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From Sisun
Every once in a while, I wonder where Mother’s binyeo could be. The hairpin had been made of low-purity silver with a small amber stone embedded in it. Oxidation had turned the silver black, but Mother had treasured it and intended to give it to me one day. It makes me wish the hairpin had been stolen by someone because the thought of it being buried in some unknown place with Mother makes me want to tear my heart from my breast. I heard that a tech industrial complex was supposed to be built on that land. What will become of this country if the ground where dozens of people are buried can simply get bulldozed over? I have never heard of a community that moves forward without remembering. That is why, at daybreak, when I write petition after petition against the development, I think of Mother’s binyeo. Now, I even become nostalgic for the women whose names I have forgotten. Those ladies made a living recreating Jinju food, Suncheon food, and Haeju and Anju food in Hawaii. Even though I have forgotten their names, the flavors of their cooking sometimes linger on the tip of my tongue. The food I ate during that time was some of the best Korean food I have ever eaten. How could I forget their hospitality? They who made familiar foods with such different ingredients to strengthen the bodies of those who had just arrived in that place; they who sent money back to their home countries even as they worried about making rent. I’m older than those women now but, since I’ve still remained a woman who cannot cook, even if a young person came stumbling to me with hunger, there would be nothing for them to eat. I always thought I would naturally get better at cooking as I grew older, but no. I realized nothing like that is guaranteed to emerge, but I wanted to find my own way to fulfill my role to a young person. I am like bruised fruit, but if my failures and flounderings were to be considered nourishment so that the next generation stumbles less, then it will have had meaning. — From What I Lost and What I Gained (1993) * Sangheon was certain there would be no fruit. After all, they were the kind of people who, while in search of things that were unusual and impressive, would forget entirely about the basics. On his way from the airport to the lodgings, he stopped at a shop and loaded up on a variety of fruits. He expected that the chocolate sapodillas, in particular, would elicit a good response. “It won’t be easy.” That was what Taeho had said when Sangheon first brought up wanting to marry Hwasu. At the time, Sangheon hadn’t understood what Taeho meant. He thought it was needless intimidation, for Hwasu was the kind of partner anyone would dream of having. Her family left nothing to be desired, either. Sangheon deemed Taeho someone of refined character and had followed in his footsteps for a long time; and while Myeong-hye was a bit scary, she wasn’t a difficult person. Speaking straight from the heart made things simple. Maybe he worried a little bit about Jisu’s Bohemian lifestyle? But he need not have, for Jisu’s shock value was something he found himself welcoming. Someone who would not fall, that was who Hwasu was. She had a great sense of balance. She was gentle but resolute; mindful of the past but not buried by it. She was the type to have plans for the future while still remaining flexible; she could judge exactly how much distance to maintain with whomever she met; she could sense the right amount of energy to allot to both her work and her life. She was, in other words, like the calm voice from those meditation apps that were in vogue those days. She had the face of someone who focused deeply on the present. I never thought Hwasu could fall. Even if she did, I thought she would get up right away. I didn’t think that she would stay lying prone because of some crazy bastard’s tackle. “Look, just tell yourself that you were bitten by a crazy dog and move on . . .” “If you’re going to talk to me that way, I’d rather you didn’t talk to me at all.” Hwasu buried her head under a large pillow as though she really did not want to converse. Although Sangheon knew it wasn’t the case, he couldn’t help but wonder if her strangely long, drawn out sleep in their bedroom with its blackout curtains always lowered were excuses to deny him. He used to think that sexless marriages were other peoples’ problem; he had never imagined it would become an issue for him. It wasn’t that things were bad and he wanted to have sex. He wanted to become the subject of Hwasu’s desire. The subject of her life. But because he had not found a way to make that request without sounding selfish, he kept pouring salt over a barely healed wound. “That bastard’s the one who splashed hydrochloric acid on you, so why take it out on me? Why did your love for me have to die?” He hadn’t meant to whine, but he did. “Lots of things died inside of me, not just love. Give me time to recover, please.” He had thought she would tell him her love hadn’t died, but when she acknowledged that it had, he was hurt. “If I wait, will it live again?” Hwasu didn’t answer. Sangheon loved her because she wasn’t the kind of person to make empty promises, but now he only wished that she would. He didn’t have unreasonably high expectations of marriage. He knew that everything would eventually change and he thought he would be able to handle the breadth of that change . . . but this wasn’t within a range he could handle. He had thought it was turbulence, but they were in a nosedive. Days in which he felt more dead than a dead man stretched on in a kind of vague despair. He thought he could understand why people of old used to dig up corpses just to mutilate them. He wondered whether his mother-in-law’s plan to travel to Hawaii was for Hwasu’s sake. It seemed to be a secret plan to inspire some kind of change in her. That’s why, even though he could have adjusted his schedule, Sangheon had decided to arrive rather late on purpose. He supposed that to undergo a change, one required freedom of space and, besides, he wanted to meet Hwasu after that change. But the day before his arrival, he suddenly stopped being able to contact her; it was only after Jisu told him that he found out Hwasu’s cell phone had been stolen. He grew insecure, thinking that someone should have told him that much at least, without him needing to ask. Through Jisu, he could only tell them hastily when he was going to arrive at the lodgings. His in-laws were not the kind of people to stay behind at the lodgings because their son-in-law was coming, so only Hwasu was waiting for him when he arrived. She opened the door and, for a moment, her lips parted and then shut, and her unspoken questions could almost be heard. Was the plane trip exhausting? Aren’t you tired? Was it hard finding the place? The old Hwasu would have asked those questions. “Do you want to go on the cruise?” “The cruise?” “It’s not humpback whale season but it might still be nice to get on a ship, don’t you think? We could watch the sunset, too.” If Hwasu wasn’t interested, he had planned to blow off the cruise reservation he’d already paid for. But, unexpectedly, Hwasu willingly followed him and Sangheon was careful not to overinterpret this to be a sign of her recovery. The ships weren’t left to idle because there were no whales; instead, they were set up with a seafood buffet and an open bar. An unexpectedly large number of people wanted to watch the sunset from the ship’s deck, although it wouldn’t have looked much different from the coast. The wine glasses looked slightly larger than the ones in Korea. The ship had sailed far enough from the shore, and its passengers from all over the world had, without any pretensions of self-control, drunk heavily and then stretched out in their cabins or on benches outside their cabins here and there. Many people had also fallen asleep to the gentle swaying of the ship. He wondered what the point of getting on a ship was if they were just going to fall asleep snoring, and wouldn’t they burn under the last remaining rays of the late afternoon sun?; He had many thoughts but it wasn’t something he could interfere in. Hwasu and Sangheon walked the deck holding plastic cups that looked like glass. “Are you okay not postponing your return to work?” “Yes.” The answer came faster than he expected. Hwasu leaned comfortably against the railing. The railings in Korea had always felt too short for Hwasu, who was on the taller side, but the ones in Hawaii were just right. “I don’t want to be remembered as someone who quit because of that incident. I want to belong with the people who go back, and if I’m sitting there, it’ll be a reality check for everyone. Our company needs a reality check.” Hwasu began to explain, methodically, the cause and effect that needed to be remembered; Sangheon felt he could understand and not understand at the same time. “So you’re going to keep working there?” “While I’m working there, I might quit simply for a different reason. But for now, I don’t know. No matter how hard you hold onto something you don’t know, you’ll keep not knowing it.” “Was that written in your grandmother’s book?” “It’s not that. It’s more like, I learned that I can’t have this amazing field of sight all at once. That all I can do in the dark is keep searching while fumbling around and falling down.” “With me?” Sangheon was embarrassed that his quiet question came out so childishly. Hwasu pretended that she hadn’t noticed. “With you, I think I can answer with a line that my grandmother quoted, that I’ll quote too. ‘Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.’1 Do you want to continue doing that?” “Why would you answer a question with a question?” “I do want to continue but . . . I think the things you want in life change over time. I think I might want to make bread with a different shape, not the shape I had planned. Would you still want to make bread with me even if that’s the case?” “Why does it have to be different from before? Why does our life have to change because of that bastard?” Hwasu nodded crookedly, as if she agreed with only half of his words. “I don’t like it either, but what life isn’t affected by external shocks? Still, my brooding after that day isn’t because of my unhappiness or my injury. It isn’t because I think I’m pathetic or pitiful. It’s that I can’t go back to the time before I saw up close such a twisted and corrupt side of this world. Until I find a language to describe it. Does that make sense? Do you still want to be by my side until I find what I need to find? Can you do that?” “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” Sangheon sank onto a bench. Hwasu came and sat down next to him. Among all the sleeping people, the two of them spoke to each other in hushed voices. “It’s okay if you don’t know.” “How is that okay?” “Tell me when you do. It’s all right.” Why won’t you fight for me? Sangheon wanted to ask, but he held it in. Nothing is all right! He wanted to shout, but lost to his quiet voice. Hwasu stroked his wrist slowly and he grew calm. He shouldn’t have married a girl from a family that believed marriage was a contract to be renewed every moment. He knew and still he dove in. He was stupid, he grumbled to himself. Still, there was brilliant sunset. “Don’t you love the word sunset? The letter s is in it twice,” said Hwasu. Her side profile looked nice for the first time in a long time and Sangheon softened. He already knew his answer, but he decided to drag it out for some time. After all, the word sulkiest also has the letter s twice. * At some point, I started talking like Aebang, laughing like Aebang, arguing like Aebang. But above all, I started loving people like Aebang, so I constantly brought them together, formed connections, set things up. I wonder when it was that I started wearing my friend’s ghost like a suit of armor. Even when I felt like I was wandering through the streets in the chill of winter, not wearing anything, I was wearing ghosts. The ghosts became a soft scarf for me. Sometimes, they turned into a transparent membrane that kept my tears and laughter from mixing. My tears stayed tears, my laughter stayed laughter. Nothing grew blurry or tarnished. Even when other people thought I was a naked lady with no shame, I paid them no attention for that reason. 1 The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin, translated into Korean by Choi Jun-young, Golden Bough Co., 2010. Translated by Archana Madhavan
by Chung Serang
Bright Night
“Is this child Miseon?” the young woman asked my grandmother, pointing. Her cheeks were flushed, maybe from walking for so long. An old woman stood beside her. “May I ask who you ladies are?” my grandmother ventured. “I’m Namseon’s ma,” the old woman answered, looking at my grandmother before turning her gaze to the child. “I beg your pardon, but what are you talking about?” The old woman motioned toward the young woman. “And this is his wedded wife.” The words elicited an awkward laugh from my grandmother. “What do you mean? I’m Namseon’s wife.” “The wind is cold. May we come inside?” the young woman asked. My grandmother nodded slowly despite not properly registering what was happening. She trembled. The two visitors sat on the warm section of the ondol floor and looked up at her. “Our Namseon was wed at sixteen. He went down first in the war and lost touch with us.” The old woman paused. “We went to live in Sokcho. We recently heard tell of him and came to find him here in Heeryeong. And now, he’s going to join us in Sokcho.” My grandmother listened without interrupting. She found out that Namseon had already fathered a son—Juseong, born in the North. Namseon had welcomed his mother and wife to Heeryeong and promised to accompany them to Sokcho in the near future. He’d also given them a local address, with the directive to explain the situation to a woman named Park Young-ok. The young woman, his wife, said, “You may raise the child if you like,” as if granting her permission. “True, things would be different if it were a son,” said the old woman. “What are you after?” my grandmother asked quietly. “We’re here to tell you, don’t you ever think about seeing Juseong’s pa again.” At that, my grandmother laughed softly, and the two visitors looked at her in surprise. “If you’ve finished what you have to say, then leave.” With that, my grandmother opened the door and sent them on their way. They’d expected her to beg for her man. They thought her eyes would widen like a surprised rabbit at the sight of the true wife. Watching them go, she realized that her marriage to Namseon had lost meaning for her. She didn’t want to claim ownership of him and get into a competition with them. Her heart felt colder than it ever had. At that moment, she couldn’t even muster much anger at the man who’d concealed his marital history and taken her as his second wife. My grandmother wrapped the child snugly in warm clothes, lifted her onto her back and went to the market where Namseon worked. He was moving a box when he saw her and stopped. As she approached, she could smell his familiar odor of cigarettes and skin. “Say what you have to say,” she said. “If I’d known Juseong’s ma had come south, this wouldn’t have happened. I thought she was in the North. It’s true. If I’d known she was in the South, why would I have gone and tried to get married again?” “Did my pa know?” “Yeah.” His voice trailed off. “He said it wasn’t no problem.” “So you and my pa were in it together.” “Don’t you get excited.” He looked around helplessly. “Juseong’s ma spent the war caring for my sick father and mother, and raising Juseong all by herself, on top of that. I’ve got to go to Sokcho where my pa is.” “What do I care if you go there or not,” my grandmother said. His eyes flashed with contempt. “So what would you have me to do?” On her way over, my grandmother had expected he’d be surprised or scared to see her, at least. She expected he’d fall to his knees and ask for forgiveness. But he didn’t. He only justified his actions. She couldn’t see any remorse in him. She couldn’t see that he felt guilty for having deceived her. Years later, when she wondered to herself how he could have done it, she still came to the same conclusion. He did it because he could. “In two days, I’m leaving for Sokcho.” “All right, go. But you can’t take Miseon.” “There are some things you should know. Keep her if you like but understand that you can’t never be her ma. The law says a child can’t be registered to a woman without a husband.” “I said you can’t take her, and I’ll say it again. I won’t let a bastard like you take Miseon from me!” It was the first and the last time my grandmother yelled so loudly at anyone. She told me she would never again be able to defy someone that boldly, even if they threatened her life. He wiped his hands on his apron and went back into the shop as if he hadn’t heard. He never gave her a sincere apology. “I never got an apology either.” I let this slip out while listening to my grandmother’s story. “I found out he was seeing another woman behind my back, but he blamed me.” My grandmother was quiet. “He said it was my fault because his heart was no longer in it, and if only we’d broken up earlier, he wouldn’t have had to be unfaithful.” I choked up at this point and had to pause briefly. “He screamed, ‘Sorry, sorry!’ and called it an apology, but I wanted him to mean what he said.” “I know, I’ve been there.” “I couldn’t stay after that.” “No, you couldn’t because you’re my granddaughter. You could leave and not look back.” “Grandma, how did you live? How did you get through it and keep on?” I covered my face, unable to hold back the tears. “You may not believe it now, but a day will come when this means nothing to you,” she said. The next morning, a call came from the vet. Oats had passed away in the night. “I didn’t think things would take a bad turn so quickly.” The vet could not hide his discomfort. If only I’d taken him home the previous evening and laid him to rest on his favorite checkered blanket, then I wouldn’t have felt so terrible. I wish he hadn’t met me in the first place. If only he’d just weakened and died a natural death, then maybe he’d have suffered less. I knew it was useless to speculate, but I couldn’t get rid of these thoughts. I’d thought I’d rescued him, but perhaps I’d only inflicted more pain. Oats was lying on his side on a disposable pad. I opened the door, hoping that he would look comfortable, as if he were sleeping, but the pain of his last moments radiated from his lifeless body. The edges of his mouth were dark, and his teeth and tongue were visible between lips that couldn’t close. I felt him and he was cold. For a long time, I stroked the body that had been Oats. If I’d known the outcome, I’d never have sent him to the clinic. Or at least I’d have taken him home for the final night. “I’m sorry,” I said aloud. