Seaweed soup

Chapter 1

At Fatty’s funeral, I drank bowl after bowl of seaweed soup until I threw up outside the door. A man I didn’t know patted me on the back and I wanted to thank him, but there were still some pieces of seaweed stuck in my throat and all I could do was reach down to the base of my throat and pull them out. That’s when the man started talking to me, saying that Koreans drink seaweed soup on their birthdays and think it brings good luck. It was the first time he had ever seen seaweed soup served at a funeral. I wiped my mouth and said to the Korean, No, it’s his birthday.

When I left the house in the morning, the door to Fatty’s room was closed, and there were noises like rats inside, and I knew Fatty was crying again.his father committed suicide by drinking pesticide in the countryside, which is fashionable in rural Korea, because the children themselves can barely afford to live in the city, and the old people don’t want to drag the children down. After a long hesitation, I knocked on the door of Fatty’s room. Fatty opened the door and the room’s salty sour smelled. I asked him how many days he had not gone out, and he said, Yes, I am drinking seaweed soup.

The wall in Fatty’s room is a wall of instant noodles, and he pulls out two boxes to eat when he wants to. The other wall in the room is a wall of books, and he pulls out some books to read when he wants to. I saw that Fatty’s eyes were red, and he was still wearing that wrinkled Anime Woman Rolling Her Eyes T-shirt, and I suddenly remembered that I was going to be late for work today, so I told him I’d go first and told him to take care of himself. He walked me to the door and then suddenly told me that his novel had been rejected again. I waved and went downstairs.

The early morning sunlight in Korea is annoying because it’s so blindingly white and shines on you with no temperature, and if I were to describe it in human terms, the sunlight in Korea is like a beautiful corpse in a morgue. As I walked, I thought about the first time I had met Fatty. He was a very strange Korean, and all the Koreans on the street had helmet-like strong haircuts, neat and beautiful clothes, and a straight and handsome posture. This stereotype made me think my flatmate was Indian when I first met Fatty. He wore that anime girl rolling her eyes T-shirt and told me he was a student in Incheon.

Would you ask me what I majored in? Because I find that people usually ask me what college I went to and when I graduated, but no one ever cares what my major is. He said.

“Oh, so what major did you choose?” I said.