“I’m fine. I’m at the Park Hyatt. My phone was dead. Actually, it’s about to die again. I wasn’t able to charge it last night.”
“Stay where you are. I’m coming to get you.”
“No—” Dahye started to say. Sillim-dong, where she and Bora both lived, was far. It would take her at least thirty minutes by subway.
“Stay where you are,” Bora repeated. “Don’t do anything drastic.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Dahye said, only to realize that Bora had already hung up. She wanted to leave, but Bora wouldn’t answer the phone. Now Dahye was stuck. She watched as her screen went black.
The receptionist appeared and waved in her direction. “Miss?”
“I said I’m fine,” Dahye said hastily. “My friend is coming to get me.”
“That’s not why I came out,” he said. “We found this in the room.”
In his outstretched hand was Hyukjoon’s black monogrammed Louis Vuitton wallet. She took it. “Thank you.”
He bowed before walking back inside.
The wallet contained a single credit card, faded receipts, six fifty thousand won notes, and Hyukjoon’s driver’s license. The picture was a few years old, and Hyukjoon looked young. His hair was much shorter now. She felt a painful squeeze in her chest. She sat on the curb and stared at it in a daze until a little less than a half hour later, when a taxi came screeching to a stop in front of the hotel. Bora leaped out, sprinted toward Dahye, and pulled her into a rib-crushing hug. “Thank god,” Bora said. She let go and looked Dahye up and down. “You look terrible.”
“Thanks, Bora,” Dahye said sarcastically. “You’re a great friend.”
“Don’t talk to me about friendship right now,” Bora snapped. “You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?”
“That’s what my mother tells me,” Dahye said. Bora let out a loud sniffle, and Dahye looked at her. “Are you crying right now?” she asked, astounded.
“Yes, you dummy,” Bora said, wiping her eyes. “I thought you were dead.”
+
Bora lived alone in a modest officetel that contained only a built-in desk and small bed, a closet the size of a box, and a tiny, cramped bathroom. After her mother had passed, it was all Bora could afford on her own; plus, there was the convenience of not needing her own furniture. There was only a single chair,so they sat on the mattress, the springs squeaking under their combined weight. It was late afternoon. They had slept uneasily around each other, tossing and turning, and in the morning, Bora had called out sick from work, against Dahye’s vehement protests.
“Stop looking at me,” Dahye said, frustrated. “If there’s something you want to say, just say it.”
Bora shook her head. “I’m not looking at you. Stop being paranoid. You haven’t eaten anything since yesterday, have you?”
“No.”
“What do you want?”
“I’m not hungry.”
Bora let out an exasperated sigh. “You have to eat something,” she said. She spotted Hyukjoon’s wallet in Dahye’s hands and took it, opening it up. When she saw his picture, she closed it with a snap. “Are you going to file a police report?”
“What for?”
“You know what.”
“I haven’t got the slightest clue.”
They fell silent again. Dahye stared at the little room. It was barely half the size of the suite at the Park Hyatt.
“Is Hyukjoon going to do anything about this? Where is he right now?” Bora blurted out at the exact moment Dahye was about to speak. “What kind of man is he, leaving you behind in the middle of this shitstorm?”
“So you saw it.”
“Of course I saw it, Dahye. It’s all over the news right now.”