HYGIENE
Helen Oyeyemi
From: Violaine
03/07/2024, 11:01
Good morning, Haewon-ssi.
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 11:03
Hope I’m not disturbing you. You’ve mentioned a preference for sleeping late, but it’s hard to guess what Early would mean to you.
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 11:35
Morning, V. It’s OK, I’ve been awake forever already.
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 11:45
That’s a relief.
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 12:50
Everything OK? You sound different. You’ve been typing for ages, too
From: Violaine
03/07/24,13:03
Haha—been watching the dots, have you?
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 13:05
What can I say? You’ve brought a strong man to his knees (so he can watch those dots more closely).
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 13:09
Good. Joking, joking. No kneeling here, Haewon-ssi. Rise! Friends should stand shoulder to shoulder
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 13:13
Damn
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 13:14
I knew it.
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 13:19
Knew what?
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 13:28
It was just a matter of time before you told me you feel like I’m like a brother to you or whatever. The only surprise is that it took this long coming.
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 13:35
Oh! No, slow down, Haewon-ssi. Siblinghood is centuries away . . . let’s try to make it to the friend stage first
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 14:10
We’re not even friends(?)
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 14:15
What a question. How does friendship work for you, Haewon-ssi? Anyone you’re acquainted with for longer than a week automatically gets upgraded?
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 14:18
BTW, I sound different because I am different.
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 14:23
V, just in case you’re being serious: how are we not friends? Mutual respect + enjoyment of each other’s company should be enough, no?
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 14:27
Sounds lovely . . . for simpletons.
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 14:32
What foundations do you sophisticates build your friendships on, then?
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 14:40
Difficult to specify. Overall I’d say there’s more intentionality involved.
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 14:51
Intentionality, or . . . intensity? Are we talking contracts signed in blood?
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 15:00
YES! (But actually, no.) Did you sleep well?
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 15:03
I did, thanks. And you?
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 15:15
Wait, just re-read your other message. You sound different because you are different? Meaning?
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 15:29
This isn’t Hwang Violaine. My name’s Kwak Minjeong. I’m messaging you on Hwang Violaine’s behalf.
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 16:02
Kwak Minjeong? Who exactly is that?
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 16:03
Why are you messaging from Violaine’s phone? What’s happened?
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 16:06
As I said, Violaine asked me to contact you.
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 16:08
She’s fine. She’s sitting right next to me. She told me to tell you not to worry.
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 16:11
My friend feels there are some aspects of your compatibility she’d like verified by a third party.
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 17:04
Haewon-ssi, are you busy? Is this a good time to exchange messages? Should I try again later?
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 17:17
I’m here. This is as good a time as any, I guess. Go ahead . . .
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 17:33
So many unpleasant secretions are produced when entities come into contact with each other, don’t you agree? I’m not just speaking about biological or even synthetic cells, but about words, thoughts, memories, emotions . . .
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 17:48
We’re healthy people, Haewon-ssi. I mean, CLEAN clean. Our inner state is the best it’s ever been. Are you clean too? Or are you just another slob looking to leave some sort of mark on every pristine expanse you stray across? That’s what we want to know.
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 18:01
Hi. Answer the phone, please. Just need to ask you something quickly.
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 18:16
Pick up. Let’s talk, OK?
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 18:27
Violaine. Minjung. Whatever your name is—PICK UP. I’m going to call again in one minute, and you’d best press “Accept.”
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 18:39
Take it easy, Haewon-ssi.
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 19:15
And please realise that it’s very important to screen for cleanliness. We all learned that in 2020, and again in 2021. Thoroughness with soap, water, water temperature and antibacterial agents, that was one lesson. Watchfulness of our proximity to others was another, as was mastering self-control at a level that prevents our hands from touching our faces more than four times a day (and ideally fewer than three times). There were many other lessons, but hopefully you see the overall picture. We learned to exist more scrupulously than we could ever have imagined. Naturally, some crumbled . . . adherence to these special rules felt like oppression. But others bloomed. We (Hwang Violaine and me) were among the bloomers. We realised a lot of things.
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 19:24
OK . . .
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 19:38
Listen . . . Kwak Minjeong, that’s your name, right?
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 19:44
Correct.
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 19:52
Do we know each other? I mean, have we run into each other in person anywhere?
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 19:56
Yes, we have. You met me the first time you met Hwang Violaine. You offered to take a picture of me and her. I’m the other woman in the picture you took.
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 20:00
Oh, of course. I remember now. Nice to talk to you again, Minjeong-ssi
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 20:03
Haha . . .
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 20:04
Liar.
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 20:08
No, truly! From the bottom of my heart. Haha
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 20:13
Look, I appreciate that you’re protective of V, but am also wondering if there’s something I’m missing here? A medical condition?
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 20:19
You still don’t get it
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 20:36
I really don’t. Please explain it in words I can understand. I just want to take your friend out for bulgogi sometime soon. Is this your way of telling me you want me to get another booster shot beforehand, or what?
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 20:40
Do you remember the date you took that photo of the two of us?
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 20:44
Yeah, it was just last summer
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 20:51
No, Haewon-ssi, you met us the summer before last. In fact, as of today it’ll be two years since you met Hwang Violaine (and me). Do you know what that means?
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 20:59
A two-year anniversary of meeting? To me, this doesn’t mean much. We’ve all matured just a little bit, albeit not quite visibly? I don’t know. What is this supposed to be meaning to me?
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 21:22
It means that, from the moment you took that picture of us on my phone and gave me your phone number to pass on to my friend “if she was interested,” you’ve had seven hundred and thirty days, or around seventeen thousand, five hundred and twenty hours to develop a good understanding of Hwang Violaine (and vice versa).
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 21:26
. . . ?
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 21:32
Somehow this makes V sound like an academic subject I’ve failed? Firstly, I didn’t realise there was a deadline. Secondly, though this is an uncomfortable matter to discuss with somebody outside of the relationship, we have been getting closer. If V disagrees, I’d be very surprised to hear that.
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 21:48
Surprise! Hwang Violaine understands you a little bit less every day. Given that you meet for dinner and/or drinks as frequently as your schedules allow (a minimum of twice per month), have exchanged messages at least three times a week and have taken trips to Jeju Island and Singapore together, we both find this concerning. Please state your reason for asserting that you and Hwang Violaine have successfully connected?
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 21:56
Aren’t there many kinds of closeness, Kwak Minjeong? Doesn’t the gamut run from deep conversations to engagement rings/domesticity, to . . . apologies for my crudeness here, but don’t orgasms count for something too?
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 22:09
Well. We agree that sex is not nothing.
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 22:11
But in this case orgasms can’t be submitted as evidence, sorry
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 22:18
In this CASE? What’s being decided here? I’ve had a few months to impress V and I haven’t done it, so my time’s up and I’ll never hear from her again?
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 22:32
Haewon-ssi, the thing that’s making us laugh—and making us sad—about this two year non-connection is
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 22:36
It’s SUCH a common scenario. Something we and most of our other friends find ourselves participating in over and over again, with just a few variations here and there. There’s nothing extra about people like me and HV
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 22:43
“People like me and HV” being those who do a little bit more than the bare minimum. Not all that much more, really. We just take opportunities to make our interactions with others non-generic. It’s about being prepared to locate particularity and meet at that exact place. You, Baek Haewon, wear your watch with the dial turned inwards so it’s always facing you and you can see it without appearing to look for it . . . and noticing that makes it possible to take vicarious pleasure in the way you observe your hours, minutes and seconds; the look on your face always suggests you’ve found you had more time than you thought. And it feels good to know someone who’s wealthy in that specific way . . . I could go on, but I think you get the gist—these are the kinds of details us more than the bare minimum people look for, find and hold on to.
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 23:12
Hmmmkay.
From: Violaine
03/07/24, 23:18
If only like always attracted like. Unfortunately, when it comes to mating, we seem to attract our opposites.
To: Violaine
03/07/24, 23:52
And the opposites of people who do more than the bare minimum are—?
From: Violaine
04/07/24, 00:01
The Dirty Impersonals. The kids who are just going through the motions.
To: Violaine
04/07/24, 00:08
Right. I get that you’re passionate about this ideology (if that’s what this is?) and I’m not sufficiently invested in this or any ideology to really challenge you here, but I do have questions. First off, I would’ve thought that keeping things impersonal was the best way to stay in the realm of cleanliness you seem to be alluding to? Also isn’t there some saying about the devil being in the details?