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I placed Oats in a carboard box and came out and paid the bill. I couldn’t stop crying even in front of the vet. “He was suffering from the time you rescued him. But thanks to you, he got treatment—and love, even if it was just for a short time.” “How did he come down with this disease? And how did he get so thin and end up in the apartment flowerbed?” I was rambling on to the vet, unaware of what I was saying. He looked awkwardly at me. My question meant nothing to him, and he wasn’t obliged to answer. I bowed my head in farewell and left. My heart was calm even if I couldn’t stop crying. In my mind, I was planning the work ahead. I thought I would wrap Oats in his beloved checkered blanket and bury him near the observatory. When I arrived home, I placed the box in the living room with him inside and sat and gazed at it for a long while. I checked my cellphone to find I’d missed numerous calls from my grandmother. Only then did I remember her offer to accompany me to the clinic and back. I called her, and it wasn’t long before she came by with a trowel. For some time, she looked at the box without speaking. I told her he must have spent his final minutes alone in a dark room. Maybe he’d felt abandoned, waiting for someone who never came. “Maybe, but maybe not. They say dogs don’t want the people they love to see them in pain, so when the time comes for them to die, some leave home.” She paused. “We don’t know. Please don’t think Oats was lonely at the end.” She handed me the trowel. “Shall I come along?” I shook my head. “I want to do it myself.” “All right. Go and say your farewells.” I lay beside Oats briefly. I’d cried so much that day and hardly slept the night before, so I was overwhelmed with drowsiness. Before I knew it, I’d fallen into a deep sleep, and by the time I awoke it was late afternoon. I wrapped Oats in the checkered blanket and placed him back in the box before adding in a bunny toy and a box of his favorite snacks. Then I carried it to the car and got in. Was time a frozen river, as my ex-husband believed, with the past, present and future all set in advance? From the time before I met him, was it already foreordained that Oats would die in a clinic? I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe it even though it was a thought that could give me some comfort. On an impulse to show it to Oats, I went in the direction of my grandmother’s old house. For some time, I stood there hugging his box, watching the sun drop below the horizon. I picked a bouquet of daisy fleabanes that were growing tall on the property. Then I drove slowly to the observatory, where I parked the car in the lot and walked to a spot beneath an out-of-the-way tree. I could dig there quite easily, perhaps because it had rained in the afternoon. After removing two fist-sized chunks of rock, I had ample space. I placed him there, wrapped in the blanket, with the bunny toy and snack box on top, and covered him with dirt. I trod over the earth several times until it was firm, then laid the daisies from my grandmother’s on top. I sat there quite still and remembered that in the morning when the vet had notified me of Oats’ death, I’d felt relief as well as sadness. Part of me was relieved that Oats was no longer in pain, and that I’d no longer have to endure seeing him suffer. I couldn’t deny my own self-interest. I brushed the dirt off my hands, stood up, and went to the parking lot. I started slowly making my way down the dark mountain road. Halfway down, I saw the headlights of a car in the distance, picking up speed. It was only when we approached each other that I realized the other car was crossing the center line and heading into my lane. I quickly veered to the right. At that instant, there was a tremendous flash of light. It was an accident, so why don’t I feel any pain? I felt a gentle breeze and opened my eyes. It was night at the time of the accident, but now it’s day. My grandmother fills a basin with water in the courtyard and washes my big sister’s face. We are at her old house. She places a hand on my sister’s tiny nose and asks her to blow. This scene puts me at ease. I hear the giggling of a very small child, and when I go closer to look, I see it is me making the sound, a child riding on my mother’s back. I peer into the child’s face, but everything fades to black. My sister and I ride a bicycle down a hill. My sister’s feet are on the pedals, and I’m riding behind, hugging her tight. She smells like strawberry bubble gum. I feel such comfort and tranquility that I forget ever feeling sorrow or pain. Don’t go, I scream, holding on to the moment. Don’t leave me, Unni. Then the sky turns upside down and I see myself as a middle school student hanging from an iron bar on the school grounds. The child I see is trying to drag out the time before she has to go home. I can read her mind like the print on a page. She thinks she’s an embarrassment to the children hanging out with her. She’s whispering to herself, I’m too ugly and no one likes me. I try to tell her, That’s not true, but someone catches me from behind and pulls me away. When I open my eyes, it’s late at night once more. I’m on a bus, sitting next to the man I love. I’m twenty-one, and aching with desire for him, but I know he’ll soon tell me he’s leaving. At last, he speaks. I know, I know. I already know you’ll say this. I know, I know. Even after he gets off, I’m still saying it. I know, I know. Everyone leaves in the end. I want to wake up. I ring the bell, but the bus doesn’t stop. I call to the driver, but no matter how hard I pummel the exit door with my fists, the bus doesn’t stop. No one looks at me. I hear the front door closing behind my back. I know it’s the sound of my husband closing the door, leaving me. You . . . you were the only one I didn’t expect to leave. I sit on the floor crying, shaking with tears. Jiyeon. My seven-year-old sister approaches, minus her two front teeth, and pounds on my back. Jiyeon-ah, Ji-yeon-ah. The world gets brighter every time she calls my name. It looks like the sun’s getting bigger. I forget what I was crying about just now and talk to her. It’s so bright I can’t see. How can it get so bright? When I say this, my sister laughs out loud in the brightness, as if she’s heard a funny story. Silly, she says. Silly. I haven’t ever left you. Translated by Kari Schenk
by Choi Eunyoung
Nameless
The hospital director asked Lee Sun-il if she was aware that they were hiring Korean nurses in Germany. I know a Catholic priest who helps people get there. I’ll arrange for you to meet him if you study English and become a proficient nurse’s aide here, he said. Germany. Where on earth was that? Lee Sun-il had gotten a glimpse of Germany through the pictures Han Se-jin showed her after her trip there: the angels of Berlin with their wings spread out, holding weapons in their hands; the bullet-marked Victory Column; the wheat fields of Bochum and yacht riders in the Ruhr River; the black steeples and iron bridge of Cologne; the arched ceiling of the Frankfurt station; the red roofs and attic windows of Munich. Listening to Han Se-jin talk about the places and things she had seen, Lee Sun-il thought about how different they were from what she had pictured in her mind, and in what ways. Germany. What kind of a place was it? It was a place where all—educated and uneducated alike—could start over from the beginning; a place where no one asked or cared whether or not you were married, whether or not you were a virgin; a place you reached by going higher than the clouds and faster than the wind; the place that, in Lee Sun-il’s dreams, rose high like a cliff, then sank low like a mire. After about a half a year, Lee Sun-il saw her uncle standing in the hospital yard as she came out carrying a bucket of lye. Spotting her, he immediately seized her and dragged her back to his and his wife’s place. Her aunt punched her on her back and shoulder as she stood there looking pale, going on and on about the fragility of her grandfather’s health. Your grandfather was worried sick about you! The poor old man, he was so worried because you disappeared! Lee Sun-il sat cooped up in a room starving herself, tearing her aunt, uncle, and grandfather to pieces over and over again in her mind; then she wondered, Who told them I was there? Who knew I was there? Two weeks went by before she saw Sun-ja again. She came in while Lee Sun-il was sitting by the well, peeling a potato she had scooped out of a pail of water. Sun-ja said she couldn’t draw water from the well anymore. That’s what Aunt said, actually. What did she say exactly? ‘That girl isn’t allowed here anymore. That nasty girl will no longer be coming to see you,’ she’d said. Sun-ja just stood there. She just stood there without talking to me, not asking what I was doing there or saying she was sorry or telling me what had happened. I didn’t want to see her standing there like that and wished she would leave, but she just kept standing there. I didn’t know what to do so I slapped her on the cheek, hoping she’d go away. I slapped her on the cheek. She didn’t even cry. * Fires often broke out in those days because houses stood side by side with no space in between; houses whose walls were made of oiled strawboard and wood, and whose roofs were made of fabric; and oil lamps still served as night lights in many homes. Back then, a lamp knocked to the floor would bring down with it all the shacks in the area, turning them, as well as the people, to ashes. Once waterproof paper and fabric caught fire, the fire spread instantly, not leaving a second for anyone to throw a bucket of water over it. Fire! someone would cry, and everyone in the neighborhood would wake up at once like magic and come running out of their houses. That’s exactly what happened that night. Fire! No one was seriously injured or died, but several houses vanished in that fire. So did the house that belonged to Lee Sun-il’s aunt. Lee Sun-il sat for a while in the small square with others who had evacuated, waiting for the day to break; then she went to the plot of ground where the house had been, only to find that there was nothing left except a well surrounded by debris. Lee Sun-il saw Sun-ja lift an ash-covered board and pull out something that looked like a sweater from underneath. Next to her, Sun-ja’s mother was trying with all her might to scrape off a tiny bit of gold stuck to the remains of a burnt drawer. Most of the people who had lost their homes and possessions in the fire were market vendors, who generally managed somehow to continue their businesses after the fire. That wasn’t the case with Sun-ja’s mother. She sat at her market stall looking tired and ill, then one day, she went off and disappeared with her daughter without telling anyone where she was going. Lee Sun-il’s aunt and uncle set up a tent where their house had once stood and lived there for a while, then made plans to leave for Busan where the uncle’s family ran a business. Shrinking at the thought of continuing on with her aunt and uncle, Lee Sun-il became determined to get married. She met Han Jung-eon through a market vendor and made a snap decision to marry him. Like her, Han Jung-eon had grown up as a war orphan without a family or possessions; but he was literate and even knew some Chinese characters, had an easy smile, and was hardworking. That was enough, Lee Sun-il thought. Hardworking, that was quite enough. Her aunt and uncle opposed the marriage, but Lee Sun-il was in her twenties now and they couldn’t come up with a legitimate reason for their opposition. They declared that they wouldn’t be attending the wedding since she was set on going through with it despite their disapproval, but then they invited people to the wedding and took all the cash gifts for themselves. Lee Sun-il went on working at the market. Her aunt contacted her once in a blue moon, but there wasn’t much of an exchange between them. It had been many years since her aunt died. Lee Sun-il heard that she died while going around everywhere trying to find a way to fix her second or third daughter’s wrecked marriage; it was something she ate, which led to a sudden death away from home. The news reached Lee Sun-il’s ears long after she had died. In the process of confirming her domicile to transfer it to that of her husband, she learned that her name was recorded on the original domicile certificate as “Lee Sun-il,” and that the name of her younger sister, born in 1948, was Eun-il. Lee Eun-il. On the records, her sister was alive; she hadn’t died. Her father, mother, and sister—none of them had died. Names that no one knew existed, neglected like a little plot of ground deep in the woods, were still on that piece of paper. After crossing out her name for marriage registration and the names of her family for death reports, Lee Sun-il had forgotten that she had ever seen the paper. She forgot about the X marks drawn neatly over the names, and the Chinese character meaning “naught (媜)” written on the paper. The forgotten names would indeed become things of naught when Lee Sun-il’s life came to an end. Lee Sun-il was the one who put away the paper. She had no intention of revealing to anyone the things those names had been through. She told no one about them. She knew that people could leave something behind in the world, through spoken or written words, and that some had succeeded in doing so; but she didn’t want to. All those awful stories . . . do I have to think back on them and talk about them? she wondered. She hoped her children, Han Yeong-jin and Han Se-jin and Han Man-su, would never have to experience those things even as stories. Lee Sun-il’s grandfather died in the late 1970s. When she received the call, the elders of the village had already buried him on the mountain. Lee Sun-il was enraged when she heard the news. She thought it was rage that she felt. What else would you call it? Dead? She thought. That old man is tormenting me to the end. Nevertheless, she placed a bowl of cooked rice and a bowl of water on the wood-burning stove for half a day so he could eat and drink before he made his final departure. She hadn’t thought much of him during her life, but she never forgot the yellow envelope of money he’d brought on her wedding day and thought of it from time to time. I kept it in my hanbok sleeve and then lost it. Well, you must’ve had a hard life too, Grandfather. So rest now, rest in peace where you are, she prayed. It was after the mid-1980s when she began to tend to his grave. In 1986 . . . when the Asian Games in Seoul were in full swing, she received an international call. A woman called out her childhood name in a somewhat rough, high-pitched voice. Sun-ja? Excuse me? Sun-ja! Who is this? Isn’t this Sun-ja, the daughter of Yun Ok-yeong who used to live in Cheorwon? Who is this? Lee Sun-il asked repeatedly, feeling anger and fear toward the woman who was addressing her by her childhood name without even identifying herself; the woman then said that she was her aunt. It’s me, Bu-gyeong, your mom’s younger sister—Ok-yeong’s little sister. Yun Bu-gyeong said she had left her home in the countryside, fed up with poverty and ignorance, and lived in Seoul for a while under the US military government; then she evacuated to Geoje Island right after the war broke out, and married a US soldier she’d met there. I came to America with him after the war. Her hometown was Baengmagoji, she said, which was close to the bloodiest fighting, so she had assumed that everyone had probably died anyway. Not speaking a word of English, she had a hard time adjusting to living in her husband’s country and just had to live each and every day the best she could. Her children were all grown up now and she had been thinking more and more of home when she happened to run into someone from home, who told her that there was only one left now. There’s only one left. One who’s still alive. That aunt, too, was dead now. She passed away in June 2003, from the worsening of a liver disease. She'd visited Korea five times during the seventeen years since that first phone call until she passed away. In the meantime, her American husband died of a stroke while on a solitary fishing trip out to the lake on a holiday, and her son now had a daughter of his own. Her son accompanied her every time she visited Korea; he took more after his father than his mother, was a soldier like his father, and didn’t speak Korean. He made a telephone call to Korea to inform Lee Sun-il of his mother’s death. Sun-ja? He asked. Then he said in Korean, Mom, died. Died? Died. Translated by Jung Yewon
by Hwang Jungeun
The Man Who Touches Waves
1
by Kim Soom
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
