Sublimation(70)

“Weird,” she says. “I’m going to buy one of those bizarre SpongeBob ice creams.”

Soyoung grabs your arm—not like a girlfriend would, like a friend would—and pulls you into the park.

You walk down the main artery of Central Park, going past the horses and the carriages and the hopeful drivers, the vendors selling nuts, the tourists walking slowly in a horizontal wedge that spans the entire street. You always feel like you should be doing more New York stuff than you’re doing (go see a Broadway show, go to the Met), but at the same time, that all feels like tourism for people outside the city. You have work.

“I didn’t see anything strange yet in the laboratory room,” Soyoung says. “Or—I guess I don’t know what I’m looking for yet. But I’ll let you know if I get a chance to look at some files or something.”

“Thanks,” you say. “But really, just describing it would be enough. Don’t, like, touch the equipment.”

“Okay. First, the technician did intake with me, and then booted the Mitosis machine up, which was in the center of the room. Everything looked pretty in place, like, there wasn’t anything odd, it looked like a research laboratory. And then, when he gave me the signal, I walked through the Mitosis gate. Other than that, nothing weird.”

“This might have been a dead end,” you say. “Asking you to look, I mean.”

“I mean, I’ll tell you if there’s anything strange,” Soyoung says. “But I don’t know what’s considered strange.”

“I tracked down my old boss,” you say. “I’m going to ask her about what’s going on. She’s working for the IIS now.”

You had finally broken down and snooped on Megan’s socials, since she still hasn’t responded to your texts. You don’t know why Megan would be keeping such a distance, though. All you had gotten was the same generic goodbye message everyone had gotten: Although I’m going to miss everyone I’ve worked with, I’m excited for this new chapter. No email address. No phone number. You opened up your web browser search engine and typed in her name. Maybe if you messaged her over Instagram, she’d answer.

This is how you found the page nestled deep in the dot-gov websites that listed her as an employee of the IIS. No headshot, no biography—this page probably wasn’t supposed to be public yet. The new chapter. She’s working for the IIS. There’s no number listed, but there was an email address for the office. So you emailed her from your work email, because there was no reason for Yujin Lee, private non-citizen, to get an appointment with a government official, but Yujin Lee, important corporate talking head, could. But you were in limbo until they emailed you back.

“The instancing immigration division? You think she’ll help?”

“I honestly have no idea.”

Soyoung lets go of your arm and walks over to one of the ice cream carts. You watch her point at the ice cream on the board. Everything about this afternoon feels fake. A fake date, a fake girl. You’re fake too. You’ll reintegrate with Yujin. You’ll no longer exist.

Now that you’ve admitted your ambivalence to Soyoung, you can’t keep yourself from ruminating about your antipathy. You just—you want his life and his memories. You don’t know about being him. You don’t know how to talk with him about this.

Soyoung walks back with her ice cream.

“Can you take a photo of me, with the ice cream? For Insta?”

“Should you be doing that?”

“Rose takes selfies. It’s for social media camouflage.”

You acquiesce. You take your phone out and position it to take a photo for her. You never really take photos of yourself. You don’t know whether you should be getting Soyoung’s whole body in the shot. Or just her face. You split the difference and take a flurry of photos. She can decide which ones she wants.

She finally takes a bite. The chemical yellow against her mouth.

“Is it living up to your expectations?”

“No,” she says, and holds up the ice cream for you to try. You acquiesce.

It tastes like sugar and artificial chemicals. It reminds you of your childhood. Five-hundred-won ice cream bars outside of the FamilyMart. The one that looked like a shark and had a pink bloody strawberry inside. The one that was just a milkshake in a squeeze bottle, where you and Soyoung had competitions to see how far you could squirt it out of the container if you stepped on it. You don’t miss your childhood, you don’t think, except when you do. Do you remember when we were kids? Does this ice cream remind you of our childhood?, you want to ask her.

You lick sugar from your lips.

“This is pretty terrible,” you say.

“Isn’t it?” she agrees, and laughs. You don’t understand how Yujin was never in love with her.





SOYOUNG-ROSE


Soyoung walks into the Mergebreak building and tells the receptionist her name. The receptionist checks a list, and then waves her through to the elevator bank. A couple of people take the elevator with her. She tries to be unobtrusive while she inspects if any of them are wearing MERGEBREAKs. One person. That’s more than in most office buildings. Must be a business traveler. Soyoung walks into the Mergebreak reception area, where Gerry looks up from doing something on his phone and smiles politely.