Tag: writing

AI Tomorrows, DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, FLASH!, Many feminisms, Reflections, South Korea

The Woman Not on Any List

!Epic Tomorrows

by Jo Eunyoung (South Korea, poet); see also Meet Me at Three O’clock at the LerDevagar Bookstore and The Summer We Once Wanted

*******

“Noblesse Matchmaking — we find you the partner you deserve.“

Even past forty, matchmaking agencies still send me messages. Maybe I’m still on their list of women who haven’t — or couldn’t — marry. Maybe it’s just an automated system firing into the void. Either way, I feel two things at once: a small admiration for their persistence, and a faint irritation at still being considered a target. I never delete the messages immediately. I leave them there for hours, as if one day even this might begin to feel urgent.

One day, a younger colleague leaned in close, as if sharing classified information. “Unni, I actually met my husband through a matchmaking agency (gyeolhon jeongbo hoesa: Korea’s paid marriage brokerage service that scores and ranks members by age, education, income, and appearance). You should try it too — I worked really hard at it.” She believed she was doing me a favor. The story of their fated, romantic meeting had apparently been constructed overnight — a tidy narrative designed to erase the fact that it had started with a checklist.

It’s not that I never tried. I dated steadily, loved recklessly. I was a bitch to some and an angel to others, just as certain exes were to me. I broke up and started over, again and again, and somewhere in that repetition, time slipped away — “hulsseok”(the sound Koreans make while swallowing tears).

People offered what they called gentle advice. You studied too long. You were too focused on work. They followed this with their own marriage success stories. A question rose in my throat — so are you actually happy?— but I swallowed it every time. I didn’t want to come across as the bitter unmarried woman, sneering at other people’s choices.

What they said always sounded less like advice and more like self-reassurance: that raising children is nobler than any career, that some men feel burdened by women who think too much, that love is fine but marriage is reality. I listened and nodded. You’re doing so well. I’m honestly envious. It was the kindest thing I could offer.

They say marriage is a choice now. But most people I know — born, like me, in the 1980s — didn’t quite choose it or reject it. They simply married, the way you do things when that’s just what’s done. A small number of us didn’t. Not entirely by choice, but not entirely by accident either. I live in the gap between those two worlds, and sometimes it’s hard to breathe.

I had actually joined that agency years earlier. Even then, in my mid-thirties, I was categorized as high-risk — too old for safe childbirth, too educated to be appealing. My PhD was a liability, they said; men worried I might correct them. They suggested I list only my bachelor’s degree. Still, they found reasons for optimism: I looked younger than my age, I wasn’t overweight, and my voice was soft and pleasant.

Suddenly I was a product approaching its expiration date. A new agency promised AI-based matching, as if intimacy were a logistics problem. When I saw the ad, I thought: I’ve walked into the wrong place entirely.

This isn’t where I belong. Run.

An unmarried woman in her forties. Neither young nor old. Studying literature. On television, forty-something single women are always successful — corner offices and sleek apartments. The term gold miss (a glamorous, financially independent single woman) comes from that image.

But I can’t claim the gold. My degree didn’t translate into salary. I spend my nights revising poems, asking myself: will I ever publish a collection? Will I become the poet I want to be? I am, by most measures, badly out of step with this era.

I can’t join my friends’ conversations about stocks, real estate, their children’s tutoring costs, the latest housing policy. I’ve grown a little strange, just as they predicted. The future still frightens me, but I’ve stopped chasing someone to make that fear quieter. That’s left me lonelier in some ways.

I’ve also stopped obsessing over my weight. I prefer streets with trees to streets with people. I’ve started to understand why middle-aged people photograph flowers. I have no children, but I tend my writing with the same careful attention — softly, gently — and I love it deeply. I take care of myself. I protect my small world.

Then I heard that younger Koreans had coined a term for people like me: yeong-poti (Young Forty: started as a compliment for energetic forty-somethings, now a slur for those who refuse to act their age). I checked myself against the criteria. I don’t wear streetwear brands. I have no money to spend chasing younger company. I didn’t buy property cheaply and profit from rising prices. I wasn’t even pretending to be young. I’ve just never quite grown up, if I’m honest.