From: Violaine
04/07/24, 00:22
Haewon-ssi, it sounds like you’re comfortable with not being interested in anybody. It sounds as if you just want to burrow deeper and deeper beneath the surface of your incuriosity and stay there. A human engaging in earthworm behaviour. We understand that a certain level of daily grime does accumulate as the days go on and it’s just one fucking thing after another, but you do have to watch the apathy. Those who don’t clear it away end up encased in their own psychological waste, “don’t-know-don’t-care” covering your eyes like goggles, swaddling your skull like ear muffs, rolling carpets of fuzz across your tongue so you can’t really taste anything. And then you go and rub that stuff all over other people, you contaminate their air with it, you take fresh air away from people whose aesthetic compasses are clean . . .
From: Violaine
04/07/24, 00:31
Sorry about that—my intention was to sympathise with your affliction, but it seems I’m unable to imagine what you’re going through after all.
To: Violaine
04/07/24, 01:30
This is
To: Violaine
04/07/24, 01:56
Minjeong-ssi—if I’m allowed to call you that—I don’t know what to say. I was having a pretty good morning, and then you informed me that I’m dirty, or at the very least not clean enough for your friend. You’ve been adamant on this topic all day and now it’s night time, my temples are numb, and I still don’t know how to apply for a re-evaluation.
From: Violaine
04/07/24, 02:04
I’m sure these feelings will shift into the past tense soon enough, Haewon-ssi. Time seems to pass at abbreviated speeds for you. After all, you thought you and Hwang Violaine had only been talking for a year. Unless you got her mixed up with one of your other options.
From: Violaine
04/07/24, 02:05
And you can call me whatever you want. It makes no difference to me.
To: Violaine
04/07/24, 02:10
WTF . . . V is not and has never been an “option”
To: Violaine
04/07/24, 02:13
But I’ll think about what you’ve said, I really will. Permission to sleep on this? If it’s even possible to do that in the midst of a nightmare (lol)
To: Violaine
04/07/24, 02:15
Unless you know of some way I can restore direct communication with Violaine ASAP?
From: Violaine
04/07/24, 02:23
Haewon-ssi, it’s honestly not great that you’re this unwilling to come up with your own solutions.
To: Violaine
04/07/24, 02:37
What’s going on here? Am I being turned into some kind of caricature? Don’t do that, Kwak Minjeong.
From: Violaine
04/07/24, 02:44
This ain’t my handiwork, sweetie. Your sluggishness has spoken for itself. Try to think of an unprompted compliment you’ve paid Hwang Violaine at any time over the past two years. Try to think of any action that’s emerged from a spontaneous desire to please her. Nothing comes to mind, right?
To: Violaine
04/07/24, 03:34
Fuck . . . OK, so I’m not good at the stuff you mention. But I’m reliable! Also, am I the only one at fault here? Silently waiting two years for somebody to speak your love language is a bit . . .
From: Violaine
04/07/24, 04:10
Yeah, we thought you’d say something like that. I’ll send some questions to your e-mail address. Answer them, and we’ll let you know what we decide. Thanks. Sleep well!
To: Violaine
05/07/24, 05:00
Hi, I haven’t received any e-mails from you or from Violaine—also checked the Spam folder; nothing there. Can you confirm that you’ll still be sending the questions, thx
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 04:09
Violaine. I am sleepless and in despair. Hear me out; we have a common enemy . . . Expectations. Ours have obviously been out of sync.
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 04:17
I could’ve been more demonstrative. A lot more demonstrative. I see that now. I guess there are rules I’ve set myself. Rules about being a low maintenance person; I hoped you were the same, and saw what I hoped to see.
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 04:26
Besides, wouldn’t you have been disgusted if I got all sentimental? What with secretly harbouring this doctrine of cleanliness all along, etc?
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 05:59
Nothing to say to any of this? Just going to leave me on “Read” forever? We’ll see about that, Violaine. I’ve written some poetry for you, and I’m going to send it until you reply.
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 06:03
OK, here goes
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 06:04
The first time thunder wed lightning, the bridal bouquet was nowhere to be found.
