Sublimation(48)

“Yeah, of course. It’s fine,” she says.

It’s not a lie. But she would have preferred that he had just said yes.





YJ


Morning. Probably morning. Sliver of sunlight across your face, your alarm ringing. You scrape yourself up from your couch. You fell asleep there again, you hadn’t taken off your work clothes, it tastes like something slithered into your mouth and died. Your back hurts. You stayed out too late.

You had called Petra four times between French fries, more drinks, and going home. You had thought to yourself—three hours between New York and San Francisco, she’s probably still awake. You had found yourself telling Soyoung-Rose about the breakup, in between drinks at a worse bar and walking with her to the ACE. You had offered to take the subway with her. She had said no. You had thought about offering to let Soyoung crash at your place, and then remembered your mess, and then reconsidered. It wasn’t that you minded her seeing. It was that she would probably tell Yujin about it.

You lift your head and feel immediate regret. You grope around for your phone, squint at the screen and your low battery. Petra didn’t call back. If Petra had called you back you would have killed yourself maybe.

Did you get home okay? you text Soyoung. No immediate response. You check the rest of your personal messages. Nothing. Okay. Good.

You think about last night. You had talked more than you had meant to, the same way you’ve had deep conversations at three in the morning in a stranger’s dorm room. It was all stuff you hadn’t talked about with anyone else but Soyoung had already known. When you described your relationship with Yujin, she nodded like it was something she had heard before. It had felt simultaneously like she was someone you could talk to because she was so divorced from your life here, and like she had already known you and how you felt about everything. Like slipping into a bath and having it be the perfect temperature. And you had also been happy to listen to her talk. You had forgotten how intense she was, when she spoke. How she was magnetic.

But in the cold light of morning, in the loneliness of your apartment, your brain throws logic at you. Let’s say there was a clinical trial that Soyoung-Rose could be folded into, that wasn’t dangerous, that would give her the clean and perfect unraveling that she craved. And if there was a trial like that, then including Soyoung-Rose in it would be, if not an abuse of your power, a misapplication of it. It doesn’t look good. It would be hard to keep secret. The reason for her inclusion would need to be kept out of all the official documentation—it needs to look like an evenhanded decision, nothing with your fingerprints.

And objectively, whatever Soyoung-Rose has gone through is something that doesn’t have any connection to your life, she’s not your sister or your mother or one of your cousins, she’s not Petra or one of your ex-girlfriends, she’s not a coworker, and she’s not a girl you’re trying to score with, she’s not anyone who you are obliged to.

But it would be easy to help her. As long as she didn’t talk about it. As long as your instance didn’t talk about it.

You check the time on your phone. It’s past noon, barely. No wonder the sun is at such a high slant. It’s been a while since you’ve seen your place in broad daylight. You stand up. You survey your kingdom. Laundry. Laundry basket. Socks on the floor. Crumpled blazer. Empty bags of chips. Empty energy drink bottles. Bag of recycling you keep meaning to take out and not taking out. Dishes in your sink, dishes piled up next to your sink. Cups. Bowls you started using after you ran out of cups.

You put on a good show everywhere else but in the heart of your heart you sort of feel that this apartment is representative of the state of your soul. You need to clean this thing up. You want to be able to bring people back here. You need to be able to walk through your apartment without stepping on a bag of chips that is nine-tenths empty and one-tenth crumbs. You don’t understand why the things that are hard are easy for you and the things that are supposed to be easy are very difficult. If you were a different sort of person, you could live a different sort of life. But you’re not. You’re just you.

It’s midnight in Korea. Yujin will still be awake.

You call him. The phone rings, then he picks up. This time, the background noise is quiet. You can hear him typing. He must be at home. Probably playing a game.

“What’s up,” Yujin says. He sounds distracted.

“I talked with Soyoung,” you say.

The typing stops. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. You should have told me what she was going to ask. It blindsided me.”

“Sorry,” he says. He uses the casual “miyan” instead of the formal “jesong.” “I thought it would be better coming from her than from me.”

“It’s fine,” you say. It’s not fine. “But seriously, did you even think about it before sending her to me? I can’t just say yes, Yujin.”

“Why not? You’re in charge of the project, just add her name to a study, get her in there to use the Mitosis machine, pull her two selves out, American Soyoung stays there, Korean Soyoung heads back to Korea.”

Every once in a while, you become acutely aware that even though Yujin and you have two decades of the same memories, he doesn’t have your context.

“It’s not that simple,” you say. “I can’t just say yes. I don’t even know if we’re still running any trials. The product’s almost to market. And adding her, if I can, to a study, means that I’m doing it, means that if anything goes wrong, I’m on the hook, means that you’re on the hook, means that I get fired, lose the H-1B1, and then if I don’t get another job, I’m going back to Korea and you’re—I’m—doing military service, reintegrating, and okay, I guess we pivot back to doing something in Korea, or maybe we try to do foreign grad school but then, what was the fucking point of my last ten years?”