The Only Child

by Mi-ae Seo

  She turned off the shower, stepped out of the tub, and opened the cabinet. She took out a large towel and dried herself off. The touch of soft cotton eased her heart, tense from the nightmare. She lowered her head to shake her hair dry. When she raised her head, the child was standing before her.

  She was so startled that she nearly slipped and fell. She barely managed to grab the sink and find her balance.

  “Hayeong, when did you wake up?” she asked, hastily covering herself with the towel and looking at the child.

  The child looked at her with sleep still in her eyes, mumbling something.

  “What did you say?” Seonkyeong asked.

  “Bathroom,” said the child.

  She must have woken up to go to the bathroom.

  “There’s a bathroom in the main bedroom, too. . . . Well, all right. I’ll be right out,” Seonkyeong said, and immediately left the bathroom, with just the towel covering her body.

  Drops of water fell from her hair. She went into the main bedroom to get some fresh clothes, after realizing that she’d left her clothes in the bathroom. She put on the clothes and gave her hair a quick dry. Hayeong opened the door and stared at her. She was wide awake now, her eyes clear.

  “What is it? Do you need something? Are you hungry?” Seonkyeong asked.

  “Where’s my dad?”

  “Oh, he’s back at the hospital.”

  A look of disappointment flitted across the child’s face, then vanished.

  “Do you want to go back to sleep? Or are you awake now?” Seonkyeong asked.

  Hayeong looked at Seonkyeong, and realizing that her hand was empty, she promptly picked up the teddy bear on the bed and went out of the room.

  “Where are you going?” Seonkyeong asked, following Hayeong, but there was no answer. Seonkyeong went to the living room and found her putting on her shoes at the front door.

  “Hayeong?” Seonkyeong called out, reaching out her arms to take hold of the child. Hayeong, however, shook Seonkyeong off violently, and shoved her hard with both hands. Seonkyeong fell straight on her back. She tried to get to her feet, but the floor was slippery from her hair, which wasn’t completely dry. Sitting on the floor, she looked at the child in surprise.

  Hayeong picked up her teddy bear from the floor and glared at her, mumbling quietly, “It’s your fault my mom’s dead.”

  Her cold gaze, directed at Seonkyeong, was full of threat and resentment.

  “What?” Seonkyeong cried.

  She felt dazed. She couldn’t understand why the child would say such a thing. It was only a few hours ago that Seonkyeong had learned of her death. And now the child was saying that it was Seonkyeong’s fault. It was the coldness in her eyes, more than her baffling words, that stabbed at Seonkyeong’s heart. A chill pierced her. She was thrown off by the hostility displayed by the child, who bared her teeth and growled at her. It seemed that the child had been harboring the hostility for a long time.

  Hayeong stood there glaring at her, then opened the front door and stomped out. The unexpected blow confounded Seonkyeong.

  Why had the child said such a thing?

  Seonkyeong found herself wondering how the child’s mother had died. She had been young, not even forty. Jaeseong had never told her how she’d died. Whether it was through illness or accident, her death must have been difficult for the child to accept.

  The mother was dead, and the father was not at the child’s side. She may have wanted to blame someone, hold someone responsible. Looking around, she may have thought Seonkyeong was that someone. But the hostility she had shown was not just vague anger or resentment.

  For the first time, Seonkyeong felt that it wouldn’t be easy living with the child.

  She attempted to get to her feet, with her hands on the floor, and felt pain in her wrists. She must have hurt them when she fell. Rubbing her wrists, she went out to the yard. The gate was open.

  Worried, Seonkyeong ran out the gate at once.

  The child was nowhere to be seen in the alley, which was just a row of single houses and was usually pretty secluded. Seonkyeong ran in the direction of the main street. She ran into a woman, a shop owner, who happened to be sitting under a parasol fanning herself.

  “Have you seen a little girl, about this tall, passing through?” she asked, gesturing with her hand.

