in the air and above the mountain. I couldn’t find the necklace.I returned to the shower stall and had a hot shower.To get home, I’d have to walk for forty minutes, or take a cab or two buses.The rain didn’t seem to be letting up. My faraway house was removed from everything. It was also removed from romance.I probably expected something when I moved into this faraway house. What? I wondered.A had maybe expected something of me.What? I was drenched all over waiting to catch a taxi in the rain.The things I was wearing stuck to my body and felt like skin. Trucks splashed through the water as they passed, making a terrific noise. How long will I have to stand here? I thought, waiting for a taxi to come.As I was waiting, the mist slowly drifted closer.The visibility was so poor that even if a taxi appeared in front of me, it would be a blur.Where is the necklace now?The thin thread-like one.That didn’t break, and barely held together. I imagined it somewhere in the water of a swimming pool I didn’t know.  9My ear was itchy and hot through the night. 10It seemed like the rainy season had already begun, as the rain didn’t stop.At the desk of the ENT, “Shape of My Heart” was playing.The elderly nurse was humming to herself. Maybe she didn’t see me push open the door and come in.Or maybe she didn’t care if anyone came or went.Was the doctor her son? I wondered.I approached the desk.She recognized me and smiled.“Shape of My Heart” kept playing, like a soundtrack. Even the auricle is red now. You must have had a tough night, the nurse said, in a worried tone.Yes, I replied.There were no other patients waiting.I went straight into the consulting room and faced the doctor.The doctor poked a large dab of clear, toothpaste-like gel into my ear. My ear, and my head as well, felt as if it was filled with a cool, heavy substance. Whatever you do, avoid touching your ears, the doctor said.Okay, I said.When did it start getting worse? the doctor asked. And what have you been doing recently?  he went on.I didn’t tell him everything that had happened.Suddenly. Last night it started getting worse, I answered.Even while I was having this simple conversation with the doctor, I could hear “Shape of My Heart,” on repeat, and the patter of the rain. After he put the gel in my left ear, every sound became muffled. My body leaned to the side as I walked towards Yang’s Pharmacy.I felt so drowsy that it seemed like I was already half asleep as I walked. I held out the prescription and met eyes with Yang Yu-jin. By any chance, were you out walking alone a few days ago? I don’t know. She looked uncertain.She disappeared into the lab at the back.I sat down on the green sofa placed there for customers. I ran my palm over the green sofa, made of fake leather that felt almost like vinyl.Looking up, I counted the number of light fixtures in the ceiling.I was dazzled by the light, and my head felt heavy.Maybe I was coming down with a cold.The tip of my nose tingled, and I felt a chill. How’s it going? I began to text.I’m sorry, I wrote and then deleted it.Your things, I wrote and deleted it.Mayonnaise, I wrote and deleted it. The necklace, I wrote and deleted it.These days, my ears, I wrote. Yang Yu-jin walked out of the lab and turned on the air conditioner in the corner.It’s summer, I wrote.  Translated by Kari Schenk

  by Kim Umji

• 

  The Diving Bell and the Poison

  The patient sustained catastrophic respiratory damage. At first, he was incapable of breathing independently and had to be intubated, but his condition later improved and the tube was removed. Orthopedics predicted a significant chance of nerve damage due to compression fractures to the first and second lumbar vertebrae, and explained that the patient had also seriously fractured his fibula and calcaneus. Even if everything else somehow stabilized, he would never walk normally again. Then again, ambulation wasn’t the problem. The microfractures to his left cranium were accompanied by brain damage. He had retained partial consciousness, but the patient continued to drift between lethargy and confusion.      If there was one thing to be thankful for, he had miraculously avoided damage to the hippocampus, meaning his language and memory functions were likely to recover. Something to be thankful for, yes, from a doctor’s perspective. From anyone’s perspective, really. Anyone would say the same thing. Gong returned to her office and sank into the chair, melting into the cushions. It had been autumn until just recently, but the world outside was clearly already freezing. Winter. So it’s winter. White-gray trees peeked out between the white-gray buildings. The landscape grew paler by the day, bleached into monochrome. She liked that. It’s like . . .a good season for quitting something.      She had been aware of this exhaustion for some time. But rest wasn’t the solution. Sometimes resting would only worsen the fatigue. Rest could sometimes mean neglecting the soul, abusing it. She tried to avoid being alone. And if that wasn’t possible, she made sure to always be doing something. At least grinding tomatoes in the blender, perhaps staring at the pulp until it turned to puree. That puree, too, would be processed again. Digested in the stomach and blended with other matter.      Gong knew that corpses, too, worked like tomatoes. They slowly decayed, broke down, and disappeared, until finally they were indistinguishable from their surroundings. Like a person sinking into the water and trying to look around. Descending into the pitch-black abyss, perceiving one’s own body deteriorate. Slowly realizing that they were becoming part of the world that surrounds them.      Much had changed in the past month. But “changed” was too mundane a word. Her life was now something altogether different. Did it even qualify as “life” anymore? Did breathing, moving, and being sustained count as life? Hyeon-wu would have laughed and replied, Sure does. Life’s a stubborn, dogged monster.      Gong turned on her phone. The wallpaper was a picture of Hyeon-wu, smiling as brilliantly as a cloudless day. In the background were mountains, and hikers, too. Gong would playfully complain, You’re a photographer, can’t you send me something nicer than a phone selfie? Hyeon-wu would burst into laughter. Almost a literal Bwa-hah-hah. She had never laughed that way before, not once. She’d loved Hyeon-wu’s laughter almost as much as his pictures, probably because it was the kind of laugh that could disarm anyone.      They had moved in together about five years ago. They hadn’t meant to not get married, but time had simply flown by. They hadn’t meant to not have children, but again, time had simply flown by. Did it feel empty to realize their lives were made of so unintentional choices, she wondered out loud, but Hyeon-wu would reply that it didn’t. Even if we didn’t mean for it to happen, our choices and perspectives still shaped it all. And those choices and perspectives were shaped by the logic of the universe we inhabit, too. Even trivial choices with surprising results are ultimately influenced by the rest of the world.      That much was obvious to anyone, and cliché of course, but Hyeon-wu made it all sound so persuasive. Gong would respond by tilting her head, staring into his face.      Let’s get married, Hyeon-wu had said, lying face-up in bed, Everything will be so much easier that way. Leaning back on a pillow, Gong turned the page of a book and replied, Sure. His proposal wasn’t particularly moving, nor was her response particularly hesitant. Being together for five years does that to people, huh, thought Gong.      What if one of us gets into a car crash? We’re not considered family, so we can’t be each other’s guardians. And if I die in an accident somewhere, they wouldn’t let you see my body, Hyeon-wu said, smiling awkwardly. Gong didn’t smile back. Embarrassed, Hyeon-wu added, Sorry, I know it’s a serious topic. Gong still didn’t respond. Hyeon-wu quickly said, Anyway, what should we have for breakfast tomorrow? Boil up some nurungji? No wait, salad with chicken breast sounds better. Or maybe both, heh heh.      One month ago on that fateful morning, Gong got up feeling properly rested for once. The sleeping pills had done the trick. In spite of the lingering daze, the dreamless night of rest had been lovely. Sunlight filled the living room balcony, a sight so unfamiliar that she suddenly felt out of place. As though she’d never seen such bright light, such a brilliant image, as though she’d never seen sunlight fill a balcony. It made no sense. I’ve lived here for years. Seen that balcony thousands of times.      And on the sunlit balcony was Hyeon-wu. Leaning over the railing, halfway outside. Teetering dangerously on the edge. Gong gasped. One of those days you’re going to disappear, just like that. It was a terrible premonition. The balcony looked like an aquarium of sunlight, and Hyeon-wu’s silhouette was almost hazy as he leaned even further out the balcony with camera in hand. Gong raised a hand and tried to yell. But there was only silence. Is this a dream?      Being a photographer doesn’t give you a license to put yourself at risk for your pictures, Gong had once said, but Hyeon-wu had laughed and given a long-winded response about how risks were what imbued his pictures with soul and turned them into masterpieces. She had wanted to protest, That makes no logical sense, but Hyeon-wu didn’t seem particularly convinced either. The debate ended there.      Hyeon-wu usually braved the danger of falling from four stories above the ground for pictures of birds, cats, and subjects like rooftop fans. Recently, he’d switched to plants and animals, and even when he took pictures of the city, he only snapped shots without any people. I’m not trying to find healing or anything. That kind of healing’s not actually a thing. People say that nature brings healing, but the thing is, nature is by definition a constant, cutthroat struggle. Even a peaceful forest with a cool breeze is a life-or-death battle if you get down on your knees and look closely at the ground, he’d said, stating the obvious in that ever-so persuasive way that left Gong with a confused tilt of the head.      Sometimes, Hyeon-wu would take closeups of the plants on the balcony. It was almost foreign to see him that way, safely taking safe pictures. Hyeon-wu was supposed to be going from New Zealand to Antarctica, taking the Trans-Siberian Railway to a northern town shivering at fifty below freezing, or racing across the Mongolian deserts to his next remote adventure. At some point he began crisscrossing battlefields. Palestine, when Israel began its offensive; a refugee camp on the border, when Syrian forces began attacking the rebels; Washington, when the Occupy movement was at its peak; Paris, when the Charlie Hebdo attacks occurred. That was Hyeon-wu, and Gong, although nervous, did not get upset with him.      Finally, Hyeon-wu pulled himself back inside and waved. Then he focused again on something beyond the railings. It was just like him, to be so immersed in his work. Gong wondered what he might be doing, but instead muttered, Hey. Good morning.      She paused. Then added:      I love you.      It was so unlike herself that she chuckled, but no one else would have seen it as laughter because it was so faint that it resembled more a stilted cringe.      Being an unsentimental person, Gong never really said things like I love you or even I like you. Hyeon-wu would tease, C’mon, don’t make excuses about personality. You’re just not that into me. She would respond with an awkward smile. Back then, Hyeon-wu had said that he loved how her eyes and lips twisted with those smiles—It’s nice to see a shy smile on you sometimes.      Shy. Shy, yes. Yes, it was shyness. But what really, did that mean? Gong didn’t really understand such emotions. So much about emotions still escaped her. The blinding sunshine still spilled in through the windows, and now the balcony remained utterly empty. No longer would she look out at the balcony and mutter quietly, like she did back on that morning. * Gong headed for the ICU, counting the time until her rounds.      The patient: Kim Jeong-sik, sixty-five years old.      He looked more like a middle-aged man than an elderly one and had a naturally strong build—that is, before he was carried into the hospital. Now, his skin was damaged in multiple places and his body hooked up to all manner of tubes and lines.      Kim Jeong-sik had jumped, burning, from the fourth floor. He’d only survived because he’d been caught in the branches of a tree and then landed on a car’s sunroof. His unusually youthful body had shielded him from the worst.      You should have seen all the people performing CPR when he arrived, the head nurse had said. Reporters had packed the hospital lobby and spilled all the way out the doors. Vehicles from broadcasting companies came and went. The director’s office instructed staff to be “especially cautious” with the patient, assigning the best of the best to his medical team. Gong was conscripted from neurosurgery, being a specialist in traumatic cerebral hemorrhaging.      When Gong first joined the team, the attending physician was a surgeon who had been practicing for two years. They performed urgent treatment like skin grafts. Now, a different doctor was the attending physician: a neurosurgeon with three years of experience. The patient was to be transferred from one department to another, passing through neurosurgery and neurology before being sent off to rehabilitation. That is, if he was lucky.      Gong spared no effort, designating the talented and hardworking resident as the attending physician and personally performing daily checkups, even visiting the ICU overnight. Due to subdural hemorrhaging, the patient was at risk of cerebral edemas and spikes in intracranial pressure, which meant they couldn’t let their guard down.      No one came to visit. According to the head nurse—who knew everyone and heard everything—the journalists whispered that the patient had lived alone for a long time. He’d run a decently successful chain of VHS and DVD rental stores until just over a decade ago, but sales fell year after year, because he had clung to an obviously dying business model.      It was not long before his company failed. It was a predictable end. He’d tried to diversify, opening 24 hours and also offering comic books and convenience store fare like snacks, but to no avail. Other rental stores had long since shuttered their doors, and as restaurants and cafés sprung up in his neighborhood, rents began to rise unsustainably.      