made as he thrust his arms into the sleeves.
“I’ve told her the story many times, but always leaving out the part you played,” said Soo-Ja. “Which means I leave out the most important part.”
“Well, if I were to tell the story of my life without mentioning you, I’d be doing the same.”
Yul emerged from the bathroom and stood at the door, looking directly at Soo-Ja’s face for the first time. His eyes were as beautiful as she remembered, a light kind of brown. She gazed into them, swam in that lovely shade, rested in the round of his iris.
“How can you go about your days, knowing everything that you do?” he asked very quietly, so that she had to lean forward to hear him, almost folding into him. “It’s hard, you know, to find happiness with someone. That becomes more clear to me with every passing year. I can never forget the day I asked you to marry me, before your wedding. That day has been burnt into my brain, and I can recite things you said like lines from a favorite song. I can’t say I haven’t seen you in eight years, because I have. I’d have pictures of you in my head and I’d ration them out carefully. I wouldn’t use them up; I’d savor each sweetly. Because at one point each mental picture would disappear—I’d lose it. I’d have it, I’d see you, then I’d lose it. You were elusive even in my memories.” Soo-Ja felt the longing in his voice tear at her. “Am I going to have to spend my whole life running after you? I have so little left now, just that day, you standing in front of me, the ink on your fingers. I always ask myself, What if you had said yes? Our lives would have turned out so differently.”
“I think of that day, too,” said Soo-Ja. “You’re not the only one.”
“If I left my wife, would you leave your—”
“Please stop.”
Soo-Ja heard a hotel guest coming their way, and she moved Yul toward a dark area underneath a stairwell. They stood there quietly for a moment, and she waited for the man to round the corner. When all was silence again, she turned back to look at Yul and saw his impossibly serious face, and his sad, broken eyes, casting a shadow over her mouth.
“Soo-Ja… I love you.”
Soo-Ja felt his words caress her ears, and when he brushed his lips against hers, she did not resist. For a while, they stood still, exchanging breaths. She could feel the warm air come into her mouth from his, and though they did not kiss, she could feel his tenderness surround her, and she let it fall over her skin, like a silk sheet.
In the old stories her father read to Soo-Ja as a child, once a climactic event took place, the story would stop there for a moment, only to be picked up again the next day, or sometime later. But as she grew up, Soo-Ja realized, of course, that there were no chapter breaks in real life. Something exciting may happen to you, like getting a first kiss, or winning a race, but it may be followed by something completely mundane, like remembering to clean the earthenware jars, or to empty the chamber pot, or to pick up food at the outdoor market. The day’s big event was soon forgotten, and though it became relived in the retelling—all the emotions coming back in the descriptions of what happened—it soon turned into no more than an anecdote, like something that happened not to you, but to somebody you knew.
That is how Soo-Ja felt when Min burst into the hotel a few hours later, his face red as a ripe mango, his body shaking with anger. His buttons had come undone, revealing his white undershirt, and she could feel energy vibrating from him a meter away. He had just heard what happened, and, for him, it was as if it had just happened. How odd, thought Soo-Ja, that he arrived as drunk as Mr. Shim himself, and for all of his anger at Mr. Shim for trying to hurt her, her husband and Mr. Shim looked and sounded much the same right now; the only difference, it seemed, resting on the fact that she was married to one, and attacked by the other.
“Where is he?” Min asked, furious, almost shouting.
“He’s gone,” said Soo-Ja, after a brief pause. She knew he meant Mr. Shim, though for