In the marriage market: not on the list. Among the targets of generational contempt: not on that list either. Nowhere do I fit neatly into the available categories. For a while, I shrank under the weight of that. The world says it has changed — women’s rights, feminism, marriage as personal choice. In some ways, yes. But I still have one foot in a world that sees my life as a problem, and one foot in a world that has no name for what I am. Too hot, too cold. I move between them, belonging fully to neither.

I live alone. I cook for myself. I write. I handle each poem the way you’d handle something you love — carefully, then carelessly, fighting with it, making up with it, coming back to it again. Sometimes someone looks me in the eyes first, and there is warmth. Not fire, but warmth. Somewhere between the cold bath and the hot one, in that lukewarm in-between place — that’s where I am.

DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, Exclusive to COTW, India, Scotland

Body Maps

!Epic Tomorrows

By Sreenithi

I loved walking through Edinburgh Old Town, up and down the Mile from crag to castle. I loved walking through Holyrood Park and sitting by the lake. It was called St Margaret’s Loch, and you could spot an entire fleet of swans on the water, looking stately and proud. I was terrified of them though. At close range, you could really see why birds are the last living dinosaurs. But I digress.

Having lived most of my life in the busy, metropolitan Bangalore, I was not used to the idea of walkable cities. Perhaps that is a uniquely European indulgence, making it a great tourist selling point. Bangalore is too big…and too chaotic to be walkable. Need I even mention the hellscape of road traffic that could easily consume your daily commute? 

It wasn’t as though I was out and about every day. Much to my shame, I barely knew my way around my hometown. I mostly stayed indoors, sitting and stewing in my own thoughts and dysfunction. Suspended in grief for over ten years without even realizing it, there was no real sense of normalcy. My family was paralysed too, frozen, and barely getting through each day. I hated being at home, but I struggled to get away.

I didn’t go out for walks. I didn’t learn how to ride a scooty or bike like the other kids to give myself that independence. I didn’t join extra-curriculars or explore sports. The only way I managed to prolong my ‘outside time’ was to hang out with my friends after class. But not for too long, because then I would have to worry about getting back home late, relying solely on unreliable public transport or a known auto uncle from my neighbourhood. Sometimes if I was lucky, a friend would drop me home on his bike.

The thing was, I wanted to get away from home, but I hated going outside. Because I hated myself. I hated my face and my body and my hair and my clothes. I wanted so badly to be seen but I didn’t want to be perceived. But there was something more insidious: I was stuck in debilitating survival mode. The poor city planning and waste management, the collective disregard for traffic rules, the noise and pollution, the fragile bubble of safety (if you’re a girl) – all these were navigable if you had the resourcefulness and a can-do attitude. ‘India is not for beginners’ as the meme goes. You just learn to deal with it as you go, to embody the chaos yourself.

But I was too incapacitated. Too broken and grief-stricken to be a proactive go-getter. Which is why moving countries for my master’s degree was quite a seismic shift. It meant that movement was no longer optional. But it was also no longer hindered. The easy, serene, walkable streets of Edinburgh were an essential scaffolding to get me out of my own head. For the first time in my life, I was going outside on my own terms…every single day. And I loved it! 

Edinburgh was so beautiful to experience. I couldn’t get enough of it. I learned everything I could about this quaint, historic little city. The closes and wynds, the undulating lanes, the view of the hills, the faint speck of sea in the distance, and the perpetual grey sky, all these became etched in my mind’s eye. This was the right place for me – not too big to overwhelm, not too small to suffocate. It was the perfect size to hold fully in my heart. It was the first place that I fell in love with, the first that I chose as home.

But for whatever reason, my journey there was constantly turbulent. For one, I moved house over eight times in a span of just three years. Not to sound too superstitious, but it felt like the city would simply not let me settle. ‘You will not find success here,’ someone at a party said to me once as she did all of our horoscopes. Not too long before that, my childhood grief had burst out of me, delaying my career and jump-starting the healing process rather violently. 

