Sublimation(10)

You wake up in a parking garage, with something prodding against your shoulder. You jolt awake, jerking the seat belt forward.

“Sorry!”

Soyoung’s fingers on your shoulder. She’s shaken you awake. Two layers of fabric separate your skin from hers, along with the MERGEBREAK.

“Sorry,” she says again. “You weren’t waking up.”

“It’s fine,” you say, in English, because you dream in English and it’s the first language your brain jumps to. Even though it’s not fine. She touched you. A 5 percent failure rate. No skin against skin, but what if there had been a hole in your jacket, perfectly layered against a hole in your T-shirt, and what if the skin of her palm had touched the skin of your shoulder, and then you wouldn’t be you anymore, and she wouldn’t be her?

But nothing happened. So it’s fine.

“I made sure I wasn’t touching you,” Soyoung says, like she can read your mind. She’s keeping her hands carefully far away from you now.

“I appreciate that,” you say. This time in Korean.

You take refuge in action, unbuckling your seat belt. This is when you realize the envelope is missing, no longer sitting in your lap. You swivel your head around wildly. It’s a big document. It should be immediately visible. Did Soyoung steal it?

“Did you take my envelope?” you demand.

She looks at you flatly.

“It fell on the floor,” she says, gesturing at your feet.

You look down. The envelope is wedged there.

“Sorry,” you say, using the word for “sorry” that denotes higher formality. You’re ashamed of yourself. You’ve been very suspicious of Soyoung for no reason. It was one thing to think of Soyoung in the abstract, and another to be faced with the physical reality of her. She hasn’t breathed a word of your grandfather’s request. She might not even know. She hasn’t tried anything, with you. She’s been a good host. Better than you would have been. You’re the asshole.

Soyoung unbuckles her own seat belt in lieu of saying anything. She opens the car door. She pauses before she gets out.

“If you want, I can drive you to Umma’s place. Or to Minsoo’s apartment. Or one of the aunts. You don’t have to stay with me if it’s too weird.”

“No,” you say. “No, it’s fine. I really appreciate it. I’m just tired.”

“Okay.”

You don’t think she believes you. But there’s no way to tell. You both get out of the car. She pops the trunk and gets your suitcase out. The odd thing is how normal it feels with her, when you don’t think about it too hard. You work in synchronization, like the movements you’re doing are choreographed. Yes, this is the order of operations you would take. Yes, this is the route you’d wind across the basement garage to the elevator, which has a mirrored door on which you can see your reflected faces.

Soyoung in her neat work clothing, more formal than you ever wear to work. She doesn’t look like a T-shirt girl. She’s wearing a full face of makeup, and her lipstick isn’t even smudged, although you saw the way she shoved lettuce-wrapped beef into her mouth.

Meanwhile, you look like you spent sixteen hours on a plane, and are carrying a large manila envelope like it’s a shield. This is the face of the American dream.

“I’m sorry I accused you of stealing my envelope,” you announce.

“It’s okay,” she says. It’s clearly not okay.

“Minsoo gave it to me, and told me that Harabeoji left me some stuff inside, and that this was all listed in the will. But Minsoo didn’t tell me what it was. Do you want to look at it together?”

“Sure,” she says.

The elevator comes. You ascend.



* * *



Instances having to work together is a staple of modern media, although the trope only became codified outside of folktale and myth after the advent of the rail system in the western world. In the older stories, the return is a magical thing. The son returns to his mother’s house and finds himself chopping wood, and he is cast out as an interloper. The runaway bride returns to her father’s kingdom and begs her instance to reintegrate with her. The fisherman rises from the sea and finds his other self contentedly asleep.

But in modern stories, the instance doesn’t reintegrate immediately, nor are they immediately cast out. The story luxuriates in the encounter. The tension is in whether there will be a reintegration. It’s a plot point, a way to refresh a character that is growing stale. A way to reset relationships. In soaps and telenovelas, instancing and reintegration are used like a death, a coma, a long-lost twin. This is not how it feels to have an instance. An instance is you in all respects but one. An instance is you, until you make enough choices that you are no longer them. An instance is what would have happened, if you had gone, or if you had stayed. It does not feel like having a twin. And in reality, instances don’t tend toward conflict—they know too much about each other, and it’s too easy for them to anticipate each other’s actions. What they want is often too similar to be separated.



* * *



You arrive at Soyoung’s apartment and some part of you is surprised that it looks nothing like yours. It’s white where your walls are blue, the lights occasionally give off a weird fluorescent flickering, and all the cabinets are too shiny. Soyoung has set up an air bed in the corner. It’s not bad. It’s just not where you live.