Look to Yourself

*Journey off the well-beaten path, please

“No, I’m not doing it,” I said as tonelessly as I could, because as soon as I said the word no, the mid or late 20-something-year-old man’s hand flinched. 

“You have an obligation to meet with a sponsor if the company tells you to.” He insisted in a tight tone. 

Three years after arriving in Korea, back in the 6th grade, I could understand Korean well enough to understand tone. 14-year-old me was about to get hit if I said again that I was not doing what he was telling me. However, I was not doing what he was saying. Why did a 14-year-old need to go to a karaoke room with a man older than their father? My father, the man who had signed the contract that brought me to the country, was not even 40 years old yet! Still, I was about to yet again pull my trump card and do what no local trainee would dare to do.

“No, no, no, I’m not doing it! I don’t want to go anywhere with some pervert!” I shouted back loudly at the manager. Then I hurried out of his reach and quit the room to make sure that I would get away with it. When I had first arrived, I had talked back all the time, but it was unintentional and due to growing up as the national of a country with nearly no hierarchy system. They thought that they had managed to discipline and train that trait out of me, yet I still knew how to use it, as well as pretending not to understand and walking off strategically. How could I be expected to understand someone speaking too quickly and shouting after me like some madman in a foreign language? Maybe he had a reason, maybe he had nothing better to do to relieve his crushing stress levels than yell at a high school kid? I left the room, so he would not see the rather triumphant look on my face at his frustration and pursue me or throw something at me for treating him like that. 

What was he really going to do about it? Give me penalty points and tell the company's boss, thinking my parents would be called? Highly doubtful, given that the first time the company had called Papa back in the earliest trainee days, he'd let them speak maybe 2 minutes before he'd understood some of what was being explained in awkward halted Konglish and interrupted. Papa had given them such a good piece of his mind in perfect west coast English with plenty of curse words in his native Hokkien tossed in, about even daring to call his home just to complain about his only child, that the company's boss had vowed to never speak with Mr. Yeh again about anything. I'd been standing in the boss's office at the time and paid the price when the boss chucked his phone at my fleeing back and head whilst he was shouting at me to scram.

If something needed to be discussed, signed, consent given, or whatever, the company just sent Papa an email like I did every few weeks or so. I highly doubted that he knew anything about the company's latest plan for my future, though, which was in direct opposition to his expressed concerns for his, at the time of contract negotiations, elementary school-aged daughter and the company's promises meant to persuade him. The company had already been holding the passport that I had traveled under hostage in supposed company possession for the past three years, ignoring Papa's repeated demands for its return to him despite its eventual expiration, due to fears he would remove me from the country and cause a quite expensively negotiated 7-year long contract to fall through. In the meantime, I remained a mere pawn.

A week or so later, as I sat in the backseat of a car taking me back to the company’s buildings after school, I looked up briefly from my homework and realized something. The way back to the company had changed, the way I was driven back and forth to the international school five days a week had miraculously changed. But I had seen this manager before and besides as just a nobody rookie trainee and foreigner with brown skin, yeah, I knew that nobody was going to bother to kidnap me. It didn’t take long to put two and two together and make four, though.

Okay, class! Okay, kids! Pop quiz! How do you get out of going somewhere you do not want to go to do something against your will?

The car stopped in front of an unassuming tower multipurpose building and the manager got out. He came around to open the backseat passenger side door for me, pulling me out and saying, “Okay, kid, let’s go!” 

Obediently, I exited the vehicle, turned on my heels, and promptly started jogging down the block. The sidewalk was semi-crowded, but I elbowed my way through. Tall for my age with long legs, which were currently on display in the school uniform skirt, it took less than a minute to disappear out of the shouting manager’s sight. 

After wandering around, like the lost orphan in a strange land that I was, for a few hours, I found my way back to the building used for trainees. Part of me was contemplating not returning and giving up, not that I missed or wanted to go back to where I had come from. And it was ultimately that fact that made me enter the building and accept the fallout after a lengthy head tilted backward look at the now fully activated lights of Seongdong. No more could I be the highly contested trophy of unmarried parents of widely different cultures and origins who couldn't get along to save their lives. Long expected to endure in silence with stoicism, I had had to learn how to and try to survive it all on my own.

You failed, you got it wrong, kid….if you don't get another retake, then what?

The next day, after school, the usual ride back once again changed, and I ducked my head as if I didn’t notice. Instead of coasting along to a stop along the sidewalk that was slowly filling with more people yet again as restaurants opened and students were on their way to their first or second after-school academy to learn something more, the car instead entered an underground parking lot. Although I had played flute from third grade and cello from first grade, now there was certainly no time for that. 

“The boss says this is your last chance, kid!” The manager said as he opened the car door to let me out. “Act normal, no more refusing or running away. Smile, be nice to this very nice man, and don’t you dare say no to or ignore anything that he says to you.” 

His hand clenched around my wrist agonizingly tight as we entered the elevators and forced his eyes to catch mine in the mounted mirror on the wall. A few weeks ago, I had been taken to get lenses and told to stop wearing my glasses during the day. And to stop plaiting and tying my hair unless I was at school or practicing, although it was down past the middle of my back and annoyingly thick and curly, so I did not like it loose and heavy between my shoulder blades. 

We arrived on the 14th floor of the building and I heard the music already before the doors opened. Unsurprisingly, it was music produced by the company.

“Last chance, kid!” He let go of my wrist and pushed me along the hallway with a hand on the shoulder, shoving me along.

Okay, kid! Pop quiz! How do you get through a difficult task and achieve your goals? Smile and pretend you’re someone else. 

The room door opened and I started the quiz.

Friday, after school, I found out that I passed the quiz. The car went the usual way back, and when I looked up, the manager glanced at me briefly.

“The boss says you go meet the sponsor again another day.” 

And that reinforced something that I had already learned many years ago, you are your own best teacher and tutor in life.