This Burns My Heart Page 0,92

a fraction of a second she thought he meant Yul.

Min headed back out the door, toward the street.

“Where are you going?” Soo-Ja asked, running after him.

“To find him!” Min yelled back.

“Stop! You’ll never find him. And curfew is only an hour away. I don’t want you to get stopped by a policeman in your state.” Soo-Ja grabbed him by his arms and pulled him back in. She could hear the loud noise from the street beckoning him through the half-opened door.

“Let me go! I’m going to find him! No son of a bitch gets away with touching my wife!”

“Get hold of yourself!” Soo-Ja said, dragging him to a chair, where he reluctantly sat. Close to him like this, she could smell the chicken and beer on his breath, mixed in with the scent of his body. She could picture the last hour of his life: running from the sul-jib to the hotel, his sandals flapping on the ground, as he bumped into people in the crowded streets, worry sculpted on his face.

“How did you know what happened?” Soo-Ja asked him.

“Miss Hong told me.”

Miss Hong, the chambermaid, was a girl of twenty or so, recently arrived from the countryside. She was so shy she never looked Soo-Ja in the eye, preferring to look down at the floor and bowing slightly whenever she spoke to her. Soo-Ja had noticed Min glancing at Miss Hong a few times, and once she overheard him telling her the plot of a movie he had seen—he went to the cinema almost every afternoon—and he described it as if he had written it himself, just for her. How charming he must seem to her! thought Soo-Ja. An older man, her employer, the “owner” of the business.

Soo-Ja was about to ask Min how and when Miss Hong told him, when the five Pearl Sisters groupies suddenly burst into the hotel, back from their concert. Their voices came in first, singing “Nima” in unison followed by their teenage bodies falling on one another’s, all arms and elbows, necks and hips, moving forward like a single multilegged spider.

Nima—my adored—who went so far away

Nima—my honey, my love—are you coming back?

The full moon rises, then sets again

The day you promised to return is long gone

All five of them wore roughly the same thing: long-sleeved black turtleneck shirts, interlocking metallic belts, knee-high boots, and sleeveless white coats with a red lining. Soo-Ja and Min watched as the girls made their way past them in the front area, keenly aware of the two of them, but without acknowledging their presence. They were not in the same room, the girls and Min and Soo-Ja; they sped by like planets. Their drunk, bouncing joy seemed to feed off the couple’s stillness and gain its certainty and power from having them there to witness it. Their happiness was of an aggressive kind, meant to evoke envy. It wanted to take something away from you.

When they were gone, Soo-Ja and Min unfroze, and Min was ready to continue his demonstration of rage. Was she being too cynical? Soo-Ja wondered. Perhaps it was real. But Soo-Ja held off on her own reentry, as she was waiting for the girls to come back in a matter of seconds. Which, with the precision of clockwork, they did.

“Where is our stuff?” Nami yelled out. Nami acted like the leader of the pack, while the others stood behind her like foot soldiers awaiting orders. Am I a fortress of some kind, Soo-Ja asked herself, with guests as invading armies trying to get to the other side? Is today some kind of battle day, as predetermined as the moment a comet hits the sky?

“Yes, where’s our stuff?” echoed her second-in-command, a girl with cat’s-eye glasses and an almost bridgeless round nose. This gave rise to the others, too, joining in the chorus, repeating the words, their voices quickly becoming indistinguishable from one another. Where’s our stuff, what kind of a hotel is this, you are low class, and this place is low class.

Soo-Ja felt adrenaline rush to her veins, her shoulders growing higher, her face becoming tighter and harder. She was not afraid of the girls at all—they were just teenagers, barely older than her own daughter.

“If you want your things back, you need to pay for your rooms,” Soo-Ja said.

“We’re not paying! The manager said we could stay for free, you dumb gashinaya!” Nami yelled. The curse word—bitch—hurt double. The word itself, of course, and the fact that it was leveled at Soo-Ja,