Secrets of Attraction

Eight: JOOHYUK

The morning after the dance,  I woke up with a mission. It was as if seeing Sungkyung and Hyoseop happy together had kicked my ass into time-to-get-on-with-my-life mode. For the first time since our breakup, I couldn't wait to get out to the garage. Abeoji's Saturday-morning omelet fest was a blue; I scarfed enough for fuel, then went out to warm up. The garage was cold but that would change soon enough.

My Desker had actually cobwebs between the legs. I wiped them off, pulled the table upward, and boot up the computer. Practice was at eleven; I had a full hour before Subin and Jisoo were supposed to show. For all my bullshit about picking the perfect developer - if I'd auditioned for a developing team at the moment, I'd have a hard time making the cut. The calluses on my hand had even gone soft.

The motherhood growled to life as I ran my fingertips across keyboard. I hit a couple of testing keys, getting my fingers used to tapping sound, over and over until the test coding was perfect. Then I launch RStudio into the first applications of Imaging Recognizer. Fumbled, really. Three months of not coding and my fingers were rubbery. I ran through it a few more times, until it finally began to come back.

The Imaging Recognizer was Sungkyung. It wasn't our application or anything, and I hadn't been creating it to impress her - she would have been like, Google who? She always joked about my love for creating apps to aid people and producing small songs that I'd picked up from abeoji. This was for me, creating and producing to disappear into. The system reminded me of her. Registering images, it felt like connecting to some real, raw part of us. The couple we were when we were together and it was good.

This was as close as possible to saying goodbye without physically saying it to her.

Each scanning was a memory, a fight, a smile, a kiss. All of the anger, remorse, sadness, and desire came out through my fingers as the system scanned and pinged. I hit that sweet spot where I didn't need to think about what I was doing, just closed my eyes and felt it. My successful application washed over me, through me. Flowed electric from my animal brain.

I wasn't sure how much time had passed but the next thing I knew, my shirt was soaked and abeoji was standing there, arms crossed, leaning against the wall.

"Hey," I said.

"Sounds good."

"You weren't watching closely," I said. "Was I too occupied?"

Abeoji and I had turned the garage  into a practice space - a couple of technology brochures and couple of band posters on the wall, and some of his old computer systems and DJ set. It wasn't soundproof, so we had to keep our sessions to a minimum, or until one of the neighbors complained - but at least it was a place we could use and store our stuff.

"It should be occupying." He pulled the cover off one of his DJ sets for me. "How long do you think it will take this new developer to sound like you when you gave your plan to Jasper?"

"Jisoo's good but, I don't know, a month maybe, maybe less."

"I talked to Jas the other day -"

"And?"

"He liked your plan, wants to talk to you."

"Really?"

"Yea, said if you had any free time this week to stop in."

"Just stop in? And what?"

Abeoji laughed. "Jas's always been a face-to-face guy, just wants to meet you. Feel you out, see if you speak the same language."

"But I thought you said we should be at our best."

"I didn't mention your developer trouble. See how things go today, it's not like he'll book you in the next month - he said he usually goes three months out. A date to play can get things going."