By the time he liquidated the business, he was left with nothing but debt. What came next, too, was predictable. First, he turned to Ocean Story slot machine arcades, and when that went bust, he got hooked on online gambling funded with loans, and ended up getting divorced. He’d spent a significant amount of time in homeless shelters, more recently circulating dirt-cheap gosiwon room rentals. It was a cruel fate for the man, yes, but a fate so generic and common that no one paid him any attention.  At night, the ICU descended into watery silence. Gong stood amidst the faint specks of light and stared at the patient. The patient had regained consciousness, yes, but he was not fully lucid, pumped full of painkillers and a cocktail of drugs. When he was awake, he was capable of some conversation, but nothing that counted as coherent. A nurse would have to lean all the way into his face to hear what he whispered, which were mostly short gasps of water, can’t see, hurts, and where am I. The rest of his nerves still had not recovered. His body did take signals from his brain and moved almost imperceptibly, but his responses were slow and limited.      The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.      Gong thought back to that movie. The story of a man descending endlessly into the water, stuck in a diving bell. The diving bell was, of course, a metaphor. The movie was about a white man left fully paralyzed due to a stroke. The fall of the cynical, proud, and successful symbol of masculinity. And death. I guess even people like him dream of being butterflies, she had thought while watching the movie, then wondered quizzically, Or is it because he’s like that he dreams about being a butterfly?      Plip. Plip. Plip. The intravenous drip continued at steady intervals. The patient was in a lethargic state, his breathing unstable. Gong quietly took in his face. It was an angular visage, so much that it almost seemed to be made of stone. But at the moment, he was completely defenseless. Utterly unprepared for outside intrusion or harm. As fragile as expired tofu.      She placed a hand on his neck. Pressed gently on his carotid artery, his weakest point. Eyes narrowing, Gong pressed harder. The artery took clear shape on his throat. One small cut with a razor, for instance, and his blood would drain away rapidly. The life would leak out of him like air from a balloon.      Gong knew that people were, above all, physical beings. The human soul was neither holy nor virtuous nor evil. It was all simply the result of physical, genetic, and environmental circumstances and changes. A small injection of specific chemicals would confuse the brain’s neurotransmitters, thrusting the individual into another dimension. It was so easy to change sensations, desires, and personalities. Humans were weak and malleable and controllable. There was no other way to describe them, she thought.      She inserted a needle into the patient’s arm. The drug would help staunch hemorrhaging and prevent intracranial pressure from rising. Once the patient’s physical circumstances improved, he would be able to converse. They could lean an ear towards his mouth to hear him speak, or lean into his ear to speak to him. If he improved further, he might even be able to nod in response. Gong returned home and looked out at the balcony. It was steeped in silence. There was no rain or snow that day, no particulate matter obscuring the sun. The balcony was exactly where it had been before. The sun still rose in the east and set in the west.      The only difference was Hyeon-wu. And the only change was in the plants on the balcony. The plants’ change, however, had been dramatic. Some died so quickly that there was nothing she could do. At first, she tried watering them, but soon gave up. It was like the plants were rejecting water, sunlight, nutrients, everything. Her heart hardened one night and she tossed them all out. Even the poinsettia and the geranium, making a point of taking them outside at midnight when the garbage truck came by and putting some bills in the garbage collector’s hand.      Now only one flowerpot remained, the one where Hyeon-wu’s ashes were buried. A plant was growing out of the soil, but Gong didn’t know what it was called. She didn’t want to know. All she had to do was hold a smartphone in front of it, but what did it matter? The plant had a long, thin stem with unnaturally heavy leaves, which were broad and dark green. The poor stem was struggling to hold up the burden. She couldn’t stand the imbalance.      She understood that the world was not sentimental. And that the truth was it was not the world that was unsentimental, but herself. Maybe I’ve been off-balance all this time. Like a heavy leaf clinging to a slender plant.      Gong thought back to her intern days, of when she’d been tasked to assess dementia patients. Repeat after me. Apple. Tree. Train.      One more time. Apple. Tree. Train. Try to remember, okay?      They would then discuss the weather for a minute, then Gong would ask, What comes after “apple”? The patients would stare back blankly.      Apple…apple…after apple was…pear? …Mountain? …Home? The lost gazes would eventually land on her face and stop.      I can do this all day, Gong had thought when she looked at these people who walked all alone in their landscapes of apples and trees and trains. It was like walking into the deepest, innermost sanctums of their hearts. In those sanctums lived apples, pears, mountains, and homes, but none of that had made her lonely. Or compassionate or sympathetic. It was a satisfying job, bringing some comfort to the gaps in patients’ souls.      Gong had no interest in yoga or Pilates, and had never gotten into plants, pets, music, or art. Never met up to chat with friends at nice restaurants or ask how they were doing over text. Only occasionally browsed Twitter and Instagram, but only because they were followers of acquaintances, especially Hyeon-wu. She was neither a drinker nor smoker, only enjoying a solitary Weizen once a week or so, and only a single can over a book or an old movie.      Hyeon-wu never understood. Do you ever, like, have fun? I live with you and I still don’t get you sometimes. Gong had stared right back. Fun? Fun, huh. Gong wasn’t used to that word.      She knew a bit about Hyeon-wu’s work, of course. How they brimmed with emotion. Each snapshot precarious and impassioned and filled with longing, beautiful or ugly or meaningful or meaningless. Hyeon-wu had only held two exhibits and published one photo essay book, but he was already a rising star not just as a freelance journalist but as a photographer. Everyone agreed that he would someday go mainstream. The photo essay book was already about to join the ranks of bestsellers.      Gong’s only interest was in the brain’s neural circuits and the structure of the cranium. The speed and state of the blood circulating the cerebrovascular system. The gunk building up in the blood vessels, whether or not there was subarachnoid hemorrhaging, and cerebral aneurysms. She felt like a simple component in the machine that was the universe. And had no complaints.* A pair of police detectives waited on the bench. One seemed to be in his fifties, and the other early-to-mid thirties. The middle-aged one was utterly relaxed, like he had seen every case in the book and then some. He was the sarcastic half of a buddy-cop movie brought to life, or at least heavily influenced by one.      The younger detective asked most of the questions while the older one observed—took in, really—Gong with narrowed eyes. They assumed she wouldn’t cause them problems because she was a woman. But Gong didn’t care, because eventually they would understand: in this particular field, the detectives knew absolutely nothing.      Her office was simple and ordinary. The winter sun hung on the drapes. Gong kept the drapes shut when she wasn’t on duty, turning on a lamp instead. The office was dim, just lit enough so that her eyes felt comfortable.      “You keep up with the news, Doctor?”      “I do.”      “How is the patient?”      “We’re doing what we can so you can interview him in a couple of weeks, but we can’t guarantee—”      “A couple of weeks,” the young detective repeated.      This time, the older detective steepled his fingers and also repeated, “A couple of weeks?”      Gong frowned. “Again, we can’t guarantee anything. The patient’s condition could rapidly deteriorate at any time.”      “So less than two weeks,” the young detective concluded.      Gong did not nod. “His respiratory system and cranial nerves are our primary concerns at the moment, but it’s not so simple. He could suffer acute cardiac arrest, or even fall into a coma,” she explained, combining facts with hypotheses. If the patient did indeed improve, they could hand him over to detectives in under two weeks. Yes, a handover. Gong and the team were tasked with restoring him to sufficient health that he was capable of basic conversation by that point.      But when speaking with the detectives, Gong was always conservative in her assessments—not because she wanted to avoid getting their hopes up, but because no one truly knew what might happen to the patient. The detectives had to be made aware. It took time for vitals to stabilize, and most importantly, for linguistic functions to recover. Until then, it would be impossible to conduct a simple interview, let alone an interrogation. You are to wait, if only for the sake of accurate testimony. You must wait. You must wait. That was the message from Gong and the team.      The media and the internet mostly seemed to acknowledge at this point that it would take time for the truth to be unveiled. Let’s take our time. There’s no need to hurry. The police, too, did not complain about the pace of the investigation, at least not out loud. Take your time. We’re in no rush. But the detectives on the case were brimming with impatience.      “We’ve been on standby for a month,” the younger one said. “You stated that he was capable of simple conversation, so why make us wait? There’s nothing more important than figuring out his motives.”      Gong was silent. The detective added, “We need to know why he did what he did.”      Why he did what he did. That’s right. Why did he do what he did?      People were always interested in motives. Motives were important, true. But Gong was not curious. The incident had already occurred, and it could not be undone. It was the police’s role to uncover the reasons, and hers to determine if the patient lived or died. Detectives did police work, and doctors did medical work. That was the nature of the universe.       Reporters had pieced together scraps of information slipped by the police and wove up several narratives. Their articles, however, made it hard to tell what was fact and what was conjecture. As if reality and fiction were waging war in their writings.      Mainstream news told the story thus: A man in his mid-sixties named Kim barged into a newspaper company and started a fire—not in the lobby or the president’s office, but the editorial office on the fourth floor. The fourth floor was also home to conference rooms and interview rooms. The newspaper also ran a small studio where they recorded content for their video platforms.      Kim had strolled down the hallway and walked into the editorial office. It had taken him only two and a half minutes to go from the front doors on the first floor up the elevator to the fourth floor and through the editorial office doors. He had taken the lid off a gasoline container as soon as he was out of the elevator, trailing fuel as he walked past the soundstage. By the time people realized what he was doing and what was about to happen, the fire had been lit.      It was an unprecedented act of arson on a major news outlet. The outcome: catastrophic. Polyethylene had been used during renovations on part of the building, which the fire had devoured in a wake of toxic smoke. One person died of carbon monoxide poisoning, and two of suffocation. Seventeen more were injured, three of them in critical condition, meaning the number of dead could rise further. The fire had consumed not just the editorial office, but the studio next door, which had only one exit and no windows.      One of the dead was a young journalist intern. Another was an editor-in-chief who had recently won an international prize in journalism, only days away from retirement. Some of the guests who had come to the building for interviews or to make an appearance on the broadcast had also been injured.      The building was still smoking when one news outlet reported it as an electrical fire, noting that the metal door up to the rooftop was closed. They claimed that the tragedy had been caused because the door had been locked to deter people from smoking on the roof, basing the hypothesis on testimony from a building caretaker that an indoor smoking room had recently been installed and that the rooftop door had been closed off. Fire prevention codes were hauled up to the chopping block. But the article was purely speculative, based only on one caretaker’s testimony, and turned out to be wrong. It was taken down in less than an hour.      The cause of the fire was not difficult to track. The building was indeed a tinderbox, yes, but the flames that day were not caused by a short circuit or a smoke break, but a person with malicious intent: arson. The survivors who regained consciousness gave testimony; the security camera footage clearly showed the arsonist enter the building with a container of gasoline. The day after the incident, some of the footage was leaked online.      Clad in grey overalls, the arsonist entered the building through the first-floor entrance with gasoline in hand. There was a security turnstile, of course, but he passed through it with ease. The man simply gave the security guard’s office a wave. The guard waved back and opened the turnstile. Renovations had been underway on the second floor. The young security guard, a subcontractor only recently assigned to this post, had assumed the arsonist was working on the second floor.      