2 #2
“Take this with you tomorrow. It’s a good-luck charm from your old teacher.
When you get nervous, just touch it. Remember, you’re not alone.
Think of the millions and millions of students who have taken difficult exams before you.
Now you’re part of this group of strugglers.
It is good to be examined. A young person should learn and be tested so he can retain knowledge. ”
Surprised, Bo stared at the coin in his palm. He wouldn’t have pegged his teacher as superstitious.
“My hagwon teacher gave me a coin when I took my test. I passed and got into SNU for the hardest course. A farm boy got a top score!” he said, laughing. “So here I am, training you to take an exam, giving you a coin, and wishing you luck.”
Bo bowed and thanked him.
“How are you feeling?” The instructor prided himself on checking in with his students. He felt that his personal approach was the reason his students got their best scores and shook off their past failures.
Bo grinned, staring at the pale-blue walls of the large classroom.
“I’m well, Teacher. I believe I’ve prepared as much as I could.”
“You will have fine luck, too. You deserve it.”
“I guess I haven’t had much luck before.”
“Sometimes it isn’t just preparation. There’s timing, circumstances, and personality.
You have good habits, and you did the work, Bo.
You’re hardworking and a good person. Go easy on yourself.
Make sure you go to sleep early tonight.
Tell yourself that the exam is just another practice test. You’ll be fine. ”
At the café, several tables had cleared out, and Bo was alone in his corner.
He put aside the literary magazine for the next person who might want something to read.
When he went to the cashier to pay the bill, he could feel the worn edge of the 500-won coin in his coat pocket.
He took the train home and stopped at the grocery store near the gosiwon to pick up supplies for dinner.
Sonya had selected the best gosiwon near Bo’s hagwon, and it rarely had a vacancy because it was so well maintained.
Regardless, it was still a pay-by-the-week lodging, filled with transient students, day workers, and ghostly figures who came and went, and, of course, it was nothing like home.
The kitchen for the residents was a modest-size rectangular room.
There were three rice cookers and three electric kettles on a long white counter by a deep sink and a dish rack.
Everyone was required to wash their own dishes.
Bo found Isul at the communal table, her eyes closed and her head propped up on a Grade 7 civil service study guide.
An aluminum ramyeon pot with rounded handles simmered on the stove.
Isul wore her usual indoor clothes: black sweatpants, gray sweatshirt, white ankle socks with black-and-white plastic slippers.
She was bone thin and tiny, and although she was four years Bo’s senior, she looked like a primary school girl wearing her older brother’s clothes.
Severely nearsighted, Isul wore eyeglasses with thick plastic lenses that obscured her lovely small eyes.
Bo had met Isul in the communal kitchen on his first day at the gosiwon. Within a week, she made a point of sitting him down to tell him that he was nothing like the other residents.
“You’re not a loser like most of us. You’ll have a bright future. Keep studying.”
She had already graduated from Pusan National with good marks but hadn’t been able to get any office jobs.
Dejected by the process of applying for any more white-collar jobs, she had taken a break for a few months to work as a barmaid at a restaurant owned by her aunt, who had borrowed money just so Isul could study in Seoul for civil service exams. Isul had failed twice already.
On the first try, she got to the interview stage but had gotten a severe cold and lost her voice.
Isul’s windowless room was one of the smallest in the three-story gosiwon, and she had to share a bathroom on the women’s floor.
She teased Bo for being a rich kid because, though his room was also small—about six square meters—at least he had his own bathroom and a transom window that opened, allowing him to get fresh air from the lobby windows.
Isul and Bo had made a wager that whoever passed on the third try would buy the other a beef barbecue dinner.
Every day they ate at least one meal together in the third-floor kitchen, where they could have as much rice, kimchi, and ramyeon as they wanted, all supplied by the gosiwon.
With the allowance that his parents sent, Bo bought eggs, sausages, tofu, and tins of jjajang tuna, and he shared his groceries with her, though she ate so little that her intake was hardly noticeable.
Whenever her aunt sent her fish or banchan from home, she shared it with him. She called him her little brother.
The ramyeon in the pot burbled over, and Bo hurried to the stove to turn off the gas.
“Sister! It’s done, right?”
Isul didn’t open her eyes, and he nudged her shoulder gently, feeling the sharp edge of her shoulder blade beneath the thick sweatshirt.
He saw that she was sleeping soundly, having forgotten to take off her eyeglasses. As he removed them from her small face with both hands, Isul still didn’t wake up.
Big Uncle, a middle-aged security guard at a downtown bank, peeked into the kitchen.
A longtime resident and a kind of mayor of the gosiwon, he favored Isul and Bo.
After his elderly father died six years ago, Big Uncle had moved into one of the back rooms with a bathroom and never seen the point of finding a bigger place of his own.
He preferred the bustle of the gosiwon to the idea of living alone and took great care to remember the birthdays of residents and staff.
On a birthday, he’d buy a red bean bun from his favorite bakery and leave it in the kitchen with the person’s name and a smiley face in a heart drawn neatly on the paper bag.
“Our little Isul looks tired,” Big Uncle said. “Maybe we can get Manager Hwang to open her room, so she can sleep properly. Her neck is going to hurt if she sleeps that way,” he said, clucking his tongue. “Manager Hwang is at the store now. He’ll be back in half an hour or so.”
“Sister, Sister.” Bo jostled Isul’s shoulder but got no response. He spotted the familiar green lanyard with her room key in her sweatpants pocket. He turned to Big Uncle. “Maybe we can take her ourselves. She must weigh forty kilos, if that.”
Big Uncle bent over her chair and scooped up the young woman in his arms like an infant.
“She weighs less than a small sack of rice,” he said with concern.
They both checked that she was breathing.
Taking her key, Bo walked ahead of him to open Isul’s room. Having never seen the inside of her room before, he was startled by how small it was, easily half the size of his.