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Authors

PROFILELim Solah

Lim Solah is a poet-cum-novelist. She has published the poetry collection Strange Weather and Good People, the short story collection Snow, Person, and Snowperson, and the novel The Best Life. She has received the JoongAng New Writer’s Award for Poetry, Munhakdongne College Fiction Prize, and Sin Dong-yup Prize for Literature. She received the Arts Council Korea’s Young Art Frontier Grant in 2014.

FICTION

Anatomical Part Vol. 63 Spring 2024

Eunha’s onni sat on the edge of Eunha’s bed. She wiped Eunha’s face with a warm, wet towel. She asked if she’d had a good dream. Eunha reached out to the bedside table. She groped around the top. “Where is it?” “In the drawer,” her onni replied, wiping the corners of Eunha’s mouth clean. Eunha opened the bedside table drawer. She took out the glass bottle. She put the bottle on her chest and looked at it. “It’s scary,” Onni said as she wiped Eunha’s hands. Eunha liked all things that her onni found scary. The opposite was also true. Her onni was afraid of all things Eunha liked. Horror movies. Taking the dark alley home at night. Staring at the endless depths of the ocean while snorkeling. Bungee jumping. When the two of them were together, no one guessed that they were sisters. It took a careful look to see their common attributes. Like thick earlobes and large kneecaps, wide feet and fingernails. They only shared features that went unnoticed. Eunha was exceptionally tall while her onni was exceptionally short. Her onni had unusually large eyes while Eunha’s were unusually small. Eunha liked to wear t-shirts with skulls or motorcycle jackets with studs, while Onni liked chiffon blouses and pastel-colored trench coats. They wondered themselves how two sisters could be so different. Any time the subject came up, Onni would explain how firstborn children are socialized to be dependent while the youngest grow up more free-spirited. Eunha would nod in agreement, thinking to herself that her onni’s theory made as much sense as the blood type and personality correlations that people spouted over drinks. When Eunha proposed that they hop on a scooter and fly down to Ban Kum Waterfall, her onni said it sounded scary. Eunha liked to scare her scared onni even more. She yelled—Boo!—in the middle of a horror movie, suddenly disappeared and ducked behind a car on their walk home after dark, made the signal for shark while snorkeling, warned her about the dangers of bungee jumping while bungee jumping. Onni, scared, couldn’t laugh again until she reached the next level of fear. Eunha hit the gas and Onni wrapped her arms tight around Eunha. She laughed and pulled the throttle harder, and she hugged her tighter. The tire lost traction on the road. The scooter skidded as it fell over. Warmth spread over the top of Eunha’s foot. Onni flew into the shrubbery by the road. “What do you mean it’s scary?” Onni applied the rest of the lotion on the back of Eunha’s hand without an answer. Eunha turned her eyes back to the glass bottle. Eunha was due for a dressing change in the morning. Eunha got out of the bed and sat in the wheelchair. In front of the treatment room, her onni gave the wheelchair over to the nurse. Eunha reached out and tugged at Onni’s arm. “I’m scared,” Eunha and Onni said at the same time. Onni freed herself from Eunha’s grasp. The top of the foot was unveiled as the gauze came off one layer at a time. The toes emerged. The thumb toe was the only one intact. The second toe was cut off at the joint, the skin pulled over, and sewn up. The third toe was gone. Stitches lay like a centipede where the base of the toe would have been. The fourth and pinky toes were rotated, toenails now facing in toward the thumb toe. Each had a pin sticking out the top like a cherry stem. The stitches were as dark as a swarm of ants on an apricot pit. “Does it hurt?” the nurse asked. Her onni stood by the door as Eunha was wheeled out of the treatment room. Her eyes were bloodshot. They were puffy like Eunha’s eyes. * The early mornings began with the sound of scooters. Eunji looked outside. A few scooters were racing down the eight-lane road. This was the sound she had to live with from this time of day to the late hours of night. Wheels turning like the blades of a blender, the scooters raced down the street, ready to mow down everything in their way. Thousands of blender blades would zip along today as well. Her dongsaeng was asleep under the white, fluffy covers. She could hear her even breathing and the howls of the scooters at the same time. Eunji left the hospital room. She waited for the hospital administration office to open. The blinds went up at the window and the office door opened. The documents she needed for the insurance claim weren’t ready yet. Kanchana said firmly that the documents would be ready before Eunha was discharged. Eunji pleaded with her again to hurry. She could not have anything else go wrong. Kanchana was obviously vexed by Eunji’s visits. Eunha