Sublimation(15)

“You’ve gotta give me more context, Soyoung. Did you guys get into an argument or something?”

“No,” you say. “Some funeral-related family stuff has come up and I don’t know how to talk with her about it. I kind of thought it would be easy. But it’s really hard talking with her. Is that normal?”

Yujin is the only person you know who regularly talks with his instance. He frowns. Runs a hand through his hair, messing up the styling.

“When I talk with YJ, it’s like … I know what he’s thinking, most of the time, so he’s actually not really helpful if I need an outside perspective. But when we talk, it’s like … do you have conversations in your head? Do you think in language?”

“Sometimes?”

“It’s like that. Like when I ask myself in my head, ‘Do I want to buy the new Pokémon game,’ and then tell myself, ‘No, we’re too old for that,’ and then I say to myself, ‘Well, come on, you know you want it, and besides, you don’t really give a shit about being too old for anything, you’re just worried about how it looks, so buy it online and play it at home. Get over yourself.’ It’s like that, but I say the words out loud. A stream-of-consciousness dialogue.”

This is so foreign from your experience of talking with Rose as to have come from another planet. The expression on your face must make this obvious. He frowns.

“Do you want to listen in on a call with him?”

“Now? Here?”

“Sure. I was going to call him anyway.”

Yujin pulls a set of earbuds out of his pocket and hands one to you. He pops the second in his ear. He fiddles with his phone for a second, and while the KakaoTalk jingle plays, he says, “Just be quiet.”

You say quietly, “Are you sure this is okay?”

He shrugs. “I don’t have to tell him everything immediately. We’ll know about it eventually.”

You want to say something about that. How your listening in feels like a lie of omission. It seems at odds with the way Yujin spoke about his relationship with his instance. But then the call connects. And YJ’s voice, fairly clear, sounding tired, with identical cadence and tone to Yujin’s: “No, I haven’t had time to call Dad yet. I got his message. I’ll call him in the morning.”

Yujin laughs. “Yeah, okay. But he’s bugging me about bugging you, so just get it over with.”

To your surprise, Yujin speaks in English, despite the fact that YJ was speaking Korean.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll call him. Are you out?”

“Getting coffee with a friend, yeah. Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“Kind of. Petra’s asleep.”

“Tell her I say hi. Just kidding. Don’t.”

“I will,” YJ says.

“You’re not getting back together with her, right?”

“No. She’s just—she’s moving out, end of the month probably. It’s just—”

“Sure. I only asked ’cause I’m seeing this girl, and I think it could be—”

“That’s fine.”

Silence, for a moment. Soyoung holds her breath, afraid that the whisper across her airway will make it obvious there’s a second person on the line. Yujin takes a long slurp of the bad drink.

“So I’m buying a new pho—”

“No you’re not,” YJ cuts in. “You got a new phone last year.”

“But I want the new model.”

“You’re never going to use the camera.”

“Don’t tell me what I won’t do.”

“Do you use the camera now? I don’t use the camera.”

“Maybe you don’t use the camera because it’s not good enough.”

“They’re pretty much the same camera!”

“Three lenses, YJ,” Yujin says. “Get over yourself, you know you want it too.”

“Look, all I—”

YJ’s sentence is broken with a yawn. You’re surprised by how fast the conversation went—less than thirty seconds of rapid-fire back and forth, the sentences more like half-formed thoughts than anything fully coherent.

“I’m going to go back to sleep,” YJ says. “Send me the specs for the phone. I’ll call Dad. ’Night.”

“Bye,” Yujin says, and hangs up the phone. He takes out his earbud. You take yours out as well and hand it back to him. You’re unnerved. That wasn’t what you were expecting from the conversation. YJ had used complete banmal, perfectly informal, and neither of them had been nice.

“Who’s Petra?”

“His ex-girlfriend.”

“She’s sleeping with him, still?”

“They’re sharing an apartment until she moves out. Sleeping in the same bed. It’s psychotic. I’ve been trying to tell him.”

“She knows about you?”

“More or less.”

You almost want to ask him about how much they share with each other about their dating life. You’re pretty sure Rose is single.

“Did that help, at all?” Yujin asks.

“Not really,” you say. “Sorry, I’d lie to you, but we’re friends.”

He snorts.