“Sorry, he likes to wonder off.”
“Oh, he’s a little adventurer,” said the guard, tousling Bum’s hair.
“No, he’s just a dork.” Young-hee crouched down to make sure Bum wasn’t missing any limbs. “Thanks for the help. We’re not usually such a strange family.”
The gyeongbi laughed warmly. “We’re here to help. Don’t worry about it.”
Young-hee spent most of the walk back trying to drill their address into Bum’s scattered mind. “We live in building 206, apartment 901,” she said. “Two-zero-six. Nine-zero-one. Remember that!”
“Uh-huh,” said Bum.
As they neared the apartment building, their mom caught sight of them. “Young-beom!” she exclaimed, running over. “You can’t just wander off like that. I was so worried.” She held her boy tightly, so happy to have him back she forgot everything else. She took him by the hand and led him back to the apartment, barely looking at Young-hee.
Only then, watching them walk away together, did Young-hee realize that for at least five minutes, she hadn’t felt stressed or frustrated by the move or the three rude girls or anything else. She had just been happy to find her brother—and just as suddenly, that good feeling was drifting away again. “So annoying,” she muttered. Yeah, what an adventurer.
✴ ✴ ✴
That evening, Young-hee sat at the kitchen table with her mom and brother, eating Chinese takeout. Black jajang sauce streaked the empty noodle bowls. Gooey, half-eaten tangsuyuk filled a cheap dish. Bum sat on his doting mother’s lap.
“Who wants a big dumpling?” she asked, swirling a steamed mandu in front of Bum. “Does a big boy get a big dumpling?” Bum laughed as he tried to bite the dancing food. He had made his typical mess, and Young-hee felt herself scowl reflexively.
“He gets all the big dumplings?” asked Young-hee, looking at the small ones on her plate.
“It was a big day for Young-beom, wasn’t it,” said mom. “Oh, does somebody have a beggar in his belly? How does he eat so much?”
Young-hee scowled at the trite saying. How did “beggar in the belly” even make sense?, she wondered. Instead, she thought about their day—moving into this lousy apartment, Bum getting lost, the mean girls laughing at her. But then she recalled the old security guards. “Mom? What does maok mean?”
“Maok? That’s not a word. Do you mean maehok?”
“Yeah, that was it.”
“Oh, Young-hee, how did your Korean get so bad?”
That was not what Young-hee wanted to hear. Her parents had insisted on Korean school every Saturday when they lived abroad, and plenty of Korean homework every night. She had only forgotten one word. “But what does it mean?”
Her mom cleaned Bum’s mouth with a napkin. “Fascinating. Or charming. Where did you hear it?”
“When I met a couple of the old gyeongbi guards this afternoon.”
“Ah, they must have found you interesting, then.”
Young-hee wondered if her mom was teasing. But no, she must have misheard the guard.
Then, at last, Young-hee’s mom turned her attention to her daughter. “Young-hee,” she said softly, “Could you do the dishes? There’s still so much to get done tonight, and I need to be at work early tomorrow.”
“If Bum’s such a big boy, why doesn’t he help?” she muttered, louder than she intended.
That earned her a sharp look that quickly softened. “Look, Young-hee,” her mother said, “I know this isn’t what you wanted. But we’re trying to restart our lives, all of us, and I need your help.”
For a moment Young-hee felt bad for her mom and all she had been through. She knew none of this was intentional, and that her mom needed her help. Young-hee could feel generous words on her tongue, but just couldn’t say them. “I miss my friends,” Young-hee complained, poking a cold dumpling.
Her mom cast a tired glance at Young-hee. “You can always chat online. That’s why I got that camera for your computer.” She stuck the chopsticks into another dumpling for Bum. “Besides, it’s not like you had that many friends in Canada. You always used to complain about that.”
That comment stung, and Young-hee felt her mood grow darker. “I miss dad,” she said. Her mom stiffened briefly, as if absorbing a blow in a fight, then went back to playing with Bum.
Suddenly, Young-hee felt overwhelmed by emotions—from the move, the rude girls, her mom, her stupid brother, things she couldn’t explain, and other things she couldn’t admit. She left the table and stormed to her room, closing the door hard.
