chapter five

w e n d y

***

It’s nighttime in Seoul’s youthful district. The pop-up stalls are buzzing with people. The nocturnal buildings have been awakened from their day-long hibernation. The streets are alive, breathing in the crowds of youngsters towards the promises of cheap alcoholic beverages and memorable merriment, and exhaling an intoxicating ambience of a vibrant nightlife into the passersby’s parched throats.

There’s a hip bar with a revolving door of patrons stumbling in and out. Booths are overloaded. Drinks are overflowing. The dancefloor is overcrowded.

Wendy is nineteen and anxious.

The digital clock on the wall tells her it’s a quarter after eight, a quarter after she had been told by Seulgi that she should dillydally in arriving so everyone’s eyes would be on her. Wendy isn’t interested in being under the spotlight, but she is interested in Im Yoona. Seulgi has an ice-breaker for her, she said. They could hopefully waltz beyond the decorous custom of hi’s and hello’s and see you around, sunbae’s Wendy and Yoona have circled into. Seulgi’s plot could be fruitful. Wendy should have more faith on her best friend. She squares her shoulders.

Every space of the room is jammed. Inebriated and boisterous college students with their sweat-stained bodies are everywhere, pressed against strangers and part-acquaintances, and Wendy has to steer herself out of the packed dancefloor to where her companions are. Yoona is laughing with a friend at a booth, the mirth expressed in her angelic smile makes Wendy swoon, her legs weakening into a state of jelly.

She’s a er for pretty faces.

“Hey, guys! It’s Wendy Shon!” Their friends are turning to Seulgi. Yoona doesn’t hear her over the Usher song, continuing to laugh with her friend. The introduction feels useless. Wendy’s cheeks are warming up at her spectators, and her kindhearted best friend fuels more gasoline to the flames, shouting above the music. “It’s my good friend from Canada, the straight-A’s exchange student in high school who became the frontwoman of our acclaimed regional show choir champions, Opera Gangnam Style!”

Wendy facepalms herself. Added heat travels to her face like a speeding bullet train unhinged from its brakes, and she slinks back to a wall, three tables from the arched brows of her distinctly bemused peers. It would have been worth it, had Yoona acknowledged her, but the object of her affections has been too engrossed to notice what has seemed to be Seulgi selling Wendy off to college scouts.

She resorts to hiding from her best friend’s blind , camouflaging herself in the shadows with her dark jeans and black Adidas top, while Seulgi squints for her amidst the darkness. Wendy has to reclaim her bearings before reemerging to her friends. Retrying her luck on Yoona will have to be deferred on a different day. Music reverberates from end-to-end of the bar, the discordant bass line prickling her spine as a girl casually props her back onto the wall as well.

“Is that your friend?” The girl nods her chin at Seulgi whose hunt for Wendy is still ongoing. The loudness of her voice must have been that noticeable to have this girl remark about it.

“Yes…” Wendy sighs fondly at her best friend. She peers down at her Converse, her eyes spying ellipses of fluorescent bouncing off from the brown translucent objects within the girl’s hands. Two bottles of beer are in her possession. The fingers gripping around the bottle nearest to Wendy are saliently fastened, as if holding on to her life.

As if she’s nervous.

As if she hasn’t initiated their conversation herself.

Wendy would have turned down a drink from a stranger, but she has seen this person in campus, recounting her participation in a talent showcase during their freshman orientation. The girl’s soulful rendition of “Best Part” shouldn’t be a justification to ease her guard, yet her hand accepts the bottle, none of the spontaneous white lies she is hardwired to give to strangers at parties she has been to in Canada. Though Seoul may be conservative in comparison, she shouldn’t be careless.

The girl’s relieved smile, radiant and blooming in the dimness of the bar, has Wendy smiling herself. It doesn’t feel like she was ever in jeopardy. Seulgi does have an operative ice-breaker.

“What’s up with your friend’s informative intro of you?”

“She was trying to be my wingwoman.”

“Her wingwoman skills need tweaking.”

“Can’t tweak something you don’t have.”

The girl giggles. It’s music to Wendy’s ears. “So your name’s Wendy,” she says her name against the rim of her beer bottle, loud and clear—louder and clearer than the cheers of drunken young adults by them. “Did I get that right?”

“Yeah, and probably the other partygoers within Seulgi’s earshot. What’s yours?”

“I’m Jieun.” She clinks their bottles together, steadying a heart-pounding gaze at Wendy. “Lee Jieun.”

Wendy feels a heavy and warm feeling burgeoning in her chest, heartbeat doubling its rate, but the picture of Jieun’s smile shimmers into a foggy distortion until it incrementally pixelates into the background. She shuts her eyes then reopens them at her renewed visual field, eyelids leaden with a lulling exhaustion, and the flicker of Jieun’s face transfigures into two fuzzy cotton balls that dominate her viewpoint in her post-sleep haze.

But cotton balls aren’t heavy and warm, her gauzy subconscious nags at her. The heaviness and warmth seem to expand to her belly, and it is after her stare down she is able to debunk the mysterious cotton balls as a feline’s furry nutsack.

“Goddamnit, Colonel!”

Colonel Kimchi scampers to the floor, fluffy tail swiping at Wendy’s nose from his pouncing, his beady blue orbs swirling with innocence. He’s meowing at her faultlessly, with a questioning cadence, like he hasn’t been flashing her his hairy balls first thing in the morning. She grunts into the pillow. The door to Rosie’s room hasn’t been closed, explaining the ambush of her morning intruder.

