The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (47 page)

But we are soon overcome with awkwardness. The sunlight is to blame. It is the awkwardness of encountering, under the bright sun, faces that we have seen only at night under fluorescent lights. Having never met during the day, we are at a loss how we should act toward one another, as we direct our awkward gazes toward the Tomb of the Heavenly Horse. Toward the Cheomseongdae Observatory. We climb up Mount Namsan. My cousin—her gaze is fixed on her camera. My cousin, who wanted to be a photographer, pushes her camera lens in any direction she feels like. She makes me and the Hegel reader Mi-seo put our faces close together and smile. Feeling awkward in the light, we try to smile and end up scowling. Cousin makes An Hyang-suk position her face atop a statue of the headless Buddha and looks into her viewfinder.

“Smile.”

An Hyang-suk, who had to wrap 20,000 candies in plastic in a day, also feels awkward about being on this trip and tries to smile but ends up scowling.

“Idiots.”

Cousin, eager to take pictures, grows tired of her unwilling, pale-faced models.

“I’m going to photograph birds . . . I’m going off to photograph birds instead of idiots.”

At any given place, on any given night, there is someone suffering from the agonies of love. Yi Ae-sun, in love with the union leader of the textile mill where she works, lets out a long sigh on this night in Gyeongju. The word “user” pops out of Yi Ae-sun’s mouth. We turn quiet all of a sudden. Our users who use us.

“Wish we didn’t have to go back.”

Ring-a-ding last summer, we were singing, but abruptly come to a stop.

“Things are unbelievably scary at work. He was investigated at the Martial Law Enforcement Headquarters then court-martialed. Isn’t it terrifying? Court-martialed, for asking for a wage increase.”

“Then what happened?”

“He was released, but they labeled him as a subject of purification, demanding him to resign, but he’s resisting.”

“What do you mean, subject of purification?”

“Beats me, some sort of social purification campaign going on.”

Our night away fills up with anxious whispers.

“They don’t assign work to union members. It’s a plot to make them resign. They send all the work to outside contractors, then hand out brooms to the unionists, telling them to clean the factory instead.”

“It’s the same where I work. The police seem to be stationed there permanently.”

“Maybe we would’ve been better off without the Seoul Spring or whatever they called it—things might not have gotten so frightening . . . Everyone protested for wage increase back then, refusing to work extra hours, they’ve all been taken in to this Joint Investigation Headquarters for questioning.”

“It’s same where I work also. Sheer terror, that’s what it’s like. Last winter, they didn’t even turn on the heat where the unionists were stationed. More than two hundred workers quit before spring arrived and there’re less than ninety left. A sly scheme, making people quit so that the management can temporarily close down the
factory. Anyway, I’m going to need a new job if they really close, so see if there’s an opening somewhere, will you?”

The night I return from the trip, Oldest Brother calls my name as we get ready to sleep. The room feels deserted with Third Brother and Cousin gone. Oldest Brother says nothing after calling me, which makes me anxious. Does he have an ache in his chest like last time?

“What is it? . . . What is it? Do you feel pain in your chest again?” Recalling the way he looked, clutching his chest in pain, I push away the covers and sit up. I am already scared out of my wits, without Cousin here.

“So you want it that bad? To go to college?” My startled eyes open in the dark with a sparkle. It feels for a moment as if moonlight, or starlight, is pouring over me. I climb back under the covers. “Are you still trying to be a writer?”

I turn reticent. I have never mentioned to Oldest Brother that I wished to attend university. Not to him, not to anyone.

“To be a writer, one needs to read a great number of books, acquire a great amount of knowledge.”

Ah. He has read my notebook while I was away on my school trip.

“College admission is tough enough even for students who didn’t have to do anything else but study for three years straight.” His voice carries the weight of worry and woe. I push off the covers and poke out my face toward Oldest Brother, lying over there with his tired back to me.

“Don’t worry,
Oppa
. I’m not going to college.”

As I step out to the kitchen at dawn to cook breakfast, I open my schoolbag and search for the notebook. What had I written in there, that made Oldest Brother say what he said last night? The notebook isn’t in the bag. I look here and there, where I
might have left it, unconsciously, but to no avail. I carefully climb down the attic and go to Oldest Brother’s desk. There it is. Under my copy of
The Dwarf Launches His Tiny Ball
, wrapped in a book cover. I must have left the notebook on Oldest Brother’s desk after scrawling down this and that the night before leaving for the trip. It would have looked as if I had left it there for him to read. I head up to the roof, taking the notebook with me. Dawn is breaking. The stars in the sky are fading out one by one. Under the fading starlight, someone is perched on the guardrail, looking like she’s about to fly away any minute. It’s Hui-jae. Like a bird she sits on the roof guardrail, watching daylight breaking, not between peach and apple trees but between tall, imposing factory chimneys. The light of dawn appears blue, even amidst the greasy smells. In the light of dawn, everything in this world exudes the scent of soft, splendid shoots budding anew. Even the factory chimneys.

