You don’t come home anymore

Credit to Joss Taylor Olson for brilliant editing and creative writing expertise.

My phone lit up – 8:30 PM. I went to clear the notification, the way one does practically without looking. But I did look, and the barest glance was all it took to hook me. There was a new message on Kakao Talk, the most used messaging platform in Korea. Strange. It would be 9:30 AM back home. I thought of where most people would be at this time: jammed in cubicles in hundred-story buildings, hungover from our typically alcohol-driven corporate culture, about to start their days.

There was a new message in a group chat with two names I did not immediately recognize, one male and one female. It said in Korean, “You probably don’t remember us…”

“You don’t come home anymore," the guy continued. "Not that there’s a reason to. I was curious to see what happened to you, who else was able to get out of this miserable place. Found you online.”

“So, you both got out?" I asked. I wasn't sure what else to say. "Where are you all now?”

The man responded, “I work at a company in Seoul now, a small one, but it pays.”

“I’m still here,” replied the woman. My heart sank.

Then it sank further. “I’m a prostitute.”

I had never really had any childhood friends. Living in poverty, it was every man, woman, child, dog, cat, and cockroach for themselves. Life was a brutal competition just to find one meal a day, to go to sleep with a semblance of sustenance and fulfillment, to have left some imprint of our humanity on the world – as if to say, “Hey! I exist!”

At best, I would describe the other kids as uneasy allies in a war against circumstance. We were all suspicious of each other, wondering who would steal what, who would be a bully, and who was the most likely to stab you.

I vaguely remembered the woman in the conversation, but as a little girl that used to live next to me. She was slightly older than me, enough that in Korean it was etiquette to call her onni, or older sister. I recall she had a pretty smile, even through all the bruises.

We never talked much, but we would sometimes walk up the nearby mountain in silence and go to the Buddhist temple together to meditate – or in my case, fall asleep and get lectured by the monks. I never had the patience for meditation as a child, but she did, and it was something we could do to get a small reprieve from the normal day-to-day.

But my favorite memory of ours was something we couldn't just walk up a mountain and do.

One day we had both somehow scrounged enough for a meal or two worth of snacks. We were both hungry, but instead of making the adult decision to buy food, we ended up walking to a PC Bang (an internet café of sorts) and spent our money renting computers to play Starcraft: Brood War. We went to sleep hungry that night and unable to afford food, but we had gotten to pretend for a couple of hours that we were just normal kids, playing as strong alien races fighting to the death in space. With the ability to play as the aliens, she never understood why I preferred playing as the Terran (humans). “Ew, humans! Why would you want to play such a terrible, useless race?” she'd say. By way of response I would click on the unit called a Valkyrie, so she could see the portrait of a strong-looking Russian woman pop up. “But look at this girl!" I'd say. "We’re badasses in the future!”

In some ways, maybe I never stopped pretending.

She had a much better memory of me as a child – because I was "crazy.” Crazy for being so stubborn in thinking I could get out of that place, out of that situation. She recalled me spending hours upon hours locked up in the public library reading, studying, and scheming up crazy ideas about going to the U.S., a land of incredible opportunity. It all sounded too good to be true. Escaping was just that: escapism.

Driven by memory and maybe even a sense of imposter syndrome, I jumped to respond to her statement. “Let’s get you over here as soon as possible. You can stay with me. I’ll pay for everything.”

My onni sent back a laughing cat emoji with the message, “I can’t be saved. I don’t want your money.”

I felt ashamed. I had committed the same egregious crime that people with privilege often do: try to throw money at a social injustice once and expect it to resolve a problem created over centuries. I despised this behavior as a child. I had never wanted a handout, but rather an equal opportunity – a real chance at life. So did she, in the way that had carried her this far, to my evening, to her morning.

“I just want to talk.”

So we did. We talked about everything: our shared challenges at work, the way we struggled in male-dominated cultures and industries, the latest happenings in the Korean breakdancing scene, our aspirations. She told me that in five years, she just wanted to be free. Free from the obligations of men, of her landlord and anyone else. Find a nice place in the mountains and run a tea shop where anyone could come in and have a normal, human conversation and be treated equally. Where your past did not matter. The more we talked, the more I felt that we were the same. We could have easily swapped places.

Finally our conversation started to come to an end, in the way that promised another. “Well, until then…” I started.

She finished. “Want to play Brood War?”