by Young-Ha Kim
The door opens to reveal a man too old to be a college student. His hair is wavy and shot with gray, and he's wearing unbecoming gold-rimmed glasses. Panda and Song-uk, who open the door with sheets wrapped around their waists, step back. "Who are you?"
The man steps into the room. "I'm sorry, but you can't do this."
"What are you talking about?" Song-uk says.
"We received a tip that someone was using this room for group sex," the man explains, looking around the room with a glimmer of a smile on his face. But he doesn't hide his disgust. "So I guess it's true."
Ma-ri covers her face with a sheet.
"I'll give you five minutes. Take your belongings and get out."
"I have to shower first..."
"Sorry, it's a violation of the rules. Just get your things and leave, before the cops get here."
"Okay."
"Hurry," the man says, and slams the door behind him.
Song-uk, annoyed, addresses Panda. "You dumbass, you said it was Tae-su! What the hell is this?"
Panda checks his phone and finds a new text. "He says he got caught at the entrance."
Song-uk kicks his bag. "What kind of an unmanned hotel is this? Fuck."
Ma-ri gathers her clothes from around the room and goes into the bathroom ahead of the guys, locking the door. She puts her clothes on and smoothes her hair. She washes her face, then perches on the bidet while she freshens up her makeup. She turns the water to cold, and the throbbing in her groin subsides a bit. She wants to shower but she doesn't think she can without Song-uk's help. She hears the guys knocking on the bathroom door but doesn't reply until she's satisfied with the way she looks. She opens the door and goes into the room, looking as demure as she did when she left work. The guys are already dressed.
"I ... I ... I had a good time," Panda stutters. "And so ... so ... sorry."
"It's fine," she replies curtly and goes out to the hall. Someone is peeking at them from the maid's room. She figures a maid is waiting for them to leave so she can change the sheets.
She addresses Song-uk. "Bye. It's been fun."
"Are you mad at me?" Song-uk asks, deflated.
"No," she says, shaking her head. She tries to compose an expression that exudes equanimity but she isn't certain if it is conveyed to the boy. "We'll say goodbye here."
"Yeah, see you later."
"No, I mean it's over. Bye," she says, her voice faint.
"Wait." Song-uk grabs her arm.
She feels something new, something she's never felt in the time she's been seeing Song-uk. Annoyance. She frowns involuntarily and jerks her arm away.
"What about me?" Song-uk protests.
"What about you?"
"Have you been playing with me? Is that what this was all about?"
Panda tugs at his sleeve. "Come on, Song-uk. Let's go."
She smiles almost imperceptibly. Her annoyance disappears. She reassures him in a friendly but businesslike way, like a late-night radio personality. "I'm sorry if that's how you feel. I'm sorry, okay? I loved you once. You know that, don't you? You couldn't have not known, because you're smart. But that's it. Bye, okay? We'll go our separate ways here. I'm tired."
She walks down the stairs, stopping a couple of times because of her aching pelvis. The guys don't follow her, but take the elevator down. By the time she gets to the ground floor, they are already gone. She walks through the automatic doors. The flashing neon signs rush toward her. Why didn't she notice those on her way in? She walks out into the street. A heavy and poisonous fatigue, the kind she has never encountered before, weighs down her body. Her head hurts, as it sometimes does when she eats sweet white chocolate too quickly, and she feels dizzy.
AN OLD LOYAL DOG NAMED NIGHTMARE
10:00 P.M.
ALL THE CARS entering the apartment complex stop at the security booth. When a resident's car affixed with an electronic tag approaches, the gate goes up automatically. But if it's a visitor's car or a taxi, they have to receive permission from the security guard before going in. Ki-yong sits in the shadows behind the security booth, in the nook where residents stack Styrofoam boxes for recycling. It's dark enough that the guard, who just finished the rounds, can't see him. The security booth's bright lights make the corner look even darker than it really is. From there, Ki-yong is able to see the cars entering the complex without revealing himself.
