The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness Read Free Page B

Father’s face. I should have set out just a little earlier. Father’s silhouette glimmered in front of my eyes, as he ran out of the store and stood vacant and still in the dark. The bus is already leaving the village. What happened five minutes ago has already become a thing of the past.
    Mom is dressed in traditional hanbok , an orange outfit. It comes with a lined jacket over her blouse, which is fastened with a chrysanthemum-shaped brooch instead of with ribbon strings. When I gaze at the brooch, Mom says, “You got this for me when you went on that school trip.” The thin white collar of her blouse is dirty. When she notices that I am glancing at her dirty collar, Mom says, “I’d meant to sew on a new one, but got too busy.”
    At the train station in town, we meet Cousin, who will be going to the city with me. Her legs long and slender, Cousin stands carrying a large bag next to Aunt, Mom’s brother’s wife, who has become bone skinny. Cousin is a slender nineteen-year-old. I smell the raw odor of fish as Aunt’s hand caresses my cheek. Aunt takes her hand from my cheek to and touches Cousin’s hand. As they say good-bye, the mother’s hand intertwines with the daughter’s.
    “And don’t you fight and argue.”
    As she lets go of Cousin’s hand, Aunt’s eyes well up with tears. When it’s time to get our tickets punched, Aunt asks Cousin to write them soon. Leaving my haggard aunt behind in the waiting room, Mom, Cousin, and I enter the boarding area.
    I press my palms on the window of the train car and look out at the platform. Good-bye, my home village. I am leaving you to fish for life.
    Even on the night train, Mom does not speak. She would barely have had time to straighten her back all day as she finished up the rice planting, but Mom does not even doze off. From time to time she glances at me, sitting next to her. Farewells make one gaze intently into the other person’s eyes. Andmake one realize things out of the blue—this was the shape of this person’s eyes, which one had never noticed before.

    For ten days I had been ordering lunch at the same table and the woman at the restaurant finally struck up a conversation. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. The busiest hour had passed. Somehow I had been coming to the restaurant at this same time each afternoon, and had begun to feel apologetic that, at this hour, when the woman would likely be ready for a break after the busy lunch crowd, I was pushing her back into the kitchen. The woman brought out my food, then after washing her face, she spoke to me as she applied lotion on her face.
    “Where are you from?”
    “I came from Seoul.”
    “A long way, is it?”
    Instead of answering, I smiled. I had just put a slice of kimchi in my mouth, so I couldn’t answer even if I wanted. The woman said that if I had told her from the start that I would keep coming back this often, she could have arranged a special menu with dishes prepared for her family for a cheaper price. I glanced at the menu on the wall. How much cheaper would she charge? The price was written below each item. A pot of kimchi stew for 4,000 won. Bean paste stew cooked with abalone, clams, or crayfish for 5,000 won. Spicy beef soup for 3,500 won.
    “Have you come alone?”
    To my relief, she did not add, A woman, all by yourself?
    “Yes.”
    “Tourist?”
    “No.”
    “That’s what I guessed. A tourist would not stay here day in and day out.”
    I smiled again.
    “Then are you here for work?”
    Now I was lost. Could I say I was here for work? Had I come for work? Unable to answer, I said, “Well, kind of,” then smiled again. The woman must have understood my smile as “yes, I have come for work.” She brushed her permed hair back over her ears and brought out three clementine oranges on a plate.
    “What kind of work do you do?”
    I could not go on eating my lunch. I put down my spoon and peeled the skin off one of the clementines. The citric fragrance seeped