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H. K. O'HARA
any Korean Birthday Card Rules she might have broken. She told me
what had happened, but she never mentioned your name—and when I
asked her to send me the card, so I could see if there was anything on it
that might have been misunderstood, she said she couldn’t because your
name was on it and she thought it best to keep it to herself. I’ll tell you,
I had to promise my life away to get it out of her. And when I finally
saw that card, just imagine how surprised I was when I discovered the
name she was protecting was yours.”
“Well, why didn’t you tell me you knew her? If I had known she was
your friend, I wouldn’t have deleted her.”
“So, being my friend makes her a valuable person? And not being
my friend makes her worthless?”
“No. No, that’s not what I’m saying at all.”
“The people on the other side of those delete buttons, Soo-kang, are
real people. They have feelings, just like you have feelings. I would
have loved to have given her a reason why you might have been offended by a harmless birthday card. But for the life of me, I can’t figure
it out, so I thought you might like to tell her yourself—since you’re the
only one who really knows.”
“So the real reason you asked me to come here today was to apologize to her? Which, of course, I will do. I just want to make sure I’m
hearing you right.”
“You’re a good person, Soo-kang. To just throw someone off your
friends list like that isn’t something I can even imagine you doing. Deleting a card from your profile page is no big deal—everyone cleans up
their pages. But the other part of it is so . . . harsh. And that isn’t you.
Not to say that your slate is completely clean, but I have never known
you to be flagrantly cruel. So, no, I didn’t ask you here to apologize to
her. I asked you here so you would have the opportunity to make things
right, because that’s who you are—the person who would make things
right if he knew his actions had harmed someone; someone whose gesture of kindness should have been valued, not thrown away.”
“Okay,” said Soo-kang, “I’ll stop trying to put it all on you. I’m the
one who did it and I’m the one who will make it right. I’ll go down there
