Authors: Ong Xiong
Sue nodded at his
explanation and remained silent until they were at the university, walking
toward her dorm.
“Thank you,” Sue
said when they reached her building. “If you’d like, I’ll treat you to a meal
of your choice.”
Jae slightly
nodded to indicate he heard her. Sue smiled at him as they bid each other
goodbye. Before she reached the door, Jae called out to her. “If the weather is
agreeable next Saturday, bring your swimming costume and meet me at the park.
Same time,” he said with a lopsided grin.
“All right.” She
gave him a grin in return. “Where are you taking me next Saturday? Swimming?”
“You’ll see. And
I’ll take your offer.”
CHAPTER
13
“Where the hell
have you been?” Angela greeted Sue when she walked into her dorm room.
“Out,” Sue
answered.
“All night?”
Angela asked, watching Sue with searching eyes. “Whose sweatshirt are you
wearing?”
Sue looked down
at herself. “Jae. My jacket was torn so he lent me his sweatshirt.”
Angela narrowed
her eyebrows in suspicion. “Who’s Jay?”
“Jae is—”
“You spent the
night with a guy?” Angela asked, wide eyed in disbelief, realizing what her
goody-two-shoes cousin had just revealed. Maybe Sue wasn’t a goody-goody after
all.
“It’s not what
you are insinuating, Angela. He’s the young man I told you about. I met him
last weekend at the park. I tried to rescue this mutt, only resulting in me
getting whipped. See?” As she spoke, she was pulling down the sweatshirt to
reveal her bandaged arm. “Jae helped me bandage my arm, and I fell asleep. I
didn’t wake until this morning.”
“You’re lying.”
Sue shrugged.
“Believe what you will.” She grimaced in pain as she took off the sweatshirt. “I
need a shower…oh wait, I can’t. I don’t want to get the bandages wet. Maybe
I’ll…”
“So, is he cute?”
Angela asked, cutting Sue off.
“What?”
“The guy, Jay, is
he Korean? Jay doesn’t sound Korean. Is he cute?”
“Yes, Jae’s
Korean,” Sue said. She was in the process of taking off her jeans, then she
stopped. “Cute? That’s subjective, don’t you agree?”
Angela gave a
snort. “He’s probably nerdy, isn’t he?”
“Nerdy?” Sue
began to laugh, thinking that Jae was the complete opposite.
Although, maybe
he is nerdy
. “Yes, maybe he is nerdy,” Sue said, chuckling, resuming the
task of taking off her jeans. She noticed she had been laughing quite often
lately and realized how good it felt.
“Why are you
laughing?”
“Nothing in
particular. Just thinking how nerdy Jae is.”
“What’s he like?
I mean, describe him.”
“Hmm, let’s see,”
Sue began as she stripped down to her underwear and searched for clean clothes.
She paused as she went through her shirts. “He’s tall; I haven’t asked him how
tall he is but I’m sure he’s about six-feet-tall.” She tried to measure how
tall Jae was in comparison to her own height. She was only five-feet-one inch
tall and Jae was definitely quite taller, perhaps by a full foot. Sue grabbed a
shirt off the rack and thought about his nose. “He has a bump on his nose,
right here.” She absently rubbed the ridge of her nose. “I don’t know if that’s
natural or from an injury. And he’s left-handed.”
“Does he speak
English?”
“Quite well,” Sue
said chuckling, remembering how surprised she was when she first heard him.
“Perfect English.”
“He sounds
boring, nerdy, suits you.” Angela said, already picturing a tall lanky guy with
a crooked nose, someone prim and proper like Sue in a guy form. She giggled and
jokingly said, “He sounds too good to be true.”
“Maybe he is,”
Sue answered from the bathroom before closing the door. “Maybe he is,” she said
quietly to herself, smiling, her back leaning against the bathroom door.
Sue hung her
towel and thought about what Jae thought of her. He seemed to be scowling quite
a bit toward her. Did he even like her? Perhaps as a friend?
Sue shrugged it
off. “Don’t over analyze, Sue. Jae’s just a friend—stop talking to yourself!”
