Kim Jennie

 

It was on my twentieth birthday when I had to make a choice. I was two years overdue, they said, no more waiting.

 

Laid out in front of me were over fifty photographs of potential marriage candidates my father had chosen. Fifty unfamiliar faces staring me in the eye, all of which looked the same. Rows and rows of men, each with dark, charcoal eyes that seemed more dead, considering the calculative, sly mind that must reside behind these pitch dark eyes.

 

My father sat before me in that large, leather armchair of hisㅡ the only momento my mother left behind that hadn’t been discarded by him.

 

The only reminder that she had ever existed.

 

I ran my fingers over the smooth plastic that bound the pictures, my fingertips leaving a trail of fingerprints in their wake.

 

I felt the atmosphere in the room go heavy in anticipation. In the background I heard the rhythmic tapping of a keyboard and the flurried footsteps of the errand boy who was at the mercy of everyone else in the company.

 

My father lifted his weary, blank eyes to meet mine.

 

“Have you made a decision?”, he asked.

 

I nodded, before pointing at the girl who stood to the right of my father with her head down, a girl who looked to be younger than I was. A peasant, an errand girl.

 

“I choose her.”

 

Park Chaeyoung

 

When I was young my father left my mother and I. He left without a word, and the only thing he left behind was a lifetime of debt for us, an eternity of repayment.

 

It felt like a dream then, but that dream slowly became a nightmare. A nightmare that had became my reality.

My mother took on a total of four jobs in a single day, at the most, six. I learnt to bite my tongue and not ask for anything- we were confined to two meals a day. Sometimes when it got especially hard, I had to split my already meagre portions to last us for the week.

 

When I was fourteen I began taking up odd jobs. Deliveries at the nearby fast food chain and waitressing at restaurants in the vicinity.

 

It was when I was out of high school, at the young age of nineteen that I hit jackpot. Not jackpot jackpot, but I found myself a job at the largest conglomerate in Korea: Kim enterprises. It was beyond anything I could ever dream of.

 

It was a chance, a new breath of life.

 

And by then I was so desperate, I was grasping at anything I could take hold of. I became an office errand girl at the main branch of Kim enterprises at the age of nineteen.

 

And yet, my dreams were dashed on the very first day with three simple words, spoken in a simple, succinct manner.

 

“I choose her,” were the words that tumbled out of the mouth of the sole heir to the company.

 

At that time I remember feeling the air in the room becoming frightfully stifling, as if an unknown force had in all the oxygen in the enclosed space. And yet I didn’t look up- we were instructed to never ever look up unless addressed personally by the president. Even so, we were not allowed to look him in the eye.

 

Trust me when I say I had no idea what was going on when I heard those three words, those three words that could spell either destruction or a chance at a new lease of life for me.

 

There was a sputtering sound, before the president started coughing violently. He must have choked on his tea, I remember thinking.

 

And when yet the large man whose power and influence greatly transcended anyone else I could have ever dreamt of meeting rose, his costly-looking armchair creaking in protest, and came to a stop before me, I felt my throat constrict and air rushed out of my lungs.

 

I was told to look at him.

 

I did.

 

In the eye, he said.

 

I did.

 

The man of immense power looked me in the eye for a straight minute, his gaze unwavering. I could only hope that same could be said about my own.

 

He looked away first.

 

“Very well,” the president intoned, his voice neutral, but I could hear an underlying current of something in his tone that I couldn’t quite identify. Thinking back, it could only have been an effort to suppress the rage at his daughter’s outright challenge.

 

I lowered my gaze back to the floor, my head spinning. What was this supposed to mean? I could only hope that the answer to that question was not the impending end of my job; it was only my first day.

 

Thankfully, it never came to that.

 

“I am very aware of your background,” the president intoned, “and because my daughter has chosen you,” (at this he let out a short, bitter laugh) “your family’s long-standing debts will be paid off by our company.”

 

Then I thought I could almost smell the sickly sweet taste of freedom, of the liberation of the shackles of years of accumulated debts that had bound me.

