In his version, I tell Sam he won’t ever have sex with another woman, so he sleeps with the first willing candidate to prove otherwise. He and Madeleine pursue the act with languorous movements to savor their consummation—I can imagine the rhythm of it, low and slow, the same way he insists when we go out to Korean barbeque.

“Low and slow,” he murmurs, turning the dial on the range just so, inhaling the seasoned smoke while watching the thinly sliced brisket pieces curl in on themselves, juices glistening on their browning bellies. When I work the grill, I jack the heat way up, searing the meat with a flavorful char. It’s done in seconds, but Sam complains that I’m burning it and confiscates my tongs.

He hates how I shove the meat into my mouth, inhaling through bared teeth to cool my burning tongue. How I eat with abandon until the grill is cleared, so I always end up eating more than my share.

“It’s the Korean way,” I tell him. “You eat like you’ll never see food again.”

Sam tells me that way of thinking is old-fashioned, a mindset adopted by elders who whenever they see you, no matter how much weight you’ve gained, always complain about how skinny you’ve become. “더 먹어,” they urge, dropping more and more food onto your plate, and you cannot tell them no because it’s disrespectful, and you cannot not eat it because it’s disrespectful—in fact, you cannot leave even a grain of rice on your plate because it’s wasteful and consequently, in the face of those who once starved, disrespectful.

It’s a new era in Korea, Sam informs me as he piles rice, spicy bean sprouts, kimchi, grilled garlic, bean paste, and seasoned spring onion onto the lettuce spread in his palm before finally topping it with one small, juicy coil of brisket. An era not of food salvage but of food appreciation. “The era of gastronomic delight,” he announces before folding the lettuce into a bursting mouthful and shoving it in.

In the time it takes for him to build one wrap, fit it into his mouth, bite down, moan with rapture, chew, chew, chew, and swallow, I can consume ten pieces of brisket. The same goes for the galbi, for the samgyupsal, the pork jowl, pork shoulder, bulgogi. I argue that in this new, prosperous era it is actually more fitting to eat as much meat as possible, without the vegetarian accoutrements originally intended to dress up scarce protein provisions. He says for the way I eat we should just go for AYCE, but we both know it’s an empty threat. All-you-can-eat restaurants use subpar ingredients, and the best quality meat is essential for the best Korean barbeque. It’s the Korean way.

—

In my version, Sam hates my obsession with specific foods on certain days. I will buy a five-pound bag of cotton candy grapes and stick it in the freezer. For one entire day I eat only frozen grapes, pressing the cool globes one by one to the insides of my lips before sucking them into my mouth. The texture is like a popsicle. My teeth are the insensitive type, so I gnash the grape to slushy bits before draining its sweet juice down my throat.

Sometimes the food of the day is hard-boiled eggs. Sometimes it’s carrots. Peanuts, watermelon, cabbages. Every so often, the only thing I consume is water. I fill my thirty-two-ounce water canister to the brim and fit it with my straw attachment. I take it into our home office and slouch at my desk, the bottle perched in the crevice of my stomach, nozzle between my lips, guzzling the quart while answering emails. When my bladder voices concern, I empty it and start again.

Sam tells me it’s not normal to eat only one thing per day. The way I explain it to Sam is in the way we have sex. “There are so many women to choose from,” I tell him, “but you only ever sleep with me.” So he tries to prove a point.

—

In his version, I am so upset by his infidelity that I do my best to leave as little meat for him as possible. The brisket is still baby pink when I lift it off the grill and onto my tongue. The marinade drips off the galbi, not yet roasted into a glaze. When I reach for the samgyupsal, Sam bats my chopsticks away. “Candace, what are you doing? That’s pork!”

Yes, I agree, confused. Pork is for eating.

“It’s still raw,” he says. “You’ll get sick.” To his horror, I eat it anyway.

Sam goes into crisis management mode. He calls to the ajumma to cancel the rest of our order. To prevent me from afflicting myself, he cooks the rest as fast as possible.

