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Tips of smoke’s tail lingered in my lungs.
The water circled around my ankles as if the waves were overgrown puppies chasing each other. I held the hem of my nightgown pinched by my thumb and index finger, ruffling the fabric between them, making a maze out of the soft labor of a silk moth.
Write down a wish on a piece of parchment.
Fold it in two.
Carry it to the sea at midnight.
Set it on fire.
It’s been some time since I watched the spark turn into a flame and the flame swallow the page. It’s been a while since I saw the specks of what were previously ink and paper travel towards the open sea in the form of ash and dust. Go along, little wish… Please, don’t take too long…
The small head of a burnt match stained my fingers black. To try and change the ending of… this would be like asking the universe to spin backward. Brief dizzy spells rotting into brain-splitting headaches which drop into the sleepless nights like overripe plums drop into the mud. There was no doubt about it… The curse of the sacred bloodline continued blooming within me – a constant reminder that I am still in debt, a reminder that I owe this world another of our kind. But bringing the fruit of this womb into the world would just be binding another soul to the bloodline which demands something a little more than self-sacrifice and a little less than self-slaughter.
And then the cycle restarts.
I want children. I want to cradle them to sleep in my arms, sing lullabies, hold their little hands in mine, knit soft toys and warm clothes for them, hear them call me “mother”… But I would just be leading the lambs into the slaughterhouse…
I presume you are somewhere thinking the same things tonight, aren’t you, Won? I wonder how you look now; I wonder if you took after Aunt Yong-Hi as much as I took after Mother.
But I cannot change anything… so there is no use in staring at the drunken Moon and pondering wishes which will never be anything but a pipedream. If love could’ve saved anyone, Mother would still be alive.
I felt the weight of a thick fabric fall onto my shoulders.
“You’ll get a cold if you stand here until dawn in nothing but a summer nightgown”, the sigh that has been building up in me the whole night rushed out of my nostrils.
“Thank you”, I cleared my throat, wrapping myself tightly in Jae-ha’s tunic.
“Did you think yourself back to that place again?”
I needed a moment to figure out what he could be referring to.
“Kind of”, I lied through my teeth. I had no idea what he had on his mind.
“You know it’s not your fault she ended up there, right?”, he asked.
An image flashed before my eyes. A devastating conclusion. It was all my fault.
I finally made my legs move. I watched as my shins split the tiny waves with each step I took. I listened to another pair of legs mirroring my movements before I stopped and sat on the wet sand, pulling my knees to my chest to preserve warmth.
“I know there was nothing I could’ve done but… to see her there, sitting on a torn-up piece of a dirty rug with makeup running down her face and her arms as pale and bony as the arms of death itself… It made me remember the night she ran away”, I squeezed the words out of myself while biting my finger.
“I never asked because I assumed she just moved to Kuuto to be with that doctor who was coming to see her every once in a while…”
I continued chewing on my finger until Jae-ha took it in his hand and moved it away from my mouth.
“Remember that day you took me out for a walk around Awa?”, I asked.
“When we went wildflower picking, stumbled upon blackberry bushes and started chewing on them like there was no tomorrow?”
“Yeah, when we lost track of time and I ended up going back to the teashop in some ungodly hour with my fingertips all purple”, I chuckled as I remembered.
“It was a nice day… It would’ve been even nicer if we had taken a proper roll in the tall grass too”
“It would’ve been fun watching you get tormented by like twelve ticks and try to get a handful of wall barley out of your ass but no”
“Oh, but there was a beautiful girl right there to be my medic and nurse me back to health with her soft, pretty hands and even softer lips”, he put his hand over mine while grinning sheepishly.
I scoffed playfully before picking up his hand by the wrist and shoving it back to him.
“As I was saying… When I opened the front door, Ji-Yun and Momo were having a shouting match in the hallway and it was getting pretty heated; I’ve never seen Ji-Yun so angry. The sound of the door closing must’ve caught their attention, suddenly pulling them out of the row, because at that moment, everything fell silent. I saw pure rage reach its boiling point in Momo’s eyes as she laid them on me. She jumped, grabbed my collar and began screaming in my face…
I stood frozen as she shook me with all her might, my curled-up arms swinging limply with every violent movement her body made. Her makeup was ruined; red lipstick smudged all around her mouth, kohl running down her cheeks in dark chips and the vibrant blush powder she was known for nowhere to be seen. She snarled, gritted her teeth and droplets of spit were hitting my face as she cussed. Her kimono was in disarray; her left shoulder completely escaping the silk collar as the other parts of her clothing barely held onto one another from slipping off her skin as she continued howling while all I could do was blink.
