Re Jane (22 page)

“But . . . you don't have any more details?”
I asked, trying to mask my impatience when I really longed to yell,
Just give me the exact address!

“Hold on,”
Emo said. I heard her shouting over to Big Uncle, and I heard him shout back a variation of the same imprecise directions, peppered with a few more details. Changhoon looked at me expectantly. I cupped the phone and repeated them to him. He stared at the map in his hands and shook his head.
“Then this is it.”

I don't think Emo quite understood how much it meant to me in that moment to find my mother's childhood home; it was a sensation that was new even to me.
“Have a great time!”
she said breezily, and clicked off.

It would have proved impossible to retrieve her imprecise childhood recollections—the exact location of the family home would be forever buried in the hazy recesses of memory.

Either that, or my mother's girlhood shantytown had been razed and was now resurrected as luxury condos.

When I got off the phone, Changhoon took my hand and led me back to the car.
“I didn't mean to put a damper on the day,”
he said.
“I just thought it'd be a nice idea.”

It had been disappointing, though; it was the pinprick deflating an otherwise perfect morning. But it wasn't Changhoon's fault.
“Good,”
he said when I shook my head and put on a bright smile
. “Because I have another surprise for you.”

Back in the taxi, Changhoon pulled something out of his bag. It was a package wrapped in pink paper and pinched at the ends, like a giant Tootsie Roll.
“Happy hundredth,”
he said, kissing me on the cheek.

When I took the package from him, it was soft to the touch. I held it to my ear and shook it with exaggerated effect.

“What are you doing?”
he asked, puzzled.

“It's just . . .”
A joke.
“Never mind.”
I undid the ribbons; a rolled-up red cloth popped out of the paper. It was a red jersey that read, in English,
KOREA, FIGHTING!

“Put it on!
” Changhoon said, undoing the buttons of his short-sleeved shirt.

“What are you,
Superman
?”
I said as he revealed what was beneath his shirt. He was wearing the exact same red jersey. Then he helped me put mine on. He straightened the shoulders and then stared proudly at his handiwork.
“
Couple-T's!” he said, pointing from his matching shirt to mine. “Couple-T” was the phenomenon of couples wearing matching outfits—on purpose. Monica had had to explain it to me when a gossip magazine in the break room was opened to a photo of Pae Byun and Ahn Jaeni dressed identically from head to toe: pink polo shirts tucked into the same pale blue jeans and shiny black loafers. The photo was snapped just as they'd stepped off the plane on Jeju Island for their honeymoon.

I didn't know what to say. I felt like the only person in the country who wasn't following soccer. And now Changhoon wanted us to walk around matchy-matchy. It was a sweet gesture—it just wasn't my style.

But it was a gift. And I could see that it made Changhoon happy. I thanked him for his thoughtfulness, kissed him on the cheek, then, quickly, on the lips. I could feel the cabbie's eyes in the rearview mirror, giving me
nunchi.

But it turned out the
KOREA, FIGHTING!
jersey hadn't been the real surprise. Our cab was pulling up to what at first was an impenetrable ocean of red—Busanites wearing identical jerseys. When the crowd parted, I saw that we'd arrived at the World Cup Stadium.

I slapped Changhoon on the arm.
“No you didn't!”

If his smile when I put on the shirt was bright, it grew even brighter still.
“I did,”
he said.
“I did!”

My company for a ticket.
It was Korea's first match of the World Cup.
“How on earth you getting tickets?”

Changhoon shrugged.
“My father might've called in a favor.”

I didn't actually know what Changhoon's parents did—I always sensed he didn't feel comfortable talking about it. Since it was a sentiment I shared about my own family, I'd never pressed him for details. Although the other Korean-Koreans never seemed to have the same qualms; all the teachers at school pressed first about my MIA father's occupation until, after I offered up a few evasive answers, they redirected their pointed inquiries to the subject of my American uncle.

