Seoulmates (Seoul 2)

CHAPTER NINE

Sae Appa has no answers for me. There’s nothing but the sound of his breathing machine, the click, click, click of the heart monitor, and the quiet hum of the heater. I rub my cold hands together and open the book I’ve been reading. It’s a collection of Korean fairy tales. I’m on the story of “Sim Cheong.” “Sim Cheong” is a traditional Korean folktale, one of the five pansori, a Korean opera, that have survived through the centuries. So much of the pansori is steeped in mysticism that it is hard to know where the human ends and the dragon begins. This particular pansori is about filial piety.

“Sim Cheong” is sad—emo, black-eyeliner, long-bangs sad. Sim Bongsa, Sim the Blind, loses his wife upon his daughter’s birth and gradually begins to lose his eyesight. When his daughter is thirteen, Sim Bongsa is begging in the street, crying about his blindness. A monk passing by overhears these complaints, which Sim Bongsa has made many times before. Tired, the monk makes an offer. For a grand price of three hundred bags of rice, the temple will offer up prayers to Buddha for Sim Bongsa’s sight to be returned. Sim is so poor that even one bag of rice would be a luxury, but he foolishly agrees to this insane bargain. When Sim Cheong hears of the deal that her father has struck with the monks, she weeps, for she knows that the temple bargain cannot be met.

The following day she learns that sailors have landed in search of a virgin to sacrifice to the King of the Sea, who is tormenting the ships with storms. For three hundred bags of rice, Sim Cheong agrees to be that sacrifice. She is thrown into the sea, and the prayers of the monks, if they were actually made, result in no change to her father. He remains blind and now childless.

The Sea King takes pity on Sim Cheong, and because of her enduring loyalty to her father, he rewards her by placing her in a lotus blossom and sending her to the top of the sea. The sailors who cast her out discover the giant blossom and haul the flower aboard to take back to the king. In the palace, the blossom petals unfurl to reveal Sim Cheong. The king falls instantly in love—lust, more likely—and asks for her hand in marriage. Sim Cheong agrees but requires that a wedding banquet be held for all the blind. Sim Cheong waits until her father arrives at the palace grounds and calls out to him. In this moment, Sim Bongsa’s eyes are healed, and with his new vision, he is able to see his daughter for the first time.

I finish the story and drum my fingers against the paperback. A traditionalist like Choi Yusuk would like this story. Sacrifice everything for your parents, including your life, and you will be richly rewarded. I wonder if Yujun knows this story. He must since it is so famous, but it isn’t controlling his life. I need to learn from that.

Wansu will relent, eventually. My coworkers will see that I’m a hard worker who deserves a job, and when the other women go to the bathroom, they’ll invite me to join them. After the hweshik—company dinner—which we all hate, we’ll skip out on the second round of drinks at a different bar, shove the drunk men into a taxi, and escape to a noraebang, where we will sing our favorite idol songs, pretend we are onstage, and drink until we have to be poured into taxis. It will be fun and bonding and we will laugh about how they all thought I was this nepotistic hire but I’m really a decent person whom they are so happy to have as a coworker. Soyou especially won’t have a pinched expression around her mouth when I call her sunbae-nim. Hell, she might even invite me to call her sunbae, dropping the honorarium -nim.

I finish reading a passage in the book, tuck the folded sticky note I use as a bookmark between the pages, and stow the collection away in the bedside drawer, refusing to admit how sad my fantasies are. I fuss with the covers again.

Sae Appa, your son is so handsome and good. You would be so proud of him. He’s open-minded, sweet, and good at his job. You raised him right. Your ancestors are cheering you on. You should wake and see what he has done, and Wansu misses you. She comes here every night. I hope you enjoy the dramas.

I pat the side of the bed because it feels wrong to touch him, even his hand. He hasn’t given me permission to do so. I wonder again about Wansu. She doesn’t have many friends that I’ve seen. We haven’t had a house party or even a single guest in the six weeks I’ve lived with her. She spends her nights with her unconscious husband watching melodramas. Her mornings are given to tending a collection of small bonsais and reading.