The Only Child

by Mi-ae Seo

  “You know that something’s wrong, don’t you?” she asked.

  He didn’t say anything.

  “What Hayeong’s been through is different from what children normally experience. There was her mother’s suicide, and then the fire. It would be strange if she wasn’t scarred.”

  “I just thought that with time, she’d forget, and be all right.”

  “That’s your wishful thinking.”

  “But she’s doing well, isn’t she?” he asked, standing his ground.

  “Only on the surface. Which makes me even more concerned. She could be hurting inside, all alone, not being able to say that she’s hurting.”

  Jaeseong was silent. He looked uncomfortable whenever she brought up Hayeong’s problems. Not having been there to take care of her, he couldn’t acknowledge that Hayeong had a problem. He must think that it was all his fault. Seonkyeong spoke as gently as she could, in a roundabout way, so that it wouldn’t sound as though she were criticizing him.

  “The counseling would be a sort of comprehensive medical testing. If any small symptoms show, something more serious can be prevented. You’re a doctor, so you know. She’s been through things that can’t be handled alone. Who knows how they’ve injured her? Can you say that she’s fine, just because you can’t see the wounds? If there are any wounds, we have to find a way to heal them before they get worse,” Seonkyeong continued, and at last, he gave in. He nodded, agreeing that Hayeong needed counseling, but he didn’t look happy about it.

  Seonkyeong let out a sigh of relief. It was a good thing he consented; if not, she might have found it necessary to be more aggressive to make him recognize that there was a problem.

  He asked her to wait until he came back from his trip, saying it would be better for him to talk to Hayeong about it himself. Seonkyeong agreed. Above all, Hayeong would find it easier, hearing it from him.

  He took his time saying goodbye to Hayeong. He went on and on about the things she was supposed to do. He also made extravagant promises about going to the amusement park, to the beach, and so on when he came home, since summer vacation was approaching. It seemed that he wanted to compensate for not having been very attentive to her. In contrast, Hayeong was surprisingly unruffled about him leaving. He didn’t seem to think a dozen promises were enough, and added that he would buy her an even bigger teddy bear than the last one, and finally left.

  With him gone, Hayeong went upstairs to get ready for school.

  He would be gone for ten days.

  During that time, Seonkyeong decided to focus as much on Hayeong as possible. How they spent those days would determine their relationship. After giving her a hug on the day she went to see her teacher, Seonkyeong took every opportunity to hug Hayeong and show her physical affection. They grew closer after that day. Seonkyeong felt it was because they’d had physical contact and shared warmth.

  Hayeong rushed down the stairs, saying she was late. She went to the front door and was about to put on her shoes when Seonkyeong called to her; Hayeong ran quickly over and put her arms around Seonkyeong’s waist. After a brief hug, Hayeong left in a hurry.

  Alone at home, Seonkyeong opened both the front and back doors to the living room and began to clean the house.

  Just then, her cell phone rang. The number didn’t look familiar.

  When she picked up, she heard a pleasantly low voice. She instantly recognized it as Sergeant Yu’s. She was both glad and puzzled that he’d called out of the blue. Then it crossed her mind that the arson case might have been resolved.

  Contrary to her expectations, though, he asked if they could meet, saying he had something to tell her.

  She said she’d meet him at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, and hung up. A chill passed through her—a kind of premonition.

  IT WAS PAST LUNCH HOUR, around two o’clock, when she arrived at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency near Gwanghwamun.

  She got off the subway at Gwanghwamun Station and took the path behind Sejong Center for the Performing Arts. The scorching midday sun was melting the asphalt. She looked for bits of shadow created by the buildings and the trees lining the street to walk in. She went to the information desk and made a confirmation call, after which she was let in, and given a visitor’s badge.

  When she walked in through the entrance, she saw Sergeant Yu getting off the elevator. He hurried over to her and said hello.

  “Thank you for taking the trouble to come all the way here when it’s so hot,” he said.

