심마니 (simmani): a wild-ginseng forager; a mostly obsolete odd Korean job with connotations akin to those of a gold digger

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February is the Lunar New Year season, the month of rice cakes stuffed with red bean paste and scallion-intercepted beef skewers. Sticks of incense lit for the ancestors, smoke filling the room until everyone feels as if trying to stand still underwater. Old family grudges are just as quick to resurface around the floor dining table. But above all, February is a glorious season of Go-Stop, Bin’s parents are sure to say.

To Bin, February is now a season for the Super Bowl, NYC downdraught effect, and friends, broadly speaking, swarming the living room of Trey’s Queens apartment to watch the games together. It also means, more often than not, a poker table.

Every evening like today, Bin’s clique of friends splits into beer-swinging football fans and those who hang around for fried chickens DoorDashed in from a Korean franchise in the neighborhood. The non-fans are quick to resort to their go-to card games, usually poker. And oftentimes, it is these non-fans that end up sticking around long after everyone else leaves. So now, five people, including Bin, sit at the oval table salvaged from an upstate garage sale after a few missed Black Friday deals.

Poker chips slide over each other with clicks. It’s a familiar sound to everyone by now. So is the long-winded boyhood anecdote that Trey, whenever at this very table, begins to narrate at some point. John seems too busy crunching numbers in his head to pay Trey any mind, but Didi, who is now sitting across from Trey, even blurted last year, It’s not called the poker mouth. Shortly after, she addressed the table in a comically rueful tone as a tight bunch, which probably made everyone think of crusty panties, because half the table openly giggled, knowing Didi.

Right now, Didi betrays her disapproval only in leery looks she exchanges with Jared. Bin steals a glimpse over her fan of damp cards and catches Jared making a face. She thinks he’s about to tell Trey, We all know about your poolside first kiss, you only really fell for the theatrical effect of the confetti-filled inflatables, which she’s been dying to say since the beginning of their friendship. If Bin weren’t too embarrassed to be eloquent, as she tends to be with friends of more than five years, she could have also said–so much desire depends on context, and in too much eagerness, context alone.

But Jared says, “We’re out of wings.”

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Bin’s never been good at games, but particularly stank at Go-Stop, a Korean card game. When she was a little girl, around this time of the year, her parents’ ranch house in a mountainous Korean village always brimmed with relatives. Their extended family of thirty six arrived, one by one, eyes bloodshot from having driven through the holiday traffic.

Once even the tardiest ones finally made it to the house, everyone sat around on the heated floor and started pouring each other plum wine. Her father then brought out a frizzy green suede blanket that would serve as a board, and a deck of greasy hanafuda cards, each the size of a matchbox. Bin’s parents also kept a plastic jar full of ten-won coins that reeked of rusty copper for the occasion. The coins would go around like poker chips, although they always went back into the jar at the end of the night. Instead of mingling with her much older cousins, Bin used to hover about and watch her uncles and aunts banter and bicker, hands quick to slap the cards down, as if they had never done this before, didn’t know the winnings were customary, an illusion.

She never learned the rules by heart, but that’s not why she eventually got tired of watching. Not even because she later found out about everyone’s complicity in letting the one who’d had the worst year win in the end. Bin just never got used to her aunts and uncles asking her father between mouthfuls of prawn chips and gulps of wine: how’s your ginseng digging going? How many roots of wild ginseng did you find this year? Did you finally hit the jackpot?

And they didn’t wait for the answers, her father hardly ever having any answers, and moved on to talk about their children, Bin’s cousins. So-and-so got a new job at a Fortune 100 company, is doing a Computer Science PhD at an obscure foreign school,  one of the best in the field, or married up and is starting a family in an expensive new condo bought full in cash, or just aced the college entrance exam. Always stories of success.

Always, her father came out a winner at the end of those nights.

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It’s well past twelve when Jared and Bin come back with a couple of six-packs and boxes of fried chicken. Quicker than the app this late, Jared and Bin said, leaving together, and Bin caught Didi casting a pointed look their way.

