I'll Be Right There (28 page)

“Are you okay?” Myungsuh asked.

I nodded. I pressed my feet hard into the ground to keep from shaking.

Back when I took a break from school and lived at home with my father, I had spent some time in the hospital. My whole body had broken into a fever. Red splotches, like flowers of fire, bloomed on my skin every half hour, and when they subsided, the chills followed. It was harder to bear the rising fever than it was the onset of chills. I couldn’t open my
eyes; even my fingernails felt heavy. Sweat poured from my forehead, and I drifted in and out of consciousness. When my hands looked like boiled crabs, my father put me on the back of his bicycle over my protests, rode me to the hospital, and had me admitted. The cycle of fever and chills continued in the hospital. I didn’t get better right away. Instead, as the fever worsened, I stopped recognizing people. My body felt like a ball of fire, and I was covered in tiny red spots the size of millet seeds. On my second night in the hospital, I was giddy with fever and lost in agony when I felt someone put a hand on my forehead. That hand was as cold and refreshing as ice. It might sound like a lie, but after the hand touched my forehead, the fever that had been raging for days came down at once. I came to and saw my father asleep on a folding chair. In the morning, I asked him if he had touched my forehead in the middle of the night. He said no. I asked the nurse, too, thinking it must have been her. She also said no. I had no idea whose hand it was that had felt so cool against my skin, but after that hand touched me, the fever and the chills died down. If only I could feel that hand on my forehead once more.

“So, shall we begin?” he asked.

“You really want to do this?”

“Yes.”

I looked up at him silently.

“Maybe if we hug a hundred strangers,” he said, “something will change.”

He kept his eyes on the stairs leading up to the tower and started counting the people as they came up
—one, two, three
 … A breeze blew up from the woods and ruffled his
hair. His dark eyebrows rose each time he ticked off another number. After he counted nine, a child came running up the stairs. The child’s mother was running after him several steps below. Myungsuh was about to take off and dash over to the boy. Before he could count ten, I threw my arms around him and held on tight.

The phone rings in the middle of the night. It rings and rings, but when I pick it up, it stops. I told Yoon about these nightly phone calls, and her eyes got big
.

“I get them, too,” she said
.

“You do?”

She said it hangs up when she answers. We stared at each other, our moods bleak. We were both quiet, then Yoon asked, “Do you think it’s Miru?”

“Why would Miru hang up on us?”

“That’s true,” she said
.

She asked if I had ever been out of contact with Miru for this long before. Never. I tried calling her parents, even though I knew there was no chance Miru would have gone to them. From the way her mother said my name, I could tell she had not heard from her, either, and was hoping for news from me
.

|||

Now we stand before a storm. I take to the streets nearly every day to join the demonstrators. I can’t leave Yoon on her own, so she goes with me. We marched on City Hall, locking arms with the other protesters and advancing toward Shinsegae Department Store
.

“When we work together like this,” Yoon said, “it feels like we can make change happen, and it doesn’t feel so weird to hold hands with strangers.”

Whenever we get pushed apart and I lose my grip on Yoon’s hand, I reach right out and grab hold of it again. I want to define my own values. I want to stop drifting from one phenomenon to another. Right now, my only strength is this feeling of solidarity. When I take to the streets, the fog in my head and even this bottomless despair seems to lift. Let’s remember this forever
.

|||

Yoon smells of chocolate. There was a hole in the back fence big enough for a person to slip through, and on the other side was a small store. I didn’t feel like studying, so my friends and I ditched school and slipped through the hole. As we were walking past the store, someone yelled, “Chocolate!” A type of candy I had never seen before was on display, each piece in its own little compartment. One piece of the chocolate cost the same as an entire bag of regular candy. We pooled our money, bought a few pieces, split them up among us, and tasted them. We were all very tense and eager because the one who recognized it as chocolate said it would taste amazing. The candy melted smoothly and easily on my tongue. I had no idea anything in the world could taste like that. I thought I would turn to stone right there
.

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On the bus, the radio was playing Blue Dragon’s “My Only Wish.” Blue Dragon was a college band that had won a prize for this song after performing it on one of those music programs they show on TV—Beach Music Fest, or maybe College Music Fest. When Dahn came to the city to visit Yoon, and we were staying together in the old house, the four of us sang this song together, accompanied by Mirae’s old guitar. I rested my forehead against the window of the bus and sang along
.

My only wish

is to return

to the ocean in the quiet dusk
,

to sleep quietly by the forest
.

Clear blue sky above the boundless sea
,

I’ve no use for colorful flags
,

no need for a splendid house
.

All I ask is a bed

woven of young branches
.

No one weeps beneath my pillow

and all that whispers across the dry leaves

is the sound of the autumn breeze
.

It had sounded so romantic and lyrical when we sang it in the house together. But now, maybe because of what happened to Dahn, it reminded me of death. I couldn’t keep singing. To think that beneath that soft, sweet melody lay the cool allure of death. I think you can only sing it so beautifully and languidly if you do not truly know the tragedy of death and have never experienced the threat of death
.

|||

Yoon’s cousin had a baby girl. They’ll be celebrating her hundredth day soon
.

|||

I woke from a dream
.

