Min Lee - Pachinko

As Pastor John teased the two sisters in the back about their fondness for sweets, Mozasu knocked his knee gently against Yumi’s. Mozasu had long thighs, and he had to move his thigh only a little to graze the skirt fabric covering Yumi’s pretty legs. She tapped him back in slight annoyance, though she did not mind.

Pastor John had asked the younger sister about what she did when it rained, and instead of listening to the girl stumble in English, casting about for the word “umbrella,” Mozasu found himself staring at Yumi. He loved to look at her soft profile, the way her dark, sad eyes met her high cheekbones.

“Moses, how can you learn English if you are just staring at Yumi?” John asked, laughing.

Yumi blushed again. “Behave,” she whispered to Mozasu in Japanese.

“I cannot stop, Pastor John. I love her,” Mozasu declared, and John clapped in delight.

Yumi looked down at her notes.

“Will you two marry?” Pastor John asked.

Yumi appeared stunned at this question, though she shouldn’t have been. Pastor John was liable to say anything.

“She will marry me,” Mozasu said. “I am confident.”

“What?” Yumi cried.

The women in the back were near tears laughing. Two men in the middle of the class pounded on their desks, cheering loudly.

“This is fun,” John said. “I think we are witnessing a proposal. ‘Pro-po-sal’ means an invitation to marry.”

“Of course, you will marry me, Yumi-chan. You love me, and I love you very much. We will marry. You see,” Mozasu said calmly in English, “I have plan.”

Yumi rolled her eyes. He knew she wanted to go to America, but he wanted to stay in Osaka and open his own pachinko parlor in a few years. He intended to buy his mother, aunt, uncle, and grandmother a huge house when he was rich. He said that if they wanted to move back to Korea, he would make so much money that he would build them castles. He couldn’t make this kind of money in Los Angeles, he’d explained. He couldn’t leave his family, and Yumi knew this.

“You and I love each other. Soo nee , Yumi-chan?” Mozasu smiled at her and took her hand.

The pupils clapped loudly and stamped their feet as if watching a baseball game.

Yumi bent her head down, mortified by his behavior, but she couldn’t be angry at him. She could never be angry with him. He was the only friend she’d ever had.

“We’ll have to plan a wedding then,” John said.

Tokyo, March 1962

Is he married?” Akiko asked. Her eyes brightened with anticipation.

“Yes. He’s married, and his wife is expecting in a few months,” Noa answered, almost flattening his voice.

“I want to know more about your family. C’mon,” she pleaded.

Noa got up to get dressed.

She couldn’t help it. Akiko was training to be a sociologist. She collected pieces of data, and her lover was her favorite puzzle. Yet the more she inquired, the more reticent he grew. When he answered her in his pithy manner, she had a habit of saying, “ Sooo ?” as if the facts of his life were something marvelous to behold. Everything about him was fascinating to her, but Noa didn’t want to be fascinating. He wanted just to be with her. He didn’t mind when she turned her headlights on strangers; it was far more interesting to hear her attempts at demystifying others.

He was Akiko’s first Korean lover. In bed, she wanted him to speak Korean.

“How do you say ‘pretty’?” she’d asked just a few hours before.

“ Yeh-puh-dah .” Such a simple word felt strange in his mouth when he’d said it to her. Akiko was stunning; “pretty” wouldn’t suffice in describing her beauty. “ Ah-reum-dop-da ,” he should have said, but Noa didn’t. She was an excellent social scientist not to have asked for the Korean word for love, because he would have no doubt revealed his hesitation in the translation.

Not wishing to be a specimen under her glass, Noa didn’t talk about his mother, who had peddled kimchi and, later, confections so he could go to school, or his father, who’d died from harsh imprisonment during the colonial era. These aspects of his biography had happened a long time ago as far as he was concerned. He wasn’t ashamed of his past; it wasn’t that. He resented her curiosity. Akiko was a Japanese girl from an upper-class family who had grown up in Minami-Azabu; her father owned a trading company and her mother played tennis with expatriates in a private club. Akiko adored rough sex, foreign books, and talking. She had pursued him, and Noa, who had never had a serious girlfriend before, did not know what to make of her.

“Come back to me,” she said flirtatiously, fingering her white cotton top.

Noa retreated to the futon.

After making love between classes, they had been lolling in Noa’s rented room — an exceptionally large living space for a university student, with two square windows that let in the morning light and immense floor space for a double futon and a furry beige rug. Thick piles of novels covered his large pine desk — Dickens, Tolstoy, Balzac, and Hugo. The fancy electric lamp with a green glass shade was off. Noa couldn’t have conceived of anything as nice as this room and could not believe his luck at the incredibly low rent. Hansu’s friend was the landlord, and it had come furnished with new, elegant things — ideal for a student studying literature and English. Noa had had to bring only his clothes packed in his father’s old suitcase.

Akiko claimed that none of the other students lived in a place as nice, even if they lived at home in Tokyo. She lived in a beautiful apartment with her family in Minami-Azabu, but in a room half the size of his; she spent all her free time between classes at his place. Her things were on his desk, in his bathroom, and in his closet. The commonplace idea that girls were neater than boys was not true in her case.

Despite Akiko’s best efforts, Noa couldn’t do it again so soon. Embarrassed, he finished dressing. She, too, rose to fix herself a cup of tea.

There was no kitchen here, but Noa had an electric kettle that Hansu had bought for him. All Noa had to do was study, Hansu had said. “Learn everything you can. Learn for all the Koreans, for every Korean who couldn’t go to a school like Waseda.” Hansu paid the tuition in full before the start of each term. Freed from worrying about money, Noa studied more fervently than he ever had. He reread books and studied as many critical essays as he could find. His only relief from work was this lovely girl whom he had fallen for. She was brilliant, sensual, and creative.

“What is he like?” Akiko asked, sprinkling tea leaves into the iron teapot.

“Who?”

“Koh Hansu, your benefactor. You’re leaving me in ten minutes to meet him. You do this on the first of the month.”

Noa hadn’t told her, but of course, she had guessed. Akiko wanted to meet Hansu. She had asked numerous times if she could tag along, but Noa did not think it was appropriate.

“He’s a good friend of the family. I told you. My mother and grandmother knew him before they came to Japan. He’s from Jeju, which is not very far from Busan. He owns a construction company.”

“Is he good-looking?”

“What?”

“Like you. Korean men are really good-looking.”

Noa smiled. What could he say to this? Of course, not all Korean men were good-looking, and not all Korean men were bad-looking, either. They were just men. Akiko liked to make positive generalizations about Koreans and other foreigners. She reserved her harshest words for well-off Japanese.

Akiko put down her teacup and pushed him down on the futon playfully, and Noa fell on his back. She straddled him and removed her shirt. She wore a white cotton bra and panties. She looked so beautiful, he thought. Her black hair fell like glossy, iridescent feathers around her face.