1.

It was a mistake to tell him to embed magnets. The task required precise manual labor, and Mr. Lim’s constant complaints in his Jeolla dialect about the price rang in my ears. The air conditioner was broken, and sweat soaked through my white sleeveless shirt. Whether I could get rid of this troublesome white Avante car, which I had bought second-hand five years ago for five million won, depended on how well Mr. Lim could embed the magnets.

Tariq, an Iraqi, had made the somewhat absurd request to embed magnets into the products, claiming it would enhance their effectiveness. For me, the words of a VIP customer who reliably bought three million won worth of goods every month felt like commands from God. Moreover, he promised that if he liked the sample with the embedded magnets, he would double his usual order quantity. I boldly assured Tariq that it was a piece of cake and that starting next month, I would send the products with embedded magnets.

Mr. Lim, who had been working for five thousand won per item, saw an opportunity with the magnets and doubled his price. I insisted that seven thousand won was my upper limit, saying I wouldn’t make any profit otherwise, and I would reconsider his pay if orders increased.

His cramped factory, located in the basement of a car repair shop, was hotter than my car. With each step down the stairs, I felt like I was moving infinitely far from 21^st century. In the dim interior, half a dozen men with headlamps were absorbed in solitary welding inside their booths. The only light in the basement came from the lamps on their foreheads. No one noticed when I entered. Mr. Lim was fiercely sparking in the largest booth. The place felt like a sanctuary where the last artisans of this era were burning their final flames with historical significance.

“Mr. Lim!”

To ensure he could see me, I stood in front of his transparent glass booth. However, with his gaze fixed downward, he didn’t react. I took a step closer and knocked on the booth. Startled, he finally looked up, his bloodshot eyes wide open.

We moved to a small, roughly seven-square-meter makeshift break room attached to the side, ready for a final negotiation. Tariq’s complaint that all the magnets had popped out, rendering the products useless, directly led to a reprimand for Mr. Lim. He insisted he had used strong adhesive but said there was nothing more he could do, suggesting I find someone else. Since the payment had already been made, Mr. Lim was in a “take it or leave it” stance. He even added some cursing, saying that sticking magnets with glue was something they could no longer do.

“Will sticking magnets in it make their fucking dick stand up any harder? Hey! Get some water!”

A young man, who seemed like the youngest, glared at me before taking a thousand-won bill from Mr. Lim and heading out. This cauldron-like basement workshop had neither an emergency exit nor a ventilation window. It seemed like no one would notice even if a tragedy occurred here. Now, all the men had stopped working and were lounging around, glancing at me standing in front of Mr. Lim. They nudged each other and whispered, then laughed soprano-like at something that seemed incredibly amusing to them.

Due to the sweat, my sleeveless T-shirt clung more tightly to the contours of my chest, and my long hair, loosely tied with a band, stuck to the curves of my back. Even during the conversation, Mr. Lim’s gaze followed my chest and neck, not my face.

“What kind of fucking country is that? Those bastards sit around thinking about sticking magnets in their dick? Damn, my fate is to wipe the asses of bastards like that…”

The men who had taken out their cigarettes laughed at Mr. Lim’s words. Seizing the moment, Mr. Lim’s eyes wandered to my legs exposed below my pink mini skirt. No matter how many years I had been in this business, I was always helpless in the face of such blatant vulgarity from men.

When the young man returned with a two-liter bottle of water and came down the stairs, I decided it was time to resolve the issue between us.

“Either return half of the money you received and continue the work, or cut ties with me altogether. The decision is yours, Mr. Lim.”

For the first time, Mr. Lim looked me straight in the eyes. Then he took the water bottle, gulped down the water, and let out a hearty sigh as if he had just drunk a strong liquor.

2.

One way or another, it was a deal that I had to start with a fifty percent loss. After that, Tariq kept bothering me incessantly, saying the magnets were attached or had fallen off. When I received an email claiming that a magnet had entered a woman’s vagina, I felt a resolute urge to quit this business. However, I eventually leaned towards a more feasible alternative: buying super glue and attaching the magnets myself.

Carefully squeezing the glue into the three grooves carved into the ring, I placed the tiny magnets one by one on my index finger and inserted them into the grooves. The magnets adhered better than I expected. After scrubbing my messed-up hands with acetone, I put the items out on the balcony and opened the windows. However, the glue smell lingering in the house showed no sign of dissipating. I remembered the aromatic candles I had bought at an herb shop I visited by chance during a drive to Paju last weekend. The scent of lavender filled the house.