It’s important to note at this point that Bin’s friend group has another tradition for the season. Each season, the five non-fans buy one Take 5 lottery ticket on the day of their last get-together, which is today. And each of them takes turns to buy the ticket, hoping that their luck will turn depending on the buyer. This year, it’s Trey’s turn. Knowing Trey’s luck, none of them is expecting to win the $50,000 prize money. So, there it is, near the kitchen sink: the scratched ticket left forgotten all evening.

Bin carries the cardboard boxes of fries over to the table. Without the food and drinks, the conversation must have died down to the broken-record chit chat. Bin knows the conversational routine like the back of her hand. Didi’s recent marriage and how her husband has never shown his face to any of her friend gatherings. Trey’s perpetual PhD status (“What was your thesis again?”). John’s inability–or socially inept refusal–to take part in any of this, adding some irrelevant comments now and again. Jared’s struggles to build a popular YouTube channel as a side hustle and the lengths he would go to.

Bin slips into the tepid conversation, fully expecting someone to comment on her hometown. Danyang, a small village in South Korea best known for garlic. The opposite of Romania, Didi once said, breezily inappropriate as always, even when she refers to such nonsense as a blood-sucking mythical creature.

Before anyone steers the conversation towards Bin’s insecurity, Jared joins the group. “Wanna see if we’re still the same losers just in case?” He thrusts the Take 5 stub in everybody’s face.

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Once upon a time, long before Bin met any of the four friends, she went to a locally famed fortuneteller in Korea. Bin was living some distance from her hometown by then, but only an hour away by bus. The fortuneteller had one crooked front tooth and a luxuriantly hair-sprayed bob. She had incorporated some card reading into the routines of traditional Korean shamanism, but used a hanafuda deck instead of tarot cards.

When Bin asked the fortuneteller about her chance of living abroad someday, the fortuneteller shuffled the cards around on the table and made Bin flip some over. She said, big rotten no. Bin’s saju chart wasn’t built for a life far away from home, destiny not planning to sweep her away to some distant place anytime soon. When Bin revealed that she had just gotten into a fully-funded graduate program in the U.S., the fortuneteller didn’t take it well. Either out of her need to prove herself right, or out of her growing spite for Bin, the fortuneteller went on. There would be nothing and no one for Bin if she left the country. Things would keep crumbling apart, even what started out well, everything dragon-headed and rooster-tailed, as Koreans say.

Bin, undeterred, would leave for the U.S. months later. But in years to come, Bin would keep thinking back to the fortuneteller’s words every time something petered out to lost hopes or didn’t live up to her expectations. She would think how her mother had once ignored a fortuneteller’s warning against marrying her father. Even as Bin, over time, forgot most of the bile the fortuneteller spat, her last words clung to the edges of Bin’s mind–no need to pay, you’ll need the money, you foolish, foolish girl.

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Friendship, Bin is thinking when she hears Didi’s shriek, starts to sound a lot like a big commercial word, when it refers to a regular enough gathering. Bin doesn’t respond to Didi’s shriek right away. No knee-jerk reaction to join in what elicited that shriek, whether terror or joy. Then Bin remembers Didi’s at the computer checking the lottery result with Jared. The friends spring to their feet.

For the next twenty minutes, the group shares in the elation of having won the lottery. Bin doesn’t know how people in the face of an unexpected windfall should act, albeit a moderate one like the winning of Take 5. But as she and her friends crowd Trey’s bedroom, Jared sitting at the desktop with the lottery result on screen, the ticket on the desk, this is what Bin observes.

John: Loudly calculates the taxes, pacing around the room. Lists potential stocks–quantum computing and informational AI techs–he’d like to invest in. Falls silent, possibly debating other fiscal possibilities that are more private. Seems to realize that his share of the winning, less than ten thousand dollars after taxes, won’t produce rolls of cash anytime soon, and stops pacing altogether. Still keeps citing the 1 in 575,757 chance of winning Take 5 and how improbable, although not impossible, that is.