  “Not at all,” Seonkyeong said.

  Together they went into the lounge in the first-floor lobby. Watching Seonkyeong sit down, Sergeant Yu took out some coins from his pocket and went up to the vending machine.

  “What would you like?” he asked.

  “Some water, please,” Seonkyeong replied.

  Sergeant Yu got a canned coffee and a bottle of water and sat across from Seonkyeong. The water was cold enough to cool her sun-scorched body.

  “I could’ve traveled to where you were,” he said.

  “No, it’s fine. So what did you want to talk about?”

  “The autopsy results are out.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m not really sure where I should begin. But since you’re in this line of work, I think you’ll take what I say in an objective, logical way.”

  Seonkyeong felt nervous listening to him stall. What was all the fuss about? What was it that he wanted to say?

  “The fire in Eungam-dong was a case of arson. And the arson took place after a murder,” he said.

  Even as she heard the words he spoke, she couldn’t make sense of them right away.

  “Wait a minute, are you saying that the fire was a case of murder?” she asked.

  “Yes, a case of arson to hide murder, that’s what we presume,” he replied.

  “So when you say autopsy results . . . are you talking about Hayeong’s grandparents?”

  “Yes,” Sergeant Yu said firmly.

  Seonkyeong shook her head in spite of herself. She had thought the fire was just an accident. She could not believe that it was a result of someone’s ill will. How many lives had changed because of it?

  “Did you catch the culprit?” she asked.

  “Let’s talk about the autopsy results first,” he said. It seemed that the culprit hadn’t yet been caught. Seonkyeong wondered why he should be telling her, of all people.

  “So these are the results. They both died before the fire broke out. There were no traces of a fire in their esophagi and lungs. If they died from the fire, there would’ve been traces of smoke from the fire in their esophagi and lungs,” he said.

  If they died from the fire, they wouldn’t have been lying so still under the blanket, either. Sergeant Yu recalled for a moment how the old couple had looked at the site.

  “What was the cause of death, then?” Seonkyeong asked.

  The sergeant rummaged inside his jacket, and pulled out a piece of paper, folded several times over. It was an autopsy report from the National Forensic Service.

  “It was death from poisoning,” he said.

  “Then . . . isn’t there a possibility of suicide?”

  “Would anyone take poison after getting ready to burn the house, with their granddaughter in the next room?”

  Seonkyeong couldn’t say anything.

  “What’s more, in cases of death from poisoning, the bodies would be contorted with pain; but both of them had their hands folded together, under the blanket. Which means that someone checked to make sure that they were dead, and set the fire after putting the bodies in order.”

  “If the fire took place after the murder . . . there wouldn’t be any evidence at the scene.”

  “That’s right. Almost no evidence at all, unfortunately . . . but . . .”

  Seonkyeong looked at him inquiringly.

  “We do have a suspect.”

  “Who?”

  Sergeant Yu hesitated, having difficulty answering, and looked at
Seonkyeong. Looking at his troubled face, Seonkyeong remembered something. They had come to the house on a hot summer day, sweating profusely, to see Hayeong. She tried to recall the questions they asked, but couldn’t.

  “You’re not saying . . .” She trailed off.

  “Yes, someone who was in the house with them, Yun Hayeong,” Sergeant Yu confirmed.

  “What . . . what are you saying here? Hayeong is a child. She’s only eleven.”

  Not knowing how to respond to her protest, Sergeant Yu scratched his head for a moment, then asked, “How old is the youngest murderer in the materials you’ve studied?”

  Seonkyeong was speechless. He was right. Age didn’t matter.

  Mary Bell, the most horrific underage serial killer in the history of the twentieth century, had also been eleven. Along with a friend, she strangled to death a neighbor child, not even three years old, and mutilated his body with scissors. You didn’t even have to look that far—in Japan, there was an elementary school child who killed a classmate, sending shock waves around the world.

  “I have several reasons for thinking that,” Sergeant Yu said, and Seonkyeong listened, her entire body throbbing with the sound of her own heartbeat.

