After leaving the pyramid, he spent the next two years focused solely on saving up money. He managed it through a combination of resourcefulness, patience, and stamina. After working the graveyard shifts in convenience stores, at gas stations, and on apartment construction sites, he made enough to reapply to medical school and was accepted to a school in J—, a town he’d never set foot in before.
Sometime after their chance meeting, Bu-wi saw Ha-jeong again. This time it was planned. They chatted briefly on a bench in the garden behind the medical school before Bu-wi had to rush off to his part-time job. Undeterred, Ha-jeong kept offering to make the long trip out to J—again, just to see him. Bu-wi had asked her how Se-oh was doing. The fact that he’d offered to help Se-oh pricked at his conscience.
Ha-jeong had remembered seeing Se-oh when she risked returning to the training center to find Bu-wi. Up until that point, she’d assumed that Se-oh and Bu-wi left together. Se-oh had asked Ha-jeong if she’d heard from him, and she’d answered, “Wasn’t he with you?”
Bu-wi had told Ki-jeong he was shocked to hear that Se-oh had looked for him. He struck Ki-jeong as cheerful, strong-willed, and resourceful, but so busy worrying only about himself that he paid little attention to other people’s feelings.
Bu-wi was further surprised to hear that Ki-jeong’s sister had stayed for several more months after he left. He thought she was only working there because of him. Se-oh felt maybe she knew why Ha-jeong had stayed. It was probably for the same reasons she herself had stayed after Mi-yeon left.
Ki-jeong finished her long story and handed Se-oh a slip of paper with a phone number written on it. It was Bu-wi’s. Se-oh took the note and traced the numbers as if to imprint them into her fingertips.
“Bu-wi was really shocked to hear that my sister killed herself. He said it didn’t make sense, and that they had plans to meet again in J—before the semester started. Obviously, my sister never showed. He also said she’d been studying for the civil service exam for a long time, and that she must have quit school and studied for the exam while working part-time. He said she probably didn’t tell her loved ones because she felt bad about it.”
Loved ones. The term felt so unfamiliar coming out of Ki-jeong’s mouth that she instantly stopped talking. Never once had she associated that term with her sister.
After meeting Bu-wi, she’d changed her mind about her sister. She was pretty certain she hadn’t committed suicide. The police said it was difficult to tell, but Ki-jeong knew that if she had only known her sister a tiny bit better from the start, then she might have been able to determine the true cause of her death. Because she could do nothing, Ki-jeong had ended it there. But at least now she knew that her sister hadn’t simply clung to her past failures.
“Could I see you again sometime?” Ki-jeong asked, as she stood to leave.
Se-oh quietly answered, “Yes.”
Se-oh wondered if that question was Ki-jeong’s way of saying goodbye or of apologizing for bursting in on her. Death made those left behind suffer; did struggling to understand it help a little? Not because you’d suffered enough and were lonely, but because you’d come to accept the fact that nothing would ever lessen the pain.
Right before stepping out of the room, Ki-jeong asked, “Did Bu-wi like Ha-jeong back?” It looked like the question had just occurred to her.
Se-oh answered without hesitation, “Yes, he did.”
Ki-jeong nodded and closed the door behind her. Se-oh did not follow. She didn’t watch Ki-jeong walk down the narrow hallway, past the grilled tripe restaurant that was still for lease, past the karaoke bar with its flashing neon sign, and out to the main street. She didn’t listen as Ki-jeong’s footsteps grew faint. She didn’t stare at the crooked chair that Ki-jeong had sat in.
She hadn’t told her the truth about Ha-jeong. Because she knew nothing about her. Saying that Ki-jeong could come see her again was a lie. As was her saying that Bu-wi had liked Ha-jeong back. From what she remembered, Ha-jeong had had a crush on Bu-wi and followed him around everywhere, but Bu-wi had not liked her back.
