Maybe it began the moment she first laid eyes on the neither large nor menacing-looking Su-ho. Or the moment he looked to her less like someone who would drive another person to kill themselves and more like the kind of coward who would go into hysterics upon witnessing a death. Maybe it was the moment she saw his filthy habit of spitting on the ground all the time, just as she’d imagined he would. Or when she realized it was unfair to blame everything on him. Or, maybe it began after she’d felt the unfamiliar thrill that comes only when you amplify your malice.
Truth is, all of it was the starting point. Those scattered moments had somehow converged, each point forming a line that surrounded Se-oh to reach this current moment.
For Se-oh, evil intent was like a weapon that was simultaneously hot yet cold, hard yet soft, sharp yet blunt, heavy yet light. Her heart would boil as hot as a blast furnace then cool to ice, a rapidly increasing cycle spurred on by the core of that malice.
Se-oh’s bad intention was the hammer she’d found in #157. If she were to put it to use, it would be for its blunt force. She hadn’t known at first what she might use it for, but the hammer had found its own use. To keep herself from immediately wielding it, she sometimes had to convince herself that the time was not quite right, but the opportunity was coming, and wouldn’t be long now.
If she were to swing that hammer, there was no question she would aim for the brain. It was the perfect target for a single strike. As organs go, the brain had such a high rate of fatality. It was much more likely to result in immediate death than a blow to the heart.
Of course, she could aim elsewhere. Like the back or chest, whose larger surface areas offered a higher probability of not missing, or the arms or legs, which she could still easily hit while swinging wildly. Even if all she did was put him in a hospital bed for a month, that would be enough. Assuming, of course, that she’d be content with only breaking a few veins or capillaries. Certainly not if her intention was to kill.
The brain’s surface area is equal to about a single sheet of newspaper and takes up no more than 2 percent of the average adult’s body weight, or about 3.3 pounds. That small organ can control a person who stands over five and a half feet tall. It tells them to eat, to take the bus, to hold a grudge, to hate, and to make decisions both monumental and trivial that change their lives. It cheats and lies and placates and clings. It threatens and blackmails and violates and commands. It fills a man’s mind with thoughts of death and compels him to take his own life.
Carbon monoxide, or even just too much cigarette smoke, attacks the brain first, damaging the tissue by depriving it of oxygen. The brain is particularly vulnerable to heat. As Se-oh struggled to imagine the agony of a brain, a body, a home, a world being wrapped in flames, she tightened her grip on the hammer.
Her task was clear. To bring the hammer down hard on something.
Ssshhh.
The air made a vicious sound as the hammer punched through it. The sound alone had enough force to rattle a brain.
A few more practice swings, and Se-oh knew that raising her arm overhead and bringing it down fast and hard generated the most force. But to aim for his brain, she would have to be taller than Su-ho. She wasn’t, which meant a single blow wouldn’t be fatal. He would fight back hard against this unexplained attack. She would have to swing the hammer and run like hell, or else find herself caught.
After watching Su-ho come out of the debtor’s house and spit on the ground again, Se-oh turned to head for the subway station. Soon, she heard him behind her; then he was overtaking her, his pace much faster than hers.
She lost him in the crowd of commuters heading home. She’d grown careless, having been to the same location several times before. But she had her guesses as to where he’d go next. The row of restaurants along the main road. He was a regular there.
She checked one after the other. No sign of him. Keeping up with him was one thing, but guessing when he was hungry or what he wanted to eat was another thing entirely. She headed back toward the station and spotted him. He was sitting in a noodle shop, staring blankly at the television mounted to the wall, waiting for his food. It was the first time he’d gone to that particular restaurant.
Finding him this time had had nothing to do with the statistics or probabilities that she’d calculated from her painstaking observations. It was simply dumb luck. Realizing that made her want to end it now. Why drag it out any longer, when she could just bash him over the head with the hammer she kept in her bag as he was exiting the restaurant? It would happen so fast, he’d be unable to defend himself. It wasn’t unusual to be attacked by a complete stranger in a crowded place.
But she couldn’t. This task, it was akin to an inevitability, or a duty. She had to curb her impulses until the time was right. A mere impulse could not possibly contain all of the fury and hatred that she felt. She would find a better method than the hammer. And she would gladly keep company with malice until she did.
Malice gave Se-oh something to do. It swept away her grief and lifted her out of bed in the morning. It gave her energy and got her moving. It fed her and kept her going from place to place instead of lying in bed all day. It enabled her to live simply, and without complaints, in the cramped goshiwon room barely big enough to hold a twin bed and a small desk. It helped her endure the hot nights in that windowless room where she would lay still so as not to make a sound. It got her through the hours spent never talking to another soul. And it kept her from returning to the ashes of #157.
Se-oh left Su-ho at the restaurant and walked slowly back to the station. There was only one entrance. If she hid among the crowd, she could wait for him unseen and ride back on the subway with him. She was not alone. No matter the time or place, Su-ho was with her.