Then there was the footage that had everyone talking. It had been uploaded to a video-sharing platform, and almost looked like something out of Hollywood. It began with a shot of an indoor space glowing red with flames. The camera panned to the windows, then back indoors. The arsonist must have started recording and propped up the phone on the windowsill to film himself. For a moment, he peered into the camera to check that it was running, then he leapt into the flames. He raised his hands high into the air, triumphant. The composition was dramatic, a shadowed man standing with arms defiantly raised to a backdrop of fire. Almost satanic. The arsonist streamed it all live on social media. The video was quickly deleted by administrators, of course, but by then it had been circulated all over the internet.      The arsonist not only streamed the act of arson, he even gave a determined performance in the flames. The clip spread almost as quickly as the fire, with the title “demon_irl.” People claimed it was a copycat attempt to mimic hate-based terror attacks across the world, kind of like those terrorists who streamed themselves shooting down civilians with machine guns. The only difference was that this arsonist was holding a container of gasoline.      Many people wondered if “demon_irl” was a hate crime or some sort of cultist attack. The newspaper he attacked happened to be serializing an in-depth investigative feature on the negative effects of religion on Korean society. How in contemporary times, religion had turned into a sort of spiritual service industry, what method religions used to amass wealth, both within and without the system, why people were so prone to faith, why Koreans tended to be so fervent, and how diehard fandom—religious, political, and social—had become so mainstream in Korea. Some partisan readers and religious organizations protested, but the editorial staff had refused to bend. One of those investigative features had been found in the arsonist’s hand.      But as it turned out, the arsonist was a single man aged sixty-five with no connection to any religion. He had attended church many years ago but had been an ordinary parishioner who had never tithed or showed signs of having suddenly fallen to religious fervor. Searches of his home turned up nothing of note, save for all the signs of an impoverished man living alone. No signs of mental instability, not enough evidence of antisocial psychopathy. Circumstances made it difficult to conclude that the newspaper feature was the reason for the attack.      Journalists investigated the man’s past and learned that he had gone from one cheap gosiwon to the next, and when he could no longer even do work as a day laborer, he resorted to theft. The record was from two years ago. The man had stolen a box of donuts and a bottle of whiskey from a convenience store while the cashier was briefly away. As the man had already been on probation for another crime, the judge had followed protocol and sentenced him to eighteen months’ imprisonment. The chaebol patriarch who had been sentenced the same day had been given a six-month suspended sentence. He had been connected to corporate corruption totalling at approximately 1.5 trillion won, but had been let off easy for “fear of the impact his imprisonment might have on the economy.” The petty thief in his sixties had stolen one box of donuts and a single bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a total of approximately 45,000 won.      Although the whiskey was a small blemish on the narrative, progressive media had blasted the criminal justice system, labeling the man a “modern-day Jean Valjean.” One conservative newspaper published a column that argued progressives were comparing apples to oranges, as the chaebol patriarch had the national economy riding on his shoulders. People on all sides raised their voices, but the system never changed. The people dispersed. That was how the universe always worked.      But not for the single man in his sixties who had committed theft and been sentenced to eighteen months in prison. His sentence was shortened and he was released three months early. That was half a year ago. Ironically, he chose to set fire to the progressive news outlet that had compared him to Jean Valjean and criticized the justice system. No one could confirm if he had really read that article in particular, but whatever the case, his actions simply did not make sense.      Supposedly, the man had once run a blog for promoting his video rental stores. Someone claimed that he had made far-right political comments on his message boards. Testimony emerged claiming that at the time, his interest had not been in films but political propaganda.      Fact-checking revealed that such claims were not entirely true. The man’s “far-right political comments” were simply copied sections of editorial columns from the best-selling conservative newspaper in circulation, which were far-right in nature but not necessarily antisocial. The arsonist had not posted any original content save for those promoting his video rental business. The assertion that he had been obsessed with propaganda, too, turned out to be baseless. Back when the business was still running, YouTube had not been mainstream in Korea. It was a time before such political content was produced and consumed in video form.      One daily published a column that speculated that perhaps all the possible motives proposed so far were true. Perhaps by assigning a singular motive, we consciously or subconsciously attempt to dismiss all other issues, the columnist claimed. Is this not the willful act of sweeping under the rug the rampant hate and rage and indiscriminate vengeance in our society? When this hate, rage, vengeance, and inequality balloons on and on until it finally bursts, what will we do with the aftermath? The column went on and concluded: This is a quintessential antisocial act by an individual hostile to society as a whole. We must examine every facet of this case and commit ourselves to addressing. . .      The column, however, failed to explain why the arsonist had chosen that particular newspaper, why at that particular time, why the fourth floor specifically, why the fiendish livestream, or any of the myriad whys behind the case. Why the particular man in his mid-sixties committed such an act. The arsonist’s testimony and confession were crucial, but matters were complicated by his jumping from the fourth-story window while ablaze. He had survived, but was left with catastrophic damage to the brain and the entire nervous system and was incapable of giving an account of any sort.      The case could only be fully understood and the facts properly uncovered if the arsonist survived. That was apparent to all. To the journalists and the public and the doctors and the police. The police had made an additional request to the hospital: to not disclose to the culprit the extent of the damage he had wrought. Revealing the fact that multiple people were dead or injured could cause problems, they said. That it could affect his mental stability, which came with the risk of the man refusing to testify, which in turn meant the truth of the incident would be lost forever. He must not know the truth, for his knowledge would distort his truth forever.      Gong did not argue. Even in something as mundane as a car crash, the truth was a real, tangible thing. Unyielding. Singular. Extant in physical time. Why did the accident happen? Whose mistake or fault caused the accident? What kinds of intentions and decisions were involved? What universal logic was at play in those intentions and decisions?      Once the confession was made and the truth brought to light, the culprit would likely be sentenced to death. He would appeal, and finally be delivered a life sentence. In prison, he would do push-ups and keep himself fit. He would write letters of contrition, be designated a model prisoner, and be permitted a brief leave upon the death of his mother at her nursing home.      Gong could see it all unfold, as if it had already transpired. She did not forget that she was a vocal opponent of the death penalty. Human institutions must not sentence a human being to death, as it is tantamount to an act of murder… But one who has done something deserving death must be put to death. . . She quietly watched the conflict waging in her thoughts. Hyeon-wu had died in a car accident. Gong did not think he had jinxed himself or sentenced himself to that fate with, Common-law couples don’t have legal status. What if one of us gets into a car crash? We’re not considered family, so we can’t be each other’s guardians. And if I die in an accident somewhere, they wouldn’t let you see my body. . . Sorry, I know it’s a serious topic. . .      His words echoed on and on. Hyeon-wu had clearly been thinking about ducking through conflict zones on the borders of Afghanistan or Syria, or clambering up and down some wintry mountain slope. Not a fatal left turn at an intersection in downtown Seoul.      Hyeon-wu had rushed out of the house that day to make an interview. He had been running five minutes late because Gong had come home for lunch that day.      He had been grinning over the meal, pretending to answer questions like, What’s the secret to publishing such a successful photo essay book? He would reply, The secret is to respect the subject, not the camera. Then he said they would ask, You used to be a wilderness photographer in remote areas. What made you pivot to conflict zones? He asked Gong what she thought might be a good answer. She advised that an answer like, A bit of risk adds a real pinch of soul to a picture, would sound too corny.      It was only a twenty-five-minute drive to the newspaper office. Hyeon-wu had been nodding loudly along to “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” in the driver’s seat. Traffic was light, so he would make it just in time. His car was at the very front of the left lane, waiting for the left-turn signal.      Flames burst from a building ahead to his left. It was about two blocks off, and the windows about halfway up the building were glowing red. That was         Hyeon-wu’s destination. The old song was reaching its climax. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, Life goes on, bra, La,-la, how the life goes on. Instinctively, Hyeon-wu reached into the passenger seat for his camera. The yellow light went dark, and a millisecond before the left turn light came on, he floored the gas pedal. One hand on his camera, one hand on the steering wheel. His tires left skid marks on the pavement, and momentum pushed him sideways. An SUV on the other lane was roaring towards him, speeding up to catch the yellow light before it changed.Hyeon-wu’s death was pure coincidence. It just so happened that he had an interview at that exact time, that his car had been the first one in that lane, that the arsonist set fire to the newspaper at that moment. Hyeon-wu had known that the next signal would be the left turn arrow, and that the turn would get him straight to the scene of the fire. He had grabbed his camera by instinct and stepped on the gas pedal precisely when the left turn light came on.      So generic was the accident that no one gave it a second thought. The dashcam footage only solidified the banality of the case, and because it was a simple traffic accident, there was no “truth” to uncover or fight for. Gong was the only one who understood the chain of causality between the rising flames and the accident, and the only one who cared. She thought about the distance between the fire and the intersection. About the angle between them. About the abyss. Into the abyss she plunged, trapped in the diving bell. The ICU had no windows. Gong stood there and watched the patient. The patient watched her. They watched each other with eyes unmet, as if gazing into the distance past each other. Eventually, the patient moved his lips, as though trying to speak. No words were formed. Foam formed on the corner of his mouth, then dissipated into a small patch of moisture. It slowly dried white.      He did not seem to be asking, Will I live?       Yes. You will. You have to. Gong did not answer. She simply had her eyes on him. Watching silently.      What good is it, clinging to life? They’ll interrogate me, then the world will condemn me, the patient did not seem to say.      You have to live. Otherwise. . . how am I supposed to I kill you? Gong did not say.      That’s right. Kill me. As soon as you can, the patient did not say. If he did, she could never kill him.      It had been ten days now since Gong started personally administering neurotransmitter treatment injections into his arm. In proper doses, it would heal the patient. But an overdose would cause catastrophic side-effects such as cardiac arrest or circulatory failure.      It was a doctor’s job to maximize a drug’s effects while minimizing its side effects. She couldn’t remember how many times she emphasized this at guest lectures. All drugs—whether chemotherapy agents or cold medications or painkillers—cause both effects and side effects. The Greek word pharmaka, where we get the word “pharmacy,” refers not just to medicine and toxins, but to all drugs, no matter their effect. The truth is, the rest of the world also consists of countless interactions between effects and side effects. . .      At least, that was Gong’s understanding. If there were no side effects, it meant no effect had taken place. That understanding was the bedrock upon which her knowledge of pharmacology, love, and life was built.      Gong had once seen a feral cat catch a mouse. I thought cats these days didn’t care about mice. Maybe ferals are different. Hyeon-wu’s face fell. The cat was literally tearing into the mouse. Probably intending to toy with it for a long time before finally letting it die. With bloodied teeth and gleaming eyes, the cat looked up at Hyeon-wu. Hyeon-wu looked at the cat. In that instant, Gong looked not at the cat, but at Hyeon-wu. She knew he would watch the cat for a long time.      Hyeon-wu said that he was exhausted. He was sick of recreating such scenes. The world was already unfathomably violent and aggressive and sadistic, and reproducing them in photography or words felt like empty repetition, he said. Gong thought he was being too emotional. Hyeon-wu was always true to his emotions, always running straight towards his next destination, always risking danger, and frequently hurt in the impact. That was both his weakness and his charm, Gong had thought. She knew that thoughtful people who examined both sides of an argument and tried to take all the multifaceted aspects of a situation into account were the lethargic ones.      