This Burns My Heart Page 0,90

Mr. Shim finally gone, and the door slamming behind him, Soo-Ja let out a sigh of relief. Her eyes took in the front desk area—pieces of glass littered the floor, and soil from the fallen plants had spread everywhere. Next to her, Yul looked like a cracked boulder.

Soo-Ja waited outside the bathroom while Yul dressed his wounds. The hotel was still fairly empty at this time, and she had to turn away only one guest, directing him to the other lavatory, at the end of the hallway. Yul had left the door slightly ajar, so they could talk. Anyone watching them would just think of her as the hotel manager and him as the guest she was helping recover from the earlier fight. But when they spoke, in the cautiousness of their words, they spoke as lovers.

“I pictured your husband when I was hitting him,” said Yul. He had his back to her, but she could see his reflection on the wall mirror as she stood just outside the door. He had taken his scrubs and his shirt off, and she could see some marks on his body. His physique was not as muscular as it had been in his younger years, though he still had a well-defined chest and strong arms. There was a certain tiredness to his body that evoked in her a feeling of warmth.

“I wondered where the anger came from.” She realized then that he could see her, too, reflected in the mirror. There they resided, side by side, within the cut glass frame: he in his corner, she in hers, only inches apart. She watched as Yul reached into the first aid kit laid open on the sink. He dabbed a cotton swab into alcohol and began to clean off the blood. He then tore up the strips of gauze and the white tape expertly, moving as swiftly as a man getting dressed in the morning. His knuckles were soon covered with small patches of gauze.

“You shouldn’t be doing this kind of work, Soo-Ja,” said Yul.

“The money’s not bad. The owner of the hotel pays me above market rate.”

“Why isn’t your husband here? Dealing with drunks is better suited for a man than a woman.”

“Min wouldn’t be good at the front desk. He’d be too afraid to charge people.”

“No. I mean it. Seriously. How can your husband let you work here? Where is he? Why isn’t he here?”

“It’s not always this bad,” said Soo-Ja, hoping to sound convincing.

“You could still go to diplomat school. Put Min in charge of things. Think of yourself for a change.”

“Yul, that was more than ten years ago. I can’t tell Thailand from Timbuktu anymore. And I kind of like hearing people speaking Korean around me, instead of, say, Swahili.”

“You could still do it. A lot of people start careers in their thirties.”

“Well, that’s part of the reason. Women diplomats are common now. There’s nothing special about it. If I can’t be the first Korean woman diplomat, then I’d like to be the first something else. That’s why I’ve been taking astronaut lessons,” said Soo-Ja, smiling.

“You want to go to the moon?” asked Yul, smiling back.

“No, but sometimes I want to send Min to the moon,” said Soo-Ja, with a straight face.

Yul smiled at her again. “Promise me you’ll find something else. Anything. Promise me you’ll quit the hotel.”

“I can’t do that,” said Soo-Ja.

“You cannot work here,” he insisted.

“Please don’t say anything to Min if you see him.”

“Maybe I should introduce him to my wife. Maybe they will like each other and go off together,” Yul said ruefully.

Soo-Ja could not tell if he was joking or not. “Don’t say things like that. It’s not fair to them.”

“You’ve met my wife. Is she anything like me?”

“Why did you marry her, then?”

“I was getting old,” said Yul, as he threw away the extra strips of gauze. “And patients find it odd when their doctor is a single man, especially when they bring their children in.”

“I noticed you still don’t have children.”

Yul placed the gauze, the alcohol, and the scissors back in the kit. “Eun-Mee does not want any. She says children, especially babies, are selfish and mean-spirited.”

“Well, they’re also easily lovable and very naturally kind,” said Soo-Ja, smiling.

“What about Hana? Does she remember me?” Yul closed the first aid kit, placing it on the floor. He then reached for a clean shirt hanging from a hook on the wall. He put it on quickly, and she could hear the whooshing sound he