Chapter Text

Part I: Crux

It seems absurd that there doesn't come a point when time stops short. Like those people who thought the Earth was flat and there was a line where the ocean ended in a big waterfall. An eternal waterfall. Maybe the Earth is only round to stop people from going to the edge and jumping into the void, to leave us with no way out. 

Rooftop by Fernanda Trias.

The full moon hung alone in the starless sky, bathing the world in cold rays of reflected sunlight. Artificial lighting from the buildings and the neon words on black boards filled the district ahead with bright colors of every sort, competing with the moon for the title of most impersonal luminescence. That sort of brightly-lit corpse of a town was, of course, something she wished to avoid.

Ji-yeong walked out of prison in an oversized grey hoodie, hands in her pockets, the worn sneakers (the ones she'd swore she'd grow out of) tapping on the asphalt ground with quiet steps. It seemed so anticlimatic, the end of her sentence— nothing seemed the same, and yet the world revolved as normal, without her. How impossibly cruel that the world had moved on, uncaring of the years she had lost?

No, that wasn't right. Back then, and even now, she never had anything to lose, anyway.

But if they'd at least let her be released in the day, just as the sun let its first rays shine onto the world and everything seemed possible for a little while (the magic of sunrise, they say!), maybe she'd have held on to some ill-informed belief that now that she was free, she was going to be okay (great, dare she believe!?), even, well, even if all seemed bleak and nobody was ever going to hire an uneducated murderer anyway! Nevermind. Who was she trying to kid?

A creditor, already?

When she at first saw that black silhouette, she wondered if someone had actually come to wait for her, but there wasn't anyone who would, unless one of the people that man owed debts to actually came to extort her? Surely they wouldn't try to mug her in front of a prison...Right?

"Hey, do you want to play a game?"

Even worse than being mugged: Someone was trying to convert her?

"No. Yeah, I know I'm going to Hell. Tell your God you tried. Amen."

The plastered smile on the woman's face didn't fade.

Crap, she's one of those batshit crazy types.

"You might be misunderstanding something. If you win the game I propose, you'll win money."

So not a fervent believer. Just fucking insane.

As Ji-yeong squinted at her with undisguised concern and unease (for herself), the woman set the sleek-looking briefcase onto the ground and opened it: two colors of ddakji (red and blue), and many bundles of bills. This woman had cash, so Ji-yeong came to a quick conclusion: just rich, not insane.

"Fine, I'll bite. But I've no money."

"I know. Then, I'll flick your forehead every time you lose instead. And if you win, you get 100,000 won."

"Miss, there are better ways to get rid of money."

"Which colour do you want?"

"...Blue."

The woman handed the sturdy piece of paper over to Ji-yeong, who shook it a bit. The dull whub of the paper as it wobbled made it seem sturdier-built than her. Probably richer than her, too.

"You can go first. Ddakji is simple, just throw your paper so it flips mine, and you win. Fail, and you lose. Same goes on my turn."

Ji-yeong aimed the paper and hurled it on the bumpiest-looking spot on the red ddakji. As it flipped, landing with a thud, she released a breath she didn't know she was holding. The woman immediately pressed a fresh bill into her hands, and went on to win on her turn, the traitorous blue ddakji flipping like it absolutely couldn't wait to see its owner getting flicked in the forehead. The woman, in turn, wasted no time in flicking what was rightfully hers to flick.

"Fuck! That won't leave a scar, will it?" Ji-yeong rubbed her forehead as the decision to go to the hairdresser's to get bangs to cover the surely-bruised spot first thing tomorrow became her topmost priority.

The flicks hurt, though the hurt seemed trivialised by the bills in her pocket. She won a lot but the pulsing sting on her forehead was an aching reminder of the losses. Anyway, money was money. She traded pain for money, just like any other person. And possibly brain cells, too.

"If you wish to play more games like this, you can call this number," the woman said, taking a namecard out of her pocket and placing it in Ji-yeong's hands, "and you can win more money."

"Just bring me there now, then." The last bit of the woman's words seemed to be added out of some mere formality, and it didn't sit well with Ji-yeong.

The woman turned to leave, ignoring Ji-yeong's words, the car pulling up on the street ahead most certainly hers at that ungodly hour. Looking back as she opened the door, her manicured smile seemed almost genuine. She mouthed: "Call the number." Then she entered the car, closed the door. The car drove away into the night.

Folding the card into her pocket, the exhaustion seemed to finally hit Ji-yeong. The aches from the flicks were also quickly turning into a sore spot. She checked in to a hotel in the district on auto-pilot mode with a faint hope that the receptionist wouldn't remark about the definitely-purple-maybe-bleeding bruise on her head. If he noticed, he did not comment on it. After locking the door, Ji-yeong slumped onto the too-soft bed.

Crazy hallucination. Mother Mary has local competition here.

The window, flanked by the dark curtains, gave its guest a nice view of the grey-hued and inhospitably edged townscape. Ji-yeong sat up, studying how it seemed both familiar and foreign at the same time. The bruise on her reflection in the glass was obviously swelling. She reached for the namecard in her pocket, settled there next to the wad of bills. Not a hallucination, it seemed.

