There is laughter that launches at others like a thousand arrows. Like when my deskmate pulled my chair out from behind me, and the other kids all laughed as I fell flat on my ass. Then there’s laughter that spills to the floor, drip drip, like blood. Like when another child pulled yet another child’s chair out when they went to sit down, and the fallen child clutched the back of their head as they stood back up and laughed along. Even as blood gushed from their head, still they laughed. A friend of mine, who always used to do her friends’ homework for them, would strain a smile and say she did it because it was fun. In the fitness test for PE class, the slowest child ran the slowest right until the end. The others, having already lapped her once, smiled brightly and cheered her on with enthusiasm. Whenever my mom met my homeroom teacher, no matter what they said, she would cover her mouth and chime in with laughter. A face she’d never once shown her family.
I would stare, expressionless, at the laughing people. They seemed oblivious to the texture of their own laughter. I didn’t join in, even as they laughed all together. Growing up, I was always called the “tactless child.” And that was what I was, but I liked my tactlessness. Nothing was funny and I didn’t want to join in with their laughter—that was why I didn’t go to the bunsik food stall with the other kids. When everyone else played with beanbags during PE lessons, I’d slip away quietly to the stands. Despite how far away I was, the excessive, overflowing sound of laughter still reached me. I hated being forced to laugh, and so I didn’t watch comedy shows or rom-coms on TV. I didn’t go to the zoo, either. My first trip to one was for the spring picnic during my third year of middle school. We all wore rabbit-ear headbands and rode the safari train together. I watched the raccoon banging its head against the ground over and over and the ostrich almost entirely bald of its feathers. The kids called the ostrich a “fried chicken party bucket on legs.” They pointed and giggled away when they saw the bear pulling the fur from its own head. The bear mooched over toward the safari train. Then, out of nowhere, it stopped in front of the carriage and stood on its hind legs. The bear opened its mouth wide. Then it roared. All the kids blocked their noses and moaned about its stinky breath. One even threw cookie pieces into its gaping mouth. They all laughed on loudly.
When I started college, I didn’t attend the freshman orientation. Or the group excursion. A photograph showed the others in my year with strange-colored drinks in their hands. Our department’s “traditional beverage”: a blend of tangerine, makgeolli, and soju. Students in the lower years were made to swallow this drink concocted by their sunbaes; these same students would later become sunbaes themselves and make their hoobaes drink, too. Beside their hoobaes’ puckered faces as they drank, the sunbaes beamed proudly.
***
I’d been working as a freelancer for ten years. One day, I got a call from my university’s Public Relations department. The caller introduced themselves as the editor for the quarterly school webzine. Before beginning my studies there, I’d often read the webzine on the university homepage. There was an interview section spotlighting successful alumni who worked in the arts. I’d applied to the university hoping to become one of them myself. This time, they wanted to interview me, they said. You could count on one hand the number of alumni who’d managed to make a living out of their major. My work had been featured in a newspaper once, though it was only a short piece. I’d sometimes been called a “rising star to watch.” Though I didn’t earn as much as my friends in ordinary jobs, I received a steady influx of manuscript fees and royalties and was even able to put some money aside. My life evolved from dormitory to studio apartment, then from studio rental to a 1.5-bedroom, half-Jeonse lease. I looked around that half-bedroom about three paces wide, and gladly called it my office. I threw away my laptop stand and purchased an all-in-one PC. My first ever desktop computer. I ordered a mesh Sidiz chair. It was the first time I’d had a chair that could be calibrated specifically for my body, and that hadn’t already been used by someone else. There was lumbar support and a tilting function, and I could adjust the neck- and armrests to suit my body. An essential piece of equipment for a working writer suffering from a slipped disc. I snapped up a secondhand folding e-bike in mint condition, too. I started paying tax on my earnings, and the state began to recognize me as a self-employed individual with a regular income. I lost my right to health insurance as a dependent, and a notice arrived announcing that I would be registered in the national pension scheme. There were now two extra obligatory payments to be made each month.
