The Melancholy Korean

aybe you’ve had this experience. There’s this girl, see. She’s cute, smart, bien élevée. She exercises a lot, always a good sign. She likes to read books, an even better sign. Naturally, you like her. There’s one thing. She’s a little chilly on the friendliness front. Not snotty, exactly, just a little, well, distant. It’s not serious enough to dissuade you, since you know reserve is often a consequence of a sheltered upbringing—inexperience about the world taking the form of insecurity in it—and you also know it’s better to lose one’s innocence slowly (if at all) than to gain experience too quickly: there’s no one more loathsome at a party than the world-weary sophisticate. Besides, you like the challenge. You think you can warm her up, get her to unbend, relax a little. And even if you don’t succeed, she’s worth the effort. Because you think she’s the bee’s knees. Cream of the cream. A pearl. (Or, since it sounds better in Italian, una perla.) And so, when she asks for help in moving, you immediately volunteer. Time to make a move.

oving boxes, you remember too late in the late afternoon sun, is not a particularly enjoyable task. The tripartite move, down and up several flights of stairs, to and from a truck, back and forth from a storage unit, is worse, and, were it not for the presence of your Lady in Need, you might even be bad-tempered about the situation. But she seems happy you’re there, especially since her other friends couldn’t be bothered to show up. Certainly, there aren’t other Knights to the Rescue on site pressing their claims. Five hours later, half-faint from heat stroke, with a dehydration headache pressing against your temples and dining room table splinters in your hands, on the subway going home you recall the day’s final scene, how she came up to you and held you close in a hug, the way her hair, even after the long day, still smelled like freshly cut lilacs—unsurprising, since someone had to sit and watch the truck, and it wasn’t you. “You’re so awesome,” she said. The next day, Your Awesomeness is having trouble with the morning routine, some kind of muscle failure that prevents you from lifting a toothbrush up to your teeth, but what are the trivialities of dental hygiene next to the exhilarating promise of a date in her apartment? The home cooked meal, a few days later, served on a familiar wooden table (your obstinate adversary tranformed by candles and flowers into romantic ally) follows a familiar pattern: wine, greenmarket salad, laughter, rustic baguette, witty repartee, and so on, until that moment, as the dessert plates dry on the dish rack, and it’s just the two of you, lingering over the coffee, meal safely out of the way, she feels comfortable enough, good friends that you are, to tell you about her secret crush on Marco, a name, you realize appromiately half an hour later (good manners and your pride having prevented an earlier departure) which you could have spelled, given one letter for each flight of stairs you carried her belongings, a name uncomfortably close to your own: Moron.

(Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische)