Everything Belongs to Us Page 19

  Those few words, that was all she needed. She felt the years of loneliness and private struggle evaporate off her chest, weightless as a cloud. She wanted to hold and preserve that moment forever.

  She must have been staring at him too intensely because he laughed and said, “Anyway, I’m too scared of you. I wouldn’t dare interrupt any of your stories.”

  It was a joke, but a sly one, referencing a genuine qualm.

  “Scared? Still?”

  “You’re scarier every day,” he said, elbowing her gently in the ribs.

  He had taken off his jacket and she could smell the fresh laundry scent of his shirt. Someone had carefully ironed the points of his collar. She felt the urge to lean into his shirt and take a deep whiff. “That’s very flattering,” she said. “But now I’m afraid I won’t live up to it.”

  “Something tells me you live up to whatever you set your mind on.”

  “You make me sound like such a dragon lady.”

  “It was a compliment,” he said. “I admire it.”

  “You think Juno would consider me a shark?” she said, teasing. He had told her what Juno had said about their generation, their country. Frog pond, shark pond. As if there were only two species in the world. “You think I could earn that honor?”

  Sunam said, “You’re the king of the sharks.”

  —

  THAT DAY, THEY walked until blisters rose on both Namin’s heels and then broke, the skin tearing and the lymph seeping into her socks. Sunam insisted they take a break and sit on a bench for a while. She took off her shoes and laid them on the bench next to them. Holding her bare feet off the pavement to keep them clean, she felt as if she were sitting on a pier, the concrete a body of water that she would eventually jump into. The broken skin alternated between hot and cold.

  “It hurts more because you’re paying attention,” she said. “If you weren’t here, it wouldn’t hurt at all. I would just get up and go.”

  “Knowing you, you’d probably march home with a broken foot,” he said. “Doesn’t mean you should. Stay here, I’ll go find a pharmacy.”

  Namin leaned back on the sun-warmed bench. She arched her toes, testing the swelling in her joints. It was like stretching after a twenty-four-hour sleep, returning to her body after floating in dreams. She thought of the night she’d met him. Not in that horrible room with the hostess game, but outside, dark enough to fear stumbling. He had been wearing a leather jacket zipped close to the neck, a scarf thrown carelessly around his shoulders. He was so slim and tall, his silhouette perfectly suited to shadows. It was the feel of him, blended into that velvety darkness, that had seemed to her both familiar and electric. She sensed how he was always fighting himself, pushing for more, the anxiety pulsing at his jaw. The word fragile came to mind, the word brittle. Only when Jisun taunted him—New Guy, he’s so impressed with everything—and he had been caught speechless and unable to deny it, had Namin allowed herself to acknowledge what she was already feeling. Kinship.

  —

  WHEN SUNAM CAME back with bandages and ointment, he seemed determined to do everything himself. “Let me,” he said. “Maybe I’ll discover a hidden talent for medicine. It could be a life-changing moment for me.”

  Namin hesitated. It was a surprisingly intimate request, letting him touch her bare feet and dress her torn, bloody skin. Mistaking her shyness, he said, “I won’t hurt you, I promise.” He pulled her calf across his lap and uncapped the tiny bottle of Mercurochrome. The glass dropper full of bright, viscous medicine, the color of cherry candy, glistened in the sun. “Ready?” Namin nodded, wondering if he would blow or wave his hand over the cut. He let the liquid fall onto the blisters, three tiny drops that stayed beaded and did not run. He blew gently over the sting, his mouth poised over her skin. His breath was steady and cool.

  “Did that hurt?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay, next.” Carefully, Sunam unwrapped the gauze and wound it around her heel and over the ankle. His hands were warm and confident, flexing her foot to make sure she could still move her ankle as he pulled the bandage tight. He tied the ends over the low, round bone that resembled a peach pit on the inside of her ankle. He had made each side perfectly symmetrical, the lines of gauze tight and parallel.

  “I think that was my very best work,” he said. “How does that feel?” He was holding her instep, his thumb pressing the arch.

