These Sainted Seouls | ongoing

section ten: Na-kyu

Then they would cook something, she decided, him teasing her and holding the food just above her reach and taunting her for kisses. The dishes all a mess that would clean themselves (he ran the city, after all) and sweetness on her fingers as they ate raw cookie dough in front of a crime drama, the best kind of television, in her opinion. Or they would go out: there was a thrumming part of the city that ran like Hong Kong and Singapore thrown together, the electricity vibrant in low, red awnings and tight shops and sudden buildings scraping up to an invisible sky; there were secret, beautiful restaurants where invisible hands served food heady with spices and local magic: things from all of asia and europe and america. They would be alone and it would be gorgeously romantic.

She stood in the kitchen, thinking this, and suddenly there was a boy standing before her. She slipped backward, crashing into one of her vases and falling to the tile with the shattered glass. "Shit," she gasped, looking accusingly at the boy. "You scared me."

She had never seen him before. He was young, with too dark eyes and skin bleached with modernity. He was a stranger in the city.

"申し訳ない、もうしわけない," he said.

"What?"

"ごめんなさい."

"I'm sorry," she snapped. "But I don't speak Japanese."

"Maybe you did," he said. "Once."

"What?" she said again, breathless. She came gingerly to her feet and stepped out of the glass.

"It's lucky you were wearing shoes," he said solemnly. "Or you would have bled."

"How did you get here?" she said, crossing her arms. "You're what--seven? Eight? Why would he have you in this city? What emotion of his could you possibly represent?"

"Maybe I have nothing to do with him," the boy said, tilting his head and smiling. "Maybe I'm here for you."

"No," she said. "That's impossible. I just haven't seen you before. I thought I knew everyone in Saint Servera--but maybe there are just some who've been hiding. Is this some kind of joke? How did you get into the apartment?"

"How did you know I was speaking Japanese?"

"I didn't--I mean--I've heard it before, I guess, on the T.V. We've watched anime, sometimes--"

"Liar," he said, and he gave another glitteringly odd smile. "You know it from inside yourself."

"Are you with that Chae Yi girl?" Na-kyu said, trying to put things together. "Are you from--reality? From outside Saint Servera?"

The boy shrugged.

"Did he let you inside his city too? Shit. How can all you come inside so easy when I can't even get out? When out is the only place I want to be."

"You want to get out? This place is a paradise." He gestured vaguely toward the window, and she knew it was true: that Saint Servera was draped in all possible luxury and that she was cocooned from hatred and sickness and human malice. But the rivers inside her were growing thicker and she was always unsatisfied. It had only gotten worse since he'd brought Chae Yi inside. The belonging between her and Lee Na-Sung was thinning but it was all that she had, and she would fight for it.

"What good am I for, inside here?" she laughed, the bitterness rising to the top of her skin. "I'm supposed to save him. How can I do that if I'm locked up inside his head?"

"Also," the boy said.

"Also," she whispered. "What happens to me if he dies?"

The light in the apartment was falling; she was dimming with the growing blue fog. The boy being a stranger and almost like a ghost did not seem to matter anymore. He fit perfectly into the shadows of her kitchen; she felt to some degree that she was only talking to her conscience and that he was a phantom of her exhausted mind. It took something out of you, being alone for so long.