Sublimation(112)

“What’s crazy is that you’ll just go along with what Megan and Drew want,” Rose says.

“Why’s that so crazy? Is the world where everyone has access to every single schematic to build their own Mitosis machines, with no oversight, to use them on people like you used it on me, is that not crazy? Is that better?”

“Is it better if you don’t know what you’re walking into when you get on that plane, is that what you’re saying?” Rose says. “It’s better not knowing who you’re going to walk out as on the other side of the immigration checkpoint? Not knowing who you’re going to be when you cross the border? Do you prefer it that way, Yujin? Just knowing that it’s going to be whatever the IIS wants. Is that better? Not asking for the details because what you really want is to have someone else make that decision for you? Because it’s easier to accept things happening to you than it is to make a choice? Things happen because you do things, Yujin! You can’t just let them happen. People deserve to know.”

“That’s not how it’ll happen,” YJ says. “There are guardrails—”

“How can you be sure,” Rose says. “That’s been my entire point. How can you be sure of what’s going to happen? How can you trust the individuals in charge to make the right decisions for every single person on earth? How can you trust yourself to do that? YJ couldn’t even trust Yujin. I couldn’t trust myself.”

“Rose—” you say.

She turns to you. “No. I’m mad at you, too. It’s okay, though. I understand how you felt, now. I don’t regret what happened, I only regret how it happened.”

“I’m sorry,” you say again. “If I could have understood what you meant—”

“—if you had understood what I meant by regret, then you would have been me,” Rose says.

Rose turns to Yujin. She puts her hand on his shoulder. You watch the way he leans toward her, unconsciously. You suddenly miss Tae. It has been so long since you missed Tae. But the missing has the tint of nostalgia, as if your relationship with Taehyung is something that is already lost. Ah, he’s going to be so sad. There is no world where you don’t hurt people.

“Yujin. I don’t want to argue with you. Can you just answer one thing?”

“Fine,” Yujin says.

“If there were no consequences to your life. If you could get away with everything. If you weren’t scared of retribution. How would you really handle Mitosis?”





YJ-YUJIN


Yujin frowns. That’s not a question that makes sense. There’s no world without consequences. To ask Yujin how he would act in a world without consequence is like asking him how he would act while living on the moon. It’s hard for him to imagine. So often, the parts of him that are cautious subsumed the parts of him that are brave.

But. He remembers the way that it felt, to chase after himself. How it had felt like freedom, to face himself in his bedroom and damn every version of his future self. He imagines being that person.

Soyoung and Rose are both silent, watching him through identical eyes. They’re fishing for something. He sighs again. In a world without consequences, it feels wrong to tell them anything other than the truth.

“If there were no consequences, I’d pause the border rollout,” he says, finally. “Everything else about Mitosis, I’d let the IIS handle, because I think that’s better than letting any single person at a private company control this—whether it’s me, or Drew, or whoever. But what I’d do doesn’t matter. We don’t live in a perfect world. There’s no way to thread that needle.”

“Fine. But which is a better world: one where everyone has the schematics, or one where just Mergebreak does?” Soyoung says.

“Soyoung,” Yujin says.

“Tell me right now that you’re happy with Drew and Megan deciding how instancing works for the rest of the world. To set the standards we’re all going to have to live with. Tell me that, and we’ll stop.”

Rose is silently nodding next to her. As if they’re in total agreement, one speaking for the other.

He’s thinking about the first night at the bar. He’s thinking about seeing Rose in the shopping street, Soyoung in the basement of the Shinsegae Department Store, Soyoung-Rose in his living room. He’s thinking about convictions so strong they exist in a plurality of selves. He wishes he had that sort of conviction.

Yujin had it, in the end. Yujin had flown to the States the minute he had learned how YJ felt. He remembers being Yujin, all those years in Korea, alone. And it had felt alone, in a way that YJ hadn’t thought it did. YJ had assumed that Yujin had felt like he was part of a community, that he had family and friends. And he did. But it was a lonely feeling, waiting for the rest of your life to start. A frustrating feeling, knowing that your life depended on the actions of someone an ocean away. It hadn’t been good, to depend on someone else. It hadn’t been good, to be so blind. He knew that in his heart now.



* * *



The English word “nostalgia” is derived from the Greek word “algea,” the plural personification of pain.



* * *



“No. I’m not happy,” Yujin says. “No, I don’t think that this is a good status quo. But like I said—we don’t live in a perfect world.”