I didn’t wake up to an alarm. I didn’t put on makeup or iron shirts. I didn’t wait anxiously for Friday evening to come around. My weekends were whichever days I needed rest. I was the envy of my office worker friends. One said she felt like her backbone had been ripped out of her after sucking up to her boss day after day. Protesting through a forced smile had made her upper lip cracked and dry as a bone, she joked. Having said all this, her pride then revealed itself—You wouldn’t be able to stand it, she said. I had my own pride. The thing I was most proud of was choosing not to stand such things. I was someone who could maintain the blank expression I’d chosen for myself.
I bought an apartment. The landlord had told me they were going to raise the deposit on my previous place. In the space of a year or two, property prices in Seoul had risen exponentially. A higher deposit meant lower rent, but if I wanted a reasonable place to live in Seoul, I’d need to fork out huge amounts each month. I opened the subway app. Following the boundaries of the route map, I looked up real estate agencies. The agent I met at Jiksan Station took me to their show-home offices. Protective film still clung to the buttons in the lift. In the show kitchen, there was a capsule coffee machine and a wine rack. Though the building was only four stories high, there was a clear view of the sky from the living room. In that neighborhood, with its back-to-back multiplex housing units, known as “villas,” it was the only building with a view like that. The window looked out over a vegetable garden planted with willowy spring onions.
“You haven’t considered buying?” the agent asked as she handed me a coffee.
Though I shook my head, one by one I leafed through the pamphlets she’d handed me. At one end of the building’s piloti ground-floor parking lot, they were going to install unmanned parcel delivery lockers and individual storage units for each residence. With my deposit, I could secure a protected loan from the bank, she said. The building was registered as a residential officetel, so electricity costs would be reasonable. Because it was one of the last unsold lots, the estate agent’s office would cover the acquisition tax, and I’d also be exempt from brokerage fees. The agent calculated the principal and interest I would have to pay every month. It totaled up to less than my current rent. With the money I was paying for a twenty-year-old 1.5-bedroom half-Jeonse, I could buy a brand-new two-bedroom apartment. Whether it was Seoul’s Seongbuk district or Cheonan’s Seobuk district, in the end they were all connected on the metropolitan subway, after all. I signed the real estate purchase agreement.
I went to Euljiro, where I selected some light fixtures to hang in the apartment. I put chlorine filters on each tap. I ordered timber online. With the wood, I made a shelf for flowerpots and set it up below the window. I ordered a compact tub to fit the bathroom. On the living room wall, I installed a TV. Finally, I had a separate living room, bedroom, and workspace. Homeownership was easy. All the neighbors moved in and the show-home offices were torn down. Around the time the sales inquiry banner that’d flapped over the building disappeared, the noise of an excavator started to rise up from the spring onion patch in front of my home. Overnight, the lush green scallions were gone. Each morning, I woke up and opened the window to check how high the building had risen. In the space of a single season, my living room view was filled in with a brick wall. The wide-open orchard in front of the onion patch vanished behind it. The twelve-story building was complete. My home had long since lost its view, even its sunlight. Though I acknowledged that I’d gone and bought a house without a clue as to what I was doing, the views from any other villa complex in the city weren’t any different. It felt like something had returned to its original state.
The typhoon passed and the rainy season began. On the ceiling of the second bedroom, I discovered a single bead of water. I scooped it up with the tip of my finger. The next day, I discovered another droplet in exactly the same place. I wiped it up with a rag and placed a plastic washbowl beneath where the water fell. What had started with the smaller bedroom then began to happen in the main bedroom and living room. I stood on the chair and peeled back the silk wallpaper from the ceiling. The trapped water came gushing out. A stench of mold pierced my nose. Black patches were spreading all over the plasterboard. Water flowed between the cracks. The leak detection specialist said that rainwater was seeping through the splits that’d formed when the outer wall had come away during the typhoon. The only solution was to waterproof the entire building. The outside of the building needed cleaning and exterior insulation had to be installed. They’d need to use a truck-mounted aerial work platform, which brought in additional labor costs, and VAT would be added on top. The estimate stated a total of 32,960,000 won. They said that if it was less than a year since the building works had been finished, I should ask the construction company to make the repairs. The construction company had disappeared. It had been established for the sole purpose of building the housing complex, and as soon as sales were completed, the company declared bankruptcy and ditched all responsibility. They had probably set up a new construction company under a different name and were already working on another building. The internet was rife with individuals agonizing over the same problem. People who’d ended up at show-home offices in the same way I had. Like me, they’d signed the contract without knowing what they were doing, and, like me, they’d searched online to find out the procedures for flood and condensation compensation, at which point, like me, they’d discovered that the construction company had done a vanishing act. Pages upon pages of identical cases, once obscured within the search engine, became abundantly clear to those who typed in this particular combination of keywords.
