by Mi-ae Seo
The knife must have somehow pierced through his ribs and stabbed his lung. He wheezed whenever he exhaled. His hands went limp. Seonkyeong, held only by one of his hands, came to and shoved his arm away, freeing herself.
As a result, Yi Byeongdo fell to the floor.
He wasn’t feeling right. His mind seemed to be separating from his body. He knew instinctively that he was going to die soon. Whenever he breathed, blood came from deep within his lungs. He burst into coughs. He threw up blood. He had difficulty breathing. The blood that flowed from his body spread out under him as he lay on the floor.
He felt a fog coming on, but he struggled to keep his eyes open. He saw the little girl approaching him, her eyes full of curiosity. His blood spread toward her feet. Feeling himself lying there helplessly, he smiled hollowly.
Suddenly, bright light flooded Yi Byeongdo’s vision. He lay on the floor, looking at the dazzling light. The power must be back on; the fluorescent light blinded his eyes.
He saw Seonkyeong stop the little girl from approaching him, then take her hand and step back. He tried to reach out a hand and take hers, but he didn’t even have the strength to push back his eyelids.
He’d believed that dying was nothing—that it just meant everything came to an end, that it was darkness, disappearance. That was what he’d thought. But as death approached, he realized at last that death was not an endless darkness, but a momentary blackout. It was not disappearance, but displacement into another world.
He felt afraid that he had to go, with his consciousness and memories intact. It frightened him that he had to move on to another life, with the same consciousness, the same soul. He’d thought that afterlife was an illusion, concocted to overcome fear. But it was not an illusion; it was another universe that was present in human consciousness. His only consolation was that his mother’s song, which had inflicted pain on him all his life, was now comforting him, embracing him.
Yi Byeongdo closed his eyes and listened to the song.
Unlike in the version of the song in his first memory, now his mother’s voice sounded cheerful and warm. He waited for his mother’s hand to touch him. Her big, warm hand, which he had waited for all his life, stroked his head and caressed his eyes, nose, and cheeks. Finally, he felt the deep, dark hole inside him, which had been empty all his life, fill up. The song that had tormented him all his life vanished after that.
“Is he dead?” asked the little girl, but her voice, too, grew more and more distant.
SEONKYEONG TOOK HAYEONG, WHO kept craning her neck to see the dead man, out of the study. She turned around to look, afraid that he might come back to life, but she saw his eyes close, his face relax, and a smile spread across his face. Death seemed to have brought him rest.
As they entered the living room, Seonkyeong’s cell phone rang in the bedroom. She rushed over to it and took the call. It was the security manager at the Seoul Detention Center. The call had come much too late. But she didn’t have the energy to blame him for neglecting his duty.
Without even listening to him, she said briefly, “He’s here. Come . . . take him away.”
Not explaining further, she gave him her address and hung up.
She sank into the sofa. She couldn’t remain standing up, as she was trembling all over. Hayeong stood a little way off, staring blankly at her. She must be in shock from what had just happened.
If not for Hayeong, Seonkyeong would have died at Yi Byeongdo’s hands. She felt grateful to be alive, but she also felt some mixed emotions.
“Are you all right?” Seonkyeong asked, but the child just stared at her, without answering. Seonkyeong wondered if she was hurt, and hurried over to her. She felt the child’s head, arms, and legs, and asked if she was hurting anywhere.
Hayeong, who had been silent, showed Seonkyeong her palms. Blood. Her hands were wet with blood.
She seemed to be in shock from seeing the blood on her hands. She was showing them to Seonkyeong because she didn’t know what to do with them. Her eyes, looking at Seonkyeong, were as deep and tranquil as the cold night sea. Seonkyeong could not fathom what was swirling in her heart. Hayeong opened and closed her palms, feeling the congealing blood.
Alarmed, Seonkyeong took Hayeong by the arm and hastened to the bathroom.
