by Lee Ki-ho
The caretakers carried two shovels as we went up the hillside behind the institution, almost all the way up to the barbed wire fence. It was just at the onset of winter, and there was white frost here and there between the bushes. With each step we took we heard the crunching of dried leaves beneath our feet.
When we’d gotten to the slope of the mountain, the smaller caretaker spoke to us.
“So what, he wasn’t acting strange or anything? Weren’t there signs?”
We told him there weren’t.
The middle-aged man did not confess anything to us, nor did he ask us to apologize for him. All he did all day long was sit on his bed, his legs crossed, and stare at us blankly. There was once—just once—that he told us he would take care of apologizing for his wrongs, and that we shouldn’t worry. Still, we continued to ask him. That was on account of it being the duty of the head residents. But, instead of answering, he hung himself.
“So, in a case like this, how do we apologize for him?” Si-bong asked the caretakers.
As soon as he did, the taller caretaker smacked him in the head with a shovel and said, “Dig, you little shit! Dig deep! Deep! That’s the only thing you fuckers can do to apologize for him!”
And that was how we spent half the morning digging deep, deep into the earth. The ground was as hard as ice. Each time we struck into the earth with our shovels, a shock ran up our arms like electricity. We apologized for the middle-aged man as the sweat ran down our faces.
The young woman took a broken bottle and slit her wrists in the bathroom, collapsing over the squat toilet. Her slit left wrist was found soaking in the toilet water. More than half her hair, as well, was soaking in it. Because of that, we couldn’t really see her face.
After hearing about her death, the caretakers lined us up next to each other against one wall in the bathroom and beat us with rags and pointers to no avail.
“What the hell did you do to her you little fucks?!” The short one yelled, almost in tears.
Standing there, being beaten, we answered. “We didn’t do anything to her! All we did was say that we would apologize for her!”
“Because that’s the head residents’ job!”
From the day after the young woman had entered the institution, every night she was called into the caretakers’ room. She spent the whole night screaming, and we spent the entire night doing nothing but silently listening.
Whenever Si-bong and I saw her in the workshop we would tell her that she should confess all of her wrongs to us first, and that we would go to the caretakers’ room every night on her behalf and apologize. When we did that, instead of answering, she spat in our faces. She even called us the dirty scum of the institution. We told her that her cursing was a good wrong to confess, and asked her if she’d like us to apologize for that. She didn’t say anything.
The day just before she died, Si-bong and I asked her about her wrongs. When we did that, she said, “What? You guys want it, too, don’t you? You guys want it, too, so that’s why you keep saying that?”
She grabbed Si-bong’s and my hands and took us into the bathroom. Inside, she turned around, showed us her behind, and said, “Hurry up and do it, you bastards.”
We stood there for a long while, looking at her behind. The reflection of her face in the window showed no expression.
Si-bong took the first step, slowly walking closer to her. He put one hand to her buttock and gave it a slow stroke. I could see in the reflection that her eyes were closed. Si-bong turned his head to look at me. I looked at Si-bong and, without a word, nodded my head. Right away, Si-bong gave her behind a hard slap with the palm of his hand. As he did so, he yelled, “What?! That’s the best you can do?! I said, is that the best you can do?!”
Si-bong repeated to her the exact dialogue that we had said for the superintendent. Despite that, she did not follow the same lines. Without saying a word, she simply stood there and continued to be beaten. Her shoulders shuddered a few times.
That was our last image of her.
We buried her right next to the middle-aged man. Since Si-bong and I had been beaten, we dug deep into the earth with large, swollen eyes. The caretakers sat squatted under a fir tree and watched us as we dug. The shorter caretaker spoke.
“Shit . . . She was a good one.”
The taller caretaker, rubbing his hands together, added, “What do you keep thinking about it for? They say it’s bad luck if you keep thinking about the dead.”
“You think?”
“If you do, you’re just gonna give yourself nightmares, you know? It’s no use.”
Each of the caretakers put a cigarette in his mouth. They continued talking.
“Those fuckers . . . I don’t think we can let them be head residents anymore.”
“Yeah . . . Fuck. Because of those little shits all the residents are dying now.”