  “Impressive.” She could barely hear herself over the adrenaline pounding in her ears. Her foot was tingling under his fingers. “I think you might have a future.”

  “If you think so, then I’m happy.”

  —

  THAT NIGHT IN her bedroom, Namin sat in front of the mirror with a brand-new tube of lipstick. It was the first color she’d intentionally owned, not a castoff from Kyungmin. The thing was entirely hers, a flat and untempered burgundy shade encased in white plastic, the number 084 stamped on the bottom indicating a secret company code. Namin had thought it a friendly number, even and divisible.

  The light wasn’t good enough to see the color properly, but she applied the formula carefully, following the contours of her mouth. The wax tugged at her lips. When she pressed her lips together, the brief drag of flesh on flesh was its own thrill, deeply satisfying. She loved that this instinctual gesture of femininity could feel as good as it looked. She could watch herself blot in the mirror for days.

  She fell asleep that way, the lipstick ablaze on her mouth, replaying how carefully Sunam had wrapped the gauze over her feet. It had felt like a moment she could trust, a window into the future. No one ever said how to fall in love, what signs to look for, but she felt certain that she was not making a mistake.

  All night she seemed to dream of Hyun. He was walking with clean white bandages wrapped around his feet. He was walking.

  “I never realized how tall you are,” she said. He had a cane of smooth blond wood. The top was carved like a river stone, fitted to his palm. He was so tall that she had to look up into his face.

  “I’m saving my energy,” he was saying. “I want to see how far I can go.”

  “You’ll make it,” she said.

  Then he was swimming in a river. “There are creatures in the river that live to five thousand years. Come in and see them, they’re not afraid. I asked them myself.”

  In the morning, her mother shook her awake. “You’re a sight,” she said, dragging a rough thumb over Namin’s lips. “What is this?”

  Namin drew her sore feet up against herself and rolled closer to the wall. “Nothing. I’m sleeping.”

  “With lipstick on, like a whore?”

  Namin squeezed her eyes shut and waited to hear her leave.

  When she was gone, Namin swiped the heel of her hand across her lips. The color was almost brown now, like old dried blood. She sat up and massaged the balls of her feet. The bandages were still tight. Sunam’s bows had held.

  Carefully, she undid the gauze, wrapping it around three of her fingers to make it stay together. She wound the end of it around itself and tied it off like a jeogori. From her desk, she took out the box that had once held a dictionary, a gift from her high school for ranking second at graduation. Exhausted after college exams, she had missed first by eight-tenths of a point. Despite this, people continued to think she had placed first, and Namin never corrected them.

  The dictionary sat in the parlor, but the box was her private domain, full of things she’d outgrown but could not bear to lose: paper dolls she’d drawn and colored as a child; special notes from favorite teachers; an empty perfume bottle that was missing its cap but still contained echoes of its famous scent. Most important: river stones from visiting Hyun. She had started with large, palm-sized stones at first, tempted by the wide streaks and colors. The smooth flatness stayed warm in her hand during difficult exams and even seemed to smell like the country, the river, her brother. Now she chose smaller pebbles. The box was getting tight, and it was crucial that the stones stay together.


  The folded gauze fit neatly in a corner. Namin patted it down and closed the lid. Soon she would have to tell Sunam about Kyungmin, who had been gone a month already without a word. In her wildest, most undisciplined dreams, her sister came back home and resumed work at the factory before Namin was forced to tell anyone, especially him, the truth.

  But lies were for people who didn’t believe in the future. Who saw only an endless stretch of present without consequences or change. The closer she got, the more determined Namin was to have all the things she dreamed of.

  Not just for herself, but for Hyun as well.

  Sunam’s father insisted that the entire household eat breakfast together each morning. A formal affair involving soup and rice and fish. A meal that required the maid—if not the maid, then Sunam’s mother—to arrive in the kitchen before daybreak to start the rice. Sunam’s father might miss the evening meal several times a week, eating and drinking with his subordinates after work. But he was not, lest his sons mistake the point, just eating and drinking. He was building spirit. Educating. Instilling that all-important ownership mentality. To work not just with diligence but with passion, as if by doing so the gains of the company would fall directly into one’s own pockets.

