Flowers of Mold & Other Stories Read online

  You unfasten your watch. When you put the pin through the next hole in the strap, an ominous feeling comes over you. You’re at the Seoul tryouts for the National Games to perform your uneven bars routine. There, your premonition becomes a reality. You could have done the routine with your eyes closed. Swing from low bar to high bar, grip, then cast to handstand, hold, release and catch bar three times in a row, somersault and catch bar again—the routine was as familiar to you as breathing. But instead of catching the bar again, you clutch at air and fall helplessly to the mat. To finish your performance, you take hold of the bar again. In the hope of making up for your deductions, you become too ambitious, and attempt a triple somersault instead of a two-and-a-half for your dismount. You’ve been practicing the triple salto on your own, but making it barely two times out of ten. You release the bar and flip three times in the air. Instead of landing on both feet, you plant your rear end on the mat. You receive a 7.8 out of a perfect 10. A student from another school becomes the Seoul representative.

  At school, you sit at the very front of the classroom. You copy down the math problems from the chalkboard, but because of your frequent absences you can’t understand any of the questions. Just then, the student behind you pokes you in the back with a pencil.

  “Hey, you mind lowering your head a little? I can’t see the board.”

  In half a year you’ve grown nearly five inches.

  You’re now the tallest on your team. Before you can manage two flips for your dismount, you land on your bottom. Your rear end, somehow having filled out, hits the mat with a dull thud, like a ripe persimmon bursting as it plops to the ground. The other gymnasts laugh. Once again people start to call you Birdie, but this time, it’s for a different reason. Every day you stay late to practice on your own, but even hanging from a bar becomes difficult because of the weight you’ve put on. The girl from your childhood, the one who fell face first from the swings, comes to mind. You keep falling off and each time, you chalk up, spit into your hands, then leap up to the bars again. You even run out of saliva to spit into your hands. The gymnastics equipment is spread out around you. You find yourself thinking more and more about falling off than climbing on.

  •

  The coach calls out to you as you’re about to remove your shoes.

  “Don’t bother, I just need to see you for a minute.”

  You realize at some point you’ve started to tower over her. You recall the first day you met her. Since then, she has gotten married and become the mother of two, but she hasn’t changed a bit. She’s barelegged as always and dressed in a short skirt. She taps the springboard with her stick.

  “What in the world are you eating? Did somebody come up with a magic growth pill? Who would have guessed you’d shoot up like a bean sprout overnight?”

  Her voice echoes in the gym. She’s the one who’s angry. You stand in front of her with your head hanging down, as if you’ve actually eaten something you shouldn’t have.

  “I’ve seen cases where people had to quit because of an injury to their Achilles tendon or spinal cord, but never something like this. Maybe it’s better this way. After all, a gymnast’s career is so short.”

  As you shove open the gym door, the coach calls out to you one last time. “Study hard, all right?”

  Walking down the hill, you consider your options. Your palms smelled of rosin and spit no matter how often you scrubbed them with soap, and you felt more comfortable with the uneven bars, vault, and balance beam than with math, English, and Korean. You and your coach had believed you were done growing. Never, in your wildest dreams, had you imagined you would be tall one day.

  You return to your eleventh-grade classroom. It’s almost midnight when you get home after the review sessions. You take out your old textbook from tenth grade, but it’s scarcely any easier. You occasionally go to the gym to practice. When you make a mistake, the coach no longer comes running. You don’t even get in trouble. Sometimes you walk up to the gym door, but end up circling the building, unable to go inside. The orange glow coming through the window seems inviting. You stand outside, listening to the sounds of practice: the thump of bodies hitting the mats, the gymnasts’ spirited cries, and the coach’s fierce voice. Then you head home.

  Dressed in a tracksuit with your gym bag in hand, you stand in front of Changgyeong Palace. To this day, you still don’t understand why you went there. You probably remembered the zoo from childhood, but it’s been moved to a new location. While you wait for the palace doors to open, you eat a corndog and some fish cake soup.

