Sublimation(97)

She does the same thing she did back then: She says, “Thanks.”

Soyoung doesn’t ask YJ any more questions, because she suspects that silence is going to be more effective. Instead, she goes to her fridge and gets them both cans of seltzer. The whole situation feels a little like when Rose ran into one of her hookups in the broad light of day. Just, awkward.

YJ takes the food out of the bag. Plastic containers of noodles, deep-fried pork, sauces. He glances at her.

“I’m going to sauce—”

“Sure.”

He pours the sweet-and-sour sauce on the pork. The black bean on the noodles.

“I talked to Drew,” he says again. “I wanted to get his measure about—you know. Before I really committed to Megan’s plans.”

He pauses. Hands her a bowl of noodles.

“I meant to keep everything calm, but it got a little heated.”

“Heated how?”

YJ sits down with his own bowl of noodles. He puts the bowl of tangsooyook and little yellow pickles and raw onions between them.

“You know when I say that he’s really American?”

“Sure,” Soyoung says.

“Like the sort of American who calls himself an expatriate,” YJ says. “He just pissed me off. I lost my cool. He was being an asshole and I basically told him to fuck off and I didn’t need him, and that I wasn’t interested in what he could offer me. Then he tried to blackmail me, using you.”

“What?”

“I want you to know that I didn’t agree because of my—Yujin’s—citizenship stuff. Job stuff, whatever, okay?” he says. “To be clear. That wasn’t a factor. But then he mentioned you.”

“He knew about me? YJ—”

“Let me finish. He knew about you, and he knew that I knew you, and I argued with him, and I got him to agree that he wouldn’t bring your situation to anyone’s attention, and that furthermore we would sponsor your and Rose’s dual citizenship, after you separate, so that both versions of you get to go—wherever you want. So, I got him to give us that, and after everything’s done, I’m still going to follow Megan’s plan. I’ve decided. That’s what’s happening.”

YJ is looking at her like it’s a relief to tell her, like she should be happy with the decision he’s made for her. That he’s given Soyoung the answer he thinks she should want. Soyoung is thinking about her grandfather’s house, how it was a gift with strings, a physical object that was supposed to shape her feelings and actions. How her other self stood in front of Rose and offered her entire life as a gift that she should have wanted.

“I never asked you to do that,” she says. “This doesn’t solve any of my problems. I wanted to be separated—”

“That too,” YJ says. “You get that too. You finish the trial as planned, and then—”

“You told your company about me?”

Soyoung is thinking of YJ’s mindset. What YJ believed was true about her.

“Did you do this because you think you can get with Rose, afterward? That it’ll help your chances in the long term?”

Hesitation in his expression. If he says no, Soyoung is going to slap him. If he says yes, she’s going to rip into him for being a coward. She cares about him. He’s the echo of her friend, but she cares about him separately from Yujin now. And he is being a condescending, patriarchal asshole, making decisions for her, setting wheels into motion that she never asked him to, just because he thinks he knows what she wants. Because he’s extrapolated from what little he knows about her, and he’s decided that what she wants is what he would want.

“It wasn’t my first intention,” YJ says. “I promise. I just thought—”

“You just thought that you could make a decision for me and I’d go along with it. And I guess that makes you feel like some sort of white knight. This lets you save face, it lets you respect yourself. You’re not going along with Drew for yourself. You’re going along with it to help a girl. And I bet that feels better, right? It gives you an excuse to collaborate with Megan, right? An excuse to get your super promotion? It lets you believe you’re not just going along with shit, and saves you from making your own decisions, ri—”

“Soyoung,” YJ says. Like the word is a stone dropping from his mouth. “Do you know how much easier it would be, if I didn’t want to help you? If you weren’t asking me for things? If you weren’t messing up my life, getting between me and Yujin? I’m sorry I wanted to give you all the things I was trying to get for myself. The things I’ve been ruining my life for. You think I’m some sort of coward? Fine. I don’t care. But you’re only still here because I didn’t report you to the IIS.”

The silence in the room is as loud as the scream of the brakes of a jet plane, touching down on the tarmac.

“That was too much,” he says. “I’m … I’m going to go.”

“You’re missing the point again,” Soyoung says. “But yes. You should go.”

“I would never have reported you,” he says, and she points at the door.





YJ


You get your coat and you walk out the door without saying anything else to Soyoung. She doesn’t say anything to you. You were too scared to look at her face on your way out. You were too afraid of what you might see. You feel like you did after Petra broke up with you, except that had been all tepid, polite conversation, and this was the chill aftermath of a hot argument. But it’s the same feelings in your heart: that you’re being misunderstood, that you’re being punished because you can’t read the inside of someone else’s mind. You feel like you are always making the wrong decisions. You shouldn’t have said what you did. You didn’t mean it. You were just angry.