Sometimes she thought about attacking Su-ho so much that she wondered if it hadn’t already happened. She had trouble distinguishing between it and things that had actually taken place. It was the future, and yet it felt like the past. The way she saw it in her mind was so concrete and clear and detailed that she questioned whether she was truly picturing something that hadn’t happened or was in fact recalling something that had, even though all she had to go on was speculation and wild leaps rather than known facts or self-evident cause and effect. The very lack of logic or validation had dug in deep. Se-oh was way past being able to tell the difference.
13
Contrary to its name, Sunshine Goshiwon was buried at the farthest end of the alley where no sunlight could reach. It being summer, the shade would probably keep the inside cool, but come winter, it would be unbearably frigid. The building was so old that the paint was flaking off in great, flapping strips, as if someone had plastered the walls with flyers. The foundation stone was so worn down that the date of construction was no longer legible. The windows in the landing were all smashed out; on stormy days, the stairs and corridors would flood. Taped over the name of the grilled tripe restaurant on the ground floor was a For Lease sign. The windows on the second and third floors were blocked out with black paper. The goshiwon was on the fourth floor.
Ki-jeong dialed the phone number posted at the first-floor entrance.
“Sunshine.”
“Is this the goshiwon?”
“Yes, this is Sunshine.”
“I’d like to check out a room.”
“One hundred or one hundred thirty at three hundred.”
“Excuse me?”
“The deposit’s three hundred thousand won. Rent is one hundred thousand for no window, or one hundred thirty thousand for a window.”
“Oh, wow.”
“It’s the cheapest you’ll find around here. As you probably know, for a place like this—”
“It’s not that. I was surprised at how cheap it is.”
“Too cheap for you? Then take the one thirty room. The cheaper one is a bit much, even for me. It’s best to just think of it as a patch of ground and a roof over your head. When do you need to move in?”
“Well,
I’d like to see the room in person first.”
“Goshiwon are all the same. I’m sure it’s no different from the last place you saw. And anyway, I don’t have an empty room for you to look at.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re third on the waiting list. A room will open up in about two months. Maybe sooner. Nowadays everyone comes and goes so quickly, you never can tell. So, joining us? What’s your name?”
Ki-jeong hung up. She wasn’t shocked that such a cheap place existed. It was the way the woman had asked, “Joining us?” The tone of the woman’s voice scared her. It seemed to say that once Ki-jeong was in she would never get back out again.
Ki-jeong hadn’t sought this quest; the quest had come to her. She couldn’t even be sure whether it was for her sister’s sake at all. It might be, and it might not be. How could Ki-jeong assume that her sister would want her poking around, asking questions, looking for the person her sister had been trying to contact? She’d started it in order to shake off the guilt of knowing her sister had died alone, to escape the thoughts that tormented her. And she’d wanted to distance herself from anything that reminded her of her current situation, whatever it took. She wanted to distance herself from Do-jun’s rage. Nothing filled that empty space better than her sister.
It was hard to wrap her brain around Do-jun. He kept sending her text messages filled with profanities. After a while, every time she got a pornographic spam text with a dirty photo attached, or a text advertising low-interest loans, or sales ads for shopping sites she’d never registered for, or text messages with phone numbers for designated-driver-for-hire services that came at all hours, day and night, she obsessed over the idea that Do-jun had somehow sent them to her.
Every time she left her apartment building, Do-jun was there, glaring at her from a distance, before walking away. Even when he should have been in class, there he was. He left rocks and crushed soda cans in her mailbox. He banged on her apartment door in the middle of the night and shouted outside her window, waking her.
If she’d stopped for a second to ask herself how Do-jun could possibly have sent so many different spam texts, or figured out the code to get into her apartment building and access her mailbox, or loiter in front of her building in the middle of a school day, she would’ve realized that her suspicions were full of holes. But she did not ask. Everything bad that happened to her, she pinned on Do-jun.
She got angry at first. It was all so melodramatic—Do-jun’s resentment, his victim mentality, and the hatred and anger that came from it. He couldn’t imagine that he would ever be treated unfairly. Such a typical spoiled child, overprotected, never met a single obstacle in his life.
After a while, she took a hard look at herself. She’d gotten a lot of things wrong. Using grades as a way to keep kids in line, skimming their essays because the content was invariably predictable and boring, scoring their work based on their attitudes or personalities, and thus grading them according to her own assumptions or prejudices rather than their individual efforts or achievements, never failing to scold or sound sarcastic when she spoke to them, letting their stories and explanations go in one ear and out the other, being stingy with praise and questioning their intentions, not bothering to conceal from them how exhausted the work made her.
Ki-jeong had been put through enough. She was the one who’d ended up punished, not him. Her punishment had been socially sanctioned, unlike the lashing she'd given him. But if she hadn't taken the matter into her own hands, as it were, she would have had no other recourse. Just like that, Do-jun was made the victim and got off scot-free.
Was hitting a student a couple of times—for educational purposes, of course—really so much worse than intentionally getting a teacher in trouble? Maybe in some cases it was. Ki-jeong knew the real problem was the malice behind her actions. It was whenever she managed to quiet her frustration that she recalled the thrill she’d felt while hitting Do-jun. She understood that was why she had to be disciplined. Bad thoughts were pungent, like garlic or ginger. Once the smell was on you, you couldn’t hide it.