My first job was terrible. I felt so poorly treated that I quit in just four months and I have been unemployed ever since. Perhaps I shouldn’t have visited the castle at the start of my course. But how could I have known? Nobody told me it was bad luck to go there before graduating. There were days when I walked down the streets, sat in buses and parks, crying bitterly, baring my ugly tears to the city. There was even a time when I broke down inside a church, and I am not the religious kind. But things only got progressively worse. It was part of the recovery, but it left me so hollow.

And yet I loved this city to bits. Vehemently. The thought of leaving was agonising. 

‘Why do you even want to stay when this place is not serving you?’ a friend asked me.

‘Maybe you’re not meant to be here, maybe something better is coming,’ said another.

I was told well-intentioned things like this all the time as I resisted the prospect of leaving. How could I even begin to explain that it was as simple as wanting to walk up and down the streets? Not any street, but Edinburgh streets, and the closes, because they had become the rugged topography of my newfound agency. How could I explain that it was as simple as loving the old, gothic buildings and the sound of bagpipes sneaking up on me from around the tourist-heavy corner?

I didn’t just fall in love with the fantasy of this city, I loved it to its bones and grimy underbelly (yes, the Fringe venue too). Sometimes I close my eyes, and I can see it all so clearly. Vivid little snapshots, as though I never left. Usually, it is a flash of the road starting outside Waverly mall, sloping down to meet the small intersection on Market Street before opening into Cockburn Street and curving upwards. I don’t know why this is the chosen snapshot. But then I open my eyes again, and it is like I was never even there. Like a faint afterimage from another time and consciousness.

I am now in the Netherlands, trapped once again inside a visa deadline which is fast approaching. The city planning here is even more impressive. It is brighter, nicer, and the Dutch surely love their flowers. Perhaps I learned to contain my attachments. Or it is just a natural consequence of growing older. But I don’t feel the same magic. I like Holland but the experience has been somewhat flat (no pun intended). Could it be that I am more well-adjusted now? Or too numb?

But how nice it is to be here! The clean air and the easy, walkable roads. This permission to exist so naturally and freely in public space, something I cannot quite experience in Bangalore. At least not without effort and privilege. Sometimes, it really is as simple as wanting to hold onto the material comfort of a place. Don’t fault a migrant for their superficial goals, I guess.

I miss Edinburgh Old Town and Holyrood Park. 

I miss the agency that warmed my legs as I walked back to my flat, late, on a cold winter night.

I miss the person that I used to be walking up and down those hilly streets.

It was a place where I felt like myself.

It was home. 

DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, Many feminisms, South Korea

[번역본] A Quiet Embrace (조용한 품)

!Epic Tomorrows

By PAK Jong Hee

A temporary but urgent call to action! Centre of the Web partner Versy Talks is kindly running a free public online debate about the publishing industry from 21st to 31st May 2026. It does not take long to take part in the debate and state your opinion, and everyone is welcome! Sharing your voice will help boost both COTW and Versy Talks. Please help us grow, so that we can platform diverse and underrepresented voices from around the world. More information can be found here.

Inside the fresh green leaves, the ingredients sit quietly, curled up. The pumpkin leaves and cabbage, steamed until tender in a boiling pot, hold their contents firmly, their cheeks slightly bulging. From the outside, there is no way to know exactly what lies within those leaves, but there is a heavy certainty that they have willingly accepted everything. Not a single grain of white rice spills out; everything keeps its place in silence, leaning kindly against one another.

Wrapping a ssam (leaf wrap) is a more delicate ritual than one might think. Depending on which leaf one spreads on the palm and what is placed upon it, the weight and flavor of that single bite change entirely. When the depth of flavor is added by mixing salty soybean paste with spicy chili paste and topping it with a thin slice of garlic, the disparate, unfamiliar ingredients finally find their place, creating an exquisite harmony. Things that might taste coarse or plain when chewed separately come together to fill each other’s voids, highlighting one another’s strengths to craft a new flavor. In this way, a ssam rounds off the jagged edges of each ingredient, tucking them inside to form a solid, whole shape on the outside.

