I know that anyone who is remotely respectable would die of horror before they would be seen with her. But she makes a lot of money and saves a lot of it too, unlike other room salon girls apparently—or anyone our age for that matter—and it’s hard not to respect her for that. Kyuri doesn’t drink Starbucks.
As roommates go, she and I get along pretty well, but mostly it’s because we don’t see each other too much. During the day I’m usually at the studio and she leaves for the salon and then work in the late afternoon. When she comes home I’m either still in the studio or asleep.
The one time we almost got into a fight was a few months ago, when we were drinking together on the weekend and she accused me of feeling superior to her because I was pretty without having surgery.
“You know, you’re just lucky that your kind of face is trendy these days,” she said, her eyes clouded over from anger and too much drink. “But you don’t have to be such a condescending snob about surgery.”
When I protested that I didn’t know what she was talking about, she fired off examples of criticisms I had voiced when we were watching dramas together.
“That was about Jeon Seul! You agreed with me!” I said. “You said her new nose looked like Michael Jackson’s!”
“No, I know,” she said, slumping onto her side. “I know what you think. You’re a stuck-up bitch.”
She fell asleep on the table and I was so vexed I didn’t even move her to her bed. The next morning, she didn’t remember our spat and came to my room to ask if I had an ice pack—in the night she had fallen off the chair and bruised her expensive face.
* * *
—
BUT I DO have to admit I feel a pinch of pride when someone asks if I have had surgery and I can say no. Our department head has gone so far as to make me promise not to cut my hair, which is really torturously unmanageable now that it hits my waist. Whenever I talk about cutting it off, department chair be damned, Hanbin gathers it in his hands and starts speaking to it tenderly as if it is a threatened child. “I won’t let her do it, don’t you worry,” he croons. And Kyuri hasn’t even read the articles and reviews of my work that unfailingly describe me as “the naturally beautiful artist-in-residence.”
“So I’m supposed to have lunch with Hanbin’s mother at their house today,” I tell Kyuri, against my better judgment. “Not sure what I’m going to wear.”
Kyuri sits up straight, her red eyes suddenly aglitter.
“Really? I thought she hated you!” she says.
I make a face.
“Well, it might not happen, but that’s the plan, anyway. Do you think my black long-sleeved dress is too…black?” I ask, sipping my coffee.
She shakes her head. “It’s not the fact that it’s black—didn’t you buy it at the market in Itaewon? You have to wear something really expensive. It’s more about your attitude when you wear it. You have to have that confidence you get from wearing something that costs too much.”
Kyuri gets up and slings the Chanel bag over her shoulder like she’s going out.
“You can borrow something of mine! Let me check what I have right now.”
For her work clothes, Kyuri uses a clothing rental store that specializes in room salon girls. This means a lot of short skirts and tight polyester dresses. I highly doubt she’ll have anything I will want to wear, but when I follow her into her room, she pulls three surprisingly demure dresses from her closet that still have Joye department store tags attached.
I run my fingers over a high-necked cobalt sheath in admiration. Whose taste is this? Certainly not Kyuri’s. She doesn’t offer an explanation though, and I don’t ask.
“I think this one is perfect,” she says, holding up an olive silk dress with cap sleeves and a chiffon