“The porridge shop was my idea, and I bought the apartment. And the children raised themselves. Yes, you’ve made it, but you didn’t do it all by yourself, so be good to me and the kids. You smell like rubbing alcohol, so sleep in the living room tonight.”
“Of course! Of course! Half of this is your work! I hail thee, Lady Oh Misook.”
“Half? It’s seventy–thirty at the very least. I did seventy. You did thirty.”
The mother yawned again and tossed him a pillow and a blanket, and the father asked his one and only son to sleep out on the living-room floor with him, but was rejected for stinking of alcohol. That didn’t dampen his good mood as he wrapped the blanket around him like a cape without washing first, threw himself down on the living-room floor, and shortly afterward began to snore.
Jiyoung’s boyfriend entered the army for his military service after completing his sophomore year. Jiyoung met his parents, and followed him to the training camp and cried her eyes out as she said goodbye, but after only a few months she became unbearably lonely. She would sometimes send letters so long she could hardly stuff them in the envelope, and other times she’d get pissed off for no reason and not answer his call. Always warm and relaxed before he entered the army, the boyfriend was now a tightly wound coil of nerves that unraveled at the slightest provocation. The thought that he was wasting the prime years of his life made him depressed, anxious, and angry, in that order. When he came out on leave, save for the sweet moment of reunion, they fought the entire time.
Jiyoung broke up with him. He took it surprisingly well at the time, but drunk-dialed her several hundred times each occasion he came out on leave, texted her in the wee hours—ARE YOU SLEEPING?—and was one time found curled up asleep in front of the porridge shop next to a huge pile of vomit he’d retched up. Rumors spread around the porridge shop building that the second daughter of the porridge shop owner had cheated on her boyfriend in the army and he had deserted his unit to have his revenge.
Jiyoung felt awkward about going back to the hiking club, but stopped in every once in a while to look after the new female recruits. The club was predominantly male, and girls usually left after a few meet-ups. Jiyoung owed her affection for the club to Cha Seungyeon, who swept her under her wings when she first joined the club, and she wanted to pay it forward.
The guys referred to the girls as “flowers among weeds” and acted as if they worshipped them. No amount of refusal could deter them from carrying everything for the girls; the girls got to choose what to eat from the lunch and post-hike menus, and the girls always got the bigger, better rooms when they went on club trips, even if there was only one girl. But then they claimed it was the camaraderie among good-natured, strong men who can josh around together that kept the hiking club going strong. The president, vice-president, and secretary of the club were all men, the club held joint meet-ups with women’s university hiking clubs, and there turned out to be a boys-only mountain club alumni group. Seungyeon always said girls don’t need special treatment—they just want the same responsibilities and opportunities. Instead of choosing the lunch menu, they want to run for president. Most guys just smiled and nodded, but one devoted member of the club—a guy in the ninth year of his PhD—would always repeat the same thing: “How many times do I have to tell you? It’s too much work for women. You brighten up the club with your mere presence.”
“I’m not here to support you,” Seungyeon would say. “If the club needs brightening up, get a lamp. God, I’m sick and tired of this place, but I’m gonna keep fighting tooth and nail until the day a woman becomes president of the hiking club.”
That did not happen before Seungyeon graduated, but Jiyoung later heard that a girl who had entered university exactly ten years after her had claimed that seat. Seungyeon’s reaction was nonchalant: “You know what they say—time moves mountains and rivers.”
Jiyoung wasn’t as dedicated to the club as Seungyeon, but she kept tabs on the comings and goings until the incident of the junior year autumn club trip. They reserved a place at a nearby nature reserve and, after a quick hike, gathered in small groups playing games, foot volleyball, and drinking. Jiyoung felt chilly, as though she was coming down with something, so went into the room where the new recruits were playing card games with the heater on, burrowed into a pile of blankets and sleeping mats in the corner, and pulled a blanket over her head. The floor heating melted away the tension in her body and she drifted off to sleep, lulled by the sound of club members’ voices and laughter.
“Kim Jiyoung’s completely done with him, I think.”
Jiyoung heard someone mention her name. Didn’t you have a thing for Kim Jiyoung. … It was more than just a thing. … Well, what are you waiting for, ask her out. … We’ll help you out, came the sound of several voices. She thought it was a dream, but as she grew lucid she gathered who these people were. It was the group of reserve forces returnees who’d been drinking in the living room earlier. She was wide awake now and a little warm, but she couldn’t crawl out of the blankets when she was inadvertently eavesdropping on an embarrassing conversation about herself.
“Ew. That’s like chewing gum someone spat out,” said a familiar voice.
It was an older member of the club who enjoyed drinking but didn’t force others to do so, and often bought the younger members food, but avoided eating with them lest they felt uncomfortable. She’d always had a good opinion of his level-headed, practical way of handling things. Jiyoung couldn’t believe her ears. She listened harder, but couldn’t deny that it was him. He could have been drunk. Or perhaps he had said what he’d said to overcompensate for being found out about his feelings for her, and had to say something harsh to discourage the guys from playing matchmaker. She thought of many possibilities, none of which helped to make her feel less devastated. Even the usually reasonable, sane ones verbally degrade women—even the women they have feelings for. That’s what I am: gum someone spat out.
Drenched in sweat and hardly able to breathe, Jiyoung remained hidden under the blanket. She was afraid of being discovered, as if she’d done something wrong. A while later, when she heard the guys leave the room and the hall was completely quiet, she crawled out of the sauna of blankets and went into the girls’ room.
She tossed and turned all night. The next morning, she ran into him while out for a walk on a nearby trail.
“Your eyes are bloodshot,” he said, as warmly and calmly as ever. “Couldn’t sleep?” No rest for gum! Too busy being chewed and spat out! she pictured herself saying, but she held her tongue.
The end of Jiyoung’s junior year came, and she began preparing for employment in earnest. She’d been retaking the courses she failed in her freshman year to raise her GPA, and her TOEIC score was slowly getting better, but she was still nervous about her future. She had had her heart set on a career in marketing and was looking for internships or corporate-sponsored competitions in the relevant field, but it was hard to get information through her major department because her major had nothing to do with marketing.
She took some classes at the local cultural center, not so much to learn but to network, and was lucky enough to meet a few people she got along with and with whom she formed something akin to a study group. The group started with three, then someone brought a friend, another left, and the group settled at seven regular members. One of them was majoring in business management at Jiyoung’s college. Her name was Yun Hyejin, a year older than Jiyoung but in the same year because she had taken a year off.