When I inhaled the scent of the candles, I felt as if I were on opium without realizing it. The scene from the movie “Farewell My Concubine,” where Leslie Cheung, ruined after the Cultural Revolution, smokes opium, had left a faint sense of romance in me. The sight of Leslie Cheung, reclining and smoking opium amid misty smoke, was more enchanting than any coquettish glance from a beautiful courtesan.

The image of Leslie Cheung from the movie, which lingered in my mind, was later useful in making the product catalog. The image of a seductive Asian woman with slightly upturned eyes, lying sideways in a short cheongsam and holding a ring as if feeding a biscuit to a lover, saying “Honey, ah!” in an enticing pose, was a huge hit. Men around the world who saw the catalog’s main image online emailed, asking if the woman was real, saying she was incredibly sexy, and even expressing the outrageous wish to try her. I didn’t bother responding to such trivial questions and only briefly sent back offer emails encouraging sample orders. Emphasizing the functional aspects. I stressed that the product, made from germanium stones that emit far-infrared rays and the legendary Hamano ore, said to exist in the Garden of Eden, delivered powerful effects, with the mysterious hexagonal pattern that gathered cosmic energy engraved on it. Men around the world would ask me explicit sexual questions: whether it could cure premature ejaculation, what to do if it didn’t stay on, if there was one that fit their small penis, how long they needed to wear it to last an hour during sex, and whether it could enlarge their penis. Suddenly, I found myself becoming a sex expert, sweating over providing detailed answers to individual symptoms.

The back of the catalog featured user reviews in a dramatic style, appealing to different age groups from twenties to sixties. A college student, once disheartened in front of his girlfriend due to premature ejaculation, praised a chain effect of gaining confidence in love and even improving his grades. A supermarket owner in his late forties, who had been unable to perform in bed since remarrying a woman twenty years younger, confessed to feeling as if he was reborn in his twenties, enjoying the best days of his life. Even a retired university professor in his sixties, who had long lost his sexual desire and lived a dry life, claimed to be enjoying a hotter sex life than during his honeymoon after incorporating this ring into his life.

Using these user reviews as examples, I neatly packaged personalized sexual enhancement guidelines based on age and size, addressing frequency and issues, ultimately concluding that this product was the only solution. The rings came in three sizes: small, medium, and large, with most sample inquiries coming from the Middle East. Occasionally, there were inquiries from Asia, but these were mostly limited to South Asia, such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Iraq was the biggest buyer in the Middle East, and it was notable that Iraqi men only ordered the large size. It seemed plausible that the country with polygamy allowed by Islam would have the most orders.

Once, during a phone call with Tariq, we were locked in a never-ending argument about the magnets—whether they were attached or falling off. Strangely, the conversation veered to polygamy. Perhaps my subconscious, tired of the magnet issue, sought a reasonable explanation for Tariq’s demands.

“Yes, I understand you Iraqi men.”

That was fine until then.

“The polygamy society”

The tone of this phrase, which slipped out of my mouth, was so ambiguous that even I couldn’t tell if it was an insult or admiration. There was a brief silence on the other end of the line.

“What do you mean?”

“I just mean…”

Tariq, seemingly offended, didn’t say much more and abruptly hung up. That evening, I found a long email from Tariq in my inbox, spanning two A4 pages. It began unexpectedly by quoting the Quran.

[If you fear that you will not deal justly with the orphans, marry those that please you of [other] women, two or three or four. But if you fear that you will not be just, then [marry only] one or those your right hand possesses. That is more suitable that you may not incline [to injustice].] (Quran 4:3)

Tariq expressed his disappointment, saying he had expected me to understand the social and cultural background of my buyers. He explained that polygamy was not for male pleasure but a relief for widows and children due to frequent wars in the Middle East. He added some slightly contemptuous remarks about how I could be in this business without knowing such basic information. However, there was no mention of the magnet embedding. Reading this stiff email, which resembled a thesis, made me momentarily anxious, wondering if Tariq was signaling an end to our business relationship.

Apart from Tariq, there were three or four other buyers who regularly ordered the rings. Sample orders didn’t make money, but if they led to regular orders, it was a different. However, securing those regular orders was a tough challenge. There were frequent unreasonable requests to return samples, claiming they hadn’t worked, unbelievable complaints about rings breaking during use, or even absurd claims that they never received the samples, demanding new ones be sent.

