The Eyes Are the Best Part

During a test in her philosophy class, Ji-won begins to feel the onset of a migraine. She’s sitting between Geoffrey and Alexis, who have taken a dislike to each other following an intense class discussion over the existence of free will. Ji-won closes her eyes and finds herself confronted with a vision of George’s blue eyes. She awakens to Alexis shaking her, her test having fallen on the floor. Ji-won leaves the classroom, claiming that she’s coming down with an illness.

Ji-won wanders around the university’s library to kill time before the bus arrives. She sits at a computer and looks at photos of blue eyes. Feeling unsatisfied at merely looking at the eyes, she googles questions about them, such as, “How firm are blue eyes?” or “How do blue eyes feel compared to brown eyes?” (101). Thinking about eyes, Ji-won figures that eating blue eyes would be more pleasant than eating brown eyes, which remind her of filth scraped off the bottom of her shoe. Another student asks her to leave the computer, as she’s overstaying her booked time, and Ji-won rushes off, realizing that the only thing she noticed about the student was the blueness of his eyes.

To celebrate the end of Ji-won’s first quarter, Umma prepares a feast for the whole family (including George). Ji-won stares at a plate of fish heads to avoid looking at George and his wandering, probing gaze. George brags about how much he enjoys eating eyeballs, and he grabs the plate of them and slurps them up before Ji-won or Ji-hyun can react.

That night, Ji-hyun tells Ji-won that she’s been acting strangely and begs her to tell her what’s wrong. Ji-won dismisses her concerns, unwilling to explain her newfound obsession with eyeballs to her little sister.

A few days into winter break, the grades are released. Ji-won’s GPA is below 2.0, and she’s been placed on academic probation. If she doesn’t raise her grades by the end of the following semester, she’ll lose her scholarship or worse.

Ji-won is alone in the apartment when she reads the email. All her instincts cry out for her to punish herself, and she wanders around the apartment in a daze and takes a nap. After waking, she spies a dark shape on the couch: George, who, without her knowing, has arrived home and fallen asleep on the couch. Looking at him, Ji-won suddenly feels an urge to stab him to death. She thinks of the taste and texture of eyeballs on her tongue.

Suddenly, Ji-won is shaken awake from where she passed out at her computer desk. It’s George, acting concerned because Ji-won was yelling in her sleep. Ji-won suddenly attacks him, beating her fists against his chest as she blames him for her father leaving and the drop in her grades. George holds Ji-won back from him, and she screams at him before running off and slamming the door to her room.

Later that night, Umma comes into the sisters’ room to talk to Ji-won. She lectures Ji-won about how she acted toward George, telling her that she wasn’t raised to behave this way. She asks Ji-won to be more accepting of George in the future, which she agrees to. Ji-won also agrees to apologize to George.

She heads out into the living room and stands in front of George, who’s watching television. Looking at him, Ji-won imagines what it might be like to pluck one of his eyeballs out of his head. George reacts with disdain to Ji-won’s apology, forcing her to repeat it to him in a loud voice before he accepts it. Later that night, Ji-hyun offers to kill George in order to cheer Ji-won up. Ji-won tells her that she can’t help, which hurts Ji-hyun’s feelings.

Ji-won starts to become consumed with thoughts of George’s death. She registers for classes the following semester, deciding to take two with Geoffrey. The two of them text almost daily now, with both considering the other to be their best friend.

When George enters the apartment and heads to the bedroom without taking his shoes off, Ji-won feels fury at him and imagines driving a knife into his back.

The spring semester starts, and Ji-won takes a bus to class on the first day. During the ride, she thinks of her high school friends, wondering what they’re all up to now. She remembers times when her friends loved and supported her, but then she dismisses them, thinking that she doesn’t need them anymore.

In class, Ji-won confesses to Alexis about her sleep issues. In response, Alexis gives her a bottle of Ambien to help her fall asleep. She also asks Ji-won about Geoffrey. Alexis tells her that it’s clear that Geoffrey has a huge crush on her, and then she admits that she finds Geoffrey generally strange and off-putting. Listening to this, Ji-won remembers various moments in which Geoffrey acted pompous and condescending, memories that make her cringe in embarrassment.

Geoffrey texts her asking to hang out after class. Ji-won says no, but Geoffrey pushes her to reconsider and acts irritated when she won’t. Ji-won takes the bus home, and when she gets off at her stop, she realizes that a heavily disguised stranger is following her.

As Ji-won walks home, she notices that the stranger is right behind her, matching her pace. Various terrible possibilities flash through her head. Ji-won slips a knife her father gave her out of her backpack and whirls around to confront the stranger. However, the street is empty behind her. In fear, Ji-won turns and runs the rest of the way home. She wonders who the person following her might be, and with a flash of terror, George’s face comes into her mind.

Coming into the apartment, Ji-won prepares to confront George but instead meets Ji-hyun. Her little sister is worried, as she can’t find their mother anywhere and she isn’t answering her phone. Suddenly, a woman’s shrill scream comes from the hallway, and the front door bursts open. The sisters rush over, terrified of what they might find, and are confronted with an incomprehensible and weeping Umma. Through a curtain of tears, she manages to tell them what’s happened: She and George are getting married.