Ma-ri hasn't come home yet. He is worried that someone might have taken her away. He hasn't been able to reach her all night. If someone got to her, it's probably the NIS. She might not have been that surprised to learn the truth about him. He imagines her expression as she says, "Oh, I see. I always thought there was something a little odd about him."
He shifts around. Behind him, he hears boxes falling over. He turns his head. A tan cat is hunched on some boxes, eyes glistening.
Ten minutes before ten, a taxi stops at the gate. Ki-yong recognizes Ma-ri sitting in the back seat. He almost missed her. Why did she take a cab, instead of her car? Ki-yong hesitates for a moment. If he pauses any longer, the cab will go straight into the complex. Thankfully, she's alone. He bolts toward the bright booth and jerks open the passenger door. She recoils, shocked.
"Ma-ri," he calls.
"What's going on?" asks the driver, turning around in surprise.
Ki-yong checks the fare on the meter and hands the driver fifteen thousand won. "Keep the change," he tells him, and pulls Ma-ri's wrist. "Get out for a second. I have to talk to you."
"Can't we talk about it at home?" she protests.
"It's important. Why would I do this if we could? Please get out," Ki-yong pleads.
"No, I'm tired."
"Look, have you ever seen me do something like this?"
"No, what's going on? You're scaring me. I want to go home, I really am tired."
"Please, Ma-ri."
The driver stops the meter. Behind them another car pulls up, waiting for them to move. Having no choice in the matter, Ma-ri is led out of the car unwillingly, as if she is a stubborn radish he plucks from the ground.
Ki-yong and Ma-ri pass the dry fountain and go toward the bench under the wisteria vines, where it's dark. It's cold. Ma-ri sits down, then gets up. Finally, she slowly sits back down again.
"Ma-ri," Ki-yong says.
"What?"
He hesitates. "Do you know which one word you say to me most often?"
"What?"
"'What.' You always ask 'what.' Even when I just call your name, you say 'what.' Isn't that right?"
"Did you just drag me out of the cab to pick a fight? What the hell is wrong with men? Why do they think they can do whatever they want? Do you think I'm some toy?" Ma-ri's voice gets louder.
"Fine, fine. I'm not about to ask you to change the way you speak to me."
"What do you want?"
"I was going to do it over the phone but I couldn't reach you."
She takes out her phone and opens it. The blue light shines on her chin and bridge of her nose.
"You're not in my missed calls list. When did you call?"
"I called a couple of times. I got a new phone."
"Why didn't you text me?"
"It wasn't the kind of thing I could tell you by text."
Ma-ri is quiet.
"Did anything out of the ordinary happen today?" Ki-yong asks.
Thousands of images spiral in Ma-ri's head—yelling at the driver of the SUV, fighting with the cop, lying tangled with the two guys. The montage sparks several emotions, exploding in her brain like fireworks. What is the "anything out of the ordinary" he's referring to? How can he possibly know everything that happened to her today? Does he really know? Her heart pounds. This is why he has accosted her like this, she thinks, instead of confronting her at home in front of Hyon-mi. But then it must definitely be about the Motel Bohemian. But how did he already know about this? Did he get a private investigator to follow her?
"No, what do you mean?" she says cagily, on edge.
"Really, nothing happened?"
"I'm telling you, no."
"Then where are you coming from right now?"
"I had dinner with my coworkers. Why are you interrogating me? Are you accusing me of something? Did you do something? What's going on?"
"You didn't tell me you were having dinner with people from work," Ki-yong points out.
"You left before I had a chance to tell you," Ma-ri retorts. She raises her right sleeve, inviting him to sniff it. He gets a faint whiff of cooked protein and fat. Ma-ri regrets spraying herself with the deodorizer earlier.
"I have to tell you something," Ki-yong says again.
"Can't you tell me at home?"
"Please, please just listen to me."
She nods reluctantly. Heavy fatigue washes over her, but she struggles to keep her eyes open and look at her husband. There's something about him that makes her uneasy, something unfamiliar. "Okay, go ahead."
