“No. Not really. She makes a great radish soybean paste stew. I love it in the winter, and her pork-potato jeon is also delicious. Jeon is a Korean pancake,” he starts to explain, but he doesn’t need to. I’m familiar with the savory fritter.
“I love jeon. Sangki and I went to a food truck at the Gwangjang Market last week. They made about ten different kinds. I liked the scallion ones the best.” They were thicker than most of the jeons I’ve seen in the basement department store food halls or in the restaurants.
“How was the spicy stew tonight?”
“Very good. What did you have?”
He yawns and turns his face away from the camera to hide his tiredness. “The team ordered Singapore noodles. They were good, but I’m tired of Chinese food. I want to come home and eat Korean food with you.”
“I want that, too.” I want him home with me.
A soft smile curves the corners of his lips up. “Do you miss me, Hara?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t say it much.”
“Because I sound needy and desperate.”
“I must sound the same, then, as I tell you this every night.”
“No. It sounds cool when you say it.”
“Ah, but I am needy and desperate.” His voice drops. “It has been forty-five days since I’ve had you.”
A dozen, no, a hundred images fly through my mind. Yujun at the airport in the suit. Yujun waiting outside the Airbnb in jeans and a simple white shirt. Yujun in crisp wool slacks and a sunny yellow T-shirt rolled at the sleeves. Yujun in nothing but sweat and skin, his biceps flexing as he lowers his body down and inside me. I close my eyes as if that can shut down my imagination, but it only gets worse. In the darkness, with the sound of his breathing on the phone, it’s as if he’s here with me, stroking me, kissing me, loving me. I’m overwhelmed and don’t want him to see it. It’s too humiliating.
“I think I need to go,” I croak. “Big day tomorrow. Lots of work.” The excuses tumble out of me.
The smile turns slightly smug, but he only nods. “I miss you, aegiya.”
I miss you, too, babe.
I don’t sleep well. Who could after that?
* * *
• • •
As I predicted, I am barely functioning the next day, but it also doesn’t matter. I have no new work. Bujang-nim is out at meetings, so I sit at my desk and blearily study Korean. My walk across the world is taking a long time. I decide to leave at five, and while it’s technically the end of the workday, a twinge of guilt pricks my conscience as the rest of the team remains in the office bent over their respective projects.
I have my own project—Project Get Closer to Choi Wansu. We met for the first time a few weeks ago when I stormed into her office and demanded to know if she was my biological mother. She admitted it without hesitation. She followed her confession with a less-than-grand gesture of asking how much money I wanted. That hurt a lot. It also hurt to find out that the boy I’d fallen in love with was the child she chose to parent over me, the child she’d given birth to. That pain was compounded by learning that my adoptive mother, Ellen, had actually been in contact with Wansu since I was twelve. Thirteen years of betrayal and lies is a lot to get over in six weeks.
I could’ve held on to my bitterness and trauma, but I didn’t have time. The press learned of my existence, and Wansu and Yujun’s family business, a multimillion-dollar enterprise that employs hundreds of people, was suddenly in danger. Years ago, when Yujun’s father fell into a coma after a heart attack, Wansu stepped forward to take charge of the business, and in doing so she began to make changes. She championed women’s causes. She accepted awards for furthering the advancement of women. She gave money to and sat on the boards of adoption organizations, all the while never telling anyone she had given her own child up twenty-five years ago.
I could have left Seoul, returned to Iowa, and allowed her, Yujun, and IF Group to burn to the ground.
I stayed. I stayed, but not for completely altruistic reasons. Yes, I wanted to know Wansu better and I wouldn’t be able to sleep in my bed back in America knowing I’d put so many people out of work, but I also stayed because of Yujun. And Sangki and Jules and Bomi and even Wansu.
I had come here looking for belonging and I’d found people I cared about. Wansu is one of them. As much as I resent her and am still hurt by what she did, I cannot deny that I might’ve made a similar decision in her shoes. When she found out she was pregnant, she was only one of at least five women my biological father had been sleeping with. Her parents were strict, and her father— Well, Wansu hasn’t come out and said this, but I got the impression he would’ve harmed her if he knew the truth. And she tried. For six weeks, she tried to care for me, but she couldn’t manage. She had no education, and other than an innate adeptness for language, she had no skills to get a job, so she left me by a police station and waited forty-two minutes until a policeman came out for a smoke break and found me.
I can stew in the bad memories or lift up my feet and walk forward. I’m choosing to do the latter, but the path ahead is not without thorns. We still step quietly around each other, selecting our words with care. She speaks to me with gifts; I speak to her with service. I hurry to bring the food to the table. I jump up to clear the plates. I go to work every day at IF Group even though I’m beginning to dread waking up in the morning because of it.
All Koreans are big on gifts. I understand that showing up to a person’s house without a gift is one of the biggest social sins out there, but Wansu is overdoing it. In the large house in northern Seoul that Wansu calls home, I’ve been allotted a bedroom, an attached sitting room, and another room that is lined with closets that are nearly empty and a floor overflowing with designer bags. On an almost daily basis, she arrives home with a new purchase. “I saw this on my way to a meeting” or “My assistant said this is trending” or “An actress wore it in an ad” were all excuses that accompanied these gifts. The price of the gifts, the overwhelming number of them, makes me uneasy, and I’ve only unpacked a tiny fraction of them. I want us to have more of a relationship than one that is marked by luxury goods.
Yet, what have I done to extend myself, to put myself out there so she can get to know me? Not much. Cooking dinner for her seems like the least thing I can do.
Sangki suggested I cook for Wansu, but he didn’t say what dish. Yujun had a few favorites he mentioned last night, which means he must’ve eaten them frequently at dinners with Wansu. Why would he bring them up otherwise? I decide to cook the radish soybean paste stew and pork-potato jeon.
Using a translation app, I copy down the ingredients and stop at a market near the office. I have no problem in the produce section. Korean radishes are easily recognizable, as are scallions and onions. Potatoes are the same everywhere. The dried kelp and anchovies for the dashi broth present a bit of a challenge, but I find a soup base in the refrigerated section. It’s the soybean paste aisle that stumps me. The sheer selection and variety are intimidating. There have to be at least fifteen different brands, and each brand has multiple versions. Obviously this would be no problem if I could read Korean, because back home the soup aisle looks much like this, with rows of red-and-white cans offering various versions of tomato soup.