A Handmaiden fic.
First published February 2017, for theoldgods.
Hideko x Sook-hee, 944 words.
Ever since Hideko had taken Sook-hee into her uncle’s library, Sook-hee had taken up a vendetta against books.
‘You can’t trust them,’ she’d say. ‘All those characters, and you don’t know what they might hide.’
‘You could learn to read,’ Hideko would say.
‘You’d think people would write proper stories,’ Sook-hee would say, and dismiss her.
She side-eyed every bookseller. If Hideko thought to read, Sook-hee would try to distract her. And Sook-hee could be very distracting.
‘I brought you a book,’ Hideko said, coming home in the afternoon. She set the paperback on the table before Sook-hee, and came round behind to kiss her hair.
‘Why’d you do something like that?’ Sook-hee asked, but she couldn’t pump back with Hideko behind her.
‘I promise you there are no perversions,’ Hideko said.
Sook-hee pouted, and she flicked through the pages. ‘At least there’s pictures,’ she said. Hideko smiled.
‘I’ll read one tonight,’ Hideko said, brushing her lips to Sook-hee’s ear. But when Sook-hee turned her head to kiss her, Hideko danced back.
‘Afterwards,’ she said, her lip curling up unwittingly.
Sook-hee sulked all evening.
When Hideko bid her sit down, Sook-hee sighed, and swung her arms. ‘Do we have to?’
‘I’m a very good reader, Sook-hee. You should feel honoured.’
‘Honoured?’ Sook-hee’s mouth fell open. ‘What, like the perverts your uncle had round? I’m not like that.’
‘It’s just a book. I promise, I feel quite comfortable reading this to you. Dearest Sook-hee, do sit down.’
Sook-hee sat.
Hideko turned past the frontmatter smoothly, her fingers remembering their care. It felt vaguely sacrilegious, to be handling a book without gloves – even though she’d bought the thing herself and knew it was cheaply printed.
‘This story’s called “Growing Pears”,’ Hideko said.
Sook-hee slumped back in her chair, looking unimpressed. But she stayed where she was, and Hideko began to read.
‘A peasant was selling pears in the market. Sweet, they were, and fragrant – and exceedingly expensive.’
It was a slight story – scarcely more than an anecdote – and detailed how a monk tricked the pear seller, when the seller refused to gift him a pear.
As Hideko had hoped, Sook-hee became interested despite herself. And in the end, when the details of the trick were revealed, she laughed out loud.
‘The pear seller deserved it,’ she said.
‘Do you think so?’
‘Sure. Hoarding something precious … that’s just asking to lose it.’ Sook-hee’s expression turned sly, something that Hideko found infinitely appealing, now that Sook-hee was on her side.
‘Something precious?’ Hideko asked.
‘Juicy pears. Pretty girls.’
‘That makes you the monk, does it?’
Sook-hee flashed her a grin.
‘I could read you another, if you like.’ Hideko brushed her fingers along the page.
‘Are they all like that? Funny?’
‘Some.’ Hideko turned the pages again. ‘Here’s one. “Silkworm”.’ She glanced up at Sook-hee, who was leaning towards her now to listen. Then back at the text. ‘Fu, a Cantonese gentleman in his sixties, had an only some named Lian, and extremely intelligent young man who had the misfortune to have been “born a eunuch”.’ Hideko paused. ‘When our story commences, he was seventeen years old, but his member was still tiny and shrivelled, no larger than a silkworm.’ She looked up when she heard Sook-hee snort.
‘I thought you said no perversions.’
Hideko smiled, and went on. ‘This defect of his was common knowledge, and his marriage proposals were worse than poor.’
‘I can think of some men like that.’
‘Sook-hee!’ Hideko couldn’t help her smile.
‘They think it matters, too.’
Hideko read on, following the young man to Hainan, and to bed with a young lady.
‘So crestfallen was she to discover the diminutive dimensions of what he had down there,’ Hideko read, ‘that she promptly withdrew her hand and crept disconsolately out from under the quilt.’ She looked up at Sook-hee with a quired eyebrow. ‘Shows what she knew.’
‘Poor lady,’ Sook-hee said, her face straight.
It was a happy story, even though the girl was a ghost, and even though the other girl was a fox. And it made Sook-hee laugh. It was an unceasing delight, how easily Sook-hee laughed.
‘Sad though,’ Sook-hee said. But the end of the story, she was curled up beside Hideko, and not stand-offish at all. ‘A fox and a charming ghost. You wouldn’t think the story needed a man at all.’
‘Well, a man wrote it down, didn’t he?’
‘More’s the pity,’ Sook-hee muttered, and pressed a kiss to Hideko’s neck. ‘Enough stories.’
The next time Hideko went out, she looked for a volume by a woman. While she had something in mind, she had to order it in specially.
When eventually the book arrived, she brought it back wrapped in paper for Sook-hee to open.
‘What’s this?’
‘Open it,’ Hideko said.
And when Sook-hee did, Hideko bent over her shoulder and traced the name of the author with her forefinger. ‘Kim Weonju,’ she said. ‘That’s a woman.’
Sook-hee turned to look at her, their faces almost bumping. ‘Are we going to read this next?’
‘You’re going to read it, Sook-hee dear.’
Sook-hee’s face fell; she pushed the book away. ‘I couldn’t –’
Hideko spoke firmly. ‘I’ll teach you,’ she said.
Sook-hee looked at the book again.
‘You have to read before you can write, Sook-hee.’
‘Write? Me?’ Sook-hee looked at her in startlement.
‘Why not?’ Hideko asked. ‘I want to know what happened with the ghost and the fox girl,’ she said, ‘when they realised you don’t need a man for a happy ending.’
Sook-hee scowled. ‘You’re making fun of me.’
‘Not about this,’ Hideko said. ‘Come. Be grateful I’m not trying to teach you Chinese characters.’