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Joshua rubbed his face and flopped down onto the ladder in front of the bookshelf. Yeojin chuckled with a mischievous grin.
“Min-hyung, Mommy isn’t finished yet. Olivia, thank you so much for becoming friends with my nerd son, who has absolutely zero social skills. I was actually very worried.”
“Josh, I’m the one who’s more grateful to Min-hyung. For becoming my friend. Min-hyung is a really great friend.”
Jiyu spoke hesitantly, her cheeks flushing red, speaking from the heart.
During a time when it felt as though the world had dropped her into a swamp, it was Joshua who had first approached her.
To her, who had been sinking slowly, devoid of will and not even attempting to escape, he had spoken passionately about Asimov’s universe—traversing space and time—with eyes that radiated both intellect and madness.
Joshua, who was so certain of his own world that he was freer and more confident than anyone else despite being alone, had unintentionally pulled her out of the swamp. Thus, she couldn't help but be grateful.
Seeing Jiyu like this, Yeojin’s eyebrows curved upward as she beamed.
“Passed!”
“Thank you.”
Jiyu, who had been standing there bewildered, bowed her head in thanks once more.
To be able to work in a bookstore filled with books—it was nothing short of heaven. It was all thanks to Joshua.
And so, for three weeks, Jiyu earned pocket money working part-time at Paper Crane.
In the mezzanine level of the duplex bookstore, various cultural events were held, such as author signings and ‘story time’ for children.
Joshua would come out toward the end of her shift to help her wrap things up. Then, he would hole up in the mezzanine, steadily proceeding with the establishment of the non-profit organization they had envisioned.
During that lonely and desperate summer, Jiyu and Joshua became close rapidly.
Even as she walked out naked from the ruins, it was somewhat bearable because she had a friend.
✾ ✾ ✾
In early August, Ae-jeong finally found a job.
It was a position caring for a child who had just passed their first birthday, belonging to a young couple living in a luxury townhouse located in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.
The problem was that since both parents worked on Wall Street and had irregular finishing times, they wanted a live-in nanny.
They provided a spacious room with its own bathroom in the townhouse basement, and the hourly pay was decent. She could take one day off per weekend, and overtime pay was provided if she worked past 9 PM. There were also two weeks of paid vacation.
In many ways, the conditions were not bad.
Ae-jeong spent a lot of time scouting for a room near the job. However, Prospect Park was one of the most expensive areas in Brooklyn.
As she was pushed further toward the outskirts, she finally found a room that fit her budget near Bedford-Stuyvesant.
To save money, Ae-jeong avoided real estate agents and scoured Craigslist, where she found a studio that didn't require a large security deposit. She contacted the landlord directly.
On the way to see the house, the mother and daughter stepped off the bus and were terrified by the unfamiliar sight. Despite it being daytime, there were hardly any people on the street, and the walls of the buildings were covered in filthy graffiti.
Having lived in Manhattan for a long time, they didn't know that the area, shortened to ‘Bed-Stuy,’ was one of Brooklyn’s most notorious slums.
Clinging to each other's arms, the two looked around warily as they climbed to the fourth floor of a shabby, old building. After checking the letters on the crowded doors, they cautiously knocked on the door marked 4B.
Soon, the door opened slightly, held by a chain. A menacing man with a thick gold chain around his neck and tattoos of numbers and letters under his eyelids scanned Ae-jeong and Jiyu from head to toe before undoing the chain and swinging the door wide open.
[Lucky day today. Come on in.]
He smiled, licking his lips, revealing yellow teeth stained with nicotine. Behind him, a wooden floor marked with black mold and a cracked window were visible.
Ae-jeong, who had stepped halfway in, froze and recoiled. For some reason, she grabbed Jiyu’s arm and quickly hid her behind her back.
The man craned his neck to see Jiyu’s face and let out a greasy smirk.
