BEAUTIFULLY, SHE LAY
Jinwoo could not keep his eyes off the corpse the morgue workers had just brought in. The body seemed to belong to a girl, not yet eighteen, in a high school uniform. Her eyes were closed, with dark eyelashes that stemmed from her eyelids. Her skin was smooth and supple, and her cheeks and lips were surprisingly pink, perhaps from a rouge she had applied prior to her death.
“What was the cause of death?” Jinwoo asked as he peered at the corpse, mesmerized.
“Drowned. Just over by the lake beside the hospital, actually,” Jinwoo’s colleague Hajun said as he flipped over a paper on the clipboard.
“Was it a suicide?”
“Seems so. Especially common around this time of the year.” “That’s...tragic.”
“Yes.”
Jinwoo was shocked at the indifference Hajun portrayed towards the corpse. Well, it seemed only natural for Jinwoo to be surprised at anything at his new job as an intern for Peace Hospital. However, for a corpse of a girl this beautiful, Jinwoo did not think Hajun’s behavior was normal.
Hajun barely glanced at the dead body before filling in blanks and writing remarks on the papers. The only time he looked up from his writing was to check the time on his watch. “Well, that’s it for today,” he said. “I suppose you’ve been here long enough to know how to organize and clean up the morgue?”
“Yes,” Jinwoo replied.
“Well, do so. I have something urgent after work, so I’ll have to go now.”
“Yes, sir. Depart safely.”
Hajun nodded and left the morgue. The other morgue workers were also leaving at this moment. Soon, only Jinwoo was left.
The girl’s body was now covered head to toe in a long, drapey white cloth. The cloth was wet from the water and stuck closely along the girl’s silhouette. Unspeakable thoughts entered Jinwoo’s mind as he uncovered the girl’s face just to see her for one more time. He was once again mesmerized. Jinwoo had never in his life seen a living girl as hauntingly beautiful as her. It was a pity that she was dead, and in a short amount of time, she would start decaying. How unfortunate. If Jinwoo had met this girl prior to her death, he was sure to have asked for her hand in marriage and made her happy for the rest of her life.
What had made her so unhappy that she had wanted to commit suicide?
When Jinwoo went back home, all he could think about was the corpse girl.
***
Jinwoo’s mother greeted him when he came back home from the hospital. “Look, Youngeui stopped by to eat dinner with us today.”
Lee Youngeui was Jinwoo’s betrothed. He did not know her very well, as this was a match made by their parents, but he thought that she looked pretty. She was a tiny girl, skinny from the malnutrition she endured as a child, but her eyes were doe-like and framed by thick eyelashes to make up for her thin hair.
At the dinner table, Jinwoo’s mother tried her best to engage the couple in a conversation, but it failed. Despite the presence of Youngeui, Jinwoo could not keep his mind off the corpse girl he saw at the morgue that day. He wondered what life that girl had led before her death. It must have been beautifully tragic; he was sure of it.
After dinner, as Jinwoo dazed off in front of the television, Youngeui sat closely next to him. Her heart beat at how close she was to him; she could feel his warmth. She blushed at the thought of their marriage that would take place in less than a few months, shortly after her high school graduation. “Mr. Jinwoo, I brought this for you,” Youngeui said, as she handed Jinwoo a small jar of paper stars she had carefully folded during her free time at school.
“Oh. Thank you, Miss Youngeui,” he responded.
He gave the jar a glance but quickly seemed to daze back into his thoughts. Youngeui wondered what it was that occupied his thoughts. She wished desperately it was of her, but she knew that could never be the case. It must be about work at the hospital, her mind settled, but somehow, deep down, she knew this was not true.
Jinwoo was the only man Youngeui had known intimately, other than her father. Perhaps that was why she fell in love with him rapidly. Jinwoo was tall, mysterious, and handsome. She could never know what he was thinking about nor what emotion he was feeling. He wore an alluring, stoic expression at all times. He rarely spoke, but when he did, he was always so polite and kind with her. She knew Jinwoo did not love her nor think of her much, but she was determined that she would change his mind someday.
***
Jinwoo stayed late at the hospital that night. It was best to make full use of the time he had to spend it with the corpse girl before she started decomposing. He used a comb to brush her shiny, black hair until it was silky. He even talked to her. About his problems and his life. Things he would never have told Youngeui. In fact, he even told the corpse about her.
***
The door to the morgue was slightly ajar. Worried that Jinwoo was caught up at work with nothing to eat, Youngeui had packed rice balls to bring them to him. She was told by one of the nurses to go visit the morgue. It seemed that Jinwoo was talking to somebody inside.
Youngeui eavesdropped, fearful of intruding.
“...and she’s nowhere near as beautiful as you, but that’s beside the point. I just, don’t know if I can commit to someone I barely know. I didn’t even want to get married. My parents set me up this match because I’m their only son, and they wanted to see me married with children before they could pass away, satisfied. But if that person were you instead, I would have gotten married right away, most definitely.”
Youngeui’s heart dropped. Was this what Jinwoo thought of her? And who was he talking to? Who was the other woman? Youngeui fought tears coming out of her eyes. She mustered up the courage to softly push the door open.
Jinwoo was sitting on a chair as he tilted his head downwards to bring his lips towards a woman’s corpse that lay on a cabinet rack.
Youngeui fought the urge to scream as she covered her mouth with a handkerchief. She would have passed out, but her desire to run away was stronger. Youngeui sprinted. Her hands still carried the sack with the container that had rice balls.
Once she regained her calmness, she replayed the scene in her head. Disgust and horror rose up from her stomach like squirming worms. All along she had wondered why Jinwoo had failed to show interest in her. And all along it was simply because he couldn’t.
Youngeui returned back to the hospital the following night. She carefully observed and listened to her betrothed as he talked about his inner thoughts to the woman corpse. They were thoughts she didn’t even know he had. Sometimes, if she peered through the door crack, she could see Jinwoo kissing the woman or caressing her face with his hands.
***
“Jinwoo, we have some upsetting news that you may want to hear about,” Jinwoo’s mother said to him on the second night he came back home from the corpse.
“Yes, Mother?”
“Your betrothed, Miss Lee Youngeui, drowned in a lake yesterday.”
Jinwoo blinked. “I see.”
“We didn’t know how to tell you this yesterday, but the funeral will be in procession. We will go pay our respects tomorrow.”
The next morning at the hospital, Jinwoo notified his colleagues of his early leave for his betrothed’s funeral. They were kind with their condolences. Jinwoo felt numb; he did not know what to feel. He went to the morgue to look at the corpse.
However, when Jinwoo opened the morgue cabinet to his loved one, an empty rack greeted him. Hajun came up behind him when he noticed his disappointed face and said, “It must have been hard on you to look at your betrothed’s corpse for the past few days.”
“What do you mean?” Jinwoo asked confusedly.
“Miss Lee Youngeui, correct? The corpse that was brought in a few days ago? What a pity. Here, perhaps this will help. This was found on her when she died. It was addressed to you.”
Hajun handed Jinwoo a letter that was sealed in a tiny jar. Jinwoo opened the jar and unfolded the curled letter paper. The words read:
I have received more love from you from the last few days than I ever would have in my marriage with you.
IHyeon Rha, 17, South Korea ✯ rha-ihyeon@outlook.com
“IHyeon is currently in high school. Although she does not plan to major in a Literature-related field, she loves to read, write, and create in her free time.”