“Brr . . . I’m freezing to death out here.”
“Let’s hurry it up, you little fuckers! The day’s almost over!”
The caretakers picked up a small stone and threw it toward us. We continued to shovel dirt without a word. But we couldn’t help but feel sad. And that was on account of at that point, being head residents, the apologies—it was all over.
25. At Least We Can Apologize
The day after the big fight broke out at the shop building the butcher came to find us early in the morning. The butcher’s eyes were red and bloodshot as if he hadn’t slept a wink all night. His hair was messy.
He asked us in a weak voice to apologize for him. Of course, to the fruit stand owner. Si-bong responded.
“Yes, of course. Choking someone is most certainly a great wrong.”
I responded as well.
“Granted, had you apologized in the first place you probably never would have even committed that wrong . . .”
The butcher glared at me, but quickly lowered his head once more.
“But there’s one thing I have to ask,” he said, staring at the ground.
“Why me? Why in the world did you pick me and big bro’?”
Si-bong and I looked at each other for a moment. Si-bong then asked the butcher in response, “Remember once, a while back, when you covered up for him with the convenience store woman about cleaning the bathroom? Why did you do that? I mean, you certainly knew that it was the fruit stand owner’s turn to clean the bathroom, didn’t you? And didn’t you even talk about that with your wife, as well?”
“Cleaning the bathroom? I mean, that was just . . .”
“Up until then we were just watching you, but that was the moment when we knew. That’s when we knew that you were committing wrongs against the fruit stand owner. That’s why from that moment on, we started to come to you.”
After that, the butcher had no more questions for us, and we had nothing to say to him. That was on account of that being all there was to say.
Soon after we went to visit the fruit stand owner.
The fruit stand owner was leaning back in his chair, his eyes closed. On his neck were two patches of anti-inflammatory medicine, and on his wrists dark, blue bruises. He looked a bit exhausted, and his shoulders seemed smaller than before.
After bowing politely to the fruit stand owner we told him we had been sent by the butcher. As soon as he heard that, he turned his head away from us.
“We’ve come to apologize for the butcher.”
“From this moment on, just think of us as him.”
“If you think of us as him, you can try to choke us as well.”
As Si-bong and I said this, we knelt in front of the fruit stand owner. We tilted our heads back as far as we could to make it easier for the fruit stand owner to grab our necks. Si-bong was in front of his left hand, and I was in front of his right.
“You think this is going to make me feel better? That’s what you think?” Both of his eyes were still closed as he spoke.
Si-bong said, “Whether you’re going to get out your anger or not, we’re going to rema
in here like this.”
The fruit stand owner turned his head to Si-bong. “That’s what you call an apology? This is how someone is supposed to act when they’re apologizing?”
“An apology means that you say you’re not going to do the same thing that you did before. That’s all it is. There’s nothing we can do about your feelings, sir.”
The fruit stand owner bit his lip and glared at Si-bong.
“If you don’t accept this apology, the butcher might at some point in the future try to choke you again. Because he might not think that it’s even a wrong at all.”
After hearing what Si-bong had to say, the fruit stand owner took in a deep breath. He looked at me once as well, at which point he suddenly began to strangle Si-bong. All he had to do was open his hand, Si-bong’s neck was right there, so the fruit stand owner didn’t even need to get out of his chair.
The fruit stand owner always played badminton with his left hand. Whenever he counted money, too, he counted it with his left. As Si-bong was being strangled, he let out a choking noise and tapped the floor with one hand.
With his hands clasped around Si-bong’s neck and his shoulders quivering, the fruit stand owner strangled Si-bong for a long while.
26. The Things Left Behind After the Apology
The next day we went to the butcher and told him that we had apologized to the fruit stand owner and that he no longer had to worry about the situation.
“Did he accept the apology?”
When the butcher asked that, Si-bong pulled at the collar of his shirt to show two medicated patches on his neck. There were bruises on Si-bong’s neck as well.
The butcher looked at Si-bong’s neck without saying a word.
“He choked me so hard while thinking of you that from now on things should be okay.”