The worst case was being deceived by a sweet proposal to visit Korea and sign a formal contract for a large purchase. I sent an impressive invitation letter as requested, went to pick them up at the airport on time, vouched for their identity with airport security, and then enthusiastically engaged in typical VIP hospitality. Starting with a tour of Namsan Tower, I didn’t hesitate to personally serve dozens of colorful side dishes at a fancy Korean restaurant in Samcheong-dong. For me, a buyer was a king. Among them, a large purchase buyer was the king of kings.

But, despite the grand hospitality, that king of kings vanished overnight without a trace. Fortunately, a dramatic scene unfolded where I retrieved the potential illegal immigrant through a service center, threatening him convincingly with a hammer and drill. After that incident, I never sent out invitation letters or fell for the hallucination-inducing promise of “large purchases” again.

3.

One day, if it hadn’t been for Tariq’s perverse demand to embed magnets in the rings, this seemingly pathetic business might have been a manageable way to make a living. However, the ripple effect caused by Tariq eventually led to a deterioration in my relationship with my boyfriend, P.

That evening, after my nerve-wracking exchange with Tariq about polygamy, I realized P, who I thought was asleep, had come up behind me and was peering over my shoulder at Tariq’s email. I quickly turned off the power and left the room, but I could feel his gaze burning into the back of my head. For some reason, I was also feeling a strange sense of shame.

“Can’t you just quit this crap already?” he said in a tone that grated on my nerves. When I looked back, P’s expression was tinged with contempt.

“What? This crap?”

“Get a proper job already!”

“Yeah, right. Even though you work at that fancy foreign company, you earn less than I do! You and I are both involved in the same kind of dirty tricks to sell stuff!”

“Do you really have to sell that damn product, getting lectured by these scumbags?”

The argument escalated, and P ended up overturning the stock boxes in the balcony. Not content with that, he grabbed the scattered black rings and then threw them, smashing them to pieces.

“Are you a whore? Do you even know what those guys are thinking when they call you? If you’re going to do business, do it properly!”

“Did I have phone sex or something? Get out! Get out now!”

Overcome with anger, I collapsed and started to sob. Since then, P neither called me nor visited.

The truth is, I never thought I was doing something shameful. As I had read somewhere, in an evolved society, the concept of sex was as natural as eating and sleeping. It shouldn’t have been something hidden away and carried out in secret. I took pride in contributing to the most primal happiness of humanity. Whenever I encountered people who acted scandalized by even the mention of the word “sex,” I would think to myself, “Tsk tsk, they’re like unevolved apes,” or “Poor souls stuck in a lower level of consciousness.”

As I swept the shattered ring fragments into a dustpan, I glanced at my reflection in the balcony window and slumped down in exhaustion. Through the darkened window, I saw the lights of the apartments opposite, and reflected between them was a woman with swollen, tear-filled eyes staring back at me with a pitiful expression.

“On one side, they’re having a damn war, and on the other, they’re having a damn fuck-fest. Shit, it’s a crazy world! A crazy world!”

Before I met P, K, who had a profound disdain for Iraqi men, had left me with those harsh words. Damn bastards… If they were going to leave, they shouldn’t have made such a mess. They just drained my energy and dignity, those jerks…

Cleaning up the scattered ring fragments, I would mumble angrily to myself, hurling curses at the men who had left, and it made me feel refreshed.

It was around that time. Every Sunday afternoon, without fail, the caller ID ‘Pakistan’ would appear on my phone screen. If I didn’t answer, he would call two or three more times before giving up. He would ask personal questions like what I was doing now, if I had a boyfriend, and how old I was. I would cut him off, saying those were private matters. Then he would assert that my voice sounded very young, insisting I must be in my twenties, and ask for conformation. When I gave no response, he would finally apologize and wish me a good weekend.

Why was he pestering me without ordering any samples? I would shudder at his sticky tone as I pressed the end call button. There were other men who called after seeing my contact information and photo on the product website, but none were as persistently regular as ‘Pakistan.’ Out of a sense of pity for him who might go crazy with boredom on a Sunday afternoon, I took his calls a few times. But I knew nothing about him. When I asked his name, he would divert the conversation and change the subject, which made me think he was probably a clever guy.

