My Brilliant Life

by Ae-ran Kim

  * * *

  But I didn’t write back. I felt afraid when I sat at my desk. What if I fell for her? I was worried that I would end up liking this life, just because I liked someone. I didn’t feel like I had the right to like her. I wrote, “Dear Lee Seoha,” then deleted it. I typed “Hi, it’s Areum,” and deleted that, too. I lay in bed, having done nothing.

  I tried my best to forget about it.

  I wanted to be grateful that someone cared and move on, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Everyone considers you prematurely aged, but I’ll just think of you as a mountain. Someone who wrote like that couldn’t be a bad person. Maybe she wanted a friend, too. My heart quaked, but my mind ordered me to calm down. This was just a nice email from a kind stranger. I didn’t know anything about this girl, and not all sick people were good people. As I knew from personal experience, sick kids were some of the most self-centered and manipulative people in the world.

  My mind started spiraling into negativity.

  How did she know that there’s always music at the beginning of every love story? Has she been around the block? Is she just super vain? Does she just follow sad stories and want to use me so that she could feel special? Does she want to be reassured that her life is not as bad? Get a grip, Areum. A love story? What are you thinking?

  That night I had that same dream. The sky was blue and the grass was green. The enormous trampoline was on a big wide hill. There I was in the middle, jumping. Maybe my heart disorder was making me breathless, making me dream that I was exerting myself. I would jump up—boing—and laugh heartily—boing—then close my eyes. I floated in the air for quite a long time, as if the frame had frozen, as if time slowed when I was in the air. Then suddenly I heard music. A guitar, a piano, and drums. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I jumped to the music. Every time I leaped into the air, I spread my arms over my head, singing the song she’d sent at the top of my lungs, elated.

  PART THREE

  15

  I heard the wind wherever I went, because the wind was everywhere. It gradually stripped the color off summer and stole the vibrancy of the earth. The color orange trumped green, and red overtook orange. It was a light breeze, level two, where you could feel the air on your face and the weather vane began to move. Level zero was calm, and level one was a wisp of a breeze, and then it was gentle, then refreshing, then brisk. I read somewhere that there were thirteen levels up to a hurricane.

  Autumn came to the hospital as well. The air turned crisp and shivered through my chest. When the sun was warm, I got myself a coffee from the vending machine and sat on a bench outside. The aroma and steam from the paper cup made me feel like an adult. I pretended to sip it without actually drinking any. If even a little bit touched my tongue my heart pounded as if I were being pursued. In the cardiology ward, there were a lot of patients who looked fine but would suddenly collapse. I was categorized as someone who needed complete rest, but I wandered through the hospital every chance I got, while my mom napped on a cot. She seemed more exhausted lately and slept a lot. If I had to sit still and rest all day long, I would go completely nuts.

  The weather was chilly. You couldn’t tell from looking, but the trees were getting busy preparing for winter. The branches were taut with obstinate determination, and they were filling their hard trunks with focus. The wind, a gentle level-three breeze that rippled water and swayed branches, made shadows dance beneath the trees. I blew into the air, curious what my breath looked like. It revealed its faint form like developing film and dissipated. The light, white breath seemed to be the manifestation of my inner and outer lives meeting for a brief moment before parting ways. Or maybe it was my soul revealing itself only during cold weather.

  Several people were sunning themselves, wearing cardigans over their hospital gowns. Dragonflies buzzed around the pond by the flower bed. Over there a man was arguing on the phone and a woman wearing mourner’s clothes was smoking a cigarette, crouched next to a trash can. Across the way a man looked dejected, holding a bundle of documents. Men hawking alternative therapies craned their necks, holding bags with herbs and magnetic mats. What you would see around any hospital. The true character of this place existed inside the firm concrete walls. Like the boy who yelled at his parents entreating him to be brave, “Do you have any idea how much it hurts?” and the jaundiced grandmother being wheeled away like a package, and urine the color of banana milk, cherry juice, or peachade. Ostomy bags, hepatic comas. All of that was inside, clustered together in segregation. In the face of disease and illness, people were shocked, in denial, grew angry and sad. Suppressed feelings cloaked the hospital. Maybe everyone worried that what they feared would become reality as soon as they reacted in a certain way.

  Once, I asked a nurse, “You’ve worked here a long time, right?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “What do you think about when you see patients?”

  She checked my blood pressure. “Nothing.”

  I waited.

  “I don’t have time to think about anything.”

  She said she didn’t even have enough time to deal with the things that she had to do. “But I did realize that money is incredibly important,” she added, somewhat sheepishly, without taking her eyes off my chart.

  I heard a gale of laughter and turned to see a young resident joking with the nurses. I thought of the word “chupa”—to make a pass. Chupa. “Chu,” meaning autumn. “Pa,” meaning wave. Autumn wave. How pretty. But why did they call the attempt to draw romantic interest “autumn wave”? Why that, of the many words in the world?

  The breeze whispered to me, Because it’s winter right after fall. Because the season of sterility and death is looming, autumn is when things become desperate. I thought of the long-dead people who decided to call that chupa and smiled. No matter how much you read, no matter how long you lived, humans would always try to get with someone else. Thinking about that, I felt that the world would continue on just fine.