We left the cafe. It was well into spring and approaching summer. The mornings and evenings had been chilly up until yesterday, but now I felt sunlight warming the nape of my neck and my back becoming damp with sweat. Office workers with employee ID badges around their necks milled about with light trench coats draped over an arm, a cup of takeout coffee in hand. This was the only time of day they could get any kind of exercise and soak in the sun. A group of workers from the web portal company where Kevin used to work passed by us. Personally, I was only working here because the agency I used to be at went belly up and this was the only place that made me an offer, but I wondered why the oh-so very clever Kevin had joined this company. He couldn’t have been tempted by the pay; our CEO had a habit of saying he’d “start paying us a decent salary once we started running ads.” Apparently, the ace up the CEO’s sleeve had been to tell Kevin that he would have the opportunity to do “all the kinds” of dev work he wanted to do. It was strange enough that the CEO thought something like that would convince Kevin, and stranger still that it actually did. Though I wasn’t sure if Kevin was, in fact, getting to do “all the kinds” of work he wanted to do. It looked like he was just fixing bugs all day. TurtleEgg said she had an offsite today and needed to get to her car that was parked in the lot near Pangyo Station. We went up a pedestrian overpass to get to the other side of the street but once we got to the top of the stairs, we noticed something strange. The overpass didn’t connect to the opposite side of the street, it connected to the same side of the street we were already on. An overpass was supposed to go across a road but this one ran parallel to it. “Weird,” said TurtleEgg. “How is this an overpass?” “Not sure. Maybe they read the blueprint wrong.” “Maybe it was built so people could stand in the shade under it to avoid the sun or rain.” “Or so office workers could get some exercise since they’re at their desks all day.” “It could just be an art sculpture. Every single building has to have one by law, so there are tons of them that have no soul.” “What should we do now?” “Go back down, I guess.” Then she added, “The view’s pretty nice from up here.” TurtleEgg went up to the railing near the center of the overpass, leaned both arms against it, and propped up her chin. I stood next to her and looked at the view before me. There was a dense stretch of buildings with exteriors that glittered like mirrors—buildings that looked overly futuristic, as though they had taken the name “Techno Valley” a little too literally. When I first came here, I had thought that this place looked like some cold galactic city I had seen in a sci-fi movie. Turns out even in Techno Valley, rivers melted once winter passed, spring arrived, cherry blossoms bloomed beautifully, and summer, too, would come in time. TurtleEgg pointed to something. “Whoa, the NC building looks so cool.” That was where the biggest gaming company in Pangyo, NC Soft, was headquartered. The immensity of that building reflected the size of the company. “I’m pretty sure I’ve paid for a windowpane or two on that building,” I said. “So you play Lineage?” “Back in the day.” “There are a lot of startups around here, aren’t there?” “Oh yeah. There are five or six in my building alone.” “I read somewhere that only three percent of all startups succeed in the end. You think Udon Market will make it?” I looked back at the NC Soft headquarters. There was a hole right in the middle of the giant building in the shape of a stretched-out “仃.” Through it, I could see the blazing afternoon sky—a square piece of sky that anyone walking around with an employee ID badge around their neck and a coffee in their hand might look up at once or twice. Every time I saw that perfectly square, enframed piece of sky, I imagined something flying through it. A dragon, a flock of birds, a hot-air balloon, a helicopter. “Who knows. The CEO and the board probably think about it constantly. How to raise money, how to earn money, how to be part of that three percent that makes it to the end . . . They probably worry about stuff like that all day long. Personally, I stop thinking about the company once I’m off the clock.” “Me too. As soon as I leave the office, I pull the plug on all thoughts about work. I only think beautiful thoughts and look at beautiful sights. For example, turtles, or turtle photos, or turtle videos.” When I turned to look at TurtleEgg, she had already pulled out her smartphone and was scrolling through her photos. She showed me a close-up of a turtle’s head in profile. There were vivid orange markings under its eyes. “Cute, huh? This is my pet turtle. His name’s Lambo.” Then she added, “Lambo as in Lamborghini.” I nodded to show that I understood and she held out her phone to show me another turtle photo that didn’t look much different from the one earlier. “And this is my second turtle, Masé.” “ . . . as in Maserati?” “Ooh, you got it.” Excited, she picked out yet another photo of a turtle (that again looked pretty much like the other two turtles) and showed it to me. “This one’s the youngest.” “Let me guess, Ferra? As in Ferrari?” “How clever of you, darling!” I pulled out my wallet and asked TurtleEgg, “So, the item you listed on Udon Market . . . could I possibly buy another one?” ©Yeji Yun * I had, in fact, cried at the office, although I had not admitted that to TurtleEgg. I was once so bothered by the sound of Kevin sighing behind me that I cried, just a little, as I kicked the bathroom door with force. In that moment, tears gushed out for a split second, that was it, but still you couldn’t say that I had not cried. I bought the small LEGO set that had been in the trunk of TurtleEgg’s car. It was part of the same Star Wars series that Kevin had on his desk. I had known Kevin liked LEGOs since even before he started at the company. Since the CEO knew him personally, it was all but decided that Kevin would get the job, but because it would not do to skip the interview process entirely, we arranged one as a formality. That was when I found out. After asking Kevin three or four questions about software development, the CEO posed one final question. “We’re a small company, as you know, so it’s not enough to be a good developer, you also have to be a good culture fit. We’re less than ten people so if things go south with someone, you won’t be able to avoid them. You’ll have to face them every day. So, it’s important to have social skills. Do you think you’ll be able to gel with the rest of the team?” That was when Kevin offered, as evidence of his sociability, his experience being secretary of the KAIST LEGO club for three years. I was seated by the CEO’s side and feeling invisible, but at Kevin’s words, I stifled a burst of laughter. KAIST, LEGO, secretary. Not a single one of those sounded sociable by any measure. I’d be even more skeptical if he’d said he had been the president, not the secretary. People said introverted developers look at their own shoes when they speak while extroverted developers look at the shoes of the person they’re speaking to. In a world like that, who knew what it meant to be part of a LEGO club? Maybe you were considered a crazy party animal or something. At 1:10 p.m., I went up to the roof of the office building. Kevin had a cigarette at that time every single day. I had no idea how the man could be so mechanical, so robotic, that even his smoke breaks were like clockwork. Just as I predicted, I ran into Kevin after he had finished up his cigarette and was on his way back to the office. Kevin started when he saw me, but when he saw the LEGO Star Wars Darth Vader Transformation kit in my hands, he trembled in shock. I held out the LEGO box and said, “Happy early birthday.” He looked like he was debating whether he should take it, but his hand was already reaching toward the box, like a robot that had developed an error in its algorithm. “Please tell me you don’t already have this one?” “No, I don’t. I was planning to get it . . .,” Kevin answered without meeting my eyes. With the box in both hands and pressed against his stomach, he traced a finger across its edge. I walked slowly toward the edge of the rooftop where Kevin had smoked his cigarette. Then I stepped up on top of a brick in the flower bed and took in the view before me. The building with the rectangle shape in it was visible from here too. I could recognize the weird overpass that TurtleEgg and I had been on. Turning around, I said to Kevin, “How about you try distancing yourself a little from your code?” Kevin stared wordlessly up at me. “You aren’t the code you write. I hope you know that.” Then I added, “A bug is just a bug. It’s not going to eat you up.” Kevin had his gaze trained on my sneakers. I jumped down from the flower bed and pulled out a capsule coffee machine box from the shopping bag I’d left on the ground. “I’m putting this in the break room. The two of us should get coffee sometime. I’ll ask Daeshik to get the capsules.” At that moment, Kevin and I received a notification on our smartphones at almost the exact same time. Each of us pulled our phones out of our pockets and looked. We smiled, the exact same expression on both our faces. * I was alone in the office when the CEO, who I thought had left for the day, suddenly came out and started talking to me. He wanted to know why I hadn’t left yet even though it was a Friday. I lied and said I still had some work to finish up. Looking impressed, the CEO said, “As soon as we start running ads, I’ll make some money and then hire you another project manager.” “Maybe we can hire an iOS developer first. I’m dying here.” “Why? Is Kevin still butting heads with Anna these days?” “You could say that.” “Goddammit, I need to stop giving in to him. It’s getting us nowhere.” All of a sudden, the CEO kicked Kevin’s chair hard. The swivel chair careened toward the entrance of the office. The CEO could have never done that in front of Kevin. If Kevin ever said he was quitting, the CEO was the type to get on his knees and beg him to stay. “It’s probably really tough on him since he’s working on something that’s hard enough for two people to take on all by himself. Even if he is a genius. It’s not like he’s Steve Jobs or something.” “Fine. Once we start running ads, I’ll for sure hire another iOS developer and someone to work under you.” I gathered up the four or five paper cups on the desk neatly in a stack and threw them in the trash. “David, let’s stop drinking instant coffee now and do capsule coffee instead. I’ll bring the machine.” “Hm . . . Is that expensive?” “Obviously it’s more expensive than instant coffee. But won’t it just be that much more efficient? Like even for cars, there’s a difference when you fill up with regular gasoline versus premium.” The CEO didn’t answer right away. He crossed his arms over his chest and hesitated for a moment before saying, “Let me look into it. I’ll think on it as positively as I can.” And then he added, “You know how much I care about what you think, Anna, don’t you?” As if. The truth is, I wasn’t staying behind to work late. Ticket reservations for Liubov Smirnova’s recital opened at 9 p.m. but I guessed that by the time I arrived home, it would be just slightly past 9 p.m. So I figured I would kill time at work and then, after successfully making my reservation, leave for home stress-free. I pulled up the server time for the reservation site and, while waiting until 21:00:00, I connected to “Silent Cho Seong-jin,” a photos-only public chat room about pianist Cho Seong-jin. As soon as I logged in, someone uploaded a photo of Cho Seong-jin with the words “Please send HD Carnegie Hall photo” written on it. I opened the “Chopin” folder on my MacBook. Thousands of jpg, gif, and avi files of Cho Seong-jin unfurled one after the other across my monitor. I double-clicked on one of them. It was a gif of Cho Seong-jin playing piano, his mouth pursed like a duck, his bangs undulating. There was no sound, but I knew he was performing Debussy’s “Clair de Lune.” He was flawlessly handsome. How could someone be that graceful? This time, I opened the folder with the Carnegie Hall photos. I chose a few that were of good quality and uploaded them to the chat room. Not long after, another photo arrived: Cho Seong-jin’s profile photo which showed him with his chin propped up against his hand on a grand piano. On the margin scrawled in crooked handwriting were the words, “Thank you so much. I wish you very little work and lots of money.” There was one more thing I had to do before 9 p.m. Cho Seong-jin’s Hong Kong recital, which I had reserved tickets for months ago, was coming up next month. With a public holiday, the weekend, and one precious day of PTO, I planned to take four days and three nights off to explore Hong Kong and attend the concert. I logged into an airline ticket reservation site and paid for a round trip to Hong Kong. It was a bit expensive, I thought, but that was fine. Today was payday, after all. Translated by Archana Madhavan
by Jang Ryujin
Van Gogh’s Light
The farmhouse in front of our house was demolished and replaced with a two-story building. The elderly couple who owned the building lived on the first floor, and they rented out the basement and the second floor to foreign workers. Late at night or before dawn, I could hear their strange languages and melancholy songs. People who left their poor motherlands behind often gathered in the yard and shared stories in languages only they could understand. It sounded as if people were speaking in tongues from somewhere afar. I kept thinking that Abul the Bangladeshi might be there among them. Or in the usual everyday scenes, or the dark alley, or at the factory. What used to be alive did not vanish that quickly. Blocked by the two-story building, the sunlight that used to stream into our house was halved. The wallpaper and the furniture seemed drained of their colors as they were unable to receive any sunlight. The entire house was dark all day long. I placed a narrow, long-necked lamp by the window and kept the light on day and night. When the soft yellow light illumined the walls and the furniture, bringing colors back into them, I felt at peace. One day, I brought back plants that had been left at the dumpster and put them on the windowsill. I took great care of them, changing their positions in the sunlight as the sun moved throughout the day, but soon their leaves turned yellow and withered. The plants I’d put out on the veranda froze to death within days. I couldn’t keep plants at home anymore. Eight-year-old Jaeyi wanted a hamster, a cat, and even a rabbit. But I couldn’t let her have such pets in this cold house plagued by backflow. I bought her two fish instead. Jaeyi put the blue and rainbow-colored fish in a fishbowl on the windowsill. “The fish are gone!” Jaeyi shouted in surprise the next morning. The two fish that had been in the fishbowl had vanished without a trace. Jaeyi and I scoured the room. But the fish were nowhere to be found. It was rather eerie. Jaeyi’s dad came home for the first time in days and held Jaeyi in his arms. Jaeyi told him about the vanished fish. “They must have eaten each other,” he said. Jaeyi covered her eyes, saying that she was scared. His words sent a chill down my back as well. If that had been the case, shouldn’t there be fins or bones left behind? It was impossible for two living things to devour each other whole without leaving a trace, at least in this world. Unless some god had something to do with it. He’s just pulling her leg, I thought. I emptied the fishbowl into the toilet. Gently scolding me for keeping the light on during the day, my husband turned off the lamp. When the light went out, it felt like all the colors in the house had drained. Startled, I turned the lamp back on. My husband looked perplexed as if he didn’t understand what I was doing. I didn’t understand myself either. How could I understand everything around me going black as if the light had taken away all the colors in the house? The wallpaper that had been dangling from the ceiling for days suddenly peeled off. The exposed cement ceiling was damp and covered in fungus. “Looks like we need to get some wallpaper,” my husband murmured in passing, glancing up at the ceiling. Without the wallpaper, the ceiling looked so grotesque that I couldn’t stand looking at it for a minute. As if it didn’t bother him, my husband sat on the windowsill and clipped his toenails. “They look like raptor’s claws!” Jaeyi looked curiously at her dad’s toenails. Not having been clipped for a long time, they did resemble dinosaur claws. “Could we wallpaper the ceiling ourselves?” I wondered loudly on purpose so that my husband would hear me. ©Yeji Yun My husband, Jaeyi, and I went into town to buy wallpaper. My husband suggested grabbing dinner before going home since it was our first outing in a long time. It was a late winter day, and the sunlight was bright and warm. Snow was still piled up along the shady edges of the alley, while the center of the path was slushy. My husband picked Jaeyi up in his arms. “She’s a big girl now,” I said to Jaeyi’s dad, looking at him sideways. “Let’s buy wallpaper with flower patterns.” Jaeyi seemed to be in a good mood. “Sure, let’s buy floral-pattern wallpaper,” my husband answered, keeping up her spirits. “Should we eat pork belly?” asked Jaeyi. I opened up my wallet to count the bills inside. My husband took a couple of ten-dollar bills from his pocket and handed them to me. We bought a roll of floral-pattern wallpaper. We decided to make flour paste glue and wallpaper the ceiling only. One roll didn’t seem enough to cover the entire ceiling, but neither Jaeyi’s dad nor I said we should buy more. It was a little early for dinner, but the winter sun set rather quickly. My husband took the lead with quick steps, and I followed behind at a slower pace as my mind wandered. The barbecue restaurant had a courtyard in the center, and the tables were laid out in a big circle around the courtyard. Further inside the restaurant there was raised floor seating where people could take their shoes off and sit on the warm floor. Lights lit up the courtyard here and there, allowing plants to grow lush and verdant even though they didn’t receive direct sunlight. My spirits fell for a moment, as they reminded me of the plants that died in my house. There was a small pond in the middle of the courtyard. When a white plaster cherub peed into the pond, music flowed. Smoke rose from the tables. Adults were grilling meat, while children were gathered around ice cream tubs. Jaeyi took off her shoes and stepped onto the raised floor seating. Her dad neatly arranged her shoes and placed them