by Un-su Kim
Reseng worked on chrome-plating for two straight months, until a new employee was finally hired and took his place. Chrome-plating required him to grip a heavy, unwieldy frame with rubber-gloved hands and teeter forward on his toes, as if he were wringing wet laundry over a bucket, dip the frame carefully into the electroplating solution and pull it out exactly ten seconds later. What he hated most about the work was how stupid he looked while leaning over the bath. He had to stand with his legs apart and his bum sticking way out—if the God of Chrome-Plating himself had come down to earth he would have looked just as stupid.
Not long after he’d started, as Reseng was carefully shaking a frame he’d just pulled from the solution, trying to keep the liquid chrome from spattering, the woman with the cute, round face who had drawn him to the factory in the first place came over to him. She stood with her hands clasped behind her back, watching him in evident amusement.
‘What’re you working so hard for? Don’t you need to eat?’ she said.
Reseng gave her a befuddled look. She pointed to the clock on the factory wall: 12:20 p.m.
‘You don’t get overtime for working through lunch,’ she said.
Her voice was just as cheerful as the day she’d walked past his window, filling the street with her laughter. He took off his gloves.
‘Have you eaten?’ he asked.
‘Not yet. I just got back from running an errand for the boss.’
‘Then, if you don’t mind my asking, would you care to have lunch with me?’
She stared at him.
‘Why are you talking like that? You sound like a preacher.’
The factory was too small to have its own cafeteria. The workers ate at a restaurant down a side street crowded with other tiny factories and small apartment buildings. She gestured to Reseng that they should head out. He nodded and pinned his rubber gloves to a wire and took off his vinyl apron and hung it on a coat rack. Then he lathered his hands with soap and scrubbed them for a full minute. As she watched him scrub, she sighed impatiently.
‘You’ve been here less than a month, right?’ she asked as they were leaving.
‘About three weeks.’
‘And you’re still on chrome-plating?’
He nodded.
‘They say it lowers your sperm count if you do it for too long. Each time you dip your hands in, several hundred sperm die. Can you imagine how many are dead after a day’s work? I can’t even count that high. At that rate, it’s practically a massacre. A massacre! I don’t know how they can make people do that work.’
She looked as if she was talking about an actual genocide she had witnessed. But Reseng figured she wasn’t really worried about the number of sperm inside his testicles.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’ve got plenty of sperm. Men produce over 400 billion sperm over a lifetime. Each time a man ejaculates, something like 150 million sperm come shooting out. So that’s plenty. No matter how hard I try, I can’t have sex three thousand times in a row. But it could be a problem for women. They only produce an average of four hundred eggs total in their lifetime.’
She stopped and looked at Reseng in shock.
‘Sex? Ejaculation? How dare you talk about that in front of a lady!’ She glared at him.
Embarrassed, he nervously held up his hands.
‘Sincerely, I…I didn’t mean to offend you.’
‘Sincerely?’ She broke into laughter. ‘Aren’t you kind of young to talk like that?’
She started walking ahead. He tagged along behind.
‘But is it true that women only get four hundred eggs in their lifetime?’ she asked.
‘I read it in a book.’
‘A book, huh?’ She looked incredulous.
He tilted his head in confusion. He didn’t understand the tone of her question.
‘What you really mean is you read it in a girly magazine that you bought at the bus station, right?’ she asked with a laugh.
‘It’s explained in detail in Richard Cardison’s Conquering Infertility. He’s a gynecologist, and according to what he wrote, the number of eggs a woman has is determined by her DNA. Some women have 423 eggs, some have 500, some have 350, you know, and so on.’
She stopped again and stared at him, but this time she looked dazed.
‘Then how many eggs have I already wasted?’ she murmured.
She grew quiet. They continued down the street without speaking. Reseng felt uncomfortable, and she probably felt the same. She was sending him signals that she wanted him to say something, anything, but he couldn’t think of what to say. When they were passing the window of his rented room, from where he’d seen her for the first time, he pointed up at it.
