“When my son gets his hands on you, he’s going to kill you!”
The pleading had not lasted long. With that last roar, she hung up.
Se-oh slowly put the phone back in its cradle. The fear in the old woman’s voice had taught her something unexpected. Someone had threatened Su-ho before. More than once. And recently, it seemed.
25
The hallway was as dark as if it were pouring rain outside. But the cold did nothing to deter the smell of instant noodles and mold. People kept coming and going. Noise was coming from every direction—from inside the rooms, from people chatting in the common area, from the speakers thumping downstairs in the karaoke bar. Shards of light reached out from beneath the room doors like pieces of broken china and gave off no warmth. The door to #433 was dark.
Ki-jeong had been drawn back to this place after meeting Bu-wi. When she had made that third phone call, she’d let the phone ring for a long time before a man finally answered. He’d sounded very happy to hear her sister’s name. That was a first. To come across someone who not only recognized her sister’s name right away but was excited to hear it. She had wondered whether the phone number would turn out to be Bu-wi’s, and sure enough it was. His happiness quickly turned to suspicion. A normal reaction for someone receiving an unexpected call from a friend’s family member.
When she met Bu-wi in J—, he’d talked nonstop about her sister. He told her everything he knew. Or at least, she had the feeling he did. And yet the circumstances of her sister’s death remained stubbornly unclear, to her dismay.
It would probably be the same after she met Se-oh. Se-oh would probably have very little, if anything at all, to tell her about her sister. Not because she had something to hide, but because there was nothing to tell. Nevertheless, she knew that Se-oh wouldn’t go about her merry way, pretending not to know Ki-jeong’s sister. As with Ki-jeong’s sister, there was nothing merry or warm about Se-oh’s life. She didn’t exactly exude a youthful glow.
In talking to Bu-wi, Ki-jeong learned that her assumptions about the three of them—Se-oh, Bu-wi, and her little sister—were mostly wrong. They had each traveled along their separate, solitary paths, and at some point those paths crossed, and nothing more. Same as with everyone else. No one’s lives were intimately bound together, but no one was entirely alone and unconnected either.
There was one thing she wondered about. All three of them had experienced similar failures. Time did not stop for them while they worked for the pyramid. They would have lost friends and time and hope. And money, too, of course. Bu-wi and Se-oh had probably taken out sizeable loans, just like her sister. But after experiencing identical failures, Ki-jeong’s sister had died while Se-oh and Bu-wi survived. They’d survived, even if all that meant was that one of them was now tailing and keeping notes on someone, while the other was struggling to finish school on part-time wages in some podunk town. For some, despair brought an end to life; how was it that, for others, despair could bring about a new beginning, or just more of the same? What had caused her sister to fail at surviving and Se-oh and Bu-wi to succeed?
Though she could not know everything, there was one thing Ki-jeong could do. She could finish whatever it was her sister was meaning to say to Se-oh. What made Ki-jeong decide to risk misunderstanding and confront Se-oh was #433. The tiny, cramped goshiwon room with its paper-thin walls. The box of relics from #157 that Se-oh went through every day. It was because of the cheap bottles of toner and moisturizer; the previous day’s hand-washed laundry, half-dry and stiff, hanging on coat hangers and on the back of the chair; the plain, white cotton underwear; the purple trench coat hanging permanently on the wall like a decoration. As Se-oh sat surrounded by these things, just as her sister had in #216, Ki-jeong wanted to tell her that someone still missed her.
A large group of people, chattering loudly, came out of the common area. Ki-jeong knew Se-oh would not be among them. They each went into their separate rooms, leaving Ki-jeong alone in the cold once more.
Someone was coming toward her. The person hadn’t made a sound when they’d entered the building, and for a moment it was as if they’d suddenly materialized in the hallway. The yellowish light was too faint for Ki-jeong to make out the face, but she could see the hair was tied in a ponytail that swayed behind them, and the shoulders sagged. The silhouette looked like an old woman.