She didn’t tell Ki-jeong that they were in the same position. She didn’t tell her she often imagined her father’s final moments, made conjectures, reconstructed events. She didn’t admit that she had ignored the state of things right up until her father’s death. She didn’t say that, like Ki-jeong, the moment the accident happened, she too assumed the cause of death was suicide. Because, unlike Ki-jeong, she had never attempted to dig deeper into her father’s death. All that mattered to Se-oh was the person responsible for it.
Se-oh wondered if maybe Ki-jeong should have waited a bit longer to meet her and Bu-wi. As long as her search for them kept her moving, she could have postponed having to say goodbye to her sister. But Ki-jeong had missed her chance. Now she had to accept her sister’s death as an irrefutable fact. The tension would have continued unabated right up until she found Se-oh and Bu-wi. The strange cohabitation with a dead sibling. That was all over now.
Soon that would be Se-oh’s life. Once her work was complete, the will to live that had been held in place only by imagining the plan and its execution would flee from her completely.
27
Su-ho was in the grips of an unusual fatigue that would not release him anytime soon. Ki-in Ku’s daughter had died. There were various reasons for this. And why wouldn’t there be? If the cause of death was disease, then there might be hereditary, physiological factors, and if it was an accident, then there would be any number of coincidences all tangled together.
But Su-ho knew the real reason. It was money. Money had turned Ki-in’s daughter’s bright future dark and gloomy. He could name ten different examples of this, including himself. He had tried so hard to defy the stereotype of undereducated men raised by poor single mothers. Now he wondered why he’d bothered. Better to have never dreamed of a life spent wearing a nice suit.
Ki-in Ku had always been poor, and so he must have thought that poverty couldn’t possibly come knocking at his door anew. But he was wrong. Once poverty knows your face, it never stops knocking. It makes you feel that the longer you live, the greater your debt will grow.
Not understanding the basic causes that had brought him to this point was Ki-in’s biggest problem. Ki-in, who should have been busy mourning his daughter at the funeral home, had come instead all the way to Su-ho’s workplace because he wanted to find an acceptable reason for his daughter’s sudden death. Something other than money or an incompetent father. What he found was Su-ho.
Ki-in kicked the glass door and called out Su-ho’s name along with a string of profanities.
On his way past Su-ho’s desk to his own, the team leader clucked his tongue loudly enough for everyone to hear and muttered, “Stupid son of a bitch, what a disgrace. How hard did you push him? What’re you, an executioner now? Have you no shame? How many times do we have to go through this? I asked you to collect debts, not kill anyone.”
It wasn’t clear whether the disgrace was Ki-in or Su-ho. Security arrived. As usual, they moved fast. It felt terribly slow to Su-ho, though. The security guards grabbed Ki-in in his black funeral suit. Ki-in cried so hard that he lost control of his body and bent over at the waist, keening. The guards dragged him out. Su-ho watched until he was gone. He watched Ki-in wail and fall to the floor, watched him get thrown into an elevator, watched him beat on the elevator doors as they tried to close until he lost all strength and collapsed, watched him make a spectacle of himself to everyone passing by in the hallway.
Su-ho stole glances at the team leader. As usual, he was wearing a suit perfectly tailored to fit him in the shoulders. Compared to Su-ho’s suit, which grew shabbier by the day, his suit grew sharper by the day. Why was that? And why was Su-ho still unable to buy himself a single decent suit despite working so hard? He wasn’t some mafia thug beating people up for pay, or a street hustler fleecing people of their money, or a common thief stealing it outright. All he did was go around and collect money th
at had been loaned to others, and in return a minuscule portion of the money he worked so hard to retrieve went to his paycheck. He showed up for work early every morning, made his tiring rounds outside the office, stayed after hours to work, and even worked on his days off, and yet he was still only scraping by, all while being cussed out and threatened by debtors. He worked his ass off trying to get people to pay their debts, and yet here he was, being treated like a thief, or worse, seen as a killer? His coworkers and even the team leader, who’d taught him everything he knew, looked at Su-ho like he was a murderer, or if not that extreme, then like he was a disgusting beast, or a hideous monster.
