What the hell? I thought, turning around to look at him. He lay on the bed facedown and naked, having kicked away the blanket. His back, as usual, looked like a child had drawn on it while he was asleep. His rhythmic snoring resounded through the room. I turned back to the computer and read through the bookmarked article. “Southern” Korean society, foreign capital . . . I paid special attention to these strange words. I couldn’t understand them no matter how many times I read them. He’d used similar words with me before. Something sticky and vile, like slime, was engulfing me. Was this what he really thought of me?

I read through a few more pages in his browser bookmarks before closing the tab. All articles on the “disease” or “social ill” of homosexuality. I erased the browser history and turned off the monitor. Better to just carry on as if I had seen nothing. Especially since I was used to choosing to see nothing. I lay down next to him. The ruined graffiti of his back filled my field of vision. I traced my fingers over each line. They felt cold. Even after I covered us with the blanket that he’d kicked off, the chill did not go away. I curled up into myself with my back to him and suddenly felt that I was owed an apology. From whom?

The idiots who blamed homosexuality for every stupid thing? Or the specific idiot next to me for smothering himself in that bullshit and being unable to accept himself for what he was? Or the other idiot who fell for the first idiot, even when he knew the first idiot was an idiot, who fell for him so hard that he dug through his computer to know everything there was to possibly know about him? Maybe I was owed an apology from all of the above. Or maybe from none of them.

Maybe from Umma.

I really wanted a sincere apology from her. To hear her say, at least once in my life, that she was sorry. But that was never going to happen, was it? The thought that it would never happen turned my resentment into self-mockery for having thought such a thing in the first place, which then led me to think that I should just get my things and go. I got up, leaving him snoring on the bed. And for the first time ever, I left his house before daybreak. Like the decadent by-product of American imperialism and Western capitalism that I was.

◊

Around this time, I got a call from one of my old bosses from that company I’d worked at as an intern. Unlike me, running in place on the hamster wheel of life, she had moved ahead to lead her own division. They had just landed a North American contract worth ten billion won and needed workers desperately. While they could only sign people on with temp contracts, the workers could have their time count toward relevant work experience later if they went on to be hired permanently. We both knew this promise of a permanent contract was her dangling a nonexistent carrot, but things were dire enough for me to reach for it anyway. I kept bowing on the phone (as if she could see me), saying, “I’m your man.”