Cornflower Blue
Achieving an A
cornflower blue.
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When I woke up, I was wearing a wedding dress, and someone was yelling to get over here right away so they can fix your hair, goddammit! I stared at the ceiling, which was patterned with stars like the ceiling in my own bedroom, and I tried to figure out what was going on. Turning over, I realized that the landscape outside the window was also too familiar for comfort. The cluttered tops of Seoul’s buildings, covered slightly by smog and dust, were the same ones I woke up to every morning, in my own room.
Then I sat up, and saw the display of plaques, medals, and trophies that my mother had installed on the wall across from the door. And I realized that I was indeed in my own room, which was strange because my last conscious thought was of the ideological origins of Maoism, in a classroom nowhere near home.
A piece of paper fluttered into my lap from nowhere. I picked it up and began to read.
Do not be alarmed. If you are reading this, you have successfully been accepted into the Live Integrated Family Experience simulation. It is not unusual for you to have no recollection, or faulty recollection, of the past week, but you will be relieved to hear that you are completely safe, your body will be taken care of, and your family is fully supportive.
The LIFE simulation creates a composite world based on the projections of your consciousness and of those of others, as well as various pre-programmed functions. Therefore, your appearance and the appearance of others may be altered due to your subconscious perception of the world. This is completely normal.
Please follow the instructions given during orientation. If you are having trouble remembering them or require other assistance, please dial 012 on any working phone. We hope you enjoy your experience!
The paper slid onto the ground, vanishing into nothingness, and everything came rushing back, quite literally. I held my head in my hands as my temples throbbed, my brain trying to process the information.
“Isabelle! What’s wrong with you?”
My bedroom door burst open and my mother, or rather the simulation version of her, stood in the doorway, livid in heavy makeup and a dress that flattered her hourglass figure. Though most would have considered her beautiful, at that moment there was something that wasn’t quite right with her eyes, with the set of . I stood up immediately, the air rushing against my bare shoulders.
“Sorry!” I apologized, remembering that I was supposed to act as naturally as possible, and follow whatever instructions given.
“Don’t be sorry, be quick,” she replied sharply, standing aside so I could sweep over the floor and into the living room, where a veritable army of stylists had set up camp.
“Sit,” one said, a man I didn’t recognize with dyed pink hair. I folded my hands in my lap, thinking to myself that he was half attractive, for someone so obviously gay.
I took back the thought in the next second as he pulled my hair and pinched my scalp, speaking in rapid dialect to a woman who seized one of my hands and proceeded to trim and buff my nails. I felt a headache beginning to come on from the abuse of my long hair, the loudness of the atmosphere, and the overpowering stench of nail polish remover.
“Chin up,” a second man said suddenly. I obeyed involuntarily and out of the corner of my eye I could see my mother talking on the phone, her back to me as she looked out the window.
“Ugh!” I exclaimed suddenly as the makeup artist spread foundation over my face, getting some in my mouth as I tried to breathe.
“Hold still,” the manicurist complained, wrestling my arm down to the table. The movement jerked my body and a bobby pin was jabbed harshly into my scalp. I felt tears beginning to form in the corners of my eyes, but before I knew it they had been wiped away by experienced hands. The pulling, scrubbing, and powdering continued without pause.
I looked wistfully out the window, at the drama playing on the television screen, and wished I was anywhere else but there. The simulation was turning out to be more tedious than I had bargained for, but there really was no way out of it now.
I had resigned myself to sitting in silence, feeling ready to throw up, when my mother came over. The stylists dispersed at her command, and she lifted my chin with one finger, the sharp point of her nail digging into my skin.
“You look beautiful,” she pronounced, a smile pulling the corners of almost grotesquely. I resisted the urge to shudder, beaming back instead. She produced a mirror from nowhere and handed it to me. “Have a look at yourself.”
I let out a soft gasp. I was much more beautiful than I remembered, though whether it was because of the makeup or because of the simulation I didn’t know. My eyes were huge and dark, framed by long lashes and painted with light, feminine colors. My skin was whiter and more delicate, free from blemishes, and my cheek bones protruded strongly from my face, tapering into a small chin. A ringlet of hair brushed my neck when I turned to admire the artfully messy knot into which my hair had been arranged. I turned my head a few more times, enjoying the cool feeling of my hair against my shoulders. My mother reached across me and handed me a delicate pair of crystal earrings. My fingers were long and pretty when I held the earrings up to examine them.
“These were mine,” my mother told me gravely. “Don’t break them.”
I nodded and bit my lip slightly, accidentally scraping off a bit of lip gloss, as I concentrated on finding my piercing hole. The earrings slid in easily, and when I turned my head they jingled softly. It made me smile.
“Ready to get married?” my mother asked as she helped me to my feet and into the strappy heels waiting on the ground.
“Ready,” I breathed.
...
A girl in Seoul considers herself lucky if she has a single room to herself for her wedding. I had four waiting rooms, a reception hall, and two large, adjacent dining rooms. The theme for the wedding was blue. The centerpieces on the tables matched the cornflower blue accents in my hair and fastened to the waist my dress. Pleased, I noted for the first time that the dress was a princess cut, just accentuating my small waist before falling in luxurious waves of white to my feet.
