• Fiction

• Poetry

• Criticism

• Nonfiction

• Reviews

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Quis ipsum suspendisse

• 

  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

• 

  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

• 

  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

• 

  One Night

  A week ago, I stole a scooter from the apartment playground. It was a pink scooter, with a turtle sticker on the handle. A name—Jang Min-ji—was written in blue across the deck. Earlier that day we’d gone to Sangju to visit my husband’s uncle. His uncle had slipped on a persimmon on his way to the village hall for some janchi noodles. Nothing’s broken, but ever since he’s come home from the overnight ER stay, his mind’s been fading. Come see him before it’s gone altogether. That’s what the uncle’s daughter had said on the phone. Hanging up, I thought it was such a strange turn of phrase—fading, gone. As if people are a bit of dyed fabric. The uncle was only five years older than my husband—a son my husband’s grandfather had from a second marriage, well into his fifties. I thought that was embarrassing, so I used to lie and say he was my cousin, my husband told me. The two went to elementary school together. At our wedding, the uncle said to me: I know how the men of this family are, so I’ll apologize to you in advance, niece-in-law. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was that I heard the uncle’s brothers had given him nothing of his inheritance because he was born of a different mother—either way, this uncle was the only member of my husband’s family I didn’t hate. The uncle recognized his niece-in-law but could not remember his own nephew by blood. The uncle’s son-in-law had prepared a dakbaeksuk. The chicken in this was raised on feed made from persimmon peels, he said. We were having plum tea after the meal when the uncle turned to me and asked, Why are you here alone? My nephew—is he dead? My husband took his uncle’s hand. Uncle, I’m right here. It’s me, Minyong. The uncle stared blankly at my husband’s face and then shook his head. No, no you’re not. He began to cry. Then he told the story of how my husband, when he was a child, almost shot out the eye of the kid next door with a slingshot. Before that, Minyong had already gotten into big trouble with his dad for shooting at a feeding cow. Minyong had a real mean streak back then. Knowing my older brother, I figured he’d really tear into the boy if he caught him at it again. So I said I did it. The neighbor slapped me across the face, saying I’d nearly made a cripple out of his son. Not just any son—he was the only son of the only son of the only son of the only son. Why’d you do it? I asked the uncle. Why’d I take the blame? Because he called me hyung instead of uncle. Like a brother. And now that nephew of mine is dead. Having finished his story, the uncle began to weep again. The uncle’s daughter got up from the table—unable, it seemed, to bear watching him behave this way—and offered to show me the drying persimmons. I followed her out. The persimmons hung down on ropes like huge beads. Wow, it’s so orange out here. So many shades of orange. That made the uncle’s daughter laugh. Unni, it’s so persimmon out here, she said, it’s all the shades of persimmon. When we returned from our little persimmon break, the uncle was taking a nap. I slipped an envelope with a hundred dollars in it under his pillow. On our way home there was a little fender bender—a bus hit the back of a truck that was switching lanes. Luckily, no one was hurt, but the drivers got in a screaming match, so it took a while to clear the road. By the time we got home, it was past 9 p.m. I said I didn’t feel like making dinner—Let’s just have a porridge of crispy rice and call it a day. Then my husband suggested we try those convenience store takeout boxes. I lived in Apartment 102, and to get to the convenience store on street level, I had to go through the playground in the middle of the apartment complex. On the way home, takeout boxes in hand, I saw the scooter. It was next to the swing. The swing was swaying back and forth like someone had just been sitting on it. I put the takeout boxes on the swing and tried out the scooter. With my left foot on the deck, I pushed carefully with my right. The wheels glimmered, the light inside them turning on. I rode the scooter all the way around the playground. Then I went home with the takeout and had a late dinner with my husband. My husband fell asleep soon after, but I couldn’t sleep, even when it got really late. I sat on the sofa and stared dumbly at the TV. Faded, gone. Faded, gone. I kept thinking of what the uncle’s daughter had said. Now I felt those were the right words after all. I went outside, where the full moon was bright. The moonlight felt nice, so I took a walk within the apartment complex. I saw the parked cars, row after row. It was an old apartment complex, so there weren’t nearly enough parking spaces. Last year, there was an argument over a parking spot, which then escalated—someone got stabbed and died. It was on the news. The apartment security guard that was interviewed for the news segment, he quit. He found a drunk resident peeing in his office, cursed him out, and then quit. When I got to the playground, the scooter was still there. How old are you, little Min-ji? I muttered, looking at the scooter. I didn’t move it, but the lights in the wheels lit up on their own and, after a beat, turned off. That felt like a sign. Like it was saying, Take me with you. So I did.   ©Ozak   I hid the scooter in the bike storage next to Apartment 125, which was the one furthest away from the playground. By leaving the scooter in the bike storage, I felt like I was just keeping it safe rather than stealing it, so I had nothing to be sorry for. The next day, on my walk to the neighborhood community center, I went out of my way to drop by Apartment 125. Someone had parked a tricycle next to the scooter. I’d been taking magic classes at the community center for three months. Every Tuesday and Thursday. The classes were geared toward the elderly, so they taught easy tricks like moving a coin or guessing a card correctly. At the beginning of each class, the teacher showed a video clip of a famous magician, and that day, we saw a clip of someone swallowing a goldfish and then spitting it back out. After class, I went to the nearby five-dollar buffet for lunch with a few other students around my age. While we ate, everyone talked about how annoying it was to get in three square meals a day—sick of it, they said. At night, my husband suggested we have pork belly, so I pan-fried some. My husband usually slept at nine, but that night, he watched pro baseball till it was late. They were tied at the end of the ninth inning, so the game was extended. I asked my husband which team he was rooting for. He said he wasn’t rooting for anyone. At the top of the tenth inning, the bases were loaded, but they failed to score. Idiots, my husband said. Suddenly, I felt sick. The pork belly from earlier wasn’t sitting right with me. At the bottom of the eleventh inning, a hit finished off the game. It was 10:50 p.m. My husband retired to the bedroom, and I sat on the sofa, flipping through TV shows by myself. Then, bored, I turned off the TV and stared at my reflection in the dark screen. Past midnight, I went out. I got the scooter and went to the bike lane that had been paved along the outer perimeter of the apartment complex. Ever since we’d moved here, I had taken to walking around the bike lane a few times each morning. I told my husband I was exercising to strengthen an achy knee, but that was just an excuse—I just didn’t want to eat breakfast with him. I rode the scooter around the bike lane twice: slowly the first lap, trying to get used to it, and a little faster the second time. I burped a loud, clearing burp, and the nausea went away. The next day, my husband and I attended a funeral. It was for the treasurer of the hiking club. His son said he wasn’t picking up his calls, so he dropped in, and found the man collapsed in the bathroom. My husband drank soju and spilled a bit of yukgyejang on his shirt. On the taxi ride home, my husband said, It’s a shame. He was a good man. I didn’t answer. I guess my husband forgot about the time the treasurer embezzled a thousand dollars from the club’s funds. A fight broke out when the other members found out—grabbing each other’s collars and all that. That night, I went around the bike lane thrice on the scooter. During the second lap, I sang as I went. Tie together shells to place around her neck . . .Singing made me wish that it was summer instead of fall. I changed the lyrics to The autumn night deepens and I can’t fall asleep. I snorted—if someone saw me now, they’d think I was crazy. On Thursday I felt a cold coming on, so I skipped my magic class. I made myself a kimchi porridge and napped the whole day. But I didn’t stop riding the scooter. I put on a scarf and boiled some ginger tea, which I poured into a thermos. After one lap around the bike lane, I sat at the bus station and drank the hot tea. On Friday, it rained. We were watching TV as we ate dinner, and my husband said, Fucking loonies. The comedians on TV were wearing funny face paint and playing a game. I watched my husband cursing at them and wondered, What happened to him? How did he get this way? The rain didn’t let up, and in the middle of the