by Un-su Kim
Jeong-eun was silent. She didn’t speak much. After cooking me dinner, she would go into her room and sleep. Sometimes I thought about whether we might have sex, but for some reason, after being released by my kidnappers, I couldn’t get even the slightest of erections. It could be because I wasn’t attracted to her sexually. But it could also be because I was suffering from PTSD.
“Is it uncomfortable having me here?” I asked.
“It is. I’ve never had someone live with me before. But it’s OK. It’s not as bad as I thought,” she said.
“That’s fortunate, that it’s not as bad as you thought.”
And it was fortunate. If she had asked me to leave, there wasn’t a single place on Earth I could go. But I couldn’t stay here indefinitely. If they found out I was staying here, they would kidnap her too. They would take her to that half-dental office, half-corporate office place. And then that smooth-talking man would cut off her fingers. Who knows, he might even cut off other parts. He was more than capable of it. When I explained all of this to her, Jeong-eun made an unabashed smile saying, “It’s fine. I can spare a few parts.” Another thing that worried me was that, as someone who didn’t talk much, Jeong-eun would have trouble answering the man’s questions. And that would put him in a bad mood. And if that happened, the result wouldn’t be good. The extreme anxiety from imagining what might happen to Jeong-eun prevented me from sitting still and would force me to pace about the living room.
I kept thinking that I had to leave this place, both for Jeongeun’s sake and my own. But there were eyes everywhere. I didn’t have the strength to keep running. And because my toes were completely shot, I wouldn’t be able to run away from someone chasing me. I had no strength to fight, nor did I know how to fight. I tripped a boobytrap. I had no idea I had already boarded the Misfortune Express. I had lived my life forgetting that things completely unrelated to me could suddenly insert themselves front and center into my life. I was an idiot. But what had I done wrong?
One morning, after Jeong-eun left for work, I picked up the bottle of sleeping pills by my bed. It was empty. I had started with just one pill, then two, then three. These days I needed six to fall asleep. If I kept this up, I’d eventually never wake up. I stared at the empty bottle of sleeping pills for some time before finally picking up the phone and dialling the number for Will Execution Inc.
“I’m in need of that safe house. There’s a crocodile after me.”
“Are you leaving in search of a new world?”
“No, I’m on the run.”
“How long can you keep running?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll run to the end of the world. But I’ll get caught eventually. The world’s too small to run from fear forever.”
THE ISLAND
This island is uninhabited. The only things here are the incessant blowing of the wind and the monotonous sound of crashing waves. And yet the island is quiet. It’s so quiet, in fact, that sometimes I get the feeling everyone on Earth has migrated to Mars. My only friend is a stupid dog that barks at the sun all day. It’s a dachshund, and, because its legs are so short, its belly drags on the ground. I named it Crazy after the way it runs around in circles trying to bite its own tail. Stupid dog.
The island is shaped like a peanut. At one end is my cabin, and at the other head is a dock. In order to get to my cabin, you have to walk two kilometers from the dock up a deserted hill. Because I can see the trail from my cabin, I will know if someone is coming for me. Behind my cabin is a steep cliff. I’ve prepared a rope that extends from the top of the cliff to the sea below. If someone comes for me, I must take the rope and descend 100 meters down the cliff. Remembering the unfortunate prisoner of Saint-Pierre, Andre Droppa, who fell to his death because his rope was too short, I’ve tested my rope by dropping it over the side of the cliff several times. It is long enough. But I hope I never need to climb down the cliff.
I also have a rifle with a scope. Sometimes I line up empty cans and practice shooting targets, but my aim isn’t good. There is also a security system surrounding my cabin. Each morning, by surveying the island and checking the security system, I take a peek at the crocodile secretly growing inside me.
Everything necessary for a person to survive is inside my safe house. It’s not necessarily cultured, but neither is it primitive. Thanks to my wind turbine generator, which spins round and round making electricity, I can make toast with my electric toaster. All my fishing needs are satisfied by the island’s shallower cliffs, which provide good places to catch fish. All in all, this place is a perfect place for someone to hide. But it’s boring. I wish I could invite people here, but that would be dangerous. If I told anyone where this island was, my chasers would get here faster than you could look it up on the map. They think I’m hiding some secret, and their eyes are bloodshot looking for me. My soul is pure – light and airy like a piece of fluff left out to dry in afternoon sun.
