Sublimation(19)

“Like, what was he thinking? Between that and the house … He’s crazy.”

“Don’t say that,” she says suddenly. “You don’t get to say that.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” she says. She says it curtly, two syllables in the lowest register. Plain banmal. Tomorrow, you’re going to bury your grandfather, and every time you talk to your instance, you say the wrong thing.

“I just mean,” you say, and then sigh. “I’m sorry you’re having a tough time. I’m sorry that Harabeoji asked you to reintegrate. I can’t really imagine what you’re going through.”

“You’re kind of blunt,” she says. “Have you changed that much?”

Time, space, the American public school system. You don’t know if change is something that happens to you all at once, or if you could chart your life in millimeters and that maybe years ago you could have understood each other.

“I didn’t know you had a life like this,” you say. “I didn’t know you had a life at all. I didn’t think about you, or your relationships. I didn’t know that Harabeoji could be someone to ask so much of you. I don’t think you should do anything you don’t want to do. I don’t want to do anything you don’t want to do. I’m sorry this has been so messed up. I’m sorry that we’re getting jerked around by our dead grandfather. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” she says. And she wipes her eye with the back of her sleeve, and the movement tugs her bracelet stack, revealing the barest edge of her MERGEBREAK wristlet.





SOYOUNG


You take care to walk around the apartment quietly. The sliver of moonlight through your blinds paints everything silver. Rose is a soft slump in the indent of the air bed. Her short black hair is a small halo around her pale face. She has one palm splayed upward. She’s still wearing her MERGEBREAK to sleep. This is a little hurtful. You’re not the sort of person to do anything while the other party is unconscious. Of course you’re thinking about it, though. But you’re mostly thinking about her confession earlier. How she spit out the words: So I know that Harabeoji asked you to reintegrate. She said it like she had to stutter it out, or like she was biting off some sort of poisonous snake. And you didn’t know what to say to her, how to get the answers you wanted.

You carefully bend down next to her backpack. You unzip it slowly, millimeter by millimeter so that the click of the zip against the teeth doesn’t sound. You pull out the envelope. The slide of paper against cloth is so loud, in the dark. The crinkle of the package opening. The rasp of the contents being poured out onto the floor. You sit cross-legged in your pajamas and start reading, squinting in the dim moonlight. You want the deed to the house to contain some special, secret knowledge. You want to unravel its contents.

But Rose shifts in her sleep. So you put all the papers back in the envelope, and you put the envelope in the bag, and you push the bag gently back into the shape that you found it in, and mostly you just wish your grandfather was alive again so he could explain things in his creaky, assured, old-man voice, and that he could tell you that it would all make sense someday, and that you’ll figure out what to do next.



* * *



Most people report having the “instancing nightmare” at least once as children. It is roughly as common as the dream about all of your teeth falling out, or the dream when you’re naked in class and get called on. The instancing nightmare is usually some variant of the child crossing a boundary (usually the threshold to the child’s home or a garage, or an airport or rail station, if the child has traveled extensively) and then instancing. Dreamers have almost unilaterally described their experience as being from the point of view of the instance left behind.





ROSE


Your instance drives you to the gravesite. It’s rush hour in Seoul, and you both sit uncomfortably in your black clothing. Your instance’s fiancé will be coming later in the day, but you almost wish he was here now. You try not to watch your instance, but her visage is reflected in the passenger window. She’s unavoidable.

Seoul crawls past in fits and bursts, block after block. You have never more desperately wanted to initiate a conversation. A dialogue. An interrogation. You want to ask about Harabeoji’s last request to her, how she feels, what she wants to do. You want to ask her your questions without fear of the answers, except you know that the moment you ask is the moment she will refuse to speak. Because you would refuse to speak. It would scare you, to talk. It scares you now.

You know that she knows that you’re scared. So, you can’t ask.

You watch the scenery instead. High-rise apartment buildings, signs for after-school tutoring facilities, bus stops, and subway stations. Dozens of coffee shops. You don’t remember this many coffee shops. You hadn’t expected Seoul to change so much—the Seoul in your memories was a static snow globe.

Your family has lived in Seoul for two and a half generations. Your grandfather relocated here after the war, and your mother and her sisters were born here, and you were born here, and you could have lived your whole life in this city. Your grandmother and now your grandfather have died here.

“It was old age, right?” you ask. “Not a heart attack or cancer or anything.”