A residents’ meeting was needed. Legally, the external walls were under shared ownership, and so it was only right that everyone contribute toward the costs. I remembered the residents’ group chat. I’d been added when there’d been an issue with people from outside using the parking lot. After I left the message “Apartment 408 has no car,” I switched off the notifications and didn’t look at the chat again. I wrote a long message. I asked that we split the construction fees between us. A reply came back from the residents’ association president suggesting that, because work couldn’t happen until after monsoon season, we discuss again at a later date.
I put on a mask and goggles and filled a bucket with bleach. Into the liquid, I plunged the rag. I climbed up on the chair. On tiptoe, I stretched my arms up high. I wiped away at the mold. Bleach liquid dripped from the rag. It rode my forearm all the way down to my armpit. The glasses fogged up with my breath. When I opened the window to let the smell out, the rainwater blew in. When I came back after going out, I was welcomed by the stench of bleach and mold. I applied bleach and then reapplied it. Monsoon season was never-ending. It rained nonstop for fifty-five days. A record-breaking spell.
As soon as monsoon season was over, I posted another message in the group chat. Five out of thirty residences expressed agreement. The rest said nothing. I messaged each of them one by one. A few blocked me. Most expressed opposition through silence. There was no way to persuade individuals who refused to respond in the first place. They saw my misfortune as nothing more than spam. My only remaining option was to formally notify them by registered mail. Monsoon season was over, and the rain no longer seeped in. The mold stopped forming, leaving only the stains, while the once bleach-marked plasterboard dried up completely. Sitting beneath the peeling wallpaper, I wrote. A year passed like this.
Summer came back around. I brought out the lighter bedcovers and cleaned the air- conditioner filter. Before monsoon season arrived, I had to prepare for leaks. I went to the local hardware store and bought urethane foam and Handycoat filler. The owner instructed me on their use and asked what I needed them for.
“Planning to do it yourself?”
I nodded.
“It’ll only work as a temporary fix. You’ll need to get someone in to do it properly. Need a contact?”
“I can do it myself.”
I connected the foam to a straw. With precision, I sprayed the foam into the cracks. It slowly expanded to fill the openings. After leaving it to dry for half a day, I carefully shaved off the protruding bits of foam with a box cutter. I coated over it with filler. Just as the hardware store owner had said, no matter how carefully I went over the inside, the cracks on the outside would render my efforts pointless. It’d get me through this monsoon season, but no more than that.
The foam lasted the season. But water kept coming through in other places. Bleach splashed on my clothes and left stains on my Sidiz chair. I would dodge the bleach-filled washbowl and mop as I put on my best clothes and headed to yet another wedding venue.
So many of my friends got married that summer. They brought back gifts from their honeymoons and invited me to their housewarming parties. The purchases of their newlywed homes were only made possible with maxed-out loans and support from both sets of parents. Then they started having children, and I drifted further and further from my friends. As they raised their children, they started to look for friends who were struggling with the same things as them. They would begin by gushing over what an incredible experience childbirth and raising a kid was for a woman, and finish with a depressed, “You’ve got it good.” I listened to my friends and cheered them on, but I couldn’t show them empathy. As the same situation repeated itself, I began to believe that each first birthday party might be my last opportunity to express our friendship. And so I tried my best for them. I arrived early to help prepare the food and lend a hand with chores. When I received news that another friend was getting married, I no longer worried about how much money to give as a gift. I put as much cash as I could afford inside the envelope and headed to the venue, expressing through money my gratitude and genuine hope that things would go well for them, even if we were to drift apart.
