by Mi-ae Seo
“Yes, I understand. I’ll explain the situation to Kaeun and her mother, and ask for their compassionate understanding as well.”
The conversation ended on a good note, with the teacher being understanding. Seonkyeong’s heart felt heavy, however, as she returned home.
She went to a nearby park and found a quiet spot. She took out her cell phone and called Heeju.
“I was expecting you to call. What’s up?” Heeju asked.
“I’m on my way back from Hayeong’s school.”
“Was there a problem with her friends?”
Nodding, Seonkyeong told Heeju what the teacher had told her. Heeju remained quiet for a while after hearing the story.
“That’s not good. She’ll have an even harder time if she doesn’t get along with kids her own age at school. . . . Has she shown such behavior at all at home?”
Hearing her say that, Seonkyeong remembered how Hayeong had torn up her teddy bear with scissors. But she’d cheered up after Seonkyeong bought her the puppy. Thinking she should tell Heeju all the facts, since she was an expert, Seonkyeong told her everything, beginning with what she knew of Hayeong’s mother. Heeju was silent, so silent that Seonkyeong wondered if the line had been cut off.
“Heeju?” she said, to make sure that she was still there.
“I’m listening. If it’s okay with you, I’d like you to bring her to see me as soon as you can, tomorrow if possible,” Heeju said.
Feeling apprehensive, Seonkyeong asked, “Why?”
“Seonkyeong, it’s just like physical illness. You know that she’s sick, so why won’t you get her treated? If you don’t, her wounds will only deepen. Besides, Hayeong’s illness began a long time ago.”
Seonkyeong couldn’t say anything. She understood what Heeju was saying. But she was afraid of how Hayeong would be labeled the moment she was taken to a counseling center. More than anything, she was concerned about how the child would see herself. She felt that she should discuss it with Jaeseong first.
She hung up, saying she’d call back.
WAITING FOR HAYEONG AT HOME, Seonkyeong couldn’t concentrate on her work.
With the ignored file open before her, she traced her memory back to the day when Hayeong arrived at the house.
It would be easier, she thought, if Hayeong were a newborn baby. Taking care of her would be physically exhausting, but there wouldn’t be such mental strain. Living with a girl who was on the brink of adolescence was like walking in a minefield, carrying a time bomb. Every little thing Hayeong said made Seonkyeong nervous, and a look on the child’s face, which she just happened to notice, troubled her heart.
When Hayeong was with her, she required attention; when she wasn’t, she was still very much on Seonkyeong’s mind. No matter what Seonkyeong was doing, a part of her mind was always occupied with the child.
Living with Jaeseong alone hadn’t required such great attention.
When he was home, she did tend to him, of course, but when she was by herself, she could forget about him and focus solely on her work. Since they both worked, they always told each other when they were busy, and made mutual concessions. When she was tired or didn’t feel like making dinner, she called him and asked him to have dinner before coming home, or if they could, they had dinner out together. She read when she wanted, and slept when she wanted. Jaeseong, too, did things as he pleased. But with a child, things were different.
On top of that, Hayeong had been through so much.
Seonkyeong felt more comfortable with her now, but the child still wasn’t very easy to approach. She couldn’t just leave her to herself, though, not wanting to come off cold or indifferent. Thinking about it, she realized that there wasn’t a moment when she wasn’t aware of Hayeong, from the moment she opened her eyes in the morning, to the moment she fell asleep.
She felt like a clown in a circus, trying to balance herself on a rolling barrel, not sure which way it would go, and moving her feet ceaselessly in the direction the barrel was going.
The puppy had made things a lot better. After the puppy came, Hayeong began to smile now and then, and even talk to Seonkyeong. So she had thought that Hayeong was getting better. She’d relaxed, thinking she was adjusting to her new home, and getting along with the kids at school.
Seonkyeong didn’t know what she should say to Hayeong when she came home. She decided to prepare a snack for her.