I don’t believe I’ll be going back to the wilderness or to conflict zones, Hyeon-wu was supposed to say clearly and persuasively at the interview. I’m more drawn now to the peacefulness of a quiet life, the quiet struggles within that serenity, and the love and death that eventually follow. That new direction in my life guided the direction of my new book. . .      The morgue did not permit her to see him, because according to regulations, only family were permitted to view bodies. I’m sorry, but we can’t do that. And the body was. . . severely damaged when the car caught fire. Not just the epidermis, but. . . The manager trailed off, knowing that Gong was a doctor. She didn’t have to hear the rest. The external force of the crash would have broken his body and ravaged his skin, his organs, and his nerves. There was no nuance or subtlety there. Gong pictured the scene as if looking at an ultrasound or an MRI. With eyes shut, she played it back in her mind in monochrome. How could she not? And how could she possibly stop? This too will pass, Gong did not think.      She opened her eyes. Silently looked at the patient. She had a needle in hand. His eyes were shut. The blood vessels in his neck looked more prominent than usual. It only took a little effort to administer an injection. She simply had to insert the needle and put pressure on her thumb. The drugs in the syringe would flow into the vein. It would circulate through the patient’s blood.      This man had no idea what a diving bell was, let alone what it meant to sink into the abyss in one. This man would live. Still trapped in her bell, still sinking into the depths, she watched the man. The room was a quiet, bottomless aquarium. Down and down the diving bell sank, and Gong’s body and soul were slowly warped. Poison slowly spread through her heart, but she did not realize it.      The ICU had no windows. As it had one simple purpose, the room was a space without an outdoors. With herculean effort, the patient opened his eyes. His gaze pointed at Gong. Who is this person, and why am I lying here, he seemed to wonder. But soon he seemed to get his bearings and his lips twitched. Gong watched, eyes narrowed, before leaning her ear close to his mouth. The patient’s voice reached her ear. Gong’s face slowly went rigid. Translated by Slin Jung

  by Lee Jangwook

• 

  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

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  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.pixelFortunately, everyone at the office seemed to have lunch on their own. I usually chose to spend my lunch breaks alone at a coffee shop. The coffee shop I frequented the most was only a short distance from the office. On some days I brought my own lunch to the office, but I usually just preferred grabbing a small bite to eat such as a pastry with a coffee. Since I spent so much time at the coffee shop, I would occasionally see people waiting for someone there. These people who had been waiting for someone would then turn into people meeting up with someone. pixelA rendezvous. Waiting. One person meets another. Two people meet, but I have never met you. You told me that you worked as an app developer at a company nearby. This happy coincidence made us feel closer, but were we really close? We often said that we should make time to see each other but never did. As things are, it seems unlikely we’ll ever see each other. I don’t know the reason why you deleted your Twitter account so suddenly. We exchanged a lot of messages with each other before your account was deleted.pixelYou said that you went for coffee every day during lunch at a coffee shop near your office. You said that drinking a lot of coffee did not interfere with your sleep at night. But you didn’t need much sleep to begin with. You have a driver’s license, but you don’t own a car because you prefer riding the bicycle. You once learned how to swim. You’re relatively healthy, but you were born with a weak heart. As a matter of fact, your grandfather died from a heart attack. You’ve been on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and you were pickpocketed on a trip to Europe. [. . .] You like reading books, and also occasionally enjoy going to the theater by yourself after work. You don’t mind being single. You enjoy spending time alone. You told me that people at your office spend the entire day staring at their computer. You told me that not much talking happened there. You told me that typing and clicking sounds filled the silence instead. You were content with your job. If you were telling the truth, that is. Although I knew a lot about you, I neither knew your name, your gender, your age, your face, nor your voice. I didn’t even know your contact information.pixelI once told you about P. I was comfortable doing so since you didn’t know P. I knew that you and P wouldn’t be crossing paths. P and I had nothing to say to each other at all. We would meet every week to eat, have drinks, and sleep together, but nothing else happened between us. I’m not even sure whether P really loved me or not, but that is of little importance now. Meeting P taught me two things. That a conversation is more than a mere exchange of words, and that what I need isn’t a lover as much as someone who I can have real conversations with. As it turns out, I feel love through language. pixelIt occurred to me that I might bump into P by chance someday. On the street, at a restaurant, or in the subway. I tried to imagine our chance encounter. It seemed fair to assume such a thing might happen one day. If I ever met P by chance, if that day really did come, I was hoping we would just pass each other by. I was hoping that I wouldn’t recognize P at all. Yes, that would be best. I wished that I would no longer be able to recognize P by then. Like we’d never met to begin with, as if we were total strangers. I was hoping that we would have become too old to recognize each other—that we would have grown so completely distant that I wouldn’t even be able to recall P’s face. pixelI conjure up a distant memory of your face.ForeheadEyebrow            EyebrowEar            Eye               Eye              EarNoseMouth  pixelDid I ever call you by your name? In a loving manner. Did I ever call you in such a way? I couldn’t remember your name. I could only remember your face and whatever little time we spent together. There was no way for me to find you. I had no clues to fall back on. It was impossible for me to find you without your name. How could I forget your name? Perhaps it had been too long. Back when you were little, I was little as well. Your face came to replace your name for as far as I can remember.pixelA little one who never even had a name, and a little one whose name I can’t remember. I used to have two little siblings. One of them died before being born, and the other had their adoption revoked. Although I don’t know the name of the one who died, I know they existed. Although I don’t know the name of the other one whose adoption was revoked, I know they existed. If I can call them so, then I’m quite sure I used to have two little siblings.pixelI don’t know my dead sibling’s face. It’s because I never got to see them. They never had a single photo taken of them. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t have a face. Once their heart formed and blood began flowing through them, things like their ears, eyes, mouth, and nose would have started to take shape. From some moment on, they would have had small holes destined to become ears and small spots destined to become eyes. As they began to move, they would have developed their sense of touch. As they began to feel things, their facial features would have become increasingly well-defined. they would have grown fingers and toes, and their tail would have disappeared altogether. It wouldn’t have taken long before they grew to the size of an adult hand. Their fate would be determined with the formation of their genitals. As their cerebrum developed, they would have begun to think and remember things. By then, they would have been able to feel anger and sorrow, although they wouldn’t have known what they were called. Once they had a face, they would have been able to smile and frown. Although they wouldn’t have known the meaning of love, they would have been able to feel it. Even without knowing any words, they would have been able to feel all kinds of sensations and emotions. Little by little, their reddish skin would have darkened and become thicker as they began to sense the world around them.pixelThey died suddenly one day. Their bones and flesh, their blood, their heart and stomach, their liver and spleen, their appendix, their brain, their forehead, their eyebrows, their eyelashes, their eyes, their mouth, their lips, their nose and their nostrils, their ears and their ear canals, their hands and their fingers, their feet and their toes, their soft hair, their muscles, their nerves, their emotions, their short memories—all of these things which once belonged to them before dying. I could’ve seen their face had they been born and not died. I could’ve seen their face change with age as they grew up. Instead, they were labeled as “infectious waste” and disposed of in accordance with the law. pixelI found myself alone for a while. I grew up, began to walk, and learned to talk. You showed up at our house just when I started talking. You’re a big sibling now. You became my little sibling that day. Although you didn’t know how to speak yet, you could make sounds to express your hunger or your dissatisfaction. You could also burp, sneeze, and smile at me. You lived with us for close to a month. Sometimes you sat on the bed staring blankly at me. Was there something you wanted to tell me? pixelThere’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. Although you may not remember me, I have always remembered you. A lot has happened at home since you returned to the arms of your grandmother and your mother. Our family isn’t as well off as it used to be. I no longer live at the house where you and I used to live. Whenever we downsized to a smaller home, and when fights between my parents grew more frequent, and when red stickers appeared on our electrical appliances and furniture indicating they were to be seized, and as my personal space kept shrinking, I thought about you. I was glad you didn’t have to go through any of that. Had you not left—or rather, had you not been returned—we would have gone through all these things together. I’m glad I was the only one subjected to this kind of life. Mom left. Dad stayed behind, and I watched him fall apart bit by bit. I’m really glad you weren’t there to see that. But I always longed to see you. Although you probably don’t remember me, you could have been my little sibling. pixelThey must be grown up by now and are no longer a child. They must no longer have the face of a child. They used to have a wide and round forehead. Maybe. From what I remember, their face was round but their cheeks were not very plump. I think they had thick lips and a deep groove under their nose. I’m not sure. I don’t remember well. But they did have a sharp nose. I can recall that clearly. No, I’m actually not even sure. I remember their nose being sharp, but I’m not sure if it was sharp enough to be called sharp. Although they may not have had a very sharp nose, it would also be wrong to say that they had a flat nose. They had very big eyes as well. Yes, I remember their faint double eyelids. Their eyes were undeniably big. I remember those eyes vividly.pixelYou left a lasting impression on me. Although you were smaller than me, your eyes were bigger than mine. Although your eyes were very big, they were more than just that. Your eyes sparkled. They glowed brightly like little marbles, like gems. They were moist. [. . .] kind and innocent. They were pure. They were pretty. They were beautiful. But they were more than just beautiful. Although I could remember your eyes, I couldn’t find the right words to describe them. It was a nearly impossible task. I could try. I could make the effort. But the more I described them, or the more I tried to describe them, the more I damaged them. I tried not to talk about you to prevent my words from erasing what was left of your face. pixelI was removing water. Water removal was a cumbersome task. When photoshoots involved spraying water on a product, it was almost impossible to achieve the client’s desired outcome no matter how many times I tried. That’s because I had no control over the direction or the angle in which the water would go, and because the brand logo would sometimes get covered in water. When this happened, I would take a photo of the product separately and merge it with another photo of the product with water sprayed onto it to create the final image. I was removing and altering the water’s shape to create a beautiful image that would include the brand logo while also capturing the moment when the water came into contact with the product. I adjusted the opacity, removed some water droplets, and added new water droplets, droplets, and droplets. When combining two photos together, it was vital to achieve a seamless result. pixelSummer was very hot this year, but winter was also very cold. Contrary to nature’s course. Paradoxically, the fact that winters have been getting colder serves as evidence that the Earth is gradually getting warmer. The melting of glaciers driven by global warming is said to have caused cold air from the North Pole to sweep across East Asia. Polar bears are losing their habitat and dying. Polar bears are disappearing. Disappearing fast. One animal has disappeared even faster than polar bears. The Bramble Cay melomys. This small rodent was driven to extinction by rising sea levels. Although I’ve never seen one in real life, I could see them everywhere. Although I’ve never seen one in real life, I knew that they disappeared. pixelI don’t think I would’ve minded had you used my stuff without asking me. Even if you had eaten ice cream that I bought for myself without asking me, or used one of my handbags without asking me, or borrowed my clothes without asking me—and even if we would have fought over why you did that—I don’t think I would’ve minded. If you got hit by another kid, I would have stood up for you and taught them a lesson. Even though I’ve never fought with