She wouldn’t be having this problem at her new apartment, but two caffeine-addicted veterinary students had pivoted in her shop when she was closing up, kidnapping her in her own pick-up truck and driving to their apartment in Mapo-gu. Rosie was sulking about not spending enough sisterly bonding with her after the shorter blonde had relocated to her place in Gangnam, and Lisa’s cries of “Unnieee, we miss you!” made her miss those dorky- kids too, more than she would like to broadcast to their smug faces.

Seven bottles of soju later, she was passed out on Rosie’s bed. The two women couldn’t be bothered to sleep in their rooms, taking the rug in the living room as their temporary beds, Sergeant McNuggets’ golden tail hanging precariously from the couch, a hairsbreadth into Lisa’s unclasped mouth. Wendy had stirred in her sleep in the wee hours of the morning to the cacophony of cussing and getting-ready-for-the-day ruckus outside of the room. She had been severely worn-out to whine at their “Seulgi is going to kill us!” and “Joy’s gonna steal my bagels!”, only drifting back to unconsciousness at the “Bye, babies, be angels to Wendy-unnie!”

On the floor, this so-called angel’s meows are beseeching at her for food. Wendy can’t say she has acquitted Lisa’s furbaby from making her his seat warmer, but she caves in to her unrequited love for these bratty furry children like they are hers.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll go get you and your brother your breakfasts.” is scratchy. She should be freshening up in the bathroom at this hour if she’s seeing Rosie for brunch at eleven. Try as she might, starting her day is a perpetually Herculean task. Five minutes of nothing should get her going afterwards.

As she slings an arm over her forehead, Wendy fixates on the ceiling, the ghost of nineteen year-old Jieun, meek yet courageous, cloaking the plain stucco above her.

“I’ll wait for you.” She had decisively declared at the hospital suite.

And Wendy is going to do just that.

***

Any variety of beverage, be it cold, hot or lukewarm, is a peril to a living, accident-prone disaster such as Wendy. Someone should just award her with a gold medal for being the “World’s Klutziest Klutz to Ever Klutz”. Spilling coffee onto her pastel casualwear of a sweatshirt and baggy sweats on the day of Dongdaemun Plaza’s bi-annual Bake Fair is the fates reprising the Toronto Airport incident.

The discoloration on her apparel isn’t as bad as the one at the airport, but when her younger sister exits through the automatic doors of the Animal Hospital, face on her phone, Rosie vacantly drops spare change into Wendy’s coffee cup.

“What the—hey!” Wendy has to chase her rear at the hospital parking lot, watchful of the billows in her cup, as the taller blonde promptly bolts without glancing back and frantically surveys for the pick-up.

“Why are you following me?” The younger woman still doesn’t check on the person behind her.

“Rosie, it’s me!”

“How did you get my name?!”

“Rosie!”

“You come any closer, I have pepper spra—” Rosie does a one-eighty, hand reaching into her parcel. With her older sister almost rear-ending her, she realizes in horror.

“Wendy?!” Rosie stuffs the hazardous three-inch can, that could have scalded Wendy’s eyeballs into some street food delicacy, back to the safety of the parcel. “If this is what Irene-unnie saw, then I can’t blame her.”

Wendy is busy heaving from the spontaneous pursuit to make an intelligible retort, heart hammering against her chest, nearly sipping on her ruined drink. She recoils from the contaminated cup in disgust. “I need my coffee.”

Rosie snickers, seizing the car keys from Wendy’s pocket. “You need new clothes.”

Vanquishing the driver’s seat, Rosie takes the wheel as the other blonde rides shotgun, vowing they would get there faster with her driving, not relying on technology to map their route.

Wherever Rosie is intending on driving her, Wendy assents. The dress her sister had badgered her into for Choi Sooyoung’s fundraiser had been a sample of her eye for fashion. Modifications on her wardrobe wouldn’t be troublesome. She can cash in on a shirt and jeans this once.

Wendy glimpses at the passing scenery of trees, structures, people, and vehicles, observing the differences the city has from her hometown in Canada. Before she could mentally sum up her eventful five-week stay in Seoul, Rosie pulls on the handbrake. Their radio-filled cruise to a department store in Myeongdong is quick and unobstructed by traffic, and Wendy couldn’t even quibble about transferring to a budget-friendly store in Itaewon when Rosie maneuvers her to a boutique on the third floor that would have her wallet weeping.

“Jessica!”

Spinning on her Balmain pumps, a woman in her thirties removes herself from an employee of the boutique, joyfully beaming at Rosie. She has a cherry blossom shift dress on, embellished with sequins and floral details, and a white-collared puff sleeve blouse underneath, something Wendy wouldn’t have thought of piecing together.

Fashion doesn’t flow in her veins as naturally as this woman sliding on white socks and stilettos. Wendy hasn’t gotten the memo on today’s fashion trends. She would have snorted at the idea of pairing socks and heels, but this woman can gorgeously assemble it into an edgy footwear. Her self-consciousness of the woman’s intimidating aura s her to browse on a rack of blouses, the pursuance of the items’ price range inflaming her skin.

Why did her sister have to drag her here?

“Rosie! How’s my favorite future vet?”

“Alive and kicking.”

“Jennie is out interviewing for our m