  “A little girl? With a filthy stuffed animal in her hand?” the woman asked in reply.

  “Yes,” Seonkyeong said.

  To her relief, the woman had seen Hayeong running off and, pointing to the road, said she had just passed through.

  Hayeong was pacing up and down by the road where cars were passing by, not knowing where to go. Seonkyeong ran over to her and took hold of her arm. Hayeong tried to shake her off, but this time, it wasn’t so easy. Seonkyeong pulled her arm with all her might.

  “Let’s go home and talk,” she said.

  “No, I’m not going. I’m going to my dad,” Hayeong said.

  “He’ll be home soon. He said he’d come home after he was done at the hospital.”

  “Let go, let go of me!” Hayeong cried, nearly screaming.

  Seonkyeong let go of the child’s arm, in spite of herself. She couldn’t take Hayeong by force, and even if she did, it wouldn’t be a good start to their relationship.

  “Do as you please. But what will he say if he sees you acting this way? Do you think he’ll be happy?” she asked.

  Hayeong’s face stiffened at Seonkyeong’s words. She hadn’t thought it through. Her face twitched—she didn’t want to give in yet.

  “You went to the hospital with him today, so you should know how busy he is,” Seonkyeong said.

  Hayeong didn’t say anything.

  “I’m going back home now.”

  Still, Hayeong remained silent.

  “It’s up to you whether you go to the hospital or come home,” Seonkyeong declared, and turned around to go home.

  Every nerve in her body pulled her toward the child, but feigning indifference, she headed home. As she walked away, taking slow steps, she heard the sound of dragging feet behind her.

  Upon arriving home, she turned around and saw Hayeong with her teddy bear in her arms, standing with her head lowered.

  Seonkyeong opened the gate and stood aside.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Hayeong went inside, keeping her distance from Seonkyeong lest they should brush against each other.

  Staring after Hayeong as she stepped into the yard, Seonkyeong heaved an unwitting sigh. Following the child into the house, she hoped with all her heart that she wouldn’t end up regretting her decision to live with her.

  Part 2

  12.

  JAESEONG CAME HOME LATER THAN EXPECTED. TO TOP IT OFF, he smelled of liquor.

  “You . . . had a drink?” Seonkyeong asked.

  “Where’s Hayeong?” was his reply as he entered through the front door without so much as a hello.

  “She’s upstairs in her room,” Seonkyeong said.

  After all the commotion during the day, Seonkyeong had cleaned a room on the second floor in haste and made it up for the child, filling it with a bed and a desk from a furniture store nearby.

  “Has she eaten dinner?” Jaeseong asked.

  Seonkyeong shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about how her plans to cook curry and have dinner with Hayeong had gone wrong. The child didn’t take a single bite, saying she hated curry. In the end, she had gone upstairs to her room, and Seonkyeong had eaten by herself.

  Seonkyeong called out to Jaeseong, who was on his way up to Hayeong’s room.

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  “Let’s talk after I see her,” he said, and went upstairs.

  Seonkyeong heard him open the door, calling out to his daughter. She felt strange, listening to the sound from afar.

  After a long while, he came into their bedroom. Seonkyeong, who had been sitting at her dressing table after washing her face, saw him and turned around.r />
  “What’s she doing?” she asked.

  “What happened to your arm?” he asked without answering her question, seeing the pain relief patch on her wrist.

  She couldn’t tell the truth about what had happened during the day. She rubbed her wrist and said casually, feigning indifference, “It’s nothing. I put my hand down the wrong way.”

  “Don’t you think it’s too much, fighting with her on her first day here?” Jaeseong asked.

  Seonkyeong could not believe her ears. She stared at him, gaping in astonishment, and found that he was quite upset. Hayeong must have said something to cause some great misunderstanding.

  “What did she say?” Seonkyeong asked.

  “Her arms were swollen red. What was the fight about?” Jaeseong asked, jumping to conclusions without bothering to ask what had really taken place, which upset her.