She turned on the faucet and thrust Hayeong’s hands underneath. The blood washed down the drain. Seonkyeong put soap on Hayeong’s hands and worked up a lather, so that not a drop of blood would remain. She scrubbed and scrubbed her hands until they were red. She felt that if she didn’t, Yi Byeongdo’s blood would seep into Hayeong’s body, tainting her young soul.
It sickened her to imagine it.
“Stop, it hurts,” Hayeong said, drawing her hands back, and Seonkyeong came to herself. Hayeong drifted away, sensing something strange as Seonkyeong scrubbed frantically at her hands.
Seonkyeong got a towel from a bin and handed it to her. But Hayeong wouldn’t take it. After she went out of the bathroom, Seonkyeong washed her face with cold water. She felt more herself.
She looked up and saw herself in the mirror. She looked awful. She raised her head and checked her neck. There were vivid red handprints there. Her muscles ached dully from the shock.
She went to the living room and saw Hayeong sitting on the sofa. She was looking out the window at the yard, just as she had on the day she arrived. She seemed lost in thought, which for some reason made Seonkyeong nervous.
“Hayeong, are you all right?” she asked, sitting down next to her.
Hayeong pointed with a finger out the window.
“The wind has stopped,” she said.
Seonkyeong turned her head and looked at the yard as well. The fierce rain had calmed its rage and quieted down. The branches of the willow tree, which had been swaying in the wind, were hanging low, drenched by the rain.
Having said that, Hayeong went on looking out the window in silence. Fearing the silence, Seonkyeong looked intently at her face. Her face revealed nothing, which made Seonkyeong uneasy. She couldn’t bear it any longer, and turned her head away.
“You don’t . . . want to live with me anymore, do you?” Hayeong asked.
Startled, Seonkyeong looked at her once again. Meeting her eyes, Seonkyeong fumbled for words. The child waited quietly for her answer.
Looking into Hayeong’s eyes, Seonkyeong said after some hesitation, “Let’s talk when your father comes home.”
A look of disappointment crossed Hayeong’s face. She got up and went upstairs.
Left alone, Seonkyeong waited for the police to come, biting her lip in anxiety.
As she thought about Hayeong, something hot rose in her throat. She tried to swallow it back, but it wouldn’t go down. In the end, she began to sob loudly.
It wasn’t the child’s fault. She had been abused by a mother, who, starved for love, did things to her child without even really knowing what she was doing. If that fractured Hayeong’s soul, what effect would the night’s incident have on it? Although it wasn’t her fault, Seonkyeong realized that she’d done something even more terrible than what Hayeong’s mother had done.
Would the child have experienced something like this if she hadn’t been living with her? Seonkyeong felt afraid. She wanted to ask someone, anyone, why things like this kept happening to Hayeong. It seemed as if her fate were leading her down a path prepared for her. Seonkyeong feared finding out what lay at the end of that path.
She wanted to deny it. She shook her head violently at some unknown being.
No. This can’t be. This is impossible. Stop it, stop it!
Stop tormenting this child.
32.
THE POLICE WOULDN’T LET THE SECURITY MANAGER OF the Seoul Detention Center in the study, in order to preserve the scene of the crime.
The manager, who had been standing in front of the study door peeping inside, waiting for the crime scene investigators to finish the primary investigation, approached Seonkyeong and paced around her. Seonkyeong, w
ho was discussing the situation with the investigators, glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.
He actually looked relieved. It must be something of a solace to him that Yi Byeongdo had come here, of all places, and died. He would be reprimanded, but the escape had been handled with alacrity, so things could’ve been worse for him.
“So he was strangling you, but hesitated when the light came on, and that’s when you stabbed him with the knife he’d brought into the study from the kitchen?” an investigator asked.
“That’s right,” Seonkyeong said, lowering her eyes. She held her neck with a hand, grimacing. The investigators would not miss the marks on her neck. One of them craned his neck to get a close look at them, and scribbled something in his notebook. Another investigator took one picture after another of Seonkyeong’s neck.