—

In my version, he finally decides to cook the right way. He jacks up the heat as high as it can go, and the fatty samgyupsal nearly goes up in flames. It’s done in seconds. I slam back mouthful after mouthful, washing it down with shots of soju.

—

In his version, Madeleine’s not flirty, just friendly. Sam joins the team one year after me, after a layoff at his previous startup, so our relationship isn’t yet known. Madeleine spends extra time walking him through the codebase and reviewing his documentation, but she’s just being a good onboarding buddy, just trying to help him find his footing.

A few weeks in, when our relationship is widely known, Madeleine continues to offer answers to any questions he might have, any at all. She can lend a helping hand, a listening ear if he needs it. Trouble in paradise? Tell me about it.

—

In my version, I am lying on my side in bed, facing the wall. Sam’s hand presses against the center of my back, right along my spine—something he does when he feels attached or tipsy. He drags his hand up and down the cotton of my shirt in a way that could be creepy or soothing. In a low voice he intones, “Come back to me.” He repeats this over and over, like a prayer. “Come back to me, Candace. Come back to me.”

In his version, I am asleep.

—

In his version, we were really happy for a really long time. He doesn’t know what went wrong at what point. Maybe it was that one time our team went to Topgolf to celebrate the new app update, and Madeleine got drunk and flirted with him while I fixated on the popcorn shrimp. Or maybe it was earlier, last year at his dad’s funeral repast, when we were inhaling ddukboki so spicy our ears turned red, and Sam, flipping through the guestbook, found an unfamiliar signature by someone named Shirley. It turned out to be his dad’s therapist, but you can never really know, can you.

Or was it even earlier, before Madeleine asked for debugging help, before his dad crashed the car, when our moms took us to Korea, and my aunt and female cousin, whom I hadn’t seen since I was seven, picked us up from the airport. My cousin had grown long-haired and slender, with a body that flattered clothes of every shape and size. Our moms exclaimed over how pretty she was. My aunt called Sam good-looking. She said I looked strong. We had soondubu for dinner, and Sam gave me all of his mussels because he knew I liked them. I piled the shells into my napkin, their uneaten contents hidden from view, and drank only broth.

The trip occurred one year into our relationship, after our moms, who learned they lived thirty minutes away from one another outside Seattle, became fast friends. Sam and I had met in our sophomore year at the University of Washington. We went to the same math office hours, stuck on the same problem, and when the answer finally unlocked in my brain, I explained it to him better than the teaching assistant could. That’s when Sam fell for me. He says he always thought I was pretty, a claim I can’t controvert, but we both know Sam has a penchant for finding the beauty in things, whether it’s a satisfyingly clear solution or the ugliest goat in the world.

Maybe, he thinks now, it was that day with the cousin and the soondubu. The day when he held my hand under the table and I pulled away because I swore that I’d seen him look my cousin up and down. He contemplates all of this aloud in the dark, when he thinks that I am dreaming.

—

In my version, he has always thought of me as something I’m not.

—

In his version, we go out for Korean barbecue often because it is the only circumstance in which I will eat more than one type of food, all encapsulated under the umbrella term. All the meats, but also the lettuce, and the perilla leaves, and the kimchi and other banchan as well. Sometimes he’ll add in a serving of soondubu and I’ll eat some of that, too. But mostly I eat the meat one slice after another in steaming, ravenous bites. And Sam ends up being the one to clear the banchan plates, scrape the soondubu stone pot, use up the lettuce.

He remembers my obsession starting a few months ago, when I was a bridesmaid in our friend’s wedding and I had the thickest limbs among the bridal party. The pictures prove it.

“Your arms are fine,” he insisted when we looked through the wedding photos. “Those women just have super thin arms. They look like twigs, like they could break with a touch. You’re more muscular.”

But I never asked to be strong.