  On these occasions, he might come home too drunk to properly remove his own shoes. He might appear with strange stains on his clothing that the maid would have to discreetly scrub with bleach in the morning. But no matter how he had behaved the night before, Sunam’s father appeared at the breakfast table at the same time each morning, marking each family member in a silent roll call. He had the bearing of a former naval officer: broad shoulders, muscular neck. Abundant silver hair neatly combed and oiled, gleaming like the belly of a giant tuna.

  “Sunam,” he said one morning. “Bring her for dinner. Bring her tonight.”

  Sunam dared not feign ignorance about whom his father meant. Later he’d pummel each one of his brothers in turn to find out who had been the one to squeal, but lying now would only cast Namin in a less flattering light, as if he had something to hide. “Couldn’t we wait a bit longer?” he asked carefully. “I’ve only known her a couple of months.”

  His father pushed back his chair from the table. “All the more reason for us to meet her now. Before it’s too late.”

  —

  “BUT WHAT DOES he want to see me for?” Namin asked when he told her. “What did you say about me?”

  “Nothing,” Sunam said. She gave him a sharp look. “There wasn’t any time,” he said quickly. “It was the first he’s ever mentioned it. I didn’t even know that he knew.”

  “And now that he knows, you’re upset?” she said.

  He had expected her to be alarmed, if not actually frightened. He had prepared to take on a protective role, to reassure her that he would stand up for her even if his parents disapproved of her background. Instead Namin seemed miffed that he had not already mentioned her to his family. Far from worrying what his parents might think, she wanted Sunam to have bragged about her. He could not gauge whether this was an indication of her ego or her staggering faith in their relationship, new as it was.

  He decided to believe it was the latter. “How could I be upset?” he said. “I want everybody to know about us. I’d walk around chained hip to hip if you’d let me. I would wear a sign around my neck.”

  “Be serious,” she said.

  “I am serious. I’d do it.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You’d wear a sign tonight when we have dinner with your parents?”

  “Sure, but you have to wear one too.”

  “I think I’m wearing enough signs,” she said. “Whether I want to or not.”

  It was the only indication she gave of understanding what she might be facing at dinner. He now realized that Namin wanted to know what he’d said about her not because she expected him to brag, but because she hoped he had laid some groundwork. In her own way, she was afraid.

  “Don’t expect me to act all bridal and demure. I won’t do it,” she warned. “It’ll only make me feel worse if I have to put on an act.”

  “Do you even know how to act demure?” Sunam asked, teasing. He tried to picture Namin behaving the way women did in books and movies when they wanted to impress potential in-laws. Bringing gifts of delicacies and health potions. Cosmetics for the mother. Department store long johns for the winter, packed in gold boxes as if they contained jewelry. Could he ever imagine Namin bringing his parents thermal underwear? He laughed. “That’s something I’d like to see.”

  —

  SUNAM ARRANGED TO meet Namin at the bus stop near his house so they could walk back together. He arrived just as she was stepping onto the curb, wearing a soft gray skirt that covered her knees and matching jacket with a Peter Pan collar: the picture of demure. “My sister made it a long time ago,” she said slightly defensively, as if to say the outfit did not contradict her earlier claims.

  “You look lovely.” He wished they were not standing at a busy intersection, otherwise he would have twirled her around and admired her from every angle.

  She had even brought a box of sweets. Soft pink taffies and bite-sized rice cakes studded with black sesame seeds. Sunam was surprised by how grateful he felt for the effort she had made. Surely his parents would see it, too, and not denigrate her, at least not in her presence.

  When they arrived at his door, he squeezed her hand tightly. “Whatever happens, it won’t change anything between us,” he said.

  “Don’t make it so obvious,” she said.

  “What, obvious?”

  She shook her head.