wasn’t able to eat dinner the night before. She said she couldn’t swallow a thing. The doctor said that she had to eat well for the bones to reattach. The cart arrived in time for breakfast, and Eunji pulled out the tray table on the bed. The kitchen worker wearing a cap passed her a meal tray. Watching the food get cold, Eunji woke up her dongsaeng. Eunha took the glass bottle out of the drawer and put it on the tray table. Looking at the glass bottle, she picked up her fork. She pushed around the macaroni in the hot peach yogurt, and licked the bit of yogurt off the fork. She said the peach yogurt tasted like cilantro. Eunji took her dongsaeng to the treatment room and went by the hospital administration office again. She bought a Wi-Fi pass, followed up on the documents she needed for insurance, and asked if there was a supermarket near the hospital. Kanchana retrieved a map from a drawer and circled a spot with a red pen. She wrote “TESCO” under the circle. With the map in her pocket, Eunji waited outside the treatment room. Through the open door came the cries of dozens of people. Dozens of nurses asked in response, “Does it hurt?” When the scooter was lifted off her dongsaeng’s foot, one of her toes was split at the end and had turned into red pulp. The other toes had been mashed. The bone was sticking out of one, and another was dangling by a tendon. Eunji took her dongsaeng back to her hospital room, crossed the lobby, and headed out of the hospital. She stood before the eight-lane road. Hundreds of scooters were flying by like arrows. Eunji took out the map and placed her finger on the circle. Far in the distance stood a huge building bearing the sign, TESCO. The pedestrian light came on. Like a kindergartener, she raised a hand to signal she was crossing and limped across the road. Among the burn and amputation patients, she couldn’t ask someone to have a look at her knee. She didn’t get a chance to tell anyone that she’d hurt her knee, either. The light turned red. Eunji stood on the midline and waited for the light to turn green again. Scooters honked at her as they passed by. Blender blades charged at her. Scooters flew past the front and back of her. Her shirt flapped against her. The scooters weaved acrobatically ahead to pass one another. They were all charging ahead wearing flipflops like the ones her dongsaeng had been wearing. ‘Sickening.’ She pictured all of them falling over and all of their feet being ground up like her dongsaeng’s. Eunji shut her eyes tight and opened them again. Restaurants were lined up in a row at the food court. The Italian restaurant smelled like tom yum goong. The Chinese restaurant smelled like tom yum goong. All the dishes in all the restaurants bore a whiff of tom yum goong. Eunji found a Japanese restaurant that did not smell like tom yum goong, but it was an udon place for vegetarians. Her dongsaeng needed to eat meat. She needed protein to recover. The udon restaurant owner said that there was a sushi place in another building nearby. Eunji thought sushi might work. The sushi chef opened the refrigerator. He got out a large bundle wrapped in cloth. The cloth was pulled back one layer at a time to reveal a chunk of flesh. He placed it on the cutting board. The sharp blade cut smoothly into the soft flesh. Lining up the pieces of flesh on the cutting board, the chef said with a broad smile that he specially cut them into thick slices. When she returned to the hospital room with a shopping bag, Eunha was hunched over, staring into the glass bottle. Eunji asked her to put it away at least for meals, but she did not respond. She produced the sushi from the shopping bag. Eunha put a piece in her mouth and chewed. She kept chewing and didn’t swallow. She ate two pieces and said she couldn’t eat anymore. Eunji peeled the fish off the rice. She encouraged her to at least eat the balls of rice. Dongsaeng ate a few of them saying she could smell the raw fish on them. Eunji called the insurance agency. They said that the policy might not cover scooter accidents. She called the airline. She confirmed her standby tickets had been booked, and requested wheelchair service. She called a clinic in Korea specializing in reattaching digits. She begged for them to move up the appointment date. She called the credit card company and asked if she could have her credit line increased. She received a message that her cell phone roaming charge had exceeded one million won. * It felt as though someone was pulling out Eunha’s toenail and turning it over. Eunji was asleep on the sofa. Eunha picked up the bottled water and painkillers. She swallowed four tablets of Tylenol. She had to take Tylenol every three hours. That was thirty-two tablets per day. The nurse flat out denied that there was any such thing as a morphine drip in Thailand. Two cups of water with three tablets of Tylenol was pretty filling. Her fever went up and down and she felt sick to her stomach all day long. When she tried to sit up, all the blood in her body shot toward her foot. She