I don’t know where I was, but I was standing next to a river. I had to cross it to get to the other side. The fog was so thick that I couldn’t see anything. I was pacing back and forth, unsure of how to get across, when I spotted a house. Tied up between the house and the river was a ferry. I figured the house was where the ferryman lived and I knocked on the door with delight, but no one answered. I called out, but there was no reply. I pushed on the door, and it swung open. I went inside, but still no one appeared. A book that looked as if someone had just been reading it was lying on the floor, so I picked it up and opened it. I know that I read it in my dream, but after I woke up, I had no memory of what it said. I waited a long time, but the owner of the boat never showed up. So I got into the boat. I tried rowing. The water parted, and the boat slid forward. As the boat began to cross, the fog thinned out little by little. It felt like I was pushing the fog away. The fog was so thick that I could barely see an inch ahead of me, but when I was about halfway across the river, it cleared away almost entirely. It was strange. After the fog cleared, the boat refused to budge no matter how hard I rowed. It seemed to be stuck to the surface of the water. Just then, I heard a shout. The voice sounded desperate. I looked all around and saw someone waving at me from the dock. They were calling out to me. It was too far away to make out the person’s face, but he or she was yelling for me to please help them get across the river. I was already halfway across and couldn’t turn back. If the boat hadn’t stopped, I would never have even turned to look. I tried to keep rowing ahead, but the boat still would not budge. Helplessly, I stopped trying to row forward and rowed backward instead to pick the person up. The boat began to move through the current
.

|||

Sometimes I call Miru’s parents’ house. Eight months have passed without a single phone call or postcard from her. Usually no one answers, but her mother will sometimes pick up. We never talk, though. Before I can even say hello, the line cuts off. There must be something wrong with their phone. I dial again, but it cuts off again. I wait a little while and then call again, but the same thing happens. Once, I let it ring and ring and ring, but no one answered
.

|||

The streets are quiet now. All of that excitement, like we were going to make something happen, has vanished. Our push for change has come to a standstill. Even our solidarity is now just another phenomenon. The people I once marched with have all scattered and dispersed without having changed anything
.

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I started working part-time at a magazine where Fallingwater’s older brother is the editor-in-chief. The magazine publishes book reviews and information about new books. Sometimes I take my camera and go to the bookstore to photograph the book covers. The building is far from my uncle’s house, so I keep a sleeping bag in the corner of the office. Fallingwater’s brother asked if I was planning to sleep there. When I nodded, he looked at me as if to say, we’ll see how long you keep it up, and patted me on the shoulder
.

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Today, I passed by City Hall and sat with Yoon for a while on the plaza
.

Yoon pointed to a long drainpipe bolted to the wall of City Hall and asked, “Do you remember that guy who climbed up the pipe?” I did. When the demonstrators reached City Hall, the doors were locked. I have no idea who that guy was. In the newspaper the next day I saw a photo of him climbing the pipe. We didn’t know who he was, but we were both there when it happened. There was an excitement in the air that made him seem like someone we could believe in. He shimmied up the drainpipe to the cheers of the people gathered in the plaza and climbed onto the roof of City Hall. Everyone held their breath. We watched on pins and needles. The moment he set foot on the roof, everyone let out a sigh of relief and sent up a loud cheer. He shouted out slogans, and they echoed them. As did I, as did Yoon. As did all of the people on top of the stone wall outside Deoksugung Palace, on the stairs leading down to the subway, in the branches of the gingko trees planted along the streets. Where have all of those people gone?

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The instant Yoon told me that Miru’s mother was hanging up on her before she could even finish saying hello, I felt like I’d been hit over the head. She said it was obvious that Miru’s mother was hanging up. I had been thinking all along that something was wrong with their phone or that they kept missing my calls. Why had it never occurred to me that her mother was deliberately hanging up on me, and that there was nothing wrong with the telephone line?

|||

Sunday. I went to the room at the bottom of the stairs where Miru used to live. I don’t know why it took me so long to think of going there. Someone else has moved in. A forty-year-old woman with a limp. She seems to be living there alone. The woman, who has a lot of wrinkles around her eyes, never even heard of the name Miru. She said the room was empty when she came to look at it, and that she signed the rental contract and moved in right away—all of which took place last spring
.

“Did she have a cat?” she asked
.

“Yes, its name is Emily.”

“I’m still finding cat hair,” she said
.

She didn’t seem to be upset about it, so I told her it was a longhaired cat. After I left, I climbed back up the stairs and just stood there, staring off into space. Where had Miru gone with Emily? How could she move without saying a word to us about it? I felt as if we were strangers to each other. The woman came slowly up the stairs, carrying her trash
.

“You’re still here,” she said
.

She set down her trash bags and asked, “Did Miru plant those?”

She pointed at the green, overgrown lily stalks. They were at ground level, but I had planted them so Miru could see them from inside her room. When she first moved in, the place was so dark that I had decided to plant flowers in the yard for her
.

“Please tell your friend that I’ll take good care of her flowers. When I moved in last spring, those lilies really brightened up the room. I wondered who had planted them. I felt so happy the whole time they were in bloom. I asked the owner, and she said the previous tenant had planted them. So that was Miru!”