Sublimation(46)

It’s very frustrating. You never really feel like you have any power, despite your new big desk and your signature on all the documents. You’ve inherited the project, but you’re not the decision-maker: Everything was in place before you were dropped in. What Drew told you was true: You were here because he didn’t like doing interviews. You were trying to get a handle on what was going on, but it mostly meant being copied on email chains fifty messages deep and poking around the public access areas. You haven’t been discouraged from looking at the files on twenty-six but you haven’t had time to look around.

You’re taking too long to answer.

“So you can’t help me,” Soyoung says.





SOYOUNG-ROSE


“I can’t,” YJ says. “No, I mean that I can’t give you an answer now.”

She stares at him. He looks serious. She can tell when Yujin is telling the truth, usually. She thinks YJ is telling the truth. But he and Yujin are, as she needs to keep telling herself, not the same person. Only derived from the same past.

“Why?”

No, the wrong word again. Just accept what you’re given, Soyoung! Don’t ask, because you don’t actually want to know, because everything in life that other people want to give you is so uncertain, and you don’t want to give them a chance to conclusively say no. She remembers, vividly and suddenly, sitting at the kitchen table in her grandfather’s house. Harabeoji on the phone. At the same time, she remembers holding her mom’s landline up to her ear, too big for her face. The memories cascade together. Sudden nausea. The desire to hurl.

“It’s complicated,” YJ says. “I need to see if there’s any study still running that I can get you into, first. I want to help, but—”

“No, it’s fine,” Soyoung says. She tries to keep her voice normal. Shoves down the echo-memory of Harabeoji talking to her and not talking to her simultaneously. Shoves down her desire to ask why YJ can’t just tell her yes. “I get it.”

“I’m sorry,” YJ says. He swirls his water. “I’ll let you know.”

She wants to ask, when? But that feels—she’s already pushed him too far tonight. The nausea passes. She swallows. Bites her lip. She imagines how she would work on convincing Yujin. Well—she wouldn’t have to convince Yujin—they’re friends. He already cares about her. He wouldn’t need a reason, their ledger is already full of back-and-forth. What’s one more entry?

It’s so very weird to be having such a stunted conversation with any version of Yujin. This feels like when Soyoung and Rose met each other. The cautious, neutral statements.

“I really do want to help you,” YJ says.

Soyoung frowns. Leans forward.

“Is there anything I can do for you? To change your mind?”

“I don’t need anything,” YJ says. “Unless you can get me a green card.”

“Rose—American Soyoung—is single and an American citizen. If you separate me, I’ll marry you,” she says. His eyes widen.

Soyoung waves her hand. “Sorry! Bad joke. Bad timing for a bad joke. I don’t know why I said that.”

She’s embarrassed. That came out of nowhere.

“God,” YJ says. He rubs his eyes. “It wouldn’t help me, anyway.”

“Because you want dual citizenship,” Soyoung says. “And you won’t qualify for that on a spousal visa.”

YJ looks up.

“Yujin told you about that?”

Soyoung nods. Yujin had told Soyoung about his and his instance’s plans a long time ago. When the instancing had been fresh in Yujin’s brain.

“I haven’t told anyone about it,” YJ says. “Here, I mean.”

Soyoung doesn’t know much about YJ, other than by proxy. She knows the parts of him that are analogous to the parts of Yujin. He laughs the same. He has the same face, the same mannerisms. He seems a little more subdued than her Yujin, but that might just be that he’s wary.

Soyoung feels seized by sudden impulse. Confession booth impulse, stranger on a first date impulse, the sort of thing where it is easy to speak to a wall, rather than to tell your mother about all the things you did in college. The past between Rose and YJ is so unmoored as to be nonexistent, they’re constructions of a different country than their shared childhood.

“I can tell you about me and Yujin,” Soyoung says. “Everything about what he told me, about you, if that’s something you want to know. And I can tell you about how it’s been, being reintegrated.”

YJ drums his fingers on the table. Soyoung can’t read the expression on his face.

“That really won’t change my mind, Soyoung.”

“No—I don’t mean it as a bribe or anything. I just think—he misses you. I figured you missed him.”

“He can’t miss me, I’m him,” YJ says.

He glances at his phone, before looking at her clear in the eyes.

“But. I would—I would like that. I didn’t eat dinner. Do you want to go get French fries or something?”

“Yes,” Soyoung says.



* * *



The first delineation in versions of the legend associated with “Arirang” stems from how the lover acts in the face of the heaving river. Does he decide to cross, or does he decide to stay? Do the lovers sing to one another from across the banks of the Auraji, or does the woman sing a lament after her lover’s drowning?