night, I cleaned the fridge. As I cleaned, I tried hard to remember something nice about my husband. Like the time he came home clutching a bunch of roasted sweet potatoes to his chest on a winter’s night, for example. There were other times like that, too, but the image that kept popping into my head was my husband saying, Fucking loonies, fucking idiots. I threw out a jar of pickled garlic that I’d made three years ago. Five cloves of garlic a day keeps the doctor away, my husband would say. He always said that—the same thing, every time—when he ate pickled garlic. On Saturday, I spent a whole hour riding the scooter around. When I got out of breath, I sat on the bus station bench. This time I sang a song that started with Ring-a-ding. The one about getting out of the way of a bike. Don’t hesitate, or else. I liked that last line, so I sang it again and again. It quelled the hate I felt toward my husband. I don’t know when it started, but randomly, out of the blue, I would find myself thinking: I wish he would die. It was painful to imagine, but the pain did nothing to stop the thought from occurring over and over again. Earlier in the evening, I’d gotten into a fight with my husband. I grumbled about how he hadn’t flushed the toilet, and then he yelled at me—God, your nagging, give it a break. I wanted to age gracefully. Sometimes I missed our old place. That one had two bathrooms. I poured almost half a bottle of bleach into the toilet. I felt like I’d gotten the hang of the scooter now. Maybe that’s why I was tempted to stray farther away. I went to the apartment complex that had recently started moving people in. It was brand new, with many pedestrian walking routes within the complex. Those paths were great for scootering too. That’s why I was going fast. I didn’t stop, even when the path sloped downhill. As I was falling, I understood why there was a turtle sticker on the handle. Slow, like a turtle. Ah yes, a warning.     2 Close your eyes, open your eyes. Blink. Seven laps around the earth. Close, now open. Blink. That was something my daughter told me when she was young: Mom, light can travel around the earth seven times in the blink of an eye. When things didn’t go her way, my daughter would close her eyes, then open them. The blink of an eye. When she thought about light circling the earth seven times in that tiny span of time, whatever she was worrying about didn’t seem like a big deal anymore, she said. I turned my head to look up at the apartment near me. There was only one unit that had its lights on. I tried to imagine who might be living there. I hoped they were new homeowners in their first home. Maybe they moved in earlier today. They’re so thrilled—too thrilled to turn off the lights. When we bought our first house, I slept with my daughter on the comforters we spread on the living room floor. Mom, it’s so big here, I can’t fall asleep, she said. When you grow up, I said, you’re going to live somewhere even bigger, somewhere with even more space. She did exactly that—she went to study in the US and then settled down there. The cold was seeping into my back. When I get home, I’m going to soak in a steamy tub. Or else I’ll catch a cold. Once or twice a year I would suffer from a bad cold, the kind that made you ache all over. And every time, I would have the same dream, over and over again. In the dream, I run and run and run. Mouth open, going aaaaaaaaaaahhhhh. When I come to a little bridge over a stream, I stop running, and cross it on tiptoes. Tiptoe, tiptoe. Like I’m crossing a bridge that will shatter any second. Once I’m over it, I start running again. Eventually, I notice that something is off. Bare feet. I’ve been running bare feet this whole time, not realizing my shoes have come off. I go back the way I’ve come but I can’t find my shoes. So then, I—young, in the dream—start crying. Because I’ve lost my new shoes. Because my feet hurt. My mom wipes my face off with her sleeves. She says, It’s okay. It’s okay. And she puts ice in my mouth. Not an icicle, a real ice cube. Ice, in the middle of summer. Amazed, I wake up, my clothes damp with sweat. Then, like clockwork, I would come down with a bad cold. When I think of my childhood, the first image that comes to mind is my mom giving me a cool-off rinse. The place we rented back then had a well in the back yard, and when summer was at its hottest, I would get a cool-off rinse there, leaning over with my hands against the well while my mom sloshed the water over my bared back, shoulders, and neck. The landlady once bought me a hairpin at the market that opened every five days, but then her son snatched it from me and threw it down the well. From then on, I stopped taking cool-off rinses. Man-bok, you monster. Every time I thought of the hairpin, I would scream that into the well. Man, as in ten thousand, and bok, as in blessing. Once we named our baby that, my husband’s business started booming, the landlady told my pregnant mom. That’s why you’ve got to pick a name that really means something. Oh, I know, my mom said. In fact, we went and paid a professional to come up with our oldest daughter’s name. But I knew my mom did not like the name my father had paid for. So she was determined to give her second daughter a beautiful name. She decided on Ji-mi—after the name of an actress—but my father stopped by a few bars on his way to register the baby’s name, and by the time he got to the local office, he was, as usual, slurring, his tongue thick with alcohol. And so he said Ji-min instead. My father was illiterate, but nobody knew. How could they—he was always drunk. What are the Chinese characters for the name? the man at the office asked. My father said, Make it up, choose whatever. The man chose ji, as in wisdom, from a character in his sister’s name, and min, as in agile, from a character in his coworker’s name. I’m sure she’s doing fine now, Ji-min, living the life her name promised her. I’ve lied when asked about my name—yes, I’ve said that it’s Ji-min. He was a college student I met on the train. I was eighteen then, I had left home, and I worked at a factory assembling radios. White, long fingers. I’d never seen a man with such fine hands. That’s why I lied, said I was Ji-min. Having lied once, the lies kept coming, one after another. I said I was going to college next year, that I’d be staying at a boarding house in Seoul. That I thought a woman’s college would be boring, but I had no choice, since my parents wouldn’t pay my tuition otherwise. After that, when men asked me my name, I always said it was Ji-min. So what made me want to tell my husband my real name? It was probably his bent thumb. My husband’s left thumb was permanently bent off to the side. The nail there looked crushed too, and I thought it must have been a work accident at a factory. What are you doing tomorrow? my husband asked, and I found myself answering, I’m busy tomorrow, but I’m free the day after. And my name is Duk-seon. That goddamn thumb. Later I learned that he’d hurt it as a kid, driving around a tractor when the adults weren’t watching.   Shivers ran through my body. I attempted to lift my right foot, to no avail. The left was as useless. When I tried to lift my torso off the ground, pushing off from my elbows, a groan escaped from my lips. A sharp pain shot down my spine, all the way to my butt. I took slow, deep breaths. At least I could move my hands. But it was no use—I hadn’t brought my phone with me. A half-moon hung between the trees. I liked half-moons better than full moons. My daughter liked half-moons too—I like how you can see them twice a month. Staring at the moon, I thought of the flower known as the moon-greeter. Evening primrose. They shone so brightly that night I walked home carrying my daughter on my back. We had gone to visit my father-in-law at the hospital and missed the last bus home. The flowers shone so bright, I almost forgot my father-in-law was dying. My daughter, who loved to play house, would pick evening primrose and set out a little meal with them. We even fried some once. It was homework over summer break—cook a meal with your mom. We fried acacia flowers too. When she was in middle school, my daughter wrote a story about a child who fries flowers as a treat for her sick mother on her birthday. The story won a prize. She was so clever, even early on. People laughed at us when we sold the house to pay for her education abroad, but she was a child worth investing in. When my daughter started elementary school, my husband quit his job at the factory and started a wallpapering business. I learned to hang wallpaper too, of course, I helped out. We were so busy back then. Sitting on an unrolled ream of wallpaper on the floor, having our meal of rice with nothing but a little smear of gochujang. Everything tasted sweet to us in those days. Five years into the business, we bought our own place for the first time. And a year after that, my brother-in-law lost us the place. It took another four years before we could buy again. By then, my daughter was in high school. I made her study look really nice, and she was the top student of her year. I fell off the ladder while hanging wallpaper. Twice. The first time, I broke my arm, and the second time, I sprained my knee. I put my hand in my pocket. I thought there would be a handkerchief there, but no. There was a piece of gum though. I thought about putting it in my mouth but decided against it. I figured there must be at least