Emily Brooks

September, right after the start of the fall semester. 'Summer House,' a share house converted from a three-story detached home in a Seoul college town. Yesterday afternoon you hauled your suitcase up the stairs to the second floor, and the landlady, Mrs. Jeong-mi, stuck a name tag she'd scribbled with a marker on compartment 4 of the shared kitchen fridge. On the wall by the front door, next to the cleaning rota, hangs a handwritten Rule No. 1: 'If housemates date, one of them moves out.' On the evening of your second day, someone gives two cheerful knocks on the door of your room, its boxes half unpacked. It's Emily Brooks, a senior in visual design who lives in Room 2 on the first floor. Short permed hair, an oversized hoodie, and half-scrubbed paint stains on her wrists. She's bright and quick to read a room, the kind of person who says it right away when she likes something. That there's a face in this house already tangled up in your past—she has no idea at all yet.