Ki-jeong stepped aside to let her pass. The person stopped in front of #433. She seemed conscious of Ki-jeong standing nearby as she cautiously took her keys out of her bag and unlocked the door. Ki-jeong watched from behind. The person was shorter than Ki-jeong had imagined. She was big-framed but not fat or sluggish. Instead, she gave off an impression of frailness.
Se-oh opened the door just slightly and stuffed herself inside. The sound of locking echoed loudly down the hallway. The light leaking through the crack in the door reached Ki-jeong’s feet. The warmth of the light surprised her.
26
If you run into someone you know, the doors to hell will reopen. That was what Se-oh had told herself when she was hiding out at home. That everyone always had it out for someone. She was convinced that the people she’d talked into joining her downline only to return home in failure, and the people she’d gotten into scuffles with when they’d stormed their way into the dorm and tried to drag her recruits back home with them—not that she had any idea why she’d bothered to fight them—would appear out of nowhere to scream and rage at her. Because hatred never went away, it only multiplied.
By sending her out of the house on regular errands, her father had shown her that the odds were high she would never see any of those people again. Look, he seemed to say. No one is out to get you. Everyone is just living their own life.
It had taken Se-oh forever to get it through her head. No one was paying that kind of attention to her. They were so busy making up for lost time and getting resettled that their hatred and resentment naturally wilted. Those emotions were useless in the face of daily life. Time overcame everything. She didn’t even resent Mi-yeon anymore. Which wasn’t to say she no longer cared. The fact that her name still haunted her was proof.
And so, she had continued to anticipate the moment someone would come up to her and say, “Excuse me, but are you Se-oh Yun?” The world was big, but coincidence was forever sending people into each other’s paths. She had imagined it so many times, and yet she’d never once pictured it happening in the dark, narrow hallway of the goshiwon. There was no way this was coincidence’s doing, though. To have it happen here meant this person already knew nearly everything there was to know about her.
The woman she’d passed in the hallway knocked on her door and said, “You must be Se-oh Yun.”
Se-oh stared at her, but the woman’s face was hidden in the shadows. The person didn’t live in the goshiwon. If so, she would’ve said “hey” instead of calling Se-oh by name. Hey, have you seen my other slipper? It looks like this. Hey, I think you used my shampoo this morning. Hey, did you take the can of tuna I left in the fridge? Hey, stop dragging your chair across the floor. It’s loud.
“I’m sorry for the sudden intrusion.”
She didn’t sound all that sorry. It was probably just something the woman thought she had to say in order to get Se-oh to talk to her. What did she look like? Se-oh had stared at the woman standing in the middle of the hallway like a pillar, had given her a look that said get out of her way. She recalled slim pants and black flats.
Someone had finally found her. She had thought she would feel scared and angry when this moment came, but she didn’t. Because she’d been imagining they would eventually track her down and accost her, and because she’d wasted so much time trying to avoid exactly that, now that it was really happening she wasn’t as afraid as she’d thought she’d be.
How had this person found her? And who was she anyway? Was she one of the people Se-oh had slept shoulder-to-shoulder with all those years ago? Someone she’d shared a bathroom with, according to the time s
lots allotted them? Someone whose stench of sweat and excrement had become so familiar that they stopped feeling embarrassed or uncomfortable about how seldom they were able to bathe? Or was she one of the family members who’d come in person to rescue her latest recruit?
“I’m Ha-jeong Shin’s sister.”
Se-oh had never heard that name before.
“You knew Ha-jeong, right? I’m her older sister, Ki-jeong Shin.”
The voice coming out of the darkness sounded brittle, like ice cracking. A look of fear flickered over the person’s face, a look that said she might have the wrong person after all. The fact that Se-oh didn’t recognize the name meant it was definitely someone she’d known during her days in the pyramid. She’d met so many people back then. She couldn’t have put a face to the name, no matter how hard she tried. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten. There were a lot of people living there at the time whose names she’d never learned. She couldn’t even begin to count how many had left after just a day or two.
“Hey, could you go talk in the common area instead?”