one person in the world who died because they choked on a piece of gum. I knew so many stories like that, of people dying in ridiculous ways. In my early twenties, I worked, briefly, at a boutique. The owner there died while feeding his dog—a nail sticking out from the roof of the doghouse went through him. My god! That’s the sort of thing that was in my daughter’s notebook, the one she carried around in middle school. It had all kinds of stories about ridiculous things happening in the world. A person who died because they threw a rock at a beehive, and another that died of constipation. It was in that notebook that I read about a daughter who died of shock during her mother’s funeral, because her mother opened the casket from inside and sat up in it, alive. When the mother found out that her daughter was dead because of her, did it make her want to die? But would she feel grateful, too, to be alive? That story always made me tear up. Because what could that mother do—she couldn’t live, she couldn’t die. When I stood in a room where the wallpaper had been ripped out, exposing the concrete walls, it always felt like I was locked in a coffin. No matter how large the room was, it didn’t make a difference. When bigger interior design companies dried up my husband’s business, he closed it down and started working as a security guard. I didn’t tell my daughter this. She believed my lie, that we moved to a smaller house because I got tired of cleaning a big place. I sneezed. Sneezing hurt, from my neck down to my thighs. I’m sure someone has died from sneezing. I didn’t know of anyone who had, but I knew someone who fractured a rib sneezing: my husband. This was when he was a night security guard at a construction site for a new high-rise. My husband, with his fractured rib, skipped some of his dawn patrols. He was supposed to patrol once every two hours. Because sometimes, teen runaways would sneak in, to drink. And one day, a student—a girl—committed suicide there, at the construction site. Threw herself off. Boys—her age—they’d done awful things to her at night there. The investigation revealed that my husband lied in his logs, that he checked off patrols even when he hadn’t done them. My husband said it wasn’t fair, that he was being wrongly blamed. That it had happened on the roof, which his patrol route didn’t take him through anyway. Even if he had patrolled as often as he’d claimed, he wouldn’t have found the place, he wouldn’t have seen anything. My husband said this again and again during the police investigation. He was fired. From then on, he was different, somehow. He watched the news all day, and he would curse the whole time—Fucking loonies, fucking idiots. Con artists were fucking loonies, as was the person who donated all the money they’d saved up over their lives. Once, I visited the columbarium where the girl’s ashes were. I did this discreetly, so my husband wouldn’t know. Not fair? I couldn’t understand what my husband meant by that. He wasn’t the one that the world had been utterly unfair to. I apologized to the girl on behalf of my husband. I turned my head left and looked up at the apartment again. The light was still on. I started going through the multiplication table in my head. So my mind wouldn’t fade, wouldn’t slip away. I was going through the eight times table when the light turned off.   On days I wished my husband would die, I took extra care with dinner. My husband liked biji and pork backbone stew. He liked pollock stew too, and he liked milt and fish intestines in it, so I would go all the way to the fish market to get those. When I made his favorite dishes, my husband would sit down at the table and say, Looks like it’s my birthday today. On my husband’s sixtieth birthday, our daughter flew back home. She said she was preparing for her doctorate. She said, Let’s travel around the US once I get my degree. She didn’t come for my sixtieth birthday. Instead, she sent a handbag as a gift. On my husband’s seventieth birthday, she sent money. I found a good job, so don’t worry about me, treat yourselves to something nice. Would she fly home next year, for my seventieth birthday? If she does, we should go to Jeju Island or something. Now that I was thinking about it, we’d never once gone on a family trip together. I reached out and groped around—nothing but leaves. I swept them together and piled them on my belly. Even though I knew it wouldn’t do anything. Hey, I shouted toward the lit window. In TV shows, people were always screaming—Save me, help me, I’m dying! But I couldn’t get those words out of my mouth. Hello, is there anyone out there? I tried, a bit louder this time. A wind blew, landing a leaf on my face. I had a craving for some coffee, full of sugar and cream. I hadn’t had coffee in years. I gave it up when I stopped being able to hold my pee. People were always going on about how terrible it would be to go senile, but it was incontinence that I was most afraid of. Forgetting myself was one thing. But washing pee-soaked underwear? That man, he must be old too, by now. The one who picked out the wallpaper with rockets and spaceships on it for his wife. When he chose that one, I figured he must have a little boy at home. But when I saw his wife in her wheelchair, I realized that wasn’t it. It was a gift, for his wife who couldn’t walk. You can’t walk here on earth, but in space, that’s no problem at all, he said to her. Your husband is very sweet, I remarked when I was done hanging the wallpaper. Too sweet—I suppose that makes him sick in his own way, she replied. On the way home, I muttered a poem to myself: Sweetness, too, must be a sickness—it keeps me from sleep. Saying it to myself again and again made me feel warm inside. At the time, I had terrible insomnia—this was when my husband signed on as a guarantor to his brother’s commercial freezer business, which went down and took our house with it. Sweetness, too, must be a sickness—it keeps me from sleep. I said it to myself when I went to bed, and just like that, my insomnia was gone. I was in love with that man. When we had a client who lived in his neighborhood, I would go out of my way to go by his place. They lived on the first floor, so you could see into their living room. I saw the man bringing his wife some water. When the wife laughed at something on the TV, the man laughed with her. I even pressed their doorbell once, pretending I was there to check on the wallpaper. The adhesive we used must have been faulty; all of the wallpaper from our recent projects have been bubbling off the wall, I lied. When I went into their room, I saw their wedding photo hanging by their bed. Pretending I was touching the wallpaper, I brushed against the edge of the frame. The frame tilted off center. Every time I wanted to go back there, I imagined that man elderly and infirm, struggling to pee. That calmed me. The couple lived there for three years. After that, I was called there again, to hang new wallpaper. The middle-aged couple who had bought the house said the previous owner’s wife had died giving birth, so he put the place on the market for quick sale. I tore out the wallpaper with rockets and spaceships and pasted on the new one with a floral pattern. My nose was running. I tugged at the sleeve of my shirt and blew my nose into it. I shouted once more—Hey.   My mom gave birth to me alone. My father travelled in those days, looking for work at construction sites in rural areas, and he was working at a dam construction when I was born. The postal carrier read him the news that a daughter was born to him, and the other construction workers around him clapped. The dam took three years to build. My father was planning to take all the money he made there and start an on-site eatery for construction sites. He would brag, now and then, about what an excellent cook his wife was. But then his left leg was crushed by a pile of rocks, crippling him. He was such a good man. That’s what my mom would say, holding me in her arms while we hid from my drunk father in the landlord’s shed. Orphaned by the war, my mom had been a live-in nanny for a while, and my father once promised her that he would hire her nannies of her own one day. A nanny to watch the child, a nanny to cook, a nanny to do the laundry—all the nannies she could want. My father was a good singer. He had a sad voice, a voice that made even happy songs sound sad. That’s where my sister gets her voice. When she was young, my sister sang at a town festival, and came home with a big rubber basin as her prize. In the winter, we would fill it with hot water and bathe there. My sister first, then me, then my mom. After the bath, the three of us would always have some sweet potatoes that had roasted to perfection while we washed. I heard a dog barking. I felt glad. Yes, yes, keep barking. What time was it? My husband had a habit of getting up at night to use the bathroom—would he have noticed, by now, that I’m not home? On our first date, we had red bean porridge at a teahouse. I think it would taste even better if it was snowing outside, I said, and he said, Let’s do that then. Let’s come back here when it’s snowing. And then he said he was sorry, sorry for asking me out and making me date a man who didn’t even have the money to buy a tiny shack. Maybe it was because the red bean soup had warmed me through—I confessed to my husband that I was an orphan. I hadn’t had any contact with my mom or my sister in a long time, so it