lay flat on her back and drew her knees up. She craned her neck and looked through the space between her knees down at her foot. The foot was bandaged, but she could feel the wet alcohol-soaked cotton balls between her toes. It felt as if dozens of tiny needles were being driven under her nonexistent toenail and suddenly ripping it out. Eunha held her breath. The pain was palpable, but the toe was gone. Eunha reached over and groped around for the bottle. Her onni had put it away in the drawer again. She never touched the bottle directly without wrapping it with a towel or tissue paper first. Like someone afraid of making direct contact with a bug as they try to pick it up, she held the bottle by the tips of her fingers and put it away in the drawer. Eunha wrapped both hands around the bottle. She stared hard at it. The bottle contained something ambiguous. It was not as important as a finger or as unimportant as a hair. The pain came like a door bursting open and disappeared like a door slamming shut. The memories of that moment worked in the same way. Each time the phantom pain came over her, she had to look at the bottle to convince herself that the toe was no longer there. When Eunha woke up, she was laying in the dark recovery room waiting for the door to open. The door opened, white light poured in, and a nurse came over to her. She put something in Eunha’s hand. It was a glass bottle with Eunha’s toe floating in it. Her onni came in. She had long blades of grass in her hair. “They cut it off.” She held up the bottle for her onni to see. Her white T-shirt stained with mud, grass, and drops of blood read I LOVE THAILAND. “Why are you giving this back?” Eunji asked the Thai nurse. The nurse, who was pushing the bed, stopped to gather her hands together in prayer and said, “Because it is part of your body that god gave you. Here, we give removed body parts back to the patient.” The physical therapists picked out a pair of crutches. Eunha tucked the crutches under her armpits and tried walking one step at a time. The armpits quickly ached when she put her weight on them, and her wrists hurt when she pressed on the grips. The physical therapist explained that not letting the muscles turn stiff was just as important as the bones reattaching. She warned that Eunha might end up with a limp if her muscles hardened. * Eunji bought rolls of bandages at the drugstore. She wrapped the bandages around the grips of the crutches. Eunha said that her hands still hurt. Eunji took out sanitary pads from her backpack. She wrapped one on each of the grips and armpit rests on the crutches and bandaged them up again. Eunha clapped. She laughed to think what they would say if airport security asked what they were hiding in the crutches. This was the first Eunji and her dongsaeng chuckled together in a long time. Eunji took her dongsaeng to sit out in the hallway while the cleaning staff cleaned the room. Eunha practiced walking on her crutches. She said that her phantom pain occurred less frequently now. The cleaning staff came to the door holding up a bar of soap and asked if they wanted to toss it. Eunji and her dongsaeng shook their heads at the same time. The cleaning staff held up a broken hair tie and asked if they wanted to toss it. Eunji and her dongsaeng nodded at the same time. They shook and nodded their heads at the same time. The cleaning staff returned with the glass bottle. Eunji nodded. Dongsaeng shook her head. Temperatures hovered above 30 degrees centigrade outside. The toe in the bottle expanded. The details became clearer as if seen through a magnifying glass. Little bits of skin came off the surface of the amputated toe and floated in the bottle. * As Eunji said, she couldn’t bring it home with her and display it like a souvenir. Still, she couldn’t throw it in the trash as she would a snapped hair tie. Eunha held the bottle up in her sister’s face. Eunji turned away. Eunha glared at her. Her onni glared back. Her eyes turned red around the edges. On the television, a close-up drone camera shot of a beach filled the screen. Yellow parasols stood in a row on the sandy beach and colorful canoes floated in the water. The shot continued as the drone flew over the canopies of palm trees and dove deep into the jungle. A praying mantis snatched up a katydid eating a snail. The praying mantis held the katydid with its front legs and tore into the katydid tail first. Its abdomen gone and half its thorax ripped out, the katydid continued to eat the snail with unwavering focus. More developed organisms have more delicate senses, and mental faculties based in cognition and intuition are crucial, said the voiceover. The katydid’s lack of sensitivity was characteristic of an inferior organism, the voiceover added. The katydid reminded Eunha of her onni; she only focused on the facts in front of her. The whole time as they watched the documentary, followed by a tourist attraction advertisement, and then a TV drama, Eunha and her onni kept their distance like boxers circling each other in a ring. * Each time Eunha left the hospital room to see the doctor, she grabbed the glass bottle along with the crutches. Everywhere she went, she wanted to get up off the wheelchair and practice walking, and she wanted to look at the toe. The sizzling asphalt was cooling. Eunji got off the bench. She walked along the line between the road and the adjacent field. A pack of stray dogs roamed the field. Their backbones were poking out under the skin and their tongues hung out of their mouths. They saw Eunji and barked at her. She kept her head down and walked on, one foot on the field and the other on the road. She looked back each time she heard a scooter coming up. ‘It’s scary.’ There were scary things that needed to be done and scary things that needed to be avoided. Her dongsaeng could not tell the difference between the two. Eunji thought her dongsaeng was like the katydid: blinded by the impulse of the moment, she could not think of the possible consequences. This scared Eunji. She was scared of her dongsaeng’s inability to sympathize with others’ fears. Eunji shook her head and clenched her fists. When she thought of that day, she was reminded of the bottle, and the sight of the bottle brought back images from that day. Eunji went into a shoe store. She looked back and forth between a pair of pastel canvas shoes and vintage washed canvas shoes. She chose a bright white pair of canvas shoes. * The bottle left a ring of water on the table. The fluid was starting to leak. Eunha carried the bottle into the bathroom in the palm of her hand. She opened the top. The skin of the toe was in tatters, bloodless and dark. Veins spilled out of the severed section like noodles from a spring roll. Eunha moved the toe into a cup they had used for rinsing after brushing teeth. She filled the cup at the tap. The toe swam in the swirl of water. Eunha was glad to see her toe move, if only in the water. * Eunji filled the tub. She stirred in shower gel to make a bubble bath. She brought a chair into the bathroom and sat her dongsaeng in it. She slowly helped Dongsaeng lower herself into the tub and lie back. She washed her hair and wiped her down all over. Streaks of grime flowed down her body. She squeezed toothpaste onto a toothbrush and put it in her dongsaeng’s hand. She turned the tap and picked up the rinsing cup. Eunji screamed and threw the cup. The cup fell on the bathroom floor. The toe rolled away. Eunha reached out from the tub and strained to reach the toe. Eunji dried off her dongsaeng and dried her hair with a dryer. Eunha sat in willful silence. Eunji took out the canvas shoes and put one on the uninjured foot. She got two bottles of yogurt drinks from the refrigerator, put one in front of Eunha, and drank the other. Dongsaeng poured her yogurt drink down the drain. She rinsed the bottle with water. She put the toe in the bottle. She stretched a plastic bag taut over the rim and sealed it with a rubber band. The yogurt bottle read SWEET PU! PU! Under the writing was a cartoon red panda in relief drinking yogurt. Behind the winking red panda, the toe floated. Eunji turned on her cell phone and pulled up the calculator. She calculated the cost of the hospital bill to date, the plane ticket, and the physical therapy her dongsaeng would need over and over. She had already made up her mind to sell the car when she returned to Korea. She would have to take the bus and transfer twice on the subway to get to work by public transportation. She would have to get up an hour early and go to bed an hour late. She would not be able to drive anyway. The image of her flying into the shrubbery at the side of the road would replay every time she hit the gas. Eunji wanted to protect her dongsaeng, and Dongsaeng wanted to protect the bottle.* Eunha watched as her onni made a list of things to throw away. She took inventory of the contents of the backpack and checked each item. She put the throw pile at the foot of the sofa and lined up the things she would pack in front of the backpack. In order to carry the backpack and push the wheelchair, she needed to consolidate their things down to one bag. Looking at the objects lined up by the backpack, Eunha wondered if she should add the bottle to the ranks. The passports were placed right by the bag. Next to them were a pair of underwear and socks folded neatly in a zipper bag. The chargers were tied together with a rubber band. The “Emergencies” chapter of the Thai conversation book was cut out and held together with a paper clip. “What are you going to do with that?” Eunji asked, pointing at the bottle. Eunha squeezed it tight in her hand. “It’s my body.” “No, it’s an anatomical part.” “Does this look like a piece of flesh to you? Like sashimi?” “Does it not look like a piece of flesh to you?” Eunji squatted and returned to packing. She wasn’t willing at the moment to accept that some things could not be thought of in terms of utility. “Can’t you think of it as a souvenir?” Eunji was about to put a bundle of Tylenol boxes in the bag when she