Pachinko

by Min Jin Lee

“People are rotten everywhere you go. They’re no good. You want to see a very bad man? Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination. Let’s see how good he is when he can do whatever he wants.”

She would have uprooted herself to have seen the world with him, and now she was seeing it without him.

Pachinko was a foolish game, but life was not.

Did mothers fail by not telling their sons that suffering would come?

It’s a filthy world, Solomon. No one is clean. Living makes you dirty.

Sometimes, she could be in front of a train kiosk or the window of a bookstore, and she could feel Noa’s small hand when he was a boy, and she would close her eyes and think of his sweet, grassy smell and remember that he had always tried his best. At those moments, it was good to be alone to hold on to him.