  A dragonfly settled on my knee. I held my breath and stared at it. I could barely see out of my right eye, so it was easier to close it to focus. We gazed at each other, me with my one eye and the dragonfly with its ten thousand lenses. It felt strangely tense, as if two epochs were facing each other, as if a being from hundreds of thousands of years ago was facing the present. The light breeze made the dragonfly’s wings shiver, making them shimmer in the colors of the rainbow. The dragonfly floated up and settled on the edge of the bench. The two pairs of transparent wings patterned in geometric shapes shined under the sunlight. Contained in the wings was an intricate mathematical pattern that the dragonfly had held since its primitive days. We, too, must have something like that engraved within our bodies. Who was the one who came up with the calculation in the beginning? How did the being who made me mess up on his math?

  Being outside for a long time made my muscles stiff, but I wanted to stay a little longer. The central vein above the right side of my chest went up and down according to my breathing. I’d come outside to figure out what I would write in my reply to her. A week had already passed since I read the email, but I hadn’t sent a response. I had taken a long time to even decide to send a reply, and I still had no idea what to say. There was also a more fundamental reason why I hadn’t written yet—I wanted to write something eloquent without being obvious. I didn’t want her to feel smug, or self-satisfied. At the same time I wanted to make her happier than she’d expected, since satisfaction transforms into admiration when it goes beyond expectations. I wanted her to be swept toward me along an autumn wave of admiration.

  How could I achieve this?

  I thought about all the terrible things I had written until now. They were labored. Just thinking about them made me blush. The notes were conceptual and pedantic and nonsensical. I was basically writing the dreck that would make me groan and roll my eyes if I came across it online. Stylistically, I was all over the place; some were like prose written by a cocky elementary schooler, other
s were like clichéd essays written by a rusty humanities student returning to school after a few years away. I was a peacock preening his feathers, begging for her affection. I felt uncomfortable and alienated from myself, having suddenly turned into the most ordinary boy worrying over the most ordinary thing.

  Was this all because I learned about love through books?

  I had heard about someone who learned Japanese by watching anime; he apparently spoke like an old man and a yakuza and a high school girl, all mixed together. That had made me laugh. But that was exactly who I was right now, when it came to love.

  Lee Seoha. Her name perked me up, like an excited child learning the name of an object for the very first time. I felt something quiet in my heart, as if a heavy clump of snow fell off a pine branch in the middle of the night. As if there was a specific type of silent wind. The silence blared. I murmured “quiet” to myself, in a volume that was level zero out of thirteen. That was the quietest sound that made the largest, farthest-reaching reverberation. Fascinating. I had believed that level zero had no impact, but it was certainly doing something.

  I had to write the first sentence, then we would see what happened. I traced the word “Hi” in the air. That wasn’t what I wanted. I wiped it away with the edge of my sleeve. It was the same with “How are you” and “Nice to hear from you.” The sigh that came out of my eighty-year-old lungs turned the air hazy. I wrote her name in the foggy air as if writing on a frosted window. A surprising sentence appeared in the sky, as if a subtitle on a movie.

  The weather vane began to move.…

  I could almost hear the creaking of an old weather vane as it began to turn, as the words drifted one by one above my head. I spotted an old sycamore tree, alone and abundant with thousands of shimmering leaves, beckoning to another tree, which nodded to another, and so on, continuously, subtly. It seemed that chupa wasn’t something only people did.

  16

  Sometimes I thought about Little Grandpa Jang. He was my only friend and he was also the only one who knew about her. When all kinds of thoughts tangled in my head, I found myself missing his cheerful but useless one-liners.

  The evening before I was to be admitted to the hospital, I snuck away to see him, to say a quick goodbye. I paused in front of his gate to check that his light was on and stood on tiptoes to press the bell. When Big Grandpa Jang opened the door, I turned shy and said in a small voice, “Um, is Grandpa Jang home?”

  Big Grandpa Jang looked me up and down with a critical eye. “Deoksu’s sick.”

  Deoksu? His name was Deoksu? It hadn’t occurred to me that Little Grandpa Jang would have a name. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Big Grandpa Jang looked sternly down at me. “Don’t worry about it. When you’re old it’s your job to be sick.” He seemed impatient for me to leave.

  I remembered Dad mentioning that Big Grandpa Jang was showing signs of dementia. He seemed perfectly fine to me. Thankfully, right then Little Grandpa Jang came running out, a blanket draped over him. His nose was red; maybe he had a cold. Instead of going around Big Grandpa Jang, he grabbed on to the gate and poked his head under his father’s arm to better see me. “Dad! I’m not sick!”

  He sounded like a little kid home sick from school, insisting that he could go outside to play. From the way he was acting you would think that it was actually Little Grandpa Jang who had dementia. He was so happy to see me; after my episode aired, he had brought me to the senior citizens’ center and always waved at me even if he was really far away. It was all very embarrassing.

  “Hey, Areum! What are you doing here?”

  “Oh. Um, I came to say goodbye. I’m going to the hospital tomorrow.”