Then dawn came: the warm rays colouring the sky on the edges of the horizon purple and pink and orange. As if lit aflame, the forested mountains glowed with speckled fiery dust, spreading further and further as the sun rose from its cover. The cold townscape, bathed in the warmth of the sun like a blanket of nostalgia, seemed at once habitable, homely even. Like a mother's embrace, if she could only remember how that felt.

Half in disbelieving wonder and half in a childish indignance she never got a chance to grow out of, Ji-yeong laughed. Not that she had much of a choice, but she would join this stupid game thing and win money, and everything would be all right. If she had nothing, she would make something. And if she had nothing, what could she lose?

And the sky lit up, the sun-arisen-rose, the day dawned. The moment of magic was over. Ji-yeong flopped onto the bed again, the wonderment just a fleeting emotion, and then it was gone. There was nothing to lose. Money was certainly something to gain. But all that money, and for what? To do what?

"I did always want to get blonde highlights, I think. Fuck up my hair."

That's all? Then just do it tomorrow.

"And bangs. A nose ring, a shiny one."

... Of course someone like me wouldn't know what to spend money on.

Although she was well-aware that it was a more fundamental issue than that, she squeezed her eyes shut like it would halt that thought permanently.

The TV at the upper right corner of the salon was playing an intense-looking movie. Not that interesting of a movie (to Ji-yeong), but when there was nothing else to do, even mundane things started looking attractive. Probably the second or third movie now, from when the hairdresser stuck her hair in aluminium foil to bleach it, the choice of strands haphazard like Ji-yeong requested (to call it 'choice' was a bit of a stretch). The scenes all blended together like most things tended to do when your mind was blank.

Her eyes were still glued to the screen although she hadn't the slightest inkling of what was happening when the hairdresser dried her hair and begun to cut it.

"Miss, do you like that show? Lee Byung-hun acts so well, doesn't he?" The hairdresser moved to trim her bangs as she said this, "Do you know that one famous line he says in it?"

"Uhh, no. What does he say?" Who the fuck was Lee Byung-hun? Ji-yeong just hoped that she wouldn't cut her eyebrows along with her bangs because she was distracted by some guy in a movie.

"Let's have a drink of Maldives at the Mojito," she recited confidently, in a low tone clearly meant to imitate a man.

"What?"

"Miss, have you not tried mojito? Wait, are you underage? It's a type of alcohol."

Ji-yeong decided not to refute that comment. Mojito. One more thing to try. "Maldives, what is that?"

"Overseas. Pretty beaches, like Hawaii, coral reefs, that kind of place. Near India, I think? You youngsters should know more than me, no?"

The hairdresser took out a mirror and showed Ji-yeong how the back was trimmed. She nodded, paying the hairdresser and thanking her as she left.

It was the time of day when everyone else was either working or going to school. The time of day when only layabouts and unemployed and the elderly (and murderers etc etc) walked about. The thought was sobering: maybe she should get a job, or something. But who would hire an uneducated ex-murder-convict? Even her sobered mind came to a blank. Maybe a church, since it was headed by trash like him...

"Fuck. Fuck. No, let's just get that nose ring."

And then what?

Mojito, maybe. The Maldives, how much did that cost? She played with the thin namecard in her pocket. Circle, triangle, square. Circle, triangle, square. Circle, triangle... right. Call the number. Okay, she'd go to a telephone booth after getting the that nose stud done.

It wasn't like she had anywhere else to go anyway.

Should she stay awake and wait for daybreak?

The room was made, in the same way as yesterday, neat sheets folded cleanly, the pillows uncreased, the towels replaced. Everything returned to its initial state. Everything without proof that she existed. Melodrama!

She leaned against the balcony railing, looking at the ground far below. The world existed without her, and it would continue to exist without her. The thought was in equal parts calming and aggravating. Then an indignant, almost proud thought: it was also true that she had existed. Then it too faded into that numbing nothingness, because did you really exist if nothing existed with you beside you for you?

—as you?

She'd already forgotten how her mother looked like. In her memories the bloodied corpse was stark against the dingy ground but her face was blurry and glazed over. Did she have a sister? Maybe. Her classmates in the few days she went to school. Did she go to a girl's school? Were there boys? How tall was she back then, what colour was that uniform? Her fellow inmates. How old were they? How did they look like? The only face, stark in her memories, but consciously marked with an X, that man, that thing, her father. The way blood, warm, a dull crimson, pooled at her feet—

Stupid nighttime view.

She shut the sliding screens leading to the balcony. The sun would rise soon, even without her watching. Though did it make sense that she knew it would rise regardless of her knowing?

Of course it made sense that the world revolved without her.

There was nothing to connect her to it. As if a planet entirely separate from the solar system, away from the milky way, had itself a glazed view of the world. And when had it begun?

That's wrong—it's just that nothing has ever started in my life.

She drew the curtains closed, turned the lights off. She would not wait for daybreak, which within a span of a day had started to seem endlessly cruel to a life like hers, that kind light that gave the hopeless solace. Only that she was far too small, nonexistent, for the anger in her heart to amount to anything like determination. In a span of twenty-four years, Ji-yeong had existed too much and yet not at all. Her newfound freedom seemed to be just a new sort of shackle, and just as before, shackling nothing of substance. N-o-t-h-i-n-g. Nothing. The word itself started sounding foreign, the letters and their semantics blending and swirling and cascading into...

Collapsing head-first on the pillows, Ji-yeong closed her eyes and willed herself to please please please fall asleep already.