Around the time I left boot camp and was assigned to my regiment, I heard news that Jaehee had reconnected with her parents and, thanks to them, was being sent to Australia as an exchange student. She also informed me that K seemed suspicious, and suggested I interrogate him when I had the chance. (It didn’t take long for her instincts to be proven correct.) Jaehee served as my loyal girlfriend throughout my six months of military service, up until the incident that earned me a medical discharge.
By the time I was banished back to civilian society—and back to my mother’s house—Jaehee was already in Australia. Which meant I had to spend about half a year without her until she returned. Not really having anything I wanted to do or anyone else I wanted to see, I mostly lay in bed in my room and ate and slept. My umma was a parent who found such an attitude most contemptible, and her constant nagging eventually drove me to find my own place, a tiny goshitel unit near campus where I could finally be alone.
?
The new year arrived, and I was there to greet Jaehee when she landed at Incheon International Airport. She saw me standing at the gate and dropped her wheelie suitcase, running to embrace me. The scent of cigarettes in her hair truly brought home that we were finally back together.
Almost the moment Jaehee got back to Korea, she found herself a 350-square-foot studio apartment, registered at an English hagwon, and studied hard to get her TOEIC score up. She also declared a minor in economics, joined a marketing club, and began to look like every other undergraduate preparing themselves for the job market. This new Jaehee felt alien to me, but when I saw her going out to drink seven days a week again, I was reassured that she was the Jaehee of old after all.
Not long after she moved into her new place, Jaehee started noticing something unnerving. Every night at ten, some man would come to her building and stare up at her window.
—Well, jeonse rentals are pretty rare now, maybe he’s a realtor?
Despite my glib reply, I was a little bothered by the whole thing. Once, she said she was in her underwear, drying her hair, when their eyes happened to meet. Jaehee added that the ceilings were low and she was only on the second floor, so he could easily climb into her apartment using the balcony. If she was so worried, why didn’t she let me stay over for a couple of nights, given that despite everything I was still a man? Jaehee replied she wasn’t that worried, but it was pretty boring at night and she wouldn’t mind the company.
Like a schoolboy going on a class trip, I packed underwear and a tank top and shorts for clothes to sleep in and headed to Jaehee’s apartment. We made Japanese curry and watched an idiotic TV show, on which panelists gave advice about the love lives of celebrities, while we simultaneously criticized everything the panelists were saying. I lay in bed and fiddled around with my phone while Jaehee took a shower. She had come out toweling her hair when I glimpsed a shadow behind the curtain. I was looking at it, my brain as blank as a sheet, when Jaehee strode to the window and whipped back the curtain. A man as skinny as a twig was crouched next to the air conditioner’s outdoor fan unit. Oh wow, it’s true, I had just barely managed to think, before Jaehee, in a series of tightly executed moves, slid open the door to the balcony and kicked the dumbstruck man in the face. He fell over backwards. He moaned and raised his head, blood spurting from his nose and mouth. Jaehee had been brought up in a neighborhood where they took education seriously, which meant she had taken piano and tae kwon do lessons since kindergarten, achieving dan 2 in the second grade; such was the power of early learning. I held on to the man, who was barely conscious at that point, and shouted at Jaehee to call both 112 (the police) and 119 (the medics). It was hard not to laugh.
Four days later, I put all of my things into a bag and moved into Jaehee’s apartment.
We didn’t have a contract or anything. I agreed to pay her 300,000 won in rent and half the utilities. A lot of my things were already in her house anyway, 350 square feet was more than enough space for two to live comfortably, and neither of us had ever had a real relationship by the time we reached our mid-twenties, which meant the closest person we had at the time was each other.
Jaehee was good at making sweet perilla-leaf soy sauce preserves, and I had my special recipe for spicy vongole pasta. I was an expert at washing dishes spotlessly, and Jaehee’s courageous soul allowed her to swipe the shower drain clean of clogged hair. After seeing me snacking on frozen blueberries, she always stocked the freezer with bulk-size bags of frozen American blueberries.
In return, I bought her favorite cigarettes, Marlboro Reds, and stacked them next to the blueberries in the freezer. Jaehee said she loved how cool her lips felt whenever she smoked the first cigarette from a new pack.
2.
When Jaehee said she was getting married, the first thing I said was, “Are you pregnant?” Jaehee commented that everyone had reacted that exact same way, without a single exception, and cackled. Surprisingly, she wasn’t, nor had she gone anywhere near getting pregnant. Things had just turned out that way—that was the way she put it. And her putting it so made me think it was serious this time.
Jaehee? Getting married?
I couldn’t quite believe it. It was more likely that I would take a bride than she a groom. Jaehee just seemed too far removed from the idea of stability and settling down.
?
When we reached our mid-twenties, Jaehee drank and went out with multiple men as if it were an Olympic sport and she were competing for gold. Since I hated losing, and since I was into booze and men to begin with, I also got drunk and slept with a new man every night. And every morning, I realized anew that the world was filled with lonely people as I walked out of the motel cluster in the Jongno district with my hair in disarray. Some of the men I met wanted more than just drinking followed by a one-night stand. No matter how many times I refused, they kept going on about wanting to date me and threatening to come see me at my apartment, at which point I would fend them off by saying I had a roommate.
—A roommate?
After discussing how we would tell a partner about each other, Jaehee and I decided that the male version of her would be Jaeho, a supposed cohort in the department, and I would be the lovely Jieun, a friend from back home. In each other’s worlds we lived as Jaeho and Jieun, perfect excuses for keeping men at bay.
For example, Jaehee might receive a text from her (temporary) boyfriend:
Hey Jaehee, why did you turn your phone off last night? And not look at your texts?
Ugh. Jieun got sick last night. I was in the ER with her all night! (“Jieun” had been perfectly fine and was snoring away at home while Jaehee was drinking five bottles of soju with guys from school.)
Hyung, are you free this weekend?
Sorry. Jaeho and I are going to the Han River for some beer. (“Jaeho” was probably busy meeting up to have sex with men, and I was probably going to fuck someone else before dumping you.)