My loan interest and health insurance costs went up and up. When they calculated my interest rates at the bank, I kept getting classified as unemployed, and when the National Health Insurance Service quoted my health insurance premium, I was classified as employed. I called the Service.
“My insurance has been quoted incorrectly. I’m a freelancer. Not employed.”
“I understand you’ve called about adjusting your insurance premium. Am I right in saying you aren’t working?”
The Insurance Service employee hadn’t accepted the word “freelancer.”
“No, I’m still working. I’m just not an employee.”
“Right, so, you’re saying you don’t have an occupation?”
“No, I’m a freelancer. The places I declare my income are not my workplaces.”
The Service said they needed evidence I wasn’t employed before they could adjust the insurance premium. They instructed me to get certificates of dismissal—provided at the end of a term of employment—issued from the places that’d given me withholding tax receipts, and to submit them. When I included the places that’d paid me 30,000 won for a single poem, we were talking more than thirty in total. To prove I wasn’t an employee with a salary of 30,000 won, I called each and every one.
“You were never appointed a post to begin with, how are we supposed to dismiss you?”
To get a certificate of dismissal for a post I was never appointed to, I exchanged multiple emails with clients who had zero interest in either my appointments or my dismissal. One publisher had already gone out of business, leaving no way of getting the certificate. I remained an eternal employee of this defunct company.
Around that time, I began logging on to “cheongyak” websites. Cheongyak was a points-based lottery system where households could join waiting lists for newbuilds while putting money into subscription savings accounts. Lime Palace La Seine Ecopark Urban, Centrium Lakeaire Sky City . . . The apartment names were as long as the characters’ in a Dostoevsky novel. While other people were doing detective work on construction firms, the surrounding infrastructure, and the going rate, I felt like I’d spent my entire life drawing up relationship diagrams of Raymond Chandler’s detective novels instead.
When I went food shopping, I didn’t chuck things mindlessly into the cart. I inspected the back of the packaging. One by one, I examined the ingredients and nutrition values written up in tiny type. I scrutinized the variety of soy sauce—yangjo, jin, hansik, or sanbunhae. Most of the jin soy sauce advertised as aged for more than five years was actually a mixture of 30% aged and 70% sanbunhae chemically brewed soy sauce. I placed the hansik soy sauce—both low in additives and reasonably priced—in my cart. On blogs, I could distinguish between genuine reviews and ads simply posing as reviews, and I knew how to choose point-accumulating credit cards that matched my lifestyle. Naturally, I had never once been overdue on my credit card or utility bills, and when I was renting, I’d been the kind of tenant landlords loved.
When I’d first decided to make my living as a writer, I calculated how much money I’d need to get through each month. I didn’t enjoy wandering aimlessly around malls window-shopping, and I didn’t enjoy accumulating accessories, clothes, and other supplies at home. I only bought a new pen once the previous one had run out. I liked how light my bag was with one pen, one notepad, and one book inside. I felt more comfortable with getting rid of unnecessary things than with owning things that were necessary. I would earn little as a writer—I was well aware of such an obvious fact, and was just as confident that this fact wouldn’t cause me trouble. Because my dream was simple and because it suited me, I accomplished it with ease. If nothing else, literature didn’t seem to pay attention to the likes of people’s facial expressions. It was in the tenacious search for the truths that people held and their unique perspectives on the world that the many works I had loved and admired shone. That light had already captivated me. It was the brightest world I knew.
