sheezall_

You are shaking fists & trembling teeth. I know: You did not mean to be cruel. That does not mean you were kind. Sometimes, I think you forget. I am not God. I do not forgive.

VENETTA OCTAVIA

Maybe my life is trying to tell me something. These days, I want to wander, But the past still needs me. How could I ever leave?

HUA XI

花

In hell, they leave the love in.

It’s important to remember that, thinks Mincheol, on the bed of a girl he’s known barely a year with the same color palette as Haesoo but not quite: The love was there. It was always there. It’s the life part they screwed up just a touch.

⊹

Mincheol first meets Haesoo under the awning of a bus stop. 

It’s raining, the first pour they’ve had all summer, and when you live in the slums of Seoul with practically no heat management system in place: you take your victories and spin them into gold. He jogs down the stone steps, yells out a Sell well, halmeoni! to the pajeon seller who always goes door to door first thing in the morning, and helps out a policeman wrangle a few kindergarten kids to safety on the pedestrian lane. There was a community here, thinks Mincheol, the same way ragtag people find themselves gravitating towards each other and making the most of what life hands to them at the bottom of the barrel.

Mincheol bumps into her on the way down the steps to the bus stop, milk bread in his mouth and spun silk in her hair. 

“Oh,” he says, and then: “Hello.”

⊹

She was beautiful, by the gods she always was; but even more so, thought Mincheol then, her heart. She was quiet in her kindness, and kept to herself in class where he was great and grand and loud. The sort of beautiful to write home about, the way her eyes lit up just a fraction when they went flower viewing in spring; or the elegant slope of her neck that had his heart stopping when she bent down to pick one up; or the almost hesitant, almost shy way she offered up the tiniest smile along with the dandelion she presented to him: heart on her sleeve and longing lodged in his throat.

Haesoo was the kind of beautiful you marry young.

The one you make a life partner out of. The one that when both of you stroll past the streets of Myeongdong, will have people stop for a second, and re-assess and double back: because yes, Mincheol had been there himself: She is real and she is mine. There are great, grand, loud things he has planned for them: a penthouse suite overlooking the Han River, a vacation house in Jeju they can summer in, the whole world on a platter, it seemed, if she asked; and by the gods, he was going to give that all to her.

⊹

They go to the same college. Mincheol takes up an internship at a multinational company and complains of long days of being a glorified errand boy, but Haesoo, Haesoo: in the little rundown apartment by Ilsan they pay way too much for way too little, always managed to assemble a few loose ingredients to make sundubu jiggae and arrange them in a fashion like a king’s meal long before he even gets to toe his shoes off. Haesoo who turns to him in the doorway and says with so much delicacy, so much honesty, so much heart: “Mincheol-ah,” and then, “Welcome home”, and then, “You worked hard”; that always has his heart racing, years after and long after.

I love you, he would always say back. I love you and I want us both to eat well.

⊹

When they lie in bed at night on the futon passed down to them by Mincheol’s parents, the one that was hard on the back and had him offering up his pillow to her instead: he’d turn to her, quiet in the night, with a voice as soft as liquid silk: I’m going to take care of you. 

⊹

The love was there. It was always there.

It was never a problem until it became the problem.

⊹

Mincheol marries Haesoo to no fanfare: There, the girl at the legal office said as she slid the papers their way, It’s done. Mincheol could only look on in equal parts awe and dumbstruckness at the tangible evidence of the very real thing they just did that was going to impact their lives now in a very real way. Haesoo, though, when she lifts her head to look at him: It’s done? she asks, still so timid and lovely and soft, Are we really—

And Mincheol heaves her up in his arms, smothers her with kisses and even more declarations of his love, all the way until they reach the expensive yakiniku place they have no money to spend on but decide fuck all because:

“Yes,” says Mincheol, breathless, still just looking at her and not believing she was real and she was his and he was hers and they were standing at the edge of the world or staring down at it, daring it to bite back. “We’re really.”

⊹

The mortgage on their first home is bleeding both of them dry, but they’re married and young and excited to do life with each other. It’s imperfect like how most marriages go, but for the first time in their lives, they have a real shot at making it out of the slums and building the bricks on a life they can slowly start chipping away on.

“When it gets too hard,” whispers Haesoo, brushing a few strands of hair away from his face when they face each other on the bed after Mincheol gets another job rejection the third time that week. “We attack the problem and not each other. Always. Okay?”

Mincheol tugs her further into him. “Okay,” he says, and then: “Okay.”

⊹

But:

⊹

The world and life, though.

It catches up to you.

It bites back.

⊹

Mincheol starts working overtime. Haesoo takes on more shifts and more part-time jobs. In a moment of pure desperation and Haesoo shivering on the floor because they’re three payments late on electricity, Mincheol tucks her in all the jackets he has and leans down to ghost a kiss on her forehead and tenders all he has left to give: I’m going to take care of you.

He leaves in the middle of the night in nothing but his t-shirt and a number he swore to never call.

⊹

The next day, all their bills are paid.

⊹

The next month, the loan sharks start banging on their door.

⊹

Mincheol tries hiding it all from her, from pretty and sweet and delicate Haesoo; he takes on a few side-hustles, invests in start-ups, even does a little black market trading on the down low. Some of them stick but not enough. 

But the love, thinks Mincheol, it’s still there. 

It’s always going to be there. You don’t brave through the jaws of death growing up poor and not know a thing or two about gratefulness, or feeling tethered to someone you did all that clawing through with. Haesoo is still as beautiful as the day the first drop of rain soaked through her uniform, that had him blushing and pushing his blazer to her chest, that had him flushing and sputtering all throughout his senior year until he finally plucked enough courage to rip out the first button of his uniform and hand it to her, hands shaking, with a smile that was just as shaky: “Will you go out with me?”

She said yes, and damn her for saying yes all those years ago, because now; now Mincheol was indebted. He felt indebted to will the fantasy life he wanted for her, this girl who never asked for anything but deserved so much more than canned tuna for dinner and a husband who always came home late; this girl who took one look at his tired face from a long night and wordlessly took off his jacket and shoes for him, deposited him on their banged up couch, and started quietly working out the kinks in his muscles; this girl with the face, as soft as a lily pad, hum lullabies to him when the stress met his dreams and he kept thrashing in bed; who, at her first spun song, his heart will always tender itself to.

He doesn’t deserve her. He knows he doesn’t deserve her. But it’s hard to forget a mouth that loves you, even more so, thinks Mincheol: one that you know has been the only one to ever love you as completely and nakedly as you are. 

⊹

The anger, then. That’s new. 

⊹

Things Haesoo has lied to him about over the years:

“Yes, I already ate.”

“It’s just a bad sprain.”

“I don’t need to go to the hospital.”

“I wasn’t late to work.”

“I don’t need to take a day off.”

“I’m not hungry, you can have the last bite.”

“I’m okay.”

⊹

So when the bills are piling up and loan sharks are barking down your door and your wife is crying herself to sleep every night, thinks Mincheol, bitterly: This is marriage.

But how could he direct all that hatred to her, on stable and supportive and enduring Haesoo? Who has only ever known to be there for him when times were rough and especially then when they weren’t? She’s become too trusting of him. She’s become too dependent on the stability of their love that she thought would have survived anything. He couldn’t fault her for that. He couldn’t get mad at her for believing in life when he’d gone through hell and back to shield its ugliest parts from her.

⊹

So he punishes himself instead.

⊹