His Life

For a man of fifty-two, Gyungjin has found that he has lost all sense of power. On Monday mornings he wakes up at 5 A.M. beside his still-sleeping wife, gets dressed, and leaves quietly out the back door. He stops by at a local convenience store to pick up a discounted packed lunch, and takes the train to the office, arriving punctually at 6 A.M. At the office he puts on his name tag, turns on the lights, and sets his lunch in the refrigerator. He makes himself a cup of instant coffee before walking over to his desk to answer customer emails. He continues working as his coworkers gradually begin entering the building at 7 A.M. Heesuk emerges from behind, setting a warm hand on his back. “Back at it again, eh?” Heesuk asks. “I get lonely when my wife and kids are away,” Gyungjin replies, chuckling slightly. “Where are they off to this time?”.

“They’re off in Switzerland, visiting some family,” he says.

Gyungjin is tall and stout, with short black hair swept up in the front and soft, brown eyes. Technically he is a graduate of one of the most prestigious universities in Korea; but then again, technically, he was disgracefully stripped of his CEO position, and the job market was slow. He had been looking for a new job for about 2 months until he found a position at a little-known start-up that was satisfactory. The new job allowed him an escape from his home life—the shame and disappointment in his children’s eyes, the constant piling up of bills, and the incessant looks of disdain and temper tantrums his wife threw. He once almost had to go to the hospital for a scratched cornea.

At work, he spends time answering customer inquiries and handling customer complaints. Most of the time he is simply copying and pasting shipping details, canceling last-minute shipments, or logging suspicious credit card cancellations. Occasionally he provides feedback for the new website homepage, which floods him with a sense of pride and competence for being engaged in what he will later describe in his CV as “website design and development.”

Unlike his home life, here, he is capable and has gentle friends to keep him company. It is his general rule, however, to not reveal too much about his home life. In the same way that his wife thinks he is running a new start-up, his coworkers too, think that he is fairly well-to-do, simply looking for a change of pace, a new adventure on the horizon. He had never meant to lie about his current situation at work or to feign a loftier financial situation than he had. But inevitably his old self-gratifying nature brought out the worst in him, and one lie piled on top of another so that he now lived double lives. Neither is his own reality.

Because he takes pleasure in the separation and solitude of workplace living, it always surprises him when the two worlds of home and work collide. Today, his son calls him from school, Hanyoung Foreign Language High School, an elite private school about a 30-minute drive from their home. He looks around his surroundings before cautiously answering. He doubts the call will take very long. “Hey Ian, what’s up?” Gyungjin asks, stooping deeper into his desk and muffling a hand around his mouth and phone. “Not much dad. I just wanted to ask if you could send me some allowance money. My friends and I are at a restaurant, and I pulled the short straw to pay for the meal.”

“Don’t I give you an allowance every month?”

“Dad, I’m calling you from the bathroom right now, do you know how embarrassing this is? Can’t you just forward like 200,000 won to my bank account?”

“200,000 won? How much did you guys eat?”

“I don’t know, Dad. We bought booze too. These guys drink like crazy. And I’m with a group of five guys, so it adds up.”

Gyungjin opens his banking app on his phone. He forwards a payment of 250,000 won to his son, just in case the 200,000 is not enough. “I sent it just now, did you get it?” Gyungjin asks. He hears a slight muffle and a click on the other end. “Got it. Thanks, Dad! See you at home.” His son ends the call.

Gyungjin sighs as he leans into his chair. His parenting skills, he is aware, are complacent and docile. Ever since those three children came out of the womb, he couldn’t say no to any of them.

The family had an old Hyundai minivan which he graciously offered to his wife to drive their children to school. On the first day of school, however, his second oldest son came crying, complaining about how all of the other students drove in luxury foreign cars. His wife simply nodded from behind. The next day Gyungjin drove his car to the dealership, traded it in for a sleek new Mercedes which had exorbitant rates, and drove it home.

That night, his wife made love to him in a way that made all of his toil and struggles feel worth it. His sentiments are, and have always been, uxorious. He is aware. Nevertheless, he does not resist that side of himself.

For the remainder of the day, he sits glued to his computer screen, getting up for a thirty-minute lunch break at noon with Heesuk. The two eat outside on a low stone fence that separates the greenery from the parking lot and talk about the weather and baseball. Heesuk had recently gotten married three months ago. Unfortunately, Gyungjin couldn’t go to the wedding, but he did send some congratulatory money on the last day of work before his honeymoon. Heesuk brought a packed lunch today, with a thermos filled with warm miso soup and a bento box filled with rice, spam, pickled vegetables, and egg-washed pumpkin. Gyungjin unwraps the plastic and pops off the clear plastic lid. Today’s meal consists of 6 thin rolls of rice wrapped in nori and pickled radishes on the side. Heesuk looks over his shoulder. “Man, are you on a diet or something? Nowadays they have all sorts of delicious meals at the convenience store. Hell, you can get a whole fried pork chop or at the very least something with a little meat,” he says, passing over two spam slices into Gyungjin’s plastic container with his chopsticks.

“My wife’s away, so I never really know what to eat without her around,” Gyungjin laughs. He takes a bite of the spam. It is sweet and somehow still warm. He envies Heesuk for a moment, before taking a hard bite out of the pickled radish, and the stale rice and soggy nori.

After the meal, the two head back inside. Heesuk goes to his desk and leaves early around 5:45 P.M. “He’s going home early to see his wife,” his coworkers make fun of him. Gyungjin stays at the office until well past closing. The last coworker to leave gives him a vitamin C lemon candy before leaving. “Don’t work yourself too hard,” he says, as he gathers his belongings and exits the building.

