Free I'll Be Right There by Kyung-Sook Shin Page A

headed outside. The nausea was overwhelming. While I was dry heaving on all fours on the riverbank, I glimpsed her through the haze rising off the river. At first, I thought she had just dipped her face in the water. Her face was wet. When she noticed me watching her, she jumped and hid her face. I realized that she had been crying. Her eyes were puffy, like she had been weeping without restraint. She put her head down and walked away, but I followed her. She stopped next to the pile of wood leftover from the night before. The thick fog had settled over the charred remains of the campfire. She squatted next to the ashes. I sat beside her. She rested her arms on her knees and buried her face in them. I did the same. She lifted her head and rested it on her forearms. I did the same .
    “Why are you copying me?” she asked .
    “To make you laugh!”
    She laughed weakly, as if to be polite .
    “Do you know me?” she asked .
    “Not yet.”
    “If you don’t know me, then how can you make me laugh?”
    She kept using the formal register with me, despite my attempts to get close to her .
    “But I just did,” I said .
    She peered at me through the fog. Her eyes were still swollen. She must have seen me throwing up, because she took an aspirin out of her pocket, handed it to me, stood up, and disappeared into the mist .
     
     
—Brown Notebook 2

CHAPTER 3
    We Are Breathing
    I made the right decision to learn about the city by walking around it. Walking made me think more and focus on the world around me. Moving forward, putting one foot in front of the other, reminded me of reading a book. I came across wooded paths and narrow market alleyways where people who were strangers to me shared conversations, asked one another for help, and called out to one another. I took in both people and scenery.
    After I found a way to get to school without having to go through the large traffic tunnel, I enjoyed walking to school as well. I had walked toward the school one day only to find myself back in front of the tunnel again. I looked around, wondering what to do, when I saw a staircase to the right of the tunnel. At the top of the stairs, a narrow, winding path led uphill over the tunnel and through old tile-roofed buildings. The school was only a couple of minutes away by bus, but if I took the path that led over the tunnel, it would be a good twenty minutes on foot. As I walked farther, I came across more staircases.
    It felt like a different city up there. A tall, redbrick smokestack had BATHHOUSE painted on it in huge white letters. A house that sold clay jars of all sizes sat with its front gate open, and I even came across a sign for the Social Science Library. A crepe-myrtle tree like the one by my mother’s grave was growing in an empty lot. But it must have been quite old, because the base of the trunk was incomparably thicker and the branches spread much wider than my mother’s tree. At one point, the path became so narrow that I had to step to the side when two giggling girls wearing backpacks passed me in the opposite direction. People up there lived life at a slower pace and did not concern themselves with those who lived below the tunnel. I peeked over a shoulder-high wall to see slices of daikon radish drying on a round straw tray. Bright red chili peppers hung from vines planted in even rows in a blue plastic container. There was even the occasional flowerpot planted with premature chrysanthemums sitting in front of someone’s house. In one alleyway, I came upon a long wooden deck placed between two of the houses upon which elderly women were kneading dough and julienning what looked like pumpkin. When I walked by, they stopped what they were doing and stared at me like I was another species. The first time I went through there, I walked very slowly so I could take it all in. But I soon grew so familiar with the place that I could get from one end to the other in ten minutes. Later still, even when I was not on that