by Mi-ae Seo
The room was so sealed that it seemed even air would get locked up within, and a person with claustrophobia would have felt stifled the moment he walked into the room. Seonkyeong felt as if her breath were growing quicker and shallower.
The guard who had gone to fetch Yi Byeongdo did not return promptly. Five minutes passed, turning into ten.
Seonkyeong looked anxiously at her watch and around the room, and sat down on the chair facing the door. Looking at the empty chair beyond the table, she pictured Yi Byeongdo sitting there. Then she realized that she was on the inner side of the room. If he stood and blocked the door, she would lose her only way out. She knew it was an absurd thought, and yet she stood up from her seat and walked over to the chair in front of the door.
She sat down on the chair, opened her bag, and took out a notebook to get ready for the interview. She took out the digital recorder and was pushing the record button to see if it was working properly when the door opened.
Involuntarily, she jumped to her feet and turned her head.
He was standing at the door.
8.
JAESEONG CAME OUT OF THE OPERATING ROOM AND CHANGED his clothes in a hurry, and headed straight to his office.
He opened the door cautiously, so as not to wake Hayeong, but the room was empty. He had checked to see that his daughter was there, sleeping on the sofa, before he went into the operating room. But now the sofa was empty. Only a milk carton on the table confirmed that Hayeong had been there.
He looked around the room, and went out to the corridor.
He had talked to the head nurse before going into the operating room, in case Hayeong woke up. If she awoke and wandered around the corridor, the nurses at the corner desk would have noticed.
Only Nurse Kim was at the desk at the moment.
Nurse Kim looked up at the sound of footsteps and, recognizing Jaeseong, quickly pointed inside the staff lounge. There was space behind the desk for storing equipment, as well as the staff lounge.
He looked where she was pointing and saw Hayeong with the head nurse. Hayeong, who had been shaking her head at the snack the nurse was offering her, jumped up when she saw Jaeseong and came running over. He could tell that she had been anxious, not knowing where he was.
He caught a faint whiff of something burnt as he held her in his arms. He thought he should take her home immediately and have her take a bath.
Leaving the scene of the fire, he had thought he should go home. But he changed his mind while driving. He felt that he couldn’t go home to his wife with a child all of a sudden, when she had no idea what had happened. He needed time to think things over.
After a great deal of thought, he decided to take Hayeong to the hospital. He took her to the emergency room, gave her a shot of tranquilizer, and checked to see if she had sustained any external injuries. In the process, Hayeong began to doze, relaxing from the tension. He felt it would be best to let her sleep, but whenever she heard the sound of footsteps, she opened her eyes instantly and looked for him. She seemed afraid that he would disappear. In the end, he stayed at her side, holding her hand, as she lay there getting an IV. Only when it was time for the morning appointments did he go up to his office, taking along Hayeong.
Sitting on the sofa, Hayeong looked at him, her face full of fear. She seemed nervous, unable to meet his eyes as he looked at her without saying a word. As the silence drew out, she couldn’t hide her anxiety and hugged her teddy bear tight.
Jaeseong felt mired in confusion as he looked at the child. He had been thinking that he would tell his wife one day when he had a chance, and bring the child home. But he felt lost and helpless at the sudden turn of events. The news early that morning had come as a shock, but he was also worried about how his wife would take it.
“Dad . . . are you mad?” Hayeong asked, looking at him with caution.
Coming out of his thoughts at last, Jaeseong shook his head. Hayeong seemed to have taken his silence in the wrong way.
“No, no, why would I be mad?” he asked.
“You . . . told me not to call.”
“Well . . . that’s because I’m always busy with work.”
Having said that, he gazed at her for a moment and spread his arms open. Hayeong, however, did not readily fall into his embrace. She was hesitant. He felt sad, wondering how distant they had grown. He gestured again with his hands, and Hayeong, who had just been staring at him, put her teddy bear down at last and threw herself into his arms.
Hayeong shivered. She must have been more shocked than anyone else. She had been through something even adults couldn’t easily handle. There was no telling what great storm was raging in her heart. He was flooded with regret that he hadn’t properly seen to the child’s needs, preoccupied with his own.
“You were scared, weren’t you?” he asked.
Instead of an answer, there was a burst of sobbing.
“It’s all right. I’m here. You have nothing to worry about now.”
Hearing the words, Hayeong began to weep bitterly. How frightened she must have been amid the burning flames, among the strangers. All the emotions that had been pent up in shock and confusion seemed to explode at those words. He held her tender body close, and patted her back. He wanted to sweep away all the bitterness in her heart.
She pulled herself back only after crying so much that she was drenched in cold sweat.
“Can’t I come live with you?” she asked.
He couldn’t answer her right away. It wasn’t for him alone to decide.
Noticing his momentary hesitation, Hayeong wiped away the remaining tears on her cheeks with the back of her hands, as if she hadn’t cried at all, and returned to the sofa and sat down. Jaeseong looked at her, unable to say a word. Hayeong, waiting for his answer with her head lowered for some time, lay down sideways, saying she was sleepy.