She closed the file on the desk and was about to get up, when she remembered some things Yi Byeongdo had said, and opened the file again. She pressed the play button on the recorder, and did a fast rewind.
“Would you . . . hug a baby monkey with such bloody hands? Could you?”
She recalled the look on his face as he said these words. A little child, hungry for affection, was pleading for a hug. His face kept overlapping with Hayeong’s. Two children who grew up abused by their mothers. Yi Byeongdo had driven himself to hell, to a point of no return. But Hayeong was different. She had to be treated, and her wounds healed.
HAYEONG CAME IN LOOKING unperturbed, as if nothing had happened. Without saying anything about meeting her teacher at school, Seonkyeong handed her a cup of cold water and asked, “Would you like some cheesecake, or some fruit?”
“Some cheesecake, please,” Hayeong replied.
Sitting down at the table eating the cheesecake, she glanced at Seonkyeong’s face from time to time. The fact that Seonkyeong wasn’t asking her any questions seemed to make her nervous.
“A new bakery has opened up near the intersection, should we try it sometime? What do you like, Hayeong?”
“Chocolate mousse cake.”
“Yeah? I like sweets, too. They make me feel better when I’m feeling down.”
Hayeong seemed uncomfortable sitting with Seonkyeong. She answered her questions half-heartedly, and rushed to her feet as soon as she finished eating the cake.
“Hayeong,” Seonkyeong called out to her as she made her way upstairs. She looked at Seonkyeong, her face stiffening, as if she knew what was coming. Her face grew darker and darker.
Seonkyeong quickly went up to her and bent down, and took her in her arms. She felt Hayeong flinch in her embrace. She was afraid that she’d push her away, but the child remained still. She could feel her little shoulders and the warmth of her body, and she felt a pang of sympathy. She thought that perhaps the distance between the two of them had been of her own making. She could sense her gradually relax.
“Everything feels strange and difficult, doesn’t it? Thank you for being so patient. Things will get better little by little. If something happens, or you’re having a hard time, you can always tell me or your dad,” she said with some effort, her voice hoarse. She let go and looked at Hayeong, who was standing in a daze, looking confused.
23.
BEFORE SEONKYEONG MET WITH YI BYEONGDO, THE SECURITY manager wanted to see her. He took her to his office, saying he wanted to talk to her in private. The office was in the oldest building at the prison. The battered door closed properly only after several attempts. The old-fashioned air conditioner seemed to emit dust. The room smelled musty. This setup appeared to suit the security manager, though.
“Would you like something cold to drink?” he asked as he walked toward a small fridge, sounding laid-back. He seemed to be stalling on purpose, when he knew that soon it would be time for the interview. Seonkyeong wanted him to get to the point.
“What did you want to talk about?” she asked.
“Why are you in such a rush? Let’s catch our breath first,” he said.
He placed a canned drink in front of her and sat down on the sofa, munching on an ice cube. He looked her up and down for a moment without saying anything, then swallowed the remaining piece of ice and opened his mouth to speak.
“I think you’ve done quite enough,” he said.
“Excuse me?” Seonkyeong said.
“The phone calls are one thing, but . . . ,” he started. Director Han’s phone call seemed to
have rubbed him the wrong way. “He’s been somewhat unstable these past few days,” he finished.
“Somewhat unstable?” Seonkyeong asked, not knowing what he meant. She wondered if something had happened to Yi Byeongdo.
“Well, you may not have noticed, since you see him only briefly, but we watch him all day so we sense even the slightest change,” he said, and went on to tell her about the changes in Yi Byeongdo’s daily routine since the last interview.
“He’s been having trouble sleeping lately. He often stands at the sink, staring into the mirror. He faces a wall and mumbles to himself. Sometimes he covers his ears and shakes his head frantically,” he said.
From the look on his face, the security manager didn’t seem to be making the details up. He was right to be concerned about Yi Byeongdo’s state. After a moment of thought, Seonkyeong decided to heed his words.