  At the break of dawn you’re the lone visitor. A few times, you walk slowly past Changgyeong, then across the bridge toward Changdeok Palace and back. You’re joined by a crowd of Japanese tourists, who chat nearby in their language like the whine of mosquitoes. You sit on a bench in front of an old hut, an area most people don’t seek. A flock of pigeons swoops down and pecks at the ground. You buy a bag of popcorn at the concession. A swarm chases after every handful of popcorn you throw. One is missing a left toe and another has a sty in its eye. There’s also one standing motionless in the same spot, blinking very slowly, while the other pigeons surge greedily. You watch this pigeon. The PA system announces it’s closing time. You grab your bag and are about to get up when the pigeon you’ve been watching collapses. For the first time in your life, you witness the moment life escapes from a living thing. All the visitors leave, but you continue to stand there, even after the concession clerks have gone home. The sun starts to set, and everything quickly grows dark. All the pigeons have flown off except for the one by your feet. Rigor mortis has set in. You open your bag to find something to dig with, but find only your leotard, a roll-on muscle relaxant, a notebook, and some pens. You start to dig with your pen, but it breaks. You use your fingers instead and dig a small hole. Blood forms under your dirt-filled fingernails. You shroud the pigeon in your leotard, lay it to rest in the hole, cover it up with dirt, and pat it down with your foot. Two security guards walk toward you. Before they see you, you scramble up onto the old hut behind the bench. The guards’ flashlights move away. Sitting on the tiled roof, you gaze out into the woods, toward the lake and the bridge, but all you see are different shades of darkness. You peer at shadows to guess where the zoo used to be. From the top of the roof, you watch the sun come up. You climb down and walk toward the main entrance, but it’s closed. For you, climbing over the Changgyeong Palace wall is a piece of cake.

  You miss a day of school, but nobody notices, since it’s more common for you to be absent. You no longer go to the gym. Around this time you hear Yunhui has entered a seminary. By the time you’re off the gymnastics team for good, you’ve grown even more. You’re now five foot five.

  •

  Your old watch stops often now.

  “Excuse me, Miss, do you have the time?”

  You’re on your way back from the bank, where you’d gone to make a deposit before closing time. You help with the accounts at an apartment manager’s office. Six years older and a graduate of a trade high school, the bookkeeper you work for always dawdles and finishes her work only when the bank is about to close, making you run every day. The way back takes twice as long.

  “Miss, what’s the time, please?”

  The scooter blocking your path—you realize you’ve seen it before. You peer at your watch. “It’s two thirty.”

  Confused, the man looks up at your face.

  “That’s strange. It was around two thirty when I was having lunch. Are you sure it’s two thirty?”

  There’s a belligerent quality to his eyes. The second hand on your watch isn’t moving. You hold your wrist up to your ear, but don’t hear anything. When did it stop? You realize you haven’t looked at your watch for a long time.

  “It’s okay, thanks anyway. Hey, do you take the number 62 bus?”

  You’re confused by his question.

  “I see you waiting at the bus stop, same time every day. You know a water strider? The in
sect with long skinny legs that stands on water? You remind me of one, the way you stand at the bus stop. There’s a watch repair shop on the main street, and a store next door with a big sign that says Movie Town. I work there. It’s right across the street from the bus stop. I guess I’ll see you around.”

  With that, he starts to putter off on the scooter. But then he yells, “It’s actually five to five right now. And my name is Kang Hyeokjun!”

  While the watch repairman puts a new battery in your watch, you look out the window. Across the four-lane street is your bus stop.

  “Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve seen one of these. I used to wear the same brand myself when I was a kid. They don’t make them anymore. They’ve come up with these ones instead.”

  The man slides open the glass display and takes out a couple of watches from a bed of cotton. He sets them down on the glass.