anyone in my life, I would have been willing to do it again and again for you. I would’ve gotten medicine for you when you were sick and taken you to the hospital when you hurt yourself. I would’ve slept next to you on nights when you had a nightmare and were scared, hugged you when you cried, and thought about something to make you laugh while making the silliest face in the world when you felt depressed. To cherish dearly. I wished to know what that meant. I also wanted to capture your entire childhood on camera, and yet I don’t even have a single photo of you.pixelI didn’t keep a single photo of P. I tried my best to erase every memory, every trace, and every thought of P. But my efforts to completely erase P felt contrived. There was nothing I could be forced to erase. Not that I remember. Attempting to completely erase something made me realize it was impossible to completely erase something. Memories, traces, thoughts. Only time could erase and cause them to fade away. The natural way to erase something was to let it gradually fade away. Trying to speed up the process by erasing something that was meant to gradually fade away, or attempting to hold on to something that was meant to fade away on its own someday. I was like a human trying to interfere with the course of nature. pixelYou said you liked computers. You said that computers didn’t do anything unpredictable or irrational. You said that you understood computers. Cause and effect. You said that computers were always right and never left you feeling bewildered and frustrated. You said that nothing about computers ever happened merely by chance, accidentally, or for no reason. You said that computer programs were not complicated. Or that, yes, they could be complicated—but that their level of complexity paled in comparison to humans. You said that the complexity of humans often left you feeling bewildered and frustrated. pixelI went into the App Store every now and then to search for Griffin. Up until your account was deleted, I knew you’d been working to develop a photo application called Griffin. You said that Griffin would not only allow people to retouch their faces, but that it would also have a feature making it possible to seamlessly erase anyone from a photo. You said that, for example, users could use this feature to erase people appearing in the background of a selfie. You said that it would also make it possible to erase a specific person from a group picture. In contrast to Photoshop, which required editing photos after they had already been taken, this application would allow users to make anyone disappear the moment they took a photo. You were working to develop disappearance.pixel 0000101000000010             0100010             0             0             011                     1                     11                  1                  10010             01000010100 pixelI looked at a photo of P. Although part of me wanted to forget what they looked like altogether, I would add him back to my kakaoTalk contact list to look at their face every once in a while. I couldn’t help it. But the face in the photo appeared both like the one I knew and one that I didn’t know. Their face seemed to have changed, but also seemed not to have changed. The more I looked at the photo, the more familiar they looked, and the more unfamiliar they looked. If I stared long enough, it would feel like I both had and yet hadn’t grown distant from the face I remembered. There are countless ways a photo can distort a person’s face, though. I knew this better than anyone because my work involved retouching and editing photos. And yet, I still couldn’t take my eyes off the photo. I formed a new impression of him that fell somewhere between the face I remembered and the one in the photo.pixelI was waiting to receive another message from you. I waited and waited. Perhaps I wasn’t waiting for you as much as I was waiting for the message. You were already a message in and of yourself. A message which aroused feelings in me. But could I really have harbored feelings for someone whose name, gender, age, face, and voice I didn’t know? Although I didn’t think it made any sense, I continued waiting. I waited and waited. Perhaps it was all P’s fault. Perhaps I wanted to talk to you about things I didn’t get to tell P or find in you what P couldn’t give me. Linking your message to his image. I waited for your message to create—and love—someone who didn’t actually exist. pixelPeople at the office began playing around with an AI chatbot as a way to kill time. It wasn’t long before it became a trend. “Did you have lunch?” “It said it had kimchi-jjigae for lunch today.” “It’s asking me why I’m asking that kind of question.” People reacted to the things the program said. People looked a little more excited than usual. They said that the more people used the program and the more they interacted with it, the more the program would be able to learn, and the more fluent it would sound. Just like a human, AI learns by copying the behavior and language of others. If it was exposed to bad words, it would use bad language, and if it was exposed to pretty words, it would use pretty language. Listening and speaking were one and the same. I looked at the chat window to see what the program was saying. pixel I     send     youa     digital     message.You      speak      to      me      in      text.text text text text text text text text text textYour     face     and     body     are      made      of      text.Your thoughts and personality are made of text.Your      mind      produces      a      soft      skin.text text text text text text text text textYou are an organism made of text.Using nothing but text I candraw and recallyour    face.I can imagine your eyes, nose, and mouth. pixelIt was supposed to be the last snow of the winter according to the weather forecast. The snow fell with such intensity that it blanketed the whole world. It finally came to a stop after the sun reached its zenith. I stepped on the snow and slowly made my way to the coffee shop. A cat—or a dog—had left some pawprints in the snow. Shoeprints. There were still visible traces of someone’s passage here and there. Store owners came out during lunch time to clear up the snow piled up on the sidewalks. Someone was sprinkling salt on a steep road. A small snowman, a tiny little snowman, a snowman the size of a person, a dirty snowman, an uneven snowman, an ugly snowman [. . .] a snowman with rocks for eyes, a snowman with eyebrows. I had no idea who made them, but there were all sorts of snowmen in front of my office building. Those who cleared the snow did not clear away the snowmen. pixelAnyone can build a snowman, it’s easy. You just have to roll up some snow into two big balls and stack one of them on top of the other. Then, you can use tree branches and small rocks to create its face. It just needs a pair of eyes, a nose, and a mouth to be a person. If it’s too much trouble, you can just give it some eyes. But make sure you don’t just give it a nose or a mouth. It needs eyes to be a person. It wouldn’t be a snowman without eyes.pixelYou know there’s a meeting tomorrow, right?I’ll need the file before the end of the day!You know there’s a meeting tomorrow, right?I’ll need the file before the end of the day. :)You know there’s a meeting tomorrow, right? I’ll need the file before the end of the day. ^^Indeed, nothing is more important than eyes.pixelI would think of you whenever I saw someone with big eyes. You had big eyes when you were little, so you must still have big eyes today. I’m sure we must have seen each other at least once before. Although we bumped into each other, we must have simply walked on without recognizing each other. Back when I was in university, I worked part-time at a coffee shop around Sinchon Station, and given how crowded it was, I wouldn’t be surprised if you visited once. I take the subway every day, and given how crowded it is, I wouldn’t be surprised if we got on the same subway once. Couldn’t you have been one of the people I bumped shoulders with on an overcrowded train? Couldn’t we have once  been sitting inside the same screening room at the movie theater? Couldn’t we once have bumped into each other on the streets of Hongdae, Sinchon, Jongno, Myeongdong, Itaewon, Sinsa, or Gangnam by chance? And if we haven’t yet, if we keep walking these streets, isn’t there a chance we might bump into each other? Although I won’t be able to recognize your face, and you won’t remember me at all, I would like to see you again once. pixelBut we’re better off never seeing each other. Even if we were given the chance, it would be better not to. If you don’t have any memory of me, then it’s better to keep it that way. I probably don’t exist for you. I feel strange when I think about that. I most likely don’t exist in your memory. Your grandmother and your mother came looking for you again, and you went back with them. Had you not gone back with them, you would’ve become my most beloved little sibling. When people ask me if I have a sibling, I tell them I don’t have one, all the while thinking about you. I will keep thinking about you when I say that I don’t have a little sibling.pixelI went out to buy some diapers for you. I was really young myself. I must’ve been four or five. It was the first and last time I would ever buy baby diapers. I did as Mom told me and went to the supermarket to buy diapers. I was worried that I would buy the wrong diapers or mess something up. But I did my best to keep my cool. I walked out of the supermarket with your diapers, but you have no idea how heavy they were. I groaned as I carried the pack of diapers which was nearly as big as me. I had to drag it a few times, but I remember doing my best not to let it touch the ground. Passing by a factory, a vacant lot, and residential buildings, I kept my eyes on our house far in the distance. Knowing that you were in that house, I walked with all my might. I was filled with a sense of responsibility. I reminded myself that I had to take these diapers home no matter what. That I had to do this for you. You’re my little sibling. You’re my little sibling. We look nothing alike, but you’re still my little sibling. I walked home to you while reminding myself of this. I came to rely on you. I managed to walk back home because you were there.pixelAlthough I really wanted to see you, and I promised to see you again one day, I couldn’t bring myself to reach out to you. Had we wanted to, we could’ve met at any time since we were so close. I could’ve walked over to go see you, or you could’ve walked over to come see me. But in the end, we never did meet. We didn’t get to meet. And yet, I was still meeting all sorts of people every day. Are you among the people I came across on the subway after work? People who went down the stairs to the subway station and vanished from my sight. The subway station seemed to swallow them up.pixelI’m looking for a face I don’t know.  人 入 人 入 人 入 人 FOREHEAD EAR    EYE    EYE    EARNOSEMOUTHA woman with short bangs walks into the subway station.A man with a beard walks into the subway station. FOREHEAD EAR     EYE       EYE    EARNOSE 人 入 人 入 人 入 人 MOUTH 人 入 人 入 人   You’re either one of the two or neither of the two.You’re either a woman, a man, both, or neither.You’re either older, younger, or the same age as me.You have a name that I don’t know.pixelI went back into the App Store. It was the only way I could look for you. When the application was released, I would be able to learn the names of the developer or the members of the development team. If I was lucky, I might even get to know your contact information. However, even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to contact you. I wasn’t thinking about contacting you. In reality, your contact information wasn’t all that important. Perhaps, I just wanted to see Griffin. I wanted to see the Griffin logo, check out the Griffin features, and download the Griffin application. No—in reality, Griffin wasn’t all that important. Perhaps, I just wanted Griffin to appear in the search results when I searched for it. That’s all I wanted. That’s really all it was. Because you were working to develop a technology that could make anything inside a picture disappear the moment it was taken. Because you worked on developing Griffin. If you really did exist, then Griffin would one day be released. If you truly did exist, if you truly did exist. I made sure to get each consonant and vowel right as I typed away the letters on the keyboard—G, R, I, F, F, I, N.pixelI wanted to tell you about it one day. Simply because, for no particular reason, just once. That I used to have a little sibling as well. Or rather, that there once was a little one who could have become my little sibling. You always paid attention to me when I talked. I could have spoken to you about the things I couldn’t tell P. Although it was all behind me now, I struggled through so many things on my own. I desperately needed someone to fall back on. My father fell back on alcohol, but I had nothing to fall back on. I was worried that saying I was lonely would actually make me lonely, so the word lonely disappeared from my vocabulary. But I felt like you were someone I could say anything to. Without the need to be logical or to make any sense. I could talk to you about my little sibling, and even tell you all the things I wanted to tell them. Up until your account got deleted, I had felt as though I could have told you anything. pixelNo one thought it strange when the snow melted and disappeared without leaving a trace. Even though the snowmen had disappeared, no one went looking for them. It was only natural for snow to melt with the rising temperature. If snow melted, snowmen would naturally melt and disappear, too. Their gradual disappearance was only natural. I have been working around here for the past three years, and as I walk these streets every day, I have witnessed them change little by little. Life went on. Without snow. Life went on. Even without snow. Today, too, I think about coffee. Wanting to drink coffee, I walk and walk. pixelNice to see you again. It was the first time the coffee shop employee addressed me. Although I didn’t know their name, and they didn’t know mine, we exchanged a few brief words. The coffee shop employee had big eyes. They caught my attention the first time I came here. The one who could have become my little sibling would have been about the same age as them. I