He said the photo of me on the website was like vitamin C for him, a fatigue remedy, and that I looked very “juicy.” The word “juicy” could mean “attractive” or “sensuous,” but depending on the context, it could be even more obscene. I couldn’t understand what was so “juicy” about a plain ID photo, inserted simply to enhance the website’s credibility, especially since it was placed below the glamorous main image of the catalog parodying Leslie Cheung in Farewell My Concubine.

I decided to steady my nerves once more. It was time to talk about samples.

P had detested these kinds of calls, and I didn’t enjoy them either, but it was my way of surviving. It was my job, as primal and sacred as pooping or having sex, something no one could take away from me.

I resolved that if this Pakistani guy dodged the sample topic again, I would end it once and for all. I began with a firm tone.

“Hey, listen up. Unless it’s business-related, I can’t keep talking to you. If you’re not going to order samples, stop calling me.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Shock, no doubt. Without hesitation, I told him that if he had nothing to say, I would hang up.

“Wait!” came the almost desperate cry in my left ear.

There we go! I should have done this sooner…

“Okay. Send me the bank and account details by email. Then I’ll give you my postal address to send the sample.”

The battle of nerves with ‘Pakistan’ seemed to end on a happy note. As soon as the call ended, I sent the bank account details to the email he provided. A week passed. Then another week. No response. Even the usual Sunday afternoon calls had stopped.

What a waste of time. I dismissed it as just another one of the many odd incidents I had encountered since starting this business and soon forgot about it.

4.

Visiting Mr. Lim’s factory again, it had been a full three months since my last visit. In that time, I had sent Tariq more samples, only to have them rejected three or four times. This time, I sent the samples with determination, telling myself this was the last chance. It took two months to finally get the okay sign from Tariq. The two-month battle I fought with myself on the balcony turned me into an expert at attaching magnets.

When Tariq finally placed an order for double the usual quantity, I became a “Bond Girl” again, wrestling with hundreds of rings and super glue on the balcony day and night to meet the delivery deadline. Thinking about replacing my old Avante car made the hardship seem trivial.

After the “Quran thesis” email, it felt as though a friendship had developed between Tariq and me. I learned he had four wives and ten children. He allowed me to focus more on quality than on meeting the exact delivery date. In the past, he would nag before the deadline, asking if I had sent the rings yet, complaining that any delay would cause big trouble with his clients. Tariq was undoubtedly the pickiest among my few buyers.

The night P had turned the balcony into a wreck, I sat down at my computer to write a reply to Tariq. Iraq was six hours behind Korea, so sending an email around midnight my time meant he would receive it around 6 PM his time. I figured he would be eagerly checking his email, curious about my response.

But what drove me the most was the fear of losing my VIP client. Losing a third of my regular monthly income was a terrifying thought. It would be much sadder than P or K leaving after making a scene. The payments from Tariq were, as he had quoted from the Quran, a lifeline for a single woman living alone on the other side of the world.

Imagining dollars flying across the globe towards me filled me with an unfathomable fondness for Tariq’s polygamy. If he called again, I was prepared to criticize monogamy. But that never happened.

I calmed myself and logged into my email. There was one new message in the inbox. I quickly read the sender and subject line in less than a second. With a sigh of relief and an inexplicable laugh, I opened Tariq’s email titled “I’m sorry for being rude.”

It was a polite apology for his previous email, which he admitted might have offended me. He said that failing to understand cultural diversity was his mistake too, and he felt ashamed of his overreaction. He acknowledged that just as the Quran has its teachings, my religion would have its own doctrines, and it was natural to feel strange about beliefs different from one’s own. He ended with positive feedback, saying the samples were generally good but needed a little more attention to detail.

The basement factory in autumn was almost paradise compared to summer. The men who used to lie around on the concrete floor, giggling like drug addicts without air conditioning, now looked refreshed and clean, as if they had been reborn.

Mr. Lim, now freed from attaching magnets, only had to carve grooves into the rings. However, he had a sullen demeanor, possibly because the price had returned to 5,000 won from 7,000 won. Still, with increased orders, he couldn’t openly complain in front of me. I subtly hinted that there were plenty of others who could make such products, to prevent Mr. Lim from habitually missing deadlines. Mr. Lim, who kept glancing at me nervously, suddenly asked in his awkward Jeolla dialect:

“But, which country is this for?”

