Mi-jeng slipped on her shoes and started down the hill to the bus stop. A sharp metal pounding started on her right and when she whipped her head to the side she felt a sharp pain in her neck. A man was trying to shape part of a car. Each time he hammered it felt like he was hitting her head. She needed more Tylenol. It was hard for her to avoid taking tylenol these days. She'd been told her whole life to stay away from medicine unless it was Chinese medicine.
She'd walked down the same hill to take the same bus her entire life. It was mostly one small street, the kind cars aren't supposed to drive on, but do. Part of the street was an outdoor market. It had never changed. She saw the same faces selling the same oranges, fish, and assorted plastic things from China. The other part were shops and the shops never stayed the same for long. One restraunt was the same. Her mother's friend Ahn-yang's noodle restaurant. The rest seemed to change with the seasons. One day a mobile phone seller, the next day it was being gutted and turned into a clothing store. One day a tire store was announcing its opening with loud music and dancing young girls, the next day it was a stationary store or a friend rice restaurant or a juice shop.
As she reached the bus stop cars flew by honked at varying speeds. When Mi-jeng was a little girl the road had two lanes. One moving in each direction. When she was in middle school the road was expanded to 4 lanes. When she started high school it became 8 lanes. Her father hated these sorts of things, but had to admit, it meant Korea was becoming a player on the world's stage. When he had grown up in the same area there wasn't even a road. "A dirt road and a market," is what he called their corner of the city. Now, there were two subway lines and a train station.
The restaurant in front of the bus station was the same. Her father said it opened when he was in high school, "the only difference being that it's covered in black pollution," because of the eight lanes of traffic.
The restaurant sold crab. It had a large orange crab, about as big as Mi-jeng, above the doorway of the restaurant. It was called "Crab House," and it was Mi-jeng's favorite.
She always stared at the crabs held in the tanks in front of the restarants. Watching them wiggle around, their legs filled with succulent white meat. Any time she took the bus with her Mother or Father Mi-jeng begged them to take her there.
In reality her family only went there once in a year. It was expensive and after the IMF crash in 1988 it became once every two years. Still, Mi-jeng begged to be taken there every time she came within earshot of the place. If she was alone, the text messaged her mother or father.
These days, Mi-jeng had enough money to go there by herself. The idea of spending $30 or $40 on a meal for two wasn't such a big deal. She made that much once or twice a day. But she could never take her mother or father. How did she get the money? It was impossible to explain. So she took her friend Mi-rang. When she asked where the money came from she said her mother gave it to her. She felt uncomfortable eating there without her parents. It didn't taste good.
As she waited for the bus she looked at the tanks filled with crabs. The female crabs in one tank and the males in another. Both tanks were filled to the top and on either side the crabs at the top were smashed between casing and the struggling crabs below. There were five or six layers of crabs on either side. The ones on the bottom lay motionless except for their antenas and some other things that looked like a mouth. As the crabs went closer to the top they could move more. Some grabbed on to other crab's legs, and those closest to the top could almost walk. Those on the very top did walk, but only in their very small space. They would lay motionless, but then in a sharp burst of energy throw themselves one way or another until they were constricted again. One crab managed to get one of its legs outside the tank, it moved its leg up and down as the rest of its body smashed aginst the crab below it. Mi-jeng noticed at the bottom several legs that had been snapped off lay at the bottom of the tank in the murky water.