[Mother and daughter? Or sisters? You can never tell the age of Asian women. You're here to see the place, right? Are you two living together? I'll cut the deposit in half if you want to have a round with me.]
Pale with shock, Ae-jeong grabbed Jiyu’s wrist and bolted out of there without looking back. Terrified that he might chase them, the mother and daughter ran at full speed for two blocks, only stopping to gasp for air once they reached the bus stop.
After staring at the ground for a while, Ae-jeong snapped her head up. She looked at Jiyu with a complicated expression and spoke with determination.
“You, live at Hunter’s house and graduate from school.”
Jiyu looked at Ae-jeong with a stunned expression.
“What do you mean by that?”
“It came up while I was talking to Lauren a few days ago. I told her about my current situation, and she was the one who suggested it first.”
“No, even so, how can I live in someone else's house, and especially Hunter’s….”
Ae-jeong let out a sigh. The elasticity of her once smooth skin had vanished, and deep laugh lines had carved into the corners of her mouth.
“I also tried to find a way for us to live together so I wouldn't have to make you live as a dependent in someone else's home, but it's not going to work.”
As Jiyu could only stare at her with a look of despair, Ae-jeong avoided her gaze and explained soothingly.
“You know Rosa is retiring, right? They're looking for a nanny, but they say no matter who comes, Daisy throws a fit and cries. She’s developed emotional instability because of that dyslexia…? because she can't read well, and they said she was at her best when she was with you.”
“…And?”
“I told them I was worried because you'd be alone during the week once I start the live-in nanny job, so she asked if you could be Daisy’s babysitter. They'll provide room and board and give you an hourly wage as pocket money. All you have to do is pick her up after school, help with homework, and read books with her. She’s going into second grade now, so she doesn't need as much attention as before. Honestly, to save for your college tuition and find a place for us to live together, we need to save a lot of money. Lauren was being incredibly considerate. Rich people usually cut ties the moment you become poor, no matter how close you were; I'm just grateful.”
“I don't want to. It's not that I don't want to babysit Daisy, but how can I live at Hunter’s house…. I'll find a job I can do after school. Then somehow—”
Ae-jeong cut her off.
“Jiyu. I know you don't like Hunter very much, but what else can we do? With the money we have now, we can only afford a place in a neighborhood like this. You're going to commute to school alone in this dangerous place? Sleep alone at night? Didn't you hear what that man said earlier? Do you even know how many bastards like that are in the world?”
“I'm not a child anymore, I'll be fine if I'm careful….”
Jiyu’s protest faded toward the end. The man she had seen earlier was the kind of person she had never dealt with before. A sickening fear sent shivers down her spine.
Someone passed by them, exhaling clouds of grey smoke. The pungent smell of marijuana lingered in the air. The two of them coughed and waved their hands to disperse the smoke.
“Just endure it for two years. It might feel miserable to go from visiting as a friend to living there as a dependent. I understand that a hundred times over. Still, it's better to be physically comfortable and mentally uneasy than to live in a dangerous neighborhood and tremble in fear of something bad happening.”
“…….”
Born in Manhattan and having lived on the Upper East Side while attending a private school, Jiyu had lived thinking her socio-economic position was near the bottom.
Looking back now, that bottom had been a dizzyingly high ceiling.
A diamond bubble, precisely cut and polished. That bubble had filtered and refracted external reality, turning it into a brilliant and beautiful prism.
With Alan’s death, the sky collapsed and the bubble shattered. Having experienced only a tiny fraction of the world outside the bubble, she felt as if she had been thrown naked onto a sheet of ice.
How fragile, useless, and incompetent she was.
Despite the midsummer weather, her hands and feet were cold and her bones chilled, as if all the blood had drained from her body.
Instead of the radiant sky, she felt poignantly that she was left with nothing but a body that didn't know how to do much, stranded in a cold, dirty, and smelling reality.
The abyss of that wretched reality was even more terrifying because the bottom was nowhere in sight.
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