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 06:05
This was no omen—it was impatience.
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 06:06
Adventure had come calling at dawn
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 06:07
And so the blooms had thrown themselves to earth
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 06:08
Electric petals and leaves of lava tumbled as one
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 06:09
The clouds trailed this form like incense
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 06:10
“If we name you,” they said, “will you tell us what’s above?”
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 06:11
The bouquet only blazed, and went on falling without a word
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 06:12
The clouds called out after her. They named her anyway.
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 06:13
She was a long way away by then, and didn’t seem to hear
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 06:14
But I swear to you, it was your name the clouds called.
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 07:33
Still too impersonal? I have more. Next poem incoming—
To: Violaine
07/07/24, 07:34
I was jealous of the roses I sent you
From: Violaine
07/07/24, 07:35
For fuck’s sake! No. Pull yourself together and stop right there, Mr. Baek.
From: Violaine
07/07/24, 07:36
You can’t send anything like this ever again, unless this is you forcing me to change my phone number. Check your e-mail; Minjeong says she’s written to you. Bye.
From: Kwak Minjeong <leavebritneyalone2007@naver.com>
Cc: Hwang Violaine <ylang_ylang_gangster@yahoo.com>
07 July 2024 at 07:34
Subject: Baek Haewon’s application to prolong this lukewarm talking stage with someone who’d really rather get on with some work, check in with her friends or lounge around with a great big smile on her face as she watches people trust and care about each other in TV dramas
Haewon-ssi,
You’re thinking, oh my god, what’s wrong with this woman . . . this is none of her business, right? But this is the Hwang Violaine and Kwak Minjeong friendship: mutually invested as fuck. Since the evening we first ate dinner together, Hwang Violaine and I have been completely frank with each other, and though this next bit can’t be proven, we think our openness with each other acts like some kind of steroid on our immune systems. No infection gets through. We don’t get sick anymore. Not even as much as a cough or a sniffle. And we’re going to keep it that way.
For the first time in two years I’m becoming curious about you, though. I expected you to simply slink off into the shadows, but here you are, all alarmingly attentive.
What is it you’re after here?
If I were you, I’d just restart this process with somebody else, and then source another time donor after that, and another one after that. Two years of pleasantries that could be made from anybody to anybody here, three years of the same thing there, and you could snatch away a lifetime in portable units.
I’m afraid this impasse with Hwang Violaine is no illusion. She’s gone off you—and that might have been fixable; if you were a priority for her once, you could be a priority for her again, right? I believe in second chances—I’ve had loads of them, third chances too—but V doesn’t believe in things like that (according to her, she’s never been given any, so she doesn’t know how to rev up that particular engine). Violaine, do feel free to chip in if I’ve misrepresented you!
I think V may be seeing someone else, too . . . I can only assume that’s what all her secretive texting is about. Cognitive dissonance is part and parcel of the clean movement. We’re proud of our friendships and embarrassed by our romantic activities. Well: embarrassed by the way the candidates for those activities keep turning out to just not like us that much.
You seem to have decided you do like her that much, Haewon-ssi. Better late than never! I’ll put in a good word for you. I like that you smell all flowery (not at all the way one expects a lopsided smiler in a leather jacket to smell). Oh, and you’re the reason Hwang Violaine became friends in the first place, so I feel like I owe you this much.
How’s your life going, Kwak Minjeong? Have you helped anyone lately? Has anyone come to your aid? Did you ask for help, did you know what to ask for, who to ask, or how to phrase your request? Confession is a key part of keeping clean, so I can admit that I’m not asking from the perspective of a person who has all the answers. I’m like one of those hapless goons in action movies. I’ve been like this for a long time, not really doing anything or getting anywhere, just . . . seeking admission. Pouncing on different roles, situations, skills and roaring “Wahhh” just before I’m knocked out.
This will probably be quite long, but just read it, OK? It’s the least you can do after sending that poem. (Did you steal it from somebody else? I don’t know why, but I hope you did.)
