I stick around for the speeches and leave the minute the actual party starts. On my way home I receive a disturbing phone call from the dean of the SNU software engineering department. He is calling me personally to inform me that Mi-Ok has stopped coming to classes, that she hasn’t been submitting papers on time, and that today she missed one of her final exams entirely. He is letting me know because he feels he has no choice but to cut off her scholarship. I don’t argue, although maybe I should, because I know there is no chance in hell that Mi-Ok would behave this way for no reason. She’s a natural – code runs through the girl’s veins, I saw it clearly that day I helped her with her seminar. She has a talent rare for any student, rare even among the experienced programmers who work for me at Bubble.
And now my thoughts are spiraling – maybe she’s in Australia with Jeremy. My blood simmers at the possibility, but I know she wouldn’t drop out this close to the end of the school year to go diving at the Great Barrier Reef. No; she’d take her exams and fly over during the summer break.
Another terrified voice suggests she might be very ill. But she’s a responsible girl. Were that the case she would’ve alerted her professors.
The scenarios in my head are getting worse. She lives in such a bad neighborhood. And I still have that ominous letter. My heart lurches with the fear that something terrible has happened to her.
I drive toward the bar she works at. I just want to check that she’s okay.
Mi-Ok’s not working this evening, but still I sit down and order a beer. The tall waitress with the large breasts reels into action. This time I don’t ignore her.
“You’re working all by yourself tonight? Where’re the other girls?” I try to get her to talk. During my last time here, I got the impression she’s the type that knows everything there is to know about her coworkers and is more than happy to share.
“One’s on her period, one’s pregnant, one quit,” she says. I wonder which one of these describes Mi-Ok. I very much hope it isn’t the second one, though I wouldn’t put it past Jeremy, that piece of shit. If she is pregnant, I have to support her through that nightmare any way I can.
“Get over here… come’n be nice to your boss.” I turn my head toward the male grunt and recognize the asshole. Who else.
“Wutcha lookin’ at,” he makes a vulgar gesture with his hand. “I was talkin’ to the lady.” The waitress immediately abandons me and trots toward him eagerly, her smile pathetically ingratiating. He, on his part, is a fountain of dirty looks; I note how the combination of baboon and giraffe makes for a sort of twisted menagerie.
“I own this place, ya got it? Jus’ bought it with the profits I made from selling some real estate. I’m the boss here… and I want you to piss off!”
He doesn’t even know that I’m the one who took said real estate off his hands. Why would he? My lawyers handled the entire thing. Only, I’m now realizing he used the money from selling the building to buy this bar. I’m realizing the effect this must’ve had on Mi-Ok.
She needed this job. And now I’ve cost her both her job and her scholarship.
“Open this goddamn door!” I eventually kick her door after spending the last twenty minutes knocking, then maniacally banging on it. “I know you’re in there. Open up before I break this damn thing open,” I warn. “You know this isn’t an empty threat. All I need to do is call the property manager and he’ll break the lock.”
I hear a scrape of metal turning in the keyhole.
Her apartment looks like ground zero of some natural disaster. I don’t even bother taking off my shoes – there’s nothing I can drag in here that will make this place dirtier.
The first thing I notice is that she looks like hell. The picture of pale misery. She’s lost weight, bleakly emphasized by the loose shirt hanging from her shoulder.
“Your apartment is freezing.” I rub my hands together.
“I had to quit my job. Money’s been a little tight so I can’t really afford heating,” she says apologetically, and my heart breaks inside of me. I take off my cashmere scarf and wrap it around her, and then take my wallet from my inside coat pocket and take out all the bills inside.
“Take this in the meanwhile,” I say, but she doesn’t move an inch toward my outstretched hand.
“This isn’t the time for ego,” I reproach.
“I’ll be fine on my own. I don’t need your favors.”
“Fine. No favors. You’ll work for this money.”
She fires a furious look at me, and I realize that must’ve sounded like I’m offering to pay her for a blowjob.
“No, Jesus. I mean come to work at Bubble. As a programmer.”
“If you’re serious, I’ll email you my CV.” She still doesn’t understand how serious I am.
“No need. The decision’s already been made. Just come to the office tomorrow.”
She smiles meltingly at me. I feel truly happy for the first time in years.
“I want you to know that I’ve… done something I feel pretty guilty about. I had to sell the dresses you gave me,” she admits.
“I actually know that. Earlier tonight I happened to meet the girl who bought the blue one.” I try to keep the gloom out of my voice, tell myself they were only clothes, there’ll be others. “But I know that no one in those dresses will ever look better than you do.”
She smiles self-consciously at the honest observation.
“I kept one to myself,” she says. “A memento.”
Please. Please be the…
“The black strapless one. It felt so perfect on me, I just couldn’t give it up, not for anything – I could probably heat this place for a month if I had, but… honestly, I’d rather freeze to death.”
This girl, she’s amazing. She feels so perfect for me. I can’t give her up, not for anything.