"If nothing's happened yet, we might get lucky. We might have nothing to worry about. But I doubt that's the case. We're definitely going to go through something. But before that happens, I have to—I mean, you—you have to hear it from me not from someone else—well, I think it's better if you hear it from me."
Until that moment, Ma-ri was still under the magnetic power of sex. But now she senses something in Ki-yong's demeanor, something she has never witnessed in fifteen years of marriage. She understands he's about to reveal a secret that will neutralize her affair, right here in the dark under the wisteria vines. Even though she knows it is useless, that she will be told soon enough, she starts guessing his secret in her head. Did he cheat on her? It couldn't be any old affair, from the way he's talking, so maybe he slept with her best friend, or with someone she's very close to? Did something happen at work? Was he involved in a hit-and-run? No, has the hit-and-run he committed years ago been revealed? Her guesses jump from one to another speedily, but nothing seems quite right.
"Don't be surprised, okay? First of all, I wasn't born in 1967."
Ma-ri always thought he looked old for his age. "So your birth certificate's wrong?" she asks.
"I suppose you could say that. Anyway, I was born in 1963. And my name isn't Kim Ki-yong." Ki-yong is hurrying through the facts, as if he's decided to reveal all of his secrets at once. "My real name is Kim Song-hun. I was born in Pyongyang and came to Seoul in 1984. I got into college, and you know everything from then."
She smirks. This isn't the reaction Ki-yong expected.
"I don't believe it. It's all lies," she says.
"No, it's all true."
"Can't be. No way. Don't worry, I'm not in shock or anything. I just don't think any of that's possible."
A dump truck clanks by on the road beyond the apartment complex, thumping over a speed bump.
"It is possible," Ki-yong insists.
"No, no way." She tries to put conviction behind her words, but her voice is shaking.
"Why not?"
"There's no way I would have been in the dark for so long. I'm your wife, and you know how perceptive I am!"
Ki-yong once heard that all the famous spies in history were failed spies. The best of the best were never discovered, so they retired quietly and died anonymously, having enjoyed their retirement. Failed spies became known because they couldn't keep their secret anymore and had to confide in someone, or leaked their identities by not being very careful, or were seduced by money or women. These men became famous for their lack of success. On the other hand, some spies are like decades-long employees of big Japanese conglomerates, guaranteed employment for life. They don't stand out, they work without drawing attention to themselves, and they don't leak company secrets. To compensate them for their discretion, they are given good retirement and pension plans, and are allowed to enjoy their old age in peace. They are not privy to top-priority information that can be sold, so they aren't ever tempted. You can even say there's no such thing as a completely incorruptible human; anyone who hasn't gone astray just hasn't been seduced by something that can win him over.
Ki-yong has now become a failed spy. All that's left is his quiet removal from this world. One day has changed everything. Nothing has changed in the world; he's the only thing that has changed. For the past twenty years he hasn't succumbed to temptation—or maybe he's just never faced a truly tempting alternative—and wasn't in possession of interesting information that would be in high demand, and he followed all the orders sent down from the North. But his life has veered from its comfortable path and is careening into the unknown. Whether you're a spy or something else, it's deflating to be a failure. He looks at his wife sitting next to him, now the wife of a failure.
Ma-ri asks, her voice trembling and low, "Are you ... really a spy?"
He doesn't deny or concede the fact. They remain in silence. A black plastic bag floats in the air, past the flower garden. The bag twirls at the edge of the road and drifts back up into the air.
"What's really going on? Are you seeing someone? Is the company bankrupt? Do you want a divorce? Is that what it is? What's going on? Tell me. I'm having a hard time believing what you just told me, so help me understand," Ma-ri insists.
He takes out the fake passport from the suitcase and hands it to her, without a word. She reads it under the faint light, taking in the fake name printed under his picture. "Unbelievable," she says in a low voice, as if uttering a Buddhist chant. She drops the passport on the ground. She's dizzy. She isn't sure if it's because of her fatigue or because of this sudden disclosure. He picks up the passport.
"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you before," Ki-yong explains.
She doesn't say anything.
"Ma-ri," Ki-yong says.