—

In my version, I am eight years old at the kitchen table and my doenjangjjigae has gotten cold. The tofu slices are tasteless squares. The onions are slimy, the squash soggy; potatoes graze my spoon with their bald little nubs. Specks of soybean float along the surface of the cloudy soup.

I don’t want the soup, but my mom says this is what we have for dinner. I am bored and want to be excused, but my mom says you cannot leave until you finish all your food. I whine and lie down sideways on my chair between tiny sips of soup gone cold. My mom instructs me to sit properly. She tells me I don’t know how lucky I am, being able to eat all this food. When she was my age, she ate potato soup every day.

I point at the stew in front of me. I lift a potato on my spoon. We’re eating potato soup right now.

That’s not potato soup, my mom insists. Look at all that tofu and squash, taste that rich anchovy and doenjang in the broth.

I covertly raise my elbow above the table, bring it down on the edge of the soup bowl. Oops! Soup in my lap, soup on the floor, can’t eat it now.

The next day, I am only allowed to eat potato soup. Just potatoes and onions boiled with salt, the same soup in the same bowl every hour because I refuse to touch it. But I had upended last night’s dinner on the floor and now I’m hungry. I cry and now I’m thirsty. I am still at the table after dinnertime, when my parents watch TV in the living room.

I go to bed with a crumpled-up stomach and, when my parents’ light goes out, creep down to the kitchen pantry. I pull out the family-size pretzel bag and ram fistful after fistful into my mouth. I repeat the process with goldfish crackers, Froot Loops. I find the Oreos my mom hid behind the walnuts and peel them apart, scraping the cream off with my teeth. Then I press the cookies flat against my tongue and bite down.

—

In my version, when Sam finally drifts off to sleep, I slip out of bed and head to the kitchen. I pull out potato chips, Oreos, carrots and hummus, instant ramen, jellybeans. I crunch and crack and slurp and chew, every flavor puncturing every craving all at once. I whip up an omelet. I bake banana bread. I pick apart a rotisserie chicken. When I am done, I crawl back under the sheets and fall into a deep slumber.

When I walk into the kitchen the next morning to fill my water canister, Sam’s back is crouched, his head lodged in the open refrigerator. “Didn’t we have a whole chicken in here?” he asks from the nether regions of the fridge. “I could have sworn I left it in the second drawer.”

It doesn’t happen every night—not even often. But whenever it does, I swear to myself it’ll never happen again.

—

In his version, Korea is food heaven. Sam and his mom stay with his grandmother, and she feeds them homemade meals. Hand-pulled noodles and knife-cut noodles and cold buckwheat noodles. When they eat until they can eat no more, she takes them out to the food districts and orders fish-shaped waffles with red bean filling, shaved ice drizzled with condensed milk. They visit street stalls with ddukboki and odeng, the spicy sauce glistening on the rice cakes, the skewered fish cakes steaming with aromatic broth.

When we meet up to shop in Hongdae, or ride the rollercoasters at Lotte World, or check out the bars in Itaewon, the first thing he tells me is what food he’s eaten since he last saw me. The first thing he asks me is the customary Korean greeting, a remnant of the scarcity days when even plain white rice was a treat. “Have you eaten?”

—

In my version, Korea is full of women who worry they are overweight. K-pop companies have developed a formula that answers this question with honest mathematics. Subtract 120 from your height in centimeters. The result is your ideal weight in kilograms. If you are a woman of average American height, meaning 5 ’4, then your ideal weight is 163 – 120 = 43 kilograms, which is less than 95 pounds.

My cousin likely meets this ideal, likely because of her morning regimen. Every morning, my aunt mixes up a viscous concoction of ground almonds and pumpkin seeds, olive oil, hemp hearts, protein powder, and milk. At first I think the colorless sludge is my aunt’s own recipe, but in stilted English my cousin informs me that it’s a common health drink. My mother sits with them on the couch downing mugs of sludge spoonful by spoonful while watching morning dramas. Afterward, they will be nourished until dinnertime, when we will pig out on grilled intestines or blood sausage soup or cold buckwheat noodles. My aunt thrusts a mug toward me, saying, “It’ll help you lose some weight.” At some point over the years, “We have to fatten her up” became “She needs to slim down,” though I am unsure when this transition occurred.