  “Take a look. The same manufacturer makes them. I’d say the design and quality are just as good as imports. I’m not asking you to buy one, all I’m saying is take a look. And what’s wrong with owning more than one watch? This here with the leather strap is a great casual option, and this gold one is an excellent choice if you want a fancier look.”

  You hold one up to your ear in order to hear the second hand, but the shop is full of ticking noises. On the back wall are clocks of every kind, from wall clocks to alarm clocks with cartoon character designs. The hour and minute hands all point to the same time. You pick one out and use it to set your watch.

  You stop by a bookstore and buy a full-color insect picture book. Within its pages is a photo of a water strider, darting over the water with long slender legs as taut as guitar strings. If a raindrop should hit it or the current turn rough all of a sudden, it looks as if it would get swallowed up. But as vulnerable as it appears, it also has a kind of charm. Why must it walk on water? There’s more than enough land in the world for its legs to stand safely on. A water strider uses surface tension and the long hairs on its legs to walk on water. You picture it gliding across a pond.

  The front window of Movie Town is plastered with posters advertising video release dates for the latest movies. While you wait for your bus you keep glancing at the store. The man’s job is to deliver and then pick up the videos people order on the phone. Sometimes his scooter would be parked out front on the tree-lined sidewalk. At age twenty-three, you watch him as you once watched Yunhui. The #62 comes and goes without you on it.

  “You just missed your bus! What are you doing?”

  You didn’t notice the scooter drawing up behind you.

  “Did you hear me? Your bus just left. It’s already the second one you’ve missed.”

  Instead of getting on the third #62, you sit across from him at a café called Jardin. You didn’t realize it when he was sitting on the scooter, but the man is much shorter than you. A girl in a green apron sets down two cups of coffee.

  “Wow, you’re taller than I thought. Five foot six?” he says.

  You grew a little more after you graduated from high school. You’ve never actually measured yourself, but when you talk to the men at work, you’re at eye level with all of them. You’re no longer a small high-school girl who picks out clothes from the juniors section.

  He smiles awkwardly while adding sugar to his coffee.

  “You like short guys?”

  You saw many male gymnasts at various tournaments. They, too, were short compared to the other male students. You were used to short men. He tells you he was once a child star who played the lead in a children’s show.

  “Believe it or not, some people still recognize me. It’s really embarrassing when they ask for an autograph.”

  He goes on to list a few actors he worked with who have risen to stardom. The names are familiar. He didn’t grow after the age of fifteen. He’s still waiting for the chance to make his big screen debut, and in the meantime, working at the video store wasn’t a bad idea—he might as well hone his acting skills and watch movies for free. He has memorized every famous movie line and could even talk with a cigarette dangling from his mouth like Humphrey Bogart.

  “The person who’s supposed to grow stops growing and the person who isn’t supposed to grow ends up this tall? ‘Life isn’t always what one likes, is it?’ Have you seen Roman Holiday? It’s from that movie.”

  So like all couples, the two of you sometimes go for a beer or catch a midnight flick. He tries to recite the right movie line at the right time and place, but he makes you laugh instead by toasting you with the famous line from Casablanca—“Here’s looking at you, kid”—when you clink beer glasses together. He also makes you laugh when he says, “Nor art, nor nature ever created a lovelier thing than you” as he is leaving after walking you home. When he kisses you for the first time, it’s “Don’t kiss me. If you kiss me, I won’t be able to leave.”

  He isn’t where the two of you agreed to meet. You wait for his scooter in front of the video store. But when it arrives, it’s a stranger who’s riding it.

  “Didn’t Hyeokjun come in today?”

  The man says he doesn’t recognize the name and tells you to go ask inside. The owner, who’s checking in some videos, recognizes you.

  “He doesn’t work here as of today. What do you expect with guys who work at a place like this? They migrate like birds, flying around from place to place. He asked me to give you this.”

  He hands you an envelope. There’s a single sentence written in the center of a blank page: “I’d rather lose you than destroy you,” and below in tiny print, “Maria in Maria’s Lovers.”