looked into their eyes and ordered a coffee. I then grabbed a seat and waited for my coffee. I waited. For someone. Just then, the coffee shop door swung open and someone walked in. It’s that person I saw yesterday. Just like me, that person comes here alone every day. That person looked around. That person must’ve been looking for somebody or for somewhere to sit down. That person grabbed a seat without ordering anything. They seemed to be waiting for somebody. Was I the one waiting for them? Even though I did not wait for them, the same people still showed up every day. The ones who came here at lunch every day. The people who worked nearby. They were all people whose names I didn’t know. Although I wasn’t waiting for them, I always felt a bit strange whenever we crossed paths. It was as though I had been waiting for them. As though I knew them well. Nice to see you again, I could have tried greeting them. I might or might not have been waiting for them. I might or might not have been waiting for anyone. I might have been waiting for someone whose name I didn’t know but whose face I knew, someone whose name I knew but whose face I didn’t know, someone whose face I knew but who I could no longer recognize, or someone whose face I could never have recognized to begin with. But I didn’t come here to wait. I was waiting but not waiting for anyone. A warm coffee. I was waiting but not waiting for anyone.pixelWinter has now faded away. Following nature’s course. Winter has entirely faded away and the days have drawn out entirely, allowing me to see the sun still shining brightly on my way back from work. Apartment buildings under construction. An intersection. Cars waiting for the green light. People crossing the street. Baskin-Robbins. Olive Young. People walking out of stores. A high school. Students in uniforms walking out of the front gate. A student on his bicycle passing swiftly through a crowd. Weeds growing all along train tracks. An old wall. The same old wall. A concrete wall. A tree behind a wall. A tree. A tree. Trees with budding leaves. A white magnolia tree. A tree. A yellow forsythia. A forsythia. A forsythia. The forsythias are in full bloom. The scenery outside the subway window shifts rapidly before fading away, fading away. I take out my cellphone to take a photo of the scenery as it fades away. I hold my cellphone up to the window and turn the camera on, pixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixel       pixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelI appear on the screen. I switch to the rear camera setting to take a photo of the scenery. The screen changes to reveal the rapidly changing scenery outside the subway window as it fades away, fades away. Forsythias. Forsythias. Forsythias. My gaze remains locked on the camera screen. Roadside trees. Roadside trees. Roadside trees. A building. Roadside trees. A building. Roadside trees. A building. Roadside trees. The scenery changes and fades away, fades away from my locked gaze. Rapidly, more rapidly. It changes nonstop and fades away. pixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixelpixel  1334 × 750 □□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□ Translated by Léo-Thomas Brylowski

  by Seo Ije

• 

  September Is a Prayer for the Estranged

  It’s September. You haven’t forgotten our promise. . . have you? I tilted my head in confusion at this random, cryptic message from H.Our promise? What sort of promise had we made? Figuring the message was meant for someone else and H had gotten the chat windows or contact names mixed up, I pretended I hadn’t seen it to give H the chance to clear things up.If H said: Sorry, wrong person,I’d reply: No worries, I didn’t even see what it said!The idea being that it was probably best to feign ignorance.But a moment later, when I remembered the promise H was referring to, I paused. Opening my calendar app and seeing the date, September 1, reminded me that we’d agreed to do something together around this time.Last September, I had taken part in a workshop H was holding at a tiny bookstore in downtown Seoul. The workshop was called A Diary of September. When I asked about the flyer posted inside the bookshop calling for participants to join a month-long journaling session, the bookstore owner eagerly invited me to join. I found out later that the owner was none other than H, the workshop organizer. H admitted to being a little embarrassed that no one else had signed up so far and asked if I’d be all right if it was just the two of us. Likely worried I might feel pressured or run away, H insisted that it would be simple and walked me through the three rules of keeping a diary. First, write by hand. (You can type on the computer first, then transcribe.)Second, write every day. (Binge writing works, too.)Third, write anything. (It’s OK if it’s not exactly a diary entry.) H and I kept our diaries for that entire month. We wrote them separately and at the same time in tandem, as the whole premise of the exercise was to share in the sense that we were writing during the same period of time. There was even time to swap and read each other’s diaries planned for the end of the month. Because we were essentially writing with an awareness of our reader, I hadn’t known how honest we could be, but since what we wrote didn’t necessarily have to be true, the sincerity didn’t feel forced.On the last day of the month, as promised, we met up again and slowly, silently read through each other’s Septembers. The workshop ended with the creation of a fourth rule: to never voice our thoughts or opinions about what we had read.Once we finished all the planned activities for the day, I was getting ready to head home when H asked if I wanted to do this again the following September. Though we hadn’t spoken much about it, we both could tell that this time had stirred something within us. Honestly, the reason I’d been such a willing participant may have been because I’d known deep down this would happen. I can’t go into detail here, but reading H’s diary, I was struck by the thought that we both seemed to have had days where we felt as though we had to at least get these entries out right away or else. I barely managed to contain my emotions for fear of upsetting H, but there were certain sentences where I could feel something hot welling up suddenly at the back of my throat.As we made earnest plans for the following year, I asked H about the timing. Why September? With twelve months in a year, it wasn’t like this was the only month you could keep a diary.H told me there was a part in Oh Eun’s poem “One Year” that read: “In September I try to get a firm grip on my mind / but try as I might my mind is the one thing I’ll never grasp.”Amazed that I’d remembered those lines so vividly even as I’d completely forgotten our promise, I sent H a reply. Thinking all the while how weirdly fitting it was that she hadn’t said a word for months only to carefully broach the subject now that September was here again. Of course not! I’m going to start today. Are we meeting up on the last day of the month this time, too? * I went to the hospital to fill a prescription for my blood pressure medication and ended up with a new medication tacked on. Suspicious about the change, especially as I hadn’t had any other tests done, I asked the doctor what the new medication was for and was told that it was the first and only drug of its kind that could be used to treat my chronic illness, so I should give it a try. The drug had initially been used to treat a different disease but had gotten approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety in early August and could now be administered to patients like me starting from September.On the bus back to the office, I looked up the name of the drug and its side effects. The information was no different from what I’d heard at the hospital and the pharmacy, but seeing it in print made it feel more real somehow, which in turn made me antsy. Very common side effects included hypoglycemia, with dizziness and lumbar pain also commonly reported. There were instructions to consume water frequently to dilute the amount of glucose present in the urine. I normally didn’t drink a lot of water, so this might prove to be yet another positive change for my body. But as always, when one thing gets better, another gets worse.The new medication came in yellow, diamond-shaped tablets. My blood pressure medication being white, at least I knew I wouldn’t mix them up and overdose. * I had been drawn to Water once upon a time. Though he often asked who would like someone as unremarkable as him—and this wasn’t just him whining but a conclusion drawn from a long history of rejections recorded in his body and mind—I didn’t think Water was as unattractive a person as he made himself out to be. His small, round forehead and plain features had a cute charm to them, and his polite yet somewhat timid attitude weirdly came across as tenderhearted.But I quickly sorted out my feelings for him. The more I learned about his lifestyle, the more certain I felt that not only was I ill-equipped to handle his type, but that he was also incapable of managing a steady, monogamous relationship. Water wanted people who could lust after him without the assumption that a relationship would follow, and those people were relatively easy to come by, almost sure to be found coming and going from particular kinds of places, such as love motels, DVD rooms, bathrooms. These were, for the most part, clandestine spots shared only within the gay community, places where those with no choice but to resign themselves to the risks gathered and then dispersed.Honestly, thinking back on Water as I knew him then, I find myself wondering. I had somewhat impure intentions toward him at first and later came to listen closely to his stories with a strange curiosity and a sensual pleasure, but that’s because I couldn’t understand why he wanted me to hear them. Whenever we met up, he would confide in me about things like the men he’d encountered fleetingly since I’d seen him last and the emotions, sensations, and thoughts brought about by those encounters. But there was never a moment when I wasn’t judging him, and though this would have already been plain to see from the look in my eyes or on my face, Water, for some reason, always tried to be transparent.Whatever his true feelings may have been, though, I still regret the words I often said to him back then. They came from a place of genuine concern on my end, and while he fortunately didn’t twist my words or take them the wrong way and get upset, they were much more scheming and had a weightier stigma to them than I had realized.Can you not? I used to say to him. This is how you’ll end up getting fucked for real.  * I was banging my forehead against the rattling window, feeling like a failure and punishing myself for getting lost in thoughts of Water once again, when the golden light of the setting sun came pouring into the bus all at once. An overwhelming heap of sunlight, enough to make me question how such a thing was possible. One by one, sensing that something was strange, other people on the bus began lifting their eyes from their phones to gaze out the window, and the light scattered softly over their tired faces, if only for a moment.When the warmth that briefly ghosted over my eyelids disappeared, I was struck by this thought.Let’s take the bus. Let’s skip the subway for September and ride the bus instead. Let’s not stare at our own blank-faced reflection in a dark window, let’s not focus on those doggedly persistent memories of Water, and let’s look instead toward where the light is pointing. * At the start of the year, I decided I would no longer live as a handmaid to art. This decision came after I realized almost all the troubles that had befallen me as of late could be traced back to that damn discipline. I’d believed I was moving through life side by side with art, never doubting for a second that we were on equal footing. but over time I learned that art had already surpassed me long ago, not only getting ahead of me but recklessly deciding where I ought to go next or else narrowing my field of vision as it pleased. I had judged people based on their importance, made use of others’ feelings, and even ended a long-term relationship, all because of art.When I told Earth about my decision, he said that even without my mentioning it, he’d thought for the longest time I was unhappy because of my novel, and it seemed like he was right. At the end of the day, he said, writing can’t be more important than living. He had a point, but it seemed that he’d misunderstood me; namely, that he’d mistaken the part where I said I wasn’t going to live as a handmaid to art as meaning I was going to quit writing my novel, and I was quick to correct him and say that wasn’t the case. Earth shrugged after appearing to ponder it for a moment and said he wasn’t sure the two aims were compatible. Then, after a beat, he asked,Why a handmaid of all things? Isn’t that a bit misogynistic?* Written this way, it may seem as though Earth had never uttered a discriminatory remark in his life, but that’s not true. Not long ago, we were watching a news story about a repeat sex offender who had escaped from prison when Earth thoughtlessly commented,Better off being gay than living like that.I froze in sheer disbelief as a cutting silence settled into the space between us, which Earth quickly broke through with a muttered retraction.I mean, I don’t think so, but realistically speaking, that’s how our society sees it.I was silent.Sorry.What for? You should say sorry to yourself.Just forget it.It felt deeply unfair how his words had immediately etched themselves into my memory, made themselves impossible to forget, and I asked myself just how long I could continue to watch the self-hate embedded in Earth’s bones present itself in this way from time to time, in what seemed like his sincere belief that we were a social evil, that our queerness was a serious criminal offense. I wanted to do something about it but often wondered whether there was anything I could do.Oh, but of course I don’t mean to speak ill of Earth.  * There’s this one story I sometimes use as an example to explain to folks the kind of person Earth is. A few years ago, we were on the subway when an older man sat down next to us. From what he was wearing I guessed he was coming back from a hike, and the moment he took a seat, the air around him began to reek with the musty, intermingling stench of alcohol and sweat. I watched for a chance to strike, and as soon as a pair of seats opened up across from us, I moved. I gave Earth a look telling him to hurry and join me. It wasn’t like the new seats were that much more comfortable, but they had to be better than sitting right next to that man.Still, Earth stayed in his seat. He watched me with obvious discomfort, creasing and relaxing his forehead again and again. Later when we got off the train, I asked him why he’d just sat there, and Earth said that if both of us had gotten up at the same time, that man would have known it was because of him and would have been embarrassed, so Earth decided to tough it out. He didn’t want to humiliate the man. But that guy had been so drunk he could barely keep his eyes open, and even if he had managed to open them, he’d been in no state whatsoever to notice whether someone next to him had gotten up or not. . .Now that I think about it, there was another time something like this happened. We had been walking around Earth’s neighborhood when he suddenly pulled me into a nearby side street. We had barely walked a few steps down the alleyway when the street opened out again onto the main road, so despite it being my first time in the area, I could clearly tell we were going the long way around. Picking up on my suspicion, Earth explained that for several months now he had been trying to avoid the salon on the main street that he used to go to. He said that if the owner spotted him walking by, she might feel upset. Baffled, I asked him whether switching salons was a big enough deal to warrant all this, and Earth smiled, told me that in the end it was best to do what he had to do for his own peace of mind. Looking at him then, I remember thinking we were patently and unmistakably different people, so I later learned to simply give in.But lately I’ve begun to wonder if Earth and I kept meeting up precisely because this was the sort of person he was. I thought maybe he was putting up with the emotional stench emanating from me. Thought maybe he was taking the roundabout way in an effort not to hurt me. Thought that since that was who he was, I would be no exception to the rule.I’m not the only one trying to endure. * I had nothing I wanted to write, not enough words to fill a single line in my diary, so I transcribed the notification I had received earlier that day. Please be advised that the indoor charnel house at the Seoul Municipal Crematorium will be closed during the Chuseok holiday in accordance with COVID-19 prevention measures. We ask for your active cooperation and request that you refrain from visiting over the Chuseok holiday period.  * The first thing I do when I get on the bus is check if the very front seat on the left is empty. The seat is installed above one of the front wheels, and sitting there makes for an even more cramped and bumpy ride than usual, especially on a low-floor bus, but I still try to claim that spot whenever I can.This seat preference is because I can watch scenes unfold as clear as day. Scenes of bus drivers exchanging the briefest of greetings as they pass each other. At some point I realized that every time the driver of the bus I’m on and the driver of the same bus going in the opposite direction cross paths and lock eyes, they slightly raise a hand or give a little nod, and that made me think there must be something like a tradition practiced at every bus company in the country, or else a mannerism known only to the drivers hired by this bus company. But anyway, seeing the drivers act as if they knew each other lifted my spirits so much that I found myself looking forward to those moments. Today, though, for some reason, the driver in the opposite-bound lane gave no greeting whatsoever as he passed my driver by. From the moment the bus entered my field of vision, my eyes had been trained on the driver’s seat, so I doubt I missed the timing or had seen it wrong. Had the driver been distracted with other thoughts and simply driven past? Had something happened to sour his mood to the point where he couldn’t be bothered with greetings? Or did that driver and my driver dislike each other so much that it was second nature to turn away whenever they crossed paths?Right, that could be it. Even an encounter this brief could be too hard to bear. * As I was reading the horoscopes my co-worker S shared with me a few days ago, I thought again of Water. Because the forecast for Cancers like me said that as Uranus continued to occupy our Eleventh House as it had begun to do in 2019, we would experience many changes in the realm of friends and acquaintances. The way thoughts of Water specifically flooded my mind as soon as I read that made me think there was still quite a distance between us. While 2022 will bring many sudden, unexpected encounters with new people, your core relationships will also undergo many shifts. In a few years, by the time Uranus moves into a new position, you will have completely different friends, colleagues, and acquaintances in your circle. I read up to there, then scrolled back to the title of the post.‘2022 Classic Horoscope for the 12 Zodiac Signs.’So these were predictions for the following year. I stared at those four digits, a number that felt like such a distant future. Did this mean I was going to lose someone again? Would next year see another relationship severed and estranged? * Look, I’m sorry, but. . . I wish you’d stop talking about him with me. We weren’t even all that close, to be honest. I don’t think carrying on like this will do either of us any good.This was what Earth said to me around this time last year, his face stiff in a way I’d never seen before. Until then, I hadn’t known just how much I had been talking about Water. Or, I knew, the same way I knew that Earth was tolerating it and that I’d become a burden to him, but there was no one besides him that I could talk to, and no one else I wanted to talk to, either. * I got a call from Water last year in mid-May. It was a little after midnight, the fresh sound of the rain rushing into my room through the slightly opened window. I was awake with my phone already in my hands, but when Water’s name came up on the screen, I just stared at it, not moving. It had been long enough that I was shocked to be getting a call from him after all that time, and I had a bad feeling. Why a phone call at this hour . . .?If I had been curious or concerned about how Water was doing, I should have answered, but in the end I didn’t pick up. It’s not that I wasn’t curious or concerned, but more that the desire not to know overpowered my every other thought. I didn’t want to deal with a situation that had grown complicated, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to reconnect with Water. I figured if he had an urgent request, he would message me, so I waited a little while, but after that one attempt to call, Water gave up on contacting me again.For some time, whenever I thought about my choice that day, I would insist to myself over and over that my back had simply been against the wall. I was completely burnt out at the time and wouldn’t have had the energy to listen or empathize with someone else, so even if someone besides Water had sought me out that night, I wouldn’t have answered—this was how I tried to make sense of the way I’d acted.But a year and a half has gone by now, and I know that’s not the full reason. It’s not a complete lie, but I knew there were real reasons that would easily overshadow it, knew there was a clear element of truth to the discomfort that had made me cower and hesitate that day. * When I started seeing Earth, we all hung out together from time to time. Earth and Water were curious about each other, and Earth in particular seemed to find Water amusing. At first, Water didn’t seem to like Earth much and was standoffish toward him, but after having a couple of meals and drinks together, they hit it off and soon were laughing and chattering away. Earth certainly seemed more cautious than when it was just us two, and I had a feeling his interactions with Water were working to feed his own ego, but things felt neither awkward nor strange. As always, Water regaled us with stories about his latest string of one-offs, but at some point Earth ended up being the one to direct the conversations, firing off questions for Water to answer. Earth had never been around someone like Water, someone who acted boldly on his desires, or rather someone who had no qualms about discussing them openly, which Earth found fascinating. I knew all too well how he felt, wide-eyed and eager to listen a little more carefully.But at some point, Earth started hinting at his true feelings about Water.By the way, is everything all right with him?Huh?He didn’t look so good today. He’s not sick or anything, right?Sick?I mean, I’m genuinely worried about the guy. No matter how lonely you are, no one should be living like that.Did you not hear him earlier?Hear what?What he said. That he doesn’t sleep around because he’s lonely, but because he likes to. He said it’s as simple as that.I tried defending Water, even told Earth that if he wasn’t going to introduce the guy to someone, he shouldn’t judge or criticize him for the way he lived, but even I couldn’t completely mask my concerns. If I imagined that when he parted ways with us, he would be heading into a world branded with stigma, I worried that much more.A moment later, though, I realized we were both feeling reassured deep down that we were in a position to worry about Water, and that by drawing this distinction between us and him, Earth may even have been inching closer toward something like certainty about our relationship. I didn’t know when or how things would end, but in that moment at least, I felt as though the two of us had pulled off a joint escape from rock bottom.Yet naturally these conversations I had with Earth about Water opened a rift between Water and me. The reason I stopped responding to Water’s messages right away or pushing back the date of our next meet-up wasn’t just because it was getting harder to make ends meet. Whenever I got the occasional message from Water jokingly saying that he was living modestly as a ‘non-gay’ like the two of us these days, I could sense that he was hurt but just laughed it off, not wanting to lay bare those feelings even then.And so I think at some point I began to choose Earth over Water. More than the world of Water, which was swept under the rug and seen as shameful even within the community, I wanted to be enmeshed in the world of Earth, which seemed middling and safe. I wanted somehow to settle into a life that sat higher up in the hierarchy of normalcy, even if only by one level. Yet in the end we’re no different from other outsiders. Even if we prove we’re as loyal and benign as any of our fellow citizens, our community is always in danger, always subject to approval, a bunch of people who never know when or how we might be dragged away by our hair yet again. * If I imagine the reason Water called me that time wasn’t to complain or ask for help but because he’d wanted to know how I was doing, I feel like crying. Amidst the unprecedented chaos of being violently outed and watching the soaring number of homophobic articles being churned out by the day in the name of disease prevention, as we held our breaths, trembling in fear of becoming each other’s alibis—if I imagine that in the middle of all that, he’d been wondering about my well-being. . . I want to die. * Today, at the recommendation of S, I went to have my palm read. There was a fortune teller based in Gwangju who even researched palmistry, and I jumped at the chance to book a reading on one of the rare occasions they would be in Seoul.Yet for the thirty-odd minutes I sat across from the fortune teller, my mind was elsewhere. Whether because I hadn’t slept well the night before or because of the side effects from the new medication, I couldn’t focus, my mind muffled as though swathed in fabric. Even worse, the details that the fortune teller was reading in the lines of my palm were generally unexciting. My fate must have been a drag if this was all they could come up with, but I had to wonder, as I slowly began tuning out, if some of the particulars—my digestive issues, my tendency to overthink, my choosiness when it came to people—weren’t things anyone could tell just by looking at me. Probably finding it equally awkward to end the conversation or simply let it meander, the fortune teller asked me whether there was anything I was curious about, and I considered mentioning what a hard time I was having with my novel, but I was afraid the reason for that would turn out to be my own lack of talent or something along those lines, so I kept my mouth shut. I stared down at the chaotic crisscross of stark and faint lines on my palm until I thought of something to say. Ah, I thought of something.Of course, ask away.Will next year be a hard year for me again?Seeing the puzzled frown on the fortune teller’s face, I explained that I was asking because my horoscope had said that Uranus was entering my star sign’s Eleventh House, which meant some of my core relationships would become estranged. It said this was true not only for last year and this year, but next year, too, so I was curious whether that would really be the case.Your star sign?Oh, does that sort of thing not appear in your palm?The fortune teller calmly returned my gaze.What’s wrong? Have you grown estranged from someone?Well, yes . . . Was that really hard for you?Well, yes . . . After silently studying my palm for a moment, the fortune teller spoke, a wan smile on their lips.Just call that person up and invite them out for a drink. That should do the trick. On the bus home, I listened to a song by Lee Young-hoon. I watched a little bit of a live cover he did on YouTube, then queued up several songs I liked from his first and second albums. His voice was thin and shaky, yet comforting for that reason. A quiet, honest consolation. Suddenly, I thought of the person who had first introduced me to him. Back in 2010, this singer would sometimes busk at the old playground in Hongdae, and this person enthusiastically urged me to go and see him perform at least once. That was already more than ten years ago now. How had that person and I grown so distant?While the songs played on, I thought of all the people, in no particular order, from whom I’d now become estranged.The hyung next door who had fled under the cover of night with his debt-saddled parents but left behind a three-page letter for me. The friend who pretended not to know all along that I was the one leaving recordings of love songs as voicemails for him every night. The friend with whom I’d shared my first kiss in a bathroom out of sheer curiosity. The friend who swore that when he grew up he was going to work in an office building in Gwanghwamun. The teacher who told me on graduation day that I could make movies and gifted me the film magazines he had been gathering since his own college days. The sunbae who said we should never give up on our novels no matter what and then wept inconsolably. My first love, with whom I’d been denied entrance to a motel on the grounds that there were no rooms they could rent out to two men. A lover from long ago who shouted while drunk that I was an asshole and I should know it. I wonder whether they’re all doing well. * I woke up this morning and saw that Earth had sent me a link on Messenger. Thinking it would be one of those clickbait posts that starts off with a sensational news report and ends with an ad for some dietary supplement, I clicked it and saw the title card for a set of slides that read ‘The Words Half of All Koreans Spell Wrong.’ The slides featured the instructions ‘Choose the correctly spelled word from the following pairs’ along with sets of commonly confused words: apoplepsy vs. apoplexy, renumeration vs. remuneration, reperation vs. reparation, perspire vs. prespire.Ever since I had brought Earth’s ridicule upon myself by accidentally saying “I’m spurious” instead of “I’m furious,” he’d taken to shoveling articles about spelling down my throat like a mother bird regurgitating food into her chicks’ mouths. Seeing the lengths he went to, I wondered whether I had made similar mistakes in front of him more than just the one time. Earth didn’t know this, but I’d been humiliated at my first-ever job, too, after writing “personnel expenses” as “personal expenses.”I picked the correct word out of the first few pairs before I got frustrated with myself for obediently doing what I’d been told and went back to the Messenger tab. Then I started a new conversation completely unrelated to spelling. Earth replied right away, as if he’d been looking at his phone at that exact moment. What are you doing this Saturday?Probably hanging out.With who?With you.In that case, can you come with me? I need to go somewhere.Of course.You’re not even going to ask where? Are you the type who’ll go anywhere if someone says let’s go?What’s wrong? Do I need to mentally prepare for something?No, nothing like that . . . I’m going to Paju.Paju?Yeah, to see my grandmother. I couldn’t visit during Chuseok. The charnel house was temporarily closed due to Covid. * We had just entered the building when Earth stopped short and said it would probably be better if he waited outside. There was a table near the entrance with a sign-in sheet for contact tracing purposes, and I was writing down my phone number and about to head inside when Earth spoke up.I’ll be fine. Take your time paying your respects.The charnel house was a two-story building constructed in the style of a royal mausoleum, and Earth’s voice hummed inside the high-ceilinged room. Suspecting something was wrong, I studied his face, and sure enough he seemed annoyed, which prompted me to apologize again. I couldn’t help feeling sorry, as he’d walked more than thirty minutes uphill in the glare of the autumn sun to accompany me. When I came alone, I got on with the trek by telling myself the walk was manageable, but today for some reason there had been unusually heavy traffic coming and going, so we had to keep stepping aside onto the shoulder of the road to avoid the cars as they passed. According to Earth, though, that wasn’t the reason he was hesitating now.It’s just, I don’t think it’s right for me to join in.What do you mean?Your grandmother might be uncomfortable with us being together.At that, I fell silent. Here was a man who had come this far in life only to feel like he even had to walk on eggshells around a dead person, but if I thought about it as though I were bringing someone home to meet my parents, it wasn’t like his diffidence was totally unfounded, so I couldn’t quite scoff at him for that. Yet even when I considered it in that light, I still came to the conclusion that Earth was worrying for nothing. What could my grandmother possibly know about us when it had already been twenty years since she’d passed? And even if she did somehow know something, what was I supposed to do about that now?As these thoughts ran through my mind, Earth asked me,What was she like?My grandmother?Yeah. Like, was she open-minded?Open-minded . . .I pretended to think for a moment, then said that for someone of her generation, she leaned more toward an open mindset. Even in that moment I wanted to say the words Earth wanted to hear, and since he’d come all this way, I wanted him to have a good impression of my grandmother.But as I answered him, I thought of how my grandmother was about as far from open-minded as anyone I could imagine. I learned later from my mother that while my grandmother was incredibly warm in front of me, she would nag my mom behind my back. Just how are you raising your son to be such a sissy? Sometimes when the topic of my grandmother came up, my mom would tell me how she’d spent so many heartbreaking years unable to conceive even after marriage, how she’d never been able to shake off the sorrow she’d held onto all that time, how my grandmother went around to all the top herbal medicine clinics in the country and refused to let her give up, how there wasn’t a single day my mom managed to get a restful night of sleep. No one would have imagined then that the precious son she had conceived with such difficulty would eventually grow up to be the one to sever our family’s bloodline entirely. * My grandmother’s remains were enshrined somewhere in the middle of Section B. From the entrance, she was on the right, housed inside a rectangular stone pillar that looked like any other storage locker. While I wiped away the dust that had gathered on her nameplate with one finger, Earth spoke.Your grandmother’s family name was Won.It was.“Grandma Won’s.” Like the bossam restaurant chain. Did your grandmother like bossam?I said nothing. I told myself it wasn’t right, I shouldn’t laugh, but then I started cracking up, the corners of my mouth lifting as I tried to ignore the satisfied grin on Earth’s face. I slid my bag off my shoulder and set it on the floor. After pausing for a moment to catch my breath, I took out the memorial prayer pamphlet I’d brought from home. It was a four-page printout that Roman Catholics used for funerals and death anniversaries. My faith had lapsed a long time ago, but when I came to the charnel house, I always made sure to bring this booklet, believing that reading the prayers was an effort to remain even a little while longer by my grandmother’s side.We crossed ourselves clumsily and started on the prayer. The text was divided into alternating parts, the changes in the speaker indicated by alternating white and black circles. I hadn’t noticed when I read it alone, but as the two of us read the prayer together, an interplay, we unwittingly created a kind of rhythm. At one point I even felt as though we were reciting a poem. Once we had read through the whole thing, I was seized by a strong desire—no, a need—to read it over from the beginning. I asked Earth if we could go through it one more time from the top.Again? How come?Is it too long?It is.Well, I just liked how it sounded. And it would be nice to pray for all my grandmother’s neighbors here, too. . .At first, Earth studied me, as if trying to suss out any ulterior motives. Then, seeming resigned, he took the prayer sheet from my hands and said if we were reading the same prayer again, we should switch roles. He would start this time.In that moment, I thought of Water. The line in the prayer that read “all the departed” repeated so often that I couldn’t help but think of him, couldn’t help but think about how I couldn’t go and see him, how I had no way of knowing where or how he was resting. According to the friend who had sent me the funeral announcement, even though the ongoing pandemic was reason enough not to hold a gathering, the truth was that Water’s father—his only surviving blood relative—didn’t want anyone finding out his cause of death and thus had elected to lay him to rest without a service, keeping even the location of the cemetery a secret from the prying eyes of people like us.For our second reading, I thought it would be a good idea to recite the prayer loud enough so that others could hear. I thought it would be nice if we could somehow send the prayer farther by exerting a little more effort. It probably wouldn’t be able to reach Water, wherever he was, but still. . . If I didn’t at least try thinking this way, I might come to hate myself again so much I couldn’t bear it, and not wanting Earth to know what I was feeling or to blame me and hate me too made me deliberately try thinking this way even more.Earth tapped me on the elbow.All right, he said. Let’s start. * Meanwhile, even now, I still know nothing for certain about what happened to Water. I’m not the only one in the dark—almost nobody in the community who knew him has any idea either, and since we were the type who could easily remain friends without knowing much of anything about each other’s daily lives, Water’s death could only be explained to us in a handful of familiar keywords and some guesswork based on those. Hate and condemnation, exclusion and deprivation, depression and isolation, disease and pain, sexual minority and suicide.For a while, I tried to tear down these speculations surrounding his death. I declined the test papers submitted in the absence of the one person who would know the right answers, refuted the narratives that reinforced the old bias that a life lived outside the norm was the same as an early death. I feel awful, but now I wonder whether there was something else I could have done for Water, if I had done all this more for myself, to put my own mind at ease, if only a little.Water hadn’t died because he was promiscuous.Water hadn’t died because he was anxious.Water hadn’t died because he was weak.Water hadn’t died because he was sad.Water hadn’t died because he was angry.Water hadn’t died because he was lonely.Water hadn’t died because he was gay.But my effort to cleave these causal relationships left me with yet more questions. Why do I want to make Water’s death into something flawless? Do I somehow want to prove, by completely erasing the parts that might appear unsavory, that not all of us gays lived and died that way? Who exactly is the owner of the gaze I find myself constantly aware of as I censor myself over and over again, and who exactly am I pushing away or cutting off so that I might receive approval from that gaze? * The night I first introduced Earth and Water to each other, Water had said about Earth:I knew you’d end up meeting someone similar to you.And that same day on the subway ride home, hinting at his first impressions, Earth had asked me about Water:Where did you end up meeting someone like him? * I met up with H on the twenty-ninth. We’d initially agreed to meet up on the last day of the month, but something unavoidable came up for H and we pushed up the meeting by a day.We sat in a quiet corner of a café that H liked, reading each other’s diaries in silence. Reading through them just once left much to be desired, so we went back and read them again from the beginning. And like that, half an hour went by. There wasn’t that much to read, but it still took us a while. We returned the diaries and heaved dramatic sighs—whew—neither of us wanting to start first.Then H spoke up.Because at least someone should know, she said.I chimed in,Right, I think so, too.We decided to abide by our old rule of not sharing any feelings or opinions related to the content of the diaries this time, too, and so had no choice but to talk about other things. Those other things turned out to be mostly what we’d been seeing, hearing, and thinking about lately, so technically, you could say our conversation wasn’t all that different from what we had written. But either way, H and I both thought it was a little funny and a little sad watching the other try their hardest to refrain from discussing the diaries. H told me how she’d been consistently calling someone by the wrong name, a syllable off, since last summer, yet the person hadn’t once corrected her, and I talked about the time the host of this podcast I liked said he was confident we could all have decently interesting conversations without making other people into caricatures or insulting them.How long had it been? As we were chatting, I’d gotten hungry and ordered a slice of carrot cake, and when I returned, H suddenly remembered something.Wait—I just realized we have one more day left of writing our diaries, but I guess we won’t get to read those last entries. September ends tomorrow.Oh, you’re right. Should we write them and send them over KakaoTalk or something?H considered this for a moment, then suggested another option.How about we bury them and dig them up again next year?Oh, like a jar of kimchi?Like a time capsule!I thought that sounded like it could be fun.Ah, then will we keep diaries together next year, too?Of course. We’ll write them together.Embarrassed at the way something inside me fluttered in that moment, I lowered my gaze to the table, staring at a spot where the afternoon sunlight was puddling as I answered.Then next September first, I’ll be the one to let you know it’s time to start. * I was walking down the street when I stopped short at the sight of a flowerpot placed outside the gate of someone’s home. A rather large note was stuck to the nameless, dried-up, withered-black plant.  Reviving. Please don’t remove. I opened my camera app, framed the shot so that the note was clearly visible, and was about to snap the picture, convinced I should write about this today, when a thought suddenly crossed my mind and made me lower my phone once again. Though I had decided not to make rash judgments, though I had resolved to stop rushing to sympathy or pity, it seemed that in the blink of an eye I had already forgotten my promise. Translated by Paige Aniyah Morris

  by Kim Byungwoon