I may not have been able to stick at anything, but I have lots of glowing references. If we were still in pre–cloud storage days, I’d probably be trudging around with this folder stuffed with business letterheads and endorsements. I DJ’d in Hongdae for a while, then I bought all the leftover stock from a herbal tea company that was going bankrupt, rebranded the tea as love potion and sold it all at the night market in Myeongdong. Anyone who listened to their tastebuds knew they were drinking a very basic ginseng and pine needle infusion, but stick that stuff in a bottle with a portrait of a Joseon beauty and the words JANG HUIBIN’S ALL-KILL, VERIFIED BY HISTORY SCHOLARS on it and people will line up to buy it at four in the morning, and they’ll pay ten times the price they’d pay for ordinary herbal tea, as well. I couldn’t deal with all those worried faces, so I put pressure on customers to buy multipacks so I could just get rid of all the stock and get out of there. I don’t know what it is about us Seoulites, but even when we’ve decided to try to buy love, or to dance until we drop, we look worried, regretful and mad at our impulses for taking control. Maybe that’s how Seoul toughness manifests, as a feeling of only really being on top of things when resisting pressure from some would-be overlord or other. Joy—or maybe just something about the exercise of free will—is an introduction to powerlessness that no constraint could make. When I think about other styles of toughness (Busan tough, Changwon tough and so on) I think ability to “go with the flow,” as they say, is linked with proximity to ports. That must have been the reason I was only ever able to assess the club and night market vibes, but I could never elevate them. It was the sea view that was lacking.
After abandoning my night market stall, I spent a hyper-voracious spring and summer out in nature, taking everything the land offered, right down to the very last pip and peel. I joined one of the gangs of day labourers who roam around the country picking, plucking, gathering and sorting the fruit, nuts, vegetables, flowers and tea leaves our employers want picked and plucked and gathered. Happy employers recommended us to other employers, and certain non-corporate customers, some foreign and some domestic, hired us to harvest herbs from graveyards . . . a largely clandestine, yet soothing project . . . I don’t know why I thought the earth in those places would be stingy. It isn’t; we were begrudged nothing. Amongst the lasting effects from those months: my hands got all sensitive and supple, like really sore kid leather, I still have all these long scratches that run from wrist to elbow, and no clear memory of how I came by them . . . You know when you feel like you’ve been in a fight, and can’t tell if you won or lost? That’s the effect these scratches have. Also I taste the elbow grease involved in bringing food to my plate; all my simplest favourites are slathered in the stuff, from persimmon salad to tteokbokki. I like this seasoning, though. It improves everything.
Winter came. I left the outdoor labourers, and moved into what seems like my pre-allocated place in the societal grid—the realm of the permanent part-timers. I may or may not be the woman who scanned your items at the convenience store this morning. I could also be the one who served you drinks and snacks in your karaoke cubicle in the evening. There are strange altercations sometimes; I’ve been warned to keep my mouth shut about “what I saw,” sometimes somebody will beg me to keep quiet, or I’ll get paid off, and I say this is strange because each time this happens, I have no idea what these guilty-seeming people are referring to. Back then I hardly ever watched anybody; I couldn’t be bothered to. But it’s as if I’ve got a pair of false eyes painted on me. Eyes with an unblinking, possibly harassing gaze that gets me hated or sucked up to.
Anyway, lockdown started, and the “what are you seeing” stuff got worse; the friends and family I video-called would get jumpy and nervous and ask why I was staring at the space behind them with this “shaman look” . . .
Everybody who had to sit alone with themselves during lockdown probably built an intricate nest of diseased thoughts around them, but these were mine: It seemed to me that I’d been built for a purpose I want no part of. I disliked the blanks in me; I think if an online user account created specifically for leaving nasty comments underneath other people’s photos and articles gained sentience, it might feel the way I felt during lockdown. I washed and washed, and it helped to reduce that sense of expelling some sort of distressing pollutant without any idea of how to rein it in. I stopped video calls, but kept up with written messages and phone calls. I beefed up my cleansing procedures, from washing individual strands of hair to scrubbing between toes.