Gimbap is no different. The black dried seaweed (gim) embraces the inner ingredients tightly, never revealing them until the very end. The sharp sourness of the pickled radish, the subtle earthiness of spinach, and even the awkward flavors of leftover side dishes from a holiday—the seaweed silently enfolds them all. It does not question what has entered its embrace; it simply maintains a calm, neat cylindrical form.

My mother made gimbap as if it were her destiny. Whenever there were leftovers from the feast-like meals she prepared for holidays or birthdays, her final grand meal was always gimbap. While the outward appearance was the same every time, the inner ingredients changed with the seasons and occasions. After the holidays, it was filled with leftover japchae and pan-fried delicacies; on birthdays, it held beef and thick egg rolls; on other days, it was packed with various wild greens like water dropwort and thistle.

Before rolling the gimbap, Mother would always crisp the seaweed once more over the frying pan. That meticulous touch, meant to erase any trace of the seaweed’s characteristic fishy scent so her children would not notice, was a silent sincerity—a love that filled the space from invisible places.

My mother’s gimbap was not only special to our family. During my school days, on picnic days, my lunchbox was undoubtedly the most popular among my friends. In front of the gimbap my mother had rolled so skillfully and heartily, my friends would push aside their own lunchboxes. They would huddle around and reach their chopsticks busily toward my container, often leaving me staring at an empty box after having eaten only a few pieces myself. Yet, as I watched my friends marvel and devour it in the blink of an eye, I felt a sense of pride rather than disappointment, even in my young heart.

Inside that delicious gimbap that captured my friends’ palates were actually ingredients with very strong personalities. There were shredded red carrots with a deep earthy scent, and water dropwort with a piercing aroma. Having a weak stomach and a sensitive sense of smell since childhood, I could usually hardly eat foods with strong scents. I would not even point my chopsticks at carrots, water dropwort, or fishy anchovies. Curiously, however, those finicky ingredients became gentle once they entered the gimbap.

Those intense aromas, which usually stood out, never felt out of place. This was because the savory sesame oil seeped between the rice grains and ingredients, breaking down the boundaries of flavor, while the soft, thick egg strips kindly embraced the tough scents of the other ingredients. The process where clashing smells and strong tastes met the gentle mediators of sesame oil and eggs to become rounded and blended—it was a perfect reflection of my mother’s arduous life, raising six siblings who were all so very different.

Though we were born from the same womb, our colors and temperaments were remarkably distinct. My eldest brother, the firstborn, matured early and heavily, weighed down by the responsibility of looking after his younger siblings. Like the thick egg roll that holds the center of the gimbap steady, he silently endured his own weight and served as a reliable shield for us. On the other hand, the youngest was as fresh and free-spirited as water dropwort, tending to go in any direction. The youngest’s stubbornness in seeking freedom and the bickering voices of us siblings in between expanded precariously, like the inside of a thick, uncut roll of gimbap.

In the midst of that fierce difference, to ensure her children did not scar one another, Mother had to become the black seaweed, giving her entire body to hold us together. Just as she applied savory sesame oil to prevent the stubborn carrots and unruly water dropwort from clashing, Mother moved busily between this child and that, becoming a smooth lubricant. She trimmed our coarse hearts with warm, coaxing words and, like sticky grains of rice, patiently glued our jagged edges together.

Always anxious that one of us might go astray or be isolated and hurt among the siblings, she nurtured us with constant care. Even in the exhaustion of feeding and clothing six mouths until her hands and feet were blistered, she never treated a single child with neglect, pulling us all equally into the wide folds of her skirt. The reason that a thick, heavy roll of gimbap—our six siblings—could maintain the shape of a complete family without bursting or scattering was entirely thanks to my mother’s tough and devoted embrace, which endured all the tension and weight from the outside.

