Sublimation(100)

Soyoung rubs her eyes. Walks over to the bathroom and opens the medicine cabinet. Pulls out a bottle of ibuprofen and shakes two out onto her palm. Pops them in her mouth and drinks some water from the tap. Closes the cabinet. Her reflection looks back at her. Memories fade. Months ago, everything about her face had felt subtly wrong. Now she just looks like herself. She looks like her moms.

She’s thinking about how it felt, for Rose to go back to Korea for the funeral, how it felt for her to return to the States, to walk through the airport. She imagines the future, if she doesn’t go through with this plan. Pretend that YJ keeps his job. Pretend that Soyoung finishes the trial and is separated. Pretend that Rose goes back to her life in New York and Soyoung gets on the plane and goes back home. Soyoung probably gets married. YJ probably asks Rose out. She probably says yes. And around them, the world changes silently, invisibly, unless everything is dragged kicking and screaming into the light.

Because in the light, everything changes. The knowledge itself would be transformative. Instancing is a psychological phenomenon. It has always been about intent. Just releasing the information about Mitosis could change migration, even beyond access to the machine itself. To know that complete control over the process was possible by machine would change the way people think about the permanence of leaving. The world that Soyoung lived in—the one where leave-taking could be permanent, might never exist again.

Like leaving home, like going back for the funeral, like Soyoung pressing her hand into Rose’s: It’s a foregone conclusion. She’s going to do what YJ won’t.

So: She needs YJ’s keycards. Once she has them, she also needs a distraction. She needs something that will so occupy YJ’s mind that he won’t be thinking about his wallet, or won’t look at whatever security breach information that she accidentally flags. So, what would distract him?

Ah. She bites her lip. She knows what she’s going to do. It’s going to be a little bit cruel. But. He was cruel to her, first.





YUJIN


You’re going on a very long walk in the middle of the day. It’s hot. It’s humid. You think it’s going to rain soon. You’re probably going to get caught in the downpour. You should get on the bus. You should take the subway. You should tell—who do you tell? You don’t talk about this sort of thing with your friends.

The breakup had come out of nowhere. Youngmi had met you for a date on the stupid bank of the stupid Han River, and while you had been eating the stupid little lunch that she had made for the two of you and the stupid little cup noodles that you had bought from the nearby convenience store, she had told you that she didn’t see a future with you. She had been really nice about it, which was the worst part. She had given you the old line: It’s not you, it’s me. You had pressed her, though. You had asked, no, what’s the real problem? And then she had told you that she just wasn’t feeling it. That you had seemed distracted. Uninvested in the relationship. That she wanted to get married in the next couple of years, and it didn’t seem like you had similar goals. That you weren’t wholly committed.

The worst is that you can’t disagree with her: You’ve been too distracted—busy taking over parts of Soyoung’s life, worrying about whatever YJ’s gotten himself into. But you had liked her. You had really liked her. You had thought there might be a future with her.

Your phone begins to ring. You’re not in the right headspace to talk to anyone. You fish it out of your pocket anyway. Soyoung’s calling. You don’t want to pick up. No, you do want to pick up and start unloading on her. That’s too much. You want to pick a fight. You’re going to tell her that she’s going to just deal with the rest of her unraveling on her own and if Soyoung gets found out, Soyoung gets found out. Ah, you want to make her mad.

You pick up the phone.

“I talked with your instance. YJ doesn’t want to reintegrate,” Soyoung says.

“Ah,” you say. You feel lightheaded. The back of your shirt damp with sweat. The sun beating on your neck. You feel sick to your stomach. You feel a great and terrible lightness. You want to sit down. You want to never get back up.



* * *



The version of Odysseus that stays home, how does he live? There are no grand epics about him. There are no poetic verses that describe his condition.



* * *



“When did he tell you?” you say, your voice sounding like it’s coming from very far away. You start walking again. You don’t know what else to do.

“Recently,” she says, which is nothing. “He told me not to tell you. But I’m telling you. He doesn’t know how to tell you. He knows that you want—”

“—to reintegrate,” you say, numbly. A horrible thought rises through the soft matter of your brain. “Did meeting you convince him? Did he change his mind because he met you, and he saw how much you hated it? Did I do this, by agreeing to help you? By making that connection for you? Soyoung. You’ve ruined my life.”

She doesn’t say anything to that. In a sick way, that feels good. She’s a proxy for who you want to hurt. You’re mad at her. You’re mad at yourself. Both yourself here, and yourself, the other yourself, the one you want to be. You keep walking. You need to get out of the heat. You can’t have this conversation on the bus or in the subway.