A friend had been considering signing up to a cheongyak, and so I accompanied her to the showroom. After telling her I was always up for trying new things that didn’t require spending money, I tagged along. The glass door opened and we were greeted by a suited man. He introduced himself as Manager Park. First of all, he led us in front of the model. With the press of a button, the units lit up according to type. He asked my friend: Which unit would you like to look at in more detail? What’s your budget? How old are your children? Manager Park and my friend walked on ahead, with me following. As I wandered around the unit, I lost sight of the pair. I sat down on the showroom sofa. Meanwhile, I observed the various managers showing people around. After a tour of the whole unit, my friend went for a consultation with Manager Park. She told him she was planning to join the special supply category for newlyweds. Manager Park said that, given she had only one child, she wouldn’t qualify for enough points.
“People who don’t know better think raising a child is so expensive it’s better to have just one. But that’s not the case. You need two children to get selected for an apartment in Seoul. There isn’t much in Korea that costs as much as an apartment in the capital. These days a Seoul apartment will set you back around a billion won. If you have two kids and get selected for an apartment, that makes each child essentially worth half a billion won.”
There was clearly something off about Manager Park’s method of calculation. However, taking into account rising property prices, you couldn’t say he was entirely wrong. He drew up a points strategy plan for my friend. She’d be ineligible for this round, but he told her to get pregnant before registration opened for the second complex about to go under construction. A fetus was also recognized as a child, and she only needed to get pregnant to increase her chances of selection. Once it was established that she was pregnant, she should quit her job immediately. Two working parents meant a higher household income, making the chances of success close to zero.
“Would you keep working if you won the lottery? It’s exactly the same thing. If it’ll increase your chances, of course you should quit.”
The free gifts from Manager Park in our arms, my friend and I left the show home. It was only once I’d said goodbye and boarded the subway that I examined the items. Five boxes of tissues and five bottles of hand sanitizer. I sat down and watched the subway empty out. If a fetus was recognized as a child, the wisest tactic would be to get an abortion as soon as the pregnancy had been confirmed. One child wasn’t worth half a billion won—one abortion was. I couldn’t have been the only one to perform these simple calculations. I opened the browser app on my phone and typed “cheongyak” and “abortion” into the search bar. Among the draws made for the newlywed special supply category in 2019, as much as ten per cent had been deemed void. In order to get selected, men had fake marriages with single mothers, women got pregnant and then had abortions, and children were adopted that would later be given up. I took out a box of tissues from the bag. On it was the model home I’d seen with my friend. I examined the back. Starting from the smallest text, I read: “The computer graphics, illustrations, images, content, and wording used on this advertisement are to aid consumer understanding and may differ from reality.” I typed the digits for half a billion won into my calculator app. Even if I were to put aside a million won a month, I’d be saving for forty years, until I was almost eighty. I opened the cheongyak points calculator. One by one, I entered my information. Given that an owner of a residential officetel like me was categorized as a nonhomeowner, I got more points than I’d expected, but even so, the total came to only sixteen. I’d need at least fifty-four for an apartment in Seoul. If I wanted to stay unmarried and didn’t need to support my parents, I’d have to remain a nonhomeowner until I was fifty before I had any chance of being selected for an apartment cheongyak.
I opened the front door. Darkness greeted me. I pressed the main power switch. On came the lights. I sorted out my bag and stacked the free gifts neatly away in the storage cupboard. Into two separate washing baskets, I put my jeans and white T-shirt. I filled the compact bath with warm water. Into the bathwater, I poured magnesium flakes. I soaked in the water and felt the warmth permeate my entire body. One by one, I switched off the LED lights, and one by one, I switched on the lamps. The inside of the apartment changed, filling with soft illumination. I ground beans to make coffee. Iced coffee in hand, I went to sit at my desk. A sort of ceremony, which I always performed before I wrote. I opened up a blank document and typed a sentence. The ceiling with its peeling wallpaper was grating on me. I stood up and dragged my chair beneath the crack. Standing on the chair, I poked at the filler. It’d cured well. With sandpaper, I rubbed at the rough edges of the filler, then chucked the sandpaper on the floor. I got back down from the chair and returned to my computer. I opened up the internet browser. On the cheongyak homepage, I clicked on the notice calling for tenancy applications. There was a special supply category for disabled people. Candidates for the disabled special supply category didn’t even need a cheongyak savings account.
