The wheels of the shopping cart rattled against the blinding floors of the supermarket, grating Hye-jin's ears. Her eyes scanned the aisles for some semblance of soy sauce, but all she saw were fish sauce. She clicked her tongue and strolled down the aisle anyway. There might be a section for soy sauce in the middle.
The bundle of hair pulled away from her face bounced against the back of her neck as she walked, its traction long gone. This was why she hated tying her hair—because she had to do it over and over in a day if she as much move a fraction of an inch. She swiped at the locks framing the side of her face and pushed her cart farther. The goods already found inside jiggled with the cart's motion. Sometimes, it's hypnotizing watching that and not the road.
A swirl of denim bled from her periphery. Her heart spiked in alarm, her hands gripping the cart's handle tighter and steering it to the right. "I'm really sorry—"
"Joon Hye-jin?" a familiar voice speared into her ears.
Her head snapped up and her gaze landed on a smile she hasn't seen in a long time. "Allen Chung," she said with a grin. "It's been a while."
Allen shrugged, balancing the bottle of energy drink and a bag of chips in his arms. They moved out of the aisle and into the wider alley to let other shoppers do their thing. "Yeah, it has," he said. "How are you?"
A thousand answers flitted inside Hye-jin's head, but only one, automated answer came out. "Fine," she plucked her phone from the pocket of her baggy sweatpants and checked the time. Still a long way to dinner. "You?"
"I guess 'fine' is also an acceptable reply," Allen replied. Huh. He removed his braces? It used to be the only thing Hye-jin kept in mind whenever she encountered Allen and his chunk of programmer friends. "We should catch up some time. When are you free?"
She snorted. "Now?" she said. "I mean, getting groceries is the next best thing to free time."
Allen, to his credit, didn't say anything about it. Instead, he changed the subject with a quick snap of his fingers and a glint shining in his eyes. "Are you still in the biz?" he asked.
He meant the business of programming and computer science. Hye-jin considered lying and saying she's found something else to spend her time on, but in the end, the truth won. "Yeah, I am," she said. "Why?"
Her former blockmate pulled out his own phone and scrolled through the screen. "There's this foundation who kept pestering me to apply to their language program. Gave me discounted rates and everything. I didn't have the heart to tell them I've moved on," he tapped more buttons on his screen. "Hold on. I'll send it to you."
"Which field are you in now?" Hye-jin asked after her phone chimed with the arrival of Allen's message. She tapped on it and skimmed the dark blue text and shapes leaping at her.
He inched closer to the cooler section and plucked a packet of yoghurt—probably just to feel good and healthy after consuming junk food. "Finance," he said with a roll of his shoulder. "I wasn't too intrigued with technology anyway."
Hye-jin leaned her elbows against the cart's handle. "I was considering moving away from computer science too," she said. "But I'd give this opportunity a try. Glad I ran into you."
"Likewise," he answered. "It's a new language, projected to be the next hype in game development. Thought you'd have more use of it than I would."
She bobbed her head. "Thanks for the info," she said. "Nice meeting you here."
Allen smiled, showing her how well his braces worked. "Don't be a stranger, Jen."
To that, she gave him a dry laugh. "I won't."
As she fell in line for checkout, she checked the link Allen gave her. It's a crash course or something, focusing on a coding language she hasn't heard of. There will be eight weeks of intensive training, featuring online and face-to-face demonstrations. The modules would be provided upon enrollment, and at the end, there would be a chance to pitch a game system using their learning from the course. The advert said these pitches would have a bigger chance of being sent to major game dev companies.
That's the allure, at least.
The sun had started to set when she made it out of the supermarket. She had spent longer queueing than the actual shopping. Again. She tackled the same way home and locked the door behind her the moment she ducked into their apartment. The lights were still off, but with the light of the bright orange sun still streaming from the windows, it didn't look so dejecting.
She rounded the ante and almost dropped the grocery bags when she came across Rin sitting by the dining table. "Jeez, Rin!" she exclaimed. The paper bags crinkled as she set them on the flat, marble countertop. "You could have helped me with these when you heard the door buzz open."
Rin stopped stirring something and turned to face her. "Oh, Hye-jin," he said. "You're here."
An unspeakable ire gripped her gut. She took a deep breath to avoid unleashing it. "Yeah, just finished groceries," she said. "Maybe you can put them in the drawers?"
The chair's legs grated against the floor as Rin staggered up, leaving whatever he's drinking on the table. Since when did he start chugging coffee in the middle of the day? Since when did he start drinking coffee altogether?
Rin pilfered through the bags, unloading the items first. Then, he'd figure out where to lump them together in the cupboards. Hye-jin used to like how methodical it was, but now, she could only say it's too time consuming. He could have stored them away while he was unloading the bags.
Well, whatever.
"I need to talk to you," she began.
Rin raised an eyebrow, the bag of pasta crinkling in his hands as he opened one cupboard door, shook his head, and shut it again. "Aren't we talking already?" he moved to the next door and yanked it open. The hinges whined, reminding her to start oiling everything in the house. "What's up?"
The story came spilling out, and by the time she finished, Rin had finished putting all of the vegetables in the fridge's crisper. "So, I feel like I need to try this out," she concluded. The soft thud of the fridge door snapping shut penetrated the cloud of silence from Rin's end. "Maybe it's not coincidence I ran into Allen today and learned of this. There may be a surprise coming in the horizon. It can be my big break. Or something."
The silence thickened. "Rin?" she prompted. He had sat back down on the dining table in front of his forgotten drink. The steam had long petered out into the air. Still, he drank it. He kept drinking lukewarm coffee.
