—The entire universe knows what we are.
This offhand comment upset him so much that I ended up walking three steps behind him. Then he relented, came back to me, slipped the forsythia twig behind my ear, and took a photo of me on his iPhone. Pretending to want to look at the photo, I lunged at him instead, grabbing his waist, and this made him jump out of his skin. His reaction disappointed me, then seemed adorable, then annoying, my feelings shifting every second. But Olympic Park in the spring was so tear-inducingly beautiful that I wondered if these mood swings were because of the change in weather or because I was mentally exhausted from having looked after a patient for so long. These were my thoughts as I fooled around, propping blades of grass behind my ears and doing other silly things that couples do.
He suddenly stopped in his tracks. Someone was waving to him from a distance. A middle-aged couple so tightly arm in arm that one seemed to have placed the other under arrest. This four-legged wall approached us with alarming speed and greeted him warmly. He suddenly became very anxious, took off his hat, and bowed to them as I reflexively took a step back. They sounded like they had gone to college together. From a short distance, I shuffled my feet as I looked out at the end of the reservoir, enduring their incredibly boring conversation. A lot of blather about how someone from their student council days had been designated by a progressive party to stand for city council election somewhere, how someone else had written a political bestseller and was a panelist for a cable news show. We took up jogging as a couple and are reading Haruki Murakami, do you still like Nietzsche, what were you thinking when Park Geun-hye won the presidential election, darling, remember how I cried, who knew that such a terrible world would be possible in the 2010s after all we did as student activists, it was really beyond imagining . . . In any case, don’t you meet up with your cohort anymore, look at you being all lazy. You were class president, it’s up to you to set the tone for them. Darling, stop it, everyone is busy now. Yeah, kids these days have no discipline. Are you still with that publisher, the one that does theory books? I kept listening to their conversation/interrogation and saw how their torturous questions made his expression grow darker.
Suddenly, the male section of the middle-aged-couple-wall turned its head toward me.
—And who might this be?
—Oh, I’m just an underclassman.
—From school? Then you must be my underclassman as well. What year is your entering class?
—(Why was this asshole, who just met me, using informal Korean?) Not school, just from the neighborhood . . .
—I see. You live in Apgujeong in Gangnam?
—Uh, sure . . . (Mind your own business.)
—So how do you feel about Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye?
—Look at my husband go. Please, pay no attention to him.
—Why? Isn’t that something I can ask a young person? Tell me, do kids these days like Park Geun-hye?
—Well . . . She’s kind of been around at this point.
—Kind of been around. What a refreshing perspective.
What about my perspective was so refreshing? Everyone in the world knew that Park Geun-hye was someone who had kind of been around. Why did these haggard oldsters, whenever they met someone young, namedrop a hundred people, spout tons of political views, and ask me what I thought? What would knowing what I thought change for them? Did they think that if we had similar thoughts and knew similar things, our differences in age would lessen? What were they going to do if I thought differently from them? Feel better about their ugly faces by proving to themselves how young and ignorant I was, how the years they’d lived hadn’t been in vain?
The man seemed to detect my distaste, because he rudely tapped my shoulder and said, “You live in Gangnam, so you must like Park Geun-hye. I can understand it, you’re rich.” I bit my bottom lip. The wife said, “Don’t be angry. He’s just joking. We live in that expensive apartment block over there, ourselves.” The two heads turned to each other and cackled as if she’d said something funny. I was just about ready to push this Great Wall of Smugness into the reservoir. Next to them, meanwhile, his face was growing as white as bread.
—But why are you out here at this hour? Shouldn’t you be at work?
—Oh, I had some outside business.
He avoided eye contact in a way that didn’t look suspicious at all. (He looked very suspicious.) The woman’s eyes grew wide.
—Two men have business here? With all these flowers and the good weather?
—Oh, yes. It, it just happened that way.
—Then you must be lovers.
The man’s joke made a smile break out on the woman’s face, which she tried to cover with her free hand.
—Darling, you can’t make jokes like that these days.
—Why not? The homosexual thing, the . . . queers? I’m not against it. I think it’s possible they really exist.
—What are you talking about? Isn’t it an evil colonial practice of the American Empire?
The couple clutched each other as they burst into laughter, and I thought, What is this completely and utterly incomprehensible bullshit, the things these old-timers think are funny? It was time to punch the eject button.
—We have to be going now.
—If you haven’t eaten, why don’t we have lunch together? I’ll buy for your underclassman.
I answered over his obvious hesitation.
—No, thank you. We’ve already eaten.
—Already? It’s only eleven.
—We had brunch.
Turning away from their shocked faces, I grabbed his arm and dragged him away. He complied, hastily saying goodbye. We were inside a taxi in a matter of moments.
His house was the most obvious place we could run away to. We needed to be where he felt safe. Because as annoyed at him as I was, I was worried. He looked absolutely awful. His hat came off as soon as we got inside. Then, he let out a deep sigh.
—Why did you have to do that?
—Do what?
—Why did you mention the word “brunch” to my upperclassmen? How do you think that makes me look to them?
—What do you mean, how does that make you look? It makes you their underclassman.
He was fuming, unable to let go of what had happened. I’d never seen him so angry, his emotions so intense. It threw me off. I could feel the thorns in my words as I spoke.
—Just who the hell do they think they are?
—My upperclassmen. They were student activists.
—They’re nothing to you. Why do you care about what they think? Just lie to them and move on with your life.
—They’re my upperclassmen.