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  I walk along the serpentine, silent alley and come to the dead end. If I’d walked along at my normal pace, I’d already be inside Jimin’s place by now. This is an unusually early time for me to be getting home. When I get home, she’ll be so happy. If I tell her I’m going to quit my job at the café, she’ll put her arms around my neck. Her hug will feel like choking, and I’ll like that. Choke me tighter, I’ll say. But my sneakers are leading me somewhere else, farther and farther away. They used to be white, but now they’re dirty and gray, and they keep leading me somewhere other than where I’m trying to go. They lead me to avoid and evade where I should be going, like I’m a pack of rats led by a magic flute, or those red shoes that made the girl keep on dancing despite her broken ankles.

  The alley is quiet. Darkness like a bottomless well. I don’t see a light coming through the tiny record-sleeve-sized window of our place at the dead end of the alley. I guess Jimin isn’t home yet. Where could she be? My legs hurt as I walk farther into the alley to get to our place. I rub my calves. I find myself not wanting to go inside the dark room alone. Should I just wait, squatting by the door, for Jimin? My body trembles, and my hands and feet are freezing.

  When I open the door, it’s dark. I feel a storm brewing in the darkness. My body trembles. In the dark, my left hand reaches for the familiar switch, but things get clearer in the darkness. Things I couldn’t see at first in the darkness brighten and reveal themselves. I frantically wield my arms against the invisible storm, my arms and legs flapping like torn laundry hanging on the line. I fall into a well. No, I fly into it. I am aware of my place in the darkness, deep like a well. In the darkness, I’m the laundry that flies, a black plastic bag that flies. I’m the pills and powdered medicine spilled all over the floor, and I fly.

  I’m the spilled glass, the pool of water, the white foam leaking out of her lips, and I float like vapor. I can’t move. My body floated away, so I can’t move. The crouching heap of something in the darkness screams. In the storming darkness, the sound of something being ripped apart—a wail, a shriek, a howl, none of the names fit—spills out.

  “Jimin!”

  I press the switch. The fluorescent light takes a few seconds to turn on, and those seconds are the darkest. Jimin is lying across the floor, as though she’d been thrashing in her sleep. Her long hair is tangled, but otherwise, she looks calm and composed. The spilled pills, the bottle, I leave everything as they are, and I lie next to her. The floor feels like cold dirt. I get up to get the blanket and shroud Jimin with it. I pull the other corner of the blanket over me. I reach out to hold her hand. It’s cold, no longer soft. Her fingers are raw from her nail biting. I try to interlace my fingers with hers, but her fingers won’t spread apart. Jimin’s body is cold and hardened, like plastic. The noise of the workshop. The clanking lullaby of the machinery. I hold Jimin, as pretty as a doll, in my arms. I can’t keep my eyes open, and I give in.

  Part II

  Death Mask

  Another happy New Year: Happy 1988. Now there are two 8s, which looks like two nooses. Is this how it feels to stand on the gallows? The reality is that only the number on the calendar changes, nothing else. No … things did change.

  My watch died but time kept moving, and everything fucking changed. My face was frozen and expressionless like a death mask as I packed, and, like a squeaky wheel, I tumbled into the attic room of Instant Paradise. Even after that happened, the sun continued rising and setting. The wind kept on blowing.

  “Receive good fortune this year!”

  I wish people wouldn’t say shit like that. I hate imperatives. I wish you a happy New Year might be a little better. Happy, though? Me? This year? All this feels like a fucking joke. Even after I thought everything was over, here we are, another fucking year arrives. There’s not much difference between yesterday and today, so why would one year or another be any different? What’s so new about this year?

  It’s all bullshit.

  I’m alive. I didn’t freeze to death. I didn’t starve to death. Like my stepmom says, I’m worse than vermin, so here I am, still alive. Like she says, I’m a cold bitch without a single drop of warm blood and without any tears, so here I am, not shedding any tears. I stand by the window alone and awkward. From the window I watch the main street intersection leading to the university. A girl in a colorful hanbok dress holds her parents’ hands, one of each, and swings between them. The sound of her laughter echoes up to my dark room. A mattress lies on the floor, the size of a coffin.

