#I was just looking at some cat species and clicked on wikipedia

[jellyjamheadobb]

Ya’ll this is very important, please read

[pinelife3]

Getting Short Stories

I read the short story “The Wind-up Bird and Tuesday’s Women” by Haruki Marukami last weekend. I really enjoyed it - until it finished. Because then it was obvious the story wasn’t going to give me any more help to understand it. Of course, I thought about if after I finished it, still trying to get whatever Murakami was on about. And I’m still thinking about it now. I don’t get it.

(Disclaimer: I cannot give you a clear definition of what it means to get it. It’s the same as when a poem works. It’s something clicking into place. Something you couldn’t learn on Wikipedia. Sweeping clear new pathways in how you think about something. I’d argue that you can get something from a piece of media without explicitly getting the media itself (for example, I love “Burnt Norton” but it is pretty inscrutable to me). Equally, you can get something without really caring about it (see: the more recent seasons of Black Mirror) - but that’s not all that interesting to talk about.)

“The Semplica-Girl Diaries” by George Saunders is an example of a short story I like and get: the character’s actions and motivations are sometimes surprising but still make sense, the world is vivid and interesting, the writing is highlightable, and I think I understand what Saunders is trying to say. Or - if I’ve misunderstood what he’s saying, I’ve been able to wring something satisfying out of it on my own. It means something to me, and I feel moved by the story and its ideas in some inarticulable way. I think I read it in a food court.

“The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday’s Women” was published in The New Yorker in 1990 and then made its way into Murakami’s 1993 book of short stories The Elephant Vanishes (published in English in ‘93 - it wasn’t published in Japanese until 2005). Probably like many people who have bought the book in the past year, I was inspired to read it after seeing the Korean film Burning (which is based on a story in the collection called “Barn Burning”). Also, I haven’t read any Murakami (that’s a lie: I tried to read Norwegian Wood when I was 21 but didn’t have much patience for it and gave up after ~100 pages) and thought this might be a low-effort way of remedying that.

In terms of the action of the story, The New Yorker summarises it well: 

The narrator, a resident of Tokyo, has quit his job in a law office, and is living as a house husband. One Tuesday morning he receives a phone call from an unknown woman, who says she will help him "come to an understanding," if he'll give her ten minutes. Busy cooking spaghetti for brunch, he hangs up. Later, his wife calls to tell him of a job prospect, as poet and poetry editor of a magazine for young girls. She also asks him to look for their missing cat; it's named Noboru Watanabe, after the wife's brother. She thinks it's in the yard of an abandoned house on their street. In his own yard, the narrator hears a bird screeching; he doesn't know what species of bird it is, but he and his wife think of it as the windup bird: it's there each morning, as if to wind up their world. That afternoon the mysterious woman calls back, and tries to have an erotic dialogue with the narrator. After he hangs up, the phone rings again; he doesn't answer. At the abandoned house, a young girl coaxes him to sunbathe with her. She tells him a fantasy about ripping up a corpse to get at "the lump of death itself." That night, his wife angrily accuses him of killing the cat. He writes a poem: Noboru Watanabe Where have you gone? Did the windup bird Stop winding your spring? The telephone begins ringing once again, but neither the narrator nor his wife will answer it.

This is basically the extent of the story but there are some weird details that add flavour. For example, the protagonist seems to have an auditory fixation. A lot of the story is about him listening to female voices (side note: Murakami is known for having a thing for ears - or formerly having a thing for ears). When a woman calls him on the phone, he makes much of his ability to place voices but has difficulty placing hers. Eventually, their conversation devolves into what is essentially phone sex. He hangs up and avoids answering the phone for the rest of the day, although it keeps ringing. The narrator describes a secret garden path/passage with no entrance or exit. It runs behind all of the houses in his block, so when he walks down it, he has a view into everyone’s backyards: he can see their washing, smell their cooking, etc. He is surprised and suspicious that his wife is familiar with this corridor. (If this were high school English I would be hammering home that the blocked in tunnel is a metaphor for the protagonist’s directionless existence, etc.) The ‘young girl’/teenager mentioned in the summary above, is described as crippled/limping and she mentions that she’s taking the year off school while her leg heals after a bike accident. He falls asleep in a deckchair in her garden while she talks to him. When he wakes up she’s gone. This never goes anywhere. The phone sex never goes anywhere. The corridor never goes anywhere. 

The passages about the wind-up bird are brief and seem trivial while you’re reading them: just lazy, dreamy thoughts from our unemployed protagonist as he drifts off to sleep on a warm Tuesday afternoon:

A regular wind-up toy this world is, I think. Once a day the wind-up bird has to come and wind the springs of this world. Alone in this fun house, only I grown old, a pale softball of death swelling inside me. Yet even as I sleep somewhere between Saturn and Uranus, wind-up birds everywhere are busy at work fulfilling their appointed rounds.

