Bomi cried before dawn.
I left my phone on the dining table and went into the bedroom. The map, the texts, and the recording with my voice on it seemed to keep glowing behind me. Jiho got up first and felt the front of her diaper.
“She’s wet. I’ll change her and bring her out.”
While he put on a clean diaper, Bomi pushed the mat away with both feet. When I slipped the nursing pillow around my waist, her little fist clutched my pajamas, which smelled of milk from the night before. It should have been funny that she had enough strength to grip so hard without even being able to open her eyes, but every time the tips of her nails pricked me, I thought of the empty space on the dining table.
When she finished nursing, Jiho took her and propped her against his shoulder. Her small, round back rose and fell beneath his palm.
“Sleeping comes first today.”
Just as I was about to argue, Bomi burped. A round stain spread across Jiho’s T-shirt. I unfolded her fingers one by one from where they clutched his sleeve, then left the room.
When I opened my eyes again, the window had gone white with morning. On my wrist, the marks from Bomi’s nails overlapped like crescents. Jiho must have changed her diaper and gotten her back to sleep in the meantime. When I peeked through the bedroom door, one of Bomi’s cheeks was pressed into the mat. A thin, milk-scented breath slipped in and out through her parted lips. I almost put the back of my hand beneath her nose, but instead moved the fabric bunched beside her face and fastened her sleep sack. Her feet were warm inside it. Even after running my thumb once over the elastic mark around her ankle, I turned back from the threshold twice. On the dining table lay a half-washed pacifier and a note. The only thing missing from the note was the record between 1:48 and 2:21 a.m.
At the breakfast table, Bomi gnawed on her bib. When I spoon-fed her sweet-potato porridge, Jiho wiped what dribbled from the corners of her mouth. She turned her head on the third spoonful, and on the fourth she snatched the spoon and banged it against her tray. Yellow porridge splattered across the back of Jiho’s hand.
“See? If she doesn’t like something because she takes after Mom, she makes it pretty clear.”
“She’s staging a protest over food because she takes after you.”
Jiho grumbled with his mouth, but put the spoon back in Bomi’s hand. She grabbed the end covered in watery porridge instead of the handle and brought it to her mouth. I reached out reflexively, but Jiho wiped her little hand first. The cold smell of the wet wipe mixed with the sweet scent of sweet potato. Bomi gripped Jiho’s finger and smiled with her toothless gums. The sweet-potato porridge in front of me had gone cold, with only spoon marks left in it. I tied Bomi’s bib one more time.
Today was Jiho’s day off. The note on the refrigerator was packed with tiny writing listing the naps, feedings, and solids for the half-day I would be gone. Even while packing my outing bag, I kept glancing back at it.
Jiho slipped a water bottle into the bag’s side pocket and added the nursing pads I had left out. As I watched him close the zipper, I tugged the strap tighter one more time.
“Don’t force yourself to stay too long.”
“I know.”
“If you really can’t, just come home. You can nap with Bomi.”
I picked up the teether from the floor and washed it. The words “my voice at 1:48” and “the business name that only appeared at night” never made it past my lips.
“I’m just going to see whether any moments besides her first smile are missing.”
With wet hands, Jiho tapped the refrigerator magnet.
“Call me before her second nap.”
As I tied my sneakers at the front door, he added,
“Everyone forgets things that happened a long time ago.”
I pulled the knot too tight and had to loosen it with my fingernail.
When the door to the broadcasting station’s archive reading room closed, the sound of carts in the hallway was cut off. The ventilation duct hummed low, and cold air from the servers swept over my ankles. The archivist mixed one ordinary production mishap in with the two incidents I had marked as important, then hid the titles and dates.
“I can’t hide the voices or the location sounds. Realizing it doesn’t mean you failed.”
I played the first file without saying anything else.
The host’s voice suddenly grew muffled. In my memory, I took a spare cable from the control room. The engineer was behind the rack on the right. The metallic taste in my mouth and the bitterness of four cups of coffee came back to me.
