Shelter by Jung Yun

Author:Jung Yun
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250075642
Publisher: Picador

SIX

Kyung unlocks the door to his office and turns on the lights, bracing himself for the noise and flicker of the fluorescent tubes hanging overhead. One by one, they buzz to life, rendering the walls an unpleasant, tobacco-stained shade of yellow. He assumed things would look different when he returned to work, but his books and papers are exactly where he left them, scattered in their usual disarray across the length of his desk. The only thing that’s changed in his absence is the smell—a musty shut-in odor that reminds him of a warm attic. Kyung opens his window, which overlooks a tree-lined quad of office buildings. The campus below is barely awake. A handful of maintenance men and early-bird secretaries travel the sidewalks, their pace leisurely, not yet hurried by the start of the day.

He deposits his mail on the ledge and turns on his computer, knocking over a row of picture frames like dominoes. The cluttered display of family photographs is Gillian’s doing. When he was first hired at the university, she decided they should decorate his office, insisting in a way that she’d rarely done before. She said she wanted him to feel at home there, and he understood the source of her excitement even though he didn’t feel it himself. None of the men in her family were the office type. He wasn’t about to take that from her, so he let her do what she wanted, organizing the bookshelves and hanging his diplomas with care.

The computer takes longer than usual to boot up, but Kyung doesn’t mind the wait. He’s afraid to see how much got away from him during his absence, the missed meetings and deadlines and requests for recommendation letters from anxious students. Classes ended in mid-May. He’d intended to take a week or two off after commencement, but over a month has passed, and he forgot to set up an auto-reply while he was gone. Now every e-mail will demand an apology or explanation, depending on how serious the delay. Despite not looking forward to this, Kyung dreads the thought of something else even more. He sits down at his desk and rolls his chair toward the aquarium in the corner. The lights in the tank are off, the water black and still. He stares inside, searching for the school of zebra fish. The fish are purely decorative—they have nothing to do with his research—but they’re living, breathing creatures nonetheless. At least they used to be. He expects to find them floating at the top, cocooned in several weeks’ worth of mold, but all twelve are alive and well, zipping from left to right and back again. He gives them a liberal pinch of food, surprised that they managed to survive for so long without it.

“Marcy took the liberty of feeding them while you were away.”

Kyung recognizes the voice before he turns to see his department chair standing in the open doorway.

“Oh. I’ll have to thank her for doing that.”

Although he doesn’t

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