Okay... sure. Clearly, the bird has some significance, but the protagonist spends an equal amount of time thinking about spaghetti. What I also find difficult is that people’s emotions, reactions and motivations in the story don’t make sense. When his wife yells at him at the end of the story, accusing him of killing their cat, I wondered if maybe she was trying to pick a fight, if she’s sick of the marriage and wants out. I also thought she might be more distressed because the cat is named after her brother - how do you tell your brother that the cat you named after him is lost, probably dead. What would that symbolise? Still, to me she seems like an unreasonable person because the way her emotions escalate (apparently without any real trigger) is seriously out of step with normal human behaviour:

I emerge from an after-dinner bath to find my wife sitting all alone the darkened living room. I throw on a gray shirt and fumble through the dark to reach where she’s been dumped like a piece of luggage. She looks so utterly forsaken. If only they’d left her in another spot, she might have seemed happier.

...I take a seat on the sofa opposite her. “What’s the matter?” I ask. “The cat’s dead, I just know it,” my wife says. “Oh c’mon,” I protest. “He’s just off exploring. Soon enough he’ll get hungry and head on back. The same thing happened once before, remember? That time when we were still living in Koenji -” “This time it’s different. I can feel it. The cat’s dead and rotting away in the weeds. Did you search the grass in the vacant house?” “Hey no, stop it. It may be a vacant house, but it’s somebody’s house. I’m not about to go trespassing.” “You killed it!” my wife accuses.

I heave a sigh and give my head another once-over with the towel.

“You killed it with that look of yours!” she repeats from the darkness. “How does that follow?” I say. “The cat disappeared of its own doing. It’s not my fault. That much you’ve got to see.” “You! You never liked that cat, anyway!” “Okay, maybe so,” I admit. “At least I wasn’t as crazy about the cat as you were. Still, I never mistreated it. I fed it every day. Just because I wasn’t enthralled with the little bugger doesn’t mean I killed it. Start saying things like that and I end up having killed half the people on earth.” “Well, that’s you all over,” my wife delivers her verdict. “That’s just so you. Always, always that way. You kill everything without ever playing a hand.”

I am about to counter when she bursts into tears. I can the speech and toss the towel in the bathroom basket, go to the kitchen, take a beer out of the refrigerator, and chug. What an impossible day it’s been!

Am I dumb? Do I not understand adult relationships? Because this seems like a very weird exchange to me. Does the way he reacts to her accusations, with exasperation rather than anger or surprise, suggest that he’s seen her behave like this before? A pop culture analogue: remember the video of Solange beating up Jay-Z in an elevator after the 2014 Met Gala?

Jay-Z is in the white suit. Solange is the one hitting him. There’s a bodyguard trying to keep them apart. And Beyoncé is standing there calmly - not getting involved, just trying to protect her outfit. Here they are directly after the incident.

What a fucking pro. Thousand yard smile. 

At the time, speculation was rife about what Jay-Z did to trigger such a beating (in italics because it’s still surprising that everyone was so okay with the domestic violence). What really thrilled people was the crack in the facade of perfection. A glimpse into their lives that hadn’t been perfectly curated, something we were never meant to see. The common read was that Jay-Z must have done something because otherwise Beyoncé would have stepped in to protect him. The consensus now is that Solange had found out that he’d cheated on her sister. Maybe even that he’d done something at the Gala. This is all now part of the Carter canon because they’ve referenced it in their music to great commercial and critical success.

Another interesting interpretation was that perhaps Beyoncé had seen Solange raging and uncontrollable many times before and knew how to weather the storm. Maybe Solange has a temper when she drinks? Maybe she’ll have an outburst, and all you can do is stay out of the way and ignore it until the mood passes and she sobers up. Perhaps her family is used to this behaviour. There’s no point engaging or trying to reason with her, you just have to let her get it out and then smile for the press at the elevator doors. 

As with Beyoncé, maybe our protagonist is accustomed to bad behaviour: recriminations, tears, tantrums. You kill everything. Most people would want to dig in if their partner said something like that. But perhaps it doesn’t trigger such a strong reaction in him anymore. Another odd behavioural detail, perhaps again showing the protagonist’s muted response to the world, is that he is pretty indifferent to the mysterious phone call. He resolves not to answer the phone, but is otherwise not at all curious about who’s calling him. If I received a call like that from a shadowy stranger, I would sacrifice a great deal to find out who was behind it. I know I’m not alone here - because, as every scammer knows, the most efficient way to get someone to open an email which it is in their best interest to not open (full of malware, spyware, etc.), is to include a declaration of love or romantic interest in the subject line.

Searching for some connection between the events of the story, I wondered if maybe the wife hired the woman on the phone to seduce her husband so that she’d have a concrete reason to divorce him. But this doesn’t really track because just earlier in the day she was encouraging him to stay a house husband - why would she do that if she wanted to leave him? 

There are lots of weird details in the story, none of which signify much to me. Our protagonist is unemployed, he doesn’t have much to do and isn’t looking for much to do, his voice as narrator is anxious, circular, repetitive. The key themes seem to be curiosity, restlessness, loneliness, directionlessness, nessness, etc. But unless the point is that everything that happened in the story was pointless, and that’s supposed to echo the protagonist’s torpor, I don’t get it. Basically every major plot element is still a question mark - are we supposed to dismiss those as magical realism or wishful thinking on the part of the protagonist and move on with our lives, never being curious about who the lady on the telephone is, or why the girl has a messed up leg and won’t go to school? I can’t do it. I want to know! I want to get it.   

Fortunately for us, Murakami wrote a novel called The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle which spins off the short story into the first chapter of the novel and runs from there. Do you think it answers any of my questions above?

Remember the cat named after the wife’s brother? In the novel, the brother is an incestuous rapist. Maybe that is why the narrator doesn’t care for the cat much. Maybe that’s why the wife is accusing her husband of killing it? Some kind of wishful thinking? Still, we don’t get any background on the relationship with her brother until The Wind-up Bird Chronicle so you’re kind of grasping at air in the short story. 

In a chapter of the novel apparently not published in English versions (according to Wikipedia, Vintage, the English publisher, was concerned the book was too long so they had the translator cut about 61 pages from the original 1,379 pages), it is revealed that the phone sex lady was actually his wife. Twist! In the short story he said of the woman’s voice:

I have absolutely no recollection of ever heading this woman’s voice before. And I pride myself on a near-perfect ear for voices, so I’m sure there’s no mistake. This is the voice of a woman I don’t know. A soft, low nondescript voice.

I presume his skill for placing voices isn’t in the novel. Because that seems like a pretty lame trick to pull on your reader. It’s one thing to have an unreliable narrator. But an incompetent, overconfident one is just setting you up for a shitty experience. That’s a book I don’t want to read. I also don’t want to read it because it’s 1,318 pages, so that’s that.

Perhaps it’s wrong to judge Murakami based on one short story. But he put this one at the start of the book! And actually (even though I’ve read hardly any of his stuff) I would argue this story is probably representative of his work. Check out this Murakami bingo card:

Appearing in “The Wind-up Bird and Tuesday’s Women”:

Mysterious woman

Ear fetish? Perhaps not - but, like I said, an auditory fixation for sure

Unexpected phone call

Cats

Urban ennui

Secret passageway

Precocious teenager

Cooking

Vanishing cats

This story is in his usual stylistic neighborhood. He’s got to be comfy here. 

What do people like about Murakami? Does his writing make me feel like the universe is singing a song? Certainly, this story has stuck with me. By which I mean, it plagues my every waking thought. It torments me. It twists my toes backwards, blocks the drain of my shower with hair, corrupts my Excel files. It is a blight I shall bear for the rest of my life: who was on the phone? Not only do I not get Murakami, but I don’t get what others might like about him. Like I said at the top, I did enjoy reading this story because there were tantalising threads. I could tolerate the dull inner monologue about the narrator’s erstwhile legal career and how he felt as he drifted off for an afternoon nap if there were a resolution to at least one of the story’s mysteries. But this story does not pay off. Not even a little bit. The idea that you need to read 1,300 more pages for a resolution is frustrating. In 2014, The Guardian covered an event where Murakami spoke about The Wind-up Bird Chronicle:

The author of 13 novels and many short stories admitted to having completely forgotten what he has written – or indeed why – when asked about specific plot points, without seeming bothered at all. “Really?” and “I don’t remember that” were two of his most frequent answers, and he had the audience laughing at his frankness every time. “It was published 20 years ago and I haven’t read it since then!” he said of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, around which the event centred...

“I don’t have any idea at all, when I start writing, of what is to come. For instance, for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the first thing I had was the call of the bird, because I heard a bird in my back yard (it was the first time I heard that kind of sound and I never have since then. I felt like it was predicting something. So I wanted to write about it). The next thing was cooking spaghetti – these are things that happen to me! I was cooking spaghetti, and somebody call. So I had just these two things at the start. Two years I kept on writing. It’s fun! I don’t know what’s going to happen next, every day. I get up, go to the desk, switch on the computer, etc. and say to myself: “so what’s going to happen today?” It’s fun!” 

Fun for you, maybe.

I don’t think a feature of good fiction is wacky shit inexplicably occurring with no explanation or follow up - otherwise, it’s not a narrative.

