Umma seemed to be feeling her physical pain in a different way than before. Unlike during her last recovery, she suffered from separation anxiety, and I had to be next to her always. She called for me as soon as she opened her eyes and didn’t eat anything unless I fed it to her. I fed her, supported her at the toilet, cleaned up her vomit, and sat down on the caretaker’s bed to write five thousand to ten thousand characters of an autobiographical novel.

We hired a private caretaker as soon as Umma was moved out of post-op to the regular ward. I would die before she did if I had to deal with her any longer, but more than that, I just wanted to touch him.

It was pure ecstasy to see him again after two weeks. There we were, six months after we’d met, seeing each other’s faces in broad daylight on a crowded street for the first time. He looked a bit different when I saw him in the day. His dry skin looked even drier in the sun, and what I had taken to be the extended length of his eyes were actually deep wrinkles—that was the least of it. Out there among the people, he looked cowed somehow, and his head hung low like he’d been hit a few times.

He was trying not to show it, but I could tell he found it very uncomfortable to walk with me. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t hurt my feelings, but I still felt passionate toward him. My hurt even turned into a kind of pity. Me at twenty-five, him at thirty-seven, our little fingers occasionally brushing against each other’s but our eyes never meeting as we walked down the streets of Gangnam, stealing sideways glances and grins as we talked about nothing.

Just when I was totally soaked in the silly romance of our walk, someone called my name. It was a coworker from my previous company, the woman who ended up getting the permanent contract. I greeted her warmly (and in my mind cursed her for interrupting us). “How are you? I’m the same . . .” He stood a few steps away and scratched at the pavement with his foot. Glancing at him, my former coworker asked me who he was, and I just replied that he was an upperclassman from college. They awkwardly bowed their heads to each other, and we went our separate ways. What kind of a thirty-seven-year-old still hangs out with a twenty-five-year-old underclassman? she might have been thinking. My feelings about this were a bit complicated, but I snapped myself out of it. Life was complicated enough as it was. Why make it even more so?