I politely decline the proffered mug, preferring instead to walk to the nearest convenience store to wolf down a triangle kimbap. I find that in Seoul, a city of dependable public transit and vegetable-abundant meals, I walk so much and eat so healthily that even without the grain smoothie, I end up losing weight. I watch the numbers on the scale descend, emerging from the bathroom victorious, only to see my cousin’s slim frame and wonder at the difference a grain smoothie could make.

The following morning, I accept the mug. The mixture tastes gray and sticks to my throat. It is worse than eating only grapes for a whole day. I choke the flavorless porridge down with the morning drama as a distraction, but it only tastes worse seeing beautifully thin actresses consume steaming platters of food that never swell their bellies.

To make myself feel better, I count the number of times the lead actress swallows the bite she has taken. Over the course of five separate food scenes, the tally is still zero.

—

In his version, food is not something to be feared. Sam has had the same superhuman metabolism since the age of sixteen, regardless of whether he runs a marathon or codes at his desk all day.

“Is that all you’re eating?” he asks when he sees me pull out the grapes at lunchtime. “Aren’t you hungry?” He slaps together an enormous sandwich, eats it with chips, and washes it down with lemonade. In the afternoon: banana, protein bar, chocolate-covered pretzels, trail mix.

Me: grape, grape, grape, grape, grape.

—

In my version, while stuffing myself in the pantry late at night, I browse YouTube videos. Recommended for me are a smorgasbord of K-pop diets and exercise trends:

– i eat and workout like le sserafim for 3 days *INTENSE*
– kazuha’s COMPLETE 7 minute ab workout
– I tried BTS Jungkook’s ACTUAL workout & diet for a WEEK

One of the most renowned and replicated intakes is the diet of IU, a famed singer known for her natural good looks. She grew up in extreme poverty, at one point living apart from her parents in a studio apartment with her grandmother, cousin, and brother. Later, as one of the top-grossing K-pop idols, she would eat an apple for breakfast, two sweet potatoes for lunch, and a protein shake for dinner. In the replication thumbnails, protruding bellies are reduced to slim curves in Just One Week! Toward the end of her week, one YouTuber gnaws idly at a sweet potato. “I’m so sick of these,” she says, “I’m not even hungry anymore.”

—

In his version, I’ve changed.

“I don’t recognize you anymore,” he says when he finds me gnashing at a sweet potato twice a day, and I squeeze my stomach between my fingers and think, that makes two of us.

“That’s not what I mean,” he insists. “I mean, you’re fading. You don’t smile. You’re never happy.” And, when I think about it, I can’t remember the last time I laughed a laugh that wasn’t sharp and scathing.

—

In my version, I am relentlessly the same. My shoulders are too broad, arms too wide. Hips with dips, thighs that jiggle. Cankles and a double chin—I could live with one or the other, but having both is unbearable. Knobby kneecaps, asymmetrical nipples, one earlobe attached while the other hangs free. The skin on my elbows is flaky; the skin on my stomach creases. I imagine what it would be like to unzip my skin, remove some stuffing, and rearrange the rest until I am effortlessly hourglassy.

—

In his version, women are all naturally pretty. After work, we cuddle together on the couch, watching K-dramas, and I point out the work the actresses have had done.

“Nose job. Jaw reduction. Buccal fat removal. Nose job. Nose job.” Almost every one of them has gotten their eyes done.

“You sound like my mom,” Sam says.

Sam’s mom goes to Korea every year. Upon her return she raves to my mom and me about some new hair trend, skin treatment, plastic surgery procedure. “Miyoung, Candace, you have to try!” Without fail, she recommends her plastic surgeon to me for my monolids. “Quick and easy, Candace. Look what a nice shape he made mine.” Her eyes are bright and punctuated, the letter O scaled up. “They do it so often, it’s like nothing for them.”