“Hey.” I approach Hui-jae, slapping her on the shoulder. She is startled.

“What’re you doing?”

“Hanging laundry.” How long has she been up, to be done with the washing already? On the clothesline hang a tablecloth, a pair of men’s cargo pants, and socks. When I stare at the men’s pants, she puts on an awkward smile.

“What are
you
doing up here so early?” I hide my notebook behind my back.

“What is that?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why are you hiding it if it’s nothing?” Noticing that Hui-jae’s feelings are hurt, I push my notebook toward her. “So it’s a notebook.”

She flips through the pages. “Do you want to go to college?”

She asks in a faint voice, her gaze on one of the pages. I want to go to college—the words have been written over and over on top of each other and stand out from everything else on the page. This was what Oldest Brother read as well. On any given page,
the sentence has been slipped in, like a prayer—I want to go to college, I want to go to college. It all began when Chang told me last summer, “Let’s try hard to get into college, we must.” I end up feeling guilty and embarrassed toward Hui-jae, perched on the guardrail up on the roof, toward Oldest Brother, deep in his weary sleep.

“I’m not going to college.” I say this as if I’m choosing not to go when I can. As I take my notebook and head down, Hui-jae calls to me from behind.

“You see, I’ve . . .” She stares into my face when I turn back to look at her. She looks pale.

“What is it?”

“It’s that . . .” She stammers.

“Tell me, what is it?”

“Well, it’s just that . . .”

I, nineteen years old, stare back at Hui-jae, unable to bring herself to say what she’s trying to tell me, repeating her fragments over and over.

“I decided to let him move in with me . . .”

Him? The man at the Jinhui Tailor Shop, the one with the spot on his cheek?

“I just felt that I should tell you . . . When I save up two million won, I’ll give the money to my younger brother and we’ll be able to get married then.”

Get married. Yes, of course, they’ll get married.

I gaze blankly at the pair of men’s cargo pants hanging on the clothesline.

As I returned home after handing over the galleys for my essay collection to my publisher, I pushed the key into the keyhole of the empty apartment, and felt a tingling quiver at the tip of my fingers. I released my hand and stood outside my door for a
while. The yellow sticker advertising a lock repair service filled my field of vision. All I wanted to do as I got out of the taxi was to hurry inside and lie down, but now I felt as if I had stumbled upon something.

I opened the door and headed to the bathroom sink after I stepped inside. I put down my shoulder bag on the basin rim. When I turned on the tap, drops of water splattered on the bag. I moved the bag to the tub. What was it, what was the sentence that my heart had stumbled upon?

I opened my palms and put them against the mirror. What had I done with these hands? I saw myself and my hands clash with my eyes in the mirror. I quickly pulled back my hands, placing them under the running water.

Running water.

It appeared as if my fingers were swelling and swelling under the water. My hands, so insecure when they are not touching, grabbing, or writing something. The loneliness contained inside each of my ten fingers. What were they trying to do, cuddled together here in this state that they were in, squirming and squiggling?

The water flowed over. I pressed the plug to let the water drain. The gathered water escaped down through the pipes, making a sound that was desolate beyond words. I turned off the water and gazed for a moment into the mirror. My heart was desolate as well. I did not want to budge an inch. I slid down and sat with my legs stretched out, my back against the tub where my bag lay. The crammed bathroom seemed as vast as a prairie. When I pushed the open door with the tip of my toes, the door closed and everything turned dark.

What was it, what was the hidden sentence that had thrust a blade into my heart when I opened the door?

. . . A strange silence.

The sound of running water within that silence . . . The sound of slapping footsteps mixed within the desolate sound of water
traveling back up the pipes and through the darkness. Slip-slop . . . Someone walking barefoot? Slip-slop . . . Traveling back through the moonlight, through the deep seas, through nets and mudflats . . . Slip-slop . . . A pair of discreet calves that I seem to remember from somewhere . . . Slip-slop . . . The flared skirt with tiny flower patterns . . . Slip-slop.