by Heekyung Eun
“Do you think the two of them live together?”
“Have you ever seen a pair of twin brothers walking around the neighborhood together?”
“No. But even if I had, I could’ve forgotten all about it. I could just as well have passed right by them unaware.”
“According to what the one said, the probability of either of them running into you in the neighborhood was the same. So even if they switched places, his logic is valid. It’s kind of unusual, too, to know about something in such great detail unless you’ve actually experienced it. It’s all so well constructed, but for some reason it’s just too complicated, don’t you think? It would be much more convincing if there was just one of them, not two. Is it possible that there were no twins to begin with? Until you’ve seen the two of them together, how can you be sure about this twin stuff?”
“I really got the impression that they were two completely different people. Were they?” Yoojin furrowed her brow. “If there was only one, then why would he have made all this up?”
“That I don’t know. In any case, the more you think about clear and obvious matters, the more you delve into them, the more confusing they become. Even you and I have different ideas, and frankly, everything that the twin brother said to you could be true. There were no inconsistencies in it, at least.”
“True enough. And I really do think I saw twin brothers around the neighborhood.”
The two women considered the matter carefully. Everything in doubt had to come to the surface.
“I just thought of something. The day you moved in, another moving truck was over at the next building. Weren’t there two really good-looking guys unloading that truck, and didn’t we keep staring at them? They looked exactly alike.”
“And there were those two men we saw at the curry restaurant. Don’t you remember? We whispered to each other about them, wondering if they were friends or brothers. They looked a lot like each other.”
There was a knock at the door, and a nurse stepped into the room. The conversation broke off there. With the nurse was helping her to sit up, S made a final suggestion. “How about paying a visit to Apartment 805 in Building B? See if either of the twins lives there, or both.”
Her body already trembling with anxiety, Yoojin took a step backward when she heard those words. A single cry shot out of her mouth: “Never!”
S and the nurse stared at her in surprise.
The book translated by Yoojin Lee was a collection of prose written by a British doctor specializing in neurology. It was a story about neuropaths existing outside the framework of social norms, and one of the chapters dealt with twins between whom the boundary was indistinct. The twins would occasionally playact, with one in the role of good and the other of evil. In accordance with their needs they’d become one person or two, and they’d often exchange roles. They made their own secret place where they could frequent each other’s existence as if it were a simulation of the world, all the while thinking, I’m an imitation, a shadow, and my life is somewhere else, at a different place.
Yoojin couldn’t forget what the man who came to her apartment that day had said. “The world truly moves as it pleases. It is full of filth and hatred and hopelessness. I sincerely believe that it makes no difference how we live in this uncaring world. Who cares what I am? Do you think that everything moves according to some meticulously constructed script? If so, then maybe I’m a rabbit who doesn’t hop along with the lines.”
4
YOOJIN WAS SLEEPING heavily. The announcement broadcasting the arrival of the train at the terminal station woke her. Casually turning her head toward the aisle, she drew back in surprise. The twins she thought had already gotten off the train were back in their previously-empty seats across from her. A closer look, however, revealed that they weren’t twins, but sisters who appeared to be three or four years apart in age. It wasn’t the first time that Yoojin had mistaken friends or siblings of similar age for twins.
The high school girls were still chattering away. They were talking about the upcoming concert.
“Our seats are on the side, up on the second level.”
“We’ll still be able to see the stage all right, won’t we?”
“I hope so.”
“I just have to see him giving me the V sign.”
“What souvenir are you going to buy?”
“A t-shirt or a cell phone strap, but only if I can find something pretty.”
“I’m definitely going to buy a concert program, even if it’s not pretty.”
The man sitting next to Yoojin asked the girls who they were going to see. They exchanged glances, and one of them asked him stiffly, “Do you know any Japanese singers?”
“No, I don’t. Actually, I like the Korean singer Eugene best.”
“Do you mean Eugene the woman or Eugene the man?”
“Is there a man, too?”
“There’s Eugene from S.E.S., also known as Yoojin Kim, but there’s another singer, a man named H-Eugene. His real name is Yoojin Heo, but I heard that Eugene is his American name.”
“American name?” The man was about to say something further to that, but changed the subject instead. “About this Japanese singer you’re going to see, what’s so good about him?”
“His songs are really good. Everything about him is great. What makes him even better is that you never know what he’s going to do next.”
“That’s like the survival tactic of the rabbit.”
“What’s that?”
“The moment a rabbit detects an enemy, it invariably starts to run. But it doesn’t follow any rules. It runs around arbitrarily, here and there. Because its movements can’t be anticipated, no strategy can be applied to catch it, right? If it ran according to a script, it would be understood by a fox or a hawk and would be caught and eaten every time.”
One of the high school girls asked, “If rabbits run around like that, without any rules, couldn’t some unlucky ones accidentally run toward their enemies? Then wouldn’t they be super easy to catch and eat?”
The man suddenly laughed out loud.
The girls resumed their own conversation.