Ssam and gimbap do not boastfully reveal their contents. Even if one does not say what is inside, the moment you take a large bite, all the sincerity and harmony layered within are fully conveyed to the tip of the tongue. My mother’s heart is the same. Even without loudly proclaiming her love, and even without trying to show her bent back and calloused hands, I now know that the warmth she created by looking after and comforting us from within has already become the most solid foundation of our lives.

The quiet embrace of ssam and gimbap, which rounded and enveloped so many differences and jagged parts… Thanks to that abundance, we were able to grow up taking sweet, thoughtless bites of something as savory as sesame oil and as soft as eggs, without directly facing the bitter and harsh tastes of the world. Today, I find myself missing my mother’s firm yet warm touch that was pressed into each of those bites, and I find myself sighing with a lump in my throat. And I, too, wish to quietly unfold a wide leaf and offer this touching, tender comfort to someone else who is weary of the world.

COTW journey & strategy

Versy Talks—Centre of the Web sponsored debate: Did the internet really democratize publishing?

!Epic Tomorrows

Introduction

Centre of the Web (COTW), a new alternative online literary platform, is thrilled to announce a booster event in collaboration with Versy Talks, a complete online debating platform, with community participation, professional debate coaching and tons of debate drills. 

This debate is titled Did the internet really democratize publishing? It started on 21st May and will finish on 31st May, and Versy is generously sponsoring the debate, offering a $25 prize, divided between 5 debaters with the most votes on their arguments. You can take part for free. 

COTW enthusiastically encourages all its contributing writers, subscribers and readers to take part in the debate during the debate period. This will help with COTW`s mission to contribute to a global revitalization of human literature during this crisis-ridden but epic period of human history, encouraging diverse and underrepresented voices from around the world to share their thoughts and stories all in one place, on a dynamic and globally interconnected platform. This aligns with the purpose of Versy Talks to promote structured debates and insightful discussions, where debaters can explore their commonalities and points of difference, to contribute to a more harmonious online culture.

More on the debate

It has been argued that the internet has democratized publishing so that these days, almost anyone in the world has the opportunity to get heard and read. However, inequalities remain, including who really makes it as a writer, who is widely read, and who is really likely to be picked up by the big publishers. In the sponsored Versy debate we ask: Did the internet really democratize publishing?! We invite debaters to consider how far the internet-led democratization of publishing is an illusion, and how far the same old inequalities that existed in the traditional print publishing of the 20th Century, still exist now. Also, how much is the best or most interesting writing published, compared with what sells, and do authors who are already well-connected still have a massive advantage, as well as those who have internet publishing skills? (Not everyone understands how to manage a blog, for example). All printed media and publishing should be considered within this debate, from newspapers, through blogs, to e-books and physical books and everything else.

COTW call for submissions

COTW would also like to announce that they are actively looking for written contributions from around the world. We currently only publish in English, but eventually we intend to publish in several languages. Contributors are welcome to submit writing in their native language, where we can negotiate translation using AI tools. This is not yet a paying market, but it is a chance for you to get your voice heard, and to receive free editing advice. The bigger you can help COTW grow, the quicker we can get to the point where we can start paying contributors! Flash fiction is encouraged, as are diary pieces, giving insights into the daily lives of diverse human beings, especially (but not necessarily) those living in difficult conditions or going through interesting times. Other types of creative writing are also encouraged, but please note: we are not accepting poetry at this time. Short essays, articles, blog-style posts, journalistic pieces and arts reviews will also be considered. For more ideas, please browse the different post categories by navigating from the WRITING tab in the menu at the top of the COTW frontpage. All submissions should be sent to the editors at the email address: epictomorrows@gmail.com Thanks!

Popular & established authors, SHORT short stories, South Korea

Tongue

!Epic Tomorrows

By Hyoungshim Choi

A temporary but urgent call to action! Centre of the Web partner Versy Talks is kindly running a free public online debate about the publishing industry from 21st to 31st May 2026. It does not take long to take part in the debate and state your opinion, and everyone is welcome! Sharing your voice will help boost both COTW and Versy Talks. Please help us grow, so that we can platform diverse and underrepresented voices from around the world. More information can be found here.