I was clueless of what had gone down earlier as I stood in the doorway of our teashop, frozen and mute in the storm's eye of Momo’s destructive outburst of anger.
“Why did you have to take them both?! Why couldn’t you just take one and keep your filthy mitts to yourself, you greedy bitch?! You took everything from me! You ruined my life, you hear me?!”, she roared, grabbing my wrists and slamming me into the wall.
“You think you can just waltz in through that door and do whatever you want around here?! I’ve been here for years!”, she slammed me against the wall again.
“You’re sleeping in the bed I’ve earned!”, and again…
“You’re stuffing your fat ugly face with the food I’ve earned!”, and again…
“All you see around here, all the glitter, all the gold – bought with MY money!”, she shook my wrists violently, pushing me harder against the wall.
“And you had the nerve to come into my house and ask for your comb? You can take your stupid dead mother’s comb and shove it up your ass!”, her voice continued getting louder and louder with each sentence, her grip on my wrists tighter and tighter.
My ears were ringing from her voice. My head was hurting like my earlobes did when they were pierced with a needle for earrings. I couldn’t feel my hands anymore, my back hurt from being repeatedly slammed into the wall.
But upon the last sentence finally catching up to my brain...
I saw red.
Get. Mother’s. Name. Out. Of. Your. Vile. Mouth.
Blackout.
T
he next time I opened my eyes, Ji-Yun was holding me by the shoulders, desperately trying to pull me up.
Min-Ji was crying. Momo was screaming.
Something was moving between my clenched teeth. My hands were pressing hard on something.
Ji-Yun was begging me to let go.
And as I unlocked my jaw I realized what I had been grinding my teeth against.
It wasn’t the scarred flesh of the insides of my cheeks.
It wasn’t my tongue.
I stared at the marks on Momo’s right wrist; the whitened spots of dented skin which harbored my teeth moments ago encircling the bruised, burning red area.
“Look what you did, you sick piece of shit! Are you so stupid the only way you know how to defend yourself is to bite like a rabid dog?!”, she hissed as she rubbed the bite mark.
Ji-Yun shot her eyes at Min-Ji and Min-Ji swiftly took me by the hand, urging me to go back to her room.
“And you’re still on her side, Ji-Yun?! Unbelievable! You’re on her side after she took everything from me?! She seduced him into casting me aside and forgetting things we shared! And even that wasn’t enough to satisfy her! She had the nerve to push him into making fun of me in front of all of you! No loyalty, no loyalty! NONE! Not even from you, Ji-Yun! I heard you talking Soo-Hyeon into going after her! What did she do to keep all of you under her spell?! You threw me away like an old shawl! Do you know where this shithole would’ve been without me?! It would’ve been just another whorehouse for sailors and drunks to empty their ballsacks into the-“, behind the door of Min-Ji’s room Momo’s muffled monologue was suddenly cut off by a slap.
“Silence”, Ji-Yun’s voice was as cold as ice.
“You come home in the middle of the night looking like a scarecrow, reeking of cheap alcohol, with the trace of another man between your legs and you dare start a fight with me over how I should run my business. Since you’ve obviously forgotten how things work around here, I am going to remind you: This teashop stood tall long before you were even born. I was operating this establishment when Awa was a fraction of its current size. You are nothing but a simple, replaceable asset of it. All of you are. I’ve been feeding you, I’ve been taking care of you, I raised you and I taught you everything you know. I was the one who brought Soo-Hyeon to you; don’t make me the one to take him from you. Know your place, Fuyuko”
“I heard the front door slam and when I got up the next day… she was gone. We thought she was throwing another fit of hers and would return by that evening. But she never came back. I wish I hadn’t bitten her when she said what she said… I lashed out and by doing so triggered an even worse chain of events when I should’ve just swallowed the insult and went on my way. She was drunk and unable to think straight. I didn’t even know her real name was Fuyuko, I didn’t even know her older brother just left her at Ji-Yun’s doorstep one day and never came back for her”, I spoke as the ghost of her fury haunted my mind.
“But why did that argument break out in the first place?”, Jae-ha asked.
He took my hand and gently stroked it with his thumb. Usually, I would find it comforting but now it made the guilt eat away at me even worse.
