“Fucking hell, I’m so tired of that story. We just protested because everybody was doing it! Everybody was protesting General Park’s constitutional amendment, yelling catchy slogans, because how could we not? If you didn’t join the protest, everybody would’ve thought you were an unpatriotic government dog! It’s different now. I just protested because I wanted you to like me. I have no political ideology of my own. Don’t tell me to read this book, that book, join your ‘group study’ like it’s some sort of holy ritual.”

“You’ve changed since your stepbrother died.”

That’s when all of the evening’s drinks rushed back into my mouth. I ran to the shared bathroom down the hall with my hand over my mouth, but someone had locked the door. I puked all over the bathroom door. Someone emerged to curse me out. By the time I cleaned myself up, he was gone. I had no one to curse at, so I just lifted my middle finger to the sky. Fuck you, motherfucker. Godfucker.

I came back to the room to lie down, still huffing with anger. Jimin held my hand under the covers. Her fingers were raw from her blood-drawing nail-biting habit. We knew we had drawn blood from each other’s hearts with our drunken argument, so we waited to fall asleep holding hands. She usually wrote before going to bed under the nightlight, but not tonight. Around dawn, we kissed. I held back my morning breath as our lips touched. I fell back to sleep.

Now I am putting away the futon and folding the pajamas she left behind. The room feels empty. I feel abandoned. I press the play button of the dusty cassette tape player. “A Bird on a Metal Tower” by Kim Dusu rings out of it. It’s the tape I gave Jimin for her birthday. So she had listened. I thought she only paid attention to Kim Min-ki and Nochatsa.

I open the photocopy of Kim Nam-jo’s poetry collection Jimin had given me. The very first page has an inscription: “Let’s go forward together,” in red, signed, “From, Warrior Jimin.” Warrior, huh? She isn’t as strong as she pretends to be. I usually don’t like the poems Jimin likes. Same with the prose.

Mayakovsky isn’t too bad. I like “A Few Words About Myself,” “Cloud in Trousers.” I heard he was a revolutionary, but his poems are avant-garde. I don’t know poetry too well, but I don’t want to know poetry too well. I’m gonna read one more poem, take a shower, and head out. I open the book carefully, like an illiterate shaman carefully picking a card. The title is great: “I Love.”

I can’t do it alone—

carry the grand piano

(much less

a metal safe)

Then how am I supposed to bring back this—

heavier than the grand piano