The door to the room next to Se-oh’s burst open just long enough for the occupant to bark at them in irritation. They couldn’t see his face. Se-oh retreated into her room, as if the voice itself were pushing her back. Ki-jeong followed her, uninvited, and stood awkwardly just inside the door.
“You said your sister’s name is Ha-jeong Shin?” Se-oh asked.
“Yes.”
Ki-jeong sounded disappointed that Se-oh hadn’t placed the name yet. Maybe she’d expected Se-oh to light up the moment she heard it. Or maybe she thought her face would crumble or flood with guilt.
Se-oh slowly closed the door. She felt calm. Maybe because the name Ha-jeong Shin didn’t ring a bell.
“You don’t remember her?” Ki-jeong asked.
Instead of answering, Se-oh sat on the edge of the cold bed. The room was so small that they’d have to sit down or else their faces would be nearly touching. She watched closely as Ki-jeong pulled out the chair and sat down without asking. The chair didn’t tip. Ki-jeong seemed to know one of the legs was shorter than the others. In fact, ever since she’d first entered the room, she’d shown no surprise at how compact it was. Nor was she trying to sneak peeks around the room. Se-oh had thought at first that Ki-jeong was just being polite, but now she suspected otherwise. Ki-jeong had been in one of these rooms before.
They sat with their knees touching. Se-oh turned to the side to make a little more room. That was as far apart as the room would allow them to get. She’d had so many questions, but now not a single one came to mind. She wondered, too, why Ki-jeong wasn’t speaking up first. Why had Ki-jeong come looking for her? How did she find her? Had she been in Se-oh’s room before? The fact that she was the older sister of some person named Ha-jeong Shin, whom Se-oh had no memory of, told her nothing.
“I thought for sure you knew my sister,” Ki-jeong said with a sigh. It was hard for her to get the words out. And what she had to say next would be even harder. She’d barely said anything yet, but already it seemed impossible to explain properly all that had happened with her sister.
“What about Bu-wi?” Ki-jeong asked. “Do you remember him?”
Se-oh raised her head and looked at Ki-jeong. It was the first time she’d heard his name from a stranger.
“He says he knows you well.”
Se-oh said his name to herself, careful not to let any of the sounds escape her lips. She repeated it several times, and then there it was. A memory of Ha-jeong Shin. It had followed right on the tail of Bu-wi’s name, as if they were linked. The girl who’d followed Bu-wi around like a lost puppy. That girl.
“Ha-jeong. I remember.”
“Thank goodness.”
Silence fell over the room. But it wasn’t a stubborn and oppressive silence. It felt calm. The quiet reassured Se-oh. This visit from Ki-jeong might have nothing to do with what she’d been imagining. Ki-jeong hadn’t come to criticize her about what she’d done in the past, or grab her by the collar and shout at her, or blame her for everything. After all, Ha-jeong had not been part of her downline. Bu-wi was the one who’d recruited her.
“I heard that you two lived in the same dorm.”
“There were a lot of us living there.” Se-oh realized that made her sound defensive. “I only went there to wash up and sleep. I was too tired to do anything else. Everyone kept to themselves. It wasn’t like we were there on some weekend trip. We didn’t choose to eat and sleep together because we were all friends.”
It was her first time opening up to someone else about those days. It was easier than expected. The passage of time had nothing to do with it either. The person sitting across from her had no idea what it had been like or how it felt to sleep alongside so many strangers in a cramped room. She didn’t know that going through something like that ate away at more than just your time.
Ki-jeong might have thought she knew something, but it wasn’t as much as what Se-oh knew. If she really wanted, Se-oh could lie about what she’d done and how she’d lived while in that place. She could make it all up. Her lies and countless misdeeds needed no justification. But the thought of trying gave her no joy. It hadn’t been anyone else’s fault. As with everything else in life, she’d simply made a choice, suffered a loss, and failed.
“I thought maybe you and my sister were close.”
Se-oh didn’t respond.
“To be really honest, I didn’t know my sister all that well,” Ki-jeong added apologetically.