“I heard that two others in our class have the same birthday as me.”
This time, too, the man cut in.
“When there are kids in the same class with the same birthday, it’s easy to think that there’s some special significance. But in a class of forty, when you first consider the probability of two people having the same birthday, it’s one in ten. At least three people could have been born on the same day. In accordance with the laws of algebra, mathematicians have calculated that probability to be as high as one in two. What I’m trying to say is that even when you meet people for the very first time, you’ll always be able to find a few things that you have in common. We even found something in common, talking about the name Yoojin.”
To avoid getting dragged into the conversation, Yoojin turned her head to look out the window. At that instant, the train entered a tunnel. The scenery vanished and the window became a black screen. It reflected the face of the man sitting next to her, who was looking at her from behind her back. In the blackened window, their eyes met. On the man’s baseball cap was the logo of an American university. S will be married tomorrow, she thought. Though convinced of her love for her boyfriend, S had felt uneasy about her inability to determine with any certainty whether he was truly her destined love. She thus accepted the fateful accident at the ski resort as the signature of destiny. The horoscope that Sagittarians would meet their destined loves in January had proven correct for S. The man who’d visited Yoojin’s apartment was also a Sagittarian. Had he too met his destined love in January?
YURI GAGARIN’S BLUE STAR
1
LONG AGO I used to jump out of bed as soon as I opened my eyes. I’d never lie there gazing at the sunlight coming in through the curtains, or bury my face in my pillow and roll around on the bed. I wouldn’t even let my eyes linger on the f
ramed picture of my family hanging on the wall. But when I wake up these days, the clock on my night table has barely reached six o’clock. Even if I don’t hurry, I still have enough time to exercise at the health club and have a simple breakfast of coffee and a salad before I go to work. Doing only what’s absolutely necessary keeps my daily routine reliably consistent.
For a while after my wife took our two sons to America for their education eight years ago, I drank heavily every night. The company was expanding, so being called out to discuss business over drinks on a nightly basis was unavoidable. Nevertheless, I invariably arrived at the office on time the following day, with my body and stomach in good enough condition to work. I don’t drink so much these days. Sure, I’ve reached an age where I need to take care of my health, but the real reason for my temperance is that I’ve simply had enough of going out. The formalities I had to go through to meet new people, and then to become comfortable them, were not worth the gradually decreasing amount of new information I got from them. It’s like people who fully understand what’s going on inside each other’s heads, sitting together sharing short-lived, trivial topics of conversation. I thought I’d found the right way to use my pent-up desire when I decided that all young women looked unconditionally beautiful. After that period passed, I began to get tired of frequenting hostess bars and playing games with young women, and as I became sensitive to noise and even grew to dislike the sound of other people’s voices, I reached a stage where I felt comfortable spending time alone. On nights when I couldn’t sleep, I’d take a shower and then drink alone, a glass or two of whiskey with ice. The following morning, I’d often discover a glass full of cloudy liquid on the table. I’d have poured myself a drink, then simply forgotten about it and fallen asleep. For months now, the clock on the wall has been ten minutes slow, but rather than fix it, I simply add ten minutes when I read it.
I don’t know how long it’s been since I began to think of this world as nothing particularly remarkable. No matter what happens to me these days, I see it as something I’ve already experienced. The news, gossip from around the neighborhood, it’s all like that. My job is the same, too, for there’s practically nothing in my work that’s beyond my capabilities. The outcome, good or bad, doesn’t deviate much from my expectations. And it’s not just with work, but with people as well. People I meet for the first time inevitably resemble others I’ve met in my life, so it becomes easier to judge them. Getting used to living in the world may involve having a formula. That is, a kind of manual for life. Everything, no matter how complicated, becomes simple when it’s put into the formula. It’s the same with time. When I open a new day planner filled with dates and empty spaces, I feel like I have many unknown hours ahead of me. But if I start to write in my schedule, the planner is split up into pieces, and from then on it becomes a daily routine with which I’m all too familiar. Whether this approach is praised as good management or denounced for being too conservative, I don’t care. With it, the world’s affairs don’t surprise me anymore, but I’ve become somewhat apathetic.
Many areas of my life have already been settled. There are almost no variables now, at work or at home. That doesn’t mean that things like bankruptcy or divorce will never happen to me. It means that I’m the kind of person who wouldn’t change much, even if such things did occur. I can no longer change who I am, so things like passion and a spirit of adventure become unnecessary, and I spend no more energy maintaining the status quo. Those who have reached a certain point will no longer be able to draw mystery or the unknown from within themselves, even though they’re closer to a state of perfection. They have no fear, but no excitement, either. It’s neither unhappy nor happy.
