The following passage is a rough-draft excerpt from my upcoming novel, Gyeosunim, the sequel to Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary. Be warned that there are spoilers and you may be missing some context. Passages are in no particular order and are subject to change.
“Hello, Lolan-duh, I am Shin-hye. Do you know my mind? I am thinking of you: do you ever think of me? Give me a sign.”
The soft female voice was prefaced with slow, melodramatic music that carried on for about ten seconds before the message ended. An automated assistant let me know that I had no further messages: “Deo isang mesijiga eobsseubnida.”
It was my student, Yi Shin-hye. All week, she had visited me in my office, mid-morning, before the other teachers and I had ordered lunch. She always brought a box, wrapped in a scented, cloth napkin, with kimbap or some other dish that she had made for me. There was always more than I could eat in a sitting, and she always wanted to watch me take the first bite, to see me smile and hear me say “majhi-sahyo–delicious.” It was not an exaggeration: her cooking was delicious.
But how had she managed to get my pager number?
It didn’t take me long to figure it out. She had obtained it today.
“I have someone who wants to learn English privately,” Ashley said, “but I’m completely booked.” We were sitting at our desks, speaking freely. Unlike when I taught at Kwon’s hagwon, teaching privately, though still illegal and could get you deported, was not a secret among the teachers, and the university didn’t care as long as it didn’t interfere with your work.
“Just don’t get caught by authorities,” Chul-won had once told us. “It takes a lot of time and effort to replace you.”
“Are you available on Tuesday afternoons?" continued Ashley. "This student wants to study during his lunch break. I think he said between 12:30 and 1:30. I’ve asked Raymond but he has a class at one.”
I had no classes between eleven and three, so I told Ashley that I’d meet with the student.
Ashley gathered his books and papers, and started heading out of the office for his next class. “Great. Just put your pager number on a piece of paper and I’ll pass it on.”
“I can do better than that,” I said, producing a business card from my coat pocket and leaving it on his desk.
“Great, I’ll pass it along. Oh, and it looks like your lunch has arrived.” His head nodded just behind me. I turned and found Shin-hye standing behind me, another decorative napkin-wrapped around a lunchbox. Her eyes had fallen on the business card but immediately turned to meet mine as I greeted her.
“I bring you japchae,” she said. Though her spoken English was very good, her grammar sometimes slipped.
“You mean, ‘I brought you japchae,’” I corrected. “Shin-hye, this is very generous of you but you really don’t have to make me lunch every day. You obviously put a lot of work into it and I’m sure your time can be better spent.”
“It is my pleasure,” she said, smiling. “I make japchae for my lunch, too. I make enough for the both of us.”
Again, I corrected her grammar.
“I made it without mushrooms," she repeated. I remembered that you don’t like mushrooms.”
Earlier in the week, we had a lesson about likes and dislikes, where students would practice saying all of the things that they liked and disliked. I like studying English but I dislike studying for exams. I like travelling but I dislike taking long bus rides. I led the class with an example of my own, before going around to each student. “I like pizza but I dislike eating mushrooms on it.”
“Gyeosunim,” said Kim Jung-eun, “you don’t like mushrooms?”
“Correct,” I said. “When I order from Heim Pizza, I like the Supreme pizza but I always have to say, “Possot, beggo. No mushrooms.”
“You can speak Korean and order pizza on the telephone?” That question was followed by gasps and murmurings of approval.
“Yes.” My answer brought applause and I made a grand bow. “Kim Jung-eun, what do you like?”
“I like speaking English with you but I dislike being late for exams.” He still hadn’t forgiven himself for his midterm oral exam fiasco, even though he received a perfect score on the makeup assignment that I had given him, minus the penalty, and he had excelled in the final half of the course. The final exam was coming next week and I was sure that he was prepared. And because the exam was to be held in class, during our regular time, I knew that he wouldn’t be late. He had never missed a single class.
It was nearing the end of July and the end of the term. Students would be away for the month of August, though we teachers would still be working. We would be spending much of the month tutoring Korean teachers, much like I had done, last December, privately and away from the hagwon. This time, however, I would be paid by the university. In September, I would have new students and a new schedule.
Perhaps, in the last week before the final exams, this was what motivated Shin-hye to bring me lunch. Perhaps she was buttering up her teacher to get good grades. But I doubted that was the case. Like Jung-eun, she was one of my top students with perfect grades. No, I could see in her eyes as she presented her lunchbox, as she watched me take my first bites, that there was an infatuation that went beyond teacher-student boundaries.
I had seen her eyes dart toward Ashley’s desk as I unwrapped the lunchbox from the perfumed napkin. It was the same scent that Shin-hye emitted as she walked by my classroom desk every morning. Her eyes returned to Ashley’s desk as I took my first bite of the glass noodles, chicken, and vegetables. No mushrooms, just like I had said in class.
After receiving my compliments and approval, Shin-hye would leave me in peace, so that I could join the other teachers who were eating lunch at the same time. Cathy and Nelson would tease me for a few seconds, often joking that I had to watch myself, that Shin-hye would become my fatal attraction. I was starting to think that it was no joke.
