My Lady, Please Wake Up

780,000 won.

That was the sum Dong-hui had managed to close her fist around after a solid month of catnaps and three part-time jobs.

Three jobs and that’s all the money she has, you ask? The same old song.

Debt.

The small fortune Dong-hui had never once laid eyes on was the gambling debt her unreachable brother had run up with loan sharks. They hunted her down with a tenacity that put leeches to shame and dumped that monstrous lump of debt like a present on a woman who was family only on the household register. Even now, remembering the day they first came crashing into her basement studio was enough to jolt her out of sleep in a cold shiver.

Ha Dong-hyeok, that son of a bitch.
Beating him to death wouldn’t be enough.

Dong-hui poured curses at a brother who would never hear a single one of them. Five million won had swollen into fifty million in the space of a blink. She would work herself half to death, pay off a month, and the debt would have spawned young and puffed itself right back up. It wasn’t even a hermaphrodite, as far as she knew. She was pouring water into a bottomless jar, but if she stopped even that, the fear that she would be carved up and sold off in pieces left her no room to rest.

Sometimes she thought handing over a kidney might not be so bad, though she had a feeling that the moment she lay down on the operating table she would be saying goodbye to this world for good. Remembering the way those men had looked at her, eyes crawling with greed, she shook her head hard. Her life was squalid, but she didn’t want to die like that.

Today was payday, but as always the money left nothing in her account except a trace of itself before it vanished.

“What is this, a guestbook? Ugh!”

Her head, propped against the wall, felt bottomlessly heavy today. Nothing in it, so why the weight?

“I wish the whole planet would just go up in smoke.”

If she could turn back time, she would erase the days she had gone around beaming about finally having a mom and a big brother.

“Idiot. Moron.”

The day she came home from the school trip, her stepmother had tidily gathered up the lease deposit and her father’s life insurance payout both, and run off with that bastard of a brother. All that was left to her was the clothes on her back, the dirty laundry in her bag, and the handmade Choco Pies she had bought as presents for her mom and her brother.

“Halfwit.”

She had checked on them over and over on the bus, terrified they would melt in her bag. She hadn’t had the money for three, so she had bought two: one for her mom, one for her brother. In the end, the handmade Choco Pies she bought in Gyeongju became the last food Dong-hui ever ate in that house.

She never touched a Choco Pie again.

She didn’t have the courage to die, quitting everything felt like it would actually kill her, and the harder she thrashed to stay alive the tighter the leash pulled at her throat. There was no hole to crawl out of, anywhere.

“Am I supposed to just live like this until the day I drop?”

47,800,000 won.

She had paid back over two million won a month, faithfully, and the debt had shrunk by a grand total of 2.2 million.

“F*ck. I really can’t do this anymore.”

Dong-hui spat out a curse she wasn’t even any good at and squeezed her eyes shut. Tears ran down on their own.

I really do hope the world just ends like this.

She didn’t have the strength to wipe them. When she flung her worn-out body down onto the old mattress, the blotchy wallpaper on the ceiling came into view.

It’ll leak again when it rains.
They said the monsoon starts next week.

The rent was so much cheaper than anywhere else that she couldn’t very well nag the landlord to fix it. She was afraid he would just tell her to clear out.

If it drips, I’ll stick a bowl under it.

A damp room still beat the street.

One shabby thought dragged the next along behind it, and the longer they went on, the deeper her exhausted body sank into the old mattress. Dong-hui stretched an arm above her head and groped around for the phone she had tossed aside. The four-year-old handset took a filthy long time to charge and gave out limply before half a day was up. Still, it was far better than nothing, and it dutifully informed her that it was two in the morning.

At five she had to be at the convenience store.

“Just three hours of sleep.”

Dong-hui crawled across the mattress, stuffed herself carelessly into the crumpled blanket, and closed her eyes. Every bone in her body felt like it had been cast in iron, and the slightest shift drew a thin sproing out of the ancient mattress springs. She blinked a few pointless times against eyelids that were closing on their own, and slid away into sleep.

Still — even a place like this is something.

Dong-hui talked herself into being proud of having scraped together a basement studio at least, on no money at all, and dropped off into a dead sleep.

“My lady, please wake up.”

A soft, kindly voice came from somewhere.

Did I fall asleep with the TV on?

Dong-hui opened her eyes, guilty already. She was in no position to waste a hundred won of electricity, and here she had slept with the television running. But the scene in front of her was not like other days, and for several seconds she blinked slowly, blankly.

Am I still dreaming?
Why is it so bright in here?

The basement studio that stayed gloomy day and night was as bright as high noon.

Oh, come on — I left the light on too?