I didn’t recognize any of my bridesmaids, probably because all of my friends were other students involved in the simulation, and couldn’t simultaneously exist in both places. They were all wearing cornflower blue, subtly altered so as not to outshine myself, and they all looked eerily alike. My maid of honor was my cousin who lived in the United States, and her smile was the only thing that gave me some comfort as I struggled not to trip in my heels.
My father escorted me down the aisle, walking slowly to accommodate me as I gripped my skirts in gloved hands and tried not to stumble. I noticed that while he usually towered over me, the simulation had made it so he was just short enough that I could give him a kiss without asking him to bend down. After depositing me at the altar in the hands of a boy I vaguely remembered from an economics class, he sat down next to my mother in the first row to the right of the us. To my surprise, he managed to watch the entire ceremony before excusing himself on business matters for the rest of the day.
“And do you, Song Raena, take Kim Jongin to be your lawfully wedded husband, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse?”
I stared blankly for a few seconds, wondering who the minister was addressing, before realizing that he was using my Korean name, the one I had been born with.
“I do!” I said a bit too quickly, startled.
The minister was impassive. Smiling, he said to Kim Jongin, “Then you may kiss the bride.”
I remembered from briefing that we weren’t required to kiss, only get close enough that the crowd would recognize it as a kiss. In the words of our teachers, we couldn’t be forced to love each other, but we could be forced to try, as in any marriage.
We both leaned in, and he lifted my veil carefully from my face. He placed it over his head so that the long gauzy fabric shielded us both from view. At such close quarters, I realized that he was extremely handsome, though I thought that I remembered those more handsome. Nevertheless, I smiled brightly, knowing that it was crucial to make a good impression on my partner.
To my embarrassment, though, he didn’t smile back. He laughed, the action splitting his face so it was almost boyish. And it took my breath away, and I thought that he was the most handsome thing I had ever seen.
But then I remembered that he was laughing at me. “What is it?” I demanded.
He showed me his teeth and pointed to one of the top incisors. “You have something on your tooth.”
I at my tooth and tasted lip gloss. “Aish!” I exclaimed, flushing bright red and covering my mouth with one hand. I had forgotten to wipe off the lip gloss from that morning, I realized.
He only laughed harder, but I kind of liked it. I grinned back, a little self-conscious, and threw the veil back over my hair, the lights blinding me.
The crowd was cheering for us.
...
“Call me Kai,” Jongin whispered to me when we were finally seated at the head of the larger dining room. “Nobody calls me Jongin except for my parents.”
“Call me Isabelle,” I replied as I adjusted the forks at my place setting nervously. “Nobody’s called me Raena since I was a little girl.”
“I know,” he replied, picking at his cufflinks.
I was about to ask how he knew that when the dining staff surged in with the first course, a salad so tiny I wondered if there had been a mistake. The look on Kai’s face showed that he thought the same thing, but he picked up his fork reluctantly and I followed suit.
I wondered how things would taste in the simulation world, but they tasted completely normal. Then I wondered if my body was receiving the same nutrition as I was getting now, but I realized that it was impossible. My body was being pumped liquid food through an IV, and only my consciousness was eating, experiencing days, weeks, and months for every minute my body lived.
“So what do your parents do?” Kai asked conversationally as we searched our plates for extra dressing.
It was a common question for the K. Popper International High School, which taught an American curriculum solely in English despite being located in the heart of Seoul. Most of its students needed to have Western educations for their future career paths, because their parents were executives, politicians, or military officers. The ones that didn’t face an expectation for their futures had grown up speaking English, but had moved too often to learn another language. They were the ones without a true home, children of journalists or scientists.
“My father is the head of Asian operations for an international pharmaceuticals conglomerate, and my mother is a tax attorney,” I replied. “What about you?”
“My father is a politician and my mother is a politician’s wife,” he said.
“Does that make you a politician’s son?” I teased.
“It does,” he agreed. I wondered what he meant by that, and I watched his eyes growing round as the second course was brought out, considerably larger than the first course.
It was soup with squab, which was a fancy way of saying that it was a pigeon, a bird with too many bones to have any purpose besides cleaning the streets of garbage. I sniffed it experimentally and took a sip. It was too salty.
“Well,” I said conversationally. “It’s good to know I wasn’t paired with someone who can afford to slack off. I don’t want to have to start the simulation over just because I had a lousy partner.”
There was a long pause before he responded. His eyes flickered to his parents, who were deep in conversation with my aunt and uncle, regular middle-class citizens and therefore fodder for political campaigning.
“Just because my father is a politician,” he said, “doesn’t mean that I will be. He can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do, and I’m not going to have anything to do with politics once I get out of college.”
I was surprised. In our high school, nobody ever doubted the fact that they would succeed their parents in whatever their professions were. Or, if they did doubt it, they never voiced it.
“Oh,” I said meekly, considering the path up the corporate ladder my parents had already laid out for me.
“But I’m not going to blow off this project,” Kai amended quickly. “I want to graduate as soon as possible.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“So we’re in this together, right?” I asked, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear anxiously.
“We’re in this together,” he agreed.
And then I realized how stupid that sounded, because whatever this was, our wedding night was staring us right in our faces.
author's notes.
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Thanks for reading, and do stick around if you're interested! If you're in any way confused about the premise of the story, I'll gladly answer your questions in the comments. If the font is too small for you, ctrl-+ should work. :)
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