And now, with this message on my pager service, it really wasn’t a joke. Shin-hye always returned to the office later in the afternoon to collect the empty lunchbox. I was usually away when she did it. And now I knew that this time, when she returned, she had glanced at my business card on Ashley’s desk, had taken the number.
Only one more week, I told myself, and the term would be over. By September, she would have a different teacher and will have forgotten all about me.
***
On Friday, as students poured into my classroom, I pulled Shin-hye aside. “I don’t want you to call my pager anymore, okay?” Since the first message, she had left two more, each longer than the first, each starting with the love-ballad music.
“Oh, Lolan-duh, do you know my mind? I think of you always. You are in my dreams and they are sweet. I think of you as soon as I wake and I can’t wait to see you again. I will be sad when our class ends but hope I can still bring you lunch that I make with love. I love you, Lolan-duh. I will always love you. I want to make you love me, too.”
“Those messages are not appropriate. I am your teacher and only your teacher.” I kept my voice low, hoping that none of the other students could hear us. They didn’t seem to pay any attention, so I was keeping my fingers crossed that it just looked like a teacher answering a student’s question.
“I have a special lunch for you today, Gyeosunim.”
“We’ll talk more then, but I would like today’s lunch to be the last, okay?”
Shin-hye’s face looked sad but I couldn’t help it. I was kicking myself for my stupid remarks on our first day, when we were learning adjectives. Why did I ever call her beautiful?
Today was the final day of class and we would be reviewing lessons from the second half of the term. Next Monday, we would have our exam, and on the following Friday, I would submit the results of the exam and we would take up the answers. And that would be it.
One week. I only had to survive one week.
***
More kimbap for lunch. But in the centre of each roll, a piece of ham was cut in the shape of a heart. A huge smile swept across Shin-hye's face and her eyes never left mine. I accepted Shin-hye’s lunchbox but I also escorted her toward the door. “I’m going to eat this outside. Come with me. We need to talk.”
Around the back side of the Languages building was a narrow path that ran the length of the building. A steep slope ran down to a sports field and about midway down the building, stairs led down toward the Student Union building. My office looked out onto the path and a bench that was shaded by a large maple tree. The bench backed onto the slope and faced the path and it also faced toward the windows into my office. I chose this bench so that the teachers could witness my interaction with Shin-hye without being able to hear us. I opened the box of kimbap. I had brought an extra pair of chopsticks–a set of metal sticks from my desk–and offered her the bamboo chopsticks that she had provided in the lunchbox. We were going to share this final lunch.
“Shin-hye, you are a great student and you have worked very hard in my class, but I have no other feelings for you.”
“I love you.”
“What do you think is going to happen between us? I am your teacher for one more week. I won’t see you again during the August break. In September, you’ll have a different teacher. I think you’ll see that it’s the studies that you love, not the teacher.”
“No, I love you. I will always love you. When you go back to Canada, I want you to take me with you. I want you to marry me.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t love you.”
“But you told me I was beautiful.”
And there they were, my words coming back to slap me in the face.
“It was part of the lesson. I’m sorry if you took those words to heart, that you felt there was emotion behind them, but I used them as part of the lesson. I didn’t mean anything by them.”
“I am not beautiful?”
I looked toward my office, tried to determine whether Cathy and Nelson were watching, but the reflection off the glass, mixed with the dancing light through the tree, made it difficult to see inside.
“You are a beautiful young woman, Shin-hye, and you deserve someone who loves you. Someone closer to your own age. I’m not that person.” I held the box of kimbap to her and she took a piece. While she chewed, with her hand shielding her mouth, I could see her eyes turned downward, moving as though she were reading from a page. She was thinking, trying to process my words. I hoped that I was gentle enough, that she would take the rejection with as little hurt as possible.
She swallowed the last bit of food and then turned her eyes to me. “If you will not be my teacher anymore and if you will not marry me, can we have sex?”
“What?”
“I want to do sexy things with you. I never have sex before but I want you to teach me. Be my sex teacher.”
I didn’t bother to take the time in correcting her grammar. “I can’t have sex with you. Never mind that I don’t love you and that you are too young. I’m a teacher. I can’t have sex with a student at the university. It’s against the rules.”
“It can be our secret.”
I handed her the barely eaten lunchbox and stood up. “No, it can’t. This is not appropriate. Good luck with your exams next week, but please do not bring me lunch anymore and do not visit me in the office unless you have any questions about school. I hope I’ve made myself clear, Shin-hye.” Tears welled in her sad eyes but I turned and walked back toward my office without looking back.
I could only hope that she would fall out of love with me as quickly as she had fallen in love.
***
On the weekend, the messages continued: “Do you know my mind? I will never stop loving you. I am a moth and you are my flame. I cannot turn away. I want to be sexy with you. I want to burn up in your embrace. I want you to touch my naked body. I want to touch your naked body. We can go to a motel and make sex all night. I am touching myself now, thinking it is you touching me. Oh, Lolan-duh, do you know my mind?”
I could hear her breathing intensify, could hear her moan, and I pressed the 7 on my phone to end and erase the message. Further pages were deleted as soon as I heard “do you know my mind?” I wished that I could just ignore my pager but because I was expecting a call from the student with whom Ashley had passed on my number, that was out of the question.
Cathy was right. Shin-hye had become a fatal attraction. How far would she go?
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