“Well, I wasn’t really looking for a reward …” I coyly trailed off like I was some sort of kind animal rescue volunteer. I couldn’t tell her what I was really thinking, not to her face, comically mottled with mascara. I hoped she’d just give me some cash and let me go, but she kept on asking what my name was, where I lived, what I was majoring in, all while her eyes were rapidly examining me up and down.

“Okay, okay. What do you think about working here? It doesn’t matter if you have no experience as a server.” She trailed off, watching for my reaction. “This is such a fortuitous situation, I will pay you a better rate.”

1. Sunbe is a term used by underclassmen to address older students. In Korea, it’s expected to address others in terms of their social relationship to you, with names for upperclassmen, boss, older brother, younger sister, etc.

Instant Days

Instant Days

I drank too much with the café owner that night. When I got back to Jimin’s place there was no one there. The room was a mess. It looked like the secret police had raided the place. The chairs were toppled over among beer bottles, and books, notes, and pamphlets were strewn about everywhere. I zigzagged left and right to clean up the place. A little later, Jimin was back and explained that there had been an argument among her friends, but they eventually stopped fighting out of consideration for her. She’d just seen them off. I drank from one of the open bottles and curtly asked why they had to do the group study here. I shouldn’t have said it, I was just a freeloader who wasn’t paying rent or buying groceries—not even a single ramen packet—just hanging out for over two weeks now, a full moon cycle. I added further insult by telling her about my new job.

“You don’t need to work at a shady place like that,” she scolded. “I never asked you to pay rent. What was the point of running away from home if you were just going to walk right back into another shithole. It would be better to starve.”

“You don’t know anything about me!”

“You’re being irresponsible! Think about it. What year are you living in? You just stroll through campus, molotovs and tear gas in the air, and you don’t feel anything?”

“Yup! I’m a clueless airhead. So what? Am I supposed to be like you, memorizing manifestoes and communist curricula, breaking bricks to throw at cops during a strike?”

“Think about the summer we met!”