  One Sunday, Sunbe and I were sitting on the windowsill at our place, sharing a bag of chips. Should we move somewhere with a better view? To a higher floor? The rent will be higher though, huh? Let’s just clean the place we already have. Together, humming a song, we laundered our blankets by stepping on them in a tub full of soapsuds. She slipped and grabbed my arm. That day, we pulled the withering geranium from its pot and left the pot outside the door.

  Another day, I thought Sunbe was calling me from the communal bathroom—maybe she forgot to take the toilet paper with her again. When I pushed open the door with a handful of toilet paper, Jimin was right outside, looking into the flowerpot we’d left there.

  “What kind of plant is that? It looks like a little tree …” We looked at each other and smiled at this surprising new growth.

  “You look stupid with your mouth hanging open like that. If you don’t watch out, a fly will get in.” Jimin tapped my chin and wrapped her arm around my shoulder. She spoke as though she was speaking to herself, rubbing my disheveled hair. “If I wither and die like this geranium, you’ll be a floating seed with nowhere to go. Go float somewhere nice and sprout, okay?”

  “Why do you imagine me floating? Do you think I’m some sort of insect? A bee or butterfly or fly buzzing around?” I wrapped the toilet paper around my knuckles like a boxer and threw a punch at her. She giggled, swaying like a reed.

  “I don’t know when I might die, but when it happens, take all my books, okay?”

  Did a white butterfly fly by at that moment? Did any of this even happen? The world is an impersonal space that keeps reminding us how small we are. When one organism disappears another takes its place. Everything just keeps on going, nothing matters.

  Despite the calamity, no houses are collapsing. No hurricane flings people, struggling to hang on to the door, up into the sky. Not a single devastating epidemic circulates. The world doesn’t come to a silent halt. I’m still breathing—in, out. I’m nothing but a breathing, grotesque death mask.

  Alibi

  “One ticket to Sanchung, please.” This is the first time in the past few days I let a peep out of my mouth. I pull off my mitten with my teeth to count the coins.

  “Same, please.” As though she’s been waiting for this moment the whole time, someone emerges from behind and nods as we make eye contact. It’s Sol, my friend. “I was here the whole time, but you didn’t seem to see anything. You look like a blind person. What are you going to Sanchung for?”

  “Nothing, really.”

  “That isn’t your hometown, is it?”

  “Why are you going?”

  “I’m trying … to go see … Jimin. It’s been almost two months since she died, and I didn’t make it to her 49th-day mourning.”

  “Yeah …”

  “After stopping at Sanchung, I’m going to go home to Hadong. My mom’s been sad that I wasn’t coming home for Sul,3 but the gas station I work at is busier during the holidays.”

  “We can go together then. I’m going the same way.”

  Silence hangs between us. In any other situation, say, if we unexpectedly ran into each other on our way to the same concert, we’d be so ecstatic about the coincidence we’d jump up and down together. Well, we probably can’t jump together. She has a bad leg, and she limps. Okay. We could’ve whistled a song together. On our way there, we might have bought a box of crackers, torn it open, and pasted them onto a messy sign to hold up at the concert. But instead … what is this
distant chill that I feel? Her wistful gaze stabs at me like an ice pick.

  I lean into the bus seat and close my eyes. The bus starts with a rattle. An announcement declares that it takes two hours and fifty minutes to get to Sanchung via Jinju. A soldier who looks younger than I do sits across the aisle from me. He takes his boots off and eats some gimbap rolls. The intense odor of his feet, his food, and the mildewy mopwater from the floor wafts up, making me nauseous. The driver blasts the heater and I’m suddenly claustrophobic. On top of that, the conversation between the couple behind me is unbearable. The man insists that now that an average Joe like Roh Tae-woo has become the president, the world is gonna get better. He calls the previous presidents, Kim Yongsam and Kim Dae-jung, country-ruining bastards. His wife throws around words like gukwisunyang (nationalist pride) and gold medals, excitedly speaking of the ’88 Olympics that will open in September. She speaks as though Roh Tae-woo single-handedly made the Olympics take place here this year. Don’t they know Roh Tae-woo is not really that far off from the mass murderer, Chun Doo-hwan? I keep my eyes shut tight. I wish my ears had covers that opened and shut on command like my eyelids.

