Blood Sisters Read online

  “Sure. You need to get your tuition for the next semester ready, right? I’ll pay you in advance so you can go buy some pretty clothes. You’re wearing the same clothes all the time. When do you even wash them?”

  Embarrassed, I mumble that I haven’t eaten yet, so I need to get some food. In the kitchen, Eunyong whispers to me.

  “Yeoul, she’s trying to take you to her bar in Gwang-an. Be careful. Once you start working there, you can’t really leave … There was another woman who worked here and left to work at that bar, and she … changed.”

  “What kept the café owner from taking you there?”

  “I like it here. Sungyun Oppa2 is nice to me. And I’m still a high school senior—a super senior at that. The customers at the bars prefer college girls. I’m not that pretty anyway.”

  “Super senior would imply you’re actually prepping for the college entrance exam. I haven’t seen you crack a book once.”

  “What, you think I like living like this? My mom says I don’t need to go to college anyway. I’m just going to get married after making some nest egg money.”

  Eunyong and I make bibimbop in the kitchen. We mix the rice, bellflower roots, bean sprouts, some greens, and chili paste. The owner’s mom often cooks for us and sends the food to us via Sungyun. Sometimes she sends something simple. Rice, soup, and kimchi. Sometimes she sends marinated beef. She must be feeding us so that we’ll work hard at her daughter’s café. It’s fine when she doesn’t send us anything, we just cook ourselves ramen or pork cutlets, or order Chinese. Mothers seem to be their daughters’ guardian angels or their enemies, there is no middle ground.

  It’s time to close the café, but the toothbrush salesman walks in. His hair is wet. It must be raining outside. We were ready to close so we all stand awkwardly.

  “Come over here and eat some of this.” The toothbrush salesman puts a big cake box on the table. We are all hungry. Sungyun appears out of nowhere and starts eating the cake with his hands. After scarfing down the entire cake, we remember to thank him.

  The toothbrush salesman notices the music in the café. “Wait, you’re listening to Zarathustra?!”

  “You know this band? Yeoul said she’s the only one who knows them!” Eunyong sticks her tongue out and calls me a liar.

  “Your name is Yeoul? What’s your last name? I came here to see you the other day, but you weren’t here. I asked the owner about you.” As I examine him, I realize that he reminds me of the photograph of my father when he was young: his pupils float in the upper side of the whites, the bridge of his nose is well defined, and the corners of his mouth are turned upward. “I should introduce myself first. My name is Han Jihyun. I live nearby, so I hang out around here.”

  * * *

  I walk back home. I think of the café owner’s remark. Aldebaran, schmaldebaran. There’s not a single star to be seen, not even the moon can be seen in the sky tonight. I preferred the mandatory study halls, and nights I spent questioning what the point of my life even was, over working this pointless part-time job. I received my paycheck today, but I didn’t even open the envelope. It doesn’t feel like the hard-earned fruits of my labor. But maybe I’m overthinking all this, too influenced by Jimin’s Marxist ideology.

  On the sidewalk, I’m waiting for the light to turn green when someone slaps my back. I turn around to find my high-school friend.

  “Oh my God! Is that you, Hyunmi?”

  “Yeah! You look just the same.”

  “I thought you had gone to study abroad in America.”

  “No, my visa for America took too long to be processed, so I had to postpone my departure. I was actually going home after my going-away party with friends just now. I’ve been wondering what you’re up to. Miryong and Eunsook said they both tried to contact you for the party, but … what’s wrong with your stepmother? She cussed at them like a crazy person. I thought I wasn’t going to see you before I left. Let’s go somewhere and catch up.”

  2. Oppa is a term used to address an older brother and is also a term of endearment women sometimes use to address an older man.

  Blue Moon

  We head back to Instant Paradise. We walk a little apart from each other, giggling sporadically. I didn’t know I was going to use the key to the café other than to lock up the place. There is some light coming out of the café. Strange, it should be closed. I push the key into the lock. Click, I get an inexplicable bad feeling in my gut.

  “Hyunmi, don’t come in. Wait out here.” I slowly and quietly open the worn door to the café; the cobalt-blue paint is scratched off here and there. When I look inside, I notice a tipped-over backpack, Geography and Ethics textbooks spilling out of it.