Trey: Lingers at the doorway, looking jittery. Decides to stand against the doorframe, leaning in from just outside the room, John almost bumping into him once or twice. Steps aside for Didi to pass through, but stays planted at the door during the rest of the conversation as the group goes on to discuss the logistics of cashing and dividing the winning.

Didi: Expresses how she wants to post about this on IG, which Jared shoots down immediately, citing the bad outcomes of similar actions in past incidents. Makes several blunt jokes about the small amount, being the most well-off one in the group. Grows bored a couple minutes after and leaves the group to finish the beer she left in the living room.

Jared: Remains stationed at the desktop. Whirls around in the grey office chair a few times to face the group, the screen burning white behind him. Goes on to read off the screen to share how to cash the winning at the Lottery Customer Service Center in the state of New York. As soon as Didi leaves the room, he picks up the lottery ticket and follows her to the living room.

All the while, Bin stands near the desk, a little off to the side so she’s not in the way of Jared spinning the chair or John pacing the room. She quietly makes note of Didi’s pout as she exits the room in strides, and also leaves the room after Jared.

Soon after, everyone else joins the oval table. The table is now littered with empty beer cans, plates, boxes of lukewarm fried chicken, crumpled paper napkins and half-full condiment cups slathered with sauces. Over the fries and beer froth, the group rambles about what they each want to do with the money. It is agreed that they will go to the

Lottery Center the next day, together, to claim the win. A celebration after, maybe at the new Korean prix-fixe place. A few leery jokes make their way into the heated, gradually more drunken conversation. Someone dials up the Bluetooth speaker and Didi even stands up to show some dance moves. Several runs to the bathroom and a couple angry neighbors later, it is John that says, “Wait, where’s the ticket?”

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One day in her early teens, Bin joined her father on his foraging trip. Even though he called it a trip, this one was going to be more of a hike that lasted a few hours. Early in the morning, he flung over his shoulders a mostly empty burlap sack that got filled, on good days, with wild pine mushrooms as thick as Bin’s ankles. On bad days, bracken stems or wild herbs and berries.

The mountain they chose for their trip was a local one, a short bus ride from their house. Not long into the hike, they went off the main hiker’s trail and maneuvered their way up sideways, twigs clawing at their faces. This must be why her father sometimes came back home with scratches over his cheek, or a bleeding earlobe, Bin thought. Her father kept telling her to watch every step, to watch out for venomous snakes. Some simmani people believed that coming across a snake on a foraging trip was Sanshin, a mountain god, telling them they’re in luck, but not Bin’s father. It’s hard work and a good eye that will help you find mother nature’s panacea, not some fogbound spirit nudging him in the right direction, he would say. Bin would feel compelled to refute that it was those superstitious simmani people that had little trouble finding roots after roots of wild ginseng, and in fact, the wild ginseng was not scientifically proven to have all the incredible medicinal effects to begin with, but she mostly just nodded.

Two hours in, the only thing Bin had chanced upon was a harmless ratsnake. Seeing that his daughter started to drag her feet, Bin’s father decided that she needed a short break. He sat Bin down on a flat-top boulder that looked like a warped coffee table.

“Isn’t it nice?”

Too upset to return any pleasant answer, Bin kept silent. She couldn’t be sure of what he thought was nice–the seat of the boulder, or perhaps the weather. It was overcast, ideal for a hike, but Bin could feel the front of her hoodie sticking to her chest from the humidity, her underarm slick with sweat. After making a show of brushing dirt off the boulder, Bin’s father told her to rest there and took off alone. Dressed in earth-tone overalls, he was soon indistinguishable from the mosaic of shrubbery and underbrush. For a while, Bin tried to keep track of the glimpses of his orange vest, but got distracted by a chipmunk.