I don’t need every plot line neatly resolved, and I don’t need to be told explicitly what everything means (I’m happy to do some legwork on my own) but none of the plot points are resolved at all in "The Wind-up Bird and Tuesday’s Women”. In fiction, as in life, I want things to be connected, to have a cause and effect relationship. I want things to make sense: to have a trigger, make an impact, be remembered. Even if the trigger is hidden, I want people to react to the things happening around them in a plausible way. Ideally, I want to think the things in the story mattered. 

“Up in Michigan” by Hemingway is a short story I like. It’s an interesting depiction of sexual politics, innocent female affection, etc. As I’ve gotten older, the reasons I like it have changed. When I read it when I was 20, I felt some kind of feminine kinship across time with the protagonist because she falls for the wrong guy, and her romanticism is crushed by the weight of the drunk guy she likes falling asleep on her after some bad sex, and she loses a little bit of herself that night - yes, her virginity but also some trust and whatever. And now I find it kind of amusing because you know Hemingway killed with the ladies and probably played the heart breaker (or the drunk dude falling asleep on some poor girl) a hundred times over so it’s funny to imagine Hemingway in his early 20s, having just got done stomping some girl’s romantic aspirations, then sitting down to write this story, all soulful and sensitive, as if he gave a fuck about girls crying over boys who will never like them. Still, Hemingway’s short stories fucking kill. Killing fuck. They’re good. In “Up in Michingan” as in many of Hemingway’s stories, things are implied rather than uttered (as per the law in Hemingwayland), so sometimes you don’t know the background to a conversation and have to deduce what two characters are talking about, but the dynamic between them is revealed through dialog and their actions. You may not understand why something happened, and often there’s no narrator to help you out, but you infer how people feel about it and what it means to them. Not everything needs to happen for a reason: sometimes babies are born with cancer, sometimes the guy you like doesn’t like you back, sometimes guys get into fights outside bars, sometimes you meet a weird teenager in a secret garden path. But the things that happen should matter to you, to your reader, and to your protagonist, at least a little bit. Otherwise what’s the point?

[jae-bummer]

My Idol: Part Twenty

My Idol From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My Idol is a South Korean competitive reality dating game show. It currently airs on Wednesday nights on Jae-bummer’s blog. First broadcast in 2016, the show offers the opportunity for a lucky fan to go on seven blind dates with seven idols. The idol plans the date with the show throwing in specific missions to complete during the day. At the end of the initial dates, the show opens up an audience vote to decide what three idols will move on to the second date.

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10 - Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14 - Part 15 - Part 16 - Part 17 - Part 18 - Part 19 - Part 20 - Part 21 - Part 22

Around every corner was a new and welcomed surprise. Well, at least Jaebum had been half right. As you turned down a new street corner, hand in hand, you heard the voice before you were able to see who it belonged to. Barreling along the pavement was a girl not much older than sixteen, school books in hand. You looked her up and down as she halted in front of you, stopping your forward progress toward your much anticipated date location. You looked over your shoulder slowly, making eye contact with Armpit and Sweaty to gauge if this was somehow a situation production had set up, but they looked just as surprised as you were. 

You turned your attention back to the girl and felt Jaebum’s hand tense under your touch. One of her adidas sported untied laces, caked in dirt. Socks uneven and plaid skirt hanging limply from her body, she pushed her hair back nervously as she attempted to regain her breath. She wheezed and adjusted thick glasses before looking at the two of you nervously. 

“Wait...Is this an actual date?”

Jaebum laughed bitterly beside you and retracted his hands from yours. He crossed his arms and allowed a stern smile to find his face. “We are currently filming, yes.”

You furrowed your brows, caught off guard by his sentiment. A simple yes would have been pertinent. 

“I’m so sorry to bother you!” the girl gasped, her cheeks growing more flush with the words she spoke. “But you don’t understand. I’m a My Idol super fan. I’ve never loved a show so much in my life. I’ve watched every episode at least twice and I run a blog all about it. You can follow me -”

“We appreciate that,” you nodded, trying to plaster on a smile as well. You looked over to Jaebum who’s smile more closely resembled a snarl and elbowed him lightly. He immediately straightened up and nodded as well. 

“Yes, yes, of course. Without fans, there would be no show,” he muttered quickly. 

“I was wondering...if um...if um you’d take a photo with me?” the girl asked carefully, pushing up her lenses again. “You don’t have to if you’re in a hurry, but you don’t know how much I’d appreciate it.” 

“Of course,” Jaebum nodded, immediately relaxing into idol mode. He instinctively stood beside the girl who began to giggle nervously. 

“I was...actually wondering if I could get a photo with both of you?” the girl stuttered, pulling out her phone. 

You lifted your brows as you attempted to understand her request. “You want me in the picture?”

“You’re the lead!” the girl gasped. “I could only hope to grow up and be on a show like this sometime! You’re a role model!” 

