THE MIDDLE VOICE

The woman brings her hands together in front of her chest. Frowns, and looks up at the blackboard.

- HAN KANG

"O.K., read it out," the man with the thick-lensed, silver-rimmed spectacles says with a smile.

The woman's lips twitch. She moistens her lower lip with the tip of her tongue. In front of her chest, her hands are quietly restless. She opens her mouth, and closes it again. She holds her breath, then exhales deeply. The man steps toward the blackboard and patiently asks her again to read.

The woman's eyelids tremble. Like insects' wings rubbing briskly together.

The woman closes her eyes, reopens them. As if she hopes in the moment of opening her eyes to find herself transported to some other location.

The man adjusts his glasses, his fingers thickly floured with white chalk.

"Come on, now, out loud." The woman wears a high-necked black sweater and black trousers. The jacket she's hung on her chair is black, and the scarf she's put in her big, black cloth bag is knitted from black wool.

Above that sombre uniform, which makes it seem as if she's just come from a funeral, her face is thin and drawn, like the elongated features of certain clay sculptures.

She is neither young nor particularly beautiful. Her eyes have an intelligent look, but the constant spasming of her eyelids makes this hard to perceive. Her back and shoulders are permanently hunched over, as though she is seeking refuge inside her black clothes, and her fingernails are clipped severely. Around her left wrist is a dark-purple velvet hairband, the solitary point of color on an otherwise monochrome figure.

"Let's all read it together."The man cannot wait for the woman any longer.

He moves his gaze over the baby-faced university student who sits in the same row as the woman, the middle-aged man half hidden behind a pillar, and the young postgraduate student sitting by the window, slouching in his chair.