“Don’t do it,” Sam tells me whenever his mom goes on about it. “I like your eyes.” He says that about everything, though, including all the updates his mom has made to her own body.

“I look younger, Sam, don’t I, with the facial laser treatment? How do you like my hair?”

“You look nice, Mom. You always do.”

—

In my version, to assuage the late-night cravings, I watch ASMR mukbang videos in bed, with headphones. A slim-faced woman sits before vast pans of spicy ramen, steaming dumplings, and cold, crunchy kimchi—a spread that could feed a family. She expertly draws up a loaded chopstickful of noodles and lifts it to her mouth. In one swift, satisfying slurp, they disappear between her prim lips. Pfffffffft.

A skilled mukbanger can clear the entire table in one sitting. To disprove allegations that they are spitting it out, mukbangers sometimes post two versions of the same video: the artfully edited one, and the full take, sped-up, to prove they chewed and swallowed every last bite.

Among the mukbang forums, there is a phenomenon known as vicarious satiation. In watching mukbangs, hungry viewers experience the sensation of eating without actually eating. By the end of the video, the viewer feels remarkably full.

The average mukbanger’s stomach is allegedly four times the size of the average person’s. This trained proportion accounts for how they can consume so much food in one sitting, but not how they do not gain weight. One theory is that they fast for three days before filming a mukbang, so that on average they are consuming the proper daily caloric intake. Another theory is that they binge and purge. While browsing mukbangs, I imagine the thin woman, who slurps noodles as easily as inhaling air onscreen, turning off the camera to kneel before a toilet, lift the seat, shove her fingers down her throat in a practiced rite of cleansing. The thought nauseates me enough that any residual hunger vanishes.

—

In his version, Sam finds me in the kitchen late one night after a mukbang backfired, afflicting me with a fierce craving for dumplings. When I opened the freezer to get the dumplings, I found our leftover pint of Ben & Jerry’s and decided to finish it up while the dumplings cooked. The sweet ice cream prompted the need for something spicy, so I opened a package of ramen, too. Afterward, of course, I needed some Oreos to finish off with something sweet again, and there was another carton of Ben & Jerry’s hidden behind the dumplings.

“Candace?” Sam stands in our bedroom doorway, squinting in the kitchen light. “What are you doing?”

I am using my ice cream spoon to spread Phish Food on an open-faced Oreo cookie, its other half tucked between my teeth. “Nothing,” I tell him. “Go back to bed.”

Sam rubs at his eyes to take closer stock of the countertops. He sees the ramen pot, the empty dumpling packet, the Oreos and ice cream. “Candace, are you eating a whole meal? This is why you’re not eating during the day.”

“Do you want some ice cream?”

Sam eyes me as I lick the spoon. “How often do you do this?”

“Just today,” I insist. “I was feeling a little hungry.”

But Sam isn’t listening anymore. He rifles through the trash and finds the canister of Pringles that went missing two nights ago, along with two packs of microwave popcorn and the container to his leftover Thai food. “This is where it’s all going. That rotisserie chicken—that was you too, wasn’t it?”

My ice cream-laden Oreo has gone blurry. I lift my face toward the ceiling and blink rapidly, but my mouth falls open and a wail pours out. “I’m disgusting,” I moan. “I’m a cow.”

“You’re not a cow,” Sam tells me, pulling me into his arms and stroking my hair. The Oreo in my hand smushes against his T-shirt. “You’re beautiful, okay? It’s gonna be fine. You’re not a cow.”

“No,” I agree finally, with some resentment, because no one ever complained about a cow having too much meat on its bones.

—

In my version, Sam becomes unbearable. I wake up to a plate of eggs and toast waiting on the table. “Eat up,” he says cheerily.

I poke at an egg until the yolk runs in a yellow river to the base of the toast-triangle mountain.

“Come on,” Sam urges, inhaling his own platter of eggs. “You need a balanced diet to feel better.”