With that, she gave herself a sympathetic sigh and started to clean herself
with a wash cloth. Forcing her mind to think about something less
self-damaging, she thought about what she needed to do for the week and where
Jae was taking her the following weekend.
CHAPTER
14
Sue stared into a
tank filled with a variety of live crabs at the Seoul Fish Market. The place
smelled of fish. It was big and crowded. Once again, Angela had ditched her,
this time for sleep. It was five in the morning and she was looking at crabs.
The fish market
offered a great opportunity for her to observe live specimen of octopus,
squids, crabs, sea slugs, and other various marine life that came through the
market as food. A classmate in one of her biology classes recommended the
market to her and was going to accompany her but cancelled at the last minute.
She asked Angela, but Angela only grunted and in the end, Sue came alone. So
there she was, staring at crabs, trying to decipher the different crabs by
their physical characteristics.
There were some
crabs she could identify by names, others she couldn’t. Looking her fill, she
moved on to the next stall, more crabs, nothing new. She continued to walk,
watching people bartering and auctioning for the freshest seafood around.
Sue came upon a
stall that had live octopus. She learned she could make a purchase and have it
prepared for her, ready to consume. Mmmm, fresh seafood! She decided to be
brave.
She watched the
baby octopus move about in the tank. Several clung to the sides. She pondered
which one would taste the best. She smiled remembering her mother who, on trips
to the zoo, would point at an animal and asked casually what that animal would
taste like. Now Sue was doing just that.
“This one,” she
said in Korean, pointing to a baby octopus by the corner. “Eat please.”
Luckily, the man selling the octopus understood her and fished out the octopus
she pointed to. With expertise, he dismembered the baby octopus into bite-sized
pieces. He placed it on a paper plate with a small cup of dipping sauce. She
smiled politely and paid but didn’t move from where she stood. She held onto
the plate with moving, chopped up tentacles with the salesman looking, waiting
for her to try.
Sue took the
chopsticks the man offered and placed the plate on the counter by the chopping
block. “Okay. Now or never,” she said, picking up a moving piece of tentacle.
She placed it in her mouth and chewed. It moved in her mouth before she chewed.
It was chewy. It was like eating unbattered, unfried calamari. It wasn’t as bad
as she thought.
She thought too
early. For as soon as she assured herself it wasn’t
that
bad, a suction
cup from the tentacle cupped the side of her mouth. She screeched and jumped in
surprise, simultaneously spitting the tentacle out of her mouth.
The partially
chewed tentacle went flying back into the tank of baby octopus. She shivered
and watched helplessly as the partially chewed tentacle slowly descended to the
bottom of the tank. The octopus salesman chortled as he made his way to the
tank, preparing to fish her discarded breakfast from its former home. She
continued to watch in horror as an octopus curiously played with its fallen
tank mate. She apologized the best she could in Korean and was sure her face
was as red as the color of her messenger bag.
As if she wasn’t
horrified enough, she heard a very familiar laughter coming from her right. She
closed her eyes and counted to ten before she turned to face the very amused
Mr. Park.
“
Ahn-nyung
,
Shorty,” Jae greeted. He wore a black rubber apron over a gray hooded
sweatshirt, jeans and a pair of black heavy duty rubber boots. A bucket
balanced in his hand as he watched her, eyeing her. His hair fell freely over
his forehead, partially covering his brows, making him appear cuter than the
last she saw of him. He gave her a lopsided grin.
“
Ahn-nyung
,
Lefty,” Sue greeted in turn, wondering how long he had been watching her.
“Breakfast?” she asked smiling, presenting him with the plate of tentacles,
which stopped moving.
“Sure,” he said
and lowered the bucket before taking her chopsticks. He helped himself to
several pieces of the baby octopus before he handed the chopsticks back to her.
“You can finish
it,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive.”
“Thank you.”
Sue watched him
finish the octopus and took the plate back from him.
“Shopping for
breakfast?” he asked.
“No. Studying.
You?”
“Working,” he
answered gesturing to the bucket at his feet.
“You work here?”
“Yeh.”
“When did you
start work?”