You winced as she spoke the words. Yet another facet of the My Idol experience you had never considered, your effect on South Korea’s youth. You felt conflicted. You had never wanted them to aspire to be in your position. If they valued their mental health, surely they wouldn’t wish for it either, but that wasn’t something you could mention aloud. You nodded shortly, shaking yourself out of your daze and stepped toward Jaebum. 

“I appreciate that,” you said quietly, easing in to the already queued camera screen on the girls phone. 

“Alright, on three, My Idol!” the girl squeaked. She clicked repeatedly on the capture button, taken at least a dozen photos of your faces. 

“Thanks for stopping to say hello,” JB hummed with a short bow. 

“What is it like?” the girl continued, completely ignoring Jaebum’s words as she stared directly at you. Her eyes were wide as she analyzed you, looking as if she were at a museum. “Dating all of these idols? Were you happy with who the audience selected? What made you pick Jay Park over Top? Does production influence your decisions? I would’ve picked Top, even if production told me not to. Doesn’t it seem like Jay Park seems too concerned with winning the competition and not your hear-”

“Time to go,” Armpit grumbled, giving both you and JB a quick shove in the shoulder. You both stumbled past the girl, in mild amazement at the amount of questions she had gotten out in such a short amount of time. It felt as if you had whiplash from her words as you continued down the sidewalk, void of conversation. 

Jay Park seems too concerned with winning the competition and not your heart...The words echoed eerily in your mind as you struggled beside Jaebum. 

“Fans are weird,” JB sighed, shaking his head. He wrapped his arm tenderly around your waist and squeezed reassuringly at your hip. The motion brought you back down to an intense reality fairly quickly as you glanced down at his narrow fingers. 

“Yeah,” you breathed, unsure of what to say. 

“Well, looks like we’re here!” JB nodded, a smile finding it’s way back onto his face. “Cat’s Attic”

“I can feel the excitement radiating off of you,” you chuckled. “Should we go i-”

JB breezed past you and toward the front door of the cat cafe. He tugged open the heavy glass, barely holding it open for you as he sauntered inside. You were caught off guard by the action, but couldn’t help but laugh. You had never seen a grown man so excited by something so simple before. 

You entered the cafe behind Jaebum and shifted to survey the man before you. While the surroundings and happenings of the cafe seemed to thrive in color for Jaebum, they faded into the background for you. He was what was thriving before your eyes. The excitement on his face was reminiscent of a child as his attention darted back and forth, uncertain of where it should be dedicated to. His mouth was caught somewhere between a smile and a gasp. His fists opened and closed, ready to pick up a cat as soon as one strode by his peripherals. 

“I just love them all so much,” he whispered, his voice barely above a breath. 

“I get that,” you chuckled, crossing your arms. “Do you want a drink?”

“Look at that one,” he gasped, bringing his balled fists to his face. The emotions were too much for him to handle as he began to stumble toward the cat play area. 

“Well alright,” you giggled. You approached the counter of the cafe, ordering something for yourself and guessing at what JB would want. You threw in some cat treats as well, more as a surprise for Jaebum than the cats. 

You retrieved your drinks from the counter with impressive speed and tucked the cat treats beneath your arm. You adjusted your stance in your cat-friendly slippers and began to search for Jaebum. It didn’t take long to find the grown man, laying on his back, in the middle of the cat playroom, completely covered in around six or seven cats. 

“Jaebum,” you hissed, your eyes wide. You looked around slowly at all of the other patrons who had been staring at your date for who knows how long. 

“Ooo, heaven is a place on earth,” he sang quietly in accented English. You closed your eyes tightly and took a deep breath, only to open them again. There was a strange mix of adoration and secondhand embaressment coursing through you, but you finally sighed and plopped to the floor. If you can’t beat them, might as well join them. 

“I got you an Americano,” you nodded, placing the cup near Jaebum’s shoulder. He sat up slowly, allowing two cats to tumble off of him and onto the floor. Two more continued to share space in his lap as he picked up his drink. 

“I’m supposed to pay for the drinks, Y/N,” he smiled, sipping casually. With his free hand he pet at the cats around him. 

“You were preoccupied,” you grinned. “I got snacks for your friends.”

Jaebum stopped mid sip as he took the small bag of cat treats from you and cradled them in his hands. He looked up to your face again and smirked. “You get me.”

“We’ve gone on two dates,” you laughed. “I get nothing. I’m so out of my element, it’s comical.”

“Why do you say that?” JB asked, opening the bag of treats and laying them on his knee. He smiled as a Siamese cat wandered over and began to nibble from his jeans. 

“You live such a different life than mine,” you sighed. “I’m not sure how I could get it or relate.”

“Just because I chose such a publicized career, doesn’t mean I’m different than you,” JB continued calmly. He stroked the cat that had appeared while leaning over to pet another with his opposite hand. “We’re still the same species, right? We have similar thoughts and feel the same array of feelings. You have a better route to get to know me than most to be honest.”