The alarm clock went off. “A new day has dawned, rise and shine everyone……” I pressed the switch. I needed to change the wake-up call on that damn alarm. 

—Did he really do that as a joke? No matter how much I think about it, our senses of humor just don’t match. It’s good that we broke up.

I muttered about this to myself as I got up and brewed some coffee. With half-closed eyes I cursorily washed the mug that was sitting by the sink. Apart from the fact that the inside had yellowed from frequent use, it was an ordinary cup. I poured the coffee into the cup. It was the same coffee that I always drink, but today it tasted incredibly bitter for some reason. 

—This is disgustingly bitter. Is it so that even the coffee is bitter just because I broke up with him?

I grumbled to myself as I gulped it down.

—Ah, stop bitching and just drink it. It tastes the same as usual.

Just as the coffee was about to go down my throat, I heard this from somewhere. 

—What the hell?!

I was so startled that I jumped out of my skin. No matter how many times I looked around, I was the only one in that broom closet of an apartment. I looked inside the washing machine, checked that the front door was locked, and even rummaged through the built-in closet. But there was not a single trace of anyone anywhere. 

—Have I been alone so long that I’m hearing things? 

It made sense, though, come to think of it. I had been stuck at home for four months now due to Covid, after all. When I first heard that I had to work from home, I cheered, just like anyone else would have. I wouldn’t have to listen to assistant manager Kim’s cheesy, cringe-inducing jokes, nor hear the shrill voice of my team leader, who was extremely irritable from all the sleepless nights taking care of a newborn baby.

However, I was disillusioned pretty quickly. Video conferences on Zoom and the like that were so boring they made my butt cramp, and the KakaoTalk (1) notifications coming through all the time under the pretext of attendance management, weren’t actually a big deal. Living alone in this cramped studio apartment for months on end without ever leaving is practically like solitary confinement. It got to the point where I even started missing the people I hated seeing! I decided to go to a cafe to get some work done for a change of scene, but the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases began exceeding 1,000 on a daily basis. Eventually, the cafe I was visiting closed down. As the number of confirmed cases surged, I started shopping online, too. As a result, I came to rely on online platforms for most of my daily requirements. 

Eventually, it got to the point where I was breaking up with my boyfriend through KakaoTalk. As soon as I saw the message that began, “If it weren’t for COVID, I’d like to meet and talk……”, I sensed that we were breaking up. I sent a reply saying, “Okay. Let’s stop seeing each other.” A long message followed, in which he rambled on about how we weren’t meant to be, told me to find someone better, and so on. I didn’t reply and coldly blocked him. Thanks to working from home, or to being confined at home, we ended things neatly and cleanly, so I should have been relieved, but I didn’t feel good at all.

I felt utterly terrible.

After finishing my coffee, I was at the sink, stirring my finger inside the cup to rinse it, when I felt something bulging out. Wondering if a grain of rice or something might have somehow gotten stuck, I looked inside the mug. However, there was something reddish rising on the white porcelain.

—What the …? 

I scratched the inside of the cup with my fingernail. 

—Ouch, I’m going to get hurt. Try to be careful. 

Right then, the voice I’d heard earlier came from out of the cup. I was so startled that I dropped it on the floor. 

—Hey, have you lost your mind? You almost broke me. No wonder you got dumped by a man. 

I was completely dumbfounded. 

—You’re only just a cup……. Who taught you such bad manners?

—Who else but you? Who’s the one who’s been talking all kinds of nonsense right in front of me every day? If I had ears, they’d have already rotted away by now.

Come to think of it, as working from home had gone on, it’s true that I had spent the days mumbling to myself the whole day with this cup in front of me. This symptom worsened especially after breaking up with my boyfriend. In the days following the breakup, I grumbled about him nonstop, pouring out curses at my cup. No wonder, since there were no cafes open even if I wanted to meet people, and since I didn’t have a friend to vent to at a time such as this……. All day long, the only things I faced were my computer and my mug. If my computer was what spoke to me, then my mug existed for me to speak to. While drinking water, while drinking coffee, I was in the habit of talking to the mug as I muttered to myself. 