Chapter Sixteen
Her first day went by without a hitch. I kept my involvement to a minimum so as not to make her uncomfortable, but I feel calmer, knowing she’s just two floors away.
By noon she is already having lunch with her new coworkers and her new team leader is apparently very pleased with her recruitment. I have no doubt that she’s just begun to impress them. I know how good she is.
Two months after she started working at Bubble, I finally begin to grow accustomed to her presence. Apart from the occasional encounter in the lobby or the elevator, I keep my distance.
She is smiling a lot, and that makes me happy.
I’m taking the elevator down when she and her team leader come in, chattering excitedly about some project they’ve been working on together. They fall silent the moment they notice me.
“Done for the day?” I attempt to break the awkward silence.
“She’s been working so hard she hasn’t even been to lunch. I’m taking her to the place across the street. But we’ll be pulling an all-nighter, sir,” he speaks for her, as if she isn’t even there. She’s just hiding behind him quietly like he’s meant to protect her from me or something. I hadn’t noticed before, but her team leader is so tall that she is entirely obscured by him, and my jaw clenches involuntarily at this. I’m further annoyed by how handsome and confident he is, how close they seem. As pathetic as it is, I envy him – unlike me, he can make his move on her whenever he feels like it; fuck me if he hasn’t made it already.
Not that I can blame him. She’s been especially beautiful since she started working here – happiness suits her. I’m not blind to the fact that she’s an attractive woman and that many of Bubble’s numerous bachelors have been asking the secretaries if the new programmer’s available. I’m trying to wrap my head around the fact that it’s a matter of time, nothing more, until the answer to that question is “no.” I can’t stop that from happening, but I hate that I can’t even talk to her or spend time with her without it reading as workplace sexual harassment. Her team l
eader is one thing; the CEO of the fucking company’s another. I’m held to a higher standard.
The next time I run into them – again in the elevator – we nod to each other like strangers, but I explode inside when I hear her team leader declare he’s taking her for a drink after work because they have some things to go over.
And just one sleepless night after that, I hear the secretaries chattering about Mi-Ok and her team leader flying to Busan for three nights to test the new encryption system we’re about to order. I didn’t expect him to wait too much – not with the level of interest Mi-Ok had been generating among the company’s men – but still, I wasn’t expecting him to take her to Busan for three nights under the premise of checking a new system that was actually designed by me. I’m so pissed when I get back to my office that I can’t even remember why I left it in the first place. I pace back and forth, seething, and all I can think is that there is no way in hell I’m letting this happen. I will not stand there and be run over just because I haven’t found a way for she and I to work yet.
“What’re you doing here?” she’s understandably surprised to see me at the airport. This is fine. I was expecting some awkwardness; the end justifies the means.
“Your team leader won’t be coming. I’ll be going instead,” I inform her of the slight change of plans. I can’t quite read her expression – it could be disappointment or concern. Either way, she does not seem pleased by the change.
“Don’t worry. We’ll fly to Busan, finish the testing in a few hours and get back.” She seems immensely relieved that we won’t be spending the night. I didn’t realize how grating my presence is to her.
“So you’re saying we’ll be back today?” she asks to make sure. She must be wondering about the discrepancy – her team leader told her that it would take three nights, and now I’m saying it won’t even be a day.
“I planned the encryption system myself, so with your help it shouldn’t take me longer than three hours to test it,” I explain, though I know it shouldn’t have taken her team leader much longer than that. Clearly, the only tests he intended to conduct with the remaining time were on her reproductive system.
The flight to Busan is dreadful. The entire aircraft shudders in bouts of turbulence. Mi-Ok is so tense I suggest that she take a sleeping pill, and only then find out that this is her first time on a plane. I hold her hand and tell her everything’ll be just fine. I’m hoping it will be.
This was a great deal more fun than I ever imagined it possible to have during technical tests of an encryption system. I stare as Mee-Ok’s curious eyes dart across the screen, taking in every single detail of the sophisticated code I’d written. I’m certain she has no idea about the sexy little growling sounds she makes when she’s excited. She picks up her pen and jots down a note on a piece of paper. I track the roundabout progression the pen makes towards her perfect lips. It’s a good thing the screen has her full attention, because all I can do at the moment is watch her tantalizingly nibble and suck on the tip of that lucky pen. And yes, of course my brain goes there. She’s complimenting the quality of my code and her eyes glitter admiringly at me. My ego feels nice and warm. She’s probably the only woman in the world that I can turn on just by quoting Alice in Wonderland or writing some elegant code. And yes, I could’ve probably finished the testing myself in a quarter of the time it took us. But considering the spectacle I got in return, I think the delay was understandable.
“I could not have predicted this storm,” I respond to her accusing stare when the entire airport display board blinks red with seemingly infinite CANCELLED alerts. “Typhoon and tsunami warnings are in effect for this whole region. You can’t possibly blame me for this.”
But her eyes say that she can and she will.
She returns from the information desk after trying to find another option; like I’d been trying to explain, there aren’t any. There are no cars left to rent and the trains are non-operational, so for the time being we appear to be stuck in Busan. She reluctantly hands me the hotel’s card. I look at it and throw it in a nearby trash can. She stares at me.
