In the end, I failed to sing the song properly. I managed to muddle through the first verse and chorus in my shaky voice, but in the second verse, everything fell apart.
Stay with me always, I want you to be the keeper of my dreams—I tried to get myself to that point at least. Jaehee, you’re really leaving me behind. The people who had stifled their laughter at the intro were letting it loose for real when I turned my head away in the middle of the song, thinking that I was acting a part and hamming it up. Then Jaehee came over to me, dragging the train of her dress, and took the microphone. She began singing the rest of the song.
—The only one in my heart, that one precious love . . .
Jaehee could do anything, but she was a terrible singer, and the backing track was for male voices, making her sound even worse. The elegance of the hotel wedding took a nosedive into the black carpeting and my tears went right back inside their ducts, making me marvel at how Jaehee would always be on brand. I sucked in my snot and finished the rest of the song with her, thinking that I was all right with losing to anyone in the world but her, that the Ock Joo-hyun of the day was going to be me. I sang with all my heart.
When I got back to my seat, my cohort was laughing it up and saying, “Who listens to Fin.K.L in this day and age?” “You weren’t really crying just now, were you?” I’m a faggot so I’m going to sing Fin.K.L, I almost said but didn’t. Instead, I chewed my way through the steak that had gone cold. Every-one else at my table had so much stuff to talk about. Who was next to get married, who had just had a baby, who had gotten a promotion, who had switched companies, who had failed to get a job, who had inherited a holiday home from their parents . . . Noisy, boring chatter, so effortlessly generated. That Jaehee’s new apartment was in Songpa, that it had appreciated in value by 300 million won, that Jaehee had met a rich guy and had basically won the lottery . . . I wanted to say it was her parents who bought the apartment, you morons . . . but I didn’t. Why bother? I got up from my seat with the steak half eaten. Saying I was going to the bathroom, I walked out of the hotel.
As soon as I got home, I threw off my suit jacket. I stripped completely naked and lay down on the bed. That was something I could never do when Jaehee and I lived together. How nice and cool it was to live alone. The sun hadn’t even set, but lying there like that made me feel like I’d drunk a lot and was greeting the dawn naked. Since I had the place to myself, I thought of inviting a guy over, but I couldn’t be bothered in the end. With the sunlight shimmering outside the window, out of habit I flicked through my text messages. Tedious notifications of credit card transactions, spam texts, Jaehee begging me to forgive her. Then, the last text that K3 had sent me.
If obsession isn’t love, I have never loved.
I dropped my phone. For a moment I thought I might shower, but then I craved something cold. Inside the freezer was an almost empty bag of blueberries and a pack of Marlboro Reds with the cellophane still intact. I stared for a long time at the photo of a man’s rotten lung on the packet. This man . . . was he dead now? I took out a bowl from the cabinet and flipped the blueberry bag over it. All that came out of it were tiny shards of purple ice.
That’s when I realized that my time with Jaehee, which I thought would last forever, was over.
She had always stocked the fridge with blueberries. Remembered the names and faces of every man I’d slept with, been the external backup drive of my love life. Smoking every-where, meeting the most unsuitable men.
Jaehee, who had taught me that every season is its own beautiful moment—that Jaehee didn’t live here anymore.
PART TWO
A Bite of Rockfish, Taste the Universe
1.
I spent all night writing and overslept the next morning, so I only had time to splash my face with water and grab my work bag before heading out of the door. Umma would probably be reading her Bible, trying to suppress her irritation at having woken up in a hospital room yet again. I would see her in a few hours. We’d settled into a routine in which she and I had lunch together before taking a walk in Olympic Park.
On my way down the steps I glanced at my letterbox out of habit and saw a manila folder stuffed into the opening. I took it out, feeling the thickness between my fingers. There was no return address. What the hell? I ripped it open. A ream of yellowed paper was inside.
The writing I had more or less thrown in his face five years before: my diary.
Feeling like I was standing naked in front of a mirror, I started to read the first page. There were red editorial marks over the black letters of my whip-like writing, and underlining that marked awkward expressions. In other words, the bastard had sent me an edit of my diary. Not five days after receiving it, but five years. My fingers gripped the paper as memories of him poured into me like a violent flood. He still remembered my address? The writing on the last page was not my rapid scrawl but a note in his handwriting. It looked as though it were written in blood.
Hello. It’s hyung. I heard you’ve become a writer. Congratulations. I thought your real name had a “je” in it, am I right? You must be using a pseudonym.
This idiot. He couldn’t even remember the name of someone he’d gone out with for over a year.
You’ve gained so much weight that I didn’t recognize you at first.
Fuck it. I’ve read enough. Tear this shit up. But then, the next sentence:
I wonder if your mother’s doing better now. I’m sorry about before. About a lot of things. All of it.
Why do men always apologize to me? Just don’t do the thing that will make you apologize in the first place. Then, just as he always did, he went on talking about himself.
I thought of contacting you many times in the past, but I had my own reasons not to. Then too much time passed, and you changed your phone number, as one does. I apologize for contacting you all of a sudden. I was just so busy. I’m leaving the country on Monday. For a long time. I may not come back. If it is all right, I would like to see you this Sunday. The same place and time we promised before. There’s something I would very much like to give to you.
He included his phone number at the end. Sunday. That was in two days. A little presumptuous of him to ask for a meeting at all, much less with such short notice. And forget this “giving me something” crap. All we had left to exchange were insults. I was torn between shoving the envelope and its contents into the trash and putting it carefully away somewhere no one would ever find it. In the end, I stuffed it into my bag.
My heart was racing as I walked down the street. I was shocked and humiliated that he could still provoke such a visceral response from me. I took out my phone, opened the notepad app where I started story drafts, and typed a single sentence.
Five years ago, I tried to introduce him to my mother.