stopped and looked over at Eunha. “You’re taking it home as a trophy.” Eunha thought of a bull with spears stuck in its body like a sea urchin. The bull fighter would unsheath a long blade and drive it in one breath right between the bull’s eyes. When the bull fell, the bull fighter would cut off its ears and tail. They were his trophy. Eunha thought of the people in black-and-white photographs posing proudly with the heads of enemies they’d decapitated with scythes. The thought of the horrifying severed heads and the even more horrifying joy in the smiles. Eunha shook her head. “I’m taking it with me.” “And then what are you going to do with it?” Eunha didn’t know what to do with it. Or what to do with herself without a toe. “I’m taking it with me.” * Kanchana said she would give her the documents after the bill was settled. Eunji passed her credit card to her. The credit card was maxed out and declined. She gave her another card. This too was maxed out and declined. Eunji called the credit card company. She raised the limit as high as it would go. The concern in Kanchana’s eyes finally dissolved into a smile. She put the hospitalization record and documents for the insurance company in a clear folder and passed it to Eunji. Eunji smiled as well. Kanchana gathered her hands together and bowed at Eunji. Eunji did the same. “Khop khun kha.” This was the phrase Eunji said the most during her time at the hospital. Eunji returned to Eunha’s hospital room. She put her backpack on. She pushed her dongsaeng’s wheelchair. Eunha had just been wheeled out into the hallway when she looked back. Eunji fetched the crutches leaning by the bed and passed them to her dongsaeng, who hugged them with both hands. Kanchana and the nurses were waiting in the lobby to see them off. Residential areas fell away as the taxi got up onto an overpass and an open road appeared before them. Billboards bearing resort ads appeared from time to time as they passed through the outskirts of the city. Eunha felt around in her pockets. “I forgot my toe.” Dongsaeng insisted they go back for it. Eunji checked the time. They would miss their flight if they went back. If they missed their flight, they would miss the appointment at the digit reattachment specialist and the podiatry clinic at the university hospital. They would have to get another appointment and buy new plane tickets. If there were no seats available, they might not be able to return for a few weeks. * “One point fourteen million won for the plane tickets, 470,000 won a day for the hospital room, food, and treatment. That is the cost of going back for your toe.” Eunha watched as the number on the cab meter climbed fast. “And it’s not just 1.61 million. 1.14 million for the plane ticket you wasted. Another 1.14 million for the new tickets. If there are no seats, we’ll have to stay for at least three days. International roaming fees for booking a flight and a spot at the hospital will be 200,000 at the very least. Ten thousand a day for udon and snacks.” The numbers that Onni listed implored on her behalf. “Five thousand per day for Wi-Fi. Forty thousand for roundtrip cab fare. A total of 3,975,000 won. It’s 485,000 won for every extra day we are here. Do you have 4 million won? Is that toe worth 4 million to you?” Eunha thought about how her onni said many times over that she was scared. Fear was a sort of desire, too. The desire to avoid damage costs. She thought of the toe that her onni was so afraid of. For the first time, she guessed at the price of that bottle. How much value could be assigned to a body part that one could not use? She thought about the price of the second toe that was half gone and the thumb toe that was fully attached. If it was Eunji’s toe in the bottle, would Eunji have gone back for it? She would have left it. If it was Eunha’s heart in the bottle, would Eunji have gone back for it? Probably yes. If it was Eunji’s heart in the bottle, would Eunha have gone back for it? Four million won was a huge sum that would take Eunha three months of working eight hours a day to earn. It was more money than Eunha ever had at one time. Even so, she would not have given up her onni’s heart for it. What if it was Eunji’s toe in the bottle? Eunha couldn’t say. How was a heart different from a toe? When they returned to Korea, Eunji would get pedicures once in a while on her pretty, intact toes and toenails. Once a month, she would pay 40,000 won to get her feet done. The cost of Eunha getting her toe back was tantamount to her onni getting her feet done for the next eight years and change. Each of their pleas was a desire to protect what was theirs. A plea was a desire of sorts. Each of their pleas would only resonate within themselves. Eunha became scared of the pleas. No. She was scared of the plea trapped in the bottle. The isolation of a plea was the scariest of all. * In the end, Eunji had the cab driver turn back. The hospital room had been cleaned out already. Eunji went to the cleaning staff. She was directed to a large bag containing