She had decided to lie to the investigators for Hayeong’s sake.
If they found out that Hayeong was the one who killed Yi Byeongdo, they’d press her about what happened at the time. In the end, they’d conclude that it was self-defense, but considering how they would harass the child in the meantime, it would be better, she thought, to make some changes to the story.
Besides, there was the arson case. If the child said something wrong in answer to the investigators’ questions, things could take an unexpected turn. Seonkyeong’s sole concern was to protect the child until Jaeseong came home.
She would discuss the problem with him when he returned.
“Will you be all right without going the hospital?” asked the investigators, as they closed their notebooks. It seemed that the scenario she’d prepared satisfied them.
Besides, the knife that had been found at the scene had Seonkyeong’s fingerprints on it. The only other person in the house was the child who was sleeping in her room upstairs. And she’d slept soundly despite the fierce rainstorm. There was no room for suspicion.
The investigators seemed, in fact, to sympathize with Seonkyeong, who had escaped a life-threatening situation with a convict she’d interviewed at the prison. When they were finished talking, the investigators got up from their seats and headed to the study.
The security manager, who had been waiting for a chance to talk to Seonkyeong, came to sit down as soon as the investigators left.
“What happened?” he asked.
“That’s what I want to ask you,” Seonkyeong said.
The security manager’s face stiffened for a moment, then relaxed. In a way, he was to blame for what happened. He should offer profuse apologies, no matter what Seonkyeong said. Taking on a submissive attitude, he tried to placate her.
“I was deceived by the act he put on, just like you were. Who could’ve known that he would escape from the hospital after all that bleeding?” he asked.
Seonkyeong could guess what happened. It was impossible to break through the tight security at the prison. If you wanted to escape, the sensible thing would be to seek an opportunity after making it out of the prison somehow. Chances were that in a hospital, the security wouldn’t be as tight.
“What did he say?” the security manager asked, his eyes gleaming.
He was surprised that Yi Byeongdo had taken such a great risk to escape. It had seemed strange from the beginning that he’d wanted to be interviewed by her and no one else. The manager knew that he’d decided to escape because of her.
Although he knew that Seonkyeong was special to Yi Byeongdo, he didn’t know what it was about her that made her special. The manager wanted to know what had shaken him up so.
“He said he could come see me anytime, if he had a mind to,” Seonkyeong snapped at the manager. Attack was the best defense.
She didn’t want to hear him say this and that about Yi Byeongdo. She could never explain to anyone what she’d seen in his eyes in his last moment. His eyes said everything—more than a thousand words could. She didn’t want to turn his loneliness, which must have chilled him to the bone, into idle talk for the security manager to indulge in.
Some people wounded their own souls with inherent sensitivity. Seonkyeong, too, had lived with the loneliness that came from having no siblings, and the emptiness that came from her mother’s death early on. Yi Byeongdo’s words had penetrated deep into her heart, where no one had been able to reach. She didn’t want to try to explain the sense of kinship she’d felt for him, which no one would understand.
The security manager looked at Seonkyeong, offended, but when he saw the body being brought out of the study, he quickly got up and followed the others. As he went out through the front door, he turned around and said to Seonkyeong, “I told you, didn’t I? That no good would come of getting involved with him.”
He gave her a light nod, and went outside.
Seonkyeong got up from the sofa and went toward the study; the investigator she’d talked to earlier was on his way out.
“You’d better keep the door closed tonight. We’ll call the criminal victim support center and request cleaning service in the morning,” he said.
Seonkyeong nodded and took a look at the study.
Dark blood stained the floor where Yi Byeongdo had lain.
The detective closed the door to the study and looked for a uniformed officer. One came with yellow tape for marking limited access, and taped it across the door.
Once the final investigator had left, the house was quiet.
Seonkyeong looked around inside the house, unfamiliar after the tornado that had swept through, and went upstairs.
Hayeong was sleeping in her bed. Seonkyeong pulled up the blanket, which the child had kicked off, and tucked her back in and left the room.
