It was one of those days when not a single thing went right from the moment morning began. The application screening results for the publishing company's editorial assistant position I'd applied for last week had arrived in the form of a rejection email beginning with the utterly dry phrase, “Despite your outstanding qualifications.” Around lunchtime, while trying to boil some water, I slammed my toe hard against the corner of the sink and had to cover it with no fewer than three Band-Aids. As if that weren't enough, an unexpected shower began sprinkling outside the window, filling the room with a damp, clammy discomfort.
The irritation in my chest refused to settle all day, as though yellow grains of sand were rasping against each other inside me. I stood in the middle of the cramped room, staring blankly at the wall, when suddenly all the clutter occupying my desk began stabbing at my vision until I could hardly breathe. A half-folded sheet of A4 paper, a teacup I'd left half-finished, charging cables tangled every which way. But what bothered me most was the three-tiered clear acrylic pen holder, taking up half the desk and rising precariously into the air.
Unless I got rid of that useless plastic tower in this cramped corner of a room, I felt like I would never be able to calm the vicious temper smoldering inside me tonight. I pulled out a wet wipe and reached roughly for the pen holder, but the earphone cord tangled on the floor caught tight against its corner.
Crash—bang!
With a dull scraping sound, the acrylic holder plunged beneath the desk. Dozens of pens spilled from the lidless holder and rolled in every direction across the five-pyeong floor. Under the wardrobe, across the unfolded bedding, into the cramped corner beside the trash can.
“Ugh… Nothing ever goes right.”
Swallowing a curse mixed with a sigh, I dropped to my knees and bent over. As I picked up the cylinders scattered across the floor one by one, the sensations against my fingertips sent a strange tingling through every joint of my fingers.
Hi-Tec-C 0.3-millimeter pens in black, blue-black, and Coromandel red. Sarasa Clip 0.5-millimeter pens in Vintage Dark Blue and Cassis Black, even the limited-edition Milk Color collection. They weren't just plastic sticks rolling around on the floor. They were the writing instruments I'd held dear between my thumb and forefinger throughout my school years and my years as a test taker.
I stared blankly down at the thirty pens filling my palm.
At eighteen, I had sat at a study-room desk and filled out my wrong-answer notebook with a needle-thin 0.3-millimeter nib. I treasured those pens so much that every time I capped one, I listened for the click, afraid the tip might fall and bend, and tied rubber bands around them by color. After underlining my key-summary books with smooth 0.5-millimeter gel ink, I would sometimes fall under the illusion that even my rattling, uncertain future could be arranged as smoothly and perfectly as those vivid ink marks. Stopping by the stationery store to collect new pen colors one at a time had been the smallest and cheapest comfort my anxious youth could lean on.
But in the end, my twenties, filled with thirty pens, failed to produce any clear results. The test-prep books had been closed, and the blank spaces on my résumé were still stark and empty. Now it was the room of an unemployed woman with no reason to stay up all night gripping a pen, no reason to record anything fiercely in brightly colored ink.
I sat down on the floor and spread out a sheet of scrap paper. I uncapped a pen and drew a line across it.
Scratch, scratch.
A sharp, precise scraping sound, as though I were scouring the paper clean of dust. The ink hadn't dried even a little; it poured out a vivid black trail.
I couldn't leave these pens aging into decorations in my cramped room anymore. I felt that I had to empty out these thirty objects packed with lingering attachment to the past before I could breathe even a little more freely tomorrow.
I laid the thirty pens neatly across the scrap paper, sorted by color and type, and turned on my smartphone camera. I framed their transparent bodies glittering beneath the fluorescent light.
[For Sale] Hi-Tec-C / Sarasa Clip Gel Pens, 30 Total (Over 80% Ink Remaining)
“These are writing instruments I've carefully collected since my school days. I'm cleaning out my room, so I'm reluctantly selling them all together. I tested every color directly on paper and confirmed that none of them skip. None of the nibs are bent. I hope a student preparing for an exam or anyone who loves taking notes will take them home and put them to good use. In-person pickup is available in front of Exit 2 of the neighborhood station.”
I listed them for 10,000 won and pressed the upload button. Barely twenty minutes later, the quiet room rang with the bright orange Carrot notification sound.
Pass the Exam: “None of the Hi-Tec-C nibs are bent, right? I'm preparing for a major exam later in life, so I'll need to do a lot of writing. Would it be possible to meet in front of Exit 2 at 7:30 p.m.?”