wasn’t entirely a lie. Don’t you ever come back, my mom had said to me. If I hadn’t done it, you would’ve. Those words rushed up to my throat but I swallowed them. I didn’t tell my mom I’d seen her pour poison into the bottle of alcohol. She cried, clutching that bottle. Mom, I’m hungry, I said. I said it on purpose, knowing she was crying. Mom, my tummy hurts, I said. Knowing she was crying, I cried on purpose next to her. That was why. It wasn’t that I hated my father for not allowing me to go to high school. No, it was because my mom never threw out the poison she hid in the back of the cupboard, because she said, I’m sick of it, I’m just so sick and tired of it, over and over like a broken record. That was the reason, though my mom would never know. When I said I was an orphan, my husband took my hands in his. He said, I’ve got a big family, enough to go around. I’ll share them with you, you can have half of them. I can’t believe I was moved by that. If I could go back to those days, I’d date someone else, someone who would take my hands in his and say, You must have been so lonely. But now—now, you don’t have to worry. My father drowned in a well. That’s what the people in town believe. My father always had some water at the well when he got drunk, and he’d had several close calls at that well before, his balance compromised by his drunkenness. That’s the testimony the landlady made for us when the police asked questions. After my daughter was born, I went back there, with my daughter on my back. The old house was gone. There was a two-story house in its place. A man smoked a cigarette at the gate. He looked a lot like Man-bok. A million blessings to you, I said under my breath. My mom had gotten swept up in some cult, had disappeared with my sister. I heard a rumor that the cult had a commune deep in the mountains, so I went and found her. That’s when she said it—You monster. Not fair, I thought. Wrongly blamed. I was a girl who cried at every little thing. I was a girl who pressed an autumn leaf between the pages of a book. I was a girl who liked to recite poems. A drop of rain fell on my forehead. The rain made me laugh. That’s what you get. That’s what you deserve. Go on, I thought to the rain. Go on, then, and don’t let up.   3 The young man who found me was on his way home from the study room. He had planned to pull an all-nighter there, but he heard it raining outside, and the sound reminded him of his ex-girlfriend. They’d been teased by their friends for setting unrealistic standards as a couple—five years together without a single argument. Turns out you don’t need to argue to break up, he said to me. True, true. And then there are those who live together their whole lives even when there’s no love, I replied. The young man took off his jacket and put it over me. Then he made a tiny umbrella of his hands and put them over my face to protect it from rain. Sorry. I don’t have an umbrella on me. The young man usually stayed at the study room all night and went home around 7 a.m., where his brother, a senior in high school, would be gulping down breakfast. His mother would already be at work. After his brother left for school, the young man had a meal with the leftovers. Then he did the dishes and vacuumed and slept in his brother’s bed. This had been his life for the last three years. When the sound of rain spurred him to pack his bag and leave the study room on a whim, he tugged the hood of his jacket over his head and started walking. If he went home right away, he would wake his brother. He liked his brother, but sometimes he would think about how he could’ve had the room to himself if he didn’t have a brother. Instead of going home, he came here, to this apartment. He remembered there was a covered pagoda at the end of the walking route here. A few days ago, on the way to the study room, he had seen moving trucks at the pedestrian crossing. Five of them, in a neat little row. What kind of place has so much stuff that they need five moving trucks, he wondered. Curious, he followed them to this apartment complex. At the front entrance hung a big sign that said Welcome Residents. It dawned on him that the five trucks were for five different houses. He watched the moving trucks unload. As his gaze followed the furniture and pallets of boxes being lifted into the air and deposited through the windows, his eyes welled up, strangely enough. Building 101, Unit 1601. That place had a piano, he said. It reminded me of my sister, who took piano lessons when she was little. She died in a car accident. A hit-and-run. I lifted my right hand and held the young man’s hand. It was cold. It must have been painful, I said. I don’t know, he said. But something disappeared that day. Like the determination to succeed, something like that. I’ve been telling people that I’m studying for this exam to become a public officer, but actually, I’m not doing anything at all. I wanted to tell him that was okay. That doing nothing was its own kind of challenge. This was back when my daughter was in elementary school. I got home from work and found her crying in the corner of a room. What’s wrong? I asked, and she said, Nobody unfroze me. We were playing freeze tag, but nobody came to unfreeze me. So I was frozen, I was ice, all by myself. After that, I played freeze tag with my daughter often. In the morning, for instance, when I woke her. She would say, Freeze, and I would say, Unfreeze, giving her a playful knock on the forehead. Once, I fell off a ladder and broke my arm, I said to the young man. Then my daughter said, Mom, say Freeze! So I said, Freeze, and I became ice. Thirty minutes passed, then an hour, but still, my daughter didn’t say Unfreeze. I sat on the sofa all day, waiting for her to say Unfreeze. At night, finally, my daughter took my hand and said, Unfreeze. I got up and went to the bathroom and peed—what a relief. It made me realize something. Sometimes we have to freeze. You’re frozen now, I said to the young man, you’re frozen so you can escape the one who is “it,” the one who is coming after you. But don’t worry. Someone will unfreeze you soon. That’s how the game works. That made him laugh. Heu heu heu—that’s what his laugh sounded like. The ambulance will be here soon, he said, and when it gets here, I’ll tell you to unfreeze. On the first day of magic class, the teacher said the most important thing for magic tricks was not technique, but humor. I didn’t get it then. But I felt like I understood, a bit, just now. The rain let up. The young man told me he watched a truck unload for Apartment 113, Unit 303 earlier today. Ever since that day he followed the five moving trucks here, he came by daily on his way to the study room to watch the move-ins. Unit 303 had six dining table chairs. They had three refrigerators, too. Apartment 109, Unit 1004 had loads of shoes. He overheard the movers talking among themselves: I’ve never seen a place with so many shoes. Apartment 111, Unit 2003 had lots of planters. Big ones. They looked like they could fill up not just the balcony but the living room too. He found himself speculating about it—Maybe they’ve got roof access since it’s the top floor unit. He said, I’ve seen some really weird move-ins too. Units where they go to all the trouble of bringing stuff in, only to throw it all out. They threw out the closet, the sofa, the table… I thought, at first, they were moving out. Because they were the only unit that sent stuff back down. But then the movers took all of it and stacked it at the dump. I was curious, so I went and asked what was going on. And they said it’s trash, they’re throwing it out. Because it doesn’t suit the new apartment. When the moving truck left, the young man sat at the table by the dumpster. There was a yellow ring on the table where a hot pan had left a mark. He rubbed it with his palm. He just sat there for a while, and then he ordered a jjajangmyeon. Pretty crazy of me, huh, he said. But what can I say—I really wanted to eat a jjajangmyeon there. I closed my eyes and imagined him, sitting there at the table by the dumpster, eating a jjajangmyeon. If security had seen him, they would’ve yelled at him. They would’ve said, Are you nuts? I heard sirens in the distance. I heard the dog barking again. You’re not crazy, I said to the young man. You know who’s a real lunatic? My mom. Getting sucked into a cult and cutting off your own daughter, now that’s crazy. When my mom told me never to come back, I replied it was better to be a monster than a lunatic. So I’ll do just fine, I said. Now the sirens were very close. I asked the young man to bring me the pink scooter. He brought it over. I spun its wheels. They lit up and twinkled. Fortunately, it didn’t seem broken. Jang Min-ji. The young man read the name on the scooter out loud and asked if she was my granddaughter. I said yes. I asked a favor of him. Could you please return it to where it was, so my granddaughter won’t be worried? Next to the swings, on the playground. That’s where she left it. He promised he would. I told him which apartment complex I lived in. He said he lived in that one too and seemed happy about having this in common. I promised him that I’d buy him a beer sometime if I ran into him. He said, I’d like fried chicken to go with the beer, if you please. I nodded. The paramedics ran toward me. The young man took my hand. He said, Unfreeze. So I said it back to him: Unfreeze. Now you can go home.   Translated by Hedgie Choi  

