- assuage their sense of inferiority
- no epiphanies, no new courage
- interested only in sending him on impossible errands, apparently to see how he coped with the humiliation of failure. There was no need to demean himself further with sad stories
- emboldened by his mention of home
- he felt a queasy flicker of doubt
- buoyed by sudden inspiration
- he paused on the step where the now congealed noodles remained where he'd left them. Yellow gray floes of fat clung to the bloated dough. Slimy onions Lay slick and sweaty on the thickened broth. only recently this had been a delicious meal. Now it was an inedible wreck. Somehow the awful state of the noodles seemed to mirror the mess he was always making of his own life. What should have been a pleasure turned grotesque. So much wasted potential.
- sometimes hours would pass in stultifying silence
- inspire such stoic concentration
- he conducted his life with calculated, measured calm. He would never rush into impetuous action with some puerile idea of rescue
- he knew better than to ask, but the boundless uncertainties filled him with panic
- something crucial to his future, which he would learn only in retrospect and regret for the rest of his life
- he wrung his mind for clues
- regretting his moment of flippancy
- gain entry into a rarefied world of status and privilege
- they were a focused defiance, conspicuous and easy to stomp
- they shouted in antiphonal ecstasy
- addled
- mortified
- she would have to hope that the strength of her feelings made her eloquent and convincing
- his profligate tendencies were no secret, but their father usually tolerated it with silent judgement
- her face still had a touch of roundness, the wariness in her eyes not yet dulled to apathy
- her father would never relent
- his silence and that subtle slight of pretending he hadn't heard her communicated everything she had feared
- his self-righteousness felt like hands closing around her throat
- "hello, Peter," she said, trying to quell the panic in her voice
- she was so angry that it was an effort to speak at all, to find the proper words to contain her fury
- all the way back to the bathhouse, Jisun's ears pounded with his words, which heaped every blame, every possible failing, on her. she felt as disoriented as if she'd been flung into a new body, a new country where she did not understand the language or know a soul.
- sharing living conditions and having periodic meetings was not nearly the same as being a true worker, and she would never forgive herself for claiming it just to satisfy a fleeting antagonistic impulse
- if she were a stronger person, someone who valued her own dignity, then she would have let him take her home, locked the door to her bedroom, and wept in the privacy of her own lavish misery. perhaps she would have done so many things differently if she were that person
- everyone always seemed to wait until the last minute to call Mr Hong, the latrine man, as if living in perpetual denial of their shit
- she would be more exhausted, made testier by the sweaty commute and growing airlessness on the factory floor
- it was on their minds all the time, a snaking fear that made them even more terse with one another than usual
- coming back, she'd expected some melodramatic communication taped to her desk, impassioned pages purporting to explain or apologise that would just yank the knots of their conflict tighter
- they were eleven years old. together, they practiced the art of being unfazed
- she truly was as detached as she appeared
- she looked askance at him
- it was a stunning piece of information, and she packed it away to think about later. in the following years, she would return to this bit of inadvertent counsel again and again - it would become a kind of touchstone - but for now she had other questions and more pressing concerns
- typical Jisun, thinking the world revolved around her latest skirmishes
- a mother of triplets whose husband had a sporadic definition of responsibility
- goading her to fight
- (Jisun and Namin quarrels) How many times could they circle the same track before one of them stopped running?
- stopped at page 68
jul 23 2017 ∞
dec 13 2017 +