  “When you go to the scene of a fire, you’ll see that the victims all look similar. Taken by surprise, most of them aren’t dressed properly. That morning when I saw the rescued child, something tugged at my mind, though I couldn’t put my finger on it. But when I thought about it later, I realized that it was the clothes she was wearing that seemed strange,” he continued.

  He remembered that morning clearly. The child, even as she was being carried out by an ambulance worker, had been carrying a teddy bear. On top of that, she’d been wearing socks and shoes. How could she have been wearing her shoes, which would’ve been at the front door, when she went out through the window to escape the smoke? It could only mean that she’d gotten them ahead of time.

  “She had her father’s business card in her pocket,” he added.

  “Perhaps . . . she’d been planning to go see him in secret?” Seonkyeong said, wanting to refute the evidence he had, any way she could.

  He has only one piece of the puzzle, she thought. You can’t judge someone with that. So many people are falsely accused through mistaken evidence. Hayeong could have been planning on leaving her grandparents’ house that day to go to her father, which would explain it all.

  You can’t come to any conclusions based on that. You mustn’t, she kept saying in her mind, but she realized that her voice was growing fainter and fainter.

  “After she was rescued, the child didn’t say a single word about her grandparents. An ordinary child, under similar circumstances, would ask someone to find or save her guardians if she doesn’t see them. But Hayeong didn’t even bother to ask if her grandparents were safe, or if they were still inside the house. Which probably means that she already understood the situation,” Sergeant Yu said, and remembered something else.

  The way she had looked, sleeping in the backseat of the police car. Thinking back, he realized that the look on her face hadn’t shown any traces of shock or fear; it was a look of satisfaction at the thought that her father was coming.

  “I don’t know what to say. This is so unexpected,” Seonkyeong said. She didn’t think she could go on sitting there listening to him. She felt as if there were a great whirlwind in her mind.

  “All this, of course, is something of my own deduction. I have no evidence to prove it. Unless the poison that was administered to the old couple is found. . . . I haven’t told anyone else. None of my colleagues know,” Sergeant Yu said.

  “So why are you . . . ,” Seonkyeong started.

  “Because you, of all people, should know. You’re an expert in this field, and you’re also her guardian now.”

  Seonkyeong couldn’t say anything.

  “Keep a close eye on her. That’s all I want to say,” Sergeant Yu said, and walked away.

  Alone in the lounge, Seonkyeong couldn’t even think of getting up from her seat.

  She couldn’t think clearly, with everything mixed up in her mind—she didn’t know what to make of anything, how she should take it, or what to tell Jaeseong. She finally managed to get a grip on herself, and came to one conclusion after long thought: she shouldn’t say anything yet.

  She couldn’t let anyone accuse the child of being a murderer, when nothing had been confirmed.

  There was no reason for the child to have killed her grandparents and even set the house on fire to come to her father. He was only a phone call away, so why would she have done something that would put her own life at risk?

  That was what she thought in her mind, but she couldn’t quite convince herself.

  Yet Seonkyeong knew that many murderers killed people for absurd reasons.

  Leaving the police agency, she felt afraid to go home and face Hayeong.

  Heading toward the subway station, Seonkyeong changed her mind and decided to go to Eungam-dong. She couldn’t go home like this. She didn’t really have a plan in mind, but she wanted to see the house Hayeong had lived in. Perhaps she wanted to verify what Sergeant Yu had said.

  THE HOUSE, whose address Seonkyeong got from Sergeant Yu, was quite unsightly, neglected after the fire. She could picture at once the disastrous situation that night, which she hadn’t been able to do when she just listened to people talk about it. She could clearly see Hayeong, standing amid flames. The scene of the fire was overpowering in itself.

  She dared not go inside, and left in haste.

  A middle-aged woman walking into the alleyway noticed Seonkyeong coming out, and looked at her warily. After watching her for a while as she passed slowly by, the woman asked gruffly, “Did you come to see the house at the end?”