  by Yoon Sung-hee

• 

  Korean Teachers

  Phuong said that she worked from 5:00 p.m. until 4:00 a.m. Sunday was her only day off. At 264 hours per month, 90,000 won meant that she made 3,400 won per hour. “That’s your salary? For one month?” Seon-yi pointed to the calendar on Phuong’s phone. She drew a circle around February and asked if the 90,000 won was for one month. Phuong nodded her head. Seon-yi stood in front of Phuong’s desk for a while. Phuong’s husband Quon, who sat next to her, said, “Teacher.” When Seon-yi turned to face him, he just looked up at her silently. Like Phuong, Quan—tan, short, and thin—worked in an underground factory in Dongdaemun. Phuong’s factory sewed buttons on shirts, and Quan’s sewed on zippers. The young couple had left their two-year-old child back in Vietnam. How much money did Quan make? Seon-yi felt lost. “Give me your phone. I’ll call.” Seon-yi called Phuong’s boss on her phone. The person who had pelted Phuong with curses. The boss didn’t answer at first, so she tried again and then left a message. “Your boss didn’t answer. When he calls back, I will talk to him. Now we will learn Korean. You have to learn Korean in order to fight.” In that moment, Seon-yi felt renewed conviction in her work. Phuong had to learn Korean in order to argue with her corrupt boss who didn’t pay her. So she could recognize when he used swear words not fit for humans, or complain when he paid her an illegal wage—no, so she wouldn’t have to work at such a factory in the first place. Phuong’s phone rang as Seon-yi was determinedly handing out a list of Korean adjectives. “It’s the boss.” Phuong handed over her cell phone and Seon-yi answered. “Hello—is this the boss of the factory where Phuong works?” she asked in the firmest possible voice. The boss repeatedly asked who she was in a wary tone. “It doesn’t matter who I am, does it?” she said, using the formal seubnida verb conjugation. “I’m calling to ask when you’re going to give Phuong the back pay you owe her.” Seon-yi didn’t usually use this formal verb conjugation, so she’d thought that she wouldn’t need to teach it to her level one students. But as she made this call, she changed her mind. Seubnida form was definitely necessary in level one. “It’s not that I don’t want to pay her. I haven’t gotten money from my clients—what am I supposed to do? I’m struggling, too.” He used the informal “I,” na rather than jeo. Who did he think he was? Seon-yi hadn’t taught her students na yet, either. “I’m asking for Phuong to get paid for her work. Isn’t paying her for her work a given? She told me that it’s not even a million won.” Seon-yi was about to talk about Phuong’s hourly wage but stopped herself. The man on the phone was breathing roughly. “You’re making me sound like a corrupt boss, but I’m not—I hire them because they have it so rough. You know that they’re working illegally, right? How are you criticizing me when you know what will happen if they get caught?” Seon-yi felt like she was experiencing the phrase “blood flowing backwards” quite literally. Her blood went up to her head and her face grew warm. She felt dizzy. “I know it’s illegal for them to work, but it’s also illegal for you to employ them. So when are you going to pay Phuong?” She could hear the man quietly grumble “fuck.” Seon-yi’s entire body quivered. Phuong, Quan and the other sixteen students were all staring at her as if they were drilling into her with their eyes. “Please text me the date.” Seon-yi hung up without waiting for an answer. Her face flushed, and she breathed heavily. “Teacher, are you okay?” Phuong asked. “Yes, I’m okay. Tell me if your boss still doesn’t pay you. You will get paid. You will. I will fight this.” Seon-yi caught her breath and continued straight into the lesson. She had to teach adjectives to her students. She had to teach “good” and “bad,” “many” and “few,” and “happy” and “sad.” Sometime she would also teach “fair” and “unfair,” and “impressed” and “insulting.” Seon-yi hoped that her students would find “fair” and “impressed” more useful to their lives in Korea than “unfair” or “insulting.”   ©Jenny Kwak   *   On Wednesday, the day after the final exam, students filled out instructor evaluations in the break after the first period. Nika’s seat was empty. Mi-ju instructed the class leader to go to the administration office and bring back the evaluation forms, then she left the room. Instructors weren’t allowed to be in the classroom while the evaluation forms were being filled out. As Mi-ju walked down the hallway, she heard someone running up behind her. When she turned around, she saw that it was Marine. “Teacher, Nika sent me a message for you,” Marine said. Mi-ju shook her head. “Marine,” she said, “tell this to your boyfriend—” “Nika’s not my boyfriend,” Marine said as her face hardened. “Okay, well, I don’t want to see Nika’s message, so—” “Teacher, Nika really isn’t my boyfriend.” “I see. Since you and Nika are so close, I thought . . .” “Nika is a girl.” Mi-ju stared blankly at Marine’s face. She wanted to ask what that meant, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. Marine repeated herself. “Nika is a girl,” she said. Mi-ju pulled out her attendance log and flipped to the student information sheet on the last page.   Name: Nika Nationality: Belarus Date of Birth: 4/27/1998 Sex: F   Mi-ju looked back up at Marine. Had Marine always been this tall? Mi-ju thought back on Marine and Nika wrestling. They’d been so insistent that they weren’t dating. Mi-ju asked herself why she’d assumed Nika was a boy, why she’d never doubted it. Was it because of the short hair? Because the other students shouted that Nika was handsome? Because Nika wore large T-shirts? Because she played basketball? Was it just because of those things? Mi-ju suddenly realized that at the beginning of the semester, Nika had played basketball with the male students, but at some point she’d started to spend time only with Marine. Had everyone realized she was a girl? Was only Mi-ju unaware? Mi-ju had asked Nika what kind of girl she liked. She’d ordered Nika to answer, giving “tall girls” and “pretty girls” as examples. She’d thought that Nika was a violent boy who liked showing off his strength. She’d vowed not to let herself lose against a student she saw as a boy who looked down on girls, who humiliated them. Had everyone else known? “Nika is mad.” Marine held her phone out to Mi-ju. A translation app appeared on the screen.   She is going to file a complaint against you.   Mi-ju stood in the hallway and stared at the word “she” for a long time.   *   I leave tomorrow.   Sometimes Korean grammar used the present tense to convey future plans, or a certain future. A future so certain that it was expressed in the present. But even if the future was as clear as the present, even if it was utterly unchangeable, it, too, could fall apart. If my mom dies tonight, I won’t leave tomorrow. If my flight is canceled, I won’t leave tomorrow. If an accident occurs on the way to the airport and I die, all future tense senten-ces related to me vanish. Ultimately, the only tense that language could express was the past. That was what Han-hui believed. The past tense expressed the past—nothing else.   