kims

In Seoul I stole trinkets from gift shops and lifted credit cards from young men blacked out in bars, I snuck onto tour buses headed north and shouted across the DMZ, I ate ram-yun and black licorice on damp and mouldy hostel beds, I took out a secretary from a dating app, I used Google Translate to ask if I could put it in, laying in bed afterwards I practiced my Korean and she bit my ear, I ate red pork belly and steaming fragrant rice, I wandered the streets, I walked through a children’s soccer game and kicked the ball onto a roof, I found a yellow hard hat on the street and I wore it everywhere, I received many compliments, I sat alone on my bed and read Tolstoy and Chekhov and Brown, faking sign language whenever the Americans tried to talk to me, after they left I took the toothpaste out of their toiletry bags and squirted the tubes into the sink, I dedicated it all to God, in Seoul I prayed every day until it started to work, I wrote excellent poetry in restaurant bathrooms, I wrote about war and Kims and ego death, I was polite, I said nei hao and konnichiwa, I took the metro going in one big circle, I rode it all afternoon watching Parasite on my phone, I ate kimchi and dried fish and drank too much beer, I threw it all up on the street, but the rain washed it into the gutter, I was so drunk I lost my phone, I met a Swedish girl and threw her passport in the trash, I helped her find her embassy, as we walked she told me she was taking a break, she told me she was starting all over from scratch, the next morning I bought a Samsung from the market, I used it to take pictures of all the gorgeous women, I looked straight into their eyes and saw an empty heaven, and nothing there was as it seemed, I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling, I made up a name for myself in Korean and wrote it there, I bought candy from 7Eleven and spent all night on an overpass, throwing pieces at the speeding cars, it was there, in Seoul, I found a version of myself I knew and liked, and thank God that I did, I was just in time, I met monsters in Busan that forced me to chug soju and listen to Oasis on repeat, foul creatures in my hostel room, they pushed the bottle onto me every time they sang “Wonderwall,” I met women who knew nothing about history and didn’t even try to hide it, who wanted to say hello to my mother while I talked to her on the phone, I met vicious men that smoked flavoured cigarettes and tourists who were too scared to eat any of the food, in Seoul I learned how to save yourself, I learned to choose your friends wisely, I texted my group chat back home and told them they were all lost souls, I told them the terrible things they had said about each other behind their backs, I removed my shackles, I washed my slate clean, I talked to ChatGPT, I confessed for every lie I’d ever told, I let my blood and put things right, in Seoul I was drowned and baptized and born again, and on my wet baby skin they wrote the word for truth in permanent marker.

Coltrane Yan is a Canadian writer living in London. His work has previously appeared in Midcult. He also writes texts, emails and Instagram comments and contributes to polite online discourse.