If she apologized sincerely, would she be forgiven? But how could she be sincere when she didn’t know what she’d done wrong? Would she feel better once the child’s anger had subsided? Would she feel like her life was starting over fresh?
Even if she tried to apologize, Do-jun would just ignore her. She’d bumped into him a while back and loudly called out his name. He’d glanced over his shoulder but kept going. She had run after him in desperation. Not to get angry at him, she told herself, though her urgent pursuit had every semblance of anger. If she couldn’t close the distance between them, she would never get the chance to talk to him.
After Do-jun had run so far from her that she couldn’t catch him, she breathed freely again. It was a good thing she couldn’t speak to him. She felt relieved not to give him the impression that everything was resolved. It was only fair for him to live in a world of resentment, where he blamed everyone else, and where someone hated him. No one else had done that to him. He’d brought it on himself.
But she couldn’t really convince herself of that. The opportunity for reconciliation had been lost. She didn’t know whether it was she or Do-jun who’d misplaced it. She just wanted to run from everything. But she couldn’t move away or change her phone number, or else she’d have to tell her mother what had happened, and she wasn’t ready to do that. Once her mother found out, there would be no consoling her. The idea of her daughter, her sole pride and joy, possibly never recovering from the blow to her career would fill her with despair, and she would genuinely dread that outcome. She might even say to Ki-jeong, “You’ll turn out just like her.” Ki-jeong, too, feared that she would fail and her life would amount to nothing, “just like her.”
Ki-jeong had been in middle school the first time she met her newborn baby sister. Their meeting took place at the mistress’s house. The thought of her mother at home alone kept Ki-jeong from being affectionate. Instead, she channeled her mother’s hatred and contempt for the infant. She could sense how much pain her half-sister was causing her mother. Her father looked happy. The baby kept on smiling and innocently sucking on its fingers and sometimes its toes, babbling something unintelligible. It was adorable. The baby gave her a vague understanding of how life was made up of ambivalent things.
Ki-jeong never wanted her parents to be angry at her, so she always asked first what they wanted from her. She reduced conflict by putting their expectations before her own desires. Sometimes she asked simply because she didn’t know what she wanted.
Her sister’s life had seemed preferable to hers in some ways. From early on, her sister had had a knack for disregarding whatever she didn’t want to deal with. She never tried to win Ki-jeong’s mother’s love, nor did she seem particularly troubled by its absence. Ki-jeong suffered constantly from her own neediness for her mother’s affection, despite the unremitting love and care she received from her, but her sister suffered no such luxury.
Ki-jeong was forever anxious and worried, despite her highly conscientious and organized lifestyle; meanwhile, her younger sister had always been quiet yet brave, relaxed despite having nothing, able to fly by the seat of her pants in the face of an uncertain future. What made her sister that way? What would drive a sister like that to kill herself? And would this Se-oh Yun person be able to provide answers to these belated questions?
Ki-jeong had gotten hopelessly lost while searching for #157. The alleyways all looked so similar, and none of the houses displayed their street addresses. As she made yet another round of the neighborhood, Ki-jeong suppressed the desire to give up and go home. She told herself this visit would bring an end to her search. The problem being, she didn’t know what she was hoping to find.
After dropping in to a real estate office to double-check the location, she finally found it, and understood at once why the real estate agent had looked so guarded when she’d asked about #157. Ki-jeong went back to the office to ask
what had happened, but the agent wouldn’t tell her. That was strange. Weren’t people usually eager to gossip about misfortune? Perhaps whatever had happened at #157 was too serious to allow for that kind of frivolity.
She was at a loss. All she had accomplished was verifying that she’d once again failed to find Se-oh Yun. She slowly made her way back through the maze of alleys. She’d thought she was nearing the end of her search, but it hadn’t even started yet. How was she to begin?
The police officer in charge of her sister’s case scolded her, saying he’d warned her there was no point in searching. Ki-jeong stared back undaunted. As if he had personally spirited Se-oh Yun away from #157. He grimaced with impatience and muttered about how busy he was.
There was one place she thought of that could help find people when the police wouldn’t. She hesitated over whether to make the call, but the process turned out to be simpler than she’d thought. She didn’t even have to go in person. She simply explained the situation over the phone and wired a deposit.
“No problem,” the employee said. “We’ll get on this right away.”
Of course, it didn’t go quite as promised. The employee called back to say it was a tougher case than they’d thought. There were no cell phone accounts or credit card bills or Internet search histories to be found.
Ki-jeong assumed this part was a formality. The harder the search, the higher the fee, after all. They wouldn’t be satisfied unless they could claim that even the easiest of jobs was difficult. Being new to this, Ki-jeong was very nervous about getting cheated. But she’d already paid the deposit, and so each time the employee mentioned an additional fee, she hesitated a little and then logged on to her online bank account again.
The Law of Lines Page 8