The Ritual

It hadn’t looked like it would rain, but by late afternoon, just as Sumin had finished her housekeeping duties in Apgujeong-dong, the sky had grown dark and a cold, hard pour broke out. Sumin dashed down the street with her hands protecting her head, having not thought to bring an umbrella. The rain pounded down her back, soaking through her clothes and sloshing inside her thrift store shoes. By the time she made it to the subway station, she was drenched. Her long hair was matted to her face like a thick black web. Her cleaning uniform—just a thin white shirt and threadbare slacks—was so soaked that it clung like skin to her petite frame, revealing more of her body than she was comfortable with. She crossed her arms over her chest and kept her head low as she waited for the train, trying not to be noticed.

Not that anyone noticed her anyway. She wasn’t the sort of girl who turned heads, though she had the potential to be that girl; she had the heart-shaped face, the big eyes, the small nose and lips… but she carried herself in a way that seemed to actually detract from her beauty—like now, the way she kept her arms crossed and her stare focused on the ground, as if wanting to be swallowed up by the shadows inside that subway station.

The only person in all of Seoul who seemed to notice her, despite how much she wished he didn’t, was her downstairs neighbor, Seunghyun. He was a tall and somewhat awkward man with dark, dead-like eyes, and a voice so deep that, when he talked, it seemed to vibrate her bones like a hollow bass. In a way, he was much like Sumin in that he would’ve been considered beautiful if not for the strangeness of his ways and what seemed to be a lingering craziness just beneath the surface.

Seunghyun owned the low-rise apartment building that they shared. He occupied the two lower levels, with his shady plastic surgery practice on the first floor and his residence on the second. Sumin rented out the third floor, paying far less than the market price. It was only because he offered her the apartment at such a cheap rate that she continued to stay there. Had she been able to afford anywhere else in Seoul, she would’ve left a long time ago.

The problem wasn’t with the apartment itself; she quite liked how dark and quiet it was. The problem was with the owner, and how dark and quiet he was. In a way, she saw herself reflected in Seunghyun, like being forced to stare in a mirror and see one’s true self in all of its ugliness. She didn’t want to think that she was like him, even though in her heart she knew she was.

It had stopped raining by the time she got off the train. As she neared the apartment building, she could see Seunghyun lurking outside, chain-smoking. He seemed to always be there each day just when she arrived home, as if he was waiting for her. Sometimes, he’d leave his patients inside, presumably in the middle of a procedure. Just the other day, she had heard one of his patients calling out for him while he was outside. He had ignored the woman’s calls, focusing instead on watching Sumin as she approached the building.

The same thing happened today. Seunghyun was leaning against the brick wall beside the front entrance, posing like some male supermodel with one hand on his hip and the other endlessly bringing that cigarette to his mouth. Sumin eyed him curiously and pulled the front door open. She was about to step inside when she heard a woman cry out from some room tucked away inside the plastic surgery clinic.

“You’re not going to see if she’s okay?” Sumin asked.

Seunhyun took another drag off his cigarette. “Just a rhinoplasty,” he said, as he breathed out the thick smoke. “A new nose despite her face.”

Sumin stared at him for a moment and then quickly made her way inside and up the three flights of stairs as Seunghyun’s patient continued to cry out from the first floor. When she reached her apartment, she closed the door behind her and locked the deadbolt.

Once, shortly after she had moved in, Seunghyun had walked into her apartment without even knocking, feeling perhaps, because he owned the building, that it was his right. Sumin had been surprised by his sudden invasion of her privacy and had stood there, paralyzed in shame as Seunghyun looked around at all the images of the idol, Taeyeon, that were plastered like wallpaper inside Sumin’s apartment. She had expected him to be creeped out by this, but instead he had merely shrugged. She knew that a normal, sane person would’ve been alarmed by her obsession with Taeyeon, and she realized then how abnormal Seunghyun was… just as she was, perhaps, which served as yet another unwanted reminder that she was more like him than she wanted to admit.

Since then, she has learned to keep her door locked at all times. He may have learned about her obsession, but he didn’t know the extent of it; he didn’t know her ritual.

Her ritual began with one photo: a black and white photo of a then thirteen-year-old Taeyeon, which had been cut out from Sumin’s middle school yearbook. This was the source of her pain, holding within it the memories of that day Taeyeon had humiliated her on the playground. Sumin stared at the photo and then slapped her hand flat against Taeyeon’s face, as if squashing a bug. She did this two more times, always doing everything in threes, and then moved onto the next photo, and then the next. There must have been over five hundred photos and posters glued, taped, or pinned to the walls. She slapped each one three times, her palm burning by the time she had reached the last one, a signed poster, which was taped just above her computer. It wasn’t one of those mass-market posters with the signature printed on it. It had instead been signed directly by Taeyeon at an SNSD fan meeting just last month. Sumin had been at that event, watching from the corner as the fans had their posters and other paraphernalia signed, until she had decided on a fan to target. She had then followed that fan throughout the rest of the event until catching the girl alone in the bathroom, where she beat her and ultimately ripped the poster from her hands.

Sumin didn’t remember much of this. Her mind had a way of playing tricks on her sometimes, of lapsing in this way, stippling her memories with dark spots that blocked her awareness of events, like what happened with the fangirl in the bathroom last month, or with Taeyeon on the playground all those years before.

She ran her fingers down the poster, stopping at the bottom where she then traced Taeyeon’s signature. She closed her eyes while doing so and imagined Taeyeon back at that event, signing the poster, her hair parted and swept to the side, her eyes smiling, her laugh so loud and open-mouthed like an ahjumma’s. She hated her, but more than that, she was jealous of her, unable to understand why life had rewarded someone like Taeyeon rather than someone like herself.

This was the final phase of the ritual, this wallowing in self-loathing and self-pity, all of which was soon redirected back at Taeyeon, as if she was the fault of all of Sumin’s problems.

With bloodshot eyes from b tears that Sumin refused to let surface, she sat down at her computer, as she always did after the ritual, to check for any updates on Taeyeon’s life. A while ago, she had subscribed to an “alert” feature through Google that automatically sent her emails with links to any new Taeyeon-related articles, blog posts, or other such media. When she checked her account now, she saw nearly triple the amount of notifications that she typically received in a day. Her eyes grew wide as her curiosity took hold, and she nearly fumbled with the mouse trying to get to her inbox. Her eyes quickly scanned the subject lines, and she saw then that although each email was in regard to a different article, they were all announcing the same piece of information—that SNSD’s Taeyeon is reported to be dating EXO’s Baekhyun.

“No, no…” Sumin muttered, as she skimmed the first article. Her panic wouldn’t even let her finish reading; she immediately jumped to the next article, and then the next, her blood racing so fast that her face burned red as she looked for anything insinuating that this was a joke. She didn’t want to believe that Taeyeon, the girl who already seemed to have everything, could have even more. The very possibility infuriated her and incited this raw need inside her to hurt something… or someone.