When Bin heard her father’s shout, the chipmunk had found and just begun to fervently chew away at a piece of chestnut, two paws to its mouth, as if to stifle a gasp. Bin’s father called out from afar again, he wanted her to come over. But Bin sat there and thought of the hard, raw chestnut being whittled down inside the little rodent mouth. The chipmunk, for some reason, reminded Bin of her father.

When he called again, Bin obeyed. She stood up and followed his voice.

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“Someone took it.”

Bin, even years after, will never be sure who actually said it, those blunt words right after John noticed the lottery ticket went missing. She always imagines it snarled in Didi’s voice, as it fits her character, her love of drama, her unsettling comfort with, the sheer delight she takes in, reproach. Not someone must have, not a question or even a hint of being one, but the past tense with no room for second guesses. To be fair, any other person might as well have said it, Bin also imagines, anyone could have said it. Maybe it was an innocuous comment, slip of the tongue, all of them having gone through ESL at different points in their lives and even bonded over the fact from time to time. But the words are said nonetheless, and the night is plunged into chaos.

A few snarky comments are exchanged, some attempts at denial, some at mediation, but it doesn’t help that everyone is closer to being far less gently drunk than at the beginning of the night. All the grease they have consumed over the course of the night has also caught up to them, and soon enough, the group finds everyone looking uncomfortably at each other, bloated and flushed.

“Damn it–are you going to say it?” blurts Trey.

Everyone at the table catches Trey throwing an angry glance at Jared, who seems stiff all of a sudden.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” “If you don’t, I will.”

For a moment, they watch Trey and Jared glaring at one another. Didi inserts herself in the staring contest.

“What’s going on?”

Of course, it is Didi–Bin thinks, unable to decide if she feels envy or relief–who cuts to the business, who demands, or rather, commands, with such ease.

Under Didi’s unwavering glare, Jared finally gives in and explains he thought up a prank video for his YouTube channel. He asked for Trey’s help to set up the whole scene–a fake lottery result he could display on a computer screen, the timing, and the recording. Trey lent him a small pet cam from when Trey used to pet-sit for extra cash, and proposed placing it in a box of cereal, a hole punched out. He helped find the perfect spot near the kitchen sink so it would have a full view of the bedroom with the desktop just off the kitchen and the oval table where everyone liked to sit, without anyone’s suspicion.

“Recording?”

Didi’s now shooting daggers with her eyes.

“You recorded us the whole night?”

John chimes in, slightly red in the face, “Not cool, man, not cool.”

“But you know,” Trey intervenes, “It’s not all bad news. This also means it doesn’t matter if someone actually took the ticket, does it?”

“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Come on, Didi–” Jared extends his hand across the table, but stops himself. “I–no,” Didi spits, “We deserve the truth.”

If Bin were a storyteller, she would have written, And the night culminated in the group of friends sitting around the table and watching the video recording to find the culprit, and ended the sentence there. But in this story of life, she has no choice but to sit through the actual video playing on the tiny screen of Jared’s iPhone. They watch together, holding breaths, the video fast-forward to where everyone returns to the oval table after finding out about the lottery win. They watch as Didi leaves the table for the bathroom, and Jared follows her shortly after. They watch as Trey looks for some hangover food in the fridge. They watch Bin stretch her hand towards the ticket and pick it up.

Didi says, “Stop.”

And the video stops on a faint smile forming on Bin’s lips.

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After stumbling through the woods for a while, Bin finally found her father down a slope. Pine trees and shiitake mushrooms had hidden away from view this patch of flatland against a steep incline, but his orange vest was loud enough for Bin to spot him once within earshot. Her father stood beaming, one foot on a log that ropy moss had glued to the forest floor.

Bin’s father said, “There you are!”

He waved her over with fervor. Her father was never the bubbly type, and this unnerved Bin. When Bin came near, he pointed at something a few yards off. Bin didn’t recognize it at first, but then her eyes travelled over the fallen leaves and made out, near the log, a scrawny plant with yellowing, star-shaped leaves. Had she been older or more informed, Bin would have thought it was cannabis. For a while, Bin stared blankly, not understanding what she was looking at. She stood staring even as her father dropped to his knees and began to dig around where the plant’s stem disappeared into the dirt sprinkled with pine needles. With the softest strokes of his fingers, as if dusting a jewel. Then it finally dawned on her.

