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I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring--
afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy
in the raw wind of the new world.
— Louise Glück
“Have you ever heard of nominative determinism?”
Saebyuk scoffs. Turns her head to where the voice came from. “You Southerners and your made-up words.”
The man chuckles. Swipes a thumb over the blindfold on Saebyuk’s face, then, and Saebyuk flinches away.
A click of the tongue. Squeak of a leather seat that tells Saebyuk the man is leaning back into it.
“It’s a theory that states that people live lives that relate to their names. A seafaring Bada. A Sori who sings. A Cheol in steelworking.”
Saebyuk lunges at him, but to no avail. She’s chained.
He laughs again. “That’s not what I meant,” he says, then Saebyuk hears the clink of a teacup on its saucer. “I was talking about you.”
The car slows to a halt. Saebyuk hears the door closest to her opening.
“Dawn,” the man says, and Saebyuk can feel the wind hitting her face, can see the light peeking through the cloth.
“The sun rises for you again.”
In the end, she chooses Hwaseong. A little further South, by the sea.
It goes so well that Saebyuk is unsure if she’s dreaming. Cheol is released into her custody without a hitch. The bank seems determined to make sure nothing gets in her way, and she follows their advice at every turn. In the end she gets a nice, quiet house. A man hired to help the money grow. A motorcycle, because she can’t stand being inside a car for too long anymore.
She finds her mom, too.
They’re having dinner. Saebyuk’s surprised she can still tell it’s her. Lines on her face deeper than she remembers, but otherwise—
“Saebyuk-ah,” her mother calls, looking up from her plate. The upturn of her brow pulling an ache in Saebyuk’s chest—how familiar, how strange.
“How did you do all this?” she asks, and Cheol turns to look at her, too.
The pain above her hip never really faded. As if the shrapnel was still there, buried deep.
“Just got lucky, mom,” she replies, and has another spoonful of stew.
One evening she hears the name Cho Sangwoo through her television speaker and drops her glass of water.
“Noona!” Cheol calls.
And Saebyuk can’t move. Can’t move—there’s broken glass all around her feet, it hurts it hurts it hurts, Sangwoo’s fucking face on her TV screen, and all she can do is squeeze her eyes shut, now presumed dead, Sangwoo’s blood draining his bedsheets red, she’s hunched over a sink in an empty bathroom, red light green light, everything hurts hurts hurts hurts hurts hurts—
“Noona.”
Hands on her shoulder.
“Breathe.”
It takes a while. This isn’t the first time it’s happened. Cheol’s never asked why. Cheol, her little angel.
“Noona.”
Saebyuk opens her eyes. Cheol’s eyes are always so warm.
“You’re okay,” he says, and hugs her. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”
This time, when the bank helps her, they’re able to find Sangwoo’s mother and allow Saebyuk’s request to pretend that the seven hundred million won is what Sangwoo had left behind for her.
Airplanes are surprisingly okay.
Saebyuk was convinced she’d pass out from her nervousness, but she and her family arrive at Jeju-do safe and calm.
Everywhere you go the roar of the waves whisper to you. They go to a mountainside, too, and their mom can’t stop taking pictures. Try everything—the tangerines, the black pork. There’s always a breeze blowing, Cheol’s hair sticking out in all directions no matter how many times Saebyuk tries to brush it back down. Everything and nothing like she’s ever imagined.
One morning, it rains.
There’s a small flower shop by their hotel, and Saebyuk goes and buys just a single head of forget-me-nots.
She walks to the shore, stops just outside the water’s reach.
Digs a hole in the sand there, and places the flowers inside. Crouches down and leans forward until her face is almost touching them. The rain beats against her back.
“Jiyeong-ah,” Saebyuk whispers. Almost wants to pray, then considers against it. Smiles instead.
“You fucking bitch,” she says, packing the sand, burying the blooms. Looks toward the sea, then back down.
“You should have been here with me.”
She picks up pottery.
