To My Dearest Roseanne- Chapter 41
In other circumstances, this would have been a fairly nice trip, Roseanne thought.
She reached Ssangmun-dong an hour after leaving Madame Yoshida's Literary Emporium. The subway trip itself was quick and problem-free, but the girl had to pay attention to English announcements made as the train stopped at each station.
The district itself was a typical middle-class area. If anything, Roseanne had to admit it looked significantly better than Szwederowo. There were no socialist blocks of flats looming from the sky and the streets were spick and span. Even on beautiful, sunny days, Szwederowo looked off, like an open-air warehouse, the forgotten corners of which still bore the scars of the Second World War. Ssangmun-dong, on the other hand, appeared cosy and minimalistic with its threads of small, unpopulated alleyways mixed up with neon-lit high-street stores that were bustling with life.
It took Roseanne half a day wandering in these alleyways in search of Cho's apartment. Of course, she relied on Google Maps to guide her, but every street looked the same, which made her lose sense of direction. Attempts to communicate with the locals were also futile because nobody spoke English. The girl was out there for so long that the sun disappeared and darkness of the night spilled over the sky. It also started raining, but she didn't mind that. Roseanne pressed on, passing LED lamp posts, cars parked outside semi-detached houses, and convenience stores. She tried to make sense of the signs written on the pavement and the fence, but the brain understood only numerals.
Finally, she found a house with number 38. With trepidation in her heart, Roseanne pressed an intercom outside the gate.
There was no response at the other side of the line, but the main door opened and a man in his late 40s came out in flip-flops. Two little children were clinging to the sides of his sweatpants.
"Excuse me. Do you speak English?" Roseanne asked.
"Mwo?"
That's my luck today, she thought.
"House." she showed at the residence. "Number 38, Rose Anne Cho."
"Mwo?"
"Rose Anne Cho!"
At that moment, one of the children stepped forward and read a paper. The little girl pointed to the adjacent street.
Roseanne patted the girl on the head and resumed her march. The children waved at her and she waved back. The man stood where he was, lighting a cigarette.
"Babo," he said.
***
The 38 house on the next street turned out to be a two-storey, newly refurbished block of flats. It didn't look anything like the battered tenement dwelling Roseanne lived in. Interestingly, the staircase leading to individual flats was located outside of the building. She had never seen this kind of set-up back in her city, but this saved the trouble of ringing over the intercom again. She referred to the note just to be sure and went straight to apartment no. 6 on the first floor.
There was no name tag, only a grey steel door and a small mailbox next to it. Roseanne knocked on the door.
"Please be inside, be inside, dammit," Roseanne kept repeating silently.
She knocked on the door again.
"Open up in there! I didn't travel across the galaxies to kiss the handle now!"
Roseanne heard nothing.
When she focused all her might on ears, she was able to make out a faint noise of a TV set playing at the neighbour's and the barking of a dog out on the street. There was no sound coming from Cho's apartment.
What if she didn't make it? Maybe she's gone and my efforts to rescue her were in vain? No, I can't think like that! I can't! Perhaps she just went shopping and will be back any minute–a rush of negative assumptions embalmed Roseanne's mind like sticky bandages applied to flesh wounds.
She sat in front of the door, looking at it with hope trickling away from her guts. It's one of those moments again, moments of despair when the status quo is breached and she doesn't know what to do in order to restore it. She felt exactly like that when mom got sick and ended up in a hospital a month ago.
"No, I can't cry. Not this time. I know better," Roseanne said to herself.
She turned away and looked over the railing on the street. She had a decision to make. Stay here and continue to wait for Cho or come back home? She desperately needed to find her, that's why led here, that's why she kept sitting here. Yes, Roseanne wasn't going anywhere.
And the passage of time proved her right.
After 15 minutes or so, a key in the lock turned twice and the door opened in front of Roseanne. She saw Cho in a hanbok costume, her skin healthy and radiant, hair let loose across the shoulders, rectangular reading spectacles adorning the nose.
"What does it mean to kiss the handle?" she asked.
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