George leaves to pick up celebratory Chinese takeout for dinner while Umma tells her daughters about how the proposal occurred. George proposed at a stoplight on the way to CVS, which Umma finds romantic, and her daughters find repulsive. Ji-won realizes that George can’t be the mysterious stranger who followed her home, as the timing doesn’t mesh with the proposal. Ji-hyun also complicates things for Ji-won by telling her that Umma and Appa’s divorce was finalized today.

Ji-hyun pushes Ji-won to tell George and Umma about the man who followed her home, but Ji-won refuses. Ji-hyun is upset and tells Ji-won that she constantly worries about her.

That night, Ji-won dreams about the mysterious man at the bus stop. Terrified of him, she tries to run, but her feet are stuck to the ground. Slowly, the man unwraps his coverings, revealing George’s face beneath. Suddenly, George’s eyes bulge, pop out of their sockets, and roll toward Ji-won’s feet. She wakes in front of the fridge, having sleepwalked into the kitchen, with a spilled box of cherry tomatoes before her. Ji-won closes her eyes and pops one of the tomatoes into her mouth.

After class, Geoffrey catches up to Ji-won as she eats her lunch. He openly wonders why she’s not talking to him so much anymore. He also mentions that he drove past the supermarket where Umma works, which makes Ji-won apprehensive, as she can’t remember telling him that information. Despite her protests, Geoffrey insists on giving Ji-won the present that he got her for Christmas: a beautifully wrapped pair of chopsticks. Ji-won’s heart falls as she sees them, as the gift comes across as presumptuous and more than a little tokenizing.

When Ji-won gets home from school that night, she encounters George sleeping on the couch. Neither her mother nor her sister is home. She leans over his sleeping form with a deep, strange urge to open his eyelids so she can stare at his eyeballs. Instead, Ji-won lies on the carpet and falls asleep.

She wakes sometime later, thinking that she’s in one of her dreams. She goes into the kitchen and retrieves a paring knife, which she lovingly drags across George’s skin. A bead of blood appears, seemingly too real, and Ji-won realizes that this dream is too vivid to just be in her head. She drops the knife onto the coffee table, and George awakens from the sound. He notices the knife and becomes afraid of Ji-won, but she manages to convince him that she just intended to cut some fruit with it. Laughing now, George dismisses her, calling her “Oriental” as he does so and reinvigorating Ji-won’s fury toward him.

Over the next few days, Ji-won watches George carefully, but it doesn’t seem as if he suspects her of anything. However, Ji-hyun notices that Ji-won is unraveling and continues to act worried despite Ji-won’s insistence that she is fine.

Ji-won thinks through the times in her life when she has witnessed injustices, such as a white man berating her father for his lack of English, or a couple getting into an argument in a restaurant over the man’s inability to accept his partner’s employment status. Remembering these incidents, Ji-won resolves to drive George away through small actions, trying to trip him up and undercut his own assumed power.

One night, Ji-won rises from bed, claiming hunger. She spies George’s keys and wallet in the kitchen. The keys interest Ji-won—there seem to be a few extra keys on the ring that he doesn’t use around them, including a set of car keys for a mysterious Toyota. After stealing a $100 bill from the wallet, she hides his keys in the back of the fridge, where they won’t be easily noticed. Then Ji-won heads back to bed.

She’s awoken by George screaming into her ear, telling her that he knows what she did and how she’s trying to mess with him. Ji-won suddenly realizes she’s in the room from her dreams, with eyeballs stuck to all of the walls. George throws himself at her, and she thrusts a knife upward into his skull. Then she truly wakes, shaking and sweating in her bed, Ji-hyun next to her still. Ji-won starts to weep from the relief of not having killed anyone.

George spends the morning tearing the apartment apart, searching for his keys. Ji-won needles him, asking him repeatedly what he needs the extra keys for. George eventually gives up and takes Umma’s car to work, but he threatens to force everyone to search for his keys in the evening if they aren’t found. That night, Umma finds the keys in the fridge. Ji-won and Ji-hyun both blame George for forgetting them in there, and he storms out of the apartment, red-faced and humiliated.

Since the chopsticks incident, Geoffrey has tried to text Ji-won multiple times. She’s responded to him either extremely curtly or not at all. In class, he sits next to her, invading her space. Ji-won has come to think of Geoffrey as “abrasive, pushy, and irritating” and wonders how she ever thought otherwise (154).

Fearing being expelled for her grades, Ji-won agrees to accompany Alexis to a study group meeting over the weekend. She heads for the car in the parking lot. Hearing rapid footsteps approaching from behind her, Ji-won grips the knife she keeps in her purse and whirls around to confront the stalker. However, there’s nobody behind her, and the parking lot is empty. Ji-won wonders whether she is hallucinating. Suddenly, from the corner of her eye, she spies someone hurriedly rushing off. She tries to pursue them, but they lose her in the bushes.

Ji-won heads to Alexis’s apartment, which she shares with a roommate a short way from off-campus. She and a few other classmates cram into the small apartment and begin to study. Eventually, Alexis’s roommate kicks them out of the apartment, and they all head down the street to buy dinner. Ji-won sticks around to eat with her new friends, feeling grateful for Alexis.

After dinner, Ji-won heads home. As she walks through campus, she feels a jolt every time she sees someone with blue eyes. On the way, she runs into Geoffrey. He asks her if she’s okay, as she looks pale and tired, but she dismisses his concerns. He confronts her over ignoring him, becoming angry when she mentions Alexis. He accuses Alexis of poisoning Ji-won against him, but Ji-won denies this accusation.