But all I feel is the weight of the ramen and ice cream in my belly, dragging me down, and I can’t endure anything more than a bite of toast. When Sam’s back is turned, I empty the plate into the trash, and he whirls on me, suddenly furious. Something about food waste, and health, and knowing what’s best for me, and all I can think to say is, “You don’t know anything.”

The same exchange with his grilled chicken salad for lunch, penne all’arrabbiata for dinner. By nightfall, we are both exhausted.

“You’re killing yourself!” Sam yells in my face when he catches me in the pantry later that night. “Do you get that? You’re literally killing yourself.” He is gripping my wrist and it hurts and I’m crying.

“You hate me,” I insist. “I know. I can’t help it, I’m a failure.” And then he has to let go of my wrist and hug me and say he’s sorry, and this, too, is exhausting.

—

In his version, he did not come home after team-building drinks the night before, and he is deeply, regretfully sorry. I didn’t know about his escapade; I had left the bar early and fallen asleep. The guilt has been rattling inside him all day, so he fills me in right as we’re heading out to the Korean barbeque place.

It was a mistake, he acted without thinking. He was mad at me, upset he couldn’t get through to me, and there was Madeleine, and at the time it just seemed so simple, no motions to go through, no lines to recite, no “Your hips aren’t wide” or “Really, I like your arms” or “I think you’re beautiful, okay? Okay?”

No tears or I don’t believe you’s, no turning off the lights, no dipping hips or jiggling thighs, no belly pooch pressed up against his abdominals, just him and her entwined in the sheets, so simple, so freeing, but it wasn’t the same as it was with me, okay? It was a mistake, and he is so, so sorry, if he could take it back, he would.

—

In my version, it’s not so much surprising as inevitable. Of course Sam would catch the eye of some other woman. Of course, eventually, he would tire of me. Of course the other woman would be the prettier, skinnier version of me—not even a version, really, just better all around, complete with a fun, outgoing personality.

Of course it wasn’t the same as it was with me. Of course he chose to upgrade.

—

In his version, I am making up his version in my head.

“You don’t actually know what I think,” he tells me whenever I accuse him of thoughts he hasn’t voiced. “You never stop to hear what I actually have to say.”

“Maybe it’s because you act without thinking,” I tell him, “and actions speak louder than words.”

It is a statement he can’t oppose; Sam knows he is prone to impulsive decisions. Like that day during office hours, when he boxed his final answer and said, “Can I ask one more question? Do you have dinner plans?” Or a few weeks later, when we bumped into his friend on campus and Sam announced, unprompted and without discussion, that I was his girlfriend. Or a month ago, on our fourth anniversary, when we were walking home from dinner, full of rich food and also love, and he touched the inside of my wrist and said, “Candace, let’s get married.”

I never hold them against him, these spontaneous outbursts. If I could, I would choose to act without thinking, too. The only time when I can seem to not think is when I am eating. When I am shoving my arm into the aluminum creases of a Ruffles bag, fingers crusted with salt, consumed by the motion of hand to mouth, down and up, in and out. I figure the sensation must be somewhat akin to the way Sam felt tucking himself into the folds of Madeleine’s body.

—

In my version, it’s just another Saturday evening. We are driving home from the Korean barbeque place, arguing mundanely. “Why did you cancel that last platter of brisket?” I demand, and he replies, “Candace, you were eating literal raw meat.”

“I was not,” I insist, but as the words come out, they grow uncertain. When I recall the grill, I can only remember the movements of my arm: up and down, in and out, thrusting meat past my lips with focused intensity, focusing on not looking at Sam’s eyes or lips or hands, focusing on not hearing the words coming out of his mouth or thinking the thoughts that tear through my mind, in and out and up and down and low and slow—so slow, too slow, somehow the thought of them banging at brisket tempo is so much worse, so I speed it up as fast as possible, in and out and up and down and in and out

—

In his version, it’s called a break. When I wake up the next morning, he is dressed and seated on the edge of my side of the bed, watching me. There is a packed duffel at his feet.

