Table for One by Yun Ko-eun

Author:Yun Ko-eun
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press

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The whole time he’d been shattering fire alarm casings, he hadn’t run into a single person, hadn’t seen the gleam of a single pair of eyes. But the CCTV recording on each floor was also a kind of eye, even if he wasn’t aware of it. The CCTV first captured the man as he broke the glass. As sirens went off, the camera turned to surveil the guests pouring out of their rooms en masse like a tide. The people who rushed out of their rooms and the building were relieved that there was no fire but at the same time they seemed annoyed that they’d all been brought together by a false alarm.

“A person’s—been hit—by a car. Down there.”

The man’s breath was ragged as he spoke. To the others, his motions looked like a blazing fire, too rapid to comprehend.

“I just, I picked this person up on the road, and brought them here. An ambulance, quick.”

Instead of an ambulance, the motel manager appeared. He was wearing a uniform and looked as cool as ever.

“Did you break the fire alarm panels?”

A cracked piece of vase fell from the man’s hand. He had thought that the fire alarms would be interpreted as a call for help—a distress signal in the empty wilderness of this motel—but it looked like the others didn’t feel the same way. He explained that there had been no other way to bring everyone together. When he finished speaking, a bystander said, “So, what’s the matter?”

“Someone fell on the road. I’m talking about this person here.”

As soon as the man indicated the fallen figure by his side, every face in the crowd wore the same expression. Judging from the way they were looking at him, it was clear that he was going to be on his own.

“How’d he hit such an old thing?” someone asked.

The woman next to the man shook her head, and someone else clucked his tongue as he headed back into the motel. The person standing closest to the man looked at him and spoke.

“Wild animals run across that road a lot. Isn’t that why it’s a wildlife crossing zone?”

The man looked down at the old person again. He couldn’t see anything odd, but the other guests saw fur and a tail and claws. They all glared viciously at him. He looked down at the person again and again. No shoes, thick toenails—and was that fur actually part of a human body? In a second, this elderly person had become the most unfamiliar creature on earth. And the man was more of a laughingstock than ever.

“You’ll have to take responsibility for the disturbance you’ve caused. And get rid of the body of that animal somehow—put it back on the road, or bury it, or burn it. If you just throw it out near the motel, it’ll be an eyesore, and we’ll have to fine you.”

Uniform handed the man a hastily written fine as he spoke. The man took the note and immediately crumpled it.

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