After a few moments, he sighed and tousled his already-messy hair. "Can you really do it?" he said. "In between all the other stuff we do?"
Her stomach twisted. What's up with that attitude? It's as if the coffee had seeped into Rin's demeanor. "Can't you just believe in me just this once?" she snapped.
"I believe in you," Rin said. "Just that I need to make sure you're not overloading yourself. This thing's going to eat time, and we both know we don't have a lot of that these days. I'd hate for you to burn yourself out."
Hye-jin bit back a retort—one that'd sure to open up a can of preserved meat nobody wanted to eat—and shook her head. "It's just eight weeks," she said. "It'd be over before we know it."
He sighed and his shoulders slumped. She had just enough time to glimpse of a dark cloud drowning his features before the darkness from the city outside the window became too unbearable. Had he been eating? Why were his cheeks more sunken than what she remembered?
"If you really want to, go ahead," Rin said on her way to the light switches. "But there's no shame in dropping it when it becomes too hard."
What was he implying in that statement? Did he already assume she's going to have a hard time and she'd eventually quit? Why would he to that?
It's not like she's had any difficulty with her coding classes in university. In fact, she liked them. Her projects were often praised by the professors, claiming she always went above and beyond what was required, and she could only do that if she understood the inner workings of the language. What's to stop her from learning another? She could take that damned crash course.
If there's anything Hye-jin considered to be her annoying flaw, it was she becomes fixated in proving someone else's perception of her wrong. Rin might have believed she couldn't make it, but she'd show him she could and would.
Besides, she refused to acknowledge the other implication of Rin's lukewarm attitude and uttered statements. It's because he's already calculating in his head how much of chores around the house would be passed on to him the moment Hye-jin started the classes. Maybe he's doing all he could to make sure it wouldn't happen, that she would choose to stay at home and be a nanny all her life. It wasn't a far-off possibility, and she refused to even let a sliver of it touch the corner of his mind.
She was Joon Hye-jin, and she wouldn't be stuck in a loop of survival and mopping up other people's problems.
She hated it when she was wrong. Because admitting one's fault meant acknowledging that at one point, she would have believed something to be true but only to be smacked int he face with its falsity. She hated feeling stupid, and that usually happens when she realizes she had made a mistake.
Like now.
A box of fried chicken sat untouched in front of her, Rin staring at it like he might want one but was too afraid to break the silence between them by introducing a banal subject. Hye-jin's appetite had long flitted down the recesses of her gut upon realizing she would have to face Rin and give him the points for being right.
"How's your day?" Rin asked instead, taking a deep breath as if he's preparing himself for the torrent he expected to come from her. "It's the first lecture tonight, right?"
One glance at the clock ticking in the living room told her it's somewhere close midnight. Ignoring a box of chicken while talking to her husband in the middle of the night wasn't in any of her ideals in living inside a marriage. "It's...fine," she said.
Her stomach swirled with the memories of the first lecture. Inside the brightly-lit auditorium, almost a hundred, bright-eyed students milled about, talking to their peers about the latest web dev trend or some other insider things.
When the lecture started, she was able to follow until the professor started talking about algorithms and data structure. All around her, the students bobbed their heads and jotted down notes. Some raised their hands and asked questions that made the lecturer think twice. Meanwhile, Hye-jin sat there, feeling lost and confused like a kid left alone in the middle of a vast amusement park.
She was the first one out of the room and into the line of buses peeling off the academy's curb. To make matters worse, it had started raining, and she didn't have an umbrella with her. So, when she got home soaking wet, she rage-ordered a box of chicken and waited for Rin to come home. She doubted she'd get any wink of sleep if she wouldn't unload all of her emotions anyway.
"I just felt like a complete idiot the whole time," she continued aloud, picking at the cardboard strips of the chicken's box. "There's this guy who kept questioning the professor and derailing the discussion, making me more confused than the last time something was explained. Oh, and the lady in front of me kept raising her tablet int he air to take photos of the slides, making me lean here and there just to complete my notes. By the time she brings her hands down, the professor has already shifted the to the next slide. And the cycle continues."
"Can't you change seats?" Rin asked, his tone drawn and brittle. His eyes glzed over but he made sure to drain the last drop of tea from his mug. "That sounds unfair. You both paid for the same class."
Hye-jin huffed. "Exactly!" she dunked her hand into the box and plucked the first piece of flavored chicken. The skin had long turned soggy due to being exposed in the air as it cooled, but she didn't care. She talked while she ate, and that's the best kind of therapy for her. At some point, Rin got one piece for himself and nibbled at it.
"Or you can just...stop," Rin interjected when Hye-jin went off the rails ranting about the main material being too vague and incomprehensible. "If you're not happy with it, you can quit. Nobody would get in your way."
She brought her hands down, her soiled fingers itching to get under the water as soon as possible. "I paid good money for it," she said. "Of course, I'm finishing it."
Rin's answer was a small shrug as he shoved the rest of what's supposed to be his dinner into his mouth. Hye-jin's back turned to him as she scrubbed her hands free of the spices and oil.
Maybe it was in her best interest to stop while she's still ahead. Fear blossomed in her gut. If she wasn't smart enough to handle the new language that's going to be used in every game system in the coming future, what hope did she have in pitching to game dev companies? Why was she still in this industry when the chances she had at succeeding in it were as abundant as fish on land?
Hye-jin dug her teeth on her lip until it started throbbing. I'm Joon Hye-jin, she reminded herself. And I'm going to make it.