all the trash from the countless hospital rooms. Eunji went through the trash. Among the bandages stained with blood and pus, used toilet paper, and a disposable plate with food still clinging to it, Eunji found the bottle. Eunji and her dongsaeng stayed near the hospital for another four days. Eunji did not put the bottle away in a drawer. Dongsaeng ate dutifully. Upon arriving at Incheon Airport, Eunji took out the hooded jacket from the bag and helped her dongsaeng put it on. She placed the bag through the baggage scanner. “Please open your bag.” The security check agent ordered her to take out the bottle. Pointing at the bandaged foot and then the bottle wrapped in a towel, Eunha said, “It’s my toe.” “May I see the embalming documentation, please?” Eunha said that it was not embalmed. The security screening agent informed them that it was a violation of quarantine law to enter the country with an anatomical part that was not embalmed. Eunji asked what she had to do to get her bottle back. “It will be registered as an infectious biohazard waste and incinerated by a specialized waste disposal company.” The agent handed her a waiver form. Translated by Jamie Chang
[Excerpt] The Best Life Vol.48 Summer 2020

The ajeossis sometimes took us to unmanned love hotels, or motels as they were called, telling us they’d find us a place to sleep. We would then all sit in a circle and drink. Everything was different from the time we’d gone to one with friends. These men our father’s age drank hoping we’d get drunk; we drank hoping to cut the night short. The ajeossis and the three of us were like the black and white pieces on a chess board. We picked up our glasses as if making a careful move. We applied strategies to defeat one another. Some ajeossis tried a conciliatory approach, promising to take us to the department store or enroll us at a beauty school. Others outright tried touching us, asking to see how big our hands were against theirs or telling us that the shape of our earlobes suggested good fortune. Then there were ajeossis who put a wad of cash in the middle of the room and suggested that we play a game. One man who’d put down the cash said he’d give us a bill every time we won. If we lost, one of the three of us had to take off a piece of clothing, he said. Sometimes, telling them that they reminded us of our fathers worked to fend them off. At other times, an explicit display of contempt did the trick. And during the stripping games, the fact that I wore layer after layer of clothes after the shopping bag I’d been carrying my clothes in had ripped worked beautifully. The ajeossis weren’t people to us. They were just men. But there was one ajeossi who appeared to be a person for a short while. The bakery clerk was putting away the few pastries that were left in the display case. The owner of the clothes shop had turned off the store lights and was balancing the accounts at the counter in the dark. All the stores that were open during the day were closing up, while the unlit pubs and drinking joints were getting ready to turn on their signs. We sat hunkered down on the steps of a store that had closed early. We hugged our knees and tried guessing the color of lights that would soon light up the streets. One ajeossi was pulling down the shutter of a store across the street. It was a photo sticker shop. A cart passed along the street between him and us. Two women who had been selling jewelry on the street were pulling the cart that was now covered with a sheet. The shutter was down, and the ajeossi secured it to the ground with a lock. After pocketing the key, he was picking up his small bag when he turned around and spotted us. He flinched in surprise. Then he hugged his bag to his chest. Hesitating a moment, he walked on by, trying to avoid our eyes just like all the other people. “The fuck is he startled for?” We each spat on the ground. And we rubbed our spit into the ground with our feet and watched it stick to the bottom of our shoes and stretch long. When we looked up, there was a 10,000-won bill in front of our eyes. It was trembling. “Buy yourselves something to eat.” The photo sticker shop ajeossi was standing in front of us. Beads of sweat coated his eyelids. He smiled. That was the first time I saw someone draw a long line with the corners of their mouths into a smile. He told us about ways to take unique and funny-looking photos for the photo stickers. Every time we said, “Click,” pretending to press the camera shutter button, he struck a weird pose. Sweat kept pouring down his forehead, past his eyebrows, onto his eyelids, and into his eyes. But instead of wiping it away, he kept on blinking and posing. He was sweating like a pig to make us laugh. He told us about his plan to go to the beach and sell shaved ice for a month. He took out his smartphone and showed us a picture of the ice shaver machine he’d already bought. “I’ll provide all the supplies, and you can sell shaved ice. People will buy more if pretty girls sell them, don’t you think? And you won’t