  “Fight? What do you think I am? A little child?” she snapped.

  Jaeseong did not reply.

  “She woke up and insisted on going off to see you, so I brought her back inside. That’s all.”

  “But Hayeong . . . ,” Jaeseong began, then shut his mouth. It seemed that Hayeong had told a different story.

  “What did she tell you?” Seonkyeong asked.

  “No. That’s enough.”

  “Enough? Tell me, what did she say? Why are you blaming this on me?”

  “Honey, you know what a difficult time she’s been having. Can’t you be a little more understanding, and just let it go? She woke up and didn’t see her dad—can’t you see why she acted that way?” he blurted abruptly. He had never raised his voice with her like that.

  “If she was looking for me, you could have called me,” he went on.

  “There was no time to call you. What was I supposed to do, when she just up and ran outside?” Seonkyeong retorted.

  Jaeseong was stumped for words, and she continued.

  “Don’t you think you should at least hear me out? If you were so worried about your daughter, why did you stay late to have dinner with your colleagues? And now you’re blaming me?”

  “All right. It’s my fault. Enough of this.”

  Seonkyeong said no more, sensing that there was no point arguing any longer, as they would only hurt each other’s feelings. There were things she wanted to ask him, but she wasn’t in the mood to talk to him now. Looking into the mirror, she brushed her hair with rough strokes, and hastened to her feet.

  “Where are you going?” Jaeseong called after her, but she just stepped out, shutting the bedroom door and leaving him behind.

  Even in the study, however, she felt ill at ease. It wasn’t as if they had never argued before. But she had never gone off by herself with her feelings unresolved. If something upset her, she dealt with it promptly on the spot.

  After the wedding, they had both been so busy that they could see each other only when it came time for dinner. Wanting to make the most of their brief time together, they treated each other with utmost consideration, being as pleasant as they could. Their only arguments were over trivial things, like why someone had thrown socks and underwear together in the washer, or hadn’t called to say that they were having dinner out. She had never truly been angry and hurt.

  She could understand well enough that he was concerned about his daughter, but she could not bear to have him blaming things on her without even listening to her side of the story.

  Feeling upset, she couldn’t concentrate on what she was reading. She kept reading the same sentence over and over, and in the end gave up, snapping the book shut.

  She took out the digital tape recorder and notepad from her bag. She would listen to the recording of her interview with Yi Byeongdo, she thought. She put on her earphones and pushed the play button. The clarity was good, and she could hear even the sound of his footsteps as he entered the visitors’ room, and the sound of the handcuffs closing.

  She heard a low voice singing. The song he had sung. She turned up the volume to the max.

  It occurred to her that the song might have a different meaning she wasn’t aware of, and she e-mailed Professor Klen. He would be delighted at her interest in the Beatles, and give her a lengthy discourse on the song. The melody was so easy that anyone could sing along, as long as they didn’t mind not getting all the words right. As did most Beatles hits, this song, too, had a very sweet melody.

  The song Yi Byeongdo had sung was dark and grim, with none of the signature upbeat sound of a Beatles song. It was partly because he had sung it much more slowly than originally intended, but mostly because of the words he had uttered afterward: “All the women I sang this song to . . . died at my hands.”

  Music had been a major issue after the Yu Yeongcheol murders as well.

  Yu Yeongcheol said that he had the theme song of the movie 1492: Conquest of Paradise playing while he was in the bathroom taking care of the bodies of the women he had killed. It was unknown whether the song had inspired him, or he had listened to the music simply because he liked it.

  What did this music mean to Yi Byeongdo?

  Seonkyeong sang the chorus, lowering her voice. She recalled the gaze he had fixed on her in the visitors’ room. It had felt as if he were looking not at her face, but into her very soul.

  At that moment, someone hugged her from behind and she almost let out a scream. Startled, she drew herself forward and turned around. Jaeseong stood there, looking apologetic. She took out her earphones and turned off the recorder.

  “You scared me,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” he said.