  Seonkyeong was going to ignore the question, but then she gave a quiet nod. Seeing the mixed emotions on her face, the woman immediately dropped her guard. She seemed kindly but nosy, and looked Seonkyeong up and down, and then clicked her tongue, as if she felt sorry for her. She seemed to think that Seonkyeong was a relative who had come a little late after hearing the news.

  “Those poor old people. . . . So, are you related to them?” the woman asked.

  Not knowing what to say, Seonkyeong missed her opportunity to answer. But the woman nodded sympathetically, as if she understood completely.

  “You must’ve been quite shocked. Who wouldn’t be? All those terrible things happening, as if some bad luck had fallen on them. . . . Maybe people are right, saying that their dead daughter’s spirit is still lingering,” she went on.

  “Daughter? You mean, Hayeong’s mother?” Seonkyeong asked.

  “That’s right. She took something to kill herself. I don’t know what was going on, but why would someone do that when her parents and daughter are alive? The old woman wasn’t ever the same again after that.”

  “Was Hayeong happy here?” Seonkyeong asked.

  “The girl? Well . . . who knows what goes on behind closed doors,” the woman said, suddenly sounding evasive and looking flustered. Just a moment before, she had talked as if she knew all about the family’s circumstances, but the tone of her voice was different now. Seonkyeong wondered what was going on.

  “Did something happen to Hayeong?” she asked.

  “Why do you keep prying about the child? How are you related to her?” the woman asked in return, seeming uncomfortable with Seonkyeong’s questions.

  “She . . . she’s in my care now,” Seonkyeong said with honesty. Hearing her words, the woman looked even more disturbed. She began to rush into her house, looking awkward.

  “Just a second, can’t you tell me what happened?” Seonkyeong pleaded.

  “We just live in the neighborhood—we can’t possibly know everything that happened in their house,” the woman said, as if being chased, when she’d been the one to start the whole conversation. She seemed reluctant to even mention Hayeong. Seonkyeong was perturbed. She had goose bumps all over, and
her stomach felt tight. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead, but the tips of her fingers rapidly grew cold.

  Without looking back, Seonkyeong hurried out of the alleyway.

  25.

  THE HOT, HUMID DAYS CONTINUED.

  Yi Byeongdo called the prison guard and requested another interview with Seonkyeong, but all he got was a laugh in his face. After some screaming and mayhem, the security manager came to see him in his cell.

  “I need another interview. I still have something to say,” Yi Byeongdo said.

  “The psychologist seemed to have nothing more to say or hear,” said the security manager.

  “I need to see her!”

  “I guess you didn’t know, but that was your last interview. She won’t be coming to see you anymore.”

  “What? No. No way. Call her right now. I’m not finished telling my story!” Yi Byeongdo yelled, and the security manager came up to the steel bars and whispered in his face, “Then why didn’t you do it when you had a chance? Not that what you say even matters.”

  “Tell her I’ll let her know where the women . . . where the rest of the bodies are,” Yi Byeongdo said, deciding to play his hidden card. He had meant to keep it to himself, never telling anyone. But he felt that parting with the information would be worth it, if he could see Seonkyeong again. When you want something desperately, you become blind to everything else.

  Surprised, the security manager looked at the face beyond the bars. The security manager narrowed his eyes, glaring at him, and fell into thought, as if to see if he meant what he said. But what he said next was not something Yi Byeongdo had expected.

  “Hot for her, aren’t you?” he said, raising one corner of his mouth and snickering.

  Yi Byeongdo felt himself crushing his hidden card. This wasn’t what he’d wanted; this wasn’t why he’d decided to play his card. He had a grand design to complete. He couldn’t let this vermin ruin it.

  “I told you you had it coming,” the security manager said.

  “I said I’ll tell her about the other murders!”

  “Only the police and the prosecutors would be interested in that—I’m fine as long as you’re stuck here, understand?”