Yesterday I went to school.   This sentence contained no meaning other than the truth of the past. Without any doubt, without any feelings of regret or happiness. The moment this sentence was articulated, the moment it was put into use, nothing about it would change. The past created the form of the sentence, and that past had a singular meaning. That was the firm truth. The past became an unshakable truth. Han-hui’s life was the same. The only tense that existed for Han-hui was the past. If she thought about the future, everything went black before her eyes. In the past, I could say what I was going to do. I could say with certainty how things would turn out. I could be certain of the future—bring forth the present saying, “That will happen.” But the future turned out to be completely different from what Han-hui expected; it was always in opposition to her intention and expectation.   While working as a Korean teacher, Han-hui had been determined to “work hard,” and she assumed that things would “turn out well.” But things just kept getting worse. She’d sworn to herself, “I’ll become a professor,” “I’ll stay at H University,” but Han-hui knew better than anyone how empty those words were. The present was more terrifying to Han-hui than anything else: she hadn’t been fired, but she wasn’t staying, either. The only thing certain to Han-hui was her past—her work experience as a senior instructor at H University’s language school. In the present, her contract had neither been continued nor terminated, and no one knew the future. But now that she was pregnant, time had completely changed for Han-hui. Something was alive inside her belly. She couldn’t see it now, but that thing so clearly inside her would have a future—it would come out into the world, breathe, and cry. The future created by this baby gave Han-hui a new sense of time, and knowing how uncertain that sense of time was made Han-hui constantly nervous.   The baby will be born. It will grab Han-hui’s fingers with its small hands. It will lean against the wall, using its strength to walk.   The fact that all of these sentences were assumptions rather than facts—the ease with which they could go wrong—scared Han-hui.   The baby will not be born. It will not grab Han-hui’s fingers with its small hands. It will not lean against the wall, using its strength to walk. Now, Han-hui needed the future tense. She needed a stable future. She needed a secure future that existed not as an intention or an assumption, but as a fact. Han-hui completely changed the topic of her presentation, which had been about teaching the Korean past and non-past. Her new topic was “Teaching the Korean Future Tense.” Han-hui was going to research a way to teach the future tense: not intention, not assumptions, but the future.   Together with the baby, I will survive.   *   The next day, Seon-yi went to the police station for the witness interview. One student who couldn’t get out had died of suffocation, and students who hadn’t understood the broadcast in time complained of chest pains. The entire dormitory building was covered with black soot, and the third-story room where the fire had started—along with the rooms on either side—had shattered windows. The detective said that an interpreter had been present, so he’d received statements from the students. According to the students’ statements, several firecrackers had been set on fire in the dormitory room, and a blanket had caught fire while the students were taking pictures. Flustered, they tried to put out the fire by covering the blanket with another blanket, but the flames just spread even further. The students didn’t know how to report the fire, so they ran into the hallway and called the residential assistant’s phone number several times, but he didn’t answer. When the detective checked with the RA, he said that the students had called and repeated the words “fireworks” and “fire,” but he hadn’t understood right away because it sounded like they were just saying, “Fireworks make fire.” Time passed, and the fire grew out of control. What happened, according the detective, was that the fire truck arrived only after the security guard, who had been sleeping, heard the commotion in the hallway and ordered everyone to evacuate over the PA system. “I don’t think it’s arson, but . . .” The detective asked Seon-yi why she’d bought the students the fireworks. “The students liked them,” Seon-yi said. “Did you ever tell them to play with fireworks in the dorms?” Seon-yi considered what she’d said about fireworks. She remembered saying that you couldn’t bring them on a plane. So she must have told her students to light the fireworks before leaving Korea. Is that what it had sounded like? Go back to your rooms tonight and light up all the fireworks? “I’m just asking you this to confirm the facts.” The police officer flipped through the other documents. “I heard you were fired from H University six months ago. Did you get fired for coming to the police station at the time?” Seon-yi raised her head sharply. “I didn’t get fired. I was a contract worker, and my contract just didn’t get extended. I was told from the beginning that I would only be working for two semesters.” “Yes, so the reason that the contract wasn’t extended was when you . . .” “No, I didn’t file a complaint at the time. I . . .” Seon-yi was about to explain why she’d gone to the police, but she couldn’t remember. She hadn’t wanted to file a complaint, and she was definitely going to wait for the school to deal with the matter, and in fact, she had waited, so why had she gone to the police? Why had she shown the detective the Instagram photo, and had him search that hashtag? There had been other instructors. Other instructors who were at the police station with Seon-yi who’d confidently gone through the steps to file a complaint. Where were they? Seon-yi didn’t understand how she’d ended up here again. She put her camel-colored coat, which was hanging from her chair, back on. The police station wasn’t well-heated. Her body shivered. The enormous fire had burnt the entire dormitory building down, and news that a foreign student enrolled in a short-term Korean language course had died in the fire made headlines on popular portal websites. Dozens of articles appeared, one of which featured an interview with someone named P, who was said to be an official at H University’s language school.   Bringing over such an unmanageable number of students was the problem, P said. People needed to look into why so many students had been brought to Korea for these language programs. Now things were a mess because of the school and students trying to take advantage of the slack laws.   Another article included an interview with an intermediate-level classmate of the deceased.   We came to Korea because we like Korea. But Korea doesn’t like us. For Koreans, we are people who will spend money.     Translated by Lizzie Buehler   Korean Teachers (Harriet Press, 2021) Copyright © 2020 by Sujin SeoTranslation copyright © 2021 by Lizzie BeuhlerPublished with permission from Harriet Press