‘That’s where I live.’
She looked up. ‘Isn’t it expensive?’
‘Not really. Three hundred and fifty thousand won a month with no deposit.’
She stared at him in shock.
‘What? How can someone who makes less than a million won a month after taxes say three hundred and fifty thousand isn’t expensive? Don’t you also have to pay electricity, water and sewerage, gas and other utilities on top of the rent? Do you cook your own food at least?’
‘I just moved in…’
‘You eat out?’
Reseng nodded.
‘Twice a day?’
‘Sometimes I have instant ramen at home.’
‘Have you managed to save any money at all? Why are men so immature? They should be saving their hard-earned cash, not burning it with every cigarette they smoke and flushing it away with all the booze they drink. Why do you act like you’re living someone else’s life? If you keep it up, you’ll never own your own home.’
She’d turned suddenly furious. Reseng felt like a scolded child, but everything she was saying sounded more or less correct.
‘Can I go inside?’ she asked, gesturing up at his room with her chin.
Surprised, Reseng asked, ‘Where? My room?’
‘Yes.’ She looked completely nonchalant.
‘Why do you want to go in my room?’
‘I want to see how you live.’
Before he could say anything, she was bounding up the stairs. He followed without protest. She stopped at his door and looked at him. He stepped in front of it to block her.
‘Not today,’ he said hesitantly. ‘I mean, how about if I officially invite you over next time?’
‘Look, I think you’ve got the wrong idea. This is not a date, there is no officially inviting each other over. All I’m doing is checking your room, as your factory elder, to see whether or not you’re cut out for the factory lifestyle. It might seem like there’s nothing to it, but if your daily life isn’t shipshape, then you won’t do well at work.’
The look on her face really was that of a stern factory elder. It was the look of a sergeant inspecting troops for combat readiness, a persnickety dormitory leader preparing for a cleaning inspection. Reseng stared at her in discomfort. She stared right back with a look that said if he knew what was good for him he’d open that door. He had no choice. He opened the door.
Since he didn’t have much in the way of household goods, there was no mess—only the blanket, futon and pillow he’d bought at the local market, the low table that had been in the room when he moved in, an electric kettle to make ramen and instant coffee, and a single bag of clothes he’d brought from the city. The cabinet under the sink was stacked with instant noodle cups, and next to his pillow and on the table were the books that he’d either brought with him from Seoul or bought at the local bookshop: Albert Camus’ Summer and The Plague, Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees, Martin Monestier’s Suicides, Andrew Solomon’s The Noonday Demon.
‘What? This place is empty!’ She kept looking around.
‘I told you I just moved in,’ he said, plucking a towel from the floor and hanging it up.
‘Yeah, but there are still certain basic necessities you have to have. Otherwise, you end up spending more mone
y on little things.’
Reseng nodded.
She glanced at the books on his table and asked, ‘You don’t watch TV?’
‘No.’
She gave herself a quick tour of the room, bathroom and kitchen, as if she were a prospective renter. She even turned on the bathroom tap to check the water pressure and opened every single kitchen drawer. She kept muttering things like, ‘Wow, how do you not have any bowls?’ and ‘This place is hooked up to the city gas line? I guess that’s because it’s such an expensive neighbourhood.’ As she was doing her inspections, Reseng glanced around and felt satisfied that the room wasn’t too dirty. Just then, she let out a shout—more like a scream—from the broom cupboard.
‘What is all this?’
She was holding up a pair of Reseng’s underwear. The cardboard box he’d stuffed full of dirty socks, underwear, T-shirts and other clothes that needed to be washed was sitting wide open. He rushed over, snatched the underwear from her hand and shoved it back into the box. While he was hurriedly closing the flaps, she noticed the unopened packages of socks and underwear piled high on the shelf.
‘Did you own an underwear shop that went out of business? Why do you have all of this?’
