Sublimation(18)

“What actually happened, when you instanced?” you say.

“That’s kind of personal.”

“Isn’t Soyoung basically your best friend? You guys seem pretty close.”

“You’re not Soyoung.”

You smile. You’re not Soyoung.

“Is she cheating on her fiancé with you, or do you have a crush on her or something?”

Yujin turns his head to you with an expression of perfect confusion.

“Fuck, what the hell? She said you two were having communication issues, you clearly got a different memo, why would you ask me that?”

You shrug. “Have you ever been on one of those dates, where ten minutes in, you know it’s going nowhere, so you both end up going way too deep and personal because you know it’s never going to matter?”

Yujin grimaces. “Yeah, I have, but still. Damn.”

He’s quiet for a moment. You think about going back inside and buying the bracelet.

“We’re friends. We’re not anything but friends. I’m friends with Tae, too. We play on a recreational soccer team together. I asked Soyoung out in high school, once,” Yujin says. “She turned me down. Which was fair, we were both shitty teenagers. After that, we didn’t really talk much until halfway through college. I was doing a study-abroad program at NYU and I came home for break, and … Well, YJ’s in New York. And I’m here.”

You sneak a glance at his face. Not much visible expression. That’s one of the stereotypes that Asians get in America: emotionless. Inscrutable. The stigma had surprised you. You always felt like you exposed too much.

“Did Soyoung bring you as some sort of ‘Oh, if Rose meets someone who has a sad instancing story, she’ll feel sympathy for me’ sort of thing?”

Yujin shakes his head, laughs a little. Just a brief bark of sound.

“Soyoung brought me for moral support. You scare the shit out of her.”

“Me?”

“She doesn’t know how to talk to you. She really wants you to like her. I think she’s always been a little hurt that you never tried to get in contact. We talk about it, sometimes.”

“Do you have support group meetings while you talk about your instances?” you say, lacing your tone with as much irony as you can, trying to drag the conversation back to safer ground. He’s easier to talk to than Soyoung. This is dangerous.

“No, mostly we just get coffee.”

You laugh. He laughs. It’s almost comfortable.

“I don’t know why I came,” you admit. “I really don’t want to go to the funeral tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Yujin says. He almost sounds like he means it.

You shrug. He’s a stranger. It doesn’t mean anything coming from him. He should save it for your instance.



* * *



NPR ran a few episodes about instancing when Rose was in high school. The first episode was on instancing research: covering the instanCenter at Stanford, the instancing start-ups that had popped up trying to overthrow Mergebreak, and the earlier, barbaric Victorian and WW2 experiments. In calm, methodical tones, the narrator explained that new research from the instanCenter has found that 30 percent of instances were surprised by the cleave. That they hadn’t consciously expected that they would duplicate. This was up from 15 percent, a century ago—although of course with the allowances that the older studies are less accurate, and survey a smaller demographic pool. The narrator postulated that this was related to the increase in human migration in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the increase of infrastructure surrounding air travel.



* * *



Yujin leaves before you do. Something about how he has a date. He gives Soyoung a hug, and you get a nod and a wave. You’re left standing with your instance.

One of us only tells the truth, the other one only tells lies, you think, the memory of watching Labyrinth floating through your head. Your instance rearranges her purchases. She seems happy. You think about how the day after Clarissa checked into inpatient treatment for her eating disorder, you went to the mall and bought three makeup palettes you never ended up using. You think about how after you had a blowup fight with your mom, the fight that led to you couch-surfing for a month over the summer in sophomore year, you had wasted forty dollars on movie tickets.

“So I know that Harabeoji asked you to reintegrate,” you say. “All cards on the table.”

A long pause. Your instance runs a hand through her hair.

“Oh. Minsoo told you, I’m guessing?”

“Yeah. At dinner. He told me to talk to you about it. But I thought you would bring it up if you wanted to talk.”

“When have we ever brought anything up?” she says. You laugh. She laughs. Neither of these are very happy laughs.

“I wanted to wait until after the funeral,” she says.

“You should have just said it when we met. I would have appreciated it.”

“I didn’t know how to say it. Why are you bringing it up now?”

“I don’t know,” you say. “It’s pretty fucked up, right?”

“So fucked up!” she exclaims. That sentence contains the most beautiful expletive you’ve heard. You and her, in alignment. Yes, that was a horrible thing to do! No, neither of us are happy about it.