She had, in fact, been having a harder time interviewing Yi Byeongdo. And she had sensed him growing more and more restless. She, too, had felt his emotions waver as she went on seeing him. But what weighed more heavily on her heart was the feeling that she was projecting the sympathy she felt for him onto Hayeong. Instead of being hardheaded, she kept being swayed. If she couldn’t maintain her objectivity, it might not be a bad idea to keep her distance from him for a little while.
Director Han’s face popped up in her mind for a second, but Seonkyeong knew she wasn’t fully capable of handling these interviews. She had to admit that she lacked sufficient experience. It was better to stop now than to continue, feeling confused and overwhelmed by her own emotions.
When Seonkyeong told the security manager that she would do as he wished, his expression changed at once. He looked as if a load had been lifted off him. It was the first time she’d seen him look so happy since she started coming for the interviews.
“It worried me that you seemed to keep letting him take control of the situation. Anyway, this will probably be your last interview with him, so I hope you wrap it up nicely,” he said.
It must have been quite troubling for him. The interviews could raise controversy regarding special favors in prison, and above all, knowing that Yi Byeongdo’s psychological state was unstable as a result of the interviews, he couldn’t relax his guard. The recent suicide of a prisoner, which had thrown the prison into disarray, must have added to his irritation. If the interviews came to an end without causing trouble, he would finally be able to relax.
In the visitors’ room, before Yi Byeongdo came in, Seonkyeong placed an apple on the table where he’d be sitting. She would’ve picked one with more care if she’d known this was going to be their last meeting.
As she sat in her seat, getting ready for the interview, the door opened and Yi Byeongdo walked in. Seonkyeong got up and waited for him to sit down. Soon their eyes met, with the table between them. It had been a week.
Studying his face, Seonkyeong was surprised.
The confident—arrogant, even—look in his eyes, which had been there since the first time they met, was gone; he now looked nervous, like someone being chased. The security manager hadn’t been exaggerating. Seonkyeong could feel that the last interview had brought about a change in him.
He kept dropping his gaze, unable to look her straight in the face. He kept acting strange, shaking his head as if he had bugs flying in his face, tilting his head sideways, and cupping his ears with his hands.
“What’s the matter? Are you all right?” Seonkyeong asked, sounding worried, but he didn’t respond.
Seonkyeong gazed at him for a moment, and then started asking, one by one, the questions she had written down in her notebook for this interview. She tried to sound businesslike, to hide the fact that she was shaking inside.
“The owners of many of the things that were found during a house search couldn’t be identified. Where did you get those things?”
He made no reply.
“Are there other victims, as the investigators assume?”
Still no reply.
“Mr. Yi,” Seonkyeong said, raising her voice, as he continued not to answer. Finally, he looked at her.
“Are there other victims?” she asked again.
He thought for a moment, then nodded.
“What did you do with them?”
Instead of answering, he smiled. He looked as if he were enjoying his little secret. He wouldn’t open his mouth easily, it seemed. Seonkyeong didn’t think she could live up to the expectations of the investigators at the Seoul Gangbuk Police Station. She waited awhile for his answer, but he seemed to have a headache, and was frowning and pressing his temples.
In the end, she gave up on asking him about his murders, and resumed the conversation they’d been having the last time. If this was to be the last interview, it seemed that it would be better to focus on him.
“Will you tell me more about the fur mother monkey you were talking about the last time?” she asked.
He stared at her, tilting his head.
“Do you have another mother, different from the one who hurt you?” Seonkyeong pressed.
“It’s . . . ,” he began, seeming willing to talk about his other mother when he had been so tight-lipped about the murders.
“It’s probably a dream. A dream so sweet . . . that it’s all the more cruel,” he said.
The look of anxiety in his eyes turned into one of longing. The tone of his voice changed as well. Was he wandering in his imagination? Or was he remembering days past?