2
THE AIRPORT WAS filled with people coming and going. Standing amid the noise and commotion brought by all kinds of aircraft intersecting in chronological order, I had the sensation that life rolled along only a fixed path, like the earth revolving on its axis. I considered even the act of coming out here today to see J off as something that’d been arranged a long time ago. J looked like he usually did in the office, with his cotton jacket and his camera bag with many pockets, and even his fountain pen with the white ice cap symbol on it, stuck into the uppermost pocket. But his complexion was noticeably pale, and his protruding brow ridge was casting an unusually dark shadow upon his two eyes below. His lips were thin, like those of a recovering patient. When his eyes met mine as I stood waiting in front of the departure gate, he pointed with his finger toward the smoking room. Behind its glass walls, several men with resigned looks on their faces were silently exhaling puffs of smoke.
When we’d finished our cigarettes, J slowly took his boarding pass and passport from his jacket pocket. As he made his way through the screening checkpoint to the departure gate with a heavy, awkward gait, he didn’t once turn to look back. I stood there for some time, even after he’d completely disappeared from my view.
Not long after I’d paid the airport parking fee and passed through the tollgate, a bridge came into view. I pulled over to the side of the road and turned on the hazard lights. Cars were going past at high speeds. The sea water was rolling in little by little, making exquisite patterns around the pilings under the bridge. I took J’s pack of cigarettes and lighter from my pocket.
“Here, you take these,” he’d said.
“Why?”
Regardless of J’s determination to also quit smoking when he left, there was only one cigarette remaining in the pack. Lighting it, I opened the car door and got out, the spring wind dispersing the smoke as it passed through my fingers. Just then, a huge object caught my eye, flying above my head, far up in the sky. It had a cumbersome silver belly like a man-eating shark and menacingly glittering wings. I sensed the indifferent majesty of a transcendent being. It was the first time I’d seen an aircraft flying in the sky so near.
My body trembled lightly, as if I’d been stung by a piercing beam of light. It was because of the wind. The same wind also took J’s cigarette, which had turned to ash, and cast it into the air without leaving a trace.
My attention was drawn to the chairs in the office, empty because it was lunch time. A chill hung in the air of the recently vacated room, the computer monitors flickering meaninglessly with a bluish light. I passed the orderly arrangement of ground glass partitions and entered the president’s office. I took off my jacket and hung it on the coat rack, then sat down at the desk which had several documents waiting on it. There was a draft of a study by a new editor, as well as a publicity document for an international book fair. At the very bottom were a cutout of a newly-published newspaper advertisement, a tentative outline for a second ad, and a table of advertising fees, all very clearly arranged.
It took me no longer than ten minutes to examine them. I answered the intercom and the editor in chief entered my office. Wearing a colorless blouse beneath her gray suit, she had the characteristic dry and passive expression of one who’d worked in an office for a long time.
“Has the office director left?”
“Yes.”
“None of his family went to see him off, did they?”
“The agreements and procedures have all been carried out, so what does his family have to do with it?”
“With his training period at an end now, he won’t ever be coming back, will he?”
“Ever?” I furrowed my brow. “He’s only taking a bit of a break. He hasn’t had any time off in over ten years, you know.”
“It’s been even longer for you, sir, and for the owner, it’s worse.”
“Is that so?”
“All the new employees met the department heads at the morning meeting. When they get back from lunch, I think they’d like to meet you, too, sir. Do you have time?”
I checked my schedule and saw that I had two conferences, a meeting outside the office, and even an appointment in the evening. It wasn’t absolutely necessary for me to attend any of them. The company was no longer controlled by the individual
ability and will of its executives, but ran in accordance with a stably-operating system. For the past ten years, I’d managed the company boldly, one could say almost aggressively. I’d entrusted J with all practical affairs, from reviewing manuscripts and deciding whether to publish them, to introducing writers to agencies. Publishers, under the cause of cultural enterprise, occasionally concentrated their efforts on receiving a tax exemption by openly speculating on land. After producing a bestseller, in many cases they no longer invested in publishing and instead focused their resources on more profitable side ventures. I even saw publishers who were only concerned with federal or municipal budgets, or getting into positions of authority to protect their interests. You could say that it was a means for small industries to survive. In such a current, it was my style to choose profit before justification. But I rarely ignored the advice of J, who clung almost obsessively to good books. While I increased the size of the company, J caused it to grow in quality.
When I first arrived, I was a lowly office worker in the publishing department of a news organization. Three years later, I became editor in chief, and two years after that, when they tried to get rid of the book publishing department because it wasn’t profitable, I took charge and turned it into the 30 billion won per year business it is today. The unstoppable proliferation of venture business at the time helped me to broaden our domain with overseas publishing agencies and culture programs, travel agencies, publishing consultation, and cultural investment financing. I even received recognition from a few cultural foundations and related government departments. Nicknames such as “Razor Blade” and “Siberia” have followed me ever since. These nicknames inevitably lacked imagination, like calling someone with curly hair “Ramen,” or a stutterer “Motorbike,” but there were in fact only so many nicknames one could give to a rational and realistic character like me. Even my friends addressed me by my title, not by my real name. Not friends from my youth, of course, like K and M, but the people I’d gotten close to through work.