She went downstairs and checked the lock on the glass door. The rain had almost ceased. She realized that her headache was gone, too.
Sleep overwhelmed her. She felt drained of all energy. She turned off the living room light and went into the bedroom.
As soon as she slipped under the blanket, she fell deep into sleep.
It was a dreamless slumber.
33.
SEONKYEONG OPENED HER EYES, FEELING AS THOUGH SHE had slept for a week, but the clock said eight o’clock. She thought she’d slept quite long, exhausted from all the commotion, but it had been less than three hours.
She slipped out of bed and pushed the curtains back. A clear sky, and sunlight that had just begun to spread, filled her view. The frenzied hours of the night before seemed like a dream. But the traces that remained in the yard proved that it hadn’t been.
The yard was a mess after the storm. Seonkyeong felt rather relieved that there was a lot to do. As she moved her body, her mind would slowly work out what was to be done next.
She was making the bed when she heard footsteps outside her bedroom. The sound came from the living room. Thinking Hayeong must be awake, she was about to step out from the room when the door opened.
Hayeong came in, with a cup of milk on a tray.
Seonkyeong was astonished at the fact that the child looked fine, even after what happened the night before. She wondered if Hayeong was used to death by now.
Hayeong’s calm face disturbed Seonkyeong even more. Washing the blood off the child’s hands the night before, Seonkyeong had realized something awful: she was scrubbing and scrubbing her hands, until they turned red, but in the end, it was she herself who had put the blood on Hayeong’s hands. She had shattered the soul that had barely been kept intact.
Would such a thing have happened if Seonkyeong had been an ordinary housewife? The child had already killed someone before. Now she had killed again. What did she think, looking down at the blood on her hands? Just thinking about it sent chills up Seonkyeong’s spine.
Perhaps she and Hayeong should never have met.
“Are you okay now?” asked the child, putting the tray down on the table. She was making an effort, in her own way, to show that she cared. Seonkyeong stared at the cup of milk she’d brought, then looked away with mixed emotions.
“There’s something I want t
o ask you,” Hayeong said, perching on a corner of the bed.
“What is it?” Seonkyeong asked.
“Are you . . . going to tell my dad about it?”
She seemed to be referring to the fire incident, in which she’d killed her grandparents and set the house on fire. She was more afraid than anything of her father finding out about it. Or perhaps she was afraid that she might no longer be able to live with him because of it—she’d done such a terrible thing, because she wanted to live with him.
“I won’t tell him,” she said.
A look of relief flooded the child’s face. But when she heard what Seonkyeong said next, her face hardened.
“I want you to tell him yourself. If you don’t, then I will have to tell him.”
“Do I . . . really have to tell him?” Hayeong asked.
Seonkyeong looked quietly into her eyes. Seeing the look in Seonkyeong’s eyes, Hayeong lowered her head, as though to say she knew she had no choice.
“All right,” Hayeong said quietly, and fell into thought for a moment. But she perked up soon enough, and looking at Seonkyeong, held out the cup of milk as though she’d just remembered it.
Seonkyeong shook her head, not wanting anything. Hayeong looked disappointed. Seeing her like that, she realized she couldn’t refuse the milk. Reluctantly, she took the cup from the child’s hand.
Hayeong wouldn’t leave, but kept staring at her and then said, “You don’t like me, do you?”
“Yes, I do like you,” Seonkyeong said.
“You’re lying. You don’t even know me that well,” Hayeong said, her voice growing croaky.
“You can like someone, even if you don’t know them very well. I really wanted to get along with you,” Seonkyeong said in honesty. The change had been sudden, but living with the child, she had been learning what it was like to raise a family.
“My dad likes you. But . . . I don’t,” the child said coldly, which hurt Seonkyeong’s feelings. She felt a lump in her throat. Not knowing what to say, she took a sip of the milk.
“All I wanted was to live with my dad,” Hayeong mumbled, sounding distressed.