‘I don’t have a washing machine.’
‘Then wash it by hand. Are you saying you wear your socks and underwear once and throw them away? Seriously, do you have any brains at all?’
Now she was angry. Of course he wasn’t planning to throw the dirty clothes away. But he wasn’t exactly planning on squatting in the bathroom and scrubbing it all by hand either. To tell the truth, he’d been so tired and distracted that he hadn’t given any thought at all to what he should do with his dirty underwear.
She glared at him, aghast. He looked up at the ceiling, his face crimson.
‘Do you have a woman to wash your underwear for you?’
Her voice sounded strange. He looked at her quizzically.
‘I’m not saying I’m interested in you. It just burns me up to see someone who doesn’t understand the value of money. But I wouldn’t want your girlfriend to get the wrong idea.’
He had no idea what she meant. ‘I don’t have a woman, but…’
She opened the box and started filling a black shopping bag from underneath the shelf with Reseng’s dirty underwear. Shocked, he tried to stop her, but she slapped the back of his hand. It stung. He stepped back. She stuffed all his laundry into the bag and stood up.
Pointing her finger in his face, she said, ‘Keep only two sets of those new socks and underwear and take the rest back for a refund. Got it?’
‘I have to have underwear,’ Reseng said with a pout.
She tapped his face with the laundry bag.
‘There’s a year’s worth of underwear in here as long as you wash it.’
By the time they left and headed back to the street, there was only fifteen minutes left of their lunch break.
‘I bet you’re hungry,’ she said.
‘I’m okay. I can skip a meal now and then.’
She disappeared into a corner store and came out with two cartons of banana-flavoured milk and a snack cake. She held out the cake and one of the milk cartons. Though it wasn’t much, he suddenly felt incredibly indebted to her. He thanked her and accepted the snacks. They sat on a bench in front of the shop to eat.
‘Weather’s nice,’ she said, looking up at the sky.
He looked up too. ‘Yeah, it is.’
‘Laundry dries really well on a day like this.’ She gave the bag of dirty clothes a squeeze.
The next day at the factory she acted as if she didn’t know him. He tried to wave hello, but she blushed and kept walking to her section. He told himself it was because she was with their co-workers. But even when they bumped into each other in an empty hallway, she merely dipped her head and said nothing. She worked inside on the production line, while Reseng worked outside in a prefab shed where all the plating and painting were done. But in such a small factory, they had plenty of opportunity to bump into each other. Every time, she looked flustered and kept her distance from him, or hurried past, her shoulders hunched.
The next day and the next day, it was the same. He waited outside the gate for her after work, but she came out in a gaggle of co-workers, making it impossible for him to approach her. Even if she had left work alone, he would’ve had no idea what to say to her. What could he say? Please give back my underwear?
On Friday night, Reseng was lying in bed when there was a knock at his door. He opened it and there she was, holding the shopping bag with both hands, her head bent. When he greeted her, she thrust the bag into his hands without looking at him.
‘I gave it a lot of thought and realised I went too far,’ she said, her head still lowered, her voice soft and trembly. ‘I’m sorry if I offended you.’
‘You didn’t have to come all this way just to say that. But since you’re here, come in and have some tea.’
He opened the door wider. She shook her head. He started to step outside, but she shook her hands and stopped him.
‘Don’t come out. I’ll just go.’
She turned and went quickly back down the hallway. He watched open-mouthed as she rushed away, her small shoulders hunched. What had happened to the feisty, intrepid woman who’d shoved all that dirty underwear into the shopping bag? When he heard her footsteps reach the bottom of the stairs, he went back in and closed the door. He opened the bag. Inside were stacks of neatly folded underwear. He took a pair out and sniffed it. It smelled like a freshly laundered cotton sheet that had dried in the warm, afternoon sun. Just then, it hit him: her kindness was nothing more than genuine compassion for a foolish, pathetic young man who spent half his monthly pay on rent and utilities and the other half on cigarettes, booze, instant noodles and underwear. He laughed. Oh, so she wasn’t hitting on me? But he felt grateful for her compassion. Regardless of whether it was pity or mercy, he’d never received anything like that from a stranger before.
