A Grand Fury [Our Story About 'Tuesday']

It was the third time I had been invited to Jaeyoung's room. From dinner — no, from the movie — no, actually from the very moment we set Tuesday as our date, we both knew. Today was the day. For a campus couple who were together every waking hour, Jaeyoung and I had been taking things unusually slow.

We had been dating for more than a hundred days, so everyone in our department assumed we had already slept together — but we were different from "kids these days." There were two reasons for that. First, Jaeyoung had an exacting personality. As both class representative and student council president, she was assertive and prized rationality above all else. She could not stand anything left vague or unresolved. Like right now.

"Absolutely not without a condom."

I wanted to slam my head against the wall at my own lack of foresight. Why hadn't I thought to bring one?

"Just this once … "

"Just this ooonce?"

Jaeyoung raised one eyebrow and fixed her gaze on me. Something at my feet must have sensed the faint edge in her voice, because a low growl rose from below.

"Wolf, quiet."

At Jaeyoung's warning, Wolf tucked away his bared teeth — but his glare, fixed squarely on me, did not waver. I stared right back. Did this roughly three-kilogram brown toy poodle genuinely believe he was a wolf? Just as Jaeyoung drew a breath and was about to launch into a full lecture, I covered her mouth with my hand.

"Okay, okay. I'll be right back. Just wait a minute."

Better to dash out and return than to sit through an hour-long seminar on sexual autonomy tracing the full lineage of feminist theory. That was the second reason Jaeyoung and I were different from kids these days: I was a pushover. To Jaeyoung, I was like dough in the hands of a skilled chef — kneaded this way and that. Either way, we were both satisfied with our respective roles.

The moment I pushed open the door of the C convenience store nearest to Jaeyoung's place, my eyes went straight to the rack. Socks, stockings, wet wipes, sanitary pads, and condoms — gone. The two slots where condoms should have been were bare. Why, of all things, only the condoms? Why sold out on Tuesday, of all days? I was heading toward the part-timer in the purple vest, eyes glued to his phone, when a woman around my mother's age walked in.

"Still none?"

"None."

The part-timer answered without looking up.

"Tomorrow?"

"No idea."

"Ugh. They ought to just burn this trash heap down … "

The ajumma muttered loudly enough for the part-timer to hear, then pushed the door open and walked out. Same story in this neighborhood, then. Back home, my parents had been frantically hunting for standard garbage bags morning and night. It naturally called to mind the great mask shortage of the COVID era — a trauma that had left its mark on everyone. Sold out everywhere the hoarders had swept through, and even the supermarkets that still had stock were limiting purchases to one per person.

If you thought about it, that was remarkable civic spirit — worrying about garbage bags in the middle of a war. It reminded me of the old tale of Janghwa and Hongnyeon: a country where even a wronged ghost files a formal complaint with the magistrate, a people who rely on the authorities for justice even from beyond the grave. If a world war broke out, my family would probably still be sorting the recycling. I shook my head and walked out.

I went a block over and into the G convenience store. I hurried to the corner where condoms ought to be, but nothing. The one time I actually needed them, they were nowhere to be found — though they always seemed to catch my eye when I had no use for them. I exhaled slowly to rein in my frustration and went to the counter.

"Do you have condoms?"

"We don't."

"You don't?"

"No."

The female part-timer, swamped in an oversized blue vest, answered with a look that said she had me pegged as a pervert. And honestly, sprinting over drenched in sweat and desperately asking for condoms — if I left now, I really would look like one. I walked to the refrigerator and pulled out two cans of beer, the ale Jaeyoung liked. Then I grabbed a bag of grilled squid and a bag of potato chips. But something was off about the packaging. The bag was black and white — every bit of color had been drained out of it. My appetite vanished for a moment.

"Is this defective?"

"No."

The part-timer answered absently, not meeting my eyes. I paid for the beer and snacks anyway, tucked them under both arms, and walked out. It occurred to me that my sister loved these chips — she was probably eating them right now. She had passed the flight attendant exam for an airline earlier this year. All the congratulatory texts, calls, and celebratory drinks had barely settled when, the following week, she got word that her start date had been postponed indefinitely. The stress had sent her into a cycle of binge-eating ramyun, chips, pizza and cola. I had a sudden, fleeting worry: what if she showed up on her first day and the company said, "Who are you?" For a moment I desperately wanted to crack open one of the beers, but I held back.