“Early.”
“When are you off
work?”
He grabbed her
wrist and glanced at her watch. “In about…thirty minutes,” he said releasing
her hand.
“Want breakfast?”
“Octopus?” he
teased.
She shuddered.
“How about something dead and cooked?”
He agreed.
An hour later
they were seated at one of the restaurants at the fish market, eating a cooked
version of what Sue tried earlier. While they ate, they talked. Sue told him
about her interest in genetics and what she was studying. He told her about the
fish market and his job. She told him about her desire to become a doctor, and
he told her about his desire to become a professional dancer.
After breakfast,
Jae gave her a tour of the fish market. He showed her live specimens she would
have missed. She found herself enjoying his company and discovered he was an
excellent listener.
She ended up
spending the rest of the day with him, touring the surrounding areas, missing
her classes that morning for the first time since she arrived in Seoul.
By six that
evening, he accompanied her back to her dorm and they bid each other goodnight.
That night, she
couldn’t stop thinking about him. She found herself worrying whether he would
get enough sleep before he had to return to work. Jae told her if he finished
his work early, he could leave early. She fell asleep thinking about her time
with Jae.
Two hours later,
she was up. It was midnight and she wondered if he was at work. She wondered if
he was tired.
At two in the
morning, she made her way to the fish market.
“
Ahn-nyung
,
Lefty,” Sue greeted a surprised Jae. He was carrying a crate filled with shrimp
to a stall and almost dropped the crate when Sue spoke. He finished what he was
doing and stared at her. When he didn’t say anything to her, she spoke. “Want
some help?”
He hesitated,
unsure what to say. She was wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a gold University
of Minnesota sweatshirt that was too big for her small frame. Her hair was
pulled back into a braid. He could tell because the braid lay on her shoulder.
Her bangs swooped to one side with loose strands framing her face, making her
look younger than she actually was. All he could do was act like he didn’t care
and tried not to gawk at her.
“I couldn’t
sleep,” she told him when he didn’t reply.
“Uh-huh,” was all
the response he gave.
When he still
didn’t say anything more, she became uncomfortable. Sue shifted her weight
uncomfortably from one foot onto another. “Can I help you? You said yesterday,
if you finish your work early you could leave early. I couldn’t sleep so I
thought, maybe I could help you. You went home quite late last night because of
me and… Can I just help you? If you say no, I’ll bug you all morning anyways,
so you might as well say yes now so I can stop rambling. I’m already here and,
well, even if I did decide to leave, I’m not going to sleep, thinking about you
anyways, so I might as well hang around here, bugging you, talking as I am, to
myself with you staring at me the way you are. I’m not looking to get paid, I
just want to help. You can—”
“Will you stop
talking if I say yes?” he said cutting her off.
She nodded.
“Fine,” he
replied and said nothing more. Thinking of him? She was thinking of him. It had
been so long since he had anyone besides Father Matthew and the nuns thinking
of him that he was speechless. He didn’t know what else to say or what to say.
Should he have told her he was thinking of her as well? That he had enjoyed
their day together and that he missed her? No. He didn’t want to scare her off
and having her at the fish market, well, he was going to have to work hard not
stare at her; otherwise, he would never finish his work.
Sue sighed in
relief. She smiled at him and asked him how she could help him. He gave her a
plastic apron that engulfed her, covering her chest to shins. She kept her word
and they worked in silence until the work was finished. By the time they
finished, it was five in the morning. Even though he gave her the light loads,
it was still hard work and Sue was aching all over.
The work was made
harder by him being silent. And the way he avoided any eye contact with her
made Sue wonder if she had made the right decision in coming. Then there was
that fine speech she had given him. She kept thinking about what said. Oh, why
did she tell him she was thinking of him? She didn’t want him to think she was
some stalker.
They ate
breakfast at the same restaurant from the previous morning. “There’s a shipment
of live abalone tomorrow. Would you like to see them?” Jae asked.
Sue smiled in
relief and replied, “I would love to.”
For the rest of
the week, Sue helped him at the fish market and that became their routine when
Sue didn’t have an early class.