so that they were facing outward. I did the same for his shoes and went to our table. My husband ordered two portions of pork belly and grilled the meat until it turned golden brown. He cut them up into smaller pieces for Jaeyi and put them on her plate, and even wiped sauce from the corners of her mouth. Jaeyi only ate the meat her dad wrapped in lettuce to give her, not touching the ones I wrapped for her. “Hon, have some meat,” I said to my husband and pushed some meat and vegetables toward him, but pretending not to have seen them, he kept on spooning rice and soybean paste soup into his mouth. Wondering if he was going to say something, I waited. All four hundred grams of pork belly were on the grill, and some of the pieces began to char. “They’re getting burnt!” When I raised my voice, Jaeyi got up discreetly and headed to the ice cream tubs. I spoke to Jaeyi’s dad about Jebu Island. “My friends went to Jebu Island. They said the sea parted to reveal a walking path to the island around noon. The last path opens around 6:00 p.m. tomorrow. They said they’d wait for us to come. Hon, let’s take Jaeyi to Jebu Island. It’s just for a day. Let’s go and stay somewhere where it’s bright. But um, the lawsuit . . .” Even before I finished my sentence, my husband nodded. He said he’d come home once the negotiations with the company were finished the next afternoon. He said we should go to Jebu Island afterward. “And . . .” “Yeah?” Just as he was about to say something more, Jaeyi returned with a bowlful of ice cream. He fell silent. We were almost done eating, and it was growing darker outside. Suddenly the courtyard lit up with light, and streams of water gushed from the fountain. As the cherub statue peed into the pond, music flowed. My husband glanced behind him toward the courtyard, then lowered his head and cautiously said, “They’re the ones siding with the company.” When I followed his suit and turned around, he signaled me to stop looking. “Don’t turn around.” There were two men in gray uniform sitting at a table by the courtyard and grilling meat. They looked familiar. They were wearing the same work uniform as my husband, but theirs looked different. Well, I suppose they are different. On my husband’s thirty-seventh birthday, they’d come to our house with a potted money tree as a gift and ate cake together and drank alcohol. When Jaeyi enrolled in school, they’d bought her a backpack, and they’d even prepared documents to submit to the Ministry of Employment and Labor together. The money tree they’d given us as a gift was now dead. “They’re uncles!” Jaeyi also remembered them. My husband waited until Jaeyi finished her ice cream and got up from his seat. The uneaten pieces of meat were left to harden on the grill. There were still lettuce, mushrooms, and other vegetables left on the table. Thinking it a shame to leave them uneaten, I walked away begrudgingly. As Jaeyi and her dad were putting on their shoes, the men in gray uniform approached us. They nodded at me in acknowledgment and held their hands out to Jaeyi’s dad. He didn’t shake their hands. The men grinned and patted Jaeyi on the head once each before leaving the restaurant ahead of us. I paid for the meat, got a cup of coffee from the coffee machine and sipped it, grabbed a fistful of candy from the counter and handed them to Jaeyi, and finally headed outside. For that entire time, my husband sat on a chair in the smoking section and burned through his cigarette. Since the first trial began early last autumn, my husband came home once in two or three days or even a week. It has been six months since. Abul. If only it hadn’t been for Abul. Or actually, if only the two-story building hadn’t been built. Or if only that dumpster hadn’t been overflowing with discarded junk. If only the junk from demolishing, rebuilding, and renovating buildings had not awakened the factory at night. If only Abul’s motherland had not been so poor. If only Jaeyi’s dad hadn’t read a book like Workers, Unite around that time. Goddamn it! I didn’t know what needed to be undone for all of this to not have happened. As for Abul, he was an honest and quiet young man from Bangladesh. Whenever he had lunch at the restaurant where Jaeyi’s friend Ann’s mother worked as the only server, he helped her serve dishes to other customers. On those days Ann’s mother packed him side dishes to take home behind the restaurant owner’s back. Elderly men and women in town were very fond of Abul, who always said hello to them in awkward Korean. The children weren’t afraid of the dark-skinned foreigner Abul. The recycling factory was thriving. Foreign workers like Abul worked the night shifts at the factory. In the wee hours of the morning, when they were the only ones awake while the entire town slept, Abul’s hand was shredded by an industrial shredder. The company fired Abul. With his one hand wrapped in bandages, the twenty-one-year-old Abul hung himself from the factory shredder. Everyone mourned and lamented his death, but no one could help poor Abul. Several months after Abul’s death, my husband and other factory workers received a “certificate of the establishment of a labor union” from the Ministry of Employment and Labor. It had to be done before another Abul came along, and of all people at the factory, my husband took the lead. Everyone was excited, and they recalled Abul’s tragic death. They didn’t think anything worse could happen. With the certificate of the establishment of a labor union in their hands, they gathered together in the yard of the two-story building where Abul used to live to grill meat, drink alcohol, and sing together the songs that Abul used to sing with his friends. The melody carried to the far end of the alley, and even to the dirt path above the church that led to the recycling factory. A month later, nothing happened at the factory, but my husband and the factory workers who created the labor union were all laid off. In a mere month. Since it was wrongful termination, they fought, and while fighting, they broke through the factory gates, and each of them received a document titled “Claim for Obstruction of Business and Damages” issued by a national agency. In the meantime, the company donated money to the elementary school in town for scholarships and built a new community center as part of its efforts to give back to the community and serve its people. The townspeople who had sworn at the company for Abul’s death immediately turned around and said that it was wrong of the workers to break the factory gates, that the town would be ruined if the factory shut down. The workers who had filled out the documents to form the labor union sided with the company. Those who joined the union didn’t last long against the company’s threats and coaxing. They feared that they would receive some threatening claims, blamed Abul for what happened to him, and said that the labor union they wanted wasn’t this aggressive. Soon the only members of the labor union were my husband and five other workers. Together they filed a lawsuit to nullify the termination of their employment contracts and set up tents in front of the broken factory gates. No one supported them, just like no one had supported Abul. Before the end of the autumn, the court ruled in favor of the factory. Jaeyi’s dad and the other laid-off workers appealed the court’s decision and spent the winter in tents. If they didn’t win the suit or folded up their tents and stopped protesting, they would be too ashamed to shed even a tear for future Abuls, for losing a hand in the shredder. “If we do that, then it’s like cutting off one of our own hands. We have to see this through to the end.” That was what my husband said on the day they filed the appeal. That happened three months ago, and the winter was coming to an end. Translated by Stella Kim
by Lee Soo Kyung
Then What Shall We Sing?
It was 8 p.m. on a Thursday, at a café with wide tables near UC-Berkley. I remember the night air feeling crisp and dry. The language exchange meeting was going more or less according to schedule. The format was for the day’s speaker to present on her choice of topic and explain Korean terms in English and English terms in Korean. It was Haena’s turn. Haena had a Korean mother and American father. Her mother had died ten years ago, and her father was now married to woman from Seattle. “So, are you living with your parents now?” “No. My dad and his wife are in LA. I’m here in Berkley on my own.” She began telling me this and that even though she hadn’t met me before. “My grandparents came to America, and my mother . . .,” she continued. I didn’t know what to say. I just listened to her talk and nodded and expressed interest. After she was done, she turned to the others smiling, and said last week’s presentation was on such-and-such, and this happened. It was to fill me in. The others agreed. Yes, that’s right. That was funny. Haena had stapled some handouts together which she brought out of her bag and passed around. She said they were about “May 18,” and I was surprised by the obvious. In Korean, we said “5.18.” I said, “Oh? I’m from where that happened.” Haena said, “Really?” and looked at me. I wondered why it was so surprising, why her eyes had grown big in astonishment. “Yes, I was born there,” I added. Come to think of it, it was May when I was vacationing in San Francisco that year. I hadn’t expected the subject to come up in a Berkley area café. For that to be where I’d hear about an event that had happened about thirty years earlier, in the place where I was born. I’d expected other, lighter conversation. Do Koreans really believe in fan death? Like, that you’ll die from a lack of oxygen if you sleep with a fan on? That kind of thing. But here I was, listening to people talking about the events of May 18 as if they were indisputable facts, like the suppression of the people on Bloody Sunday in Ireland, or Pinochet terrorizing Chile. It was as if the English language itself lent objectivity to the incident. Haena’s handout included English information from the May 18 Memorial Foundation and an article printed in the New York Times. ©Yeji Yun After the copies were passed out, we were ready to read. We took turns reading aloud, one paragraph each. We covered three or four large pages of closely spaced print in what seemed like no time. The barista called to say our drinks were ready, and some of us rose to collect them. The long-haired girl sitting across from me had ordered a milkshake, and I a cappuccino. My squat cup stood across from her tall glass. We all took a sip of our drinks and looked at Haena. When everyone was reseated, Haena started her talk by giving some background information about Korea at that time. There was nothing incorrect about what she said, but there were some differences hearing the information in Korean and in English. The differences weren’t there for Haena, just for me. I took a sip of my coffee and glanced at the handout again. The pages dense with print included a few photos—one of a man whose face was mangled, another of young men with bandanas around their foreheads or necks riding on a truck, and another of soldiers looking down at people kneeling. I took another drink. Then someone asked where Gwangju was and so Haena drew a map of Korea. Actually, it was more of an outline. She pointed to Gwangju’s position on it. She knew exactly where it was. “Here, south of Seoul and west of Busan.” Some of the group members nodded, Oh. A Korean exchange student studying in San Francisco asked what “massacre” meant. “What does this mean? It keeps coming up and I don’t know it.” Someone broke it down in simple terms: killing a lot of people by brutal means. “What is it in Korean?” “Haksalhada.” The student underlined the word and wrote the definition below, as if inserting a footnote. Haksalhada. Haena and I exchanged email addresses. And that was the end of the meeting. We must have talked some more, too, but I can’t remember anything from our conversation. Maybe we said: Whose turn is it next? Oh, I’ve something going on that day. Oh, really? I’ll go, then. Where are we meeting? You choose the venue and send me an email to let me know. Okay. Our conversation would have gone something like that. When we left to go home, Haena gave me a few more sheets of paper. “I wanted to share this, but I couldn’t.” I took the papers back to my accommodations. I had to pass through Chinatown to get to my room. The sky was blue that night, and the slender road stretched below it. The traffic signal changed, and as I was slowly crossing the street, I met eyes with a middle-aged white man. He asked if I was Chinese or Taiwanese or Japanese and suggested going for a drink. I was ready to nod, thinking I should acknowledge the right nationality if it came up. An inner voice was urging me to follow this man and drink with him and do as he asked, whatever it was. But even as I waited with this mindset, the chance to nod never came. I missed my moment to respond. Nothing happened, and I crossed without answering. I passed the man, who just stood there on the street, and returned to my room. I lay down on my bed and unfolded the papers. The poem was “Massacre, Part II” by Kim Nam-ju. Typed out in Korean and English, it was like something written by a foreigner. Someone who’d been watching with bated breath as military troops stormed Mexican or Chilean universities in the late 1960s. Someone who’d been there to see people disappearing from the streets. Like a text about Guernica, or Taipei in 1947. A poem in which someone is beaten in an alley at night. A poem in which someone is beating someone. Someone is beating someone and someone is being beaten; someone is killing, and someone is dying. And many people are crying. That kind of a poem. Next there was a copy of something written forcefully by hand which turned out to be a manifesto. I noticed some words: “Guardians of Democracy.” Above it, Haena had written an explanatory note. Year XXXX on the Dangun calendar had been changed to 19XX on the Gregorian calendar. I met Haena three years later, and in that time, I’d been to Kyoto on vacation. I am mentioning this for two reasons. First, because it was the only travelling I did in this time, and second, because someone there brought up the subject of Gwangju as well. I met him at a bar in the Shijo Kawaramachi neighborhood. So, where was it more unexpected to suddenly hear about an incident that took place in the city where I was born—in a café near Berkley or in a bar near Shijo Station? Of course, I don’t remember the name of the man at the bar, but he had a sturdy build and looked to be in his early sixties. He wore glasses and a dark blue shirt. I remember some of his facial expressions, together with the lines around his eyes. Perhaps he didn’t tell me his name, or even if he did, I can’t remember it because I never called him by it. He owned the bar, and I was the only patron, the only patron for some time. I had draft beer and he drank sake warmed in a large pot. I kept looking back and forth from the simmering pot to the man’s reddening face. After a while, I felt as if the alcohol was boiling down to its essence. My beer was cold, but the warmed sake was blazing hot, and the face of the person drinking it looked hot somehow as well. “Where are you from?” “Korea.” “Where in Korea?” “You won’t know it even if I tell you.” “Where?” “Gwangju. It’s south of Seoul and west of Busan.” “Oh.” He took a sip of water and picked up a piece of radish that was boiling by the sake. It had been boiling in sauce with an egg. It was dark brown because it had been boiled in the sauce with the egg for a long time. In fact, it was so brown that I should have described it another way. “It was left so long to boil in the sauce,” or “it must have been boiled for a long time” or “only by being boiled so long could it be so brown.” This would better convey the dark color. The man put the radish on a saucer and gave it to me and placed one before himself as well. “I know that place.” “Really?” “My friend wrote the song ‘Koshu City.’ Isn’t this it?” He took a pen and wrote “光州 City” on a thin napkin sitting on the table. I nodded. I asked about the song, and he said it was about soldiers entering the city and killing many people at the time. Oh. I acknowledged what he said and went back to drinking my beer. “Didn’t many people die in Koshu City? And on Jeju Island as well?” He said it like you would say something in passing. While drinking his beverage. He swallowed a sip of beer and talked about many people dying. He came from behind the counter and rummaged through some books that were stacked under a back table. He brought out a photo book that had been stuck in a corner. There was a street café in Kyoto. A young man wearing sunglasses was sitting in a chair reading a newspaper. On the page he was reading, there was a large photo of a man bleeding, being dragged away by a soldier. The man being dragged away was wearing a suit; he looked like an office worker. I stared at the page for a long time and then someone opened the door to the bar and came in. I met Haena again the following spring. After our first meeting in San Francisco, I sometimes exchanged emails with her. We wrote occasionally in English, but mostly in Korean. 안녕, 잘 지내니? [Hi. How are you doing?] Even these words sometimes felt awkward. It wasn’t that Haena’s Korean was that unnatural, but as I was reading along, chunks of Korean got clumped together, and the screen came to look as if it were covered in splotches. This was quite the effect, and it made me think of the email sender as an unusual child. Of course, it was a little petty of me. Haena said she was taking Korean at a university language institute in Seoul. I’m going to Gwangju next week. If you’re there, let’s get together. I wrote back to tell her I was in Seoul, but that I had a reason to go down the following week. Then shall we meet? Call me. 