“Some time apart might be good for us,” he says. “I think there are some things you need to work out on your own.”

—

In my version, it’s the end of the world.

“You’re the one who slept with her,” I point out, following him as he strides toward the apartment door, “and you’re the one who wants a break?”

“Candace—”

“I need to work things out? Maybe you need to get over your dad sleeping with his therapist.”

Sam yanks open the door without another word. He’s the silently fuming type.

“If you walk through that door,” I tell him, “we’re over.”

“Candace.” He speaks in even, measured tones that make me feel like a five-year-old and want to punch him in the mouth like one. “I don’t know how to deal with you when you’re like this.”

“You’ve dealt with me for four years.”

“You weren’t always this way.”

What he means is, you’re not like Madeleine. I have discovered someone like you but better, and she is not difficult to be with. She is, in fact, very easy to be with and she listens to what I have to say, plus she is prettier and skinnier.

It makes sense to me, his leaving. I would have been more surprised if he stayed with me. She’s got twig arms, I point out to him, spitting the words to distract from the fact that I’m crying. Thought you weren’t a fan of those.

Sam rubs his hand over his face. “This is the problem,” he says, as though the problem is me. “You don’t like me. You don’t even like yourself.”

“I like you, you jerk,” I shriek. “I like you, I love you, I need you.”

He’s laughing now, a laugh unconstrained and dialed up high, a mirthless hyena cackle.

“Why are you laughing?” I demand. Snot drips unbecomingly from my nose, and it suddenly seems cruel that he hasn’t left already, to spare me this embarrassment.

Sam’s brows are scrunched together—the same configuration as when he was laid off, or when the tongs slipped in his grip and he burned his finger on the grill, or at his dad’s funeral right before he cried. Still Sam laughs, gasping uncontrollably for air, his face so screwed up and ugly I can hardly stand to look at him. He draws enough breath to meet my stare and admit with wide-eyed terror, “Because I love you.” Then he yanks his duffel out to the hall and slams the door behind him.

—

In my version, I press frozen grapes to my swollen eyelids. I roll them one by one all over my puffy face before rolling them right into my mouth, where they numb my tongue until I can no longer feel anything.

—

In my version, I make my way one by one through all the contents of the refrigerator. The carrots, unskinned, pecked to their leafy ends. A whole watermelon administered by the teaspoon, seeds crunched between my teeth. A pack of string cheese drawn string by string, divided into ever smaller threads that melt on my tongue.

When the fridge is empty, I start on the pantry provisions. I pick each puffed grain off the rice cakes and press it against the roof of my mouth, waiting for it to dissolve. I take an hour to nibble an inch of licorice. I make deals with myself. If I lick all the dust off each Dorito, he’ll come back. If I take ten bites to eat each chip. Twenty. Thirty. If I finish the bag, he’ll come back. If I never finish, then he’ll return.

Day by day, ounce by ounce, I gnaw away at our supplies. When nothing is left, I eat nothing, guzzling water at my desk with the dawning realization that it was Sam who took the initiative to shop for groceries.

“You don’t look so good, Candace,” our manager observes in our virtual one-on-one. “Are you doing okay?”

“I have a bit of a headache,” I admit, though it’s the least of my problems. There is a gaping hole in my chest that I have been unable to fill with pretzel sticks, peanuts, Skittles, canned soup, or craisins in the past five days.

“Take the rest of the day off,” he encourages. “Come back when you’re feeling better.”

I sprawl on the couch in front of the TV for the rest of the afternoon and late into the night, counting the swallows of K-drama actresses until I fall asleep.

—

In my version, taking the day off is such an inspired idea that the next day I call in sick too.

—

I find that I am beginning to forget his version, if there ever was one, and the thought scares me. That maybe there was more to his version than I’d believed but now will never get to know. That maybe, if I’d been less consumed by the version in my head, the version I thought he wanted, there could have been a version we shared.