 

And I felt a great hope balloon within my chest.

 

“On the condition that during the period in which you will be betrothed to her, I’m willing to give it a year, that you manage to make my daughter fall in love with you.”

 

The balloon of hope I had felt briefly deflated.

 

But then I thought of the years I had spent watching my mother work tirelessly, without so much as a thought to her own well-being. If all I had to do to relieve my mother’s burdens was to make someone fall for me, I would do it.

 

“I don’t think I will fall for you, but thank you for giving me buffer time.”

 

Those were the first words that passed between us, or more accurately, from her to me. I had expected this; her hostility did nothing to weaken my resolve.

 

Instead, I believed it did the exact opposite of the intended effect.

 

The week after, we were betrothed.

 

In the weeks to come, she would return to our shared apartment after midnight, before leaving again at the crack of dawn. I had no knowledge of her whereabouts, but that did not concern me.

 

After all, this was a game to her.

 

And maybe, if I thought of it as a game, it would be so much easier. So I called it ‘A Game to Make her Fall’. Not that she had any knowledge of it.

 

I began waking before her; if she awoke at 7am, I would be awake by 5am. I made sure to collect information about her favourite food from their family chef.

 

Samgyeopsal, Fish Head curry, Hamburg Steak, food of every cuisine that was on the list I dedicated myself to master them.

 

The cuts that lacerated my fingers were bandaged by beige plasters, a pathetic attempt to cover up. Cooking had never been my forte- it was too time consuming and expensive. Cup noodles made up the majority of my diet.

 

But Jennie- as I soon learnt of her name which she begrudgingly muttered, an answer to bring my prodding to cessation- looked increasingly haggard. She would pick the food I made as she left the house, a casual thanks as she passed.

 

One day I followed her as she left the house, to bring to her the umbrella she had left behind, out into the side of the street where the next thing she did brought tears to my eyes.

 

She lifted the bundled disposable container and tossed it into a garbage bin at the side of the road, before walking off.

 

I felt a distinct ache, a sharp edge of hurt ran along my chest.

 

I had expected some sort of resistance, a blatant hostility. And yet it hurt me more than it should, more than I had expected. More than I should allow myself to hurt.

 

I soldiered on.

 

She returned home one evening, an unwelcome surprise I was not ready for. I saw her take in the cup noodles I had committed myself to eat- in an attempt to save money- and I saw pity flash in them.

 

But pity was not what I wanted from her.

 

Kim Jennie

 

I remember the day she followed me out of the house, it was so obvious, what with her furtive glancing around and how she had trailed after me in such a clumsy manner.

 

It was so obvious, it was almost cute.

 

I couldn’t let on that I had noticed the plasters that were wrapped around her long, slim fingers, or the fact that the meals she made had became increasingly delicious.

 

I couldn’t let myself fall for her.

 

I couldn't do that to her.

 

So I dumped the disposable container with her hard work for that morning into the nearest bin.

 

The soft pattering of her footsteps as she trudged back to the house was the only sound I could hear amidst the early morning racket of the neighborhood.

 

I walked along the alley that morning without so much as a backward glance.

 

A few days later I returned home earlier than usual- staying away from home to avoid her was gradually more and more difficult. I hadn't wanted to spend yet another night roaming the streets.

 

That evening I found Chaeyoung- the girl to which I had been betrothed to- sitting by her lonesome on the floor, with a mere cup of instant noodles before her.

 

I suspected this wasn't the first time she ate instant ramen for her meals: there was an entire stash of cup noodles and instant noodles I had stumbled upon while looking for utensils.

 

A twinge of guilt shot through me, an instantaneous flare of rage welling up within me.

 

But that anger was directed at no one but myself.

 

I joined her on the floor that evening, still clad in my suited work clothes, and as a peace offering, “Can I have some of that?”

 

Instant ramen tasted better than I had imagined.