Jaeseong quickly pulled out a little blanket from a desk drawer and draped it over her. He gazed at her, lying there with her eyes clenched shut and holding the teddy bear, and pushed back the strands of hair sticking to her neck. The child who had been sobbing a moment ago, clinging to him, was gone; Hayeong was sleeping soundlessly with her back to him.
A knock came at the door. It was time for his morning routine.
He looked at Hayeong for a while as she stayed lying there with her back to him, then got to his feet.
“I have to go in for a surgery. It won’t take long, so get some sleep, okay?” he said.
The child remained still. His heart felt heavy, but he decided to think about it after the morning’s work.
He kept picturing Hayeong, with her back to him, during the two hours of surgery.
Can’t I come live with you?
Her voice kept going around in his mind. But her question hovered in the air, like an echo in an empty jar. He wasn’t the one who could give an answer to the question.
They had been apart for only a couple of hours, but now Hayeong clung to his waist with all her might, as if to say that she wouldn’t stay separated from him for another moment. The head nurse looked at her with a face full of pity.
“I heard your house was on fire! It must have been quite a shock,” said the nurse.
The rumors that had started going around in the emergency room early that morning had spread through the entire hospital. Even the interns in the operating room extended words of concern. With Hayeong in Jaeseong’s office, it was impossible for them not to know. But he didn’t want any further exposure of his private life.
“Thank you,” he said to the head nurse, to cut her interest short. He took Hayeong’s hand and rushed out to the corridor. The meal carts were already going around to the hospital rooms. He hadn’t even had breakfast yet, now that he thought about it.
“Should we go get something to eat?” Jaeseong asked, and Hayeong nodded in silence.
“What do you feel like? Black bean noodles? Pork cutlet?”
Hayeong made no reply.
“Hayeong?”
“Just whatever . . . you want to eat,” Hayeong said gruffly, not meeting his eyes, probably still miffed that he hadn’t readily said that she could come live with him. He was just grateful that she didn’t draw back her hand from his.
Jaeseong left the hospital, Hayeong in tow, and went into the pasta restaurant across the street.
There were white wooden chairs with the paint chipping off, with colorful seat cushions on them. Sitting across from him, Hayeong made a conscious effort to avoid his eyes, tracing the outlines of the flowers on a cushion with her finger. Watching her sit there against the backdrop of pink curtains, he became aware of her age, which he hadn’t thought about in a while. She had turned eleven this year. They had been living apart for three years already. She had grown quite a bit in the several months he hadn’t seen her.
“Cream sauce for you, right? You like cream sauce, don’t you?” he asked.
Hayeong would not reply.
Jaeseong called an employee over and placed the order, and poured some water into a cup for Hayeong.
“You’re going to go on, not talking to me?” he asked.
Hayeong remained silent.
“Then I won’t talk, either.”
Hayeong, who had just been staring at the table, looked up. Her eyes looked anxious again. He regretted what he had said. He tried to appease her, in a gentler voice.
“You’re not going to stay sulking like that, when I haven’t seen you in so long, are you?”
Hayeong shook her head, but it was clear that she was doing it against her will. Even as they ate, she gave only cursory answers to his questions.
Jaeseong felt bad, but in truth, she hadn’t been on his mind at all in the past several months. Things hadn’t been all that different when they were living together. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her. He was so busy at the hospital that when he went home, he most often hit the bed without even seeing her. Although they lived in the same house, he saw her only once every few days, and played with her rarely—once every few weeks.
When was the last time he had taken such a good look at her face? He sat gazing at her as she ate her spaghetti, sitting across from him.
Her big, clear eyes and thick eyebrows were like her mother’s. She still had baby fat on her face, but when she grew a little older and her features became more distinct, she would look even more like her mother. Jaeseong realized that he turned cold even at the traces of her on the child’s face.
He didn’t want to acknowledge that there were still remaining wounds and feelings inside him that had to do with his deceased ex-wife. He hastily took his eyes off the child and finished the food on his plate.
“It’s . . . because of that woman, isn’t it?” Hayeong asked.
“Huh?”
Hayeong, who had been eating quietly, put her fork down and said, “I mean that woman, who lives with you . . .” She trailed off, not really knowing what to call her.
She had always been quick and perceptive. She knew quite clearly why he couldn’t just take her home.
“It’s all right. . . . I’ll go to Grandfather’s, in America.”
It seemed that she had already resigned herself to the reality of the situation and thought about where she should go. But the plan she had in mind wasn’t quite so feasible, either.
Jaeseong’s father had gone to live in Seattle, where Jaeseong’s two older brothers lived, when Hayeong was two; for the past year, though, he had been suffering from Alzheimer’s and was under Jaeseong’s mother’s care. He couldn’t load her with another burden when she was so busy nursing his father, nor could he ask his brother’s family, who were tied up with work at their restaurant, to take care of Hayeong. There never had been any room to ask them in the first place. Family you couldn’t see even once a year, family who called once every several months, and only when something had happened, wasn’t really family at all.
Besides, he balked at the thought of sending the child so far away when she had a father.