The Tiger and the Rabbit
One day Rabbit was strolling through the woods to the market to buy some vegetables when he heard the sad sound of someone crying. “Oh dear! Oh dear!” the voice cried. Rabbit looked and looked and finally found the voice. It belonged to Tiger, who had fallen into a tiger pit and was trapped.
“Hello?” said Rabbit, peering over the edge of the deep hole.
“Oh, Rabbit!” said Tiger, suddenly hopeful. “Please help me out of this hole.”
But Rabbit was wary. “I know you, Tiger,” he said. “If I got you out of that hole, you would only try to eat me.”
“No!” he protested. “I would be ever so grateful. I could give you a reward.”
“I fear my only reward would be being your dinner,” said Rabbit skeptically.
“Definitely not. How could I do that to someone who helped me? Please, before the men find and kill me.”
Rabbit took pity on Tiger, and decided to help. He found a strong length of rope, tied one end to a tree, and lowered the other to Tiger who climbed out. Once free, Tiger roared with joy. “That’s so much better,” he said. “I was trapped in that hole for days, cold and hungry. Ever so hungry.” He looked at Rabbit, suddenly predatory.
“But Tiger, I just helped you,” protested Rabbit.
“Yes, and I appreciate it, but I am hungry. And you are definitely a big, yummy-looking rabbit.” Tiger moved forward ominously, intent on making a meal of the animal who saved him.
But Rabbit remained calm. “Oh, silly Tiger,” he said casually, “You know you cannot eat me. I am far too strong and powerful. In fact, I might even eat you, if you anger me.”
Tiger kept approaching. “Nonsense,” he said, “I am far bigger than you. My claws are long, my teeth are sharp. There’s no point resisting.”
“Resisting?” said Rabbit, looking bored. “My teeth are pretty long and sharp, too. Why, I could swat you away with barely a thought.”
Tiger slowed, his eyes narrowed, and he looked at Rabbit full of disbelief. “I have never heard such silliness. Everyone knows Rabbit is small and harmless.”
“Oh, really? Everyone knows?” said Rabbit. “How about I show you just how strong I am? Follow me, Tiger, before you make me angry.” He began to walk away.
So Tiger, skeptical but confused, followed Rabbit. “You better not try to run off,” he warned.
“Who’s running? I want you to see this.” Rabbit led Tiger into town.
And as all the villagers saw them approach, they saw mighty Tiger and they fled in terror. Women and children, men and soldiers, all ran before Tiger—but because Rabbit was walking in front, to Tiger it looked like they were fleeing from Rabbit. “I had no idea Rabbit was so strong,” said Tiger, and ran away before Rabbit could hurt him.
Bored, Young-hee bounced a tennis ball against the wall of her room. Thump-bump. It was the middle of the afternoon, but the sky was dark with purple clouds that poured down the hot, summer rains of jangmacheol.
The heavy humidity left everything soggy and disgusting; clothes hanging by the window felt nearly as wet as when taken from the washer the night before. Gross, thought Young-hee, looking at the wallpaper by the window that was turning green with mold.
Thump-bump.
It was the plainest, most unremarkable day ever.
With each thump of the tennis ball, Young-hee, surly and unrelenting, felt the glare of her mom struggling to work in the n
ext room.
“Young-hee, could you use the Internet or something?” her mom called.
“Internet hasn’t been working all day,” Young-hee said sullenly. But, feeling her mother’s glare, she stopped throwing the ball.
The weeks since the big move had not gone well. Knowing that thirteen-year-old girls anywhere could be cliquish and cruel, she had dreaded her new school, but it was worse than she feared. On the first day, she discovered that the three girls she met on moving day were in her class—and, of course, its unofficial leaders. They were eager for someone new to torture.
Young-hee tried putting her energies into schoolwork, but it was all either ridiculously easy or impossibly hard. Either way, it was nearly all endless memorization—no activities, no experiments, no creativity at all. Young-hee used to like science class, the way Ms. Thompson would lead them through experiments and let students try things out for themselves. But here there were just multiple choices and lists. “So annoying,” she would say as she puzzled over some grammar problem or stupid history lesson. Sometimes she found herself looking out the window, daydreaming, only to be brought back, embarrassed, when a teacher slapped her desk with a ruler. Young-hee would sit fuming, her resentment piling higher than her homework.