She screwed up her face and pushed herself upright, and the blanket under her palm felt wrong.

Where is this?

Her very first thought was, Did the loan sharks get in while I was asleep and kidnap me?

Eyes wide, Dong-hui stared at furniture and walls and a ceiling she had never seen before, and finally met the gaze of a woman watching her with concern.

“Aaaaaaaaagh!”
“Aaagh!”

Startled by the scream, the woman facing her shrieked as well, both hands trembling. Dong-hui went on screaming for a while. She cast around for something that might work as a weapon, but everything in sight was plush and soft.

“What’s the matter? Did you have a bad dream?”

The woman who had screamed along with her pulled herself together and asked, sounding worried. It dawned on Dong-hui belatedly that the woman standing in front of her was a foreigner, and the floor seemed to tilt, vertiginous, beneath her.

“Don’t tell me you put me on a deep-sea trawler?”¹

At least they didn’t just cut me open first, but shipping me out to sea is a bit much, isn’t it?
And why can I understand every word she’s saying?
Come to think of it, this isn’t a boat.
Where am I?

Her startled heart wouldn’t settle, and her breathing quickened on its own. Sitting on the bed, she hunched like a badly frightened cat, ready to attack if it came to that.

“My lady, are you really all right?”
“M-me?”
“Yes. Are you hurt somewhere?”
“I’m not hurt. But… who are you?”
“I’m sorry?”

This time it was the woman who cried out, her face going blank with shock.

Leaving behind the woman who kept calling her “my lady,” Dong-hui had been glued to the mirror for an hour now. The face looking back was not thirty-one-year-old Ha Dong-hui’s but a girl’s, someone in her late teens at the very most. Large chocolate-colored eyes shone like glass marbles, and hair the exact same color spilled down in waves. Skin as milk-white as fresh rice cake, without a single blemish; lips soft and smooth, red and fresh as cherries.

“This is me?”

Still not believing it, Dong-hui pressed her nose to the mirror and felt over her face. The woman in the mirror felt over her face in exactly the same way, mouthing along with her. The girl copying her every move was as pretty as a doll.

Nobody had ever called her pretty, not once in her life. Her face had been just a face, and her figure had never quite come out where it should or gone in where it should. She had so little presence that hardly anyone recognized her at class reunions; the question she heard most there was, ‘Wait, you were in our class too?’

And this is me?

“This pretty?”
“Yes, my lady, you are very pretty. Which is exactly why it’s time to get ready to go out!”

The woman with the fussy, particular look about her said she was the nanny. Or rather, that she had been the nanny. When Dong-hui failed to recognize her and asked who she was, the nanny had answered through startled, welling tears at first. Then, faced with how unnervingly calm Dong-hui stayed, she concluded it was a prank and settled into the thoroughly sulky face she wore now.

It’s not a prank, though.
So is this a dream?

Dong-hui took hold of one soft cheek and gave it a small pinch.

That doesn’t hurt.

“Pinching like that — of course it doesn’t hurt.”

The nanny, watching from beside her, let the grumble pop right out.

“Then would you pinch it for me?”

If this was a dream, she needed to wake up fast. Being late for her shift and getting fired would be a disaster. Dong-hui slid one cheek out toward the nanny and, even knowing it was a dream, tensed a little and squeezed her eyes shut.

“No taking this back later!”
“Yes, yes, just pinch me already. So I can wake up.”
“I’m pinching!”
“Hurry! I’m late for work.”
“What on earth have you been going on about this whole time, honestly! Excuse me, then!”

The words were barely out before pain tore through her cheek as if it were being ripped clean off. The nanny’s face was apologetic, but her fingers wrenched at that tender cheek without mercy.

“Aaaaaaaaaagh!”

Dong-hui came up on her toes as far as her cheek was pulled, then stamped her feet and shrieked. Flopping like a fish fresh off the hook, she clutched her cheek and glared. A few tears leaked out.

“That hurts!”
“You said no taking it back! Now up you get! You have to eat breakfast! And today you absolutely must look over the estate. Otherwise Viscount Patrasche really might take it away from you.”

The nanny said it while stroking Dong-hui’s reddened cheek, apparently feeling sorry a little late.

“Patrasche? The dog?”²

Dong-hui rubbed her stinging cheek, feeling a small flicker of gladness at the familiar name.

With a deep sigh, the nanny dipped the towel she had brought into warm water and began gently wiping Dong-hui’s face. Dong-hui flinched back without meaning to, afraid of another pinch, but the nanny caught the back of her neck, so all she could do was squeeze her eyes shut. This nanny person, it was clear, had a truly formidable grip.

“Still, you can’t just come right out and call him a dog. What if someone hears you?”