 

Park Chaeyoung

 

The first meal we had together we had instant ramen. We sat crossed-legged on the spotlessly clean tiled floor of the kitchen, a comfortable silence bestowed upon us like a thick, warm blanket in the middle of winter.

 

That night before she retreated into her room, she handed me the plastic container from that morning.

 

“Today’s food was okay,” she’d said, “the egg was good.”

 

“What would you like tomorrow?” I asked, hopeful.

 

“Anything is fine,” she said dismissively, bouncing on the balls of her feet for a split second, “but fried rice sounds nice.”

 

I thought of her words that day, the way her lips had moved to enunciate the individual syllables. I thought of them as I cleaned up for the night, and I thought of it as I got ready for bed.

 

And as sleep overtook me that night, I thought I could her voice resonating in my mind.

 

A soft, gentle lullaby of sorts. A promise for more to come.

 

When we had been betrothed for two months, Jennie brought home a bouquet of roses. She had claimed then that she’d found the bouquet sitting in a corner of the street; she hadn’t wanted it to go to waste and brought it home.

 

“You can have it,” she’d said, pushing the bouquet into my hands, “do whatever you want with it.”

 

“Did you get this for me?” I had asked then, hoping to catch a glance of her face- she was someone who wore every thought of hers on her face; her intentions would be as clear as sunlight.

 

“I told you,” she'd said then, her face turned away from me, her cap pulled low over her eyes, “I found it somewhere.”

 

Then she retreated into her room without so much as a backward glance.

 

She shut the door of her room behind her, but I could still hear movement in her room. I ran my fingers along the length of the roses, expecting a prick before the unmistakable feel of blood ran down my hands, but there was nothing.

 

She had dethorned the roses. The stem was smooth, whatever protrusion of any sort had been meticulously removed.

 

Maybe it had just been wishful thinking on my part, or another insignificant considerate act of hers. But for some reason I felt a faint fluttering in my chest.

 

Then, I thought it was a delusion of mine; one that was not unlike how the moon appeared to shine, when in actual fact it was simply a rock that reflected the sun's rays.

 

That very week I received a call from the hospital near the restaurant where my mother had been working at. They told me that my mother had fainted while working, and the doctors had found a malignant tumour during her check up.

 

I remember the static silence after the revelation distending, suffocating me, a needle sharp accusation held at my throat. I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. I had heard the details, yes, I had understood the clear indication that cancer had swept my mother into its clutches, bringing her into yet another level of hell- as if the past two or so decades had not been enough torture.

 

I couldn’t bring myself to believe it, not even when I visited her in the hospital later that day, not even as I held her hand in her death throes, as she struggled to escape from the deathly grip of the depths of her illness.

 

That evening as I sat with the doctor who then held my mother’s life in his hands, discussing about the possible treatment methods she could undergo, it was as if I was watching someone else sitting in that small, air-conditioned room, that unbearable antiseptic smell in the air with a tenuous underlying smell of death.

 

The conversation I had with the doctor I could not remember- his words were as clear to me as the bottom of a muddy lake was to a fisherman. The one thing I could grasp from the discussion was such a simple yet nauseating fact: my mother’s death was inevitable.

 

And yet I continued to hold unto the vapour-like thought that my mother could pull through.

 

My mother left me a month later, her eyelids fluttering shut with a finality that I could not protest. And she was beautiful in death as she was in life.

 

I was still unable to fully convince myself that the woman who had worked herself to the bone for the sake of bringing me up was gone.

 

The funeral procession was simple, yet another indication of how much of a disappointment as a daughter I was; that I could not even afford to hold a grandiose funeral for someone who had risked everything for me.

 

Jennie came that day.

 

She was the only other person who did, other than myself. My mother was not someone who had time for socialising. She had a family to support. She had me to bring up. Yet another sacrifice she had made for the mistake of another.

 

Jennie stayed in the small room where the funeral was held, her hand reaching out to hold mine. No words passed between us. Her presence was a comforting one; she stood silent, as I cried my eyes out that day, tears spilling over and over again.