“What are you doing?”
“Look, the city’s in chaos, and I’m not taking you to a seaside hotel in the middle of a tsunami warning. Does that make sense to you?” I ask but don’t really wait for her reply. “Let’s go.”
I take her hand in mine so I can’t lose her in the crowd and my other hand wheels the luggage cart out of the airport. Among the mass of people packed outside in the howling wind and rain I frantically search for someone dumb enough to risk his life for money and drive us out of here before it’s too late. The taxi driver I find looks at me like I’m the dumb one when I list the amount I’m willing to pay him for his services.
“Take us here,” I hand him a note I’d scribbled an address on. “You know the way?” he nods. I’m paying him enough so he doesn’t complain about the distance.
The taxi sways and creaks in the wind and the convoy of military rescue vehicles that passes us indicates that we are in very real danger. The driver informs us that dozens of boats and other vessels have been lost at sea. Mi-Ok visibly shrinks at the news, but I dare not hug her.
When we reach our destination, I pay the driver much more than we’d agreed on, and he drops us off and drives away.
“Where are we?” Mi-Ok inquires when we go up the driveway, struggling against the fierce wind.
“One of my vacation homes,” I tell her.
“It’s completely abandoned,” she states the obvious.
“I suppose the staff must’ve evacuated because of the storm, but this house is tough. It can take the storm.” I pray I’m as right as I try to sound.
I flick on the lights and peek around the pantry. Thank god – the people who keep the place up in my absence seem to be fans of instant ramen.
The power’s still on, so is the heating, and there’s food.
We’ll be fine.
“This house is huge,” Mi-Ok states in astonishment. I suppose anything would look huge compared to that cozy shithole she lives in. But it is a fairly large house. “Still,” she adds, “I feel uncomfortable that it’s just the two of us.”
“You can choose any room you like. If my presence is so unbearable to you, feel free to lock yourself in a room until the storm passes,” I snap, but quickly simmer down.
I put the kettle on and place two cups of ramen on the kitchen table. “I just ask that you eat something before disappearing off to one of these rooms.”
The water boils, and she takes the kettle to fill up the cups. We both sit there, waiting for the five minutes our ramen needs to cook. She looks at her cup as if nothing in the world has ever been as fascinating. I look at her, because she is the most fascinating thing I’ve ever seen.
“Do you want me to show you the rest of the house later?” I suggest, slurping noodles. She giggles a bit at the sounds I’m making. That captivating smile reappears.
“Don’t look at me like that, I’m starving,” I shrug, and keep slurping noisily.
“Okay,” she says, and the word makes me happy, because it means she’s willing to be with me rather than hide somewhere until the storm passes.
“There’s a video game room downstairs, a home theater, and the crowning glory of this place – the heated pool.”
She seems unimpressed. “I suck at video games. A home theater is cool, but only if there’s popcorn. As for the pool – you hate swimming, and I never learned. And anyway, it’s freezing outside. Going for a swim’s not what I’d call an attractive offer.”
“The pool is heated. Same central heating as the rest of the house,” I declare with mock indignation, and she awards me with a small smile.
“I can teach you, if you want,” I say. “You’ll swim like a fish by the time we’re done here.”
“I didn’t pack a bathing suit.”
&nb
sp; “You’re wearing underwear right now, aren’t you?” I swear, I didn’t mean for it to come out that way; but if I hadn’t stopped her hand halfway to my face I’d be very much slapped right now.
I hold on to her wrist on our way down the stairs leading to the pool. I flick a switch and the water lights up in a beautiful, blue glow.
“I’ll let go if you promise not to run.”
When I release her, she rubs her wrist as if I’d squeezed too tight, even though I didn’t. I crouch near the water to check the temperature.
“I’ll turn around until you’re in the water. You can stand in this area,” I indicate the shallow end.
I hear a zipper unzipping and chattering teeth.
“Get into the water where it’s warmer,” I suggest. She runs into the water, crossing her arms adorably over her pink cotton bra.
“Motherfucker,” she swears, “you liar, it’s freezing in here.”
I laugh and jump in after her.
“You can stay over there,” she points at the other end of the pool, alarmed.
“Am I supposed to teach you how to swim from all the way over here?” I try to understand exactly how she expects this to work.
“I’ll demonstrate, okay? Watch me and do what I do.”
Her hands are spanking the water. This is not going to work.
I cross the distance between us in three seconds and stand next to her. My hands guide her arms, slide across her wet skin. Her pink cotton bra has become completely transparent, but I’m making an insane effort to look anywhere else. She thankfully seems to have no idea how turned on I am right now.
“Turn around and place your hand on the rail. Next I’ll show you what to do with your legs.” I grab her ankles and guide the motion of her feet. “Straight, bend, open hard, close hard. Now you try.”
While she practices, I swim a few laps in a failed attempt to calm my libido.
The Bubble Match Page 11