But in this version, I am alone. My head throbs and my chest is caving in. I gather the strength to drag myself to the bathroom, where I also fill my water bottle in the sink. I drift in and out of sleep, opening my eyes every so often to yet another actress taking a luxurious, unfinished bite, selecting a new K-drama series at random once the old one has run out.

—

I wake up with a sudden, gnawing urge for Korean barbeque. I haul myself to our usual restaurant, sit at our usual table, place our usual order. The ajumma eyes me warily. “You can eat all that?” she asks, and I nod, adding an extra plate of brisket for good measure.

When the plates come, I turn the range up as high as it can go, and the flames lick eagerly at the strips of meat, which transform from pink to brown, glistening with juices, crusted with char. And then I am piling piece after piece on my tongue, the heat too much to bear, my mouth ignited, but I don’t care. I eat and eat and eat until at some point everything tastes the same and nothing tastes good and I’m so full I will burst. My stomach must have shrunk in the past few days, or maybe Sam eats more than I thought, because there are still two platters to go. I grill them up and force them down, knowing it’s a mistake but unable to stop. I pile the slices in stacks of ten and shove them past my lips, cheeks crammed, teeth gnashing, an eating machine, all you can eat.

Midway through the last plate, I am gripped by a sudden, clenching pain in my stomach. I stumble to the bathroom and kneel before the toilet, heaving, but nothing comes out. When I try to stand, my stomach roils, and I sink back to my knees, clutching my gut. So it’s come to this, I think, and, at the same time: It cannot come to this.

Slowly, with shaking breaths, I clutch the toilet seat, shift my weight directly over the bowl. Shove my fingers down my throat.

—

I dream that I am a cow with four stomachs and can eat as much as I want. There is a pile of food before me, and I stuff my face with pretzels, vanilla wafers, bacon, Twix bars, salt and vinegar chips, green tea ice cream, raisins, Eggo waffles. I am halfway through a platter of brisket when I remember that in this dream I am a cow, and I try to regurgitate what I’ve consumed, but it has all gone down into the fourth and furthest stomach and cannot reverse. I feel ill; I’m sweating in my four legpits and there’s a terrible hammering in my skull, but the pounding is real, on the apartment door, and I scramble to sit up. The sun is long gone, the living room drenched in darkness. “Candace! Open the door!”

It’s my mom, all bustle, two grocery bags in each hand. With one deft swing, she hefts them all onto the counter. I’ve never noticed her arms before. They look strong.

“Why aren’t you answering your calls? Sam says you’ve called in sick for three days.”

I shrug and flop into the nearest kitchen chair. “He broke up with me.” My voice is ragged from retching.

“He says you’re on a break. What does that mean, a break?”

“He’s with Madeleine now.”

“What are you talking about? Who’s Madeleine? Sam’s at home with his mom. He asked me to check on you.”

I bury my head in my arms, press my cheek against the table’s cool surface.

My mom opens cabinets and doors. I can hear the whoosh of the refrigerator. “Candace, you have no food! Don’t tell me you’ve been eating takeout.”

“No,” I mutter through the drumming in my head. It is impossible to explain the state of the fridge. “No,” I repeat more loudly, the word reverberating against the table. My stomach is empty, stripped bare, but bile somehow rises to my throat. “Mom, I’m sick.”

There is a pause in the rustling as my mother looks me over. “You need a home-cooked meal,” she declares. The clang of pots and pans, the aroma of my mother’s cooking.

I lift my head after a minute, but probably more like twenty-five, to find myself facing down a bowl of doenjangjjigae. The squares of tofu pearly white, onions thinly sliced and sweet. Squash fork-tender, potatoes starchy and infused with full-bodied doenjang. Hot and savory and intoxicatingly spicy. “Eat up before it gets cold,” my mom urges. “얼른 먹어.” So I dip my spoon into the stew, lift it to my lips. The steam is warm and fragrant, soothing.

I take a sip. ■

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