even have to work all day. Just five hours when it’s the hottest. The three of you can sell about twenty bowls. We can sit under the parasol, watch the ocean, eat shaved ice. You can go do whatever you want after work. I’ll even get you girls a place to stay. You don’t have to live on the streets like this. Come work with me.” I pictured the ocean dotted with colorful floats. And the multicolored gummies that go on shaved ice and the sparkling sugar crystal coating on those gummies. Then I thought of the money that the customers would hand to me. And the fireworks that we would light up on the night beach. I felt like we’d run into a great business partner. I told him my real name and age. I didn’t really think that either of it meant anything, but I didn’t want to lie to him. I wanted to go with him. I wanted to listen to the stories of the person who would sweat buckets to try and make me laugh every day. He thanked me for telling him my real name. He took out a notebook from his bag and wrote down my name and age. “You name is like a gift. So I’m going to keep it safe.” He placed the notebook in his breast pocket and patted it. “I lived like that, in the past.” I tilted my head sideways in curiosity. But his face cracked in a smile without a word. The business partner ajeossi said he’d just sleep for a few hours in the corner of the room. We climbed up onto the double bed and tried to sleep. But I couldn’t really fall asleep. Every time I opened my eyes, all my senses were focused on the ajeossi lying in the corner. He was balled up like a cocoon stuck to the underside of a leaf. I heard the second hand ticking away. And the sound of the cars driving by. Headlights swept across the room. When the room lit up for a second, I noticed the ajeossi lying stretched on his stomach like a lizard, looking at us. Slowly, like the ticking second hand, he crawled toward us over a long period of time. He even stopped moving for a while and faked snoring. I felt sorry for him as he tried his best to pretend to be asleep. He finally got close to our bed when it started to get light outside. I got a sniff of his stench and wondered how much he sweated overnight. I imagined the trail of sweat he must have left on the linoleum. He reached his hand up to the bed. So-yeong, who had been sleeping on the edge of the bed, sat up. “There was a bug on my stomach.” She stroked her stomach and looked down at the ajeossi, lying on the floor below with his eyes closed tight. She moved to the other side of the bed and took the farthest spot away from him. Pushed to the side closest to him, I cracked my eyes open and watched him. When he reached his hand into the bed, pretending to be asleep, I brushed it away like I was doing it in my sleep. “Let’s get outta here.” I shook A-ram awake. We came up with a lie about having to go get some sanitary pads and ran away from the motel. On our way out, we stole his bag. He chased us. The three of us spread out in different directions, but he followed me. He caught up to me and jerked me by the hair. “You fucking bitch.” With my hair caught in his grip, I showed him my hands. I didn’t have the bag. He put his hands in my pockets. They were empty. He started crying. His jaw was trembling. He was spewing curses with a pleading look on his face. “Please don’t kill me,” I started crying as well. He let go of my hair. The ajeossi and I stood face to face, crying. I started backing away. His head sank to his chest. I saw his tears hit the concrete. He turned around. That was the last I saw of the ajeossi, who had been human for a little while. Both he and I felt sorry for each other, but we couldn’t help each other. The ajeossi was still an ajeossi, and a runaway teen was still a runaway teen. Every time an ajeossi pulled me by the hair, I pleaded with them to not kill me. Sometimes, they slapped me on the streets. I noticed how weak I was every time a big strong hand met with my cheek, sending my head to one side with nearly enough force to snap my neck. I remembered something from when I was ten. I’d walked all the way to a neighborhood I didn’t recognize. I was holding a stiff dead chick in my hands. I went all the way up to the rooftop of a tall apartment building. Chanting a spell I’d learned from a comic book, I tossed the dead chick into the sky. But instead of flying away, it plummeted to the ground. It flattened onto the flowerbed without even making a sound. Holding tight onto the railing, I looked down at it for a little while. Then I took everything out of my backpack and started throwing them down the building one by one. I hurled my marbles and textbooks into the air, and I opened my pencil case and chucked away the colored pencils and a mechanical pencil. I even took out the mechanical pencil leads from its case and tossed them down the building as well. Then I walked all the way down and out of the building. The things I’d thrown down were scattered about on the flowerbed, broken, crumpled, or bent out of shape. I stood there until everything inside