Skin Food Read online

  “Don’t mind her. She’s kind of a prude. I think she feels guilty partying this late,” Mimi said to Sam.

  But her friend was right. Mimi was suddenly sleepy and couldn’t keep up with the beat of the music, her rhythm reduced to sloppy swaying. They went to the lockers to get gum out of her purse.

  “You want some?” she asked, holding up the pack of peppermint.

  “Sure.”

  “Do you want a whole stick or half a stick?”

  “No one’s ever asked me that.” He paused. “Half a stick, please.”

  He laid the half stick on his tongue and crushed its half wrapper into a tiny silver ball. Then he flicked the ball into a dark corner. Taking in his surroundings, he saw a couple making out against a wall, ATM receipts scattered on the ground, and his shoes caked in black sludge. People started bumping into him left and right, and he could feel his agitation building. He suggested they go outside for fresh air.

  This was the moment of truth. He and Mimi were ascending from the cave and there was no neutral lighting, no smoke and mirrors. The grand reveal. Even with her sleepy face, Mimi was still stunning. Maybe more so because of it. She didn’t look as fierce as when they’d first met. Her guard was down.

  They sat on a bench outside of Zen, and she rested her head on his right shoulder—but not before getting a glimpse of his eyes. They were a little bloodshot but trustworthy. She spit her gum on the street and dozed off, unbothered by the smoky and sweaty smell of his v-neck.

  Sam had expected to chat with the sleeping beauty, and he soon grew tired of random guys pointing at Mimi and giving him thumbs up of approval. He closed his eyes, and a game unfolded around him. Which unlucky pedestrian would step on Mimi’s gum? Would it be the Korean guy in black Air Force 1s, the English lad in sand suede Clarks Desert Boots, or maybe the Korean high schooler in silver and pink Nikes? Feet shuffled around the gum. Got one! White gum on white sneakers.

  “Damn it!” Tyson said, scraping his Chuck Taylors on the curb.

  Sam opened his eyes. “Ready to call it a night?” he asked Lana.

  “For a while now. We couldn’t find you,” she replied.

  “Why didn’t you just call me?” Sam asked with his thumb to his ear and his pinky to his mouth. Lana and Tyson didn’t have their phones and didn’t find his joke funny.

  “I’ll call Steve.” Sam was careful not to wake Mimi as he squeezed his phone out of his pocket.

  “Did you ever ask him what happened at work?” Tyson asked.

  “I didn’t get a chance to,” Sam said with the phone ringing. “We were walking around the bar, and Steve disappeared. Sometimes we lose each other for hours at a time. One night he took a nap on the street— on a cardboard box in an alley—and called me when he woke up. We always reconnect.” Steve didn’t pick up.

  “Ah well, he’s a big boy. We’ll see him tomorrow,” Tyson said.

  “Mimi,” Sam whispered as Tyson finished getting the last of her gum off his shoe. “Mimi.” He tapped her shoulder. Then he gently shook her. She was in a deep slumber.

  “Dude, did she blackout?” asked Tyson.

  Sam mouthed an expletive and stared into space. Again, he tried shaking Mimi awake, without success.

  “I saw this in a K-drama. Actually, a few of them,” Sam explained to Lana and Tyson. “Hopefully she wakes up before we make it back to my place.” He picked Mimi up and put her on his back, piggyback style. She didn’t flinch, and her facial expression didn’t change. “Can you get her purse?” Sam asked Lana.

  “When’s the honeymoon?” Tyson asked Sam a ways down the road.

  “I should be asking you lovers.”

  “You told him?” Lana asked Tyson.

  “Yes, love.”

  She stuck out her tongue in playful disgust.

  “So how did you two get together?” Sam asked.

  “As you know, we took Summer Session together…” Lana started.

  “Right.”

  “Well, one day after class we went to a café in Wynwood. To study. We were there maybe five, six hours and had only ordered a couple of drinks…”

  “Non-alcoholic,” Tyson clarified with his index finger pointed up.

  “When the server put a tea light at the end of our table.”

  “We thought nothing of it,” Tyson said.

  “A few minutes later, the café’s lights dimmed, and we looked around and people were ordering dinner.” Lana paused. “We were hungry, and the menu looked good, so we said why not?”

