Chapter 3 - Jennie

I had a dream about an old boyfriend of mine. He looked the same as ever, his eyebrows knit together and a serious look on his face. He had on a black turtleneck he often used to wear when we’d sneak out on car dates, and he was carrying a bunch of white freesias in his hands. 

“Jennie-yah,” he said. (He always said my name really mechanically.) “I can’t go on without you.” The furrow between his brows deepened. “I’m sorry I said such horrible things,” he mumbled, biting his bottom lip. “Look, Jennie, I brought you your favorite flowers, and some of those macarons you like so much.”

Macarons, from Laduree, I thought to myself in my dream. “What flavor are they?” I asked.

My old boyfriend smiled brightly. “Your favorite, of course; milk.”

Milk flavored macarons! Suddenly, I felt a whole lot better about everything. 

It was nine-fifteen when I woke up, and Mino was already gone. When I wandered into the living room in my pajamas I could smell coffee. The living room looked spick-and-span as always, and the heater was clanking away in the corner. I pressed the play button on the smart speakers and soft low-volume music began to filter through the room. Suddenly, I became uneasy. I felt as though Mino was never going to come home again. Maybe he had never existed, to begin with. The room seemed unnaturally bright. The background music sounded morbidly clear. Nothing felt real.

I was desperate to hear Mino’s voice and see him in flesh again. It was all his fault that I had that dream about Kai. Mino was the one who had brought up the subject. All the worries and fears I had been keeping bottled up inside of me came gushing up my throat, and I could feel myself on the verge of tears. I tried calling his mobile but it was sent to the voicemail. I quickly googled the gallery’s number and dialed it in.

“Hello?” A woman picked up on the second ring. She spoke the name of the gallery in a cold, distant voice.

“I’d like to speak to Song Mino, contemporary art, please.”

“One moment please.”

She put me on hold, and ‘O Vreneli’ came on in the background. I felt as though someone was making fun of me. Then the music stopped and the woman’s voice came back on. “I’m sorry, he hasn’t come in yet.”

I got dressed hurriedly, put on a face mask and grabbed my purse, and then went out. I could feel the sunshine and the dust in the air. I had to take three different buses before I got to the gallery (actually you were only supposed to have to change once, but the bus routes and timetables were so complicated that it was impossible to get the transfers right). I looked out the window and watched the scenery crawl by. A few family restaurants, posh boutiques, and then office buildings.

Kai and I broke up not long before I got in touch with Mino again. Let’s no see each other anymore, he’d said desolately. (Actually that’s the way he looked all of the time. I used to love the cloud of sadness that seemed to brood over his forehead).

“You’re not normal, Jennie,” he said. “Men are social creatures. Your wildness is one of the things that appeals to me about you, but beyond a certain point, I just can’t keep up with you. It’s my fault, really.”

I still don’t have a clue what he was trying to say.

“I’m sorry/“ I remember the way his forehead looked as he bowed his head, pain, and suffering carved into the creases between his brows. 

The gallery was a huge avant-garde white building. I asked the lady at the reception for directions to the offices. She picked up the phone without even looking at me. “One moment, please,” she said. And then, “name please?”

“Song Jennie,” I told her. The lady gave me a quick look up and down and flashed me a ridiculously overdone grin. Unsurprising. After all, my engagement with Mino was not publicized. Only the closest people around me and my company knew about our engagement. She then pointed to a nearby bench and told me to have a seat. 

I felt sick. I sat down on the futuristic white plastic bench and stared blankly at the dimly lit lobby. High ceiling with floating installations and a bright shiny vending machine in the corner that looked like it had found its way here by mistake. There was a humid sickly smell of plants and a giant oversized oil painting that was enough to make anybody feel ill. And this was where Mino worked.

“Jennie?” Suddenly, there he was in front of me, with his beautiful clear eyes, and his soft cropped blonde hair; my beloved Mino. “What’s up? You’ve never come here before.”

I stood up. I wanted to tell Mino everything: the dream about Kai, the way I’d suddenly been so desperate to come and see him, about how I got all confused with the buses, how the receptionist had been mean to me, how lonely and uneasy I’d felt waiting for him in the lobby… But I didn’t know where to start.

“Uh, Jennie?”

“I want to go home,” I managed to say at last. But this didn’t seem to strike Mino as sensible.

“I’m going home because I want to go home.” I felt better now that I’d seen his face and somehow managed to elaborate that much. 

“Well, I guess I won’t keep you,” Mino said. He sounded a bit confused.

“Hey, is she your fiancée?” I heard someone bellow behind me. When I turned around, I saw a tall man in glasses with thick black frames, in a very dandy outfit topped with a newspaper boy’s hat that made him look as though he had just stepped out of a Sherlock Holmes novel. How young Mino looks in his red plaid suit next to this guy, I thought. 

“I’m Jihoon, street photographer. We spoke once on the phone, I think. I’m a friend of Mino’s from high school.”

Jihoon… Sounded very familiar. I didn’t remember ever speaking to him, but I smiled anyway and said hello.

“Well, what a surprise. I never expected to see you here,” he said, a little too loudly. “He’s so secretive! He could’ve introduced us before you got engaged, at least. We go way back, you know. We tackled the state exams together as student