One summer’s day after I lost two of my toes in an accident, I went out wearing sandals. I hadn’t wanted to hide my severed digits. That damaged part of my body—I wanted to view it as something natural. On the subway, I stood gripping the handle. The man sitting in front of me was looking at his phone, head lowered. He pulled his phone into his body a little and began to stare at my foot. Next, he raised his head to get a look at my face. I kept my eyes fixed on the window. The man’s gaze alternated between my foot and my face. Every time I wore sandals on the subway, I went through the same thing. After first seeing my foot, the person would—without fail—then raise their eyes to my face. At the bathhouse, cherubic children would stop dead in their tracks and stare, mouths agape. Their mothers hurried them away, not wanting them anywhere near me. Some people did double takes. Some tried to help me walk, even though I could do so perfectly fine. Others did their best to look while pretending not to. For some, the sight of my foot made their faces fill with emotion, as if they were envisaging some grand drama. If I demonstrated that I could stand on tiptoe with two toes missing, they looked ready to burst into tears and applaud. On days I wore sneakers, I was treated as abled, and on days I wore sandals, I was treated as disabled. The discomfort I felt didn’t matter. Only when I slept could I forget the uncomfortable feeling in my foot. With each step, to keep my balance I needed to center my weight entirely differently. It required constant attention, much like how my growing fingernails always needed maintaining. I saw the term “disabled special supply category” and immediately remembered my foot. I decided to try and apply for a disabled ID card. Children weren’t the only thing worth half a billion won. The process was simple. All I needed was a diagnostic certificate from a specialist at a hospital that had an X-ray machine. I found a hospital. Removing my sandals, I presented my foot to the doctor.
“I’m trying to get a disabled ID card. I came to get a diagnostic certificate.”
The doctor looked at my foot and tilted his head.
“This won’t do.”
“Why not?”
“It won’t be accepted.”
“Is it not a disability?”
“If you’re missing a thumb you can register as disabled. For toes, you need to be missing all ten.”
“Why’s that?”
“What are you asking me for?”
The doctor laughed heartily. Watching him laugh, I laughed alongside. I left the consultation room. Even inside the elevator, I kept letting out chuckles. It wasn’t uncontrollable laughter. The other person in the lift looked down at my foot. It’ll be the face next, I predicted, and that was exactly what happened. I couldn’t help laughing.
The president of the residents’ association came to my apartment. He said he wanted to see the ceiling for himself. With his phone, he took photos, then climbed up on the chair, stretched out his arm, and felt the ceiling. He’d wanted to talk to me about the repairs, he said. At the back of his mind, the leak in my apartment had been a constant worry. In the meantime, he’d had a conversation with an acquaintance well-versed in construction law. There was a system known as a “defect performance bond.” You could claim insurance money using this system in the event that a construction company vanished without repairing a building’s defects. They could get the repairs on the external walls done without the need for the residents to chip in—all they needed was everyone’s written consent. The president said he would meet with each of the residents and get their signatures. He wanted, however, to get a more liberal quote for the works. If they got a generous insurance payout, and what was left was distributed to the residents once the works had finished, no one would hesitate to sign. He already knew a contractor who’d write them up a quote, as well as an acquaintance who’d help with the insurance application, and all they had to do was to shave off a bit of the insurance money as commission.
I said I’d think about it. If I was caught over-claiming on the insurance, I would almost certainly be fined, and even if it wasn’t discovered, if a defect appeared in the building at a later date, I wouldn’t be able to file a claim. The instant the residents signed and received the cash, they too would become complicit and would be essentially giving up their rights to building repairs. I felt as if I was toeing a strange kind of line. When I was little, I always used to stand on the rubber surrounding the sandpit at the playground. My mom had warned me that playing in the sand would get my clothes and hands all dirty, and so I simply observed the other children playing from the boundary. Dirty, it’s dirty, I kept whispering to myself, but never averted my gaze. Just like that first time when, having walked around and around the borders, I finally leaped into the sandpit, I believed that the time had come to be brave. The fear would likely follow, but it would only last a split second, and after that, I would be able to jump into the sandpit more easily and more often.