  “It felt like a date,” Tyson said.

  ______

  When they arrived at Sam’s officetel, he delicately set Mimi on the couch and covered her in a faux mink blanket. He gave Lana and Tyson his bed and rolled out a yoga mat for himself. Good enough for sit-ups, good enough for sleep, he figured.

  “FEMA special delivery,” he said as he tossed bottled waters at Lana and Tyson. He left one on the coffee table next to Mimi’s purse. Then he turned on the AC, turned off the light, and chugged his bottle of water.

  Lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, Sam wondered how Mimi would react in the morning. Would she be nervous or nonchalant? Would she think him a hero or a villain? Would she hang out or sneak out? Would her parents be worried? Had her friend messaged or called?

  Sam’s ears were still buzzing from the bangers and mashups of Zen. Zen: what a fitting name, he thought. You lose yourself to find yourself. He shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and pictured the stone Buddha bust at the bar’s entrance.

  ______

  Sam sat up and faced the couch. Mimi was now sleeping on her left side, facing the yoga mat. She’d drank the bottled water and set her phone on the coffee table. Lana and Tyson looked comfortable but not overly comfortable. There was no spooning or touching of any sort. Lana slept in the classic fetal position, her left hand resting on her chin. She’d folded her pillow into a double decker. Tyson was on his stomach, his left arm hanging off the side of the bed. He looked like he should’ve been drooling, but he wasn’t.

  Sam tiptoed to the bathroom and checked the mirror. He had bed head—or yoga mat head—and puffy eyes. He splashed cold water on his face and patted it down with a hand towel. Then he took a shot of mouthwash and swished it around.

  In the kitchen, he poured a glass of water and looked in the fridge. It was nearly empty, save for a red apple and a hangover drink. He popped open the can and raised it in a self-toast.

  “For when you break it down ‘til the break of dawn.”

  The lingering mouthwash gave the hangover drink a strange taste, something akin to the mixture of toothpaste and orange juice. He chased it down with the glass of water.

  “Rise and shine. Do you wanna order food?” he asked when Lana’s head popped up.

  “Absolutely. What are our options?”

  He checked the time on his phone. “McDonald’s breakfast just ended. How about Korean food?”

  “Sure. We’re in Korea, after all. Can you order? I trust your judgment.”

  “Me, too,” chimed in Tyson.

  “Can I eat with you all?” asked Mimi. “I’m famished.”

  Sam was surprised to see her awake but tried not to show it. “Uh, yeah, sure,” he replied. “Anyone want water?”

  Lana wanted water and Mimi the bathroom. Sam flipped through the many restaurant fliers that had been taped to his front door that month.

  “What happened last night?” Mimi asked when she got out of the bathroom with a fresh coat of makeup and without the Zen stamp on her hand. “Sorry I took your couch.”

  “No problem. How are you feeling?” asked Sam.

  “Like I lost my film.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s a Korean expression. Pilleumi kkeungyeosseoyo. My film was cut. I lost my memory. I blacked out.”

  Sam introduced Mimi to his friends and relayed the night’s events. It was Mimi’s first time blacking out in a long time, and the last thing she remembered was getting gum out o
f her purse. Tyson suspected that the gum on his shoe was hers.

  “I know where you sleep,” he said.

  Sam called a restaurant, but no one picked up. When he tried a different number, he got the same result.

  “Can you try calling these?” he asked Mimi, holding up the restaurant fliers. “No one’s answering. Maybe it’s my phone.”

  She tried her phone with no luck.

  “Is it a holiday?” asked Lana.

  “Nope. Let’s just go to a restaurant,” Sam suggested.

  “Ahh. I don’t wanna get outta bed. Can you bring back food? Pretty please?” Lana half-begged.

  “You got it. But it might be a while.”

  “I’ll stay here, too, if that’s okay,” said Mimi.

  “Yup.”

  Tyson stood up. “All right. The hunters in search of food. Let’s do this.”

  ______

  Tyson and Sam stepped outside the building as a stampede of people ran by. There were kids in the street, cars honking.

  “I thought Korea was ‘The Land of the Morning Calm’?” Tyson quipped.

