56th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards Fiction Grand Prize: The Things that Go By
Cover of Kim Ji-yeon's "The Things that Go By" / Courtey of Vookda
Written by Kim Ji-yeon
Translated by Diana Akhmetova
Youngkyung appeared only after everything else had already passed. We first met through a dating app. Meeting people that way was always a long, exhausting process. I wrung out every last drop of courage I had, along with courage I didn’t, and kept trying again and again. Most people either stopped replying halfway through a conversation or never showed up at the place we’d agreed on. I wanted to ask why I kept running into people like that, but in this backwater town, the only lesbians I knew were a couple who had never even installed the app and had somehow managed to “let things happen naturally,” ending up in a long-term relationship, and my ex-girlfriend Jaeyeong, who I dated for three years starting in high school before she suddenly ghosted me. Even those three eventually left town, saying they couldn’t see a future here, and moved to Seoul.
A future—what kind of future? Isn’t the future something you’re not supposed to see in the first place? If you could, you’d be a fortune teller. When they left, I clung to their pant legs, asking who I was supposed to hang out with now, but of course it didn’t work. So I kept running the app, over and over, thinking I should at least try to make a girlfriend or even just a friend. But maybe because the population here kept thinning out, even the nearest people were dozens of kilometers away. I forced myself onto long-distance buses to neighboring cities, but more often than not I ended up back on the bus home without having met anyone. So when someone finally appeared who lived in the same city, I told myself I’d try to get along with her as long as she wasn’t completely out of her mind.
Before I met Youngkyung, these were the things that had swept through my life: my mom’s remarriage, my grandmother’s funeral, my dad’s move to the Philippines, the birth of my niece, academic probation, a leave of absence that was really just an escape, my best friends moving to Seoul, and being ghosted by my ex. Every rite of passage and every first-time life event seemed to fly past me in just two years after I became an adult, and I felt like a duck egg drifting down the Nakdong River. Even during the holidays, I had no close relatives left to visit, and neither friendship nor love felt like anything I could rely on. In the early hours, walking home after finishing a shift at the barbecue restaurant, I felt hollow. Entering a cold, empty house that everyone else had abandoned and switching on the light gave me the strange sense of being caught in the act of being alone, which only deepened the loneliness. But after all that, I began to feel like whatever came next wouldn’t shake me so easily. Even so, meeting Youngkyung was still a shock.
On the weekend we’d agreed to meet, I followed the coordinates she sent me. It was a playground about halfway between her neighborhood and mine. There wasn’t a direct bus, so I decided to walk. According to the map app, it would take about thirty minutes. For early May it was already quite warm, but not so warm that walking was unbearable. More than anything, I wanted the time to prepare myself. As I drew closer to the meeting spot, whether from the long walk or from the growing anticipation, my heart began to beat faster.
She was sitting alone on the seesaw. I circled the hedge of boxwoods that lined the playground, pretending to look for the entrance while stealing glances at her. She pushed against the ground with her feet, moving up and down. Each time the opposite end of the seesaw touched the earth, her legs rose into the air, never quite touching down. Her figure flickered in and out of sight behind the playground structures. She had short, jet-black hair, neither permed nor dyed, was shorter than I had expected, and carried a slender frame. She wasn’t my type at all, and for a moment I felt the urge to quietly turn around and leave. But then I thought of all the people who had agreed to meet me and never showed up. Maybe they, too, had spotted me from a distance, decided they weren’t interested, and simply walked away. Thinking that, I couldn’t bring myself to move.
I kept walking along the outside of the playground, pretending to be just another passerby, sneaking looks at her the whole time. At some point, she stopped moving and sat still, hands clasped together. It almost looked like she was praying, and if she truly was wishing for something with that much earnestness, I felt as if I wanted to wish for it alongside her. The way her hands were pressed together gave her the look of a praying mantis. Her long, slender limbs and green shirt probably made the impression stronger. It was the kind of color I would never have chosen for myself, the kind that makes you wonder who would buy it in the first place. But this wasn’t about choosing a date; I was just trying to make a neighborhood friend. And I wasn’t exactly someone who dressed all that well, either. So I doubled back, entered the playground, walked up to where she still sat on the seesaw, and started to speak.
“Um...”
“Oh. Thought I was getting stood up.”
“What?”
“Nothing. You’re Park Misoo, right? Wanna try the swings?”
We’d agreed over text to speak informally, but now that we were face to face, I couldn’t quite get the words out. Youngkyung, though, spoke without hesitation. I brushed off my pants and followed her toward the swings. Up close, walking beside her, she seemed taller than she had from a distance. We sat side by side, swinging slowly without saying much, occasionally trading shy smiles. Then at some point, watching the back of her head as she soared surprisingly high into the air, I suddenly thought of Jaeyeong. A ridiculous thought crossed my mind, that maybe we hadn’t really broken up. After all, judging from her Instagram posts about life in Seoul, she was out drinking almost every night with new people and seemed to be keeping up with her other friends just fine, but she still hadn’t blocked me, not on KakaoTalk or Insta. She hadn’t actually said we were over. What was the last thing she said to me again? Let’s go to Seoul together, I can’t live here anymore—was that it? I think I said something like, just wait a little, and she said okay. But not long after that, she went to Seoul alone and cut off all contact.