“I guess so,” I say with a sigh. Suddenly I feel exceedingly tired and I think of Nami. I haven’t spoken to her since the day she came over. She had texted me a few times and then stopped when I didn’t respond. Light leaked out of me whenever I thought about her.
“I have been compiling some ideas for Miho,” Sujin says matter-of-factly. “I just have to check a few things first, like which reporters will actually believe what I say, and which ones might pay and which ones accept anonymous submissions. Miho has to be patient, because it is her destiny to become famous. All of us at the orphanage always said so.”
We clink glasses again and drink. I indicate that she has some sauce on her chin and she wipes it off. Then she takes her phone and starts searching through her photo gallery.
“All of us asked her for a drawing to keep because we knew she would be famous one day. Look, this is what she was drawing back in high school.” She slides her phone over to me. The screen shows a detailed pencil drawing of a family walking in a procession in a field of flowers. The father is in the front, then the mother, and then an older daughter holding several books to her chest. Trailing behind is a short figure wearing a girls’ hanbok but topped with the head of a giant frog staring out with mad, bulbous eyes and a flickering tongue.
“Um, I wouldn’t want that in my possession,” I say, handing the phone back to her. “You asked if you could have that? How awful.”
“That was her toad series,” says Sujin. “She drew a lot of toad people in wells but this one is cheerful, with all those flowers. No dead people!” She smiles down at the photo.
I always knew they were both cracked.
“I thought going to New York would be good for her, which is why I kicked up such a fuss to the Loring Center, but I suppose that’s how she met Hanbin and now she is unhappy….” Sujin trails off. I ask her what she means.
“I was an assistant at the hair salon when I first came to Seoul, and one day I overheard a customer bragging to one of the stylists that her daughter was applying for this art scholarship to New York. I listened as hard as I could and looked it up afterward and I called the Loring Center to make them apply for Miho.” Sujin shakes her head. “The adults there never think ahead about our future—to be fair, they’re busy putting out fires, with girls like me—but that’s why those of us out here are constantly looking for information for the younger ones. That’s how I got that salon job too, an unni from the Center called me. I mean, the job was gruesome, but at least it got me here!”
Sujin grins at me, as if she is revealing a finale with a grand twist.
* * *
—
“ANYWAYS, I WAS at Cinderella Clinic this morning for my checkup and I heard that Manager Koo left,” says Sujin on the walk home.
“What?” I’m surprised. Manager Koo has been with them since Dr. Shim first opened Cinderella Clinic. I couldn’t imagine what he would do without her, since she was the one who was always bringing in new patients and convincing old ones to get the latest surgeries. Her signature move was to indicate her face and body with a little flourish and whisper, “I’ve had simply everything done, so you can ask me anything—anything at all and I will be completely honest with you.” She was marvelously compelling, to say the least.
“Yeah, I heard she moved to NVme, that new enormous hospital right off Sinsa Station,” says Sujin. “Cinderella Clinic seems to be in shock because everyone was scrambling when I got there. I guess she didn’t even find a replacement or train them or whatever because I saw the youngest assistant doing a consultation!”
NVme makes sense—it’s the huge new place that everyone is checking out because of an onslaught of recent publicity. I read somewhere that it’s the largest plastic surgery hospital in the