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.
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.
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