I didn’t make a scene, did I? If I wanted to, I could have.
You were so good to me that it hurt me to hear you were getting married. And you didn’t even tell me directly because you didn’t think it was necessary. Perhaps I should have continued to act as if nothing was different. But I have feelings. You should know that.
Everyone is so angry with me, and I’m going to take on a suicidal amount of debt at the shop because of what happened. I had some idea of what the consequences would be but I still went to see you and her. That is how much I was in love with you. You do know that, right?
I just want to say that I am sorry. I know I will never see you again. I hope you can forgive me.
* * *
—
MY HEADACHE HAS arrived with a vengeance and it is unfurling throughout my body. I am shaking as I finish composing the text and press send. I am kneading my temples as hard as I can, but it does not make a dent in the pain. People walking by look at me in alarm because I am lurching back and forth in this chair. I stand up and look around for a pharmacy, even though I know that five, six painkillers will not be enough to help and the doctor warned me about taking any more than three at a time. “That kind of dosage is for people who have just given birth,” he warned. What about people who will never be able to give birth? I wanted to ask.
I find a pharmacy and I stumble in and ask for the strongest dose of painkillers they can give me. As I reach into the suit pocket for the cash, I feel my phone buzzing and I draw it out.
It is a text from Bruce.
All right, it says. Now fuck off.
* * *
—
ALMOST WEEPING with relief, I hand over cash and walk out of the pharmacy without waiting for the change.
As the door closes behind me, I hear the pharmacist call, “Are you sure you are okay, miss?” His gentle voice falls like a patter of rain. I raise my hand and nod as I pry the pills from the thick packaging.
I’m okay. I have survived the day, again. All I need now is for these stupid fucking pills to work.
Miho
When it comes to love, I am not quite the fool that my roommate, Kyuri, believes me to be. Lately, she has been looking at me with great pity, alternating with scorn, and I know that she is contemplating my impending heartbreak. She considers it entirely my fault, for setting my heart up to be broken in the first place, with reckless disregard for the prime years of my man-attracting life.
It is her job to know men of course, and she thinks she can sum up Hanbin, my boyfriend, and how he will leave me. She believes girls should operate like Venus flytraps—opening only for prey that can actually be caught.
Of course, Kyuri cannot help thinking like this, as her own life remains deliberately stripped of love. When I ask her if she ever wants to get married, she snorts. “Not meant to be,” she says, blinking her mink-like eyelashes and wondering out loud at my rudeness for even raising the subject to her. But Kyuri is still the one out of all of us—even including the impressionable Sujin who lives in front of the TV—who cries the most when one of the characters has to leave the other for martyr-like reasons.
Kyuri also suffers from persecution mania. This is entirely my own and secret opinion. She sees herself as the victim—of men, of the room salon industry, of Korean society, of the government. She never questions her own judgment, or how she creates and wallows in these situations. But that is another story.
One day, years after we stop living together, I will embark on a Kyuri series. I know that with absolute certainty. I cannot start now, when I am in