If I Had Your Face(2)

I frown and take out my notepad and my pen, which I prefer over typing into my phone. Writing down words by hand feels more akin to speaking.

Taein is too young to go somewhere like Ajax, I write.

Kyuri leans over to see what I’ve written. “Chung Taein? He’s our age. Twenty-two,” she says.

That’s what I mean, I write. And Kyuri and Sujin both laugh at me.



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SUJIN’S PET NAME for me is ineogongju, or little mermaid. She says it’s because the little mermaid lost her voice but got it back later and lived happily ever after. I don’t tell her that that’s the American cartoon version. In the original story, she kills herself.

Sujin and I first met when we were assigned to work a sweet potato cart together our first year of middle school. That was how a lot of teenagers made money back in Cheongju in the winters—we stood on street corners in the snow and roasted sweet potatoes over coals in little tin barrels and sold them for a few thousand won each. Of course, it was only the bad kids who did this, kids who were part of the iljin—the gangs of every school—and not the nerds, who were busy studying for entrance exams and eating cute little boxed lunches that their mothers packed for them every morning. But then again, the ones at the sweet potato carts were the good bad kids. At least we were giving people something for their money. The truly bad ones just took it from them.



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AS PERILOUS BATTLES were fought over the best corners, I was lucky to have been paired up with Sujin, who could be ruthless when necessary.

The first thing Sujin taught me was how to use my fingernails. “You can blind someone, or punch a hole in their throat, if you want. But you have to keep your nails the optimal length and thickness, so that they don’t break at a critical moment.” She examined mine and shook her head. “Yeah, these won’t do,” she said, prescribing nail-strengthening vitamins and a particular brand of thickening polish.

That was back when I still spoke, and Sujin and I would joke around or sing as we manned our cart, and call out to passersby at the top of our lungs. “Sweet potatoes are good for your skin!” we’d yell. “Gives you health and beauty! And they’re so delicious!”

A few times a month, Nana, the senior girl who gave us her coveted corner, would stop by to pick up her dues. She was a famous iljin member, and had conquered the entire local district in a series of legendary fights. She’d broken her pinkie finger in the last one however, and handed her territory off to us while she recovered.

Although she would slap around the other girls in the bathrooms at school, Nana liked me because I was the only girl in our school gang who didn’t have a boyfriend. “You know what’s important in life,” she always said to me. “And you look innocent, which is great.” I would say thank you and bow deeply, and then she would send me off to buy cigarettes. The man at the corner store wouldn’t sell them to her because he didn’t like her face.



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I THINK I KNOW why Sujin is so obsessed with her looks. She grew up in the Loring Center, which everyone in Cheongju thought of as a circus. In addition to housing an orphanage, it was a home for the disabled and deformed. Sujin told me that her parents died when she was a baby, but recently it occurred to me that she must have been abandoned by a girl even younger than us. Perhaps Sujin’s mother was a room salon girl too.

I told Sujin I liked going to visit her at the Center because no one was there to hover over us. We could drink all the expired drinks donated by grocery stores, and park our sweet potato cart there with no questions asked. But secretly, it scared me sometimes to see the disabled slowly roaming the grounds, their caregivers addressing them in singsong voices.



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“I HATE TO TELL you this, but Taein has also had major work done at my hospital. The clinic manager told me.” Kyuri looks at me slyly and shrugs when I glare at her. “I mean, they have the best surgical staff in the world. It would be stupid not to get your face fixed there if you want to be a star.” She stands up slowly and stretches like a cat.

Sujin and I are watching her and we start yawning too, although secretly I resent her dig at Taein’s face. I really don’t think he’s had anything done other than veneers. He doesn’t even have double eyelids.

“Wait, you’re not talking about Cinderella Clinic, are you?” Sujin’s eyes narrow to slits.

Kyuri says yes.

“I heard all the doctors there graduated top of their class at Seoul National!” exclaims Sujin.

“Yeah, they have a wall covered with doctors’ photos and every single bio includes Seoul National. The magazines call it the Pretty Factory.”

“Isn’t their head doctor really famous? Dr. Shin or something?”

“Dr. Shim Hyuk Sang,” says Kyuri. “The waiting list to see him is months long. He really understands beauty trends before they even happen, and what girls want to look like. That’s so important, you know?”

“That’s him! I read all about him on BeautyHacker. They did a huge feature on him last week.”

“He is a lovely man. And skilled, obviously.”

Kyuri waves her hand over her face and winks. She sways a little too, and it’s only when I get a good look at her that I realize she is completely drunk.