This must be wild ginseng.

Bin tried to see if she was excited, proud, or something positive, for her father. She knew she should offer help, or at least feign interest. But she stood there, thinking of the chipmunk. She thought of the long hours he spent away from home on these hikes, disappearing for days at a time, travelling to distant mountains. She thought of their two-burner gas range whose left one wouldn’t start, or if it did, leaked gas. She thought of her friends who, one by one, had moved away over the years to bigger cities, better schools, and long streets flashing brand names at night. Even so, when her father sprang up with his prize, Bin managed a meek smile. The front of his overalls was a swathe of damp dirt now, his fingernails cracked and black from digging barehanded. Why couldn’t he at least wear those bulky gloves he always stashed into the burlap sack? But then Bin realized her father thought not hurting this plant was more important than his hands.

With the same fervor from before, Bin’s father frantically waved the ginseng in her face. The wild ginseng looked almost exactly like a root of ginger that Bin often saw her mother peeling in the kitchen, but much, much smaller. Even so, it was not with contempt but with mortification that Bin said, finally: “So this is it.”

She quickly added, feeling blood rush up her neck, without even realizing she stuttered.

“This, this is what you go on and on about.”

It was perhaps the flush, or the stutter, or even the phrasing, but Bin’s father dropped his hand as if he’d just heard the worst insult. He could have said, misleadingly but simply, yes. He could have also told his daughter that his obsession was not all about wild ginseng, and that, in truth, it had to do with anything but. He knew about the simmani people who planted farmed ginseng roots in their secret spots all over the mountains, and went back to claim them as wild ginseng a year, or likely only months, after. He wasn’t so clueless as to expect to make a bank off his wild pursuits. But the mountains calmed him. Only when he was diminished by the dusty green all around him, could he stop the feeling of his own life rushing past and ahead of him. The mountain was hard evidence that nothing was rushing in the vast space of life but the people climbing, foraging, gathering. On his hike, he felt life falling quietly in rhythm with him, the way trees grew with, and to some extent were the height of, the mountain.

But rage took him by the throat.

Bin’s father raised his hand as if to strike his daughter. He could see the surprise in her eyes, but also something else—jeer, defiance, a look of deep disrespect no man likes to see on his daughter’s face but he, a fair man, knew he couldn’t deny her. With two open palms, he pushed Bin to the ground, turned around, and headed home alone.

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Later, when Trey briefly meets up with Bin for a chat, both of them are breezy about what happened with the lottery ticket. Neither brings up any other in their group. Bin chooses not to mention what everyone knows is going on between Jared and Didi, their little sordid affair. As it happens when people politely stay out of each other’s business, they run out of things to say all too quickly.

Before parting, Trey finally says: “You know, I trust you.”

“Sure, appreciate it,” is all Bin can muster. “But I wish you stood up for yourself a little more.”

It was not that Bin didn’t try to defend herself. She was going to say, eloquently and reasonably, that she had as much motive as everyone else but couldn’t have done it. Not because she was good, or by any means better than her friends. While she saw in herself that hard little greed, it was no more than that–hard little greed. Nothing out of the ordinary. One needed much more to cross the line in a room full of people, a lot more uncalculated foolishness than she could ever afford. Bin was the kind of person who pitied those with enough guts and foolishness to rush to drastic measures, for their lack of better judgment, but who, deep down, also found that drive to push beyond the ethical norms admirable and quizzical at once. But Bin could not articulate. She was not eloquent in person, and the audience had turned cold before she even began.

Still, it was not her friends’ coldness that fazed Bin. It was, in fact, Didi’s rant at the end of that night.