Life at home was not much better. Sarah and Fei were already talking online with her less and less often, and Denda never emailed at all. She could still follow her friends from their homepages, but the new pics, updates, and inside jokes left her feeling increasingly distant. Her mother worked more than ever, even at home. Lousy takeout food containers stacked up, and Young-hee was sick of the same things all the time.
Bum seemed to get lost at least once a week, although now the kindly guard was pretty good at finding him and cheering him up. Half the time Bum would return soaking wet after a mess-making swim in one of the complex’s fountains. Sometimes Mr. Shin would tell Bum stories until Young-hee could pick him up. The last time, she found them playing with a stray orange kitten while Bum made tiger noises. Young-hee apologized again for the inconvenience, but the guard said Bum couldn’t help it because it was such a magical time, being young. Young-hee always hated it when adults said that kind of thing. There is nothing magical about being young, she thought. Only someone who has never been young could think it was magical. Being young is boring. That she knew for a certainty. And frustrating and confusing. But mostly horribly, endlessly boring. Every minute takes an hour, every hour takes a day, and life just sprawls out ahead of you. But she held her tongue and thanked him.
Soon after that, school took a turn for the worse after the girls heard gossip about her father, and used it to tease her. On the chalk-board one morning, there was the simple drawing of a stick-figure man, standing sadly behind bars in a simple prison. “Where is Mr. Jo?” asked the cartoon’s caption. Furious but determined not to let anyone see her cry, Young-hee stormed out of the classroom, with cruel laughter trailing her down the hallway. At least her teacher didn’t punish her. In fact, soon after that, school got a little less terrible, although Young-hee thought she was probably just getting used to it.
Today, though, she was at home, listening to incessant, pounding rain, determined to avoid her homework. “I’m going to watch TV,” she announced.
“Please keep the sound down,” said her mom.
Young-hee sighed dramatically, but when she turned it on, the TV hissed static so loud, she jumped. “Sorry,” she said. She hit mute, but failed to find anything wrong. Cable’s out, she concluded. She turned to the DVD collection, but had seen everything way too many times, even movies she didn’t like. At last she decided that something with Gwenneth Paltrow would do—at least she was pretty.
When Young-hee pressed “eject,” the DVD door jiggled and cracked slightly open, then made a sickly noise as gears ground against some unseen obstacle. Young-hee hit the eject button a couple more times until the DVD tray managed to open—revealing a sticky mix of peanut butter and Japanese robot toys.
“Mom! Bum ruined the DVD player!” She felt like she would explode. “He ruins everything!”
Suddenly Young-hee found herself facing an umbrella. Her mom jiggled it slightly. “Take it,” she said, her voice clipped. “I need you to go for a walk. Or go shopping. Something.”
“But … it’s raining.”
“I know. That’s why I’m giving you the umbrella. Maybe you can visit your friend—what’s her name?—Eunsu.”
“Eunju. And she’s not my friend.”
“Whatever. I can’t take it anymore. I have to get this work finished, and you’ve been impossible all day. All week. Longer.”
Young-hee looked back at her mom as defiantly as she could for as long as she dared, then took the umbrella. “Fine.”
She grabbed a light jacket and shoved a ball in her pocket, unsure if she was more furious or sad.
“Look, Young-hee,” said her mom, her voice suddenly soft again, “I just need to get this work done. Give me a couple of hours, then we’ll have something nice for dinner. Okay?”
Young-hee, not ready for a truce, stormed out. As the door closed behind her, she called out “So annoying!” one more time, so her mom could hear.
The elevator was out yet again, so she took the stairs, scared she might start crying, although she couldn’t really say why. She knew she was being difficult and her mom needed to work, but it still wasn’t fair. Bum ruined the DVD player, the rain was ruining her summer, her mom had ruined her life.