It’s absurd, but recently I’ve been thinking that was all some ploy orchestrated by Professor Kwon. Perhaps there were never any chimera files to begin with. And if there were no chimera files, that would mean there was never any syndicate trying to get their hands on them. Perhaps K, with his elegant business card, and the smooth-talking man who cut off my fingers were both sent by Professor Kwon. Maybe everyone had conspired to banish me to this god-forsaken island. As I imagine such things, it all starts to make sense, and I begin to feel like I’ve been duped.
Someone had to devote their whole life to guarding those abandoned stories. And that someone, at least in Professor Kwon’s eyes, was me. I was perfect for the job: stupid, naïve, gullible, and afraid.
But this wasn’t a bet I was willing to take. There really could be a syndicate looking for chimera files, and there really could be men in black suits chasing me. If I were caught by them again, I wouldn’t be able to make it out of there with just a few fingers missing. Perhaps this was all because of that god damn Professor Kwon. Because of him, I’m living on this forlorn island with no friends, no women, and no alcohol.
* * *
Unsurprisingly, there’s a cabinet on this island. Organized in this cabinet are files from the original Cabinet 13. They’re all the leftover symptomer files that the syndicate or investors must have deemed worthless. Despite everything that’s happened, they’re still unbelievable. But not having anything to do, I often take out the files on sunny afternoons and quiet, lonely nights to read and organize – just as I always have.
I read those files, again and again – that’s what I do. I leave records of my doing this in various ways. Sometimes I make codes that no one can understand, and sometimes I rearrange the order of the files into a labyrinth. There’s no real purpose for any of this. I just do it for fun. However, because symptomers are a little different from other people and, in some ways, unique, I always think it very important that I find diverse and accurate ways to describe them. I do this because form is sometimes all that matters. The Russian formalists of Korea who were so deeply enamored with the beauty of form, once said this:
Cold noodles in a bowl for beef broth are not cold noodles. It’s just really poorly made beef broth.
I like this quote. Keeping these words in the back of my mind, I’m always trying to think of the most appropriate bowl in which to put these odd humans. But it’s not easy.
Sometimes I miss those absurd humans. Had the 290lb Mr Hwang lost weight and transformed into a nimble cat? Had the Mr Ko of Alien RADCOM received a reply from his home world? Had the torporers who were in a long state of torpor finally woken up? They must be getting annoyed that no one is answering their calls at the research center. Was the poor formerly conjoined twin still cremating her split soul on the weekends?
Each night I think of them. It’s not because I miss them, but because this place is so utterly boring. I think about their lives from my island and write about the things I’ve read. It’s similar to how Ludger Sylbaris in the middle of the Mexican desert sought out reven
ge little by little on the people of Saint-Pierre who had turned to ash.
This is how I’m spending my time, at the end of the world, in the middle of nowhere, with a stupid dachshund that chases its tail all day long. Aside from the discomfort of trying to reach the shift key without any pinkies, everything is all right. There are people in much worse circumstances in this world than me.
However, I don’t know how much longer I can last here. With nothing but the waves and the seagulls and the ridiculous stories of Cabinet 13, this island is so monotonous, so boring, so tedious. My life is full of that I-would-rather-eat-dog-treats-than-suffer-this-boredom boredom.
Perhaps you know. I don’t deal with boredom well.
“How’s it going?” Professor Kwon asks from heaven.
“Bad. Very bad. What am I supposed to do on this god-forsaken island?”
“I’m not sure there is anything to do. Just endure your time. Life is nothing but time that’s been momentarily placed in a bowl.”
“You mean, like a cabinet?”
“Yes, like a cabinet.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Un-su Kim made his debut as a writer in 2002 through the Jinju News Fall Literary Contest with short stories, Easy Breezy Writing Class and Dan Valjean Street. His first full-length novel The Cabinet won South Korea’s Munhakdongne Novel Award in 2006. His novel The Plotters was published in English in 2019
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Sean Lin Halbert was born in Seattle, USA, and holds a BA in Korean Language from the University of Washington, and a MA in Korean Literature from Seoul University. He has been awarded the Global Korean Literature Translation Award, the Korea Times Modern Korean Literature Translation Award, and the Literature Translation Institute of Korea Award for Aspiring Translators. He currently lives and works in Seoul as a full-time translator. The Cabinet is his first translated novel.