The next day, the residents’ association president came to see me again. He asked me if I’d thought on his suggestion.
“Let’s do it,” I replied.
The president smiled at me. My facial muscles began to twitch. My cheekbones lifted and my lips spread out wide. I was smiling, too. As I washed my hands in the bathroom, for a while I stared back at my smiling face. As I watched, my smile was wiped away. My smile was not self-mockery at the choice I’d made. Neither was it substitute emotion to fill the gap as I erased the guilt I felt over my choice. The thought once occurred to me that I’d come to make decisions in life just to avoid smiling. From simple things, like which film to watch at the movie theater, to bigger things, like which career to pursue—each time I chose the path that would allow me to not smile.
I took some dried seaweed from the kitchen drawer. After soaking it, I scrubbed it hard under cold water. I heated sesame oil in a pan and fried the seaweed. Seaweed soup—miyeok-guk—was my signature dish. I could produce a rich flavor without any secret method or ingredient, cooking it very slowly on a low simmer until it was just right. A message arrived from the president. The interior contractor needed to visit my apartment. I grew anxious. It was too much to wait until the seaweed released its flavor. In went the MSG. I tried a spoonful of the soup. It tasted as good as what you’d get in a decent restaurant. I smiled. In moments like this, I’d discovered, I always smiled.
It’d taken only three days for the president to gather written consent from every resident. The construction work took no time at all. As soon as the external walls were finished, the wallpapering team was called in. The newly wallpapered room was flawless. It was like nothing had ever happened. I put my house up for sale at below the market value. I bought some kimjang bags. The dish soap and sponge were first to go inside the large plastic sack. Next, in went the nutritional supplements and red ginseng extract that had been on the dining table. Then, in a single motion, I swept all the spice jars and kitchen tools from the kitchen counter into the bag. Once I’d crammed all the odds and ends in the kimjang bag, I tied it securely and left it on the stairs to the rooftop. Any items with wires, like the vacuum and chargers, I moved to the storage unit. The books that had been sorted by genre, I rearranged by height, and took out those whose titles were too depressing. In the now empty spaces, I placed attractive, eye-catching objects that could act as focal points. The appearance of my apartment grew closer to that of a show home. Right on time, the estate agent arrived. The first person to come for a viewing fell in love with the place immediately and said they’d buy it. I had sold the place at a loss, but felt a joy in having hooked someone in. Once the contract was signed, I walked down the rooftop stairs, the kimjang bag filled with my daily essentials in tow; even then, I was chuckling to myself.
I went beyond the subway map. The further I went from Seoul, the more hopeful I grew about where I’d be living. There were so many unsold apartments. I worked at home, so there was no need to be right by a station, and I wasn’t a parent, so there was no need to live in a school district. Things like shopping infrastructure were also irrelevant to me. All I wanted was for my view not to be obstructed by the home in front. Somewhere that got plenty of sunlight, was well ventilated, and didn’t have mold would be perfect. The agent I met in Seosan took me to Central Firsthill Apartments. In the outskirts, with next to no bus connections, was a large-scale apartment complex with 1,600 residences. It had the same square footage as my previous place, but there was a fitness center and indoor swimming pool in the complex, and the price was also far more reasonable. Though not one of the most well-known, it had been built by one of the top one hundred construction firms, and the apartment was on the twenty-first floor, meaning it got lots of light. There was no need to take out an unreasonably large loan. All I had to do was give up on my friendships in Seoul. The estate agent opened the front door for me. Sunlight filled the empty space. It was such a bright home. I walked over to the kitchen window. I opened it. A fresh breeze blew in. There was nothing on the other side of the window. There were no homes, no trees, and no passing cars. Endless nothing. The view I had wanted. I signed the real estate purchase agreement.
“내가 아는 가장 밝은 세계” copyright © 2021 by Lim Sol-A. Originally published in To Say That It’s Nothing by Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. By arrangement with the publisher. Translation © 2025 by Clare Richards. All rights reserved.
