Sublimation(105)

“Ow—Don’t—” he starts to say in Korean, but you’re throwing your dirty laundry at him and you’re not thinking clearly. Your whole being is suffused with fear, the cortisol and the adrenaline, your nerves jangling all disjointedly, why’s he here, why’s he coming for you, what happened between you and him that he’s here, what does he know, don’t let him, don’t let him touch you—

He lunges at you. You jump back, nearly trip down the steps from your loft, manage to slide your way down without falling. He comes after you.

“Why are you—” you shout, clambering over the sofa.

“—you didn’t want to—” he shouts back before slamming his ankle into the glass coffee table and swearing.

There’s a part of you fascinated by everything about him. You’ve never seen him in the flesh. Here is the way he moves, the same as you move. You’ve slammed your legs into that coffee table a million times. The way he grimaces when he’s hurt. That’s all you.

“—who told you?” you say, running to the kitchen. You look at your knife block. Your half-formed thoughts kaleidoscope on one another. No. This is insane. You look back up. He’s looking at you. You’re looking at him. He’s thinking what you’re thinking, you know. You won’t do it. You’re a coward. You don’t want to kill yourself. You’re a normal person. You’re not a murderer. And he knows that you know that he’s thinking this.

So you grab the knife.

Yujin stops. He knows that you don’t mean it. But the knife is a physical object. The knife gives you distance. He has to pause. It doesn’t matter what he thinks about you. It matters that there is a physical object between yourself and him, that you could use, that maybe ten years has given you enough distance that you could use it.

“Let’s just talk,” you say. “How are you here?”

He gives you a look like you’re stupid.

“Plane.”

“Did you instance again?”

“Of course not,” he says. “We’re going back, Yujin. I’m going back.”

He speaks in complete banmal, almost derogatory.



* * *



Does Odysseus, seeing his other self slaughtering the room full of suitors, think to himself: I wish I were him? Does he feel relief that he is finally taking action?



* * *



“Who told you?” you say. You know the answer in your heart. There’s only one person who knows where you would be, tonight, that you were asleep, because mere hours ago she was lying next to you. Did Soyoung sleep with you because she knew what was going to happen? Was she colluding with him? Why?

“Soyoung,” he says. He takes a step forward. You don’t step back. He knows you’re bluffing. You know you’re bluffing. You can’t be bluffing.

“You’re here to reintegrate,” you say.

“What I don’t understand is why you wouldn’t just tell me,” Yujin says.

How to explain. You know your faults. You are always spending too much time deliberating. You think that you can get all your dominos in order and knock them down. You have plans. You don’t execute. You withhold information. You didn’t want to tell him because you knew in your heart what you wanted but you thought you could put him off as a problem until the clock ran out.

You contemplate dropping the knife. You contemplate letting Yujin walk into you and becoming one person again. Give him what he wants. You know you could reverse it—you could be separate again, within the hour. But—the way that Soyoung talks about her past selves. How the person that she is now doesn’t want what her previous selves wanted, how the conglomerate self has different goals, beliefs. What if the person you become, what if they don’t want to separate? What if Yujin overpowers their desires? What if you change your mind?

So, not that. You’ve got the home field advantage. You’re going to run.

You put the knife down and pick up a pan and throw it at him. You jump up and slide across the counter, but it doesn’t work the way you expect and you end up skidding pathetically, halfway across, and you can see Yujin reaching for you and you feel cool acceptance, ah, this is all it is. This is what everything is. All you’re thinking is sorry I’ve been such a shithead. Sorry I promised you things that I didn’t deliver. Sorry that I left you in the chrysalis of our previous life.





YJ-YUJIN


So, in this story, the fisherman lives.



* * *



Yujin’s head hurts. His other self—his prior self—had good aim. He lies on the counter, staring at the ceiling. He knows everything now. Full download, cascade—it’s like what Soyoung said. Reintegration doesn’t feel like the movies make it feel. It’s not a slideshow of memories, not like watching a clip show of moments. It’s like being stranded in deep water. It’s like feeling seaweed wrap around your legs and pull you under, every thought dragging up a new set of associations, memories. YJ’s apartment is suddenly familiar, foreign. It’s home, it’s alien, it’s home again. Whatever he’s thinking about is being magnified through two perspectives.

He closes his eyes. He’s thinking about the last few seconds before recombination. Yujin hadn’t expected him to freak out. He had hoped that he would be able to touch his other self before he woke up. Yujin’s head now is filled with the memory of him with the knife, standing before his self. Like he meant to use it. Like he knew that they weren’t the sort of person to hold a knife like that, that they folded at every opportunity.