Even though I didn’t know it at that time, I really took him from her…
“Min-Ji later told me that Momo overheard her patron talking to Ji-Yun. He was disappointed that someone had already had me before he had the chance to bid. He asked for how much Ji-Yun gave me away and when he heard you gave two bundles of gold coins, he jus snickered. He proceeded to ask when Ji-Yun became so generous; he would’ve given her at least double the amount… Devastated, Momo went out that night to drink and fool around with men to forget. When she came back, Ji-Yun scolded her for letting herself be seen in such a state. She went on and on about her tarnishing the reputation of her teashop, treating Momo like a showjumping horse rather than a human being. No wonder the poor thing snapped. I wish I knew then what I later found out. When I saw her in that filthy bordello few days ago my heart broke again. She pretended not to know me, turning her face away from me but that emptiness in her eyes will stay with me forever”, I screwed my eyes shut trying to make the picture go away.
But it persisted. It continued haunting.
“Why didn’t you tell me there was something between the two of you?”, I finally asked as I felt a heavy rock press harder against my heart.
“Because there wasn’t anything between the two of us?”, his voice was telling me he was confused but my heart hurt even more because of that. Did he see her as just another worker providing services, while she thought he was more than just a customer? By this point, I know the way Jae-ha breathes and that flirting is his way of passing time but I myself had fallen for his charm the first time he came to our teashop… I can’t blame her for thinking he saw her as much more than a teashop girl.
“Well, she said I stole someone from her…”
“Ada, I want you to listen to me now. When I visited the teashop for the first time, I was around seventeen. She was the one to greet me. We were drinking Ji-Yun’s expensive spirits straight, flirting, stealing a touch here and there. She looked so silly trying to hold down her liquor, giving it her all not to smudge the vibrant red rouge on her lips. I was also more than tipsy by that point and was under the impression she would pull me up and drag me to her room every second. But then she just thanked me for coming, wobbly stood up and stumbled her way to the next table. I went home thinking about that encounter. It was something new, definitely more engaging than just dropping by the red light district and cutting straight to the chase. But the next time I managed to save up some money and treat myself by paying Ji-Yun a visit I was told Momo no longer saw customers. It ended on that note. I continued on with my misadventures: trying out new alcohol, taking a stroll down the red light district when pulls of the flesh told me to, went fabric shopping for my new clothes, learnt to play new songs on my shamisen, practiced throwing daggers and ate some wonderful air-dried tomatoes. This really came as a big shock to me, I had no idea I left such an impact… Turns out I break hearts wherever I go”, Jae-ha finished his personal report on his extracurricular activities with a big nod to his own ego…
“You’re such an ass… I still feel terrible”, I gave him a fraction of a chuckle before my mind reminded me of the main topic.
I know he was trying to stop me from burrowing myself even deeper in my guilt by horsing around and being his usual cheeky self but...
“Ada, you do realize that with the patterns of behavior Momo reinforced with every step of hers this was the only place her life could’ve led? The misfortune of her overhearing the conversation between Ji-Yun and Doctor Soo-Hyeon just kicked what was bound to happen someday into overdrive. Is it tragic and does it leave a sour taste in both of our mouths? Yes. Could she have changed it? Yes. Did she? No. I understand that you would’ve acted differently if you knew things you know now. I understand you wouldn’t act on impulse if you could go back but by reliving the same event through what-ifs, you are again and again hurting yourself. The hard truth is – nothing will change. Momo will still be in that rundown bordello. You didn’t steal anyone from anyone, if anything you are currently stealing your future from yourself by staying in the past. Let go of it and be at peace with the things you can’t change”, he ended on that note, placing my cheek in his palm, ready to catch the tear that threatened to escape my eye any second.
I buried my cheek deeper into the warm skin, bringing it even closer by pushing it against me with my shoulder. The reality check he provided fished me out of the persistent game of blame I threw myself into. I’m glad he acknowledged my feeling of guilt but still reminded me that I needn’t carry the world upon my shoulders.
I silently wailed in his arms for the ending I’ll never get, for the home I’ll never be able to make with him, for every spark I’ll have to stomp out, for all the perfect things I’ll pretend to doubt and for everything I will eventually have to leave behind...
Only if you knew how much I wanted to leave this duty of mine behind for a chance to have a life with you…
“Promise me you’ll always take care of yourself… I take care of myself for you”