I fled my home as soon as it was safe to do so. A lot of people did. I could spot my fellow jjimjilbang nomads a mile away. We’re the ones who switch our street clothes for the spa-provided T-shirt and shirts as quickly as we can, and we take the longest to relinquish our uniform when it’s time to go, easing our feet out of those soft white slippers and back into those germ vehicles with pavement-soiled soles . . . ugh. I fell into this lifestyle like it was a feather bed. We’re all the same here, every girl is just like all the other girls, regardless of age or anything else. Steam enfolds us, inexorable angels with loofahs and three-thousand-carat knuckles knead our muscles and peel our old skin away, naked, clothed and then naked again, we lie on warm stones with our souls swelling like the plumpest of yeast buns. Then we bathe again, anointing each other with waterfalls, and we head back towards the steam room. Rest and repeat, rest and repeat. No ritual sorts you out like the jjimjilbang rituals. Having met you at our favourite bathhouse, there’s no need to persuade you of this, Haewon-ssi. But have you ever considered giving yourself over to the jjimjilbangs completely? Staying overnight at a jjimjilbang close to your workplace every night can be ever so slightly more affordable than monthly rent in outer Seoul, provided you pick establishments that offer the best value and also factor in loyalty discounts. All I had to do was reduce the bulk of my possessions so that they fit into a rucksack and a wheeled duffel bag—oh, and I had to keep circulating, so as not to overstay my welcome at any of my seventeen homes.
Hwang Violaine took her own path to jjimjilbang nomadism—I’m not sure if she told you about it. Somehow I doubt it. In order to know that story the two of you would’ve had to have a non-scripted conversation. Look, the main thing is that all three of us—you, me and Hwang Violaine—were checking in at that bathhouse at the same time. You saw Hwang Violaine, and, desperate to talk to her (I understand; that happened to me too, she’s so very disdainful, it feels amazing when she lifts the VIP rope and lets you through), you hit upon the ruse of offering to take a photo of her and her friend.
“My friend?” Hwang Violaine asked. “What friend?” You meant me. I wasn’t yet acquainted with Violaine, I was only queuing behind her. Actually I’d tried to speak to her a few moments before you approached us—we’d accidentally made eye contact for the second time in three days (I’d spotted her at another jjimjilbang two days prior) so I said “Haha, hello again,” but she’d only stared at me and said “What?” without taking her earphones out of her ears.
But when you offered to take the photo of us she took her earphones out of her ears, put her arm around me and told me to give you my phone. We posed as BFFs, for your benefit and ours too, I suppose. What to blame that on? Giddiness after years of having to shy away from strangers? The confidence of a jjimjilbang regular communing with another jjimjilbang regular?
So, Haewon-ssi, you gave me my phone back with your number saved as a contact, you returned to the queue for the men’s area, and V told me she remembered me! “Same here,” I said, thinking she was talking about the spa. But she was talking about a book signing she’d done years and years ago. She’d just given a reading from her latest book, the bookshop had been packed with literature fiends, she’d spent the next hour or so signing copies for everybody who asked. At a chance interval she’d looked up and seen me join the signing queue, an even longer line than this jjimjilbang one. At another chance interval she’d looked up and seen me shake my head, put her book back on the nearest shelf and leave the bookshop empty-handed. “Huh,” I said. I’d forgotten all about it, but of course it all came back to me once she told me about it. She said she’d stored that sight away in her mind because it was humbling.
You facetiously asked what foundations people like us build our friendships on. For future reference, the answer is roasted eggs and the wisdom of ancients. Once we’d changed into our pale orange T-shirts and shorts, I tracked Violaine down and insisted on buying her dinner. She was all no, no, you don’t have to do that, but now that we were in a photo together I felt bad about robbing her of a book sale.
V found a spot in the TV room with a good view of the screens, I joined her with a platter of eggs and two bowls of sikhye, and before we got stuck in, Violaine said: “First of all, Minjeong, let us pray.”
She’d already fetched a book out of her locker—it was the Tao Te Ching. She raised it aloft and read aloud:
Nothing in all beneath heaven is so soft and weak as water. And yet, for conquering the hard and strong, nothing succeeds like water. And nothing can change it:
weak overcoming strong,
soft overcoming hard.
Everything throughout all beneath heaven knows this,
and yet nothing puts it into practice.
“But we will,” I said.
“Amen,” said Violaine. And on the count of three, we cracked our roasted eggs on our foreheads and fell to feasting.
I don’t expect an answer to this, Haewon-ssi.
Look after yourself,
Kwak Minjeong