same given name, different handwriting

The name on the lease is Im Seo-yeon. Same given name. Different surname. I read it twice under the cafe lamp because I thought maybe I had read it wrong. I had not.

My hands have not been still since Mapo. I spilled cold coffee across a three-month surveillance log and across my left sleeve and I took a photo of the sleeve under the warm cafe light because the stain looked like a coastline I could not stop looking at. I do not know why I did that. I do know why I did that. I wanted to remember exactly how my hand looked when it failed me.

Tomorrow I knock on a door in Hannam-dong at 6:00 AM and the person who opens it has been renting a room in my given name for who knows how long. I packed a small bag tonight. Badge, ID, a change of cardigan, and a tooth wrapped in tissue that I am not ready to talk about yet. The tooth is not mine.

The fairy lights are still on. I cannot turn them off. I keep rehearsing a first sentence and the first sentence keeps being: how did you get my grandmother's phone schedule. That is the one I mean. Not the Ansan house, not the Jongno clinic. Maa's calls. He has a calendar of when she calls me on Wednesdays and Sundays. That is the sentence I will say when the door opens.

I climbed six flights tonight and did not stop on the fourth landing. ~~That is new.~~