  In the back corner near the DJ booth no one uses, the glaring butcher shop lighting is cast on Sungyun. His sweatpants are at his ankles, he’s leaning forward, his glutes flexed, looking like hunks of meat. He’s holding his penis like a pole made of meat. A girl with her black skirt pulled up to her chin is lying before him, her exposed lower body writhing. I place my hand over my mouth, start to close the door, and Sungyun turns toward me. Did he see that it was me? I feel his pupils tremble like the needle of the butcher shop scale weighing a cut of pork.

  I grab Hyunmi’s hand, my face feels cold, and we run down the stairs. Hyunmi suggests going to her car. The fume of her hot breath spills out of her mouth. We get into her car, and I lean into the seat. My head feels as foggy as the windshield.

  “Yeoul, let’s go see the sea.”

  I don’t respond.

  “Let’s go see the nighttime beach, go for a walk. I know it’s cold but it will be nice, no?”

  “No thanks. I don’t feel like it.”

  “Do you want the radio on?”

  “No.”

  Hyunmi pouts. “We haven’t seen each other for a long time, and like a miracle, we ran into each other. So why are you sullen? Aren’t you happy to see me? Don’t you know how much I liked you? Remember all the snacks, bento boxes, gifts, letters I gave you?” She chatters on.

  Back when we felt constantly and desperately in need of something, feeling unfulfilled and underdeveloped, when we felt like we were going to go crazy unless we immersed ourselves in something, she acted as though I was a boy that she liked. She pulled me in by my neck, tearing up on the bench in the school garden. In the night time under the magnolia tree, she begged me to put my finger into her pussy. She didn’t like that I had other friends and tried to keep me from going to the school snack bar with them. She followed me around, keeping me from going to the Fine Arts Club room. I found her irritating, but I never could refuse her lips that tasted like cherry candies.

  •

  Hyunmi lifts her head from the steering wheel to lean into me. I feel her earlobes against my neck. Her cheeks are wet and warm. She takes off her pearl earrings, and unbuttons her blouse. She moves over to straddle me, and kisses me lightly. She pushes her pale, firm breasts against my face.

  “Please, suck me.”

  “I don’t really feel like it.”

  “This is the last time we’ll be together. This one last time.”

  Okay, this will be the last time I’ll see you. So I’ll do what pleases you. In this heated moment, I feel like I understand her, even love her. Such confusing sensations. Our lonely connection. Our heated breath. Condensation drips down the window. I wish for the car to fly across the night sky into an alien world a million miles away, to travel through a dark nebula, never to return.

  Virus Complex

  I turn in the leave of absence form, so a long break is ahead of me. School break, banghak, letting go of the learning. Does it always feel this light when we let go of the things we’ve been holding on to? I walk quickly across the campus, blowing on my cold hands to warm them. I suddenly feel melancholy, thinking that I might not be able to see all this again—the school library as warm as a greenhouse, the frozen winter trees on campus. I watch the small creek that winds through campus. The cold wind cuts through m
y body. I’ve been wearing this thin reversible coat the past few months.

  A while back I stopped at my dad’s place to pick up some of my winter clothes, but he changed the lock, so I couldn’t get in. I kicked and shook the door, but it didn’t budge. A boy, the son of the renters next door, said hello. He kicked the soccer ball over, so we passed the ball back and forth for a little bit, but I eventually turned around to leave, feeling defeated, my hands in my pockets. The boy must have wanted to continue; he stood in front of me to keep me from leaving. I looked at the soccer ball and its crooked shadow. I ruffled the boy’s hair and forced a smile.

  I walk into the alley and a scooter almost hits me. Bitch! The man on the scooter spits on the ground, and starts the engine again. With a metal delivery case on the back, he speeds away like he’s racing someone. I doubt his shitty scooter can keep up with the speed of his yearning.

  When I get into the apartment, Jimin Sunbe is eating sweet and sour pork as though she’s been starved, her face half-buried in the bowl.

  “It’s so unlike you to order this expensive dish!” I sit next to Jimin and split the wooden chopsticks, and she runs to the sink and vomits.

