Sublimation(44)

The words come out all wrong, you wanted to hit casual but your voice hits fervent, like you want to know, the same tone you hit when you asked her out, all those years ago.

And Soyoung-Rose laughs at you, again.

“How did it feel!” she repeats.



* * *



The story associated with “Arirang” begins with a man and a woman who fall in love picking camellia blossoms near the banks of the Auraji, before parting. A storm causes the waters of the Auraji to rise, separating the two lovers. This happens in every version of this story.



* * *



“I shouldn’t have—”

Soyoung-Rose waves her hand, shakes her head, her hair undulating in a neat wave.

“It’s fine, it’s just, Yujin asked me the same thing immediately, when I told him.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t mind,” she says. “I told Yujin, anyway. He’ll probably tell you.”

She looks down at her drink.

“They put something weird in this. Rosemary, I think?”

“Seriously, don’t tell me. It’s fine.”

She shakes her head again.

“No, I just—figure out what you’re ordering, okay? Give me a minute.”

“Sure.”

The bartender enters the periphery of your vision.

“Can I just get a whiskey-soda? Uh. Suntory?”

He nods. You nod back. It still feels like winning a game whenever you interact successfully with a service professional. You always feel like you’re doing it wrong. It’s the little things. You think, sometimes, that this is because you’re kind of a foreigner. The things you learned as a kid were all—not incorrect. But a half step removed. Sometimes you’re afraid that this isn’t a cultural conditioning thing, it’s just that you’re not very good at people. But you are. Good at people.



* * *



Reintegration is required on reentry into certain states, after the expiration of the citizen’s visa in another country. It is mandated in Russia and China for political reasons on reentry from the United States, and from most South American countries, as well as Mexico. A political science doctoral candidate at Yale published a thesis that drew the connection between overpopulation and required reintegration. He published a follow-up charting how in countries where reintegration was more heavily mandated, but the political apparatus didn’t have the bandwidth to police reintegration, citizens were more likely to lie and stay separate, or to lie about having an instance for access to social services.



* * *



Soyoung-Rose puts her glass down and leans toward you. You pretend not to notice her cleavage.

“Do you remember playing human sacrifice?” she says.

“Vaguely,” you say. You haven’t thought about that in years. It was Soyoung and her cousin’s game. You only remember that it involved stabbing each other with Soyoung’s cousin’s lightsaber, and you hadn’t liked it that much, because it mostly involved Soyoung demanding that you lie down and let her stab you with the lightsaber.

“Sure. Okay. Different metaphor, then. Have you ever gotten pushed into a swimming pool?”

“Once or twice.”

“It’s like that moment, falling in. First, gravity. Everything goes weightless for a second. Like when you’re falling, and you’re scared, but you don’t have time to be scared, because now you’re in the water, like, the cold plunge of it, right? The way it slams all your breath out of you, and for a moment, you’re just … You’re nothing. You don’t remember where you are or what’s happening other than the cold and the pressure and then you’re trying not to breathe, and then you’re surfacing out of the water, gasping, wet, all your shit’s drenched, if you’re wearing clothes.”

Soyoung-Rose takes a breath. She smiles, briefly. It transforms her face. Suddenly she’s the girl you remember, and then it’s gone.

“After you’re reintegrated, it’s like, you’re in the ocean. Not a pool, anymore. You’re in too deep, and the waves are coming, and you can’t catch your breath, because it’s like, the waves are rolling through you, like, you know what I mean? How it feels. It’s like that, but in your head. Over and over and over. All the rest of your fucking life. So. Yeah. Or, I don’t know. Everyone’s different. Maybe it’ll be good for you. Since you want it. Unlike us.”

She’s fully leaned over on the bar. You’re no longer trying to ignore her cleavage. You couldn’t pay attention to her cleavage if you tried. She’s tilted her face in a way where her eyes are large, luminous, upsettingly so, the black circle of her iris cut by her eyelid in a way where it’s hard to tell whether she’s staring at you or past you, and it scares you, the way her face has gone completely blank. Us. The plural.



* * *



You hadn’t anticipated the separation.

In your memory, there was no moment when you looked back at Yujin across the immigration desk, or across the border after getting your luggage and locked eyes. In the television shows, there’s always that moment, paired with a swell of music and the high-pitched metallic tone that is supposed to denote something brainbending is happening. Sometimes then you get the silhouette shots of the instance walking away. The other instance standing there, the actor with a curated blank expression on their face.