  “Yeoul, are you asleep?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very funny. Don’t be like that. Listen to this song.” Sol places her headphones over my ears. Kim Hyun-shik’s song is playing from her CD player. “Isn’t that nice?”

  “Not really.”

  “He went to jail for smoking pot. The Wildflowers’ Jeon Inguon and Huh Seongook were also arrested. There was a concert at the 63 Tower when they all got out ten days ago.”

  “Oh yeah? Did you have fun squealing like a stupid fangirl?”

  “Well. I’m just trying to say … everybody goes through shit. People bounce back from it.”

  Sol seems to realize how empty and ill-fitting her words sound, and trails off. I feel like a lump of metal is hanging down my throat and sinking into my chest, lower and lower. I turn my attention to the song.

  If I turn around and close my eyes, will I be able to forget? My beloved, what shall I do as you depart? I keep tripping over our memories of love. O these tears in both sets of eyes. I loved you. I didn’t know then, but I loved you with my whole heart. Now I know. What love is, how much my heart hurts …

  Now I know? Whatever. The heartfelt lyrics and husky voice don’t resonate with me, it all sounds like noise.

  I turn to Sol, “You and Jimin were in the same club, right?”

  “I wasn’t in the Blue Stockings, but I was a student representative with her in the Feminist Reading Group.”

  “I didn’t know there was such a thing.”

  “Well, that happened not long after we started … why do you think she committed suicide?” Sol cautiously asks.

  “I don’t think she meant to go through with it. If she was determined to really end it, there should’ve been a note or something. Regardless, I don’t think there is just one reason behind her decision.”

  “So what are those reasons? Shouldn’t you know some of it? You lived with her.”

  “People keep telling me that, but … I feel like I knew so little of Jimin, perhaps even less than what everyone else saw in her … So even though it’s too late, I’m trying to trace her path, get to know her …”

  “At first, the student society considered connecting her suicide with the current regime’s tyranny. Remember the Sunbe who threw himself off the library the night before the school festival? Last October?”

  “Yeah, the one who tried to organize the Busan Gyungnam Student Association under the supervision of the National Student Assembly.”

  “The activist set himself on fire, screaming, ‘Down with the military dictatorship. ’ He even left behind a letter written in blood with the slogan, ‘Battle on.’”

  “Yeah, now he’s buried in the May 18th Memorial Cemetery. But I’m not following why you’re bringing this up.”

  Sol continues: “Well, let me put it this way. During the Student Assembly meeting, some people in our student protest group voiced that we need to connect his suicide with her suicide. I know it’s a stretch to connect a suicide for personal reasons with the rhetoric of student protest, even if she was an active member. Some voiced that doing something like that would make the whole student protest movement look bad. You know, and I heard Jimin had some sort of depression or dissociative disorder for a while. She had to take handfuls of pills every day, right?”

  “Who the fuck is saying that?”

  “Well, Hyangsook Unni … The pretty Sunbe with a cute mole on her nose? The one with the nasal voice? She said she was Jimin’s best friend and knew everything about her.”

  “No, no, you’ve got it all wrong! Stop telling me this! Stop!”

  “Don’t get so upset, Yeoul! This is a secret, but … a few days before her death, Jimin asked me why pharmacies only sell sleeping pills one at a time, and if there were pills that could induce miscarriage. Why would she have asked that? She couldn’t have been pregnant, could she? So today I plan to meet her parents and ask them why they cremated her body in such a hurry and why they didn’t call the police …”

  It’s like Sol thinks of herself as some sort of detective, she almost seems excited as she rambles on. She got into pharmacy school as an honor student. She’s booksmart, but she runs so goddamn slow. We met at a student protest and I had to drag her along. Get up, do you wanna be trampled to death? The riot police almost killed us both.