The same thing had happened to him last spring. Su-ho was still fairly new to the job at the time. A gas line exploded at the house of a debtor whose next payment was due. He had taken over the client from the team leader only a week prior. The police said at first that it was suicide; later they walked it back, saying there was a chance the explosion was accidental, but Su-ho was still questioned by the police several times. “Well, that sucks. He blew himself up before you could get your money,” was all the team leader had to say about it. He didn’t rest a comforting hand on Su-ho’s shoulder or offer him a handkerchief or go to the police station for questioning in his place. For a while, he even stopped eating with Su-ho or joking around with him. He acted as if Su-ho had personally detonated the gas line.
Su-ho sprang out of his seat so fast that he made himself dizzy. It felt less like he’d stood of his own accord and more like something had shoved him up out of his chair. He had no idea what to do now that he was standing. His coworkers gave him the side-eye as they went about doing their work or taking calls or chatting with each other, all while properly seated. Su-ho remained standing and took a long, hard look at his life. What had happened that he should end up here? And what had made him jump out of his seat just now?
It wasn’t the first time he’d felt this way. When he’d heard about the gas explosion, he was so afraid the person was going to die that he couldn’t bring himself to visit him in the hospital. He’d gone to the team leader for advice, but all he was told was, “It’s your account now, so kill him, save him, I don’t care, just figure it out.”
He could quit anytime. He could start over anytime. And so he kept going. If nothing else, he felt okay as long as he was working. Sometimes he even got a weird thrill from bullying people and making them shake in their boots. But Su-ho knew they didn’t respond that way because he had any real authority; they were simply afraid of getting beat up. Su-ho’s problem was that he knew this but was powerless to change it.
Su-ho approached the team leader, who’d long since lost all interest in the matter. The team leader paused in the middle of talking and laughing at someone on the phone to stare at Su-ho. His face hardened as he hung up. Then he jerked his chin at him to ask what he wanted. Su-ho clasped his hands together tightly to hide how hard he was shaking.
“What do you want?”
Su-ho swallowed hard. He was as unsure why he was standing in front of the team leader as he had been a moment earlier when he’d jumped out of his chair. The moment he’d heard Ki-in Ku start to weep and wail, he had wanted to break free from the monster he had become. All he’d wanted was to make a little money, but the cost was too high.
The team leader’s eyes bored into him. Su-ho had to say something. His mouth wouldn’t open. He dropped his head. The team leader seized that moment.
“Bring me a report of your collection rate from last month.”
“Sir?”
“Now, dumbass!”
The team leader’s eyes were nearly bulging out of his head. Su-ho took one look and realized that he’d gone too far and maybe the only way out now was to just keep going. He had no idea what lay ahead of him, but at least he knew what was behind him. If he couldn’t pay back the money he’d borrowed to get an apartment, then someone else from this same office would come to kick at his front door. Perhaps the one ringing his doorbell would be the team leader. He hadn’t personally experienced that kind of suffering yet, but it was easy enough to imagine.
“Ah, okay, yes, sir.”
The team leader’s face softened and warmed at Su-ho’s obedient response. Just how many faces did the man have anyway? Which was his real face? Su-ho met the team leader’s eyes and quickly looked away for fear he would think Su-ho was staring at him. He felt that if he looked the team leader in the eyes for too long he might wet his pants.
The team leader had filled him with fear on multiple occasions, but never as badly as when he smiled warmly at him. In that moment, the team leader was money, was business suits, was the future. Su-ho never once forgot the many things weighing so very heavily on his shoulders.
28
The afternoon was filled with things so mundane that it would take effort to remember them. Se-oh was busy enough to not brood over the task awaiting her that night, and yet not so busy that she couldn’t listen in on Wu-sul and Jae-hyung’s silly jokes. Nevertheless, a scene kept repeating itself inside her mind. Each time it started over, her face hardened and she grew tense.
On her way out at the end of the day, she said to Wu-sul, “I’m leaving now.” To Jae-hyung, she waved and said, “Take care.” Just as she had every day that she’d worked there.