 

She stayed with me as I let loose the tears I had held back for years; the tears of outrage and sadness for the injustice my mother had to deal with.

 

When the sobs that wrecked my body died down into small, pitiful hiccups, my tear stained face and swollen eyes a pathetic display of my vulnerability, I felt her pull me into a tight embrace.

 

She held me against the crook of her neck, a comforting warmth seeping into me.

 

Then I felt her lips move against the side of my ear, heard her raspy, almost inaudible voice. “Let's go home.”

 

I allowed her to pull me to my feet, before taking my hand, her other hand grazing the side of my cheeks to wipe away the stray tears that had escaped.

 

Jennie led me out of the room, the steady, soft staccato of her footsteps filling me with a renewed sense of comfort.

 

She put me to bed that night, tucking me in like a small, vulnerable child. I felt the weight of her on the side of bed and her lips grazing the surface of my forehead, soft and warm.

 

When she left my room, padding out softly, closing the door with a soft metallic click, I had fallen into a deep sleep, the exhaustion of the day catching up to me.

 

And when I woke up the next morning to the gentle sunlight streaking in from the gaps between the blinds, her presence had dissipated, like an apparition of sorts.

 

I wondered if she had been here at all.

 

I understood it only in hindsight, but at that point, I had fallen. I still hadn’t grasped the concept of love yet, but I knew that what I felt for her was more complex than mutual coexistence.

 

But I was playing to win.

 

And so I forged on.

 

Kim Jennie

 

In those days where the time we had left together were evaporating like water leaving a surface, I felt my resolve weaken.

 

It was true, I had been tempted many times to profess my feelings for her. The day she bared herself to me, revealing her vulnerabilities and feelings, I thought I would break.

 

But I stayed strong for her. Because I knew I couldn't do that to her.

 

Although I had never met her mother, I silently thanked her the day of her funeral, for raising Chaeyoung into the woman she is.

 

And though my fiance was unaware of the fact then, I had already made a promise to her, and to myself, that I would never let anyone hurt her.

 

I was determined to keep that promise.

 

Two days before the day my father was to meet her again, I proposed to her.

 

But she turned away that day, a single tear running down the side of her cheek. The moisture of her eyelashes reflecting the soft warmth of the candlelight, she looked me in the eyes.

 

She asked me, “Can you truly say you love me?”

 

I opened my mouth to speak, but she turned away before the words could form on my tongue.

 

“I don't want your pity.”

 

But she was wrong. I was not doing it out of pity, and I knew that like a sheep knows that voice of its shepherd.

 

She had my heart, but she didn't even know it.

 

Park Chaeyoung

 

The days passed, and I slowly counted my days left.

 

Counted my days to the moment I would have to leave Jennie for good.

 

The day she knelt before me, ring in hand, I didn't know what I was expecting. I believed she was doing what she had out of pity, and my heart ran cold.

 

I avoided her the next day, trying to get her out of my mind. That, of course, was impossible. She had become an inherent part of my life, like it or not, and had succeeded in making a crevice deep in my mind hers.

 

As we passed each other in the corridor of our house that day, it took everything in me to avoid any eye contact.

 

This is when the cracks started to show themselves.

 

I fell asleep that night, dreaming about nothing but darkness.

 

Kim Jennie

 

On the day we were arranged to meet my father, I offered to drive, and the stifling silence engulfed us the whole ride.

 

I didn't know how to prove my feelings for her. It seemed as if she had put up an impenetrable wall. One that was meant to keep everyone out.

 

One that was meant to keep me out.

 

The lunch with my father was rigid and awkward. Tension held high in the air, overbearing and frighteningly weighty.

 

I watched her over the heap of food on my plate, noticing her nibble, making apparent her lack of appetite. She engaged in curt conversation with my father, answering only when asked.

 

And she always, always kept her head down.

 

I only wished she never had to look down ever again, but instead level her head, possessing the confidence she must have.

