If I Had Your Face(61)

“Oh,” I say quietly. It is on the tip of my tongue to say so many things—“How do you know?” “Who is it?” or the futile “That cannot be true.” But it is easy to see from her face that she is telling the truth. I have to hold on to something because I feel as if I am about to keel over. I turn around—and totter back to my room like an old lady. I feel as if I am floating above my body—watching myself find my way back to my paintings. In my torment, I cannot process this.

I do not want to know. I do not want to know.

“Miho,” says Kyuri. She is behind me, her voice soft and compassionate now. She regrets telling me.

I wave my hand at her without looking behind me, to signal to her to go away.

In my room, I take up my little drawing. With a pang I realize that this will be painful for me to look at from now on. It is a pity, because I already loved it. This does not mean I will not be able to work on it, though—I can attack it with more fervor, more anger, and most likely it will be the better for it.

I feel as if I am sleepwalking, and I wander into the bathroom and start running the shower. It occurs to me that I will have a great deal of time from this moment on. Thank goodness I will be able to work.

I take off my clothes and my jewelry—my gold necklace with a palette-shaped pendant was of course from Hanbin, as was my eternity ring of tiny black diamonds.

The glass and the mirror are soon swallowed up in steam and fog. Closing my eyes, I endure the hot water beating down upon my head and body.

What am I to do now? It gnaws at me bleakly, this question. For all that I had thought I protected my heart, knowing this would happen one day, I am not prepared.

I wish I were dead, so that I did not have to feel this pain.



* * *



—

I REMEMBER MY AUNT telling my cousin Kyunghee and me, when we were small, that my grandmother had died of anger. She had choked to death on han—the pent-up rage from all the pillaged generations before her—seeing her parents die before her eyes, having served her mother-in-law as a body slave until she aged long before her time. To have a son—my father—that turned out to be a weak fool, led astray by a cunning daughter-in-law—my mother.

My aunt told us that we inherited my grandmother’s wrath, that this kind of potent han could not just die off with the passing of an old woman. That we should be careful to curb ourselves, to avoid situations that could lead to altercations.

You do not know what you are capable of, she said with a sigh. We nodded fearfully. She herself regretted certain incidents in her life, my aunt said. And she didn’t want us to end up feeling the same.



* * *



—

THE IDEA TO EXTRACT the SD card from Hanbin’s dashcam comes from the latest drama that Kyuri is watching. Since she refuses to tell me how she found out about Hanbin, and since I have nothing else to say to her, the television has been blaring nonstop for the past few days and we have settled into a chilly coexistence.

The scene that gives me this brilliant idea unfolds on the screen when I sit down at our tiny table with the ramen I made. In the drama, the chaebol son is in love with the girl who everyone thinks is his sister. The father, who suspects this unpalatable relationship, sneaks into his son’s car at night and extracts the SD card from the dashcam. Reviewing the videos confirms his hunch.

The scene with the SD card arrests me, and I swivel my head toward Kyuri to see if it is occurring to her that this is occurring to me. She pays me no attention. The way that she is sitting on the floor with her back and neck completely stiff makes me suspect that she must have gotten another treatment. Most likely a session of that bone therapy she is addicted to where they massage the shit out of you for two hours. The one time I went, on her recommendation, I asked for face therapy and they started pressing my jaw so hard I cried for them to stop. When I asked for my money back, they refused, so I gifted the rest of the sessions to Kyuri. That, they allowed.

But the dashcam—this could truly work. Hanbin had installed one that records the inside of the car after he had his laptop stolen by a valet parking attendant.

The trick is to get Hanbin out of his car long enough that I can take out the SD card. After studying videos online, I am pretty sure I can do it fairly quickly, but I will fumble if I am frazzled about getting caught.



* * *



—

I FINALLY DO it on the day that we are meeting his friends for drinks in Itaewon. After he picks me up at the studio, he finds a miraculous street parking spot just a block away from the restaurant. We are walking there when I take a deep breath and say that I just realized I left my phone in his car.

“I’ll go get it,” I say.

“No, no, let me. It’ll take me two seconds.” He is already turning back when I add that I think several of my “female items” also must have spilled out of my purse. There is nothing like the mention of menstrual products to send a guy running in the other direction.

And then it is the easiest thing in the world to obtain the evidence.



* * *



—

AT HOME AFTER drinks, I go through the videos on my computer. After scrolling and scrolling, I find it: the one of him having sex with a girl in his car. It is dark and it is difficult to see because the images are blurry, but the rhythm and sounds are unmistakable. I stop the video and close my eyes. Then I crawl under my desk and curl up to see if the sharp stabs I am feeling will go away.