Outside, the rain was falling harder than ever, forming ankle-deep water pools. Even with the concrete entrance overhang and her umbrella, the wind-whipped downpour soaked her shoes and pants. I can’t believe this is my life, she thought. A gust of wind blew the umbrella inside out, soaking her all over. This is stupid, she thought, there’s no way I can walk around in that.
Giving up, she sat down, failed to wrangle the umbrella into shape, and angrily threw it to the ground. She checked her phone. No messages. She sulked, checked her phone again, then sulked some more. A rainy roar echoed through the stairwell. Far away, she could hear cars pushing through water-filled streets.
Just then, she heard the clank of a heavy door, followed by feet on stairs. She turned and saw Mrs. Park from apartment 201 coming up from the parking garage, carrying shopping bags. With her blotchy, white makeup and her pushiness, Mrs. Park had quickly become a staple of their lives, often offering to keep an eye on Bum or share some extra side dishes. Everyone agreed she was friendly and helpful, except for Young-hee, who secretly found her nosy and vaguely scary. “My goodness, child, what are you doing here?” she said on spotting Young-hee’s broken umbrella. “You’re not thinking of going out in that? You’ll catch your death.” She squeezed by Young-hee and kept going up the stairs, making complaining noises. “I can’t believe the elevator is out in this terrible building again.”
Young-hee looked down into the dark stairwell. The building’s parking garage was not the most exciting place in the world, but it had to be drier than outside, assuming it hadn’t flooded. Pushing her broken umbrella into a corner, she walked carefully down four flights of rain-slicked stairs to that familiar dark blue door marked with the big 206.
After the stairwell, the parking garage seemed almost bright. At midday, it was only half-full, mostly with smaller cars—husbands took the nicer, big cars to work, leaving their wives the “cute” cars for shopping and errands.
The parking garage stretched out endlessly, connecting all the apartment buildings above into one giant concrete cavern below. It was not a pretty place, but quiet and kind of interesting. She instantly felt a kind of ownership, and pleasure that no one here could tell her what to do.
She fished the ball from her pocket and walked deeper into the garage, hoping to find an emptier area for throwing things.
The next level was a lot less crowded, and she tried whipping the ball off of a wall, but an unlucky bounce left a dirty round mark on a white Hyundai Accent, so Young-hee thought it
best to find somewhere even more deserted.
Her foot falls squeaked on the rubbery green floor and echoed throughout the huge underground space. She passed stairwells to other apartment buildings, their doors emblazoned with big white numbers: 205, 204; around a corner was 408 and 501. They didn’t seem to be a clear order, and some doors had labels instead of numbers: storage, maintenance, or utilities. Curious, she tried them, but they were nearly always locked.
Turning another corner, she came to a promising place—darker than most of the garage, but with very few cars—so she tossed the ball off the wall and ceiling, in elaborate caroms. Soon a bad throw coupled with a bad bounce sent the ball ricocheting over a wall and into a lower level. Young-hee took a ramp down to chase the rogue ball. The car park ramp turned and turned again, and it seemed to be too long to be going just to the next level. Then, it opened up again into another parking level, and Young-hee stopped short.
Something was not right. Everything was just too … empty. No cars, no people, no anything, except a forlorn orange parking cone on its side in a corner. The garage’s colors seemed off. Sounds had a weird flatness. Even the light felt wrong. That doesn’t make sense, she thought. It’s just a parking garage. Young-hee swallowed, trying to stop scaring herself. She wasn’t looking for the ball anymore, just trying to figure out where she was. And that was when she realized: None of the doors had apartment numbers. No signs told what floor she was on. Or marked an exit. The floor no longer had the green rubbery finish or bright white and yellow lane markers. Where on Earth am I?
The feeling of dread grew overwhelming and, suddenly, Young-hee just wanted out. She tried a door that might be a stairwell, but it would not open. Nor would the next door, nor the one after that. Her heart raced. She took a couple of steps back and looked for a ramp up. There was one not far off, so Young-hee ran up it hard, but the next level looked the same as the one below—no signs, no numbers, no cars, no people. Young-hee ran up another level. And another. And another. This is crazy, she thought. The garage wasn’t this deep. And there definitely were cars around here. She could feel a spiky ball of fear growing in her chest.
Young-hee and the Pullocho Page 3