You nodded slowly, biting your lip as you continued to watch him. He was methodical in his movements, calm and careful. He was very conscious in making the small creatures around him comfortable, including yourself. He reached over slowly, taking your wrist between his fingers and flipping it so your hand faced palm side up. He dumped a few of the cat treats into your upturned palm. 

“Stay still, you can usually get them to eat from your hand,” he whispered, giving you an encouraging nod. 

After a few moments, a small. grey tabby cat wandered up to you, uncertainty apparent on it’s small and furry face. 

“It’s alright,” JB cooed, reaching out and petting it carefully behind the ears. “Y/N won’t hurt you.”

You felt as if you had stopped breathing as the tiny cat seemed to heed JB’s words and stick it’s tongue out cautiously to your hand. It bit at one of the crunchy treats and chewed slowly above your outstretched fingers. You smiled at the funny feeling of the cat’s sandpaper like tongue making contact with your skin. 

“JB?” you whispered, your eyes not able to leave the cat. “Why do you like cats so much?”

Out of your peripherals, you saw Jaebum tilt his head and lift his brows. He pursed his lips in thought before he began to speak. “A cat can let you know how it feels without saying a word. It communicates solely through body language. They are curious and self serving. The confidence in which they own a space that doesn’t necessary belong to them, but they believe it does. Like now for instance...that cat eating out of your hand. He thinks those are his treats, and your hand is his bowl. And this cafe is his cafe. And Seoul is his. He is the king of Seoul.”

“I guess it’s all about perspective...and in a cat’s perspective...they rule the world?” you questioned. 

“And how thrilling must a life like that be?” Jaebum smiled. 

“I suppose that’s as good of a reason as any,” you nodded. 

“I think so,” JB nodded as well. 

“And why do you like me so much?” you joked, shamelessly winking at your date. 

Jaebum’s jaw slowly slid open, his eyes wide with surprise. With his personality, you loved to catch him off guard. You knew you were completely joking, but he never quite knew how he should handle your words. 

“I...well...uh,” he trailed, looking at the cats surrounding him for any type of help. 

“Don’t feel compelled to answer that,” you laughed. “I was only teasing.”

“When your date asks a question, you answer it,” he confirmed, his eyes smiling. “I like you because you’re like a cat.”

“I’m...I’m like a cat?” you stuttered. “I think I’m the King of Seoul?”

Jaebum hiccuped out an unexpectedly loud laugh as he collapsed onto the floor again. After a few moments of giggles, he sat up and took your hand in his. “Y/N,” he hummed, lifting your knuckles to his lips. He kissed your hand gently and smiled. “You are the King of Seoul.” 

Your thoughts were heavy as JB tugged you along the sidewalk and back toward your apartment. You were hesitant to let the day end and had decided in the midst of your date that you could watch Jaebum play with cats forever. 

“What are you thinking about?” JB’s voice whispered, his breath hot in your ear. You jumped at the appearance of his words, tilting your head to hide your ear in your shoulder. 

“Why must I be thinking about something?” you countered, a sly grin on your face. 

“Because you haven’t spoken,” he sighed. 

“JB, neither of us really speak when -”

“But you also aren’t checking me out,” he chuckled with a wink. You froze and turned to him slowly. 

“What?”

“When we don’t talk, we at least exchange eyes with each other,” he hummed. “You act as if you don’t notice.”

“That’s hardly something I would deem as checking you out,” you grumbled, continuing your steps back toward your apartment. 

“Really? Because I thought what you were doing was the textbook definition of the word,” he chuckled. 

“Words,” you muttered. “’Checking you out’ is three words.”

“Glad to hear you acknowledge it at least,” he continued, a wry smile bright on his face. You groaned as you finally reached your building and shuffled down the hallway to your front door. 

You narrowed your eyes as you travelled down your dimly lit hallway. It was an open air corridor, but the shadows of the floors above caused little sunlight to filter through. As you grew closer to your door, you attempted to focus even more, noticing a small white rectangle placed over the number on your entryway. 

“What’s that?” JB asked, verbalizing the thought before you had the chance to. 

“No idea,” you muttered, reaching out toward what appeared to be an envelope. A deep feeling of nausea radiated through your stomach as you thought of the possibilities of what could be hidden within. You were under the impression that you had left missions during dates far behind in the last round, so you couldn’t imagine what this could be. Your fingers trembled as they found their way beneath the envelope’s edge and began to lift up. You slid out a thin piece of parchment paper, full of small and closely knit handwriting. Your eyes traced the page without giving any of the paragraph context, searching for a signature. 

You swallowed hard as your attention lingered on the bottom of the page, your heart nearly stopping from the small inscription left there. 

“What is it?” JB asked, attempting to peer over your shoulder. 