Gyungjin sits at his desk, occasionally taking quick breaks to stare at old pictures of his children. They were happy then, weren’t they? He muses. But then again, had they ever really been happy? It’s now 8 P.M.

Gyungjin begrudgingly gets out of his seat, cleans up his work desk and turns off the lights. He locks the doors before leaving and takes the train back home. It’s 8:45 P.M. by the time he gets home. He finds a cold meal left out for him by his wife. He gratefully eats the cold stew and hardened rice before doing the dishes and setting the side dishes in the fridge.

He peeks into his children’s bedrooms. His oldest son has earbuds on. He is supposed to be in college by now, but he failed out of his dream school and is taking a gap year to retake the test to get in. He refused to work part-time while he was in between school, his wife also forbade it. “I’m not just gonna sit around and watch my son work part-time on minimum wage in the service industry!” She said.

He peeks into his second son’s room. He’s passed out, drunk from earlier today. He’s 18 now and in his last year of high school. He reasons that he’s probably stressed out and needs the leniency to unwind.

The third room is empty. Their youngest daughter is away at a boarding school, Cheongshim International Academy, and she only comes home for major holidays. He misses his little princess but finds that perhaps this is for the best. His wife is insufferable at times, and the two always get into arguments. He watches from afar.

And so, Gyeongjin washes up, gets into bed beside his wife, and does the same thing over again the next morning. He is an invisible man in his own house. Somehow, he has lost all sense of respect in this household.

Then one Sunday morning everything changes. He is sitting at his desk completing some mindless and monotonous task when he receives a notification from a messaging app. His older sister made a group chat with the entire extended family: him, his older sister, his older brother, and his mom and dad, as well as their respective spouses and children.

He hesitates, he hasn’t spoken to his family members in years. Maybe an occasional call to his sister from behind closed doors so that his wife wouldn’t hear, but generally he makes sure not to keep in touch with his family. But today is different. Lately, he has been different. Whether it is the constant solitude or the loneliness. He is curious.

He opens the group chat to find his sister’s message: “We will be celebrating our dad’s 80th birthday on May 26th. We were thinking it would be a good idea to Zoom in the family in Korea so that we can all celebrate together. Let’s coordinate more as the time comes.” The thread ends with a bunch of hearts and thumbs-up reactions. Gyungjin sits with his heart pounding. His hands shake a little as he types a response, before deleting everything and simply responding with a thumbs up. He shuts off the phone and leans back in his chair. His wife is going to give him hell for this when he gets back.

At home, as he suspected, his wife is irate that his family included their entire family in a group chat. “How the hell did she find our children’s Kakao IDs? Why do we need to be included in a Zoom meeting like we’re the outsiders?” She screams at him and stares daggers into his eyes, filling him with dread and terror.

He soothes and coaxes her as best as he can, but he never could reign in this side of her. He simply tries to explain that it was his father’s 80th birthday, that it was a big milestone, and that the two of them shouldn’t deprive their children of interacting with their own grandfather. She storms out in a huff, tells him to sleep on the couch today, and he obeys.

That night as he lay on the couch to go to bed, he feels a fluttering sensation in his chest. Is it excitement? Nervousness? No—this is hope. For the first time in a very long time, he realized that he was looking forward to something. He hasn’t seen his parents in over 13 years. How were they doing, he wonders. What do they look like?

The next day he wakes up with a knot in his shoulder, but he has never felt more unburdened of his current circumstances.

It is the day of the Zoom call. His wife, begrudgingly, puts on a soft smile and instructs his children to wear their most expensive and polished outfits. They drove their daughter all the way from boarding school so that she could attend, taking a temporary leave of absence approved by the school. The family poses in front of the computer camera. His wife and Gyungjin sit in the back. His children sit in front, on the floor. Gyungjin rushes over to the computer, opens the Zoom link, and scuffles back to his station.

The family Zoom meeting commences, and in front of the screen, he sees his father and mother, his older sister and her husband and two daughters. He sees his oldest brother and his wife and son. He is overcome with how much they have all grown, the children, and his siblings and parents too. Each family greets one another and performs something for their grandfather. His sister’s two daughters had prepared a song and drawing. His brother’s son had prepared a heartfelt message. Gyungjin’s eldest son had written a poem for his grandfather. His second oldest prepared a violin piece, and his youngest daughter prepared a song on a Korean Danso—a long wooden wind instrument.

He exists in an anxious flurry, and at once when the Zoom call ends, he does not know what he feels. He is glad to see his parents but also worried about what his wife felt and thought throughout the whole experience. As soon as the Zoom call ends his wife scowls. “Well, that was a waste of time,” she says, taking off her dress and putting on loose clothing.

In the family group chat his older sister’s daughter had posted a link to the Zoom recording. A souvenir of our time together, she had written. That night, his wife obsessively watches the video recording and notices her child’s violin playing is inaudible. The high frequency of the violin’s whines wasn’t captured through the microphone. She flies into a fit. “How could they not tell us that his playing couldn’t be heard through the Zoom call? They just sat there, watching. Mocking us. They’re all in on it, you know. They’re against us! Our children too.” He consoles his weeping wife for about two hours before she falls asleep.

There is still his sister. He ought to close that chapter, he deems. While his wife is asleep he calls his sister. She sounds cheerful, kind. “Gyungjin?” she says “Why are you calling?” “Hey. I don’t think we should call anymore. Minyoung doesn’t like it. And don’t send texts in the group chat either.”

A long silence before she speaks. “I don't know what you’re talking about,” she says. “Gyungjin, are you okay?”

He puts down the phone. A shadow of relief and regret passes over him. There will be peace for a little while at his home. But for how long?