—You should have just left me alone. How much pent-up frustration must I have had to have grown a tongue? 

the cup said, sighing. Hearing this, I felt sorry. Without a word, I took out a soft tea towel and carefully cleaned the cup before putting it back in the cupboard.

After that, I occasionally thought about the mug, but I never opened the cupboard. This was because I didn’t want to exchange a single word with that irritable, insolent, manners-nowhere-to-be-found jerk. Moreover, a cup with a tongue sticking out of it creeped me out so much that it just didn’t feel right to put anything in it to drink. Of course, I did think about throwing that strange thing away. But considering its personality, it was clear that if I threw it away it would blabber all sorts of things about me to anyone, so I decided to just put up with it. So I swapped my cup for a tumbler and strove to break my habit of talking to myself. I felt like I was going crazy keeping my mouth shut while just staring at the computer screen all day. But what could I do? I had to just suffer. 

—Give me some water.

It was about 2 in the morning when I heard that voice. I had finally fallen asleep after tossing and turning since 10pm, having developed insomnia due to a lack of outdoor activity. I covered my ears with the pillow and pretended I hadn’t heard. 

—Hey, I said I’m thirsty. Can‘t you hear me? 

That jerk goaded me again. It piqued my irritation. 

—Let me just sleep.

I sprang up, opened the cupboard, and shoved a tea towel in the cup. 

—What are you doing? I said I’m thirsty, thirsty! Take this thing out of me right now.

—Don’t be ridiculous. You think you’re human just because I talk to you. You’re so loud it’s driving me crazy.

I went back to bed and tried to sleep. As soon as I did, the jerk quietened down. I’d just dozed off when his sudden screaming jolted me awake. My heart was pounding. 

—What’s going on?

—I can’t breathe! Get this damn tea towel out of me.

—Ah, seriously, you’re so loud. You’re making a fuss over nothing. Do you know what time it is right now? Just be quiet. 

—Be quiet? Won’t you come over quickly and get this out of me?

—I don’t care.

I spat this out, rummaged through a drawer, pulled out a pair of earplugs and put them in, then victoriously went back to bed. But then he screamed breathlessly, at a high pitch of about two and a half octaves above normal, like a dying soprano singing a climax.

I could hear him screaming through the earplugs. 

—This is suffocating me! I said I’m thirsty!

Since the jerk wouldn’t stop screaming and raising hell, in the end I got up again and irritatedly opened the cupboard.

—This damn cup, I’ll just…… 

I picked it up and hurled it against the wall. The cup shattered with a crash. 

—Ow, I’m dying! I’m dying! 

he screamed in what seemed to be one last desperate struggle, before suddenly falling silent. At that very moment, the doorbell rang.

—Police! We’ve had reports of a domestic disturbance. 

The police, in the middle of the night! This is all because of that jerk! As annoying as it was, the problem at hand now was coming up with an excuse. 

—But what in the name of God should I say? 

I asked myself, into the wall. 

—What do you mean, what should you say? Just tell the truth. 

Out of the blue, the wall replied. I looked to face it in shock. This time, exactly where the cup had hit, a really huge tongue had sprouted. 

—Ah, seriously! Who would believe that!

I felt like I was going to lose my mind with anger and frustration. But I resolved to control myself and open the door. 

—What seems to be the problem? 

Two officers wearing black masks were standing in front of the door. I hesitated, not knowing how I should begin. Since they had eyes, I figured that if I just showed them that thing then they would understand the ridiculousness of the situation.

—Do you see that over there? The big tongue. It was originally in that cup down there. 

I pointed to the shattered cup on the floor, and the large tongue that had hung limply from the wall since the police showed up. 

—A tongue? What do you mean, a tongue? 

one of the police officers asked, looking back and forth between me and the wall. 

—You don’t see that tongue there? That tongue…. 

***

1. KakaoTalk: Korea`s most widely used chat app