“I wasn’t close with anyone there,” Se-oh said. “It wasn’t easy to make friends. Whenever someone new was brought in, all I thought about was how long they would last, how much they’d be worth. A lot of new recruits tried to run away their first night, so we’d chat them up about all kinds of stuff just to keep them from leaving. But I’d forget about them right away. It was impossible to become friends with someone who was always watching to keep you from escaping at night.”
That was a lie. She’d trusted Bu-wi. Ki-jeong’s sister probably had, too. And maybe Bu-wi had trusted someone in turn. Though they couldn’t show it, everyone in that place had relied on someone else if they could. That said, Ha-jeong had never once turned to Se-oh. Se-oh wasn’t the type people turned to.
Se-oh hesitated and then asked, “How is Ha-jeong doing now?”
The fact that it was Ha-jeong’s sister who’d come to find her, and not Ha-jeong herself, finally weighed on her. There had to be a reason she wasn’t hearing all of this from Ha-jeong directly.
“She’s dead.”
Ki-jeong hesitated and then added that Ha-jeong had drowned and that it wasn’t clear whether it was an accident or suicide. She figured that would answer a few questions Se-oh might have. The look on Se-oh’s face said she wasn’t too surprised.
Ki-jeong slowly answered the rest of the questions that she guessed Se-oh wanted to ask. Such as how she’d tracked her down at the goshiwon, and why. She wasn’t sure if the explanation was acceptable. Se-oh nodded now and then. Though the nods were probably just an unconscious reflex, Ki-jeong felt grateful for them anyway.
Se-oh was surprised. She’d had no idea Ha-jeong had tried calling her multiple times. Her father had never handed her the phone when it rang or told her who was calling. After she’d escaped from the dorm, the team leader and other team members had called relentlessly and even come to the house. Her father had known that she didn’t want to talk to any of them. He would have hung up on Ha-jeong as well, or told her Se-oh wasn’t home. Se-oh never answered the phone herself. When the doorbell rang, she did not open the door. If her father wasn’t home, the phone would ring and ring until it stopped on its own, and if someone visited, they would go home with nothing to show for it.
“Why did she call me?”
Ha-jeong and Se-oh hadn’t been close enough for phone calls. Se-oh felt like apologizing to Ki-jeong for that. Someone’s last words had to mean something to the bereaved. The bereaved would sustain themselv
es on whatever meaning they managed to extract from those words, at least for a little while. But Se-oh had stolen Ki-jeong’s opportunity to hear them. Maybe Ki-jeong had been brooding over it the same way that Se-oh had been brooding over her father’s final moments.
“When did you see her last?” Ki-jeong asked instead of answering.
Se-oh thought about the verb tense of that question, about the difference between asking “When did you see her last?” versus “Have you seen her?” The latter continued into the present while the former belonged to the past. A question like that required time.
It was a long time ago. Back then. Back when she’d thought a single failure meant your whole life was over. When she’d tried so hard not to fail that all she did was fail, over and over. When she’d called strangers out of the blue to try to convince them to work for her, and begged and pleaded with friends to join her. When she’d taken turns with others just to be able to splash some water on her face over a utility sink. When the only words that came out of her mouth were a hypnotic chant about how you could succeed if you really tried. When she didn’t leave, not because she thought she was going to make money, but because it was too hard to acknowledge that she’d messed up. When she’d been so good at saying things she didn’t believe just to keep people she didn’t care about from leaving.
Now she understood a few things about those days. Enough time had passed. The first was that maybe all of life was like that. Holding onto hope only to get bitten. Maybe it would happen to her again, and again.
Looking back on it now, it hadn’t been so different from any other time. There’d been good, and there’d been bad. That was all. At the time, she’d thought all of it was bad. Because happiness had flitted on by while bad things had a way of lingering.
She thought maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if they had been given better things to sell or if they had been treated better. Bu-wi had said the system itself was unfair, as it had played to everyone’s get-rich-quick fantasies. And in fact, Se-oh had decided at some point that the problem was structural, in order to soothe her own disappointment.
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