 

My father let out a snide laugh at the end of the meal, before glancing at me from the side of his eye. “I will need more time to think about the matter,” he grunted, before getting into his car.

 

Maybe we still had a chance.

 

Chaeyoung looked at me after he had left, her eyes wide and thoughtful. I could almost envision the gears turning in her mind.

 

Then she announced that she would walk home.

 

Alone, she added, looking pointedly at me.

 

As if I was only looking out for her as a pass for my freedom.

 

I sighed, before I walked in front of her, and although her head was down I knew she was wearing an expression of distress at what seemed inevitable.

 

The end of our time together.

 

I pulled her into a loose embrace, feeling her flinch under my touch before she finally circled her arms around my back.

 

“Be safe,” I whispered, before my hands dropped down from her shoulder blades to the small of her back to hang taut by my sides.

 

I turned and left.

 

This was when everything started to fall apart.

 

Park Chaeyoung

 

I walked aimlessly that day, my mind a blur.

 

I kept my head down, afraid of what I would see in the eyes of the strangers on the streets.

 

Accusation. Disapproval. Disappointment.

 

Because no matter what I did I knew that I wanted nothing more than to lengthen the time we had.

 

A one sided, unrequited feeling. Or at least I thought.

 

Lost in thought, I trudged steadily on.

 

Then I heard an unfamiliar voice shout, “Look out!” and a saw a bright flash of lights, followed by a screech of tires against the asphalt ground.

 

My vision turned white, before I was engulfed in darkness once again.

 

Kim Jennie

 

When I received the news about Chaeyoung, I was in the middle of a board meeting.

 

The voice over the phone was clipped, urgent, detached. The words barely registered, flying past me like a whirlwind, leaving pretty purple bruises blossoming under the surface of my skin.

 

My mind could not process what was happening, but my body moved immediately.

 

I was driving to the hospital near our apartment before I knew it.

 

And yet I knew it was somehow my fault, that I had failed my promise to protect her. One mistake was all it took.

 

The next time I saw her was a few tense hours later, when she was pronounced 'stabilised’ and visitors were allowed.

 

She was lying on the hospital bed, several tubes attached to her stringing to different monitors, her beautiful red hair spread out in a fan around her, a halo framing her delicate face.

 

I held her hand that day, even as the last visitor left for the night, when visiting hours drew to a close. I sat there, in a plastic foldable chair, the overbearing smell of antiseptic and death all around me.

 

I remember listening raptly to the comforting, constant beep of the heart rate monitor.

 

The one thing that told me she was not gone yet.

 

The one thing that would keep me going.

 

Park Chaeyoung

 

I was surrounded by darkness for a long, long time. There were time when I thought I could make out a familiar voice from a distant past, but I accredited it to my imagination.

 

For days I wandered in the darkness, wondering if I had been cast into oblivion, the world about me going on as per normal.

 

It was in those days where I was tempted to surrender to the darkness, to finally be freed of all my burdens.

 

But in times of wearing resolves I would find refuge in a voice, be it a figment of my imagination or not, it comforted me and kept me going.

 

I still make cup noodles for two, wondering when you'd be home.

 

I wonder if she knows I'm here?

 

I know it's selfish of me, but I miss you and I want you back with me.

 

Can you hear me?

 

I can't take this anymore.

 

Is that you Jennie?

 

I love you.

 

I woke with a jolt, a frenzy of beeps jarring my senses.

 

“She's awoken…”

“...”

 

A flurry of movement all around me, but all I could hear was her voice, distinct and comforting.

 

“You're finally back...I missed your cooking,” I heard her say, the warmth from her hand seeping into my weak, icy hand.

 

Then I felt moisture on my arm, (thinking back, it could only have been her tears of relief? Happiness?) and a gentle kiss on my cheek.

 

And although I could not see well yet, the bright, white blur of lights flashing in my vision, I knew who had kissed me and to whom the voice belonged to.

 

“You're going to be alright now,” she whispered.

 

And I believed her.