The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness by Kyung-Sook Shin Read Free Book Online

subway station across from the vacant lot, and an uneven flow of heads, nothing else but the heads of these peoples’ bodies, is pouring out. As the people move up the stairs of the subway station and rush out, like an incoming tide, to the fork in the road, only their heads and nothing else are visible. In less than five minutes, however, the people have seeped away somewhere and the fork in the road is completely empty. All those people, where have they gone? It seems it was a dream, these people, who in just five minutes crowded in and emptied out. I stand looking, listening to Cousin open the small window in the kitchenette. Cousin and I sweep and wipe down our room. We sweep up the traces that the former tenant left behind into the dustbin; pick up a shard of red brick that seems to have been used to level the cupboard; throw out scattered pieces of tissue paper from the attic, and the old, abandoned kerosene stove.
    Oldest Brother places some money in Cousin’s nineteen-year-old hands.
    “Ask the landlady for directions to the market and go buy the things we’ll need to cook food.”
    After Oldest Brother leaves, Cousin and I lie on the floor on our stomachs and write on a sheet of white paper the things we will need to cook food, just as he said. A pot, a strainer, a large bowl for rinsing rice, three small bowls, three sets of spoon and chopsticks, three plates, a kerosene stove, three rice bowls, three soup bowls . . . Cousin and I follow the alley all the way out to the market, which we are told is located on the other side of the overpass, and buy the kitchen items on the list. Older Brother’s belongings are delivered from the night duty room at the Yongsan Community Service Center to our lone, remote room. A desk and a chair. The Complete Compilation of Six Major Laws and books on criminal law are inside his suitcase. I open a small bag to find a bundle of Older Brother’s underwear, which needs washing. After looking around the room and the kitchen, Older Brother leaves again then comes back with a newly purchased vinyl wardrobe, a small cupboard, and a sack of rice. He connects metal beams to set up the wardrobe next to the desk and tells us to hang up the clothes in our bags. We leave once again to buy our bedding. Older Brother walks to the market the way he crossed the athletic field to leave the Job Training Center, his eyes on the ground. An intermittent sigh, phew , drifts out from his mouth. We buy floor mattresses, acrylic mink blankets, and three pillows, and divide up the load to carry. Older Brother says only what is necessary and does not even smile. “Let’s eat out tonight.” He takes Cousin and me to the alley outside our lone room and treats us to pork rib barbecue for dinner. He does not eat. He looks like he is extremely angry, or perhaps enervated; he just sits there watching us eat the ribs.
    One does not always age according to conventional number sequence. One can go from sixteen to thirty-two in one day. It was that day at the restaurant that I, then sixteen years old, suddenly turned thirty-two. That day when I saw Older Brother sitting there, weary inside the smoke of pork ribs, treating Cousin and me to a barbecue dinner but not taking a single bite himself, I believe that I turned thirty-two, the age that I am now.

    Out of our week-long vacation, we spend five days back in the country. It is our first time traveling back to the country from Seoul. Since Cousin and I only know our way around the route between the training center and our lone room, Older Brother comes along to get us our tickets and takes us to our seats and buys us an armful of pastries and soft drinks for us to eat on the train.
    Here in the present, outside of my writing, I feel an ache in my heart.
    Back then, eating was such a major issue; Older Brother, back in that time, is continuously treating us to food. At the restaurant across from the community center, he treats us to bean sprout soup; at the Job