  “Sol. Sol, Sol, shut up! People can hear you.” People are stupid, like dumb beasts trying to sniff out the trail of another animal. They keep asking questions about her death as though that would lead them to know who Jimin was. In a way, I’m doing the same, I suppose. Perhaps the only thing a human can do without an ulterior motive is die.

  I’m falling asleep again. Sleep roars in like a dark cloud. Someone told me I probably have narcolepsy and that I should get it checked out, but I savor these moments of drowsy ecstasy. I don’t care if this is a disease. I would’ve died long ago if I didn’t have this escape. The afternoon my mother left me, I slid down from the swing to curl up into sleep on the grass. When I heard about my stepbrother’s death, I just keeled over and slept.

  I see Jimin and me on the beach. We’re making a sand castle, but the waves keep crashing in. Jimin chuckles. Our skin is bright pink. We look like a couple of baby piglets. She points at me and laughs. We’re naked, but we don’t feel embarrassed. The sun pricks our bare skin, it’s the only thing we’re concerned about. Yeoul, I love summer. I wish I wasn’t allergic to the sunlight. Sunbe’s back bloats up in bright red. So itchy. Her belly rises like a balloon. Get in the shade before your belly bursts! I try to yell but I’m merely mouthing the words. Hurry! Hurry! I mouth. But there isn’t any shade, not even a tiny patch the size of a my hand. Ahead of us are vast sand dunes. I dig a hole in the shape of a mattress, and gesture to her to lie in it. She giggles, and lies down in the hole. All I need to do is cover her with sand. The sun can’t get to her, and she can’t keep inflating if I can cover her. I scoop the sand with my hands, but everything keeps slipping through my fingers. My hands are empty, and I panic. Sunbe’s body is covered in red lesions, and, as she scratches, pus flows out. I poke my palm with my finger. My hand now has a hole in it. I poke my cheek with my finger. My finger penetrates my cheek until I feel the back of my head. I try to call to Jimin, I try to get back to her, but my feet are sinking in the sand.

  Sol shakes me awake. “Yeoul! Are you alright? You were having a nightmare. Gosh! You’re so sweaty.”

  “Where are we?”

  “This is our stop. Can you get up?”

  3. Sul is the Korean Lunar New Year.

  Pendulum

  The bus terminal is full of people. The government designated Sul, the Lunar New Year, to be the “traditional” New Year, and encouraged citizens to observe the first of January instead, the “new” New Year. But people still travel in droves to visit family on Sul. Today is the last
day of the holiday, so people are flocking to the terminal to return to work: sleepy complaining children; cough cough—a young man who can’t stop his rattly cough; grandmothers and grandfathers seeing off their children and their children’s children; a middleaged lady with a bundled package on top of her head handing the load off to someone else; a chainsmoking old man; a middle-aged man coughing and spitting up phlegm … Sol and I leave the waiting room and walk toward the river. The sky is gloomy and dark. It looks like it will pour at any moment.

  “The river where they scattered her ashes—that was Gyungho River, right?”

  “Yes, we were both there.”

  “Should we go to her parents’ place and say hello? Do you know where they live?”

  “No! You can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just don’t.”

  “I want to ask them a few questions about her.”

  “Think about it. Do you really think they’d like it if we just barged in and started asking questions? Leave them alone.”

  “I can’t decide if you overthink everything or just do everything on a whim. Let’s go to the river then. We can cross the bridge over there, right?” She looks up. “It looks like it’s about to rain, let’s hurry.”

  Sol walks ahead of me, swinging a large bag in her hand as her black trenchcoat flutters around her body. Every time she steps on her left foot, her entire body slumps to the left as though the earth’s axis were tilting. Walking behind her, I worry she’ll fall on a patch of ice in the road and end up in tears.

  * * *