The answer was clear, no matter how he looked at it. He was only grappling with how to make it work.
“What did I tell you earlier?” he asked Hayeong.
Hayeong looked at him, not saying anything.
“I told you not to worry. I’ll take care of it,” he assured her.
“So . . . that means I can live with you?”
Jaeseong nodded, and the child finally smiled, looking relieved. Seeing the smile on her face, Jaeseong made up his mind that he would tackle the problem head-on.
It had been a year since he started living with Seonkyeong; he knew what kind of person she was. She wasn’t someone who would coldly refuse a child in a situation like this. She might hesitate for a little while, but in the end, she would accept Hayeong. But even as he thought that, there was another reason why he hesitated, not taking her home right away.
He didn’t want to tell Seonkyeong, if possible, about what happened between his ex-wife and him. Seonkyeong wasn’t someone who pried about the past, so he had never told her what happened.
If Hayeong came to live with them at the house, he would have no choice but to tell her about many things in his past that he didn’t want to tell her, things he didn’t want her to know. Hayeong would be spending more time with her than he would in the days ahead. There was no telling what might happen, and what Hayeong might say, when the two of them were alone without him. That was what troubled him the most.
But there was no alternative for the moment. He might end up watching them, feeling as if he were walking on a minefield every day, but he decided that he should take the child home with him.
Jaeseong wondered how much Hayeong knew about what happened that night. But it wasn’t something he could talk about easily, or ask. He didn’t want to stir up her memories for no good reason, either. He watched her as she focused on eating, her head lowered, and picked up his cup and drank the remaining water.
He felt as if there were something cold and hard stuck in his throat.
9.
HE WAS WEARING A BLUE PRISON UNIFORM AND HANDCUFFS, but he looked unbelievably at peace.
The fair face from the photograph was so pale, having been hidden from the sun for some time, that the capillaries showed through. The handsome face, with shapely eyebrows and soft lips, looked gentle because of the downturned eyes. The nickname “David” was quite fitting. The short hair made the face stand out even more.
It was difficult to see in that face a cold-blooded killer who had committed heinous crimes.
Standing there, Yi Byeongdo slowly looked Seonkyeong up and down. As his gaze slid down from her face to her chest, Seonkyeong felt her heart beat faster. His gaze wandered in the air for a while, then returned to her face. When his eyes met hers, wrinkles gathered around them, and he smiled quietly. If they had been meeting by chance somewhere else, her heart would have fluttered at the smile.
When the prison guard nudged his arm, Yi Byeongdo came to himself and took slow steps forward.
Sitting across from Seonkyeong, Yi Byeongdo stared at her while the guard handcuffed his arms to the chair. His eyes were certainly full of gladness, as if he were seeing someone he knew.
The guard stood beside him after he finished handcuffing him. Yi Byeongdo turned his gaze, looked up at the guard, and asked, “Are you . . . going to keep standing there?”
“It’s the rule” was the guard’s reply.
“I want to talk to her, just the two of us.”
Rumor had it that he played the master and did as he pleased even at the detention center, and it seemed that the rumor was true.
“With things the way they are, I can’t say what I need to say, don’t you agree, ma’am?” Yi Byeongdo asked, turning around to look at Seonkyeong. As long as there were safety measures in place, Seonkyeong, too, would prefer an environment in which he could talk frankly.
“You can’t talk to him without a guard present,” the guard said firmly even before Seonkyeong opened her mouth.
“Like you said, rules are rules. If it’s all right with you, would you sit by the door over there? This might take a while.”
The guard looked from Yi Byeongdo to Seonkyeong, and reluctantly conceded. As long as he was in the room, he would be able to hear the conversation between the two. But it would irritate Yi Byeongdo to have him so close to his side. Spatial distance would make him feel relaxed, which would work to Seonkyeong’s advantage as well. Everyone would win without breaking any rules. With everyone being flexible, they could all sit down in their chairs.
Yi Byeongdo checked to make sure that the guard sat down, then turned his gaze toward Seonkyeong. He seemed to be in a better mood after the arrangement. Smiling gently, he looked at Seonkyeong, and slowly began to speak.
“You were curious, weren’t you?”
Seonkyeong looked at him, wondering what he was talking about.
“How does this person know me? Why me, of all people? You asked those questions, didn’t you?”
His eyes, directed at Seonkyeong, were laughing. She felt flustered, feeling as if he were seeing right through her. But she didn’t want to pretend that he was wrong. She felt that she had to open up to him for the interview to go well. She looked at his face and saw a peculiar chill in his seemingly good-natured eyes. Even his smile couldn’t hide that chill.
“Yes, I did. I was very curious for several days. Will you tell me why?” she asked.
Instead of answering, however, he stared at her, and leaned back and relaxed in his chair. He seemed pleased that he had control over the situation. He asked another question.
“What’s the oldest memory in your head?”
“What?”
The question threw her off. The oldest memory? Is he saying that he knows all about my childhood, or that he wants to know more about me? Seonkyeong thought. She felt at a loss, as if she had studied all night for a test only to find out that it covered a completely different topic from the one she had prepared for.