  “Yeoul, don’t you smell mugwort incense from this? It’s foul.”

  “I haven’t started eating yet, so I don’t know.”

  “I ordered it because I was craving it, but now I can’t eat it.”

  I finish the sweet and sour pork, and watch Jimin lying on her side. Her eyes are swollen, and her skin looks rough under the bright light. “Sunbe, come sit over here. I wanna draw you.” Jimin smiles. Even when I showed off my paycheck, or got into a handstand and circled the room with my belly button showing, she didn’t smile. Even when I told her I finally finished Thus Spoke Zarathustra like she asked me to, and even when I told her I liked her poems she didn’t smile, but here she is, smiling slightly. It’s been a long time since I saw her pretty pink gums. On the back of the page ripped from the calendar, the last month of the year, I draw her. The face that aches, the lovely face slowly building on the white space. The pencil keeps slipping off the slippery paper. I feel like I am ruining her beautiful smile with my terrible drawing. Should I stop here and leave it unfinished?

  “I went to the café the other day.” The smile disappears and her face is filled with grief. She always looks so serious. It scares off some of the underclassmen from approaching her, but she doesn’t know that.

  “Oh yeah? When was that? Why didn’t you come in to say hi?”

  “I … It was last month. I went there around midnight, because I know that’s when you’re usually done with work. The person who was there told me you stepped out briefly, and invited me to wait for you inside. He offered me a drink … You didn’t come back. You must’ve gone home by then.”

  “Hmm. Was this person a man or a woman?

  “A man.”

  “That must be Sungyun. Why didn’t he say anything to me?” Jimin says she’s tired and lies down. She turns toward the wall. Her shoulders seem to tremble. Is she crying?

  * * *

  I don’t want to go to Instant Paradise. I hate Instant Paradise. I swing the door open, thinking about quitting. I’m not really late, but Eunyong chastises me, “What took you so long?” An unfamiliar girl in a school uniform politely bows.

  “You have something other than the school outfit, right? Get changed and wipe down the tables,” Eunyong tells her, then explains that the café owner hired another part-time employee because it’s summer, and when school is out we get more customers.

  “But a high schooler?”

  “I know, right? Sungyun chose her. She came by a few days ago to inquire about the job opening.” I notice a blue notebook on the counter, and without thinking much of it, I open it. The notebook is filled with dates and names.

  … (oral)/1987.3.24. Kim Sora (Donduk Female Merchant University. Sophomore. Tall-ish)/1987.4.1. Yeonsook Park (middle-school dropout. Fat. Bad body odor)/1987.7.25. Name unknown. (College student. Failed)

  Sungyun snatches the notebook out of my hand. He is furious. What the hell was that? It looked secretive like North Korean spy codes. I think I saw Eunyong’s name.

  Today is turning out to be the worst. Sungyun constantly barks at me like an angry dog. Wipe down the toilet seats. Why are these plates dirty? Who ate the fruit for sale? Smile at the customers, will ya? It gets to the point that I throw down the rag and scream at him.

  “Stop with all the nagging, Jesus Christ! Why are you so riled up? Fuck, you’re acting shitty!”

  “What? Shitty?! I know my aunt is spoiling you, but how dare you to keep calling me Sungyun. I’m way older than you, you know. Don’t you notice everyone else calls me Oppa?” He goes on forever spewing this kind of nonsense. As he listens to his own case he seems to get angrier. He trembles, his fist curled tight. It looks like he’s about to hit me. Eunyong pulls us apart, and the high school girl pretends not to watch us. You fucker, you’re some sort of pervert, aren’t you? I know you invite women here after we close. Are you a serial cheater? A rapist? What would happen if I started yelling all this? What would he say? What would he do? You can’t judge a book by its cover—I used to scoff at the saying, but I think in this case, it really might be true.

  * * *

  “Do you like working here? The owner said you’re majoring in German Literature, right? How many years in are you?” the toothbrush salesman asks.

  “I just finished my first year. I started working here a few months ago. I plan to quit soon though.”

  “Oh good! I need a German tutor. I was looking into getting a tutor or registering at the German learning institute.”

