THE SPACE THAT TAKES YOU IN (excerpt)

PART ONE

Miranda did not belong here.

If the conversation and the laughter that surrounded her was not enough to prove this, then the crowds of youth that filled the road and spilled out of shops were evidence all: young thin men in tight black clothes and leather jackets, silver earrings dangling from pierced earlobes, handsome in their sharp-boned invincibility. Young women moved with confidence in groups of four and five, pale-skinned gazelles whose faces were powdered even paler, lips dashed with pink or—if they were daring—crimson, lashes heavy with mascara and eyes cat-like with liner. They wore and walked in heels higher than she had ever owned, and the primal fear of comparison drove her powerless before them. She loathed the stares she collected as she went, unable to stop them from burrowing into the folds of her clothes and pressing against her skin, and she loathed herself for loathing them. One would think that at twenty-eight she was too young for a mid-life crisis, too old to truly hate herself, and yet here she was, caught between neon lights as bass pounded in her ears.

She felt sick.

She should have gone to Itaewon. Owen had said as much that morning, when she casually mentioned her plans to visit Hongdae. “I want to see the culture,” she had explained lightly, scraping scrambled egg remnants into the trashcan. “You’re always telling me to get out more. Maybe I want to see what all the fuss is about.”

“Yes, and I’m glad,” her husband said. He’d folded away his glasses, laid them on top of the lesson plan he was reviewing. “It’s been nearly a year. But Hongdae, Miranda? That’s where my students go.”

“Which means I can’t?” she laughed as she carried her plate to the sink, knuckles turning white with the force of her grip. “You’re the one in his thirties, not me.”

“Maybe try Itaewon. There are more expats, and my students say—”

She turned on the faucet, and Owen stopped talking.

Her anger propelled her through the rest of the day, past the minutes she spent vacuuming and the hours she dedicated to catching up on the election back home. It was present in every downward slice of the knife as she prepared Owen’s dinner, and it lingered in the echo of the message he left on her phone as the casserole was baking, a scratchy apology that he wouldn’t be home until late—work friends had invited him out—he had to go, Mira, he was very sorry, he couldn’t say no, you know how Koreans are. It was anger that made her halt her usual night-time reading, today some compendium of Korean oral literature, and it was anger that forced her into the skintight dress, first, and then a more forgiving skirt and blouse combo, second. It gave her the courage to make up her face the way she used to when she was twenty-four and newly married, and it fueled her as far as the first busker on Hongdae walking street before it fled.

She’d been stranded ever since, buffeted past shops and stared at by strangers. Soju and perfume laced the air and tangled curiously in her hair, a reminder she had not used enough of either. The ever-present Korean couple, so common they were generic, so happy they were nauseating, ducked out of her way as she stumbled past. Often they would be wearing matching clothing, and she could not help resenting them for it, as if they were participants in some personal and malevolent plot meant to add insult to her Owen-less injury. Clubs and restaurants and shops leaned invitingly out at her, and once or twice their twinkling lights stirred enough bravery in her that she approached them. Occasionally she would even get so close that she could reach out and touch the building if she’d wanted, hear the chatter of diners or get a whiff of sweat and cigarettes, and then a wave of Korean youth would sweep past her—through her—and she would remember that these invitations were not for her. Had never been for her.

She did not belong here.

Under her feet, the street was neatly cobblestoned, the cracks threatening to trip her and send her flying. Neon signs and tall lampposts sent their mixing light into the night sky, rendering the stars invisible and distilling the darkness into fragments of navy blue. Silhouettes of moths fluttered at the entrances to buildings and the occasional pigeon landed in a nearby alley to peck at food scraps and trash. Telephone wire parabolas spanned the length of the road and curved their way through the row of trees planted down the center, a subtle connection of nature to humanity; beneath both, the crowd paused and moved in the stop-start motion of a dance. Awnings of all colors stretched from the fronts of buildings, ineffective in their attempts to umbrella the racks of clothes and tables of phone accessories that overflowed from stuffed shops. Still, she could have found this kind of street anywhere in Seoul. Instead it was the atmosphere that truly alienated her, the humming electric thrum of young expectation and unspoken desire, of money to spend and dreams to make true. It radiated through brick and stone and sky, infecting all who passed, and shimmered at the edges of Hongdae, alluring and dangerous—a lure to youth so bright they had no need for stars.

This was a place to forget mortality, and Miranda liked to fancy herself the poster-child of being mortal. It meant she kept her dreams founded in reality and her decisions based in pragmatism, a lifestyle that kept her head above water even while those around her floundered. She took an unflinching pride in weathering storms and coming through alive.

“Excuse me,” somebody said, and Miranda found herself shunted against a mannequin as a group of people passed her, gorgeous and glittering and stormless. One of the boys near the end paused. He looked as unreal as the rest of them, black hair tinted gold by lights and bomber jacket snug around his shoulders, but it was his expression of curious kindness that anchored him for a moment in front of her, a creature pulled from the slipstream into the real world.

“Ma’am, do you need help? Are you lost?” he asked in careful English. Maybe he was one of Owen’s students, with that kind of politeness. She bit back her sudden anger.

“I’m fine,” she said. His eyes widened at her shortness. “Thanks.”

He nodded. His lips parted, his brows furrowed as he searched for words, and then one of his companions re-emerged from where the rest of the group had vanished, silver earring swinging. He caught the boy’s sleeve, spoke in Korean. Looked at Miranda for the first time, and she hated that she could see his surprise and then his pity as they appeared, shifting across his face until they were replaced with the same kind of studied indifference she was used to. He leaned towards his friend’s ear and said something else, syllables quiet.