Mr. Lim said he had a friend who worked in the shipping department at the airport and could drastically reduce shipping costs if he tipped him off. However, since shipping rates varied by country, he asked if I could provide a list of my overseas clients’ addresses. He then suggested that he could handle the packing and shipping himself. The flow of his persuasive talk felt suspiciously well-rehearsed, so I declined outright, saying that I could manage the small volume on my own. Disappointment was evident on Mr. Lim’s face.

That day, when I got home and opened my email, there was a reply from the almost-forgotten ‘Pakistan.’ After months of silence, ‘Pakistan’ didn’t offer any explanation but simply stated that he had sent the money and asked me to send the rings. At the start of the email, he listed various instructions as if he were ordering a secret weapon: do not reveal the actual purpose of the product on the envelope, label the product as household goods, list the product price as zero, and no need to include the case for the rings or the invoice.

Finally, his name and address were at the bottom of the email. Seeing his name, “Reham Khan,” gave me a sense of having discovered some great secret. But it was the address that really threw me off, ending with ‘St. Peter’s Church.’

5.

Actually, it was not something I should be embarrassed about. People working at St. Peter’s Church are not saints. Tolstoy once said that there is no desire as strong as sexual desire, and that the struggle with it is the most difficult battle. Freud emphasized that desire and sexual drive are the two main motivators of human behavior. Even though Augustine stated that sex is a necessary evil for procreation, but such a saint might appear once in a millennium, if at all.

I packaged the samples and sent them to St. Peter’s Church in Pakistan via EMS. As instructed, I made sure not to write anything on the outer envelope that could hint at the contents. Then I emailed Khan to inform him that I had sent the samples and that he should receive them within a week.

Five days later, Khan sent a brief email saying the samples had arrived and he hoped they would be effective. I replied just as briefly, expressing my hope that this sample would lead to a larger order.

That night, I had a strange dream. Khan, wearing a white turban, appeared as Choi Min-Sik from the movie “Old Boy.” He was having sex with a woman in the room where Choi Min-Sik was imprisoned and only ate fried dumplings for fifteen years. As the camera slowly zoomed in, Khan’s face became clear. He had a typically handsome Southwest Asian appearance with prominent facial features. His thick lips were lined with neat mustaches, and his high nose and intense eyes gave him the look of a roaring lion.

The camera then moved to the woman beneath Khan, gasping for breath. Her face was hidden; the focus was on her violently trembling feet. A moan, then a crash. Khan picked up something from the floor and showed it to her. She clasped it and closed her eyes in prayer. When she opened them, Khan was up in the air, nailed to the cross, with his voice echoing, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Priests in black robes entered, shouting at Khan, “Pervert!” Then the naked woman stood up and began to dance with the ring. She spun it on her right hand, then her left, passing it through her entire body, laughing in a shrill voice. The ring stretched and transformed into something like rubber. She molded it into a ball, tossed it, bit off a piece, and chewed it. As soon as she swallowed it, a golden ring emerged from her genitalia. She threw it towards Khan on the cross. As it was placed on his head like a crown of thorns, the rope that bound his body untied, freeing him. Khan, with a dazzling halo, ascended to the heavens. The priests now prostrated themselves, crying out with awe and delight, “Praise be! Our savior!”

I woke up, drenched in sweat. I felt like I had danced in the dream. Dawn was breaking, and the sky spread out in a watercolor-like pale blue. Energized as if I had just finished an intense warm-up, I sprang out of bed and sat at the computer.

There was one new email in my inbox.

It was from Tariq. A vision of a sleek sports car flashed in my mind. He wrote that he would visit Korea next month with his entire family, choosing Korea for their annual holiday destination because I am here.

Entire family?

I flopped back onto my bed and pictured Tariq entering Incheon Airport with his four wives and ten children. And there I am, standing with a welcome sign to greet them, leading them up Namsan Tower to overlook the city of Seoul, treating them to bulgogi or galbi at a traditional Korean restaurant in Samcheong-dong, and dedicating a day to take the kids to an amusement park.

Perhaps Tariq’s visit is not just a simple annual event. Tariq, who holds love for 14 humans in his family. I thought it was remarkable humanism. The images from the dream replayed in my head. This could be some sort of prophetic dream. The omnipotent transformation of the ring, the festively flamboyant dance with it, and Khan’s ascension.

This was something.

Our savior!

The sacred words from the dream echoed in my ears like a lullaby.

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