my head turned white. When the contour lines of all the objects disappeared into the whiteness, I saw a black line that stood out, like a ringing in my ears, except this was in my eyes. I picked it up. It snapped in half. That was the first time I realized that only the mechanical pencil leads flew lightly into the air and landed without breaking. A runaway teen was weak like a mechanical pencil lead. Because she could easily break, she didn’t. Once, twice, I counted the number of times the ground zoomed by in a blur every time an ajeossi held up his hand and my head snapped to the side. Around the time the ground started spinning below me, someone always came to rescue us. And those who rescued us from the ajeossi who hit us were some other ajeossi on the streets. In the morning, we headed up to the top of the apartment building where we kept our belongings. We were always sleepy. We never slept deeply. The sensor lights came on. They weren’t noticeable because it was already light outside. Yawning, A-ram said, “None of the men we met were really bad. They were just all pathetic . . .” “Pathetic men are all would-be offenders,” So-yeong cut her short. “It doesn’t matter whether they’re good or bad.” “To fifteen-year-olds?” I asked. “Right.” We crouched down and huddled together to get some sleep. Even as we were sleeping, the sensor lights kept turning on and off. There were times when oppas—young men and boys older than us—told us they’d buy us a drink. After the night passed and right before the sun came up, the white collars, women, and the pimps were almost gone, and only some ajeossis and oppas wandered the streets, their eyes roving the surroundings. We realized that they’d failed to pick up girls all night. The loser boys talked to us. They were a pair, kind of like a comic duo of a fatso and a bean pole. We went from one twenty-four-hour drinking joint to another. Every time we headed to a different place to drink, A-ram fell for one of the oppas, while one of the oppas came to like So-yeong. Fixing her makeup in the bathroom, So-yeong said, “As if.” One night, A-ram disappeared. We were pub-hopping, and when I looked behind me, she was gone. And so was the oppa who was walking with her. So-yeong and I went around looking for her until office workers with company ID cards around their necks poured out of buildings for lunch. We went to the pubs we’d been to during the night and checked the areas packed with seedy love hotels. But A-ram was nowhere to be found. Around the time children in school uniforms were heading home, we gave up. We returned to the top floor of the apartment building. There, we found A-ram sleeping on her side on the landing between the steps. We shook her awake. A-ram sat up, wiping the saliva that seeped from the corner of her mouth. “You’re back,” she said. The neck of her t-shirt had been stretched out, and the sleeves were frayed. One of her eyes was so swollen that it was closed shut. Her lower lip was torn. A-ram touched the neck of her t-shirt and spoke as though she were sleep talking. “He hit me until I took my clothes off.” Then she lay back on the step and fell asleep again, smacking her lips. So-yeong and I stood before her for a long while. When night came, A-ram took off her old t-shirt and put on a new one. She said she’d promised to meet the oppa again. She put pink eyeshadow on the lid of her swollen eye. Every time the sensor light turned off, she waved the light on. “You said he forced himself on you.” “Right,” A-ram nodded, her eyes still glued to the mirror. “So why are you seeing him again?” She put down her mirror and stared at me. She touched her lower lips with her fingers. The sensor light went off. She waved her hand again. “Because I like him. He likes me too.” I gave a snort of disbelief. A-ram snorted back at me. “You little thing. People fight when they’re in love.” Every day for the next several days, A-ram went to meet him. Then he stopped coming to meet her at the appointed time. A-ram clutched the phone in the phone booth, leaving tearful voice messages, but the next day she met another oppa. She started hanging out with any oppa. She disappeared with them. She was raped by them. On the floor of a public bathroom, on the bench in a karaoke room, on the staircase of a building full of stores, next to a tree in a park. All the oppas who raped her told her that they loved her, and when they said that, A-ram came to love them. Over time, A-ram started spending time with ajeossis as well. They also raped her, and she came to love them too. “You like ajeossis?” A-ram was putting on makeup to cover up the bruise on her cheek. “Boys grow older and become men. If you talk to them, they’re the same.” “But they beat you.” I snatched away the mirror A-ram was using. “They need me.” Gripping the mirror, I closed my eyes. A-ram took my hand. Then she patted me on the back. I relaxed my grasp. A-ram took the mirror from my hand and went back to painting her face again.

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