  “What’s it say? He didn’t tell you some nonsense about how he used to be an actor, did he? Told you his name was Hyeokjun? I bet you that’s fake, too. Probably has over ten names he goes by. Hyeokjun—yeah, right!”

  You decide not to believe the owner. You cross the street and stand at the bus stop. The #62 goes by. You don’t even know his name. Everything he did and said to you for the last six months—he could have taken it from some movie. Although he borrowed a line to say goodbye, you think the words “I’d rather lose you than destroy you” are true. A movie you once saw crosses your mind. In it, Audrey Hepburn says to Cary Grant, “Oh, I love you, Adam, Alex, Peter, Brian … whatever your name is.” As you walk down the street you mumble to yourself, “Oh, I love you, Hyeokjun, Kyeongshik, Eunho, Changmin, Minsu … whatever your name is.”

  Your trowel doesn’t work very well—the ground is too hard. And you can’t quite remember the exact location either. Since the hole you dug wasn’t deep, you should be able to feel it if you poke the ground with the trowel. The pigeon should have rotted away without a trace, but your leotard, made of a cheap nylon weave, won’t decompose even after you die. Perhaps a heavy downpour swept away the top layer of earth, leaving the leotard in plain view, and the custodian tossed it out. All day until sunset, you poke and prod at spots that look right, but nothing turns up. You end up digging dozens of holes in front of the old hut you climbed that night. In the end, you start to think perhaps you had it all wrong and buried it somewhere entirely different, maybe Changdeok Palace and not Changgyeong Palace. That day, you’d walked back and forth between the two palaces at least five times. You’re not even sure which wall you jumped—the one near the Donhwa Gate or the one near the Honghwa Gate. To your inexperienced eye, all the traditional buildings look the same.

  •

  Twenty-six years old, you soar through the sky. You, who stayed airborne for only a moment when you jumped from the swings, can now stay in the air for as long as you want. You belong to the hang gliding club called Icarus Wings. From high up, the houses and trees below look like they’re stuck together. Once you’ve completed your test flights on ground and the bunny hills, you’re able to hang glide from higher places. Once a month you attend the club meetings. The president of the club warned beginners not to be too ambitious. In hang gliding, there is something called the glide ratio to target, the ratio of the distance glided to t
he distance fallen. Although you haven’t quite mastered it, you’re able to stay aloft longer than the other beginners. In order to turn, you twist yourself to the left and to the right. You navigate the glider by moving the bar, which changes the direction of the sail. When you land, your gymnastics training is obvious. While others waddle unsteadily with their rear ends sticking out like ducks and then are dragged by the glider, you pull off a flawless landing.

  You go up a mountain with expert pilots. Your hang glider, transported to the end of the road by car, must be carried to the summit. Under your waterproof parka, your clothes are soaked with sweat. At the top, you assemble the glider, attach the sail, and put on your helmet. You’re fully aware of what to do in case of an emergency. Those who are more experienced go first. They sail slowly down the mountain in wide, gentle arcs. Since the current can change at any time, depending on the temperature and topography, you pay close attention to the person who goes before you. Below the cliff is a dense growth of pines with an occasional crag jutting out. You must sail over this area and land in a flat field. You take a running start and jump. You find yourself buoyed upward. It’s as exhilarating as sticking your head out the window of a racing car. The sweat you worked up from the climb dries. Far below you can see the path you took, snaking its way to the peak. As you begin to pass the pine grove you see the landing area. Your companions who have already landed are waving at you. But the moment you try to square yourself to land, your sail begins to rattle violently. Suddenly the wind hitting your face changes direction. You push the control bar to the left, but a gust of wind from below sends your glider shooting up. In the blink of an eye, you’re far from the field. You move the bar this way and that, but the sail doesn’t obey. Another gust of wind hits you, this time from your right. Your glider starts to nosedive. You struggle to stay in the air a little longer, but it’s no use. You’re sucked into the pines. A wide crag looms up, you let go of the bar, and cover your face with your hands.