[53rd Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards] Fiction Commendation Award: The Forty-Four Lives of a Wedding Dress

Cover of Chung Se-rang's "See You on the Rooftop," which includes short story "The Forty-Four Lives of a Wedding Dress" / Courtesy of Changbi Publishers

Written by Chung Se-rang
Translated by Giulia Macri

The dress was picked up at a small warehouse in Vancouver during the Canada Day Sales of July 2013 and imported to Korea. Although it was a designer dress, it came at a highly discounted price because it was the work of an emerging creator. The price tag read $15,000, but the final price had come to $3,500. The dress was a size 4 but because it was somewhat larger than the average and could be adjusted with the strings, it could pass for either a size 2 or 6.

1

The dress remained unchosen by anyone for a long time. It was a simple dress with a geometrical line. It looked like an origami dress, as it flaunted no handmade lace or beads or sequins. As the shop owner began to regret making it a part of the collection, the first woman picked it out at last.

"When the protagonist in a movie or TV show puts on her wedding dress, special effects are used to make her look dramatically prettier. I knew it was all a lie, but there's no special effects for me at all. It's just me."

She had come in without any hairdo or makeup, and she looked at herself in the mirror, her face expressionless.

"Would you like to try on the last one again?" the shop assistant offered.

"No, I'll just take this," the woman replied.

"You're the first ever to wear this dress. You know that a dress can be worn only seven or eight times at tops, right?"

The shop assistant repeatedly emphasized this point, but the woman seemed unimpressed.

2

"Please don't make it too tight. I faint quite easily…"

The second woman suffered from vasovagal syncope, which made her faint at times when she was nervous. So in searching for a dress, she was more concerned about how comfortable the corset would be for her to breathe in than she was about the design. A tight dress would be no help at all. She mainly browsed through imported dresses, which had a relatively roomy chest area, finally deciding on this one. It was still a bit uncomfortable, though.

There were a few close calls, but she managed to get through the wedding without fainting. She took a sweet breath when the ceremony was over, freeing herself from the dress. I'm alive, she whispered without realizing it, and the help lady laughed.

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Later on, whenever she watched a movie with women wearing dresses and corsets she couldn't focus on the story because she was concerned about the women being able to breathe. She kept wondering, How long did these actors have to stay in those dresses? or, How in the world did the women of that era endure?

Watching a scene where one woman fainted, she thought to herself, Yeah, that was bound to happen.

3

The third woman had absolutely no plan to get married, but she ended up doing so because she lost her scarf.

It wasn't just a scarf. It was destiny's scarf. Whenever she wore it, she was showered with compliments. The color, the pattern, the size and the fabric fit her perfectly. The color was mainly sky blue. It looked beautiful however she tied it. It complimented dresses, blouses, and even t-shirts in different ways. She was heartbroken when one day, after running around places on work assignments, she realized that her scarf was gone.

She wanted to buy the same scarf again, but three years had gone by since the purchase and she couldn't find it in any shopping mall, not even on the internet. There was one in the same pattern but in different colors, and that wasn't what she wanted. She attempted to buy it directly from overseas but failed. She gave up eventually, but a sigh escaped her whenever she opened her closet.

Her boyfriend, however, did not give up. He made call after international call and sent desperate emails until he successfully found and bought the same scarf. During the month he had pestered people all over Europe, he came to realize how much he loved her. So he went back to every place they had been together to take pictures, then he wrote a letter and proposed to his girlfriend at the Bugak Skyway, presenting her with the scarf and the book of his photographs and the handwritten letter.

She had a lot of other plans for herself, and many things she wanted to do, including a training year overseas.

"I'll make sure you can have the life you want. I'll work hard to do so," her boyfriend promised.

She could only believe him.

"But why are there two of the same scarf?"

"I don't want you to be sad if you lose it again."

"You think I'll lose it again? What do you take me for?"

He had thought that she would be moved to tears, but she wasn't. Though he felt a little disappointed, he decided to let it slide.

She chose the dress because it had no embellishments. She wrapped the sky blue scarf in gauze and ironed it carefully, then tied it around her waist like a belt. The scarf complimented the dress so well that it looked like a set.

4

The fourth woman moved in with her boyfriend a month before the wedding. The house they found was available on that date, so they decided to move in together earlier. It was easier this way―neither of them could take days off, and managing two moves and a wedding was already too much.

What was more, the sink was a problem. The plywood had surrendered to the humidity and was rotting away, and cockroaches kept crawling out from underneath. They were so big they didn't even look like the Korean variety. When the couple called the disinfection company, they were told that it was impossible to get rid of the roaches without replacing the sink altogether. As they blamed the previous tenants and cursed the owner, who claimed to be abroad and didn't take their calls, the two of them sprayed the apartment with repellant.