As we got out of the taxi, I immediately admonished myself for my earlier disappointment about the couple-T.
Why you act like baby?
And beneath that there was another nagging question that managed to surface: Would Ed Farley have ever done this for me, constructing an elaborate day in my mother's home city?
No.
He was too busy holding hands with Beth down Court Street.
I had come to Korea to escape him, and I'd found Changhoon.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
I said, covering Changhoon's face with kisses.
Take that, Ed,
I thought with each kiss.

Changhoon laughed.
“One thank-you is more than enough.”

We grabbed hands and ran to the stadium entrance, becoming one with the sea of red fans.

If you watched any of the news coverage for the World Cup that year, you would've seen images of the South Korean Red Devils fans everywhere—an overwhelming tide of red T-shirts and painted faces. The Western media praised the Red Devils for their good manners and lack of . . . well, hooliganism. (This praise, however, did not extend to the one superfan who doused himself in paint thinner before lighting a match, with the hopes of becoming the twelfth man, the “ghost player” on the field.) But what that media coverage could not capture was the collective energy that radiated in the air of the crowd. It was palpable and pulsing; the only word to describe it?
Jung—
that deep, shared sentiment coursing through the entirety of the stadium and bursting into the streets.
Jung
for our national team.
Jung
among the fellow fans. I witnessed that overflowing
jung
for myself. A second wind pumped through my body—the exhaustion from the travel and the peaks and troughs of the day's emotions were ebbing away. The ripples of
jung
began when the Korean national anthem played and we solemnly placed our hands to our hearts and sang. Our notes soared from Baekdu Mountain to the Donghae Sea, just like the words to the song.

And then Korea scored its first goal. The bleachers were alight with life. We cried out in triumph. The woman in the red jersey next to me caught my eye. There was no flicker of hesitation as she wrapped her arm fiercely around me.

Suddenly we were all linking arms, swaying side to side and chanting cheers as one synchronized mass.
Oh, Pilseung, Korea!
I didn't know the words, but I mouthed along all the same. I looked over at Changhoon: his lips were pinched together in a tight O, his eyes crinkled with joy. Changhoon's arm was draped over my shoulders.
“Thank you, again,”
I said to him.

“Ay, no need,”
he said before turning back to the game.

“Changhoon Oppa,”
I whispered in his ear.
“Saranghae.”

I had never told anyone “I love you” in Korean. At first the word tasted . . . foreign, uncanny. It tumbled off my tongue and hit the warm ocean breeze. But its aftertaste was all freshness and familiarity. It felt like
jung
itself.

There's always a risk in being the first one to utter the L-word. In those fraught seconds before your beloved responds (or not), you're left wide open and trembling. And it's too late to snatch the word back, even if you wanted to.

But that's the thing with love, isn't it? It's not a venture for the risk-averse.

Breaking from the human chain, Changhoon clasped me and lifted me into the air.
“Jane!”
he cried, with feeling.
“I've wanted to tell you for so long. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

I'd been holding my breath. Now I exhaled with relief. In the confusion of our embrace, the match, and the chanting crowds, the bag of
ojinguh
that Changhoon had been holding got tossed into the air. We spun round and round, drowning in dried squid confetti.

* * *

Korea beat Poland 2–0, and that night we celebrated on Haeundae Beach, in the red
pocha
tents that lined the shore. Curly-permed ladies served up slices of raw abalone, translucent strings of live octopus tentacles, and crab innards mixed with rice. Groups of friends pushed their plastic tables together and poured one another rounds of drinks. I remembered Sang once saying that the Haeundae
pocha
tents were where the
gangpae,
or gangsters, used to hang out. But those were the days long before ground was broken for the five-star resorts.

Every now and again, someone would cry,
“Daehanminguk!”
or “Fighting!”
and that whole table would erupt into whoops. Their voices rose and fell in that familiar Busan cadence. I let their rhythms wash over me. I remembered my early days in Korea, eavesdropping on all those conversations—each one had felt like a flaunted reminder that I would never belong.

In the midst of the revelry, Changhoon teetered to his feet. It was clear he was about to make a public announcement.