“You know you always reminded me of that story of this do-gooder who’s really no good in truth. Do you know the story? Well, let me tell you. I want to tell you. This guy found a misplaced wallet, walking down a boulevard. A woman walked up to him to claim it to be hers, and even though he could tell it wasn’t, based on the ID photo, he gave it to her, because he didn’t want to accuse her of lying. When the real owner came back looking for the wallet, he was surprised to see her, and when the owner asked him about the surprised look, he said she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, because he didn’t want her to realize her wallet’s long gone. She believed him and gave him her number, and he neglected to mention he’s already in a relationship. Obviously, he didn’t want her to feel shitty about giving him her number. And he texted back, took her on dates, and did the whole romance, because he felt he owed her. Of course he didn’t even tell his other lover about this side thing because he also didn’t want her to feel horrible. This went on and on until he ended up with two families, children from two oblivious women, messing everything up. Then the guy found another wallet walking down the same street. Guess how that story goes? You’re just like that guy, you think you can explain yourself away.”

Bin was more taken aback than anything. Why such theatrics? In their shallow, nothing-at-stake friendship was surely much room for easy forgiveness. The made-up nature of whatever depth it projected was a guarantee of generosity, a silly amount of it that made almost anything laughable, did Didi not understand? But she had to make a big deal out of it, of course. Didi had to claim life, her intimate and private life, as this sacred pocket of territory not to be ridiculed, every betrayal grand, every punishment befitting not the crime but her anger. Not even the anger she actually felt, but the one she felt entitled to. Didi must really love her life, Bin realized.

For a moment, Bin considered her friend’s fury. She couldn‘t find in herself a stir of any feelings that even remotely matched it. Still, out of kindness, Bin walked up to Didi and slapped her across the face.

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Despite what Trey said he would do, he didn’t get rid of the video recording of that unfortunate night his friends seemed unanimously eager to forget about. In fact, the weekend after, he rewatched the whole thing from start to finish. Then he texted the group to suggest that they rewatch the full recording together, and when no one responded, sent a shortened clip. John texted, what the hell??? Didi and Jared didn’t comment, but Trey was sure they both watched it, at least after John’s outburst. A few hours later, Didi group-texted about a bad burrito she had, along with an out-of-focus photo. She and Jared bantered for a few messages, and before Trey knew it, the clip was pushed out of sight by a trail of LOLs and wink emojis.

It is after his coffee chat with Bin that Trey finally decides to delete the video file, but after one last replay. While the video plays, Trey’s mind dwells on his friends. He

thinks of them by their names, almost as if an HR professional would, now that he sits alone, away from all of them and their interference with his judgement. Every one of their names only vaguely echoes its original counterpart in another tongue, Americanized into curt syllables, except for Bin’s, which, Trey recalls, is short for her Korean name, Subin. She never seemed to mind all that much how her name invites bad jokes from English speakers.

Trey has come to a conclusion that Bin’s name marks her inability to let go, her ego getting in the way of her chance at better assimilation, a weakness. He’s always had a soft spot for people who want more, who persevere and embellish, in the wrong places. He himself picked his own name off a list of most common names for American men, and after only briefly debating between Trey and Travis, settled on what he would be called for the next decade to come. Picking a T name was enough of a nod to his birth name, Thien.

Trey watches Bin in the video–there she is, amongst the fries and poker chips and cards strewn all over, with her eyes growing heavy after her third beer. This is when Didi went to the bathroom, and Trey realizes Jared, nowhere to be seen, must be also in the apartment’s single bathroom. Trey watches himself open the fridge and rummage through it with sluggish hands, his back to Bin and John. John sits slouching in his chair, his eyes closed.

And then, there is that moment–Bin’s fingers leave her beer bottle and reach for the ticket that lies in the middle of the table. They grab the slightly wet paper with a single swift motion and disappear with it under the table. Now, there’s that smile of Bin’s that threw Didi into one hell of a rant. But this time, Trey watches past its first emergence, through the full transformation of it. Bin’s smirk soon softens into a self-mocking pout, and Trey finds himself smiling along, against himself. Eventually, Bin’s fingers emerge from under the table to return the ticket where it lay just moments before. When John opens his eyes to reach for his beer, Bin’s fully smiling, almost flirtatious. Trey can tell John mumbles something at her, and they seem to engage in a playful chat, too soft-spoken to make out.

