The dry cleaner's shutter was down. The pale light beneath the sign was exactly as I'd seen it during the day. I rounded the corner of the building and stopped in front of the back door. The nursing pad stuck inside my nursing bra was damp. I'd changed it right before leaving home, but my breasts still felt sore and heavy as stone. When I held Bomi, the smell of formula soaked into her collar rose again.
I only told Jiho that I was going to meet someone for a little while. When he asked who, I said it was someone I'd met through work at the broadcasting station. It wasn't completely untrue, which made it worse.
“I'll get her the next time she wakes up. You go ahead.”
Jiho said it while zipping up Bomi's sleep sack. Even as I stepped out the front door, I looked back toward the master bedroom. I couldn't promise I'd be back before she woke up. These days, promises like that meant nothing when it came to Bomi's sleep.
There was no business name or doorbell on the back door. When I pulled the handle, the only sound was the lock catching from the inside. Just as I was stepping back, thinking no one was there after all, a low voice came from beyond the door.
“Are you Han Seoyoon?”
It was the voice that had answered my question in the recording at 1:48.
The lock disengaged, and the door opened inward. The woman from the photograph was standing there. Even the way her hair was tied low, with a dark knit sweater on, was the same. In the photograph, she had been looking straight at me. Now, her eyes moved first over my face, then down the front of my coat.
“I'm Moon Haejin. Come in.”
White noise spilled out through the doorway. It sounded like the noise I'd heard when I finally got Bomi down and closed the bedroom door, and my feet stopped for a moment. She didn't hurry me.
“Is Bomi with her father right now?”
Moon Haejin asked.
I stepped over the threshold.
“Do you remember me?”
“Yes.”
After her answer, only the white noise remained. I wanted to ask when the photograph had been taken and what she'd done that day. Moon Haejin's gaze settled inside my coat again.
“Looks like you're wet. Do you have something to change into?”
Only then did I clearly feel the fabric cooling against my skin and clinging to it. I pulled my coat closed.
“I'm fine.”
“I asked because you don't look fine. There's a privacy screen and extra nursing pads inside.”
I hadn't come here to be taken care of. But I couldn't sit there with milk soaking through my shirt and interrogate her, either. I changed the pad behind the screen. The thin paper stung as it peeled away from my skin. I folded the wet one into my pocket and came out. Without saying anything, Moon Haejin pointed toward the sink.
The consultation room had the old sofa I'd seen in the photograph. The dried formula stain on the inside of the armrest was still there, too. In the corner, the white-noise machine blew air through yellowed gaps. A half-folded blanket lay beside an old recorder. The empty shop I'd seen during the day had become stuck with someone's nights.
Moon Haejin poured me some water and set the blanket down at the end of the sofa. She didn't cover my knees with it or suggest that I use it. A white ring clung to the rim of the cup, as if it had remained even after washing. I picked up only the water. It was lukewarm, but after one sip, the throat I had kept my thirst trapped in stung even more.
“What would you like to know first?”
“What I took from here that day.”
“I can't answer that question in full right now.”
“Then what can you answer?”
When my voice rose, the white noise suddenly seemed far away. It belatedly occurred to me that Bomi might have woken up at home. Jiho would be holding her and trying to soothe her without even knowing where I was. I pushed the thought away and set down the cup.
“I won't start by asking you to give it back. Show me what I chose in exchange for putting Bomi to sleep.”
She looked at me for a moment, then nodded.
“What you chose is recorded.”
Her answer stopped there, at the fact that a record existed.
“So there really is a contract.”
“Yes.”
“And Bomi really did sleep.”
“It was carried out according to the contract.”
I didn't want to deny it. Even after the house fell silent, I'd put my hand beneath Bomi's nose several times. Only after confirming her stomach rising and falling slowly had I collapsed onto the floor. I was grateful that, thanks to it, I'd been able to sleep even once. If I dismissed that peace as fake, it felt like I would be throwing away the version of myself from that night, too.
