Sublimation(12)

You apply your moisturizer and makeup, blow-dry your hair. If your instance asked you bluntly why you want to reintegrate, you wouldn’t have an answer that would make sense to her. You step into your underwear and day clothes. You think about how your instance is you, and you imagine how you might feel, alone, among strangers-who-aren’t-strangers, but your imagination fails you so you give up. You pick up your phone and text people back—the girls (yes, I’m free next week to go for drinks!), Minsoo (I’m not babysitting for you, today. Get Mina to do it), and Tae (that shirt looks good on you!! Looks like a cute girl with an amazing sense of style picked it out). You make a call.

“I think I need your advice,” you tell Yujin. “Can we meet up? I’ll buy you a coffee or something.”





ROSE


You’re up before the sun rises. For a moment, you think you’re at home, underneath your duvet, and that your cat is going to come running in begging for his breakfast. But then you blink, and the ceiling isn’t your ceiling. The sagging air mattress underneath you isn’t your bed. You’re halfway across the world. Your body believes it’s supposed to be seven at night and that it’s time for dinner, not breakfast.

You rub your eyes. You pick up your phone and check the time. Six in the morning. The apartment is quiet. Soyoung probably isn’t awake yet.

You’re a heavy sleeper. You make an educated guess that your other self will be as well, and quietly slide the bedroom door open. The soft slump of your other self’s sleeping body is a dim outline. You go back to your suitcase and pull out a pair of socks. You pad into the bedroom silently and stand over the bed, breathing shallowly.

So this is what you look like when you’re unconscious. Her hair is splayed across the pillow, her mouth open. She’s curled up in a fetal position, with one arm tossed across blankets. It’s not particularly attractive, and you feel a sudden self-consciousness. You step back, and slowly turn your head to take in the whole room. It’s too dark to make out the particulars, like the color of the curtains or the text on the spines of her books. But you see framed photos of her and people you don’t know. Photos of her and the Korean version of your mother. Photos of her and her fiancé. A lot of them look like they were taken in photo booths, the kind you loved as a kid.

Apart from that, her room is neat. No haphazard clothes pile on a chair. No cat toys that have been batted into weird places. No cat. You should check on how Dr. Crouton is doing at Clarissa’s.

You could imagine living in this room, but you don’t much like it. You wonder why Soyoung lives alone. If you were engaged, you would be living with your fiancé. But maybe it’s a cultural thing. Some of your more Korean friends, the Korean Christian ones who go to church every Sunday, have talked about the same thing: No moving in together before marriage.

You suppose you could ask. But you don’t need to know that much about her life.

Soyoung shifts in her sleep. You make a hasty, silent retreat, carefully closing the door behind you. You step into the kitchen and exhale quietly.

You decide to open all her cabinets. Plates, bowls, cups, all very Korean in a way that is less cultural and more in the way that you remember using a similar style of bowl as a kid. Maybe these are actually Mom’s bowls. You look through her pantry cabinet and her fridge, and you’re amused to see that it’s very similar to your own: more snacks and condiments than actual food, half-eaten takeout containers. See, you think. We have the same bad habits. The glee at the moment of connection shocks you: You had thought you didn’t want to be her.



* * *



What does the fisherman think when he goes into the water? When he slides into the cool ocean, when he steps into the wet sand, when the buoyancy lessens his weight and he goes, hand in hand, with the water-nymph-siren-mermaid into the undersea court? Does he think about his wife? Does he think only about the lights underneath the water? Does he think, who will take care of my boat, who will take care of my house, my ailing parents, my wife, my unborn sons and daughters? When does he know he will not return?



* * *



You take a very quiet shower using unfamiliar products that smell like mint and citrus. You dress yourself. You stare at the envelope sitting innocently on the kitchen table. You haven’t flipped through the documents inside, yet. Your instance’s anger unnerved you. You knew you had a temper; you’ve never seen it on display. You’re learning too much.

Suddenly you really just want to be out of this apartment. Soyoung’s possessions are a reflection of her, and she’s a reflection of you, and you’re struck by the sudden complete understanding that the longer you spend in this space, the more you’ll know about yourself, and you didn’t come back to this country for self-discovery. You always hated that trope. An instance returns to the place of their birth, and has some sort of important cultural experience, meets the people that they grew up with, and in doing so, learns something about themselves before leaving again. It’s always bittersweet, sentimental. You don’t want bittersweet or sentimental. You have a life already. You want the closure of a chapter of your life that you had already considered dead and buried. You were never really one for thinking about your childhood. You had overestimated your tolerance for nostalgia.

Fine, then. You’ll take a day to work through your emotions and then there will be the funeral, and then you can go home. You’ll take a few more days off work and claim bereavement, and spend them playing video games and watching reality TV and hanging out with your cat and going out with your friends. But first you need to figure out what you’re going to do with the envelope. And for that, you need to understand what’s in it.