Sublimation(25)

“I hung out with American Soyoung,” your instance says.

“Huh,” you say again. “So … Soyoung’s instance? Visiting Korea? Wait, is that who you needed the MERGEBREAK for?”

He hadn’t really explained why he needed your employee discount, but you had presumed it had been some sort of favor for a friend, an expat returning back for a couple months. You trust yourself. You and he share email addresses, a Netflix subscription, and most of your social media passwords, because you had still been a single person when you made them.

“Yeah,” he says. Looks like you were right; he was trying to impress a girl. If you weren’t so stressed, you’d be annoyed. You and he have an agreement. Only one of you can be pursuing a long-term relationship at a time.

“How’d she look?”

Your last memories of Soyoung are from high school graduation. You had hugged each other, and she had said good luck in college, and then she went to KU and you went to SNU and then you did that semester abroad at NYU which led to your instancing at Incheon Airport at the end of winter break, after which your instance transferred to KAIST, out in the boonies, while you scraped your life together in NYC.

So you kind of lost touch with Soyoung. You had other things on your mind.

Thinking about Soyoung makes you think about Petra, and you really don’t want to think about Petra right now, even less than you want to think about your imminent career nosedive. You look at the time on your phone.

“—hung out, but it was weird. And the first time, I just watched them meet from across the room, which, hey, do you think that was creepy?”

“Yeah, that’s creepy. Look, I have to go. Can’t be late to my guillotine. Spend the time thinking about how not to creep on girls you’re friends with.”

“Fuck you, talk tonight! You’re not getting fired. Tell me how it—”

“Fine, yeah. Bye, man.”

You end the call before he can say goodbye. You don’t feel bad about it. He’ll call back tonight and pick up your conversation right where it left off.

You contemplate making your bed before you leave, but you don’t and just shove your shoes on and head out the door, shaking off the dread of the little blue blocks that had been added to the calendar: MEETING WITH D. THORSSON.

And then after that: MEETING WITH HR.



* * *



You haven’t been back to Korea since the day you instanced. You could go back—for Christmas, or for Chuseok or the New Year or something, some manufactured excuse. It would be good. It would be good to see your parents again. To see your friends. To see Yujin in the flesh, which you’ve never done before. It would be good to be back in Korea, where you speak natively and without any self-conscious hint of an accent. Where you would just be Yujin, who’s working in America, which would give you some exotic clout.

To go back would mean that your mom would start guilt-tripping you about staying, would ask you about girlfriends and why you aren’t married yet. To go back would mean your dad would ask about you getting a job at a Korean company. And going back would mean accepting the possibility of military service. You’re still a Korean citizen. Your thirtieth birthday is coming up. Yujin’s up for his service soon. You’ve heard of people getting detained at the airport—you don’t know if the stories are true, but you have friends who won’t go back to Korea because they don’t want to accidentally end up wasting two or three years of their life. You don’t think it’s going to happen to you. But you worry.

So, best not to risk it. Best to tell yourself that all the good memories can stay with Yujin, until you can become him.



* * *



For a brief, delicious moment as you exit into the world outside your rathole, you feel like a person with a capital P. You’re divorced from your messy floor, divorced from the looming workplace failures, divorced from the divorce. Not a divorce. The breakup. The clean, bloodless, amicable breakup.

“I don’t want to do long distance,” Petra had said.

It was bullshit, and you knew it was bullshit. You could have done long distance: Planes existed, and you liked California, you would have dutifully flown across the country twice a month, and she knew it, and you knew she knew it. So the problem wasn’t the long distance. You didn’t want to ask what the truth was. It was all an excuse. You really hated the idea of Petra staying with you out of pity, or because it was easy. You wanted her to stay with you out of—you don’t know. Love? Even thinking “love” makes you squirm. But you had thought you maybe could have loved her.

So you had said, “Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Sure. Cross-country move. Doesn’t make sense. I get it.”

And Petra had smiled at you and said, “Thanks for understanding, Jay.”

Petra always called you Jay. She was the only one. You were YJ to pretty much everybody else. You liked “YJ” better than hearing “Yujin” with the American accent, and Yujin was your instance now. Yujin lived in your parents’ apartment in Seoul. Yujin hung out with your high school buddies and dated pretty Korean girls with glossy mouths and perfect hair. But you were Jay to Petra, because you had been trying something new that month (you had also been trying: dirty martinis, going to the movies regularly, keeping a daily planner).

You had liked being Petra’s Jay, even if it had culminated in Petra sitting next to you on the couch not looking at you. Across your clean living room The Good Place played silently on the television, and Eleanor exclaimed to Michael in closed captioning all caps: THIS IS THE BAD PLACE!