The video moves onto Trey trying to stir-fry something and Bin rushing to his side to help. John, now sitting alone at the table, throws a glance over to see if his friends’ backs are turned and, once he’s sure they are, springs for the ticket. He stashes it in the pocket of his pants and nervously looks back at Trey and Bin cooking, splattering oyster sauce all over the gas range as they try stirring the pan. The bathroom door must have creaked, as John’s head jolts towards its direction.

Leaning against the very chair where Jared sat that night to show his friends the fake lottery result, Trey watches John shove his hand in his pocket and return the ticket where it was. By the time Didi and Jared are back at the table, the ticket lies, slightly crumpled, among the poker chips and condiment cups.

Later in the video, Trey and Jared go to the door to pacify the angry neighbors over playing music too loud. As John joins the other two to put an end to the argument, Bin, not wanting to be left alone with Didi, goes to the bathroom. Now the video shows Didi sitting alone at the oval table. Without a moment of hesitation, Didi picks up the lottery ticket. There’s no hint of stealth or anxiety to her movement. Briefly, she holds it at arm’s length and stares, perhaps deeming herself the first of her friends to debate the nagging question in the form of the flimsy paper. Just as casually, her hand travels down to bring the ticket precariously close to her pocket, only to drop it back on the table.

Trey has watched the video so many times by now that he can see what happens next with his eyes closed, mind completely blank. The neighbors finally leave. His friends sit around the table again and try finishing up some of the food, chatting about what they want to do with the lottery money. Two of them think they’re complicit in a prank, but in truth, all five of them are in on a bad, bad joke. Jared dumps some cold noodles onto his plate straight from the pan, and slides the pan away, across where the fake lottery ticket lies. When the friends start arguing about where the ticket went, and go on to search around the table, they also remember to put all the plates and the pan away. But no one thinks to look at the bottom of the greasy pan.

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After the foraging trip with her father, Bin trudged back home sullen. She found her mother in the kitchen and complained in a sniffly voice about what had happened.

Her mother sat on the kitchen floor, sorting through the dried bracken stems to tie each handful into a bundle. Her face was set on what Bin would later call the expensive look. Expensive, as in blank of any telling emotions. If her chipped fingernails and callused hands were no indication of it, this expensive face was a sure sign of her aristocratic blood. “Soft of mind, hard of heart,” Bin’s mother would say of the right attitude to have with people and life. Not hard like rocks, but like shellfish.

So there Bin sat, rambling on about her trip with her father from earlier that day. When Bin got a little too close to badmouthing him, Bin’s mother stopped her hands shuffling the bracken stems, and said: “Some men need follies to survive. If you must know, I prefer your father’s to most others.”

But then she sat Bin down at the table and made her the yuzu tea they both love. Bin’s mother put a little jeongjong in hers, and sat across from her daughter. What Bin didn’t know was that, the day before their excursion together, her father had gone on a secret hike alone to plant a farmed ginseng root in that special spot. Bin’s mother knew this but did not speak of it. Instead, she said, in her rare moment of compromised dignity, “Just between us two, I do wonder if he’d even know if I replaced that wild ginseng with something else.”

Bin followed her mother’s eyes and saw the glass jar full of hard liquor on an overhead shelf. And her father’s prized wild ginseng, the size of her ring finger, marinating in it. Seven years and counting. It was the very first he had found, the beginning of his long hikes in years to come, a symbol looming over the household in its gnarly, twisty form.

Bin thought about what her mother said, and gave the jar a long hard look. “No,” Bin’s mother said, noticing her daughter’s spirit rising.

But then they exchanged a knowing look. Or so Bin thought.