He got up and ran out after her. Five hundred metres down the street, he spotted her. When he caught up to her, he tapped her on the shoulder.
As he gasped for air, he asked, ‘Want to see a movie this weekend?’
A month later they moved in together. Reseng didn’t have much to move to her place. He’d told the factory he was twenty-four, but in fact he was twenty-two. You didn’t have to be a philosopher to know there were millions of reasons for a twenty-two-year-old man and a twenty-one-year-old woman to move in together. They could fall in love while bandaging a cut for each other. They could fall for each other while sharing a warm goldfish-shaped pastry from a food cart. They could even find themselves in love while mid-bounce on a pogo stick. So there must have been other couples on this beautiful planet called Earth who’d fallen in love over a bag of dirty underwear and decided to live together.
She turned out to be unimaginably good at housekeeping. Whether it was cooking or cleaning or laundering or ironing or sewing, she did everything quickly and efficiently, and though she seemed to do it all in a half-hearted way, it was always perfect. She would take one look at the clothes Reseng had struggled to fold, the edges never quite lining up, make a face and refold it all when Reseng stepped away for a second. She would oversleep, and yet even while rushing to wash her hair and get ready for work, she would somehow manage to set the breakfast table with soup, fresh greens and a grilled fish.
‘First we’ll save money. Then we’ll get married. If you and I both work and save up carefully for twenty years, we’ll have enough to buy a nice apartment.’
‘Twenty years?’ he said in shock.
What she was telling him was that in order to escape the tiny studio where they paid monthly rent, to move into another studio with a lump-sum deposit, and then escape that to buy their own apartment, which would still be no bigger than his left nostril, he would have to spend the next twenty years doing that godawful chrome-plating. By then, there wouldn’t be a single sperm left in Reseng
’s testicles.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘you’re barely twenty-one, I’m barely twenty-two. Don’t you think we’re a little young to be thinking about a life that grim and boring?’
‘All I ever think about at the factory is getting married. I imagine married life while I’m tightening screws. I picture having a pretty baby and watching him or her grow up. Seriously, just the thought of it fills my heart with joy and excitement. Otherwise, what’s the point of suffering like this? It would be meaningless.’
All she ever talked about was married life. Every chance she got, she talked about children, houses, gardens, kitchen appliances. For Reseng, married life sounded like a futuristic world in an animated movie, but she looked so serious and happy that he simply nodded his head and agreed.
After breakfast, they rode their bicycles to work. She had bought his bicycle for him. ‘Bikes are great. You get good exercise, and you save money. Feel free to use the bus fare you save as spending money.’ She’d said it like she was granting him some huge favour. ‘No man would ride this,’ he’d said, giving the front tyre a kick. ‘This is a woman’s bike. Everyone at the factory will laugh at me.’ His bike had no gears and an enormous basket—a pink one, at that—big enough to hold twelve kittens.
It turned out it was good exercise. Her place was at the top of a steep hill about a hundred metres off the hilly main road. On market days she would fill the twelve-kitten-capacity basket with tofu, green onions, radishes, onions, carrots, a sack of rice, fatty slices of pork for kimchi stew, and freshly cleaned and chopped fish. She was so methodical about packing the basket that she could have fitted in a bear cub as well if she had wanted to. While Reseng dripped with sweat trying to pedal the bicycle back up the hill, she was licking an ice cream and looking radiant.
‘You should’ve bought me a cart instead,’ he would grumble.
‘I’ve always wanted to do this,’ she would say with a huge smile.
The factory folks’ reactions to his pink basket were even stronger than he’d expected. When he parked it outside the factory, they crowded around and took turns making fun of him.