There’s a small studio by their home back in Hwaseong, and Saebyuk agrees to an apprenticeship of sorts. She can’t flounder away from fragile ware forever. The owner is kind, smile warm, and Saebyuk figures that she has to get a job soon to avoid any more suspicion.
There’s still a flash of near unbearable pain during the split second she hears something break, but she finds comfort in her fingers wrapping around wet clay—a creation instead of destruction. Round softness instead of the sharp edge of a knife. Her fingers stained a dull, muddy brown instead of bright, acidic red.
Her mother dies just before the new year.
Cancer. Saebyuk wonders if she knew this whole time. Bites the inside of her cheek when she realises she would make the same decision to keep it to herself, if she was in her mother’s shoes.
When they bury her, Cheol’s shoulder’s shake. Saebyuk sheds a single tear.
In an alley beside a small pub Saebyuk sees it, just past midnight.
A man, impeccably dressed, playing jackstones with a woman near tears.
Saebyuk feels her heart drop. Hides by a wall. The woman begs, “One more try, please,” voice breaking, and Saebyuk bites into her thumb so hard it draws blood.
She waits. Takes out her vape pen, and waits, and waits, and waits, until they’re done, doesn’t know if it had taken minutes or hours.
Footsteps. Saebyuk picks out which one is more staggered, and follows the sound.
When the woman is near enough, Saebyuk nicks the card from her pocket.
Tears it to pieces, and tosses it aside.
She’d been making regular donations to the orphanage that took care of Cheol, but had only come around to visiting them herself today.
The stifling care with which she’s treated only serves to annoy her. The children, refreshingly, don’t understand, and she smiles and crouches down and kids’ games are okay, like this.
In the middle of her conversation with one of the staff a wail pierces through the halls.
There’s a new baby, she’s told, only left to them two nights ago. Barely a month old.
“What’s his name?” Saebyuk asks as one of the caregivers rocks him in an attempt to soothe.
“We haven’t given him one yet,” is their reply.
Saebyuk watches the slow opening and closing of his small fist. The hope contained there, a skin that has yet to be hardened by the world.
“Gihun, please, if it’s okay,” Saebyuk says. “If you’re still looking for one.”
If the world is cruel to him, Saebyuk hopes he armours himself with kindness.
“Gihun,” the caregiver repeats, looking to Saebyuk and back to the child. “Yes, that should be alright.”
The nightmares still happen. Memories that refuse to stay quiet. Saebyuk figures they’ll never stop.
The worst ones are always these—Gihun’s taunting face, drawing the anger out of her on purpose until she’d pushed him outside the squid lines. The shift of his expression from arrogance to a tender sadness. Saebyuk had screamed. Saebyuk raged. They promised. They promised.
She never makes it to the gunshot. As if grace from Gihun himself.
Saebyuk wakes up quietly. Familiar burn of guilt running through her.
She thinks of them. Jiyeong and Gihun, both of them making their one-sided decisions, both of them martyrs, both of them considering Saebyuk’s life of a greater value than theirs.
Outside, Seoul blinks back at her. A last minute decision to stay overnight instead of going back home after making sure Cheol would be okay by himself.
Laying down in a nicer bed either of them could have ever dreamt to sleep on, she wonders if they’re proud. Or content, at the least.
She can only hope.
“You dropped this.”
Saebyuk studies her. The shape of the eyes, maybe. Or the chin. She can see it.
“Thank you,” Saebyuk answers, taking the coupon from her.
“My dad and I liked eating at that place,” the girl says, and it’s enough to form a lump in Saebyuk’s throat.
She clears it. “You two like tteokbokki, huh?”
The girl nods and flips her hair behind her. Then Saebyuk sees it: the embroidered nametag. Seong Gayoung.
“Love it,” Gayoung says, before bidding Saebyuk goodbye.
When the bus crosses into Hwaseong the sun is making its ascent, warming Saebyuk’s face through the window.
A promise, in and of itself. A dawn. A new beginning.
It’s the best she can do, she’s realised. To make them proud. She vows.
She’ll live.
Or better yet—she’ll draw it closer. Present tense. A reality instead of an intent.
Saebyuk lives.