Dear Jinhwa,
 

I’m sending a super late reply. Sorry for being late.

Yes, I arrived safe and sound in Harlem from Haehwa. It feels awkward putting the two places in one sentence. Perhaps because they are more than fourteen hours apart even by plane. My body seems misplaced here, in a place that feels psychologically distant.

But one thing remains the same as when I wrote the first letter: I’m having a bowl of cereal. Only, Lucky Charms have replaced brown rice and mixed grains. Have you ever tried them? I think I have, once when I was very little. Or maybe not. If my memory is wrong, the media is entirely to blame. All the American animations and soap operas I devoured may have deceived me into thinking I ate what I only saw on TV.

Anway, I bought the cereal, delighted to discover a familiar sight in a large store in a strange country. Perhaps I hoped it would bring me a little luck. I take a bite and it tastes, if not lucky, like laughter. It contains marshmallow charms of myriad colors. One of them is shaped like a blue horse hoof. It’s supposed to give you the power of speed. I promise to answer your letters quickly. So long is my excuse and so huge my self-consciousness about an unwritten letter.

You asked what my secret was to having my body as my own interior. I feel a little guilty talking about this while having cereal. Well, I hesitate because I never thought of it as a ‘secret.’ To begin with, my insides are filled with colorful pigments. They’re hungry and loud, sometimes cumbersome in that I’m burdened with them wherever I go. I didn’t choose my in. It was merely the only thing I had to encounter every day, which made me accept it as my inescapable in. So it makes me surprised and a bit jealous to discover you have Nini inside you. Even if it entails taking the Super Rapid Train between Seoul and Busan several times a month for him.

Will I be able to take someone in like you did someday? In truth, when writing the first letter, I believed Nini was an important part of your exterior. That’s why I talked about creating an out of our own, thinking we shared the same concern. Reading your letter makes me question more: Is there another being than Nini you took inside you? How did he come to enter your being? Would it be terribly difficult to constitute a new exterior while keeping your interior intact?

I have to go; my colorful charms are melting. By the by, I had brown rice with crispy seaweed and red pepper tuna for breakfast, so don’t worry too much about my well-being.

In a new room full of unpacked boxes,
July