“Why did it have to be memory?”
She rubbed the stain on the sofa's armrest once with her fingertip. The hardened mark didn't come off.
“The person who first created this method was also the parent of a child who couldn't sleep. They were trying to save their own child.”
“That doesn't answer why it had to be memory.”
I remembered the anonymous tip: There isn't just one thing you can choose. They can take more than that.
“You mean they can take something besides what I chose?”
A small fan inside the white-noise machine caught for a moment, then started turning again. Moon Haejin straightened the blanket's rumpled corner before rising from her seat.
“I'll bring you the contract.”
After she left, I folded my hands over my knees. The smell of formula soaked into my coat grew stronger again.
A little while later, Moon Haejin returned with a single thin sheet of paper. Even as she placed it in front of me, she didn't let go completely.
“This is as far as you can look.”
My name and signature were written beneath the paper. It was my handwriting, right down to the habit of drawing out the ends of consonants when I was in a hurry. I pressed hard enough that several letters had left dents on the back of the page. And yet I couldn't recall the hand holding the pen or the way I'd been sitting on this sofa. All I could hear was what I'd asked in the recording. I get to choose, right?
In the selection box, one line was written in my handwriting.
The joy of finishing and airing my first full-length radio documentary.
I remembered the folded rundown and my coworkers' voices. I remembered what I'd said in response to their congratulations. But I couldn't touch the joy that should have been there. I couldn't deny that I'd written it.
I didn't read the sentence again. I scanned the blank space and margins below it. There was no mention of a child's name, a video, or laughter. I remembered the formula stain spreading across the collar of the yellow spacesuit. I remembered Jiho calling my name from behind the camera. The sound of Bomi laughing in the video felt unfamiliar. Even as I watched it, I wasn't inside that moment.
The moment when my source said I'd cried wasn't written there, either. I still couldn't tell whether that, too, was a blank created by this contract.
Without taking my eyes off the paper, I said, “The day Bomi smiled for the first time isn't here.”
“It isn't.”
“It isn't in the contract, but I don't remember that moment or how I felt then.”
“That doesn't match the terms of the contract.”
Her voice remained calm, but her hand straightened the blanket's folded corner again.
“Who took it?”
“I can't give you a definite answer.”
“Don't you know, or can't you tell me?”
“Both.”
I nearly let out a hollow laugh and pressed my lips together instead. She knew my name and Bomi's, yet at the one place I needed her most, she said she didn't know.
“Has this only happened to me?”
Her hand stopped.
“I've heard before that things not written in the contract disappeared, too. That's when I started to suspect it.”
“You only suspected it?”
Moon Haejin took her hand off the blanket. Her fingers slowly uncurled. It didn't lessen her responsibility. But she didn't seem to be making it up just now.
“Can you give it back?”
She started to clear away the cup of water that had gone cold, then stopped. Leaving it where it was, she sat across from me.
“I can't promise I'll return it to you right now.”
“Then what can I do?”
“If you're not one of the Exchange's people, you can only confirm this much.”
My chest grew heavy again. I had to get home before the next feeding. I thought of Jiho's hands taking Bomi from me at the front door. If she woke up around now, those hands would be rubbing her back. I'd borrowed that time to come this far. When I went home, Jiho would ask who I'd met. I'd have to choose only part of the truth again.
Moon Haejin said, “Your job at the station was listening to people and recording what they said, wasn't it?”
I didn't answer.
“A night counselor also listens to parents who come in unable to sleep and records what they choose.”
“What happens if I do that job?”
“You'll be able to see parts of records I can't show you right now.”
To find my memory, I'd have to sit across from other parents on their most exhausted nights. It seemed like it would be easier if I called it reporting. That's why I didn't.
“So you're asking me to join this deal, too.”
She waited for my answer. I took my hand off the contract and stood. The answer wouldn't gather into either direction in my mouth.
She asked, “Would you like to try working as a night counselor?”