Page 93 of Heart and Seoul (Seoul 1)

“Good morning.” Little fingerlings of light are breaking through the night’s sky but not enough for me to make out her expression.

“Good morning, Hara. Come inside.”

The entrance is lined with marble and so are the walls. I shed my shoes and then awkwardly hand them to a staff person dressed in all black who gives me a pair of gray felt slippers that match the ones that Wansu is wearing. Silently, I follow my birth mother down the hall. We end up in a living room overlooking a terraced garden. The furniture is tufted white leather with gold accents. Whoever decorated Choi Wansu’s office made their cold, colorless way here. Yujun had this place coded as home in his phone, and he once said his place was white but for the yellow pillows Wansu forced on him, but I can’t envision him here. He’s too warm for this place.

“Does Yujun live here?” I blurt out.

Wansu’s shoulders tighten as she places a tray on top of a concrete coffee table. “No. He lives in Yongsan-gu with a view of his favorite place.”

“The river?”

“IF Group.” His work is his favorite place? “He can see the river if he positions himself in the right place in his bathroom,” Wansu continues, and I don’t know if she’s telling me these things to be informative or to drive home her superior relationship with Yujun.

It strikes me how little I know about Wansu that I can’t confidently arrive at any conclusion. Sadly, the same thing can be said about Yujun. I might know that his neck is sensitive or that he has a mole on the inside of his right thigh, but I don’t know how he likes his coffee, what his favorite color is, or even the last book he read. If Wansu means to make a point of my ignorance, she’s doing a great job. I feel outmatched in this stark opulence and my borrowed clothes. This is a house full of polka-dot couture and I’m made up of ten-dollar stripes from the underground mall stall.

Wansu pours me a cup of dark coffee. “Milk or sugar?” she asks, her hand poised over a small china bowl.

“I’ll take it black.” I need the punch in the face that the caffeine will provide. The house is so quiet that I can hear the puff of air from the purifying machine in the corner. That sound is joined by the clink of porcelain on porcelain as Wansu places the cup onto a saucer.

“Does Mr. Choi live here? Yujun said he was ill.”

Wansu nods. “Yes. We care for him here. He suffered a stroke five years ago and has not fully recovered.”

“I’m sorry.” Five years ago, I was twenty and dicking around in college while Yujun and Wansu were grappling with this trauma. I had no idea. That said, she doesn’t know about my life either.

“Can I ask how you met my—Yujun?”

She was going to say her son. I hate that he’s connected to her. On the other hand, this confirms what he told me—that he had no idea who I was when we met in the airport.

“I met him in the airport. I thought he was the driver my friend had sent me to take me to my Airbnb.”

Wansu’s eyebrows twitch in surprise. “That is a coincidence.”

“I don’t even know what to call you. In my head, I keep switching back and forth between Choi Wansu and Wansu. I know that if you were a regular person, it would be Choi Wansu, right? But you aren’t a regular person. You’re my mother but only because you gave birth to me. You didn’t raise me. That was Ellen.”

“You can call me whatever you like.”

When Yujun said that to me, I melted. It doesn’t have the same charm coming out of Choi Wansu’s mouth.

“In Korea, because we believe in honoring our elders, most people refer to others by titles, not names,” she continues after a sip of coffee. “Teachers and doctors are not Mrs. Lee or Mr. Choi but seonsaengnim. The older woman that works with you is sunbaenim. But among friends, it is fine to call us by our first name.”

“And if we aren’t friends?”

“Samonim or seonsaengnim if you want to be very formal.”

“Yujun calls you Eomma.” It’s starting to make sense. To Yujun, Wansu is the mother figure that he lost when he was very young. So what is Wansu to me? She is not my mother exactly.

“How about imo? It is what a young person would call the mother of a close friend. It’s a type of aunt in Korean.” Then she smiles, an almost imperceptible curve of the corners of her mouth upward. “Or michinyeon. It means crazy bitch.”

An involuntary laugh escapes me at this unexpected level of perception from Wansu. “I’m okay with Wansu.”

Her response is to drink her coffee. I notice that her knuckles are white. She’s not as cool and unaffected by our interaction as she makes herself out to be. Oddly that puts me at ease. I sag against the cushions and drink. For a heartbeat, a breath, there’s only the sound of our china in the still room.

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