She smiled crookedly. There was no reason for them to know that she could not understand.

“Okay,” said the first boy. Dark-rimmed eyes found her face again, and the concern was even worse than the pity. “You—” he began, and she was grateful when his friend tugged at his jacket, two sharp jerks that cut the boy off. He rounded on his friend. “Hyung, hajima,” he snapped, and she seized her chance.

“Good night,” she said, smile fake.

“Ma’am!” called the boy, but she pretended she hadn’t heard, heels slipping into the cracks between the cobblestones as she escaped as quickly as she could without breaking into a run. She caught sight of a woman ogling her unabashedly from outside a nearby restaurant, curly-haired and plump-faced, the apron she wore marking her out as the restaurant’s cook—taking a break, perhaps, or simply there to witness Miranda’s humiliation. See me? Her expression seemed to say. People like us should never mingle with immortality. And the real kicker: Even worse than that, you’re foreign.

If Miranda didn’t already believe that God had a cruel sense of humor, this would have proved it. This, and the fact that it turned out she’d walked pretty far. “Shit,” she muttered as the crowd thinned long enough for her to see just how much street she still had to go. “Shit,” she said again when her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten before she left, assuming she would simply grab dinner while she was out, but of course this was nearly impossible. Unless she stooped to McDonald’s or another fast food chain, eating alone in Korea was an automatic death knell. It was one of the first things she learned after moving, and one of the things she simply tried to avoid rather than accommodate. There were singles-only restaurants—honbap, her orientation class had called them—but she hated the little one-person cubicles, hated the way she would be seated facing the wall like she was in prison. After visiting once she had vowed never to return. Koreans could suffer through their strange cultural indignities alone; this expat was not going to play along.

Owen, of course, did not understand. He always had his work acquaintances, or herself, to fall back upon. Eating alone was a non-issue because it was a novel concept, and their conversations about it would end up devolving into accusations that she wasn’t making an effort, that he wasn’t listening. After a while she stopped voicing her discomfort entirely. His lack of empathy was too profound for her to bridge, and trying just made her tired.

Still—she wished he was with her tonight. His presence, however token, would have allowed her into the restaurants where sizzling meat cooked on table grills.

She was passing several of those restaurants now. She refused to let herself stare, though once or twice, above a platter of steaming seafood or marinated beef, she caught her reflection staring back: thin face and straight nose, unsmiling mouth and blue eyes. The rouge on her cheeks and the shadow on her lids would have been tastefully done, in America, but here in Korea—where dewy freshness and youth were the modus operandi—she simply looked garish. Her hair, too, was unfashionable, and as she passed between buildings she touched it self-consciously, tucking a stray brown strand behind her ear. Korean beauty standards, a different kind of toxic than the expectations of home, could exacerbate anyone’s insecurity. Under Hongdae’s scrutiny her skirt became unflatteringly modest while her best silk blouse clung to every unfortunate curve.

A curtain of straight blond hair exiting alone from a building in front of her caught her attention. She glanced at the slightly plump body it was attached to with a hollow vindictiveness. At least she was thin.

The thought was fleeting, replaced in a fission of shame by curiosity. It was clear the woman was foreign. She stood and stared too long at a sign, traced the Hangul until she found (in the corner, misspelled, right where Miranda had found it earlier) the English translation. Like Miranda she towered over the crowd, though unlike Miranda she did not tower over many of the men. She looked at another sign, some beauty store with bright colors and free samples and uniformed workers, and scurried in. It was only when the woman entered that Miranda realized she’d been walking towards her as if they were friends. As if they were not visitors in a foreign country, dull and out of place on a night-alive street. Her hand had even been raising, attracting a few curious glances. Would the gesture have been a command, a greeting, a plea? Normally she hated small talk, but the standard-issue expat questions—Why are you here? What brings you to Korea? Where are you from?—were tolerable because of the variety of answers. They ranged from those individuals enamored with everything Korean (younger generations mostly, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and far too knowledgeable about the Hallyu wave) to those who simply gave a tired shrug. She herself was one of the latter, though occasionally she mixed in half-truths: her husband’s work was here, she wanted to see the country, it was a situation of circumstance. The full-truths she never mentioned—that her husband had quit his job without telling her, to take one here; that she hated to travel; that she considered herself a victim of circumstance, and of the desire to repair her shredding marriage.

Her stomach growled again. Across from the beauty shop was a tiny restaurant, Japanese lanterns and a string of cloth flags hanging from the eaves. A sign in English proclaimed self-serve udon. From where she stood, she could see a family chattering inside, and beyond them a young man with white-dyed hair eating alone. For a moment she contemplated continuing home, but her decision had already been made. Not even the stress of the night could make casserole sound better than udon, and out of all the places in Hongdae she had encountered so far, this seemed the most forgiving. If nothing else she craved a space that would be kind to her pride.

It was kind to her hunger as well, she was happy to find some forty-five minutes later. The restaurant was quiet enough, and she chose a seat far enough back, that she could watch Hongdae instead of having Hongdae watch her. She ordered a bottle of soju with her udon and drank half of it straight, letting the sweet vodka heat sear down her throat and settle in the pit of her stomach, and then threw the bottle into the trash so she wouldn’t drink the rest. By the time she finally left, satisfied and warm and feeling much calmer, she was only slightly dismayed to find that Hongdae had grown much busier in her absence. It was as if the entirety of Seoul’s college-going population had been poured into this single neighborhood, a concentration of vibrancy whose collective conscious filled the air with an electric hum.

Despite everything it was intoxicating.

She let the soju do its work.