  “Yeah, this isn’t normal. I wonder what’s up.”

  They walked to the edge of the sidewalk to scope out the scene. Traffic was at a standstill, runners darted in different directions, and there was a significant police presence. Tyson and Sam tried to make sense of all the commotion, but the sun was in their eyes.

  “Maybe we should go back inside?” Tyson asked, rubbing sweat off his forehead. He was really feeling the hangover.

  At that moment, a driver rolled down his window and yelled at them in Korean. Tyson and Sam were startled. They didn’t understand what he was saying, but body language is all but universal. “Get the hell out of here!” was a fair interpretation. The man pointed at Sam’s building, and the friends ran inside. They pressed up against the double pane glass double doors, collecting their thoughts amid a haze of adrenaline.

  “What do you think is going on?” Tyson asked between breaths.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Hopefully nothing too crazy.”

  “That guy in the car seemed plenty worried. Like he thought we were idiots for standing around. Wanna go talk to the girls?” Tyson asked.

  “Let’s give it a few minutes.”

  “All right,” he said with skepticism. Tyson wasn’t sure why Sam wanted to wait and see. But he had an educated guess.

  ______

  At the dining hall their freshman year, Sam invariably sat facing the front door. He started with the salad bar and selected his seat first.

  Tyson favored fewer trips for food, so he took his time and stacked his plate high. His specialty, which he called “Tyson Chicken,” was a chicken sandwich on top of chicken Pad Thai.

  Sam’s salads could be likened to ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement. Tyson had made fun of Sam’s first salad—romaine greens encircled in a ring of mandarin oranges with Italian dressing and sunflower seeds—so Sam created a new and unique design every day in what became their ongoing joke.

  About a month into their friendship, Tyson caught on to Sam’s habit of sitting within sight of the front door. So he put it to the test at the dining hall, a sociological study with Sam as the subject. Tyson grabbed fast food, slingshotted around the round tables, and sat at one of the two-seater tables—in the seat he suspected Sam would’ve taken. When Sam walked up with another magnificent salad, he looked puzzled.

  “Why are we sitting here?”

  “I’m just switching things up.”

  Sam gritted his teeth and sat down, his back to the front door. Their conversation that dinner was stale. Sam didn’t have much of an appetite.

  Tyson thought it was because Sam liked people watching. When Tyson studied at the library, he, too, liked to face the entrance. The influx of eye candy was a welcome distraction from his business books.

  As Tyson later learned, Sam had been a lifeguard for three summers. He had a watchful eye and likely had a hero complex. If or when a victim or villain walked through the front door, he was ready to spring into action.

  ______

  Bloody hands suspended in midair, then arms outstretched and swaying. She of willowy hair and frame slowly entered their field of vision. Feet dragging and legs discolored, a greenish-white. Her body seemed to have a mind of its own, and it was centimetering closer to them.

  She hopped, and their hearts jumped. Instinctively, they backed away from the double doors. Was she wounded or warring, a victim or villain, an effect or a cause? She was the embodiment of the fear of ambiguity.

  She came to an abrupt stop ten meters from the building. And Tyson had had enough. It was time to get going. He whispered to Sam, and in that instant, her raven hair whipped around her left shoulder, revealing cloudy white eyes, pale sunken cheeks, and bloodstained lips. She raged toward them, dragging her feet and hopping at high speeds.

  “… the hell?!” Sam yelled.

  They pressed their shoulders up against the double doors, and she slammed into the glass, her palms and forehead bearing the brunt of the impact. Blood streaked down the glass to her battered body laid out on the pavement. Sam and Tyson backed up, their arms bumping. Not missing a beat, she rolled over to her stomach, showed her teeth, and pushed through the doors.

  Tyson and Sam weren’t down to fight. They didn’t understand the enemy. They retreated up the flight of stairs, her hissing and moaning haunting their every step. Fleet-footed double and triple steps. Tyson kicked over a rusty tin can full of cigarette butts and ashes, sending it rattling downstairs.

  Room 403, 8-4-3-0. Sam punched in the code while staring back at the stairwell. His hands were shaking. Tyson was on the balls of his feet.

  {beep} They burst into the officetel and shut the door. Breathing heavily, they stared each other in the eye. Beads of sweat formed on their faces.