  —

  IN RETROSPECT, IT seemed so inevitable that Namin would win the admiration of his parents, but at the time Sunam had been sure the meeting would be a disaster. His mind had even flashed forward to the ways he could comfort her in the aftermath, the things he might say and do to prove his unaltered devotion. His plans proved unnecessary.

  That evening, everyone with the exception of Sunam’s father was overdressed for this unprecedented spectacle. A dinner guest would normally elicit bored good manners from his brothers. Now they buzzed with hormonal electricity. A girl at the table! An interrogation! Swift judgment! His mother flitted between instinctual hospitality and frosty caution—running into the kitchen to fetch new dishes, laying them down with casual indifference far from Namin’s reach.

  His father, not one to bother with preambles, began firing questions right away.

  “I hear you scored perfectly on the entrance exam. How did you do it?”

  “I studied, of course,” Namin said, unperturbed by the many eyes tracking her responses. “I imagined the rest of my life if I didn’t succeed.”

  “And that was…?”

  “Selling odeng skewers with my parents,” she said simply. “It wasn’t a mystery.”

  There was a brief pause as Sunam’s father absorbed this answer, taking in her characteristic frankness.

  “I take it your parents never had to push you.” He glanced at Sunam, who had been pushed all his life. Without his father saying so, he knew he lacked the drive to have made it this far on his own.

  “They were pushing themselves.” Namin smiled, as if to acknowledge the joke. Her parents, their whole life set on wheels, transient in every way. “We all have our jobs.”

  Sunam’s father fixed his gaze on each of his sons in turn, lingering on his eldest. “Did you hear that? Pay attention,” he said. “All of you could learn a thing or two.”

  —

  FROM THE START, it was obvious that Sunam’s father and Namin were charmed by each other. They seemed to understand each other implicitly, as if they were old friends or possibly compatriots in a past life. Though a generation apart, they were built for the same purpose: both engines for success. His father, with his great bulk and straightforward energy, was a locomotive. And Namin, something new. Sleeker, quieter, but more powerful.

  After dinner, the family gathered at the door to see Nami
n off. “You keep him on track, Namin,” Sunam’s father said. He patted her shoulder with all the warmth and affection of a mentor blessing his true disciple. He was as pleased with her as if he’d dreamed her into being. They had lingered an hour after dinner, eating fruit and cookies and tea. Everything that could possibly be taken out had been offered to Namin, and still his father seemed reluctant to let her go. “You keep my boy on track,” he said again. “I’m trusting him to you.”

  Outside, Namin was elated. “Did you hear what they said? They loved me.”

  No one had actually used the word love. A small part of him wanted to contradict her. No one said love. But vocabulary aside, it was true. They had loved her.

  It was full dark now as they made their way back to the bus stop. They walked slowly, gazing at the sky, their faces upturned to the warm night air. Namin held his arm and leaned into him, heavy with victory.

  “And now you are free to reform me,” Sunam said. “Remold and remake me. You have my father’s blessing.”

  “That was just a joke,” she said. “He was only being nice.”

  “But are you going to do it?” He pulled her close to him, wrapping his arms around her. They breathed in unison, great inhalations and exhalations that pressed them even closer together. Her head nestled against his chest. He could feel the release of her breath, her whole body relaxing.

  “They loved me.” Her voice held the joy of marvel, turning the evening’s events over and over in her mind like a jewel held to the light.

  He kissed the soft crown of her head. “They loved you.”

  One month.

  For one month after the arrest at the textile factory, Jisun obeyed. She stayed in the house like a captive princess, silent and submissive, following the rules drummed into her since childhood. She ate at the right times, went to bed early, rose early, exercised in the garden, read in the solarium. A productive schedule is what separates humans from animals. Putting away the simple layers she preferred, she chose clothes her father approved of—blouses with multiple closures, navy knee-length skirts, and pearl-button cardigans. When she needed to go out, she notified Ko. She followed a strict regimen that anyone could remember, then forget. She wanted to numb the household to her presence.