When I finish curling Kyuri’s hair, I fluff the curls and then squeeze some of my most expensive shine serum into my hands. I rub them together and comb them lightly through her hair. It smells lovely, like peppermint and roses.
When I tap her on the shoulder to let her know I’m done, Kyuri sits up straight. Her lashes flutter as she gazes at herself with her “mirror expression,” sucking in her cheeks. She looks breathtaking, with her cascade of waves and carefully made-up face. Next to her, I look even more faded, with my ordinary face and my ordinary hair, which Manager Kwon is constantly harping at me to style more dramatically.
“Thank you, Ara,” she says, her face breaking into a slow, appreciative smile. She catches my eye in the mirror. “I love it. What a goddess!” We laugh together, but my laugh is soundless.
* * *
—
IN THE HOSPITAL, all I can do is hold Sujin’s hand while she weeps silently, just her eyelashes and nose and lips visible in her bandaged head.
* * *
—
WHEN I GET home that night, I find a sheet of paper on the table. It is her will. We had read many news stories about patients who died from flecks of jaw bone getting lodged in arteries, causing them to choke to death on blood filling up in their throats while they slept. I made her stop after the first few articles, but secretly, I read them all.
* * *
—
I LEAVE EVERYTHING I own to my roommate, Park Ara, it says.
* * *
—
IN THE ORIGINAL STORY, the little mermaid endures unspeakable pain to gain her human legs. The Sea Witch warns her that her new feet will feel as if she is walking on whetted blades, but she will be able to dance like no human has ever danced before. And so she drinks the witch’s potion, which slices through her body like a sword.
What I want to say, though, is that she danced divinely with her beautiful legs, even through the pain of a thousand knives. She was able to walk and run and stay close to her beloved prince, and even when things didn’t work out with him, that wasn’t the point.
And in the end, after she said goodbye to her prince and flung herself into the sea, expecting to disintegrate into sea foam, she was carried away by the children of light and air.
* * *
—
ISN’T THAT a beautiful story?
Kyuri
Around 10 P.M., a girl who was not one of us entered our room at the room salon. She was small and expensively dressed, in a flowing bird-patterned silk dress and high heels edged with mink. I’d seen that exact dress in the latest issue of Women’s Love and Luxury and it had been the same price as a year’s rent. She stood there, dainty and scornful.
There were five of us girls sitting around the table, one for each of the men, and she stood in the doorway and stared in turn at each of us, her eyes alight with intense interest. Most of the men did not seem to register her entry—they were drinking and talking loudly—but us room salon girls, we froze. The other girls then looked away immediately, heads down, but I stopped myself and stared back at her.
She was quietly scrutinizing everything in the room—the dark marble walls, the long table laden with bottles and glasses and crystal plates of fruit, the light emanating from the bathroom in the corner, the karaoke machine, which had been switched off midsong because Bruce had received an important work call and couldn’t be bothered to step outside. The fact that she was not escorted by one of the waiters meant someone had told her exactly which room to come to—which was not an easy feat given our deliberately confusing underground maze of hallways.
“Ji, over here!” Bruce, my partner, turned to see what I was looking at and called to her while giving my inner thigh a rough pinch under the table. “You came!”
The girl called Ji walked slowly toward us and sat down where Bruce had indicated. Up close, I could see that her face was devoid of surgery—her eyes were single-lidded and her nose was flat. I would not have been caught dead walking around with a face like that. But clearly, from the way she walked and held her head, she came from the kind of money that didn’t need any.
“Hey, you,” she said to Bruce. “Are you drunk? Why did you tell me to come here?” She sounded upset to be called to such a setting, but I knew that the opposite was true—she was delighted to see for herself what the inside of a room salon looked like. On their rare visits, women usually gape like fish, judging us. You can tell they are thinking, “I would never compromise my morals for money. You probably only do this to buy handbags.”
I’m not sure who’s worse, them or the men. Just kidding, the men are always worse.
A half-empty bottle of whiskey sat in front of me on the table. As always, Bruce had booked the largest room and had ordered the priciest bottles we had on the menu but tonight he and his friends were taking longer than most parties to drink it. Bruce was a recent big catch for our room salon—not only was his family famous (his father owned a stem-cell clinic in Cheongdamdong) but he had started his own gaming company—and Madam was thrilled that he’d been here every week for going on two months now. “All because of you, Kyuri,” she’d said to me a few nights ago, her toad-like face breaking into a smile. I smiled back. I happen to know that ours is the closest room salon to his office.
“Of course I’m not drunk,” Bruce snapped at the girl. “I called you because Miae’s not talking to me.”
This was the first I had heard of a Miae, but why would I have heard of her?
“You had another fight?” she said. Shivering, she pulled a sand-colored cardigan out of her bag and put it on. That gesture in itself was another affront. Madam keeps the room cold and comfortable for men wearing suits, while we’re in minidresses trying to hide our goosebumps.
“You need to talk to her, wake her up so she understands how the real world works.” Bruce took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, something he does when he’s frustrated. Without his glasses, he looks like a lost little kid and the name Bruce seems ludicrous. I started calling him that after he told me he reached 3-dan in tae kwon do before he turned fifteen. We were at a hotel and I was teasing him about his skinny arms. I was too tired for sex that night, and had hoped he would get annoyed if I teased him.
I don’t know at what age men become assholes—boyhood, teenage years? When they start earning some real money? It depends on their fathers, and their fathers’ fathers, probably. Their grandfathers are usually the biggest assholes of all, if mine are any indication. Men these days are actually much better than previous generations—the ones who used to bring mistresses into the house and make their wives feed and care for their bastard children. I’ve just heard too many stories in my own family tree to have had any illusions to begin with, even before I started working in a room salon. If they don’t die early, stranding you with kids and colossal childcare expenses, they fuck you over in other ways that are entirely boring.