“Nothing,” you lied, closing the paper immediately and sliding it back into the envelope. “Just a letter from my landlord.”

“Oh, poor timing,” he chuckle. He smiled kindly as he stepped forward, allowing his arms to wrap around your waist and pull you in close. “I hope you had fun today.” 

“I did,” you confirmed, your mind and heart still racing from the small bit of paper tucked between your fingers. You tried to ignore your compulsion to run inside and pour over the letter, so instead you chose to snake your arms around JB’s neck and rested your forehead near his chin. “Thank you.” 

“Anytime,” he hummed, nestling his head in your hair and peppering your hairline with light kisses. “I’ll take the King of Seoul for cats and coffee any day.”

PART 1 - PART 2 - PART 3 - PART 4 - PART 5 - PART 6 - PART 7 - PART 8 - PART 9 - PART 10 - PART 11 - PART 12 - PART 13 - PART 14 - PART 15 - PART 16 - PART 17 - PART 18 - PART 19 - PART 20 - PART 21 - PART 22

[jansegers]

Simple English Word List

SIMPLE1540 : a simple English wikipedia word list based on the XML export of all articles related to the nine major groups: Everyday life, Geography, History, Knowledge, Language, Literature, People, Religion, and Science and retaining all word forms appearing 7 times or more in this corpus. The total number of words in this corpus is well over the 100.000 words. a A.D. ability able about above absence abstinence abstract academic academy accent accept access accord account across act action active activity actual actually ad add addition adherent adjective adult advance advice affect after again against age agnostic agnosticism ago agree agreement agriculture air alcohol all allow ally almost alone along alphabet also although always amateur amendment among amount an analysis ancient and angel animal annals anonymous another answer anthropomorphism any anyone anything aphasia appear apple apply approach archaeology architecture area argue argument around arrange art article artificial artist ask aspect associate association astronomy at atheism atheist atomic attack attempt attribute audience author authority available average avoid award away B.C. baby back background backpack bad bah balance band baptism base basic basis battle BCE be bear beautiful beauty because become bed bee before begin behavior behind being belief believe believing belong below best better between beyond bias biblical bibliography big billion biological biology birth bit black blind blood blue body book born both bottom boundary box boy brain branch bring brown buffalo build building bull burn business but by c. ca. calendar call can cancer canon capital caption car carbon card carry case cassette cat category cathedral catholic cause cell center central century cerebral certain change chapel chapter character chemical chemistry child china China choice choir choose chronicle church circumcise circumcision cite citizen city civil civilian civilization claim clan class classical cleanup clear clergy click climate close closer clothes clothing coast coauthor code codex cognitive col cold collection college colonization colony color column com come commentary commission common commonly communicate communication communion communist community companion company compare competition complete complex compose composer computer concept conception concern condition confuse confusion congregational connect connection conquer conquest consciousness consider consistent constitution construct construction contain contemporary content context continent continue contrary control convention conversation conversion convert cook cooking copy core correct could council country course court cover covered create creation credit crime critical criticism crop cross crust cultural culture current currently daily damage dark data date day dead death debt decadence decadent decide declaration decline deconstruction deep define definition deity demonstrate denomination department depth describe description design detail determinism developed development device devil diagnosis dialect dictionary die difference different difficult difficulty diphthong dipstick direct directly dirt disagree disambiguation disbelief discipline discover discovery discussion disease disorder distance distinct distinction distinguish distribution divide divine do doctor doctrine document dog don't door down Dr. dream drink drown druid due during dynasty each earlier early earth easier easily easy eat economic economics economy ed edge edit edition editor education effect eight either electric electricity electronic element elevation else emperor empire encyclopedia end energy engine engineering enlightenment enough enter entertainment environment environmental epic episode equal era error especially establish etc. etymology even event eventually ever every everyday everyone everything evidence evil evolution evolve exact exactly example except exchange exist existence expansion experience experiment expert explain explanation express expression external extinct face fact failure fair faith fall false family famous far fast father feature feel feeling female feudal few fiction field fight figure file find finding fire first fish fit five fix flow folk follow food for force foreign foreskin form formal former fortune fought foundation founded four fourth frame framework free freedom frequently friend from front fruit full function functional further future gas general generally generation genre geographer geographic geographical geography geology geometry germ get give glass global go god gold golden good government grammar great greatly green ground group grow growth guide guillotine hair half hall hand handbook handicap handle happen happens happiness happy hard have he head heading health hear heat heaven help hemisphere her here heritage hero high highly him himself his historian historical historiography history hold holy home homo hope hot hour house how however human hundred hunter hypothesis hysteresis I ice icon idea identify identity if illiteracy illiterate illusory image importance important impossible improve in inc. incense include increase indeed independence independent indigenous individual industrial industry influence information inquiry inside instead institute institution instrument instrumentation intellectual intelligence interlinear internal international internet interpretation into introduce introduction invent invention involve iron island issue it IT itself job join journal