  That would be a great gig for me. Today has been shitty, but maybe things are looking up. The toothbrush salesman laughs loudly for some reason. He clarified earlier that he is a dentist, not a toothbrush salesman. He opened his office near Gupo, but there haven’t been many patients. He thought it might be good for business if he had a few more certificates on the wall, so he is prepping for the German certification exam. He tells me he studied a little German in high school, so he’ll be able to catch up quickly with my help, and playfully begs me to say yes to his proposal.

  I don’t really care about his back story. Tutoring is a good gig, much better than working at a café. And instead of tutoring some sniffling kids, I get to tutor a real man.

  The shithead seems to be glaring at me—Sungyun, no, segyoon, a virus, a fungus. When I lift my head he makes a gun shape with his thumb and index finger. He pulls the trigger. He sends me the message through his body language: You’ll regret what you did. I will destroy you.

  I feel my belly grip with an ache. No one knows how much pain I’m in. There are many people who are actually sick inside even if they look alright. My uterus feels like it’s been bombarded. It’s my period. I wish I wasn’t a woman …

  Saved by the dog. The café owner stops by with Nana and immediately starts rambling about her fever. When I ask her if I may be dismissed early today, she lets me go without hesitation. Person or animal, we all should take care of ourselves. I thought about telling her I quit, but Sungyun, that virus in human form, butts in to talk to her about the grocery and alcohol delivery, so I decide I’ll wait a few days.

  Merry Gloomy Christmas

  I fold up some toilet paper to squeeze into my panties. I have to walk slowly and awkwardly to keep the blood from leaking into my pants. I imagine that there is a philosopher slowly strolling through this city, brooding over deep philosophical thoughts, probably also constipated or on their period.

  Jimin is probably also brooding over her deep thoughts or is on her period. When we started living together—well, ever since I started leeching off of her, to be specific—our period cycles started synching up. Together, we bleed profusely, struggling with the pain, and argue over the slightest provocations. We share sanitary pads and philosophy. Jimin doesn’t know that she is the only member of humanity I love and emulate.

 
; I wish there were more vacation days, red days, on the calendar. More of the admirable people on earth need to die off fast. People will like it; poor folks will be like, “Woo-hoo, another national holiday! Let’s go for a picnic at the amusement park or in the tangerine groves!”

  Christmas is not far off, so cloying Christmas carols fill the street. Variety stores are filling up with trees with twinkling lights and people picking out holiday cards. A child is laughing hysterically with a stuffed bear in her arms. Another child, probably her friend, presses the heart-shaped button attached to the bear’s ear, and the hymn “You are Born to Be Loved” plays and gets stuck in my head. A red-eared child on a bike barely dodges a bus and pedals backward. I almost fall to the ground, shoved by the crowd. I had thought about buying a small poinsettia, but not anymore. I escape the main street to take a detour through a less crowded alley. The university’s sound tech people are setting up a stereo system, so there must be a concert happening later. From the back of the half-finished stage, a man with a guitar calls out to a yellow-haired guy, yelling something about the amp and whatnot. There’s a small sign that says DONATION-BASED CONCERT, but it’s too dark for people to notice it. Even if, and that’s a big if, Jimi Hendrix himself were to show up, people wouldn’t notice. Nobody wants to hang out here.

  I tell myself to stop thinking so negatively. But then another part of me barks back: Why do I need to change? Why do I have to choose between this or that? Is that the only option? I choose to run away from making a choice. Not to my father’s place, nor my mother’s place; like when my dad kicked me out and told me to find her, if she’s even still alive. No, I’ll go to both. No, there is nowhere to go. Joy to the world, whether the Lord is come or not … Look at me, I’m full of rambling anxious thoughts. I think this way because I’m anxious, and my anxiety makes me think this way. Why do I get more depressed as the day everyone else looks forward to so joyfully inches closer? I want to live a simple life. I don’t care about finding myself or discovering my sense of identity. I just want to live anonymously. I grab my head and shake it. What’s with me today? What is the origin of this endless anxiety? Don’t think, don’t think—but one thought tails another. This knot of unknowable angst can’t be undone unless my intestines escape my body like it has been autopsied.