안녕. [Bye.] My reply also looked like trembling clumps of Korean characters somehow. Like compounds made by tearing letters from somewhere and pasting them on the computer screen. It had little clumps in it that didn’t come together. Haena and I were going to hear the Gwangju Orchestra perform Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony, Symphony no. 2, Fifth Movement in front of the South Jeolla Province government building. That year marked thirty years since May 1980. The outdoor concert would commemorate this important anniversary. Haena said she’d come to Gwangju a day early to visit the May 18 National Cemetery. We arranged to meet at the Post Office in Chungjang-ro. People all met there before going to other places. I hadn’t seen her in some time. Her hair was shorter, and she looked calm, maybe because she was dressed in black. We greeted each other and hugged briefly. Haena said the concert we were going to see was cancelled on account of rain. I was disappointed. Now I had the question of what I’d do with Haena, whom I’d only met once some years before. What should we do? When I asked, the answer came back, “Well, how about let’s eat?” Although it was threatening to rain, the night air was fresh and not too humid. We went to a local Chinese restaurant, had japchaebap and came out and walked for a while. It was quiet in Gwangju, and not notably different from other days. In particular, no one was saying anything out loud. It was unusual, but no one around there spoke much. Some days, they talked loudly about things, and other days, they kept their mouths shut and said nothing. Usually they said nothing. We walked towards the provincial building and little by little we started to feel the raindrops falling. “Oh, rain. It’s raining,” we said softly, and stretched our hands up into the empty air. The rain landed on our palms. I shook mine dry as I walked along. The rain soon quit. We walked around the old provincial building that was specially opened to the public only for this period. On the first floor there was a showing of video footage taken that May. Two men in their twenties were standing side by side watching the video. Two men watching it calmly, their hands at their sides. Two men in two white shirts standing side by side. Behind them was a Japanese man who looked to be in his fifties speaking in Japanese with a twenty-something man. The younger one seemed to be a Korean who was interpreting. We left them behind and walked up to the second floor. Nobody was there except Haena and me. We were in an empty hallway. A dark hallway. A gray, heavy gray hallway, and around us were only the smells of the cement building and the peeling paint. Few people can talk about what really happened in that gray hallway. And those who really know what happened there might tell you a different story. I mean, a different story than what you’ve heard so far. Then that will become yet another story. We looked outside. It might rain again. With that thought, we left the building. Translated by Kari Schenk
by Bak Solmay
The Extremely High-Spec Machine That Only Works in This Room
Tae-sik first met Si-on in winter three years ago, when he had just finished university and moved in temporarily with his older brother, Tae-in, in Seoul. Eight years Tae-sik’s senior, Tae-in had steadily saved up his earnings and bought the old condo unit at a relatively young age and lived there alone for several years. Or maybe not always alone. The possibility never occurred to Tae-sik (not because he assumed it never happened, but because he had little interest in his brother) until Si-on entered the passcode to the door and walked in like it was the most normal thing in the world. He was shocked that a stranger knew the code and had let herself in but when he saw her face and the way she carried herself, part of him understood. She didn’t seem the type to hang out with him so much as the type Tae-in probably had a weakness for. Before moving in, Tae-sik had lived apart from Tae-in for a long time and their age difference also meant that when he was in elementary school, Tae-in was in high school, so it wasn’t mutual dislike so much as disinterest. But one look at Si-on told Tae-sik that she was someone his brother loved and also someone he was weak against. In any event, Tae-sik was not alone in facing an unexpected situation but whereas his shock was mild, the nature of Si-on’s response was and still is hard to discern. Was she also mildly surprised or scared or nervous that she might be seen as a creep? He didn’t know, but Tae-sik’s memory told him it was probably the latter. She looked around anxiously and once she was convinced that she had not walked into the wrong unit she took a deep breath and explained herself. There was little in the way of resemblance between they ways Tae-sik and Tae-in carried themselves so most people never recognized that they were brothers but Tae-in must have told Si-on at some point that he had a brother nearly a decade his junior. Then she asked: – By any chance, are you . . . his brother? – That’s right. But who are you? – My name is Kim Si-on. – So you’re . . . Silently imploring for Tae-sik to understand, she added that she was Tae-in’s friend. She brought her clasped hands up to her chest and then released her fingers as though saying friend didn’t really mean friend. She claimed that in any case she was a friend of Tae-sik’s brother, that they were close, and that she had to see him again. The oatmeal-colored curtain behind Si-on who stood by the table caught Tae-sik’s eye like a backdrop that reminded him of his first impression of this unit and how everything was so appropriate and un-excessive as though selected with care and thought. – Actually, he’s off traveling right now. – When did he leave? – Monday. – When will he be back? – Soon. Uh . . . next week. Si-on gave an understanding nod and pointed at Tae-in’s room with a look saying she needed to pick up something and wanted permission and then allowed herself in. Tae-sik seated himself at the table and focused on the sounds from Tae-in’s room. Si-on must be lying on the bed. He heard the frumpling of blankets and something weighty shifting on the mattress. She did not come outside, so Tae-sik began to count the minutes. Twenty minutes later, she was still inside. Lying in a familiar bed with nothing but one door between herself and a stranger, were her eyes open or closed? She couldn’t have fallen asleep. Not actually looking for anything, just lying in another person’s bed with a stranger outside the door. Tae-sik didn’t even feel like drinking tea but he found himself putting the kettle on and placing bags of black tea in a pair of mugs and pouring the hot water into the mugs. The shuffling must have roused Si-on who finally left the room and took the mug Tae-sik held out for her. – Anyway, I know this sounds crazy. Tae-sik didn’t know what she was trying to say but when he gazed into her face, he somehow understood at that moment. That, just like his brother, he would have a weakness for her too. Si-on explained that she would leave for Canada at the end of winter. That she had to see Tae-in because she would live there for some time. She said she would come visit again next week but when she stood, she froze briefly in thought and sat right back down. – It’s not that I have to see him. But I want to. – Sure. That’s fine. At the time Tae-sik should have told her that Tae-in was going to go into cold sleep straight after the trip, and even when he caught Si-on’s pleading gaze asking when exactly he was coming back next week, he did not give her a specific date and looked away. Probably at his phone or the tabletop as he gave vague responses, until he picked up their mugs and put them in the sink. Si-on said little but her thoughts were written in her eyes and on her face so even when she was silent it was like she wasn’t silent but very clear about the things she wanted. He would remember this for a long time, Tae-sik knew: her pensive face as she sat at the table, her head almost imperceptibly bowed and lips pursed in defiance, her face as she suddenly looked up, exhaled, and gave him a clear, demanding look that said she could not accept this situation. He saw her back and shoulders as she left the door. They were wide and erect, with no hint of a slouch. Tae-sik went back to the kitchen and looked cautiously at the seat she left vacant as though she were still sitting there—sitting there and watching him. He would look back into her face. Refusing to turn away from the steepled hands and unflinching gaze, he met her eyes. The day Tae-sik met Kim Si-on was not the first time it occurred to him that he had no idea what kind of life his brother led or what he thought about. In late summer of the same year Tae-in had asked him to be his cold sleep guide. When Tae-sik asked why, Tae-in had replied that it was because he wanted to stay asleep for a long time. He said no more. It had been about two months since Tae-sik had gotten his license. Tae-sik had never been serious about the job and the license was just a fallback for a part-time job he might have to do at some point so the proposal surprised him but at the same time he noticed the exhaustion on his brother’s profiled face. Everything he knew about cold sleep came rushing back and automatically applied themselves to the circumstances of his own brother. But Tae-sik didn’t know how similar or different—or both—his brother was to other people who chose cold sleep. A significant number of people had cold sleep experience by now, with last year’s statistics showing that the number of participants who treated it like a sort of Christmas vacation had increased significantly, now accounting for 5 percent of all participants. Researchers claimed that the majority of this group was composed of people subject to extreme stress at work, such as corporate executives or lawyers, and that regular cold sleep was a way for them to take a brief but restful break. Cold sleep was not a mechanism for escape or an antisocial phenomenon. But admittedly it was not easy to think of an action or choice that was entirely without the purpose of escape or antisocial intent, perhaps with the exception of greeting the server at a restaurant before being greeted, but in any case, Tae-sik was taught that cold sleep was an acceptable way for people to spend their spare time, like travel and exercise, and the steadily-increasing amount of data concerning the procedure supported this perspective, betraying the pessimistic predictions from the past. In spite of this, Tae-sik still thought of it more as a treatment for people who had experienced trauma or suffered from severe fatigue. The 5 percent, he thought, were people who experienced trauma or were fatigued because their work was considered socially important and especially burdensome. It wasn’t possible for heavy workloads to not exhaust someone. In fact, they were precisely the cause of exhaustion. What then did Tae-sik think of the 95 percent? The people who enjoyed novelty, the people who took their friends’ suggestions, and the people who, like the 5 percent, were just as tired and weary? – I have a license, sure, but I’ve never actually done it before. – I have. – What? When? Tae-in didn’t go into the details and instead explained that he had an especially long vacation coming up to celebrate ten years of working at his company and that he would go on a trip and then go into cold sleep afterwards. – So you’ve done it before, but how does that help me? You’re going to be asleep the whole time. – What I mean is that I know I won’t have any side effects, so you don’t have to worry too much. I’m a veteran, and all you have to do is follow the procedures. I’m helping by eliminating variables. Glancing sidelong at Tae-in’s face, Tae-sik decided he did not want to look at his brother’s sleeping face every day. It was an act of such intense closeness that just thinking about it made him want to run. The fact that they were family, the fact that each was someone’s child and sibling and some were even parents on top of that was like a metal spoon with a hefty chunk of overpowering food being shoved between his lips. But in the end he chose to accept Tae-in’s request. Tae-sik didn’t remember clearly how he felt when he agreed, but it might have been because, since his teens, they had been so disinterested in each other and he had known so little about him so he thought he might be up for the task after all. But he knew he should not consider this further because the more he considered it he would find himself thinking it didn’t have to be that way, and that it didn’t not have to be that way, either. That he’d convince himself his first instinct that he’d never want to be a cold sleep guide for family wasn’t so strong an opinion as he’d thought and he would end up taking what seemed like the path of least resistance at the time. And the fact was, Tae-in was right when he said Tae-sik needed the money. Tae-sik had thought in response that he wanted to make money. And in that moment, he ended up considering again. Tae-in went into cold sleep three days after returning from his trip. He said he’d come back from Hawaii but the souvenir he brought could have been from any old airport or even a local department store because it was a box of macadamia chocolates that you didn’t have to have gone to Hawaii for, but Tae-sik quickly told himself he didn’t need to think about that. He told himself to not think. He tidied up Tae-in’s room to dedicate it fully to the cold sleep and moved his own things which he’d left there temporarily into the smaller room. Tae-sik had always slept in the small room but decided to sleep in the living room during the cold sleep so he would hear immediately if something went wrong. At night he laid out a mat and a futon by the table. The day before the procedure Tae-in went to a local cold sleep clinic to register his plans and got another health exam. His company health exam had only been two months ago and it had detected no serious issues but Tae-in chose to get the unnecessary examination anyway since he was there. The thorough exam revealed that he still had no serious health issues or problems that might prevent him from going safely into cold sleep. Tae-sik looked at the chair across the table where Si-on had sat. In the next seat over sat Tae-in. For some reason he hadn’t wanted to say that Si-on had come to visit but he didn’t even want to consider the fact that he didn’t want to say so. Tae-sik wanted to think of her in a different way. – Friend of yours dropped by the other day. She knew the passcode and let herself in. – Yeah? Guess it’s time to change it. As Tae-in got up to change the passcode, Tae-sik stared at his back. Tae-sik was the one who worked out regularly but Tae-in was taller and although he did work out in his own way Tae-in’s work had nothing to do with exercise and he didn’t do it regularly. They were similar in that neither were talkative and if they happened to sit down together, they would either watch TV in silence or do their own things. Tae-in disappeared into his room. It was almost the end of the week Tae-sik had told Si-on about. Tae-sik explained the cold sleep procedure to Tae-in yet again and Tae-in listened with the indifferent nods of a veteran. Tae-sik thought Tae-in might complain that he knew all this but Tae-in listened to the end and took the medication as Tae-sik directed and performed a few final diagnosis tests before he went to sleep exactly on schedule. Tae-sik went over the procedure once more in his head and made a list of things to confirm at the next scheduled check. This was the first time he was putting his license to use. He looked down at his brother’s sleeping face and thought that the face was all too familiar but not from the front, even though they lived in the same house. But the more he stared, the more it seemed like the face of a stranger, the face of some man in his mid- to late-thirties with wrinkles growing on his face, and by the time he found himself saying, But this guy is actually . . . he’s actually . . ., Tae-sik recognized him again as someone he knew intimately. He stood with gaze locked there for a long time before he went back to the living room to set his alarm to go off every hour. It was the first day and that came with risks so he wanted to check in often. Although Tae-sik was worried he might sleep through the alarm, he found himself falling asleep and waking up on time with mechanical ease. It wasn’t until nine in the morning that he finished his checks and let himself have a normal schedule. No more alarms to turn off. Just waking up and living life. He changed and ran for half an hour and went to a nearby hilltop. He warmed up again and ran to the top. Maybe because it was around lunchtime, it was surprisingly deserted. He would keep doing this. Make this climb at the same time each day, then come home for lunch and do work and watch TV in the afternoon and then check in on Tae-in occasionally and have dinner and do another lap around the neighborhood, then wash up and go to bed. For the first little while, he would get up once an hour to check on Tae-in, and in the following week he would check once every two hours. He remembered Tae-in calling himself a cold sleep veteran and considered the word. Veteran. On the way home, Tae-sik picked up eggs, cereal, milk, and meat. Each time he remembered that he was a cold sleep guide, a wave of anxiety crashed over his back. He picked up his groceries a little faster than usual and rushed home and showered and checked on his brother. When he sat down for lunch, he thought of Si-on again, but found that her face was now a blur. But the look of demanding something and her short stature against her unusually wide and angular shoulders seemed to flash with terrifying clarity before his eyes. The second time he met Si-on was a week into Tae-in’s cold sleep. He was on his way back from working out and she stood at the bus stop by the condo, facing his direction. In that moment, Tae-sik felt like something he’d expected and waited for was really happening. With looks of recognition that didn’t need spoken greetings, they walked together to the condo. Tae-sik stopped partway through asking her to wait because he realized it would take him half an hour to