Applause came from the next file. The sound ricocheted off the walls of the cramped live-broadcast studio and filled the microphone. It was after I had aired my first long-form radio documentary. Right before transmission, I changed one line of dialogue on the cue sheet, and as soon as it ended, I called the interviewee. Everything up to that point was as clear as yesterday.
I pressed pause in the middle of the applause.
I knew why everyone had been looking at me. I knew what I had finished. But my face alone was missing from it. Whether I had laughed or cried from happiness, whose hand I had reached for first. My head was full of applause, while I stood outside the sound.
The archivist handed me the cue sheet from that day. The corner of the paper had been folded so many times that it had turned white and risen. It was the spot where I used to fold it right before a live broadcast. My thumb followed the crease. Without a word, the archivist turned to the next page.
My handwriting, pressed in pencil, had bled through to the back of the paper.
A woman’s laughter-laced voice came from another interview file.
“You cried too, PD.”
The dining table in an unfamiliar room, the woman’s hands across from me, and the sound of a door closing after the final question followed. My throat went dry. The fact that I had cried existed only in the woman’s voice.
I texted Jiho that I still wasn’t finished. He replied that Bomi had eaten lunch and was nursing. I waited for three dots to appear after the white baby-bottle emoji, but the screen stayed quiet. Only then did I realize that one side of my chest had hardened into a tight knot. It throbbed whenever the fabric brushed against it. Instead of Bomi’s breathing, all I could hear was the ventilation duct.
The archivist selected one short passage from each of the two files that I hadn’t heard before. In the recordings, I answered a colleague’s congratulations and told the interviewee that everything was okay. I understood the words, but the reason I had said them did not come back.
When the archivist closed the files, the room fell silent. I sat there with both hands tucked between my knees. I couldn’t say anything until the ventilation started up again.
I took off my earbuds. Marks from the pressure remained around my ears.
My phone vibrated. It was Jiho.
“Bomi’s down for her second nap.”
Behind him, I heard dishes being placed on the drying rack.
“How is it there?”
“The order of events is all correct. But in two places, I’m missing.”
“You barely slept. Don’t try to reach a conclusion today.”
I pulled my body away from the back of the chair.
“Then why are only the moments I marked as important missing?”
My voice struck the soundproof wall. Jiho said nothing. Beyond the silence, Bomi whimpered briefly. Soon after, I heard someone patting her.
“I’ll check on her when she wakes up.”
“I’ll be home before her evening feeding.”
I ended the call before he could ask anything else. In the hallway, I opened my personal notebook and wrote down one line. The shredder’s faint vibration still lingered in my fingers.
Tomorrow night, the back entrance behind the laundromat.
In the complete index the archivist handed me, an anonymous tip collection beside “Sleepless Parents” caught my eye. It was an investigation I had never finished. Of the posts that had been cut off, only one sentence could be read in full.
“There’s one more missing besides the one I chose.”
I thought of the spoon marks left in the sweet-potato porridge at breakfast. I let out a long breath and pressed into the corner of a memo pad that the materials had come in late at night. The crumpled edge jabbed my palm.
In the preserved audio from the tip collection, a child fussed. Plastic wheels scraped across the floor, and when someone opened a door, I heard the wind. At the end, the anonymous source called the location “that old shopping center, the back entrance behind the laundromat.” Then, in the attached photo, she identified the woman as “Ms. Moon Haejin.”
The photo showed a worn-out sofa and a white-noise machine. The woman in the back looked straight at the camera. Her gaze seemed to catch hold of me outside the screen. The “back entrance behind the laundromat” from the audio matched the old shopping center I had seen on the map. There was no proof the photo had been taken there.
I had agreed not to take anything transcribed from the anonymous materials outside the reading room. With the archivist watching, I fed the memo pad into the shredder. The thin paper caught on the blades and trembled briefly.
When I stepped into the hallway, Jiho called. He said Bomi had woken up, eaten a snack, and finished nursing.
“Does my voice sound okay?”
“Yeah. I’m heading home.”
“Seoyoon.”
“I’ll be home before her last feeding.”
I ended the call before he could ask anything else. In the hallway, I opened my notebook and left one line behind. The shredder’s residual vibration remained in the fingers gripping my pen.
Tomorrow night, the back entrance behind the laundromat.