journalism judge just keep key kill kind king kingdom know knowledge la LA label lack lake lamp land landlocked landscape language large last late later law lead leader leap learn learned least leave legacy legal legend let letter level lexeme library life light lightning like likely limited line linguistic linguistics link liquid list literacy literary literature little liturgy live local location logic logical long longer look lord lore lose lot love low lower mac machine magazine magic magnetic magnum mail main mainly major make male mammal man mankind manuscript many map march March mark market mass material mathematical mathematics matter may May me mean meaning meant measure measurement meat median medical medicine medieval mediterranean medium meet member memory men mental mention mercury message metal method mid middle might migrate migration military millennium million mind minister minute misconception miss model modern modernism modernist moment money monologue monophthong month monument moon moral morality more morning most mostly mother mount mountain mouth move movement much museum music musical musicians must my myth mythology name narrative nation national nationality native natural naturalism naturally nature near nearly necessarily necessary need negative neither neologism network neurogenesis neuron neuroscience never new news newspaper next night nine no non none nor normal normally not note nothing noun novel now nuclear number object objective objectivity observation observe occupation occur ocean octane of off offer office official officially often oil old older on once one online only open opera opposite or oral orbit order org organization organize origin original originally orthography orthology other others our out outer outside over own oxygen p. pack pagan page paint palace paper paradigm parent parish park part participant particular particularly party pas pass past pasta pattern pay peace peer penguin penis people per percent percentage perception performance perhaps period peroxide persecution person personal personality perspective persuasion pet phenomenon philosopher philosophical philosophy phoneme phonetic phonetics photo phrase physic physical picture piece pilgrimage place plan planet plant plat plate play please poem poems poet poetry point pole police policy political politics polytheism polytheistic popular population position positive possession possible possibly post power powerful pp. practical practice praise pray prayer precise predict prediction prehistory present preserve press prevent priest primary principle print printing private probably problem process produce product production professional program project pronounce pronunciation proof property prophet propose prose proselytism protection protein provide province psychological psychology public publication publish publisher publishing punishment pure purpose put pyramid quantum question quickly quite quote race racial rack radiation radio rain range rate rather read reader real realism reality really reason receive recent recently reclamation recognize record recreation red ref refer reference referred reform reformation regard region reign rejection relate relation relationship relatively relativity reliable relic religion religious remain remember remove renaissance replace report republic request require research researcher resource respect response result resurrection retrieve return revelation revert review revision revival revolution rhetoric rich right rise ritual river rock role room royal rule ruled ruler run rural sacred sacrifice safe saga sage saint salad same sample satellite saw say schizophrenia scholar school science scientific scientist scope sea search second secondary section secular see seek seem selection self sense sent sentence separate sequence series service set seven several sexual shall shaman shape share she short should show shrine side sign significant silence similar simple simply since single situation six size skill skin slavery sleep slightly slow small smell smith snake so social society sociology soft soil solar soldier solid soliloquy some someone something sometimes song soon sortable sound source space speak speaker special specie specific speech speed spell spirit spiritual spirituality split sport spread square st. stage stain standard star start state statement station statistic statistical statue status stick still stone stop story strange strap strong structure struggle stub student study stutter style subject successful such sugar suggest sun sung sunlight superior superiority supernatural support suppose supreme sure surface survey surveyor sushi sustainability sustainable sweat symbol symbolic system table take talk tam tan task teach teacher teaching technique technology tectonics teeth tell temperature template temple ten term terminology territory tertiary test testament text textual than thank that the their theism them themselves then theology theoretical theory therapy there therefore thesaurus these they thick thing think third this those though thought thousand three through throughout thumb thus ticket tight time title to today together toilet tolerance toleration tongue too tool top topic total towards tower trade tradition traditional train translation transport travel treat treatment tree trench trial tribe tried trig true truth try turn twentieth twenty two type typical typically ultimate ultraviolet under understand understood union unit united universal universe university unknown unsortable until up upon upper urban urbanization usage use useful usually valley value van vandalism various vassal vegetable verb verbal verse version very video view violence virgin visit vitamin vocabulary voice vol. volume vowel vs. wale wall want war warm warmer wash waste water wave way we weak wealth wear weather web website weight well what when where whether which while white who whole whom whose why wide widely wild wilderness will window wisdom wise witch witchcraft with within without witness woman word work worker world worship would write writer writing wrong yam year yellow you young your

China, March and May made this list because china, march and may are on it and I didn't want to decide in favor of the common noun or the proper noun; all other proper nouns have been omitted (even the ten other months that met the criterium of appearing more then 6 times). #SimpleWikipedia #SimpleEnglish #wordlist #English #words #level1540 #Inli #nimi #selo1540