As they finished the first round of drinks and moved onto the second bar, Chung stopped in front of a fish tank outside a raw fish restaurant. She was with a group, but it felt like she was standing there alone. Inside the cylindrical fish tank, mackerel were rapidly being pushed around in a circular orbit. The current was too strong for them, so they had no choice but to be spun around in circles by the water--however, the current might have felt more like a refreshing wave of water to them than a current. And perhaps the mackerel really did think they were swimming on their own. But in order to know for sure whether they were actively swimming or passively swimming, they would have to pick one of two options: either stop the current, or jump out of the fish tank. Outside, however, there was only the hard asphalt.
Being cooped up at home, the first day felt like Sunday, regardless of what day it actually was. The next day would be Sunday as well. And the day after that, too. But when Sunday came for the third day in a row, Sunday ceased to be Sunday. And on the fourth consecutive Sunday, unease began to manifest itself. Following the natural progression of events, Chung received a phone call from the housing manager. She had to vacate her place within 45 days of leaving the company. It was a procedure Chung was well aware of. It's just that she never thought the procedure would be applied to her so suddenly, and by someone else. The reason Chung had chosen to attach herself to this company, with its long hours and measly paycheck, was because of the company housing--attractive to someone like Chung who had come from out of town. Chung was lucky to get housing only a year after entering the company, and thanks to that she had been able to live comfortably for the past two. But not anymore. Chung didn't know if this was also a natural progression of events, but she had also received news from her boyfriend that he wanted to break up. Both of them were busy, so their relationship was such that they only met about once a month, if that. Everything--her job, her housing, her boyfriend--had disappeared all at once, suddenly freeing her from all attachments. Chung felt elated by the uncertainty of that vacuous state.
Chung wasn't the only person living alone. She knew in general who her neighbors were. She also knew that no one from her team was living in the same neighborhood. Chung was the type of person who, when going down the hallway, would try to guess who her neighbors were by glancing at their gas bills, to check that her own wasn't unusually high. She was also the type of person who had connected to, and used, the Wi-Fi of some random internet network the first few weeks after moving in, but had actually felt pleasantly reminded once again of her neighbors' existences when that internet connection was suddenly forcibly disconnected. And sometimes, when the neighbors packed tightly around her turned up their furnaces, she would feel cozy at the heat emanating through the walls. She was the kind of person who would one day come to a vague understanding about who was raising a puppy, who was a newlywed, and who returned from work at what hour. However, Chung definitely did not want her neighbors to be aware of her. Of course, neither did she want to be differentiated from the rest of them. But perhaps they already knew. Knew that the circumstances of one woman, who had lived in this apartment for the past two years, had changed. The evidence being the delivery plates placed in front of her door regularly for the past week.
Three weeks passed, but Chung continued to read the same book, always starting from the same page number. For the next month, she would have to read more of this book. At first it was tedious, but it became a little more bearable when she thought of it like a script for a play. With each day, Chung's facial expressions improved. She even cried twice. Crying was several times harder than smiling, but on her third week she had successfully acted out crying. She remembered to keep turning the pages regularly, yet naturally, even as the tears dropped like hail on their slanted surfaces. Once out of the two times she cried, an old lady sitting next to her handed her a tissue and even asked what it was that she was reading that was so sad. Although no one spoke to her the other time she cried, it was clear that everyone had fixed their eyes onto the book that she was holding. Of course, Chung wasn't crying because of the book or anything. The tears were merely draining from her like bodily waste. Chung wasn't usually one for tears, but when she thought of it as work, crying wasn't so hard.
Lifting her eyes from the pages of the book and looking at one corner of the subway, Chung could see a very slow-moving dot trudging along the floor. It was a slug. What should have been an unfamiliar sight actually felt familiar. It was because of her work; reading House of Slug each day, even if she wasn't particularly interested in its sentences, she would eventually get used to them. One day, as Chung went around in the same orbit as always, she escaped from her subway line. All she had to do was stay on line 2, but at Seongsu Station, she had left for a diverging line. It was all because those words that had been manufactured by an error in her head had passed in front of her once again. It was definitely "Chef's Nail" and not "Chef's Mail." The font was also certainly similar to the one used in the design on that storefront. Chung should have continued riding line 2 and gone all the way to Shincheon Station, but instead she followed "Chef's Nail." What she had seen was the title of a book some man was holding in his arm. Chung walked along the path branching out from the inner circle. The signpost she used to guide her was only the couple of letters printed on the book cover. But somewhere along the way, she had lost those letters, and with them, the man and his book.
An hour before Chung's shift would be over, she ran into Gwak. Gwak smelled like an office party. Chung felt slightly awkward for having made such good use of the business card Gwak had given her. She was a little embarrassed by herself as well. Chung was in the middle of work but closed her book anyway because it was an unexpected situation. Yet she didn't put the book in her bag and instead left it on her lap. The two of them sat side by side and glided along in the same direction. Chung realized from what Gwak was saying that the business card that Gwak had given her on the day she had left the company wasn't the business card for Bookworm. What Gwak had given her was actually a coupon for three Thai massages--a business-card-sized coupon. When Gwak asked Chung how she liked the massages, Chung thanked Gwak for the coupon. She didn't mention anything about Bookworm. That massage coupon had probably already expired, and even if it hadn't, by now it would have already drifted into the city's enormous wastepaper dump.
Chung wanted to live an average life, no more, no less, just something in the middle, but this was the hardest thing to do. People who tried to reside in the middle would fall downward. That was because the people who had looked up to the top and jumped but fallen were already resting their butts in the middle. Chung felt like she now knew a little bit about what kind of stance she would have to take to maintain her place in the middle. First of all, if you were in a fish tank, you would have to swim around in circles at the speed the fish tank demanded of you. Chung didn't have the speed regulator for the fish tank. And just like that, Chung found herself once again swimming around in circles inside of a fish tank.
Chung trudged to work, and with her eyes buried in her book, she glanced at the world beyond the print, beyond the outer cover of her book. She knew that this six- or ten-car hunk of scrap metal wasn't a stage for herself, but when she finally confirmed this fact with her own two eyes, she felt somewhat embarrassed. As many as three people who were holding House of Slug entered Chung's field of vision. They might have been affiliated with Bookworm, or they might have also been real readers. One woman would intentionally--yet not so much so that it was obvious--bump into someone. When the book dropped as a result, she would either pick it up herself or receive it when the other person picked it up for her; in this way, she was doing a more direct form of advertisement. In the span of thirty minutes, that woman repeatedly bumped into people and dropped the book many times. Of course it had a good effect. As the book was repeatedly dropped and then picked up again, its cover and the title on it, House of Slug, was actively being exposed to people. One guy was dozing off. Sitting with the House of Slug held silently in his hand, he would nod off repeatedly and then wake up again and start reading the book. Although nodding off while holding the book that was to be advertised was reason for a point deduction, it had its advantages because something about his expression and body position was so unique that it grabbed people's attention. As Bookworm demanded that the House of Slug be etched into people's subconscious, even if all he was doing was nodding off as he read the book, you couldn't say that he had failed in advertising the book. That man had clearly succeeded in attracting people's attention, and afterward he made sure that their eyes met with the House of Slug. And another girl was just silently reading House of Slug. What she was doing technically fulfilled the demands of Bookworm, but there was nothing unique about her. She was a book-reading machine. Chung spoke to the woman.
caa09b180b