“Should I not take care?” Wu-sul said with a laugh.
Other days, he’d tried to get her to talk more by saying, “That’s the first thing you’ve said all day,” or added something pointless, like, “Go straight home now.” Sometimes, to try to get her to smile, he’d asked where she was headed.
This time, when she picked up the pile of empty boxes to take with her, Wu-sul said, “That old lady is working our Se-oh too hard. She should just call a moving company.”
Se-oh didn’t tell him she was the one who’d volunteered to help. Nor did she tell him it had to be today.
Another family had moved out of the tenement flats the previous weekend. Now only #101 was left. On top of which, Wu-sul had delivered another order of eel to her yesterday. The lady would have spent the entire day simmering it on the stove. When her son got home, she would heat up a bowl of boiled eel for him, and he would eat his late supper in that moist, hot, reeking air.
Nothing was ever certain, of course. Including Su-ho’s schedule. She’d spent months tracking the times he came and went. During the week, he usually didn’t come home until close to midnight, and an early night for him was still 10:00 p.m. at best. Supposedly he always ate dinner at home on the nights that his mother boiled eel for him, but there was no guarantee it would really happen.
She might even bump into Su-ho. She might greet him as he stepped through the door ahead of schedule, and get flustered and leave #101 without doing anything. Or panic and rush to put her plan into action. The plan in which blue sparks would flare and blossom and everything would vanish in a second. Not even Se-oh would make it out safely.
That thought didn’t slow her down, though. She was already as good as dead. She’d died when #157 went up in flames. Since then she’d been a living fossil. Her body had been buried in time. Even if she were to survive this day and be given a new future, that future Se-oh would be no different.
Se-oh hesitated briefly on her way out of the grocery store. She wanted to linger there a bit longer, in that place where Wu-sul and Jae-hyung chatted, laughed often, frowned sometimes, and worried about the future without a trace of pessimism. When she was with them, she found herself wanting to live right. Ordinary tasks and routines made life fun. The two of them taught Se-oh that people are not each other’s capital. People existed in diverse forms. It wasn’t all good, and it wasn’t all bad. There were good times, and there were bad times. Sometimes you could rely on others, and sometimes they disappointed you. Sometimes they filled you with joy, and sometimes they made you angry. That’s what normal relationships were.
It all went away the moment the door closed behind her. The world in which she had existed with them was
already in the past. Se-oh turned to take one last glance. Wu-sul and Jae-hyung looked very far away.
Tomorrow would find Se-oh gone from this place. She would not go to the park in the morning. She would not watch the old people exercise. She would not trace the arc of shuttlecocks flying through the air. She would not press her back to a wall to hide. She would not wait for the smell of eel and freshwater fish. She would not follow someone with her shoulders hunched.
There would also be no more opportunities to listen to Wu-sul and Jae-hyung’s small talk, which was entirely pointless and yet made daily life worth living. She would no longer pretend she wasn’t listening only to end up chuckling along. She would not share any more warm, simple meals with them. Conversation would vanish, along with friendly words of comfort and easy smiles. Se-oh was receding from the world of the living. Once she was gone, she would finally ask herself, What on earth had she done with her life?
29
Before redevelopment began, the entire neighborhood had been packed with multi-family flats. The landlords lived on the top floors and filled the lower floors with as many renters as they could. They were called landlords, but they were no better off than their tenants: they lived in fear of tenants moving out before their contracts were up, and then in fear of not being able to find new ones. When the co-op was formed and the plans for redevelopment began to take shape, the tenement dwellers gathered every chance they could, renters and landlords alike, to bemoan their situation, their talk filled with words like variable interest rates, home loans, land valuations, additional contributions, premiums.
Every weekend and every holiday, Su-ho would leave for work in the morning to find his neighbors gathered on the stoop, worrying together about moving and about housing prices. The neighbors who used to respond to his morning greetings by asking after his mother’s health or whether he’d looked into moving yet were now all gone. Most had left for other tenement flats on the outskirts of the city.
The Law of Lines Page 18