Seonkyeong wanted to know if his fur mother monkey was someone who existed in reality.
“Does she . . . look like me?” she asked.
Yi Byeongdo’s gaze rested on her face. Searching his memory, he began to talk slowly.
“Maybe she did . . . it’s been so long, I can’t trust my memory. It could just be my imagination coloring my memories,” he said.
Good memories become all the more distorted because they’re good memories, and take on a rosier glow with time. Like one’s first love, the mother in his memory must have been painted over.
His expression had softened as he searched his memory, but suddenly, his face stiffened and he said with a crack in his voice, “It was my one chance. My one chance . . . and I ruined everything!”
For some reason, he was angry with himself.
“Mr. Yi, what was your one chance?” Seonkyeong asked.
“I . . . ruined it. I did,” he said in a faint voice, his head lowered. Then he looked up at Seonkyeong, his eyes burning.
“You’ll give me another chance, won’t you? Won’t you?” he asked.
Seonkyeong didn’t know what he was talking about, but moved by the desperation in his eyes, she nodded. His face, which had been distorted with anger, relaxed, and he heaved a sigh of relief.
Seonkyeong’s unwitting answer seemed to have given him great comfort.
“Have you ever killed a cat?” Seonkyeong asked out of nowhere.
She hadn’t planned on asking such a question. She’d remembered the cat his mother had loved, and how he’d been jealous of the cat; his story got mixed up together in her mind with how Hayeong and the other kids had harassed a cat, and the question just popped out. Yi Byeongdo stared at her for a moment, looking dazed, then began to chuckle.
“You’ve finally figured it out, huh? All women are like cats. They run, just out of your reach . . . and reappear, when you think they’re gone. All the women I killed . . . were like that. They came up to me, then they scratched me and ran. That’s why I sang to them. Some of them even sang along, without even knowing what the song was,” he said, and kept chuckling. He had trouble concentrating on what Seonkyeong said, and kept falling back into his own thoughts.
His story brought a lot of things to Seonkyeong’s mind. The story about the day he killed his mother and the story about the women he’d killed were consistent with each other. It seemed that he wanted to kill women when he saw his mother in them. To Seonkyeong’s knowledge, the victims did not have similar phy
sical traits. Had they reminded him of his mother in psychological, emotional ways?
He kept looking around anxiously, unable to keep himself steady; in the end, he got to his feet, saying he was tired. When the guard came and took him away, Seonkyeong didn’t tell him that it was their last interview.
Even if she met with him again, it didn’t seem likely that he would tell her who the other victims were, or if he had committed additional murders. She didn’t know why he remained silent about the other victims, but he wanted to keep his secret buried to the end. Although she hadn’t been able to unearth the secret, she’d learned a lot about him through the interview. With that, she’d be able to write a report that would satisfy Director Han.
With mixed emotions, she looked around the visitors’ room.
On her first day here, the room had made her feel stifled, as if she couldn’t breathe. As time passed, however, and the interviews progressed, she realized that the confined space helped them focus.
She packed her bag and got to her feet, and noticed the apple on the table. She picked it up and looked at it for a moment, then took a careful bite.
The refreshing taste of the apple spread through her mouth. She put the apple back down on the table. Leaving the partly eaten apple for Yi Byeongdo to finish, she walked out of the room.
Part 4
24.
JAESEONG LEFT FOR WASHINGTON IN THE MORNING.
The previous night, Seonkyeong had told him about Heeju. He was angry when she suggested that Hayeong be examined and receive counseling.
“Why would she need something like that? She’s going to school now, and adjusting fine,” he said.
“You really think she’s adjusting fine?”
“Do you think she has some kind of problem, then?”
Since Hayeong’s arrival, Seonkyeong had learned that the child was Jaeseong’s weak point. He felt guilty that he hadn’t been a good father to her when they were living apart. That kept him from facing the problem head-on. Seonkyeong told him about what happened at school, and what Heeju had said to her.