wash and change and check on Tae-sik. He almost asked her to come into the unit until he remembered Tae-in changing the passcode as soon as he told him about her. Si-on turned and pointed towards the bus stop and told him she would be at the café across the alley. – It might take a while. I’d like some coffee. – Right. Sure thing. Si-on seemed like a different person outside than when she was inside. In the shower, Tae-sik thought about the strange sense of relief and uncanny tension he felt when he saw her. He hadn’t consciously waited for that meeting, but he did have the thought that what he’d expected had really come true. He went to check on Tae-in before heading to the café. Tae-sik ordered coffee and took a seat across from Si-on and wondered if the things they would talk about could really ever be properly explained, but quickly stopped that line of thought. – I don’t think you’ll be able to see him right now. – He did come back from his trip, right? – Yes. – Is he home? – No. No, he isn’t. Technically, he wasn’t not home, but he also was and Tae-sik wondered who his brother would be all right knowing about his cold sleep. In principle, going into cold sleep was a private matter unless there was an emergency, but Tae-sik just didn’t know enough about Tae-in. Tae-in had claimed he’d told everyone who was supposed to know, but Tae-sik couldn’t even begin to be sure that Tae-in ever talked to anybody and didn’t know if he would ever be able to bring himself to ask. The demanding look from before was gone from Si-on’s face and she looked a little sad but also resigned. Or maybe that was what Tae-sik needed in order to feel better. At the same time, he didn’t want to feel better. He wanted to be uncomfortable and ill at ease. Maybe he even wanted Si-on to interrogate him and berate him. So Tae-sik kept finding himself coming up with reasons for Si-on to enter and scenarios where they went into the room together. Si-on rose, saying she wanted to get some air and Tae-sik finished his coffee and followed her out. They walked down the alley and found a bench at the entrance to the trail up the hill. Sitting there, Si-on silently focused on the condo buildings beyond the trees ahead. – Sometimes I feel so sleepy or exhausted. It’s just like that. – Oh. Even now? – It’s a lot better than before, now. It wasn’t cold yet but the walk up the steep path must have left Si-on breathless because each time she spoke, her breath rose into the air like midwinter. – Do you sleep all right? – Yes, on the whole. On the whole I sleep well. – Me too, but I don’t think Tae-in did. – He did say you were really different, come to think of it. Have you ever gone into cold sleep? Si-on explained that she’d been Tae-in’s cold sleep guide this time last year, and the year before that. Their workplaces were near and someone had introduced them when Tae-in had to go into cold sleep and then they had gotten close and met on occasion even afterwards, she explained. Si-on explained that she had been his guide at the condo where Tae-sik lived now. As though explaining how she allowed herself in without hesitation the other day. That was not good enough of a reason to bring her back to the unit and Tae-sik knew that as well. He knew other things well, too. Strange things and strange feelings. The desire to be interrogated by Si-on and the desire to exchange uncomfortable questions. He was certain he felt the desire for Si-on to make him uncomfortable and outright anxious, and it was like walking a narrow line suspended high up in the air. With the hill and the trees behind them, Si-on and Tae-sik slowly made their way down the slope. He’d already told her he was Tae-in’s guide so Tae-sik said that she couldn’t see Tae-in. The autumn leaves clutching desperately to the trees were beautiful and their feet crunched over the newly-fallen leaves as they reached the condo. At the door Tae-sik said once more that he couldn’t let her into Tae-in’s room. – Can’t I at least see his face? – No, I’m sorry. – Please tell me why. Or just tell me about the past. If you really don’t have a choice. Si-on took a seat in the same chair that Tae-sik saw her in on the day they first met, and for some reason it was only in this house that she wore the face of demanding something from him, her face changing into that look. Tae-sik boiled water and poured it into the mugs with the bags of black tea already inside. Their bare hands were red with cold so they wrapped them around their mugs for warmth. Tae-sik got up to check on Tae-in again and Tae-in was all right so he walked out and shut the door behind him and told Si-on that he was doing fine the night before and the night before that as well. – He’ll probably always be all right. And later—even later—please tell me more. Tell me anything. About what he saw, or if he says he saw anything. – What would he see? You mean, when he’s in cold sleep? – He just might. Tae-sik had heard about it. Past cases came up in the materials he read while studying for his license. People believing they experienced something they didn’t or gaining new memories of places they hadn’t been to. Tae-in hadn’t shown any unusual symptoms or side effects according to Si-on. But it’s common. A lot of people have mixed-up dreams or see things. Tae-in said he saw me living my life. Si-on said that these things weren’t premonitions. They’re just daily life, the way I stand and sit and want things and think, that kind of thing. She said she wanted to think and hear about these things. She wanted to hear from someone who saw her, the story of someone who saw her when she was out of sight. A look of calm serenity came over her face when she talked about this and Tae-sik thought that if his brother could see anything in his sleep, this would be the moment. Tae-sik washed his hands and changed into home wear and went to his brother’s room. If he saw something in the past, there was no reason he wouldn’t see something now, he thought, and laid himself down on the floor parallel to Tae-in. If I look at his face, he looks back at mine. He lay in the room whose only purpose was sleep and maybe it was for that reason he briefly felt as though he would fall asleep so he forced himself back up. He looked down at his brother’s face again and the fact that they had no choice but to look each other in the eye and the anxiety and the pressure of now being unable to look away wasn’t so bad. Responsibly shouldering the burdens they had to bear and not looking away. Tae-sik had no idea what his brother actually saw in cold sleep and he had no way of knowing if Tae-in even saw anything at all but when he looked at him, Tae-sik thought, Maybe he could see something. He leaned in close, scrutinizing his brother’s slow breathing. Finally, he broke off the stare and left the room. Si-on was no longer at the table but leaning back on the sofa. She explained that she’d usually slept there when she was a guide. Tae-sik joined her and pointed at the mat on the floor. A few days ago he’d learned that sleeping on the floor made the fridge sound louder than sleeping in bed. All the low sounds of the room seemed to sink with weight slowly sliding down towards the floor. When he lay on the floor in the dark of night he heard the sounds humble themselves towards the ground. – So what are you going to do in Canada? – My older sister lives there. I’m going to stay with her, get used to living there, learn some English, and then go to school. As though talking about a local neighborhood, she talked about one area in Vancouver and the places she’d gone to with her sister and niece. How her sister attended a Canadian church and not a Korean one and how she had gone along for service one time and on the way back they had scones and coffee and then, as though this place in Korea was connected to the Vancouver neighborhood, she saw the little church plants and theology study group signs behind the condo and wondered out loud why there were so many of these groups in this area. Tae-sik thought of the places he’d never been to but could always visit in the future as a little map in his head, as though drawing a map of some place in Canada. The many alleyways and stores and the roads where he ran and the countless paths that led towards the hill. The alley and the bench from earlier with Si-on too he slowly added to the picture. He turned and as though tracing a path on a map he drew his finger along the contour of Si-on’s face. He followed her hairline with his finger, slowly. Her brows and cheekbones were neither too sharp nor round. Hand trembling almost imperceptibly with his big and slightly rough finger, he slowly traced her face. Then he rose like he’d remembered something and went past the table and to the sink. He turned on the tap and left it running before filling the kettle again and bringing it to a boil. A moment later, he refilled the emptied mugs with the tea bags still inside and put it on the floor by the sofa. Steam rose from the mugs and Si-on with her eyes still closed brought her hands to her face and traced the lines as though following the lines Tae-sik had drawn. Near her cheekbone she sensed the warmth from the mug and she felt as though she could see the mug spill as though it were already set in stone. When I reached out and touched Tae-sik’s face, but not in the way he followed the contours as though sketching them, but my putting my thumb on his cheek then bringing it to his brow and tracing his jaw with my index finger, Tae-sik did not meet my eyes and could not meet my eyes and looked at the corner by the sofa then closed his eyes so we did not look at each other’s faces but I lifted his face with my hand again and slowly stared into his face. – The way you look at my face reminds me of a dentist. For the first time Tae-sik laughed. That day was the second time I ever saw him. That day we slowly talked about the things we each saw and spent the whole time together. Before I left for Canada I visited the house where Tae-in slept many times, but Tae-sik never allowed me in and I was not allowed to meet him. But I know that Tae-in knows my face. What I knew was Tae-sik’s face and although it has been several years since, I sometimes vividly remember in my fingertips the way the lines of his brows and nose came together and for some reason when my fingers remember, his face comes clearly back into my mind. The way you look at my face reminds me of a dentist. I made Tae-sik sit back against the sofa like it really was the dentist’s chair and with his eyes still shut Tae-sik laughed. Feels like my teeth are all better and the mug of hot tea fell over. I took his hand but our feet were already drenched. Translated by Slin Jung
by Bak Solmay
Yuwon
The man seemed determined to feed me something. I tried telling him that I was full, but he ignored me; he pointed to a franchise bunsik restaurant nearby and grabbed me by the wrist as he said, “Let’s eat tteokbokki and sundae.” I usually allowed him to lead me places, but the last thing I wanted today was to sit across from this man while smelling food. The thought also crossed my mind that sundae might weaken my resolve. I pointed to a nearby café. The bright, clean, neat café that smelled of fragrant coffee, as well as the café’s plush couch, seemed foreign to this man. I didn’t have anything urgent to do today, so why, I wondered, had I left school in such an anxious hurry, as though I were being chased? Why did I come out into the hallway and stare at Class 5, which hadn’t yet been dismissed, and at Soohyun, who was from Class 5 and sitting near the window of the classroom? How was it that I had bumped into this man who was loitering in front of the school’s front gate? The only way I could explain these impossible coincidences was to attribute it to a superpower I had gained from many years of being tormented by this man. Regardless of how or why, what was important was that I had found the man before Soohyun had. It was unbearably awkward sitting by myself, face to face with this man. I sat close to the entrance, where I was able to divert my eyes to the ankles of the people entering and exiting the café. The man asked a café worker if they had jujube tea. But the café sold neither that nor black herbal tea. I ordered hot chocolate and placed the man’s jasmine tea in front of him. The man drank hot tea in both the summer and the winter. He said that he didn’t touch coffee for his health, but if that was the case, how, I wondered, would he explain his smoking? After all, he was a nicotine junkie who smoked at least two packs a day. The angriest I had ever been at him was the time I caught him secretly smoking a cigarette on our balcony. As he smoked, he would unconsciously fiddle with the plants, bending their stems. Father watered those flower pots in the morning and at night. How could this man dare to smoke at our house? ©Park Sanghyuk I was self-conscious about how this man and I would appear to others: me in my school uniform, and him in a worn-out windbreaker that was way out of season. A couple sitting across from each other and talking, their fingers interlocked; a middle-aged woman reading a thick book; friends sitting side by side watching movies on their computers. Everyone seemed like they were immersed in their own world, but it was clear that they were glancing over at the man and me with suspicion. I wanted to finish our conversation and leave as soon as possible. In some respects, I probably knew more about this man than Soohyun did: that he had no wallet; that he always kept a wad of fresh bills folded in half and stashed in the inner pocket of his parka, which he wore year-round; that he liked raw oysters and raw beef; that he never allowed his hair to grow longer than a buzz cut; that he never talked about his family. The man kept talking without taking a break—but it was impossible to tell if he was doing this because lulls in a conversation made him feel awkward, or because he actually had a lot to say. What he was talking about was something he had never mentioned until now. “My old boss once introduced me to an unmarried woman because of my status as an old bachelor. That woman was Soohyun’s mother. Soohyun was a sickly child when she was younger. And she has no manners now because she was spoiled.” What did you come here to tell Soohyun? Have you already forgotten that she told you to stay out of it? I scratched at my palm with my keys as I painfully swallowed these words. How could I be sitting across from a person with the same body temperature as me, yet feel such cold emotions toward him? How could my mood be so dreary? “Yuwon, your mom told you, didn’t she? About the shoot?” “Yes.” “I thought about it, and while creating a natural image would be good, I think it would be better to insert at least one scene that delivers a strong message, since it’s a TV program. An emotional scene that really resonates with people. How about we go on a hike up a mountain together? You can help me up the steep slopes, and I’ll show you a deep trail that leads up to a tall mountain. You know, people who overcome hardship and continue to courageously live their lives. Something hopeful like that.” I avoided the man’s gaze and turned my head to look out the window. I met the eyes of a girl who was sitting diagonally to me. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but I could feel that her gaze had been pointed in my direction for quite some time now. The girl, who looked like a college student, was trying to ask me something with her eyes. Something like Do you need help? She pointed to the man, whose back was the only thing she could see, and kept sending me signs. Are you sure you’re okay? Are you sure you don’t need help? In my mind, she was already my friend. I was thankful that this stranger cared. I blinked twice to tell her I was okay. The girl then nodded her head with a look of relief and went back to her laptop. As I continued to scratch at my palm with my keys, I unlocked a memory that had been locked away deep inside my palm. The view of the sky from the school rooftop, which Soohyun had unlocked for me. The wind I would never have known were it not for Soohyun. A shed filled with dust. A sunset, an advertising balloon, and a long wait. And voices which gave me the courage to hate him as much as I wanted. “We’ll work our way to a high summit and yell out ‘Hurray!’ At the top, we’ll say what we want to say to each other. We’ll make plans for the new year. Isn’t that a beautiful image?” But what would I need to do, I wondered, to not hate this man? Whenever I met him, something inside my heart smoldered, the way skin burns when it meets the sun. I needed to escape. “Mister.” “Hm?” “I don’t think I can do your TV shoot.” “Why? Because of school?” The man said this with an obvious look of disappointment on his face. “No, it’s not because of school. Mister, I want to become confident, too. I want this weight off my shoulders.” I continued talking, not caring about what face the man made. He wasn’t cutting me off, but he was making a look of dismay. He looked like he couldn’t understand what was happening. “Soohyun taught me this way of living.” The man furrowed his brow at my mention of Soohyun’s name. “I was so heavy that day,” I said. “Your legs broke because you couldn’t support my weight. I’m sorry. Sorry for being so heavy, for injuring you, for making you unhappy.” “You . . .” “But right now, that’s how you feel to me. You’re too heavy for me to handle.” I didn’t avoid his eyes. I didn’t know this was how his eyes looked. They weren’t as wide and threatening as his voice. They looked yellow and glazed over. Like someone who hadn’t slept in a long time. “. . . I see.” Only after several moments did the man say this, and with great pain, as though he were trying to collect himself. But his voice was so quiet that I wondered if I had heard only what I wanted to hear. Rain started to fall outside the window. Autumn rains had come and gone for the past few days. My mother had told me to take an umbrella. But because there hadn’t been a cloud in the sky when I left the house for school this morning, I didn’t take one. I should have listened to my mother. The problem of guilt was that it never ended with just feeling sorry; it always led to further complications. Shame, self-blame, depression. In order to protect me, my subconscious diverted the anger directed at myself to others. And every time I faltered from this heavy weight, Soohyun would appear to support me. The man and I just sat there drowning in the café’s jazz music as the seconds passed by slowly. “It’s really started to pour,” the man said. “Did you bring an umbrella?” The man’s tone sounded as though he was pretending he hadn’t heard a word I had just said. As though he had completely forgotten the conversation we had only five minutes ago. “No. I can buy one at the convenience store.” “Wait until the rain lets up a bit.” I knew that the rain was going to continue through the night. But I wouldn’t dare tell him that. I got a message from Junghyun. —Hey, where are you? The man said he was going for a smoke and headed to the smoking room. —Yuwon, you don’t have an umbrella, do you? Are you at school? Should I come get you soon? —I’m not at school. —Then where? —At Sleep. The café at the four-way intersection. —With whom? —Just myself. Can you come get me in thirty minutes? —Ok. When the man returned from the smoking room, he finally realized, it seemed, that this rain wasn’t going to stop any time soon. Once outside, the man unfurled the folding umbrella that was in his paper bag and offered it to me. One of the ribs was broken, causing one side of the umbrella to droop. And the handle was rusty. “Take this.” “No, it’s fine.” The man took a step closer and tried to put his umbrella over me. “It’s acid rain.” “It’s fine. My friend said he’ll come get me.” I ducked out from under the umbrella, afraid that the rusty water dripping from the ribs would get on my clothes. The man stared at me for a second before finally saying, “All right, I understand.” Today, he seemed more willing to accept what I was saying than usual. “Where are you going?” he asked. “The subway station.” “A bus that goes all the way to my home stops just in front of here. So, I’ll take that.” “Okay.” “It’s dark out. Be careful.” “Okay. Goodbye.” The man started walking away then stopped suddenly and turned back to face me. “Yuwon.” “Yes?” The man seemed to be thinking about what to say next. I waited for him as I listened to the rain. “You . . . weren’t that heavy. It’s just that . . . people’s bodies are weak. Forget everything.” After saying this, the man continued walking away, as though nothing had happened. What does he mean “forget everything”? Forget about the TV shoot? Or everything he did while hanging around me? Surely, he didn’t mean everything that had happened since that fateful day? I decided to wait for Junghyun under the café awning. I watched as the man limped away. With one hand he held his umbrella, and with the other he held the paper bag. The paper bag was filled with magazines, but why he had these, I didn’t know. I was a little worried it would get wet from the rain and rip. Should I have held his things and walked him to the bus stop? I could still run and catch up to him. But despite thinking these things, all I could do was stare at the man’s back, which was already soaked. The man ran with his lame leg across the crosswalk, which only had five seconds left on its signal. No matter how fast he tried to run, however, he wasn’t going to be able to cross the street in only five seconds with that limp. Although the cars waited for the man for a second after the crosswalk light turned red, they eventually lost their patience and started honking threateningly. For just that one moment, it felt like those drivers hated the man more than I did. He ignored the honking and crossed the street; once he reached the sidewalk, the trucks and buses took off, hiding the man from my view. My heart ached thinking about how the man was probably used to people resenting him. “Yuwon, what are you doing here?” Junghyun appeared out of nowhere and blocked my view. I couldn’t tell him the truth. “Nothing really.” “Why are you crying, Yuwon?” “Don’t ask.” “Alright.” Junghyun was carrying an umbrella large enough to be a beach parasol. The two of us walked home together. But even though we had a parasol-sized umbrella, my sneakers were immediately soaked straight through to my socks. Because the rain was coming down at an oblique angle, we couldn’t avoid it. I was crying, but thankfully, no one could tell the difference now. Translated by Sean Lin Halbert YuwonChangbi, 2020
by Baek Ohn-yu
The Struggles of a Girl Fated to Die Young
Yian was nineteen years old like Soojung. She said she was headed north. “What for?” “To die.” At Yian’s response, Soojung blushed as if she were ashamed for some reason. Thank goodness she had Tomorrow. Soojung buried and reburied her hand in the dog’s bristly coat. Yian pulled back to put as much distance as she could between herself and the dog, as if she were afraid of it. “So what about you?” she asked. “Me? I dunno . . .” “You don’t know?” “Um, do you want some tteok?” Flustered, Soojung opened her bag and pulled out a snow-white rice cake. Tomorrow let out a small whimper. “Oh, it’s baekseolgi.” “Yeah. Let me know if you want more. I have a lot.” As Soojung showed her the inside of the open bag, Yian asked her abruptly, as if throwing the question at her, “Are you headed there to live?” “What?” “I said, are you running away to the south because you want to live?” Soojung carefully chewed over Yian’s question. She bit into it and chewed it thoroughly, like she did the tteok, so as not to get a stomachache. Then, little by little, like the sweetness spreading through her mouth, she felt herself get angry. I’m not the weird one here, she is. Living is better than dying. She’s not the brave one, I am. I’m not the one who should be embarrassed . . . Even as she sorted through those thoughts, her face began to burn. She almost thought dying would be better than nodding meekly in response to that girl asking her if she wanted to live. In any case, it wasn’t even that Soojung wanted to live in particular. “It’s not exactly that I want to live—” “Mm-hmm.” “—I just don’t want to die.” “Mm-hmm.” “I’m not anxious or scared or anything—I guess it just didn’t seem fair. I just didn’t get it.” “You didn’t get it?” “Yeah. I didn’t get why I had to die. You know what I mean? You’re not supposed to die at nineteen. I’m not even old. I’m not sick, either, so why the heck do I have to die . . .?” “Did you ask?” “What?” “About your cause of death. Someone must’ve told you that you were going to die, right? Did you ask the psychic or monk or whoever it was why you’re going to die?” . . . I didn’t ask. Once again, Soojung’s face grew red. It’s not like she could go back and ask anyway. Just as her heart was growing murky and muddled, she felt something gently bump her palm. With the lightness of a magpie swooping down with both its feet tucked close together, Yian took the baekseolgi rice cake in Soojung’s hand. Soon after, behind the long curtain of her hair, Yian’s thin cheeks started to bulge, then pucker, then bulge again on repeat. As she watched this, the heat in Soojung’s face gradually subsided. Yian, after pondering something for a while, shook the crumbs off her hands and spoke. “It’s fate that we met like this, so—” That was as far as she got before she burst out laughing, unable to hold it in. She thought someone was going to yell, Cut! from somewhere. Saying lines like that was far too corny, Yian thought, and, moreover, it sounded like she was imitating an adult. She had a feeling that if she managed to get out the rest of her words, she’d really bust a gut laughing. Suddenly her skin prickled. Like a balloon ready to burst, like her whole body had become ticklish everywhere. “Maybe we should . . . introduce ourselves?” Soojung, who had been waiting, asked carefully. She glanced at Yian’s face as she turned away from Yian. Soon after, she heard a thunk sound from somewhere. Turning around, she found Yian lying on the ground. Soojung jumped in surprise and gathered Yian’s body into her arms. There was a twisted expression on her face, as if she were in pain. Yian was gasping, clutching her stomach as she laughed. Though she tried to hold back her tears, eventually, a single teardrop coursed down the neat outer edge of her eye. ©Park Sanghyuk They needed to find a place to spend the night before the sun went down. Soojung, who didn’t want to die, and Yian who didn’t want to die that day, decided to spend the night together. First things first, they had to find kindling nearby, as well as roots and berries they could eat. It would be a time for camping, for spending their first and last night together after crossing paths, before parting ways, commemorating their fateful meeting and exchange of names. No. In reality, it was just a game. Soojung and Yian were both well aware of that fact. But they kept it a secret from each other. They kept even their joy a secret, as they looked around the ground with serious expressions. Eventually, Soojung uncovered a bush full of wild berries about the size of the nail on her pinky finger and, beside it, Yian discovered a decently nice house. The lights didn’t turn on, but they had enough candles. The house was full of dust, but there were no insects, and while there was no food, there were plenty of cooking utensils. With a thud, Soojung stepped over the threshold of the door; she had been carrying wooden boards to the fireplace and then had dropped all of them at once, injuring her calf. Yian pursed her lips and, pulling out a Zippo lighter from her pocket, lit the fire. “What are we boiling?” “Huh?” “We don’t have rice or anything. So why did you start a fire?” At Soojung’s words, Yian was lost in thought for a moment. Then, as she watched the fire gradually begin to grow as tall as her frame, she said, “It means this house is ours for now.” Then she got up and dusted off her bottom. Luckily, there were a lot of ways to use a fire; especially because there was a stream nearby. The two of them boiled some water to wash off their sweat and rinse their hair, and then, feeling refreshed, decided to make tea out of the berries and leaves Soojung had picked. When Soojung asked if they might be poisonous, Yian stared at her for a moment. Soojung stared right back into those eyes. They were dark eyes, deep like a well. What if she says, Then I guess we’ll just die together? What if she says, Let’s die together, and what if I say yes? Soojung wondered. Finally, Yian spoke. “It’ll be fine if we boil it.” And so, this was a tea made by boiling, not brewing. They tossed in the leaves and the red berries and boiled them in a cast-iron pot until the bubbles were nearly as big as Yian’s fist and an appetizing red glow started to swirl about. Yian gave it a taste. She smacked her lips and tilted her head for a moment, considering it, and then her eyes began to sparkle. They drank the tart, fragrant tea like a soup; then the three of them, including Tomorrow, sat on the porch, eating three pieces of baekseolgi each. I feel like I’m playing house with my little sister, Yian said with a laugh. Little sister? Soojung pretended to scowl at her. Yian burst out laughing again. She looked nothing at all like a person heading north to die. It was right as they were having a heated debate about whether to lie on top of the musty old comforter that had been in the old wardrobe for ages, or to get underneath it. A small child appeared to be poking his head through the open front gate. “Who is it?” As if in answer to Yian’s question, another child popped up from behind the first. Ah! Soojung shrieked and, in a frenzy, like a sandcastle collapsing in on itself, several more children tumbled forward. She counted seven children in total. The seven children, who were all of equal height, looked like they had been standing in a line and peeking into the house. “I’m hungry,” said one of the children. The other six all nodded. Each one was nodding at a different rhythm until, one by one, their movements began to synchronize; a short while after, all of them were nodding in unison. Wondering if Soojung too had noticed, Yian turned in her direction, but Soojung had gone back into the room and was opening her bag. She presented two pieces of tteok to each child. The children quickly devoured the tteok. Though there were some children who ate both in one mouthful, and others who swallowed in two mouthfuls, none of the children needed three mouthfuls. Soojung hesitated, and then went back into the room and brought out a few more pieces of tteok. Ten pieces. Yian sighed. “Soojung-ah, don’t you think that’ll make the kids fight?” The children fought. It wasn’t even the four children who had one piece of tteok versus the three children who had two pieces, either. With their small palms, the children whacked one another’s heads and elbowed one another’s noses and bit one another’s arms and legs. Inside the wailing children’s mouths, half-chewed tteok could be seen crushed between their baby teeth. This time, Soojung brought the whole bag with her. Yian’s eyes grew wide but as she drew in a breath, Soojung whispered, I set aside our portion, and pressed a finger to her lips. Yian looked around and saw four pieces of tteok neatly laid out on top of the wooden mokchim pillow. “I just told you that people start fighting if you don’t get the number right. Did you forget already?” “But you’re leaving tomorrow, aren’t you?” At Soojung’s words, Yian was quiet. The children rushed forward. A hard fingernail scratched the back of Soojung’s hand and she cried out, dropping the bag. The children grabbed the bag and ran out the gate. They decided to go with Yian’s decision and lie on top of the comforter. Lying side by side, their heads on the pillow, an emptiness stretched from Soojung’s chest through her whole body, almost as if she were nervous about sleeping naked. She turned to glance at Yian, but she appeared unperturbed. She looked like she was lost in a deep, singular thought. From her unfocused pupils to her stiffly pursed lips, to the slight furrow in the middle of her forehead, now she really did look like someone who was going to die soon. “Hey.” “Yeah.” “Why do you want to die?” At Soojung’s question, the furrow in Yian’s forehead smoothed. “I didn’t tell you?” she said with a smile and even turned toward Soojung, propping her head up with a hand. Soojung mirrored Yian, turning toward her and propping her head up with a hand. “Someone told me they wished I would die.” Translated by Archana Madhavan The Struggles of a Girl Fated to Die Young Sakyejul Publishing, 2021
by Hyun Hojeong
Sunrye House
I lay down on my bed. The rain had stopped and fog rose from the heart of Geobuk Mountain. If there was one good thing about Wonder Grandium, it was that I had my own room. I felt sad at having to say farewell to my only space and sell all the furniture. “Let’s face it, Oh Surim,” I muttered to myself. “Your parents know nothing. What’s more, they’re dirt poor now.” I sat up. I couldn’t keep lying down and doing nothing when I had to take these immature parents of mine and Oh Mirim to Sunrye House. I washed some rice and got the rice cooker going. I took out aged kimchi from the kimchi refrigerator, making a mental note to add the fridge to my To-Sell list. My eldest aunt would no longer send kimchi to us anyway, nor would there be any space for it there. From deep inside the freezer, I took out big, dried anchovies to boil with the ripe kimchi, perilla oil, and water. Kimchi stew—one of the quick ten-minute dishes Sunrye would cook for me. ©Park Sanghyuk “Hey, stop making a racket!” yelled Oh Mirim. “You don’t know how to cook!” I brought my face right up to hers. “Says the one who doesn’t even know how to turn on the stove. There’s no money to order in,” I said. She burst into tears and buried her head in the couch. I went back to the kitchen; if the stew boiled over, I’d have to wipe the stove and the pot. “Did you cook?” Dad peeked inside the kitchen. His sweaty hair seemed glued to his scalp, making his balding situation even more prominent. Mom lay down next to Oh Mirim on the couch, in the opposite direction. The state of the couch’s fake leather wasn’t too bad. Good enough to get us a few dozen won through the bartering app. “Look, honey! Our daughter knows how to cook!” Dad exclaimed. “And the kimchi stew is delicious. Please eat some and get better, dear. You are a strong, fierce woman who has overcome every hardship.” Wow. Overcoming hardships? Just kill me already. “Yes . . . honey.” Mom sat up, her voice whiny. Mom and Dad used formal, polite Korean with each other. To live with respect for one another, they said. Obviously, they only had respect for each other and were rude to everyone else. What an embarrassingly lovey-dovey couple. The major leaguers polished off my kimchi stew. Not even a spoonful was left. As soon as they finished, Mom and Oh Mirim lay back down on the couch. Dad followed them, pulling up two chairs in front of them. He offered one of the chairs to me. As I took the seat, he said, “I got some money from a small side job with a publisher. It can get us a two-bedroom half-basement apartment in the Cha-in-ri neighborhood—500,000 won a month, and a 1,000,000 won for the deposit. I still can’t get over those solar energy scam artists, but we can all get through this hardship.” “But I don’t want to move there! I can’t let other kids know I bus from Cha-in-ri, it’s embarrassing,” Oh Mirim said. “Those solar energy scammers!” Mom wailed. She hugged Oh Mirim tight. It was as if they had hypnotized themselves into thinking they were innocent victims of an investment scheme. “Did you agree to the provisional contract terms already?” I asked. “You already know the term ‘provisional contract’?” “How much did you pay as down payment?” “100,000 won.” “Get it back. If they don’t return it, consider it as though you never had it in the first place.” “What?” I went to my room and came back with the floor plan of Unit 201. I sat back on the chair. “This is a unit in Sunrye House, where Granddad used