  Lana walked over. “Are you boys okay?”

  Tyson hugged her and held her close. “We should check the news,” he said. He searched the room for a TV. There was none.

  “Keep the door closed,” Sam said.

  Lana wondered if they were joking. She was used to their antics, but Tyson had hugged her so sincerely.

  Mimi took them at their word. They hadn’t taken off their shoes and didn’t have food. “What happened?” she asked, concerned.

  Sam turned on his computer. “A woman tried to attack us. She has green skin, she’s covered in blood, and her eyes are all messed up.”

  “What do you mean she tried to attack you?” Lana asked in disbelief.

  “We can only assume,” Tyson explained. “She came after us and ran into the glass door downstairs. Well, she didn’t exactly run. She moved like this.” He did his best reenactment.

  “Are you sure she’s not hurt? Maybe she needs help,” Mimi questioned.

  “No, no, no,” Sam replied. “This is no damsel in distress. It’s like she’s possessed. She was making these noises. Growling. If anything, she needs psychiatric help. I really think she wanted to hurt us.”

  “We should ring the police,” Mimi said.

  “We saw a lot of police cars and people running around. Let’s check the news,” said Sam.

  The New York Times, HuffPost, The Guardian, and the BBC didn’t bring up any news. Sam checked Naver and read “홍대,” “Hongdae” in the headline.

  “Mimi, can you translate this?” He stood up and she took over the computer.

  “Oh my God,” she said with her mouth agape. “‘Breaking News: Murders in Hongdae.’” She clicked on the link. “At least nine people are dead, and police are investigating.”

  “Damn. That sounds about right,” Sam said.

  “Okay, but how does that explain the woman downstairs?” Tyson asked.

  “It doesn’t. We can’t even begin to explain her.”

  Mimi picked her phone up off the coffee table. It was 11:37, and the battery was half spent. No messages or missed calls. She rang her mother, and they list
ened in. Judging by her tone, it was a fairly normal conversation.

  “What’d she say?” Sam asked. “I mean, if it’s okay for me to ask.”

  “I told her I was at a friend’s home in Hongdae. She hadn’t heard the news, and I said I’d stay inside.”

  “It was that easy?”

  “Yeah, she’s not a typical Korean mom. She cares, but she gives me a lot of freedom. And this situation is out of character for me.”

  “Oh, that’s good. And your dad?”

  “What about him?”

  “What’s he like?”

  “He’s a typical Korean dad. Too busy working.”

  Mimi had referred to Sam as a friend, and he was ever the overthinker. Surely, it was just a white lie she told her mother, right? Technically, they were just friends, if even that. They hadn’t so much as kissed. But what if she hadn’t blacked out? Or could he have kissed her before then? Or was it better that they hadn’t kissed at all? Ah, overthinking! He was never at a loss for thoughts. He’d just met Mimi, and he had more important things to think about than labels and lip-locking.

  Sam picked up his phone. “I’ll try Steve.”

  Steve’s phone was off, so Sam messaged him a nervous text.

  Mimi checked other websites, but there was no new news. The Korean netizens were in full force, speculating as to the identities of the murderers. Drunk students? Chinese? Japanese? Americans?

  Sam touched his temples. A terrible tension headache had set in. The woman downstairs, Steve, and Mimi were weighing heavy on his mind, but hunger was the likely culprit. And the hangover didn’t help. He checked his cupboard. Crunchy peanut butter, whole wheat crackers, a half-full bag of popcorn kernels, and store brand spaghetti. He had a steady supply of tea bags, green for a pick-me-up and chamomile for a knock-me-out.

  The crackers were individually wrapped, eight per pack. Opening all seven packs over a white plastic plate, Sam was reminded of childhood ‘cracker parties’ he and his brothers had had. They’d mix ketchup, mayonnaise, and black pepper in a small glass bowl, put it in the center of a porcelain plate, and surround it with stacks of saltine crackers. These ‘cracker parties,’ presumably the catalyst of Sam’s dining hall salads, included daytime television programming, trashy talk shows and squeaky clean public broadcasting alike. It was summertime, and the brothers were latchkey kids without cable TV.