His profile picture showed the smiling face of a kindly man in his fifties wearing blue hiking clothes. Preparing for an exam at fifty. I began carefully recapping each pen and stacking them neatly into a clear zipper bag.
In front of Subway Exit 2, the evening air was cold as crowds of commuters poured out on their way home. As 7:30 drew near, one person in particular caught my eye among the silhouettes of people loitering and looking around at the top of the stairs.
He was a middle-aged man in a wrinkled grayish suit, carrying a briefcase in one hand and a thick, battered test-prep book with worn corners tucked under his other arm. Instead of a suit with a crisply upright collar, his shoulders had sagged beneath the full weight of the day's fatigue. He kept turning his smartphone screen on and off as he looked around, and I cautiously approached him.
“Excuse me… are you ‘Pass the Exam’ from Carrot Market?”
He jumped and straightened from his hunched posture, then wiped the sweat lightly beading his forehead.
“Oh, yes! You’re the seller. I’m sorry I’m late. The bus from work was delayed a little.”
“No, you arrived right on time.”
I took the clear zipper bag containing all thirty pens from my bag and held it out. He rummaged through his pocket, pulled out a pair of brown horn-rimmed reading glasses, and carefully accepted the zipper bag in both hands, as if he were an antique appraiser.
Under the streetlamp, the man's eyes as he examined each nib through his glasses were completely different from the ones weighed down by the fatigue of his commute just moments earlier.
“Wow, this Hi-Tec-C 0.3 black still has such a straight tip. The ones they make these days have ink that's too watery, so it smears easily when you write in the margins of an exam sheet. You need a thin, sturdy nib like this for summarizing civil law and public law precedents, but I could hardly find any at the stationery stores.”
He opened a small notebook he'd taken from inside his coat, pulled out a pen, and gripped it. When his rough, heavily knuckled fingers closed around the thin barrel, he held it so tightly that his fingertips turned white. Scratch, scratch. The familiar, sharp friction of the nib reached my ears through the traffic noise. With his magnifying glasses lowered to the tip of his nose, he inspected the ink's thickness and consistency, strands of gray mixed into the hair at his temples.
“I’m in my fifties, and I’m preparing for the second stage of the licensed real estate agent exam while working full-time. My mind doesn’t work as quickly as the younger people’s, so I have no choice but to memorize things by writing them out by hand over and over. Even when my wrist aches every night, whenever I draw lines and take notes with these pens, my heart starts racing because I feel like I’m still someone who can begin something new.”
The man smiled shyly, almost embarrassed, and the knuckles of his hands were covered in calluses far harder and rougher than any I'd carried during my senior year of high school.
I suddenly felt ashamed of how I'd tried to sell the pens off as if I were throwing them away, driven by the self-loathing of someone who had failed to accomplish anything. The objects that had been remnants of a past frozen in place for me were becoming someone's fiercest weapons for running toward a new tomorrow.
“Sir, all these pens still have plenty of ink, so they should last you comfortably through exam day. I hope they help with your studying, even just a little.”
The man took a neatly smoothed 10,000-won bill from his wallet and handed it to me politely with both hands. Then he rummaged around in his bag, pulled out a bottle of Bacchus, and pressed it into my hand.
“Thank you for selling them to me so quickly. I’ll take good care of these pens and work hard with them until they’re completely worn down. I’ll be sure to leave you a message when I pass.”
I watched for a long while as the man's back descended the station stairs again beneath the streetlamp. He held the bag of pens tightly in one hand as he walked, and instead of the weary steps of an office worker heading home, there was almost a solemn resolve in them.
I returned to my studio apartment, took off my shoes, and turned on the light. In one corner of the desk, the spot where the acrylic holder had stood packed with colorful pens was now hollow, leaving behind only a round ring of dust. I gently wiped the dust from the empty space with my fingertips.
The space left behind by the thirty pens was barely ten centimeters by ten centimeters, but the air seeping into the room felt about a handspan lighter than before.
I quietly held the Bacchus, its warmth still lingering in my palm. The ink that had carried the anxiety and impatience of my youth would now quietly write out someone else's second life. I sat down at the desk and left a short review on the man's username: “Cheering you on.” A small promise I was making to myself, too. The empty space in the room felt just a little more solid.