to live. It’s around 500 square feet with two bedrooms. The market price is 300,000 won a month for rent with a deposit of sixty million won. The smaller the deposit, the higher the rent. Granddad used to pay 300,000 won a month after putting down twenty million won for the deposit. And as you know, his deposit went straight to clearing his debts. I told Sunrye about our situation, and she offered to lease the unit to us for two years without the deposit, for only 300,000 won a month. Free Wi-Fi and the common rooftop area included. We have to pay 20,000 won for cleaning the staircase and follow strict recycling rules. Also, we have to be extra careful not to create noise at night. If we don’t abide by these rules, we’re unlikely to get a renewal. And of course, it’s just for the first two years that we don’t pay the deposit. We have to follow the building rules. And we’re free to leave anytime, because there’s a long waiting list of people who would kill to move in here. We’re cutting in line, you know. Sunrye is generously giving us this offer. Despite knowing there’ll be complaints.” The major leaguers went quiet, staring at me. It was the first time I’d ever gotten their complete attention. Certainly, the first time I’d spoken to them at such length. Mom stood up from the couch and came close to me. “You’re not kidding, are you?” “Do you really think I’d be joking around at a time like this?” “I’ll follow all the rules,” Mom grasped my hand. “Thank you so much, Surim,” Dad blubbered. “You saved us. Sunrye’s house is a palace compared to the house in Cha-in-ri!” “So I don’t have to bus to school then?” Oh Mirim asked. “Yes, my dear, it must have been a tough few days for you. Honestly, look at us. Because we all love and care for each other, honestly, there’s a silver lining even after getting scammed,” Mom said, patting Oh Mirim on her shoulder. No, that’s not . . . I felt like I needed to make something very clear if I was to get this ridiculous bunch to Sunrye House. “You do know that Sunrye basically raised me, right?” Mom stopped patting Oh Mirim. She avoided my eyes and didn’t answer me. I thought of bringing up “Granddad’s accounting book” but decided not to. It was too early to use that. Better save it for a more serious situation. “Dad, you know that, right?” “Yes, I do.” “Do you know how much it costs a month to hire a babysitter for a full day? I mean, we’re talking seven years. That’s how long she took me in for.” Dad bowed his head. “And I’m the closest to Kim Sunrye, the landlady of Sunrye House. If you guys ever talk nonsense about Sunrye using Granddad’s money or whatnot, I’m going to rat on you to the landlady.” “. . .” “Be grateful to her.” “Understood,” Dad replied. Mom didn’t say anything. “Mom, you know that Sunrye never moved in with Granddad.” Mom kept silent. “Do you or don’t you know that?” “I do.” “And yet, you still call her names, ‘live-in girlfriend’ and whatnot. You didn’t even let them marry, and you called her that even when you knew they didn’t live together.” “Hey, the two of them traveled together . . . And honestly, what’s so wrong about the word ‘girlfriend’?” “Your insinuation.” Mom couldn’t refute that. “If you ever call her names, I’m going to rat you out, too. I mean, Sunrye must be out of her mind, offering you guys a home without a deposit.” “I will never call her that,” Mom said, lowering her head. “And if we save up enough, we’ll pay her some kind of deposit, yes?” “Sure, of course,” Dad said. “I trust you, Mom and Dad. You’re intellectuals.” “Y-yes, of course.” I said I trusted them, but I didn’t. I called them intellectuals, but that was not what I really thought of them either. “By the way, I didn’t realize you were this articulate, Surim. And you can cook, too?” Dad asked. “Well, yeah.” “I had no idea.” “I was considered the dumb one only in this family.” Dad couldn’t utter a word. “We really have no time. We should start posting our stuff for sale on the bartering app. Oh Mirim and Dad, you guys start posting the books on the secondhand bookstore app. If you look at the floorplan, you can see the sink is much smaller. So sell off any kitchenware that can bring in cash, except what we absolutely need. Anything unsellable, just give it away for free. We need to save some money on waste stickers and garbage bags. We also need to think about our moving date because the movers charge more on ‘lucky’ days when no evil spirits are supposedly roaming around. We have to cut down our stuff, start getting quotes from movers, and decide on the moving date. And just so you know, Sunrye has generously offered to re-paper the house for us, even though it was rich of me to ask her about that when we’re not even paying her a deposit. Granddad took great care of the house, so it’s in great condition. Also, cleaning fees are 10,000 won per thirty-five square feet, so a total of 140,000 won. But I’ll start cleaning it up whenever I find time. The 140,000 won does add to our burden, especially when we’re basically relying on one credit card to pay off another. And I borrowed this tape measure from Sunrye. It’s one of her favorites that she got for a Christmas present. We have to return it in perfect condition. And do calculate the rooms and sizes precisely—don’t slack off and just bring our furniture out there. It’s highly probable that none of them will fit.” The major leaguers looked at me, dumbstruck. “Umm, Surim, where did you learn all that?” Dad asked. I was about to say, “Geobuk Village,” but then I wanted to provoke my mom and said: “From the ‘shabby neighborhood.’” Translated by Sandy Joosun Lee Sunrye House BIR Publishing, 2021
by You Eun-sil
Stars Shine in Earth’s Sky
Dear Brother, I received your letter with much joy. Forgive me for not having replied sooner. You don’t need to be so concerned about my health. Though I understand why you are worried, I have no desire to start treatment. What chance of cure it promises is of no consequence to me. It’s not the potential risks or side effects that bother me. My condition is simply a part of me, and I am not at all inclined to tinker with it at this point. Please do not take seriously what our mother and father have been saying. They’ve always talked about me as if l were cursed with a terminal illness. Even my thirty-year survival thus far has not succeeded in persuading them to relax and give up this belief. If anything, each additional birthday of mine seems to have further solidified their conviction that my good luck is drawing to an end and that this might be the year that I meet my doom. Photograph by An Woong Chul It’s true that people afflicted as I am often don’t live very long. It’s also true that I fatigue more easily than others, that my nerves are quick to fray, often diminishing my mental acuity. And yet as long as I stick to my routine of going unconscious from time to time, none of these issues bother me. The only tricky part for me is syncing my daily rhythm to those around me. Following my move to this island, I’ve built myself a box very much like the one I used in the dormitory. It’s made of wood and stands two meters high and nearly ten meters wide, and boasts a viewing slot and a breathing hole. When the proper hour comes, I climb in and latch the door from the inside. This box keeps me safe while I am unconscious and prevents me from being disturbed by others. Fortunately, people here seem to regard my ritual as just another eccentricity of someone who has studied too much. They probably think I’m meditating inside. I’d be curious to see the looks on their faces if they were ever to learn that, once inside the box, I plummet into a state of total oblivion for a minimum of five to six hours. I don’t bother to inform them of my condition, however, as some might believe it to be contagious. Of course, it is not. One in every thousand babies is said to be born with it. If you include children who have only mild symptoms and those who’ve suffered without knowing what afflicts them, the number would be much higher. Each time I lose consciousness, our parents worry that I’ll never come to again. They used to prod me into alertness, but I’d soon faint again, and they would have to shake me until I recovered. We’d repeat this performance over and over again. Their fear was much stronger when I was younger, but trying to prevent me from one of these spells only seemed to contribute to their frequency. Before you were born, I was a frail, sickly child who could barely sit or stand properly. My brain always felt shrouded by a thick fog, making it impossible to think clearly. I had frequent hallucinations, and my nerves were so frayed that I couldn’t tell the difference between what was real and what was imagined. My “controlled fainting” ritual was inspired by a housekeeper who briefly stayed with us. Though uneducated, she was very wise. Having suffered from asthma since childhood, she knew the trick to living with an illness. She advised me to stop fighting it. She said that having an illness is like having a friend with a bad temper. Then she offered to help me find a way to get along with mine. Had it not been for her, I would’ve died young, like so many others with my condition. Even if l had somehow managed to stumble along in the manner I did before she taught me otherwise, it’s unlikely that I would have been able to maintain a sound body and mind. What she did was simply allow me go unconscious. During the six or eight hours that I was in that state, she did not try to rouse me. When our parents found out about this, they were so furious and distraught that they almost reported her for child abuse. But in the weeks that followed, my health and appetite improved. I grew strong enough to play outside on my own, and I even learned how to control the times when such spells would take place. That was when I finally realized that nothing was wrong with me. Our parents still find it difficult to accept that I faint regularly, almost as if on schedule. They feel shame each time I go into my box. They try to insist that I not give up, that I can get better. That’s why I left home and found a place of my own. I only hope that you will know that my love for them and for you has never diminished. I have recommended my method to others with my condition, but it’s never easy to get the parents on board. Most are shocked by the idea of letting their children stay unconscious. And yet those who do subscribe to my method have written to tell me all about the improved health of their children. I suspect that parents who claim to see no improvement are unable to trust the method wholeheartedly and tend to prematurely rouse their children from unconsciousness. Few are those who can stand on the sidelines and simply watch their kids lie seemingly lifeless for hours. Some of the books I’ve consulted suggest that those with my condition have lower IQs. That’s nonsense. Shouldn’t a person who has lived with this condition her whole life know more about it than so-called experts who have only studied it for a few years? Symptoms are only a problem for those afflicted who resist the condition. That is to say, people with my condition need to lose consciousness, and yet treatment is always focused on preventing that from happening. One book even asserts that people like me exhibit symptoms of schizophrenia, I assume because of the often bizarre hallucinations we experience during our spells. I do not yet have an explanation for these occasional hallucinations, but unlike with schizophrenia, they never appear while I am not unconscious, and moreover, they have never caused harm to me or anyone else. All this is probably new to you, as I’ve never talked to you about it before. Our parents didn’t want me to. Their preference has always been that I show only the side of me that is normal and more or less in step with others. All these years, they took pains to keep you from seeing me unconscious. They thought that this would be better for you. And in a way, they may have been right. In the end, however, I insist upon my right to be the master of my own circumstances rather than be mastered by them. Perhaps you take it for granted that you live in a world populated by people who are like you. But that very same world appears completely different to people like me. For us, there are no teachers and no students, no colleagues, nowhere to call our own. We must spend our lives teaching ourselves, studying alone, and working to craft a system and an environment to accommodate our needs—all the while fending off those who never tire of saying, “You can beat this.” It is a demanding task. You have no idea how many innocent children have run them selves ragged both in body and mind while fighting a losing battle against this condition. From where I stand, “beating” what we have looks a lot like turning ourselves into someone we’re not. Not that this matters to those who aren’t like us, since it doesn’t mean losing one of their own. But for me, it would mean abandoning myself. Throwing away everything that is truly me. [. . .] Stars shine in Earth’s sky. What I think the Earthlings meant to point out in that sentence was not so much the stars as the darkness. I also believe that the message was a reply. As in, there had already been communication between us a long, long time ago, and Earthlings knew that our sky was always bright. Can you think of a more sensible response addressed to a planet with an eternally luminous sky? I’m sitting outside my wooden box and looking up at the sky as I write to you. It shines as brilliantly as ever. There isn’t a single gap in the light, every inch is gilded and studded with jewels. No question it’s beautiful to behold. But I imagine that Earth’s sky possesses a beauty different from ours. A lone star hangs in their sky by day. It is so close and so colossal that it swallows the light of all the other stars. The light shining down on the planet would change with each hour. Depending on the height of that star, the temperature and landscape would vary, too. Earthlings wouldn’t dare call that star “Star.” They would give it the greatest name known to them. Their satellite wouldn’t be hidden in the light like ours is. They wouldn’t have to determine its whereabouts in the sky by calculating tidal forces, orbital shifts, or axial precession. When darkness comes, their satellite would hang alone in the sky. They would only have to look up to see it. They would know the shadows on its surface as well as they know the backs of their own hands. Both satellite and star would be named for deities. They would pray to the satellite, they would sing and dance in its soft light. And when the time came for them to turn their gaze to outer space, the satellite would be their first stop. After setting foot on that tiny, airless, lifeless, empty rock, they would gather its precious dust in their cupped, spellbound hands. And they would see stars. They’d count them one by one, pointing at each with an out-stretched finger. They’d know each star’s color, size, and brightness. Everyday people, not just astronomers, would be compelled to name the stars. They’d remember the stars’ positions and connect them to draw pictures. They’d gaze up at those pictures and give them all stories. On Earth, each star would be named after a god. There’d be as many gods as there are stars. Every time my unconscious spell approaches, I think of Earth. A world that alternates regularly between light and dark. A world where warmth and cold, activity and rest, change places every day. Perhaps you’ve already guessed it. If there’s only one star that lights the Earth, and if Earth rotates once daily, then darkness comes every clay. Much like the entrance to the cave that I discovered. The star’s light varies in intensity with each hour. It’s a place where light and dark coexist. It’s my belief that most creatures on that planet have the same condition I do. Some of them may be active while it’s light out, and others may be active after dark. Having adapted to one of the two phases, however, they’d pause all their activities for the duration of the other phase. I sometimes wonder whether our ancestors could have hailed from a place such as Earth. If, indeed, there was communication between the two planets in the ancient past, it is not outside the realm of possibility that some of our ancestors might have migrated here from the outskirts of the galaxy. And if they lived in periodic darkness, then they might also have had a condition like mine and like the creatures in this cave. By this logic, I could have inherited my condition, a natural adaptation to the environment from which they originally came, from them. How wonderfully bizarre . . . Imagine! When darkness falls, Earthlings casually retreat to their private quarters to enjoy a period of unconsciousness. No one ridicules this habit. No one grips a person by the shoulder and tells them, “You can beat this.” No parents weep as they tried to shake their child back to consciousness. No child has to live in shame because of a condition they can’t overcome. No one even thinks of any of this as an affliction that needs to be cured. When the dark phase begins, and stars appear in the sky, Earthlings tell each other, “Go unconscious well.” And when the sky turns light again, they ask each other if they’d gone unconscious well. They rest happily without being disturbed, as if what they were doing was perfectly natural. “Rest” is a term I’ve begun using; I felt it was time we found a more positive way to express this state. My brother. I know that you care deeply about me. I’m a native of this planet, so it’s not as if I don’t yearn to be like everyone else. But at the same time, I simply do not see my condition as being a problem. It’s getting late. I, too, must rest like an Earthling. If, one day, you find yourself ready to accept my ideas, I hope that you will greet me by saying, “Rest well.” With love, Your Sister Translated by Sora Kim-Russell & Joungmin Lee Comfort Copyright © 2021 by Kim Bo-Young Translation copyright © 2021 by Sora Kim-Russell & Joungmin Lee Comfort Published with permission from Kaya Press
by Kim Bo-young