  by Sujin Seo

• 

  Seshiru, Juhee

  Seshiru said she’d prepare snacks in the shared kitchen and bring them back to the room. From that time on, she went to make snacks whenever Juhee came over. While Seshiru was away, Juhee looked uneasily around at her belongings. There was a single bed and a small desk. You could see right through the transparent glass door into the bathroom. Next to the closet was a sizable suitcase . . . At these times she would stare quietly at the large photo of U-Know Yunho hanging above the head of the bed. Juhee and Seshiru quarreled on the first day. If they hadn’t made up then and there, the Sunday afternoon Korean tutoring sessions would’ve been cancelled. Seshiru had said that most of the Japanese men they’d met on the way to the gosiwon, from the money changer to the part-time worker at the Sindang-dong Tteokbokki restaurant, had remarked on Juhee’s good looks. Juhee never liked to hear these kinds of comments, and had come to object to them even more strongly after seeing the video. Seshiru kept chattering on as if she just viewed them as compliments. “Mamoru-san doesn’t usually say girls are pretty, so even I was surprised. It’s because you have the kind of face that Japanese guys like. Such a cute look.” But the moment Juhee heard the next sentence, her suspicions rose. “Juhee-shi, you’ve had plastic surgery, too, haven’t you? Lots of Korean girls do. It’s ubiquitous.” Juhee was surprised both by Seshiru’s use of the word “ubiquitous” and by her expression, all smiles after saying something so rude. She frowned and said, “Seshiru-san, that’s not a nice thing to say to someone. Would you talk that way if you were in Japan?” “What’s wrong? I said it because you’re beautiful. And it’s true, a lot of Korean girls have had surgery.” “A lot of Korean girls have had surgery? Then is it true that most Japanese girls shoot AV?” Seshiru’s face hardened. Juhee was shocked at her own words, but she kept on talking. “It’s the same as saying that. Do you get it?” Seshiru pursed her lips. She began to cry. It took Juhee an hour or more to calm her down, apologizing over and over again. That’s how the session ended. As they parted, Seshiru got her money ready. She desperately held it out to Juhee, who was refusing it. “This is all I want. Nothing too fancy, just someone to talk with. At any rate, I promise not to say anything to make Juhee-shi angry in the future.” At JuJu House the next day, Seshiru bumped into Juhee, thrust something in her apron pocket and skittered away. It was a Kanebo brand cleanser that was very popular with Koreans, known for dispensing foam in the shape of a rose. There was a Post-It note stuck to the package. Juhee-shi, I’m sorry. I won’t make any more mistakes. Seshiru. Just before going home, Juhee hurriedly handed Seshiru the new lipstick that was in her pouch to return the favor.   ©Jenny Kwak   *   Seshiru and Juhee met in Myeongdong on Christmas Eve as planned. Seshiru handed Juhee a package. “It’s a Japanese hotpot my mother sent. Since I don’t cook much, I want you to take it.” Juhee accepted it, a little bewildered. But I don’t cook either, Seshiru. Juhee said she hadn’t thought to bring a present, so the pancakes would be on her. The pancake restaurant was about twenty minutes from JuJu House on foot, in the vicinity of the department store. It was very far from the subway station. Juhee said it was farther than she expected, teasing Seshiru. Seshiru linked arms with her without speaking. It was the first time she’d done that. As they walked, the crowd kept getting thicker. Juhee realized the people weren’t just Christmas revelers out for a good time when she noticed some of them wearing masks. She and Seshiru had inadvertently joined a protest march. Looking around, she saw picket signs covered in slogans. “Out of the mire of this historical injustice and on to the path of true reconciliation and healing!” “For the victims and their families, and for all of us who are living in the same age, we require a settlement.” Seshiru clung a little more tightly to her arm. “What is this protest about? I shouldn’t be around a protest . . . You know, we foreigners are a bit vulnerable.” She hid her face against Juhee’s shoulder. Juhee patted Seshiru and said, “It’s okay, Seshiru-san. This is a peaceful gathering. It’s to support war victims.” Seshiru’s eyes shone as she answered, “Oh, really? I’ve taken part in anti-war demonstrations since middle school. My grandmother died in the ravages of war, in Japan, you know.” Juhee felt an odd feeling come over her and she looked at Seshiru, who was standing on her tiptoes as if trying to see something in the distance. Her eyes reddened with tears as she looked around. Juhee felt as if she had duped Seshiru. Seshiru, your grandmother and the elderly war victims they are talking about here are a little different . . . You said your grandmother is at Yasukuni Shrine. Juhee could never say this to Seshiru and she felt a little miserable. “Seshiru-san, shall we take another route?” she asked earnestly, but Seshiru shook her head. “It’s all right. Let’s just keep on going.”     Translated by Kari Schenk   Seshiru, Juhee Barbie VibeMoonji, 2020