“What do you do?”
I said, tugging on his arm.
“Sit back down!”

His cheeks were flushed and rosy.
“Don't worry,”
he said before turning to command the room.
“Attention, everyone!”
he said. The room came to halt. And then, to my utter mortification, Changhoon began dragging me to my feet.

“You embarrass me!”
I whispered. But he was too strong; he pulled me up all the same, wrapping an arm tightly around my shoulders lest I wriggle away.

“Don't struggle so!”
Changhoon whispered back. I could have been the escapist octopus from the fish market, writhing out of its too-tight box.

Changhoon turned to the crowd again.
“To our beautiful
gyopo
girlfriend, returning to our beautiful native Busan!”
He was not from Busan—his family traced its roots back many generations to Seoul—but Koreans sometimes did that. Instead of emphasizing the individual “my” or “her,” they spoke in the collective possessive.

Then, as one, his audience turned its eye to me.

The crowd did not whoop and cheer, the way they had at their own private tables. They looked from him to me—I froze under that scrutiny—then back to Changhoon.

“Okay, drunko!”
someone shouted. With that, the crowd's attention snapped; they all turned away and resumed their tableside chatter.

Busan in that moment felt uncannily B&T.

My cheeks were still burning red from Changhoon's public outburst when the
pocha
lady weaved her way toward us. There was something in her purposeful gait that reminded me, for some reason, of Nina.
“Here,”
she said. She was addressing me.
“Took you for a foreigner at first. I didn't know you were one of us.”
She lowered a Styrofoam plate of live octopus tentacles onto our table.

She didn't linger to hear our thank-yous but instead spun on her heel and stalked off. I told Changhoon that if she hadn't just given us free
anju
, I would've thought we had pissed her off.

“Well, you know what they say about Busan ladies,”
Changhoon said, reaching for his chopsticks. I thought of the women in the pink galoshes, calling out to us in soft voices in the fish market.

“What, they're mermaids of the ocean?”

“No, they're tough.”
He lifted a still-squirming string, dipped it in a mixture of salt and sesame oil, and dangled it above my mouth.
“Here, eat up.”

The tentacle was curling itself around the tip of the chopstick. I was fascinated and repulsed at the same time. As I chewed tentatively, the octopus tentacle fought me furiously, suctioning the insides of my mouth.
“Keep chewing!”
Changhoon instructed. Finally it relented. It let out a salty burst of sea before giving up the fight.

“That was a little grossing me out. But kinda cool. I guess I can now cross it out of my list,”
I said, but Changhoon was turning around. A bottle of C1
soju
arrived. It was sent by a man sitting at the next table. He looked about Sang's age.

“You'll need a drink to go with that
anju,
”
he said gruffly. We tried to thank him, but he was already turning away to quaff his own
soju.

Changhoon poured me a drink, and then I poured him one. We toasted—first to our magnificent victory, then to our magnificent national team. We drank to the magnificence of our Busan people. The
jung
that began in the bleachers of the stadium pulsed through the
pocha
tent. It filled my lungs and made me gasp with breathlessness.

We finally stumbled back to the Grand Sinnara Hotel, to a suite that overlooked the Donghae Sea. Up to that point, Changhoon and I had never been intimate—like most Koreans we both lived at home, and the furthest we'd gone was the occasional make-out or grope at the movies or in his car before he dropped me off at home. We hadn't even gone to one of the many love motels that rented rooms by the hour, a fact that shocked even Monica.
You guys
still
haven't done it?
But I knew that our getaway trip came with the implicit promise of sex. And I was determined to give him the best sex of his life.

But Changhoon passed out before I could do it.

While he snored off the
soju,
I stared out the window. The
pocha
revelry had died down, and a stillness swept over Haeundae Beach. I slipped out of our suite and rode down in the elevator. Once I hit the outdoors, I pried off my heels and found myself half trotting, half tripping toward the ocean. My feet sank into the damp, soft sand and then the ocean itself, the ebbing waves licking my toes.