She still doesn't say anything. They sit there, side by side, without saying a word for a while. The black plastic bag reappears, dragged back by a funnel of wind, dizzily whirls around, then disappears again.
Ma-ri buries her face in her hands. She looks up at him. "Why are you telling me this now?"
"I got an order this morning."
"What order?"
"To go back north by dawn."
Ma-ri is shocked into silence again.
"I don't want to go," he says, his voice shaking slightly.
She opens her arms. He bends over and buries his face in her embrace, holding on to her. She smells like barbecued pork belly, disinfectant, and cigarettes.
"At first I lied to you," Ki-yong continues. "But you have to understand that the real me is the one you've known since college. I lost touch with the North and I worked hard to survive and I tried my best to live here, without anyone to lean on. I've even forgotten that I'm originally from up there."
"What happens if you refuse?" Ma-ri asks.
"They'll know for sure that I've betrayed them."
He feels her nod.
"I still can't forgive you," Ma-ri declares.
He raises his head from her chest. "I'm sorry I lied to you."
"That's not why I can't forgive you," Ma-ri explains. "Listen. People make all sorts of choices in life. It's the same with me, too. You recognize several junctures where you're forced to make a choice. I've become myself today because of those choices. Do you know what I mean? That's why people shouldn't travel through time. If we could go back and change even the most trivial thing, this world, this reality that we see, none of it would exist. So what I'm trying to say is—basically, you asshole, if I hadn't met you fifteen years ago, or even if I'd met you but known the truth, I would have made a different choice. I would have gone on to make another choice based on that, and I might be living a completely different life right now. Even this morning, I didn't regret anything in my life because it was all a product of my choices; I knew I had created my own life. Of course, I sometimes chose wrong or made mistakes, but I was fine with that. I'm most terrified of my own foolishness. I was stupid before and today—yeah, even today. Now I get it, my stupidity is a chronic illness. I'm unchangeable. Wait," she says, when Ki-yong tr
ies to soothe her, "I'm not done yet.
"I know what you're thinking, what you want to tell me. I'm not crying. I don't have the right to do that. I'm pathetic. I'm a pathetic piece of shit. I shouldn't be here. I'm stupid, but I didn't even know it. I thought I had it all. I always thought it was my fault that you didn't open up to me, so I tried really hard. I did, I really did. But at some point I realized that there was a limit to that kind of effort, so I gave up. But that's not where it ends, because it wasn't enough to just give up on you or communicate with you. During all of this, I was closed off to other people because I was hurt, because I couldn't even communicate with the person I was closest to. Do you understand what that did to my self-confidence? I shrank into myself and avoided people and was cowed, and that's how I spent my twenties. Oh, you really are an asshole. You knew what you were doing all along, and you were never on my side even when you knew I was having a hard time with everything. You didn't even think to comfort me. I always thought that was just the way you were, so I'd tell myself, Okay, I'm going to try to understand, because that's what he's like—there was no way I could change you. But if I had been able to build a really intimate relationship with you, if I had succeeded, I might have become a different person. Don't you think so?
"What really pisses me off right now is that you knew how much pain I was in, but you were comparing it with your own and dismissing mine. Isn't that what went on in your mind? Whenever I complained that I was having such a hard time, you must have jeered at me secretly, thinking, That's nothing. I'm a spy, I have a secret I can't tell a single soul. What Ma-ri is going through is nothing compared to that kind of pain. Isn't that what you thought? I get it now. You have that damn superiority about pain—you arrogantly think your pain is the absolute worst, and you judge others' pain against it. You're an egotist, a self-righteous pig. An egotist thinks he's the only one who's going through difficult times, laughing at other people's hardships, and believes that because of his unique pain, he can do whatever he wants. You always have that expression on your face. You walk around like life's beaten you, like you're depressed, but really, you're looking down at everything and everyone, superior and arrogant. Sure, I knew that about you, but I was compassionate. I thought it was understandable that you ended up like that, because you were an orphan, because you had to raise yourself. I figured I just didn't know what it was like for you because I had a fairly easy life.