  “Didn’t know what?” Seonkyeong asked, still with an edge to her voice. She didn’t want to forgive him that easily.

  He took her hand in his. Caressing the back of it, he said in a tender voice, “You must be so angry. I was rash. She wouldn’t leave my mind all day. And when I saw her, on the verge of tears as soon as she saw me, I just . . . and when I know what kind of person you are, too.”

  The hand that had been caressing hers was now touching her face.

  “You have no idea how grateful I am to you. Thank you . . . so much,” he said from his heart, and Seonkyeong’s own heart softened.

  Still, there were some things that stayed unresolved in her mind. She took his hand in hers, and sat facing him.

  “There’s something I want to ask you,” she said.

  “Go on, ask me,” he said.

  “Today, Hayeong . . . said it was my fault that her mother died.”

  Jaeseong’s face grew pale. Seeing his eyes waver, she wasn’t sure if she should go on with the question. But she did, thinking that she couldn’t keep it buried forever.

  “Did . . . something happen, to make her think that?” she asked.

  He put her hand down, and rubbed his face with his hands. He looked as if he didn’t know how to tell her.

  “It’s all right. You can tell me anything. Just tell me what happened,” Seonkyeong prodded gently, and finally, he spoke.

  “A little after our honeymoon, I got a phone call saying that Hayeong was hurt. There was a message saying that she was in critical condition, and I ran to her, half out of my mind. But it turned out that the critical condition consisted of scraped elbows and knees. She had fallen somewhere, it seemed. I lashed out at her mother. I told her not to call me again with something like this, that I was married to someone else now. I yelled at her, saying that I was sick and tired of her calling me on the pretext of the child’s interests, and that I would never come again,” he said.

  He had never spoken of this. He had only told Seonkyeong that their relationship was completely over, and that she wouldn’t even let him see the child. According to him, Hayeong’s mother had lied to him often, saying that the child was ill, in order to see him. But if that had been the problem, Seonkyeong wasn’t to blame.

  “What does it mean, it’s my fault that her mother died?” she asked.

  He looked away, saying nothing. Seonkyeong pressed, grasping
his arm and shaking it.

  “There must be a reason she thinks that, don’t you think?”

  “Her mother took something that night. She pushed Hayeong down from the second floor, breaking her leg, then called me. I told her I wasn’t coming, and she went into her room and . . .”

  Seonkyeong could guess the rest.

  His ex-wife, though divorced from him, had never really parted with him.

  The woman, who in her heart couldn’t let her husband go, dragged her daughter in to keep her husband, who kept his distance from her, within reach of her grasp. Then at last she realized that they were indeed divorced, yet could not acknowledge the fact that he had left her. Seeing that her only weapon, her own child, no longer served as a threat, she must have taken something on impulse, in despair.

  “I don’t know what took place between Hayeong and her mother that night, but Hayeong refused to see me after that. Her mother probably said some harsh things to her,” he said.

  A daughter takes her mother’s pain and despair to heart. Even if the mother pushes her and breaks her leg, the child sees the situation through the eyes of the mother, who is the weak party. It followed that for Hayeong, the one to blame was the person who took her father away from her and her mother.

  “I see what you’re saying,” Seonkyeong said.

  She felt exhausted. Her relationship with the child wouldn’t have been easy to begin with, without any preconceived ideas, but Hayeong was full of hatred and resentment toward her. Things wouldn’t be easy, no matter the effort she made.

  Jaeseong raised his head and looked at her. Hiding the anxiety welling up in her heart, she smiled to reassure him, saying, “Don’t worry. Living together will clear up the misunderstanding, and then she’ll open up to me.”

  “Thanks, honey.”

  “Promise me something, though.”

  Jaeseong looked at her with inquiring eyes.

  “That you’ll trust me no matter what happens.”

  He gazed at her for a moment, then nodded. He drew her toward himself and held her in his arms. There was a lot more that she wanted to say, but she decided not to rush.