  by Park Min-jung

• 

  Elementary Korean

  Adam Hong sent me an email out of the blue. He didn’t bother with any formalities. There were no magical phrases designed to put the reader at ease, like “By the way, I was wonderingif . . .,” either. The email was no-nonsense and to the point. Come to think of it, he was much like his mother. According to Adam, his mother’s birthday was coming up and he wanted to write her a letter in Korean. He was asking me to have a look at it. Funny how it’s always the most disobedient, troublesome students who later go on to make the most demands. At that point, I only had a few days left in the US and was pretty much a “non-existent” person. Did I really need to respond to him? Out of a sense of self-imposed duty, however, I re-read his email, slowly this time. According to the English language draft of the letter, Adam’s parents were divorced, and his father was killed during the September 11 attacks. In his letter, Adam wrote of his late father and offered words of condolences to his mother. Reading his words, I didn’t think he had to translate them into Korean. He didn’t need to, nor could he do justice to them even if he tried. Adam had also sent me an email attachment. It was a photograph taken of the graveyard at St. Paul’s Chapel that stood next to the former World Trade Center. I remember visiting St. Paul’s, which was located on the way to Wall Street. In the aftermath of 9/11, the church had become famous for having remained intact with not a single broken window, even after the Twin Towers came crashing down just across the street and caused damage to countless other buildings nearby. Some say that the trees planted in the chapel’s garden had protected the church from the tons of debris that had flown toward it. I was a corporal at the time in faraway Korea, watching the breaking news from my army barracks and worrying whether these terrorist attacks in a foreign country would mean that I’d have to cancel my planned leave. I downloaded the photograph. Gravestones strewn across the field like fallen soldiers were basking in sunshine. The trees that had protected the church from the surrounding crashes broke up the sunlight and scattered it in pieces that fell like solitary islands on the grass. At the center of the photograph stood an ash gray tombstone in clear focus, with the words THEY ARE IN PEACE carved on the surface. I understood this must be the message Adam wanted to say to his mother. I decided to translate that last phrase, and only that phrase, into Korean. Mom, Dad is in peace.   ©Jenny Kwak   *   I called W. In a voice that sounded much more cheerful than it did the last time we spoke, he asked me when I was going to come see him again. “Isn’t it almost winter break for you guys?” he asked, before going on to list all the things one could do only in New Hampshire. For example, New Hampshire didn’t have sales tax, which made it the perfect place for buying pricier items like laptops. The bridge leading from the back gates of W’s campus lay between New Hampshire and Vermont, which meant that different state laws applied depending on where you were on the bridge: you could legally dive off the bridge up to a certain point but past that point, any diving would be considered illegal. Since W had taken to yachting recently, he suggested we could take a yacht out on the lake during my next visit and enjoy a barbeque. Listening to W go on and on, I almost forgot my current situation. I told W I was leaving the US soon. Silence. After a while, W said, “You’ll do well anywhere you go. Good luck.”   *   I couldn’t bring myself to call Aya. Instead, every night in the dining room, I played the CD she gave me. Throwing open the windows, I gazed at the reddening skies and listened to the guitar strumming of Kotaro Oshio. After a while, I found myself imagining, rather foolishly, that everything was going to be okay. The title of the third song on the CD, which I would listen to over and over again until darkness had settled all around me, was “珋狀狗初矽蒢忺.” Before I could fall asleep, I suddenly felt the urge to look up the meaning behind those words. I brought my phone’s translation app up to the Japanese words and within three seconds, I had the result. The Time You Gave Me.   *   I went for a walk on the last night of 2012, as I did every night. The neighbors had decorated their front yards with Santa Claus, the Virgin Mary, and Baby Jesus, but because Christmas had already come and gone, the decorations looked rather sad and lonely. I took my usual route in the direction of Englewood Cliffs where I saw fewer LED lights and Christmas ornaments but more darkness and stillness that had settled in their place. The residents here must not feel the need to celebrate any birthdays or commemorate anyone’s passing. I came to a stop on a wedge of sidewalk where the light from the streetlamps didn’t reach and stood staring into the darkness. Just then, I saw something moving in the shadows and felt as if I might keel over. It was a deer. The deer, whose sex and age I couldn’t determine, took a few steps out of the shadows and looked up at me. I stood there locking eyes with the animal, as if I’d been caught in an act or as if I was possessed. No one had told me what to do in the event of meeting a deer. I felt as if I were having a conversation with this animal at the intersection where pitch darkness and shadowy light met. It was the sort of chance meeting I’d never understand or ever remember. Soon, I turned and headed slowly down the hill. When I reached the foot of the hill and looked back up, there was nothing there.   *   I went through my furniture and other belongings. I gave away some of my things to the people I knew from church, then sold what I could on HeyKorean.com or Craigslist. Lastly, I took the remaining items to the neighborhood recycling center, where anyone was free to come and take things they needed. As for my 2010 Volkswagen Golf, I sold it to the highest bidding used car salesman. Just like that, the car that I’d bought for 18,000 dollars was sold off for 8,900. When I first came to the US, all my belongings could fit inside two black, expandable travel bags with spinner wheels that I’d bought in Namdaemun market. After going through all my things and letting go of most of them, I was once again left with the same two bags.   *   On the morning of January 7, 2013, a Monday, I called a Korean cab driver to take me to JFK Airport. After giving most of the cash I had left to the driver, along with a tip, it hit me that I was in fact leaving this country. My phone, which was still working since I hadn’t canceled my service yet, rang with a call from my cousin in Raleigh. “Why didn’t you come see us?” After I hung up, I imagined the things my younger nephew might be saying in broken Korean. “Samchon left. Samchon went to Korea.” After getting past immigration, I was waiting around to board my plane when I suddenly noticed a commotion around the gate. I stood up, thinking that maybe I might catch a glimpse of a celebrity, when I noticed a small Asian man waiting before the gate to board first class. The man, who was smiling faintly while surrounded by huge, black bodyguards, was PSY, the singer and entertainer. This was around the same time that “Gangnam Style” was a phenomenon in the US He must’ve been on his way home, after performing his hit Korean song with the members of the TV show Infinite Challenge at the Times Square New Year’s Eve event, which I’d seen on the news. Seeing PSY, I realized that at least for now, the most popular Korean word in the world must be gangnam. Finally, boarding began. Passengers with first-class tickets were invited to board the plane first. Watching PSY board the plane from where I stood in line for economy class passengers, I took out my phone and attempted to take a quick photograph. Just then, my phone connected to the erratic airport WiFi and managed to receive a message from Jihye. Reading the blue iMessage bubble, I learned that I had forever lost a beloved word in my mother language.     Translated by Amber Hyun Jung Kim   Elementary Korean Minumsa, 2020

  by Ji Hyuck Moon