This time I ran all the way to the S convenience store near the subway station. It was bigger than the others, and being in a transit-oriented area, I held out hope as I pushed the door open. The bell chimed and I strode straight to the sundries aisle. Condom condom condom condom condom condom — there was only one word in my head. Please let there be one, please. Then a small box on the condom shelf caught my eye. Of course. I smiled with relief and picked it up, but it was heavy. Had condoms always been this dense? I looked more closely at the box. "Premium Hwatu Cards," it read. A pack of playing cards had apparently muscled in and taken over the condom's spot. A drop of sweat stung my eye.

"Oh, come on."

I wiped the corner of my eye with my sleeve, which probably made me look like a boy crying over the lack of condoms. But I genuinely felt like crying. This was supposed to be the decisive night — Tuesday. Jaeyoung was waiting. Should I just go back empty-handed? But then her sharp, unwavering gaze — the one she wore in the thick of every student council dispute — flashed through my mind. If I dithered, this night would slip away entirely.

"Someone cleaned out every condom in this neighborhood!"

I stomped my foot and shouted before I could stop myself. It was a roar of fury — the roar of a hot-blooded man in his twenties.

"It's the war."

I turned toward the voice behind me. A part-timer in horn-rimmed glasses was staring at me.

"Nobody swept them up. They just stopped coming in. Orders haven't been filled for three weeks. The system shows 'temporarily suspended' — standard garbage bags, sanitary gloves, straws, condoms. There's nothing at the distribution center. What are we supposed to stock the shelves with?"

The part-timer in the red vest finished speaking and stood up. I walked over to him. He had the look of someone who had failed the journalism entrance exam two or three times after majoring in media studies. He crossed his arms as though he still had more to say.

"Do you know what naphtha is?"

"Sorry?"

"It's one of the things you get when you refine crude oil. Crack it thermally and you get ethylene. Polymerize the ethylene and you get polyethylene — and low-density polyethylene is what goes into the standard garbage bags everyone's scrambling for right now. The thing is, most of the crude oil coming into Korea passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran sealed it off for 111 days starting Feb. 28, and within a month prices jumped more than 50 percent … "

I sighed at that point, and the part-timer took the hint and stopped — until he spotted the bag of potato chips tucked under my arm and started up again.

"Customers keep asking if that's defective. The packaging is fine. It's the ink that's missing. The solvent used to dissolve printing ink is toluene, and that also comes from naphtha. You know what's the first thing to disappear when there's a war? Color. Color. — Oh, that's actually a good line."

He paused for a moment, quietly impressed with himself. Looking at him, I thought he might well be an unemployed creative writing graduate. I felt a flicker of sympathy, immediately followed by irritation.

"But condoms are latex."

"Right. Natural latex — rubber tree sap. It comes from Malaysia or Thailand. But the individual foil pouches are aluminum with a plastic coating, the ink on the box is petroleum-based, and the ship that hauls it all to Busan runs on fuel. So it doesn't matter that the rubber trees are perfectly fine. The body exists, but there are no clothes, so it can't go out."

He paused again, apparently pleased with his own analogy. Insufferable. As I turned to leave, he fired a question at me out of nowhere.

"Is it urgent?"

"Sorry?"

The eyes behind the horn-rimmed frames seemed to look straight through me.

" … Yes."

The part-timer reached under the counter and pulled out his backpack, unzipping it to reveal a jumble of pens, notebooks, and miscellaneous odds and ends. I caught a glimpse of a worn book cover — "What Men Live By." Philosophy major, maybe.

"Found it!"

After rummaging for a good while, he lit up like someone who had just spotted a four-leaf clover in a field of grass, and held out a small silver square to me with both hands. I received it with both of mine.

"Not sure if the size will work. You don't have to pay me back."

We exchanged a brief, charged look. Was this the camaraderie of wartime — or simply human solidarity? I thanked him, pushed the door open, and ran.

"Sorry to keep you waiting!"

I threw the door open, heart pounding. But Jaeyoung was asleep. Snoring, even. Dead to the world. The air went out of me completely and I sank to the floor, at which point Wolf growled and padded over. That dog, always on alert the moment he had the chance — a handful of a poodle who seemed to think he was the sole guardian of peace and security in this roughly 10-square-meter studio. Jaeyoung had always said his golden coat made him special: not brown, but golden. I found that golden-yellow fur deeply irritating. When I glared at him, he bared his teeth. In that moment, a grand fury rose within me.

"This is all your fault, you little mutt!"

I shouted, and he fired back with a sharp, indignant volley of barks. Dog and man locked eyes — one of us was about to bite, the other about to kick — when Jaeyoung stirred. Both of us turned to look at her at the same moment. Then came the sleepy murmur.

"Truce."

And then the snoring resumed.