  “Yeah? Let’s talk in private.”

  “Well, I heard you’re sick.…”

  “Oh, I’m fine. We won’t be gone long. Stay here. I’ll go change.” Little Grandpa Jang dashed back inside before anyone could stop him.

  Big Grandpa Jang and I stood there awkwardly.

  “Grandpa?” I said.

  “Hm?”

  “Don’t worry, we won’t be out late.”

  Big Grandpa Jang nodded. He looked down at me. “But—”

  I looked at him.

  “Who are you, sir?”

  * * *

  We headed to the store by the entrance to the neighborhood, which had a wide bench under an old zelkova tree. First, we had asked the next-door neighbor, Grandma Choi, to keep an eye on Big Grandpa Jang. Little Grandpa Jang boasted that he was out of her league, but he was tolerating her crush because she was very kind to him. I shrugged; Grandma Choi was at least a decade older than him.

  The shopkeeper was still completely sucked into the TV drama. I didn’t particularly like that show but I liked how the entire neighborhood fell silent when that program was on, all these people focusing on the same story at the same time. Little Grandpa Jang announced in a loud voice that I should pick what I wanted to drink, broadcasting to the entire world that he was picking up the tab.

  Startled, the shopkeeper got up from his chair. I chose an orange soda and Grandpa got an herbal drink. We sat in front of the tree with our beverages. Bubbles fizzed in my bottle. An elegant, bluish hue settled over the hills as the sun set. I could hear kids playing, their loud, clear voices calling out, arguing, and shouting, the way every neighborhood should sound.

  “So you’re going in tomorrow?” Little Grandpa Jang asked.

  “Yes.”

  “When do you get back?” He asked this every time, even though he knew that it might be for the last time.

  “When I’m better, I guess.”

  “You’re all packed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  A few motorcycles roared from a distance away. We could see flashes of light from all the way over here; they were clearly a motorcycle gang.

  Little Grandpa Jang frowned. “Ugh. I don’t like young folk.”

  I grinned at his unveiled disgust. “Why not?”

  “They’re annoying. Stupid, arrogant, full of themselves. I really hate them.” He shuddered as if he had seen a repulsive animal.

  “Grandpa Song over at the real estate office has a different opinion.”

  Little Grandpa Jang looked wary and jealous. “And what does he say?”

  “That old people always say young people are stupid, but that it’s wrong to think that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because old people have only one thing to be envious of. Their youth.”

  Little Grandpa Jang thought for a moment and burst out laughing. “It’s true! He’s right.” He sucked noisily on his straw and nodded in the direction of the motorcycles. “They’re just trying to get themselves killed.”

  “Who? Those guys?”

  “Otherwise why are they going on like that?”

  “Because they want to look cool?”

  Little Grandpa Jang let out a mysterious smile. “No, that’s not why.”

  “Then why?”

  “They’re terrified of dying.”

  I cocked my head.

  “They brag like that, but they’re quaking inside. That’s how they boast that they’re alive. I know, because I used to be like that when I was younger.”

  I didn’t understand what he was talking about, but nodded. “Grandma Choi’s grandson is always on his bike. The other day, I asked him, What do you think about when you’re riding?”

  “Yeah?”

  “And he said, I don’t think about anything.”

  “See what I mean?” Little Grandpa Jang clucked.

  “I asked him why not, and he answered grimly, Because, if you think about it, you could get killed.”

  “Pfft!”

  “Were you really like that when you were younger?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you can’t talk shit about them.”

  “Why not? They talk shit about us.”

  “But you’re an elder.”

  “That’s exactly why w
e have to talk shit about them. We’re bored! We can’t even get on motorcycles.”

  * * *

  A little later.

  “Areum,” Little Grandpa Jang said gently.

  “Yes?”

  “Why don’t you hang out with kids your age?”

  I looked at him, disappointed and hurt that he would ask me something like that when he knew my situation better than anyone else.

  “Don’t you have any friends?”

  I flushed. “Of course I do,” I said, my voice growing loud. “A ton of kids got in touch with me recently, saying we should be friends. But they’re not at my level. They’re childish. I’m not interested.”

  Little Grandpa Jang stared at me. Then he burst out laughing. “Yeah?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you know, the way you’re talking makes you sound just like the kids your age.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You talk like your age. Like you’re sixteen.”

  “Well, why don’t you hang out with people your age?”

  “Don’t you know by now?” Little Grandpa Jang said breezily. “Those old fogies, they’re not at my level!”

  * * *

  We kept talking about deep, serious things. Around that time I had developed a habit of asking about something the moment I became curious. I figured I was allowed to be a little impatient and brazen, since I might not have the chance to ask those questions later. Especially to someone like Little Grandpa Jang. Everyone’s answer to a question was imbued with their life experience, and hearing someone else’s story made me feel like I was sharing those experiences.

  “Grandpa Jang?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you ever feel old? When do you feel your age?”

  “Let’s see.…” Little Grandpa Jang reflected for a moment. “You know, before, I thought people in their fifties and sixties were really old. But when I turned that age I realized they weren’t that old after all.”