The butcher still said nothing. We remained standing there at attention.
The butcher took out an envelope from the cash register and handed it to us. There was money in it. We bowed to him politely.
Si-bong added: “So, any other wrongs you’d like to confess?”
The butcher turned his head without saying anything.
From the next day on, the butcher shop did not open. The fruit stand, however, opened as usual. The fruit stand owner swept the sidewalk in front of his shop alone, and ate his packed lunch alone. He didn’t play badminton, nor did he have a beer after work. All he did was sit there alone in his store, staring at the neighborhood across the street.
A few days later there was a sign posted on the door: “For Lease.”
We gave the money we had received from the butcher to the man with the horn-rimmed glasses. As soon as he took the money his eyes widened.
He looked at us and said, “But, how did you guys . . . ?”
We told the man with the horn-rimmed glasses what had happened in the days before, ending with, “And you know, there are wrongs upon wrongs out there. That means the apologies will just keep coming.”
The man with the horn-rimmed glasses quickly put on his sweatshirt and left. We looked at him from behind for a long, long time. We felt a bit proud.
Part Two:
Creating Wrong
1. Visiting Hours
One day, as the weather was beginning the get warmer, Si-bong and I went to the detention center to visit the superintendent of the institution.
We had to stop by the plaza in front of the train station before doing so to see the man with the whiskers. That was on account of our not knowing where the superintendent was.
In the plaza in front of the train station there were many men with long whiskers. They either sat around the base of the clock tower of the plaza drinking alcohol, or sat inside the terminal on the benches watching TV. There were some who slept in cardboard boxes, and there were some older men who panhandled to passersby. All of them wore hats low on their heads. It was a hot day, but they all wore multiple layers.
After walking around the area of the train station for about an hour we were able to find the man with the whiskers. He saw us first and approached us.
“Ah! Well look who it is! If it isn’t the pillars of the institution!”
He clasped our hands and shook them up and down. In the time since we’d last seen him his whiskers had grown even longer. A smell of alcohol came from his mouth, and his cheeks were so red they look liked they’d been burned. With our hands still clasped in his, he led us to the shade next to the public restrooms. There, there were another three men sitting on lain out newspaper, drinking alcohol. They were all older men with whiskers and mustaches.
“Say hi, fellas! These are the two young men who helped me blow the whistle before!”
Si-bong and I bowed our heads politely in greeting. The men handed us cups of alcohol. One of the men said that he thought he’d recognized us from the newspaper, that it was the first time he’d ever met someone he’d seen in the newspaper, and passed us a cup. We drank everything that was handed to us. Not long after, our bodies became warm.
We asked the man with the whiskers where the superintendent was.
“That guy? Why’d you wanna see that piece of garbage?”
“There’s something we have to ask him.”
“It’s better not to associate yourselves with garbage like that.”
“There’s one thing in particular that I really have to ask him.”
The man with the whiskers looked at us for a moment without saying a word, then walked over to a phone booth. Si-bong and I followed him. After calling three newspapers, he’d found out where the superintendent was. It was a detention center about 30 minutes away by train.
“Look, I don’t know what it is you’re looking for, but don’t believe a single word that comes out of his mouth! They’re all lunatic fucks,” he spoke, patting us on the shoulders. He added that if we ever had problems getting by that we should come find him, and that there were plenty of spots there to sleep so we needn’t worry about that. We bowed our heads once again to the man with the whiskers as we said goodbye.
The next day, early in the morning, we went to the detention center.
After signing up for a visiting time we sat in a place where the chairs looked a lot like those in the terminal of the train station and we watched a large electronic display. Besides Si-bong and me there were about ten people sitting there. All of the people were watching the information on the display, which room number and what time. As each new number flashed on the display, some people would get up, open the door over on the right, and go inside. All of them took the same, slow steps.
We were told to go to room number 26. The visiting room was a little bit smaller than the bedroom that Si-yeon and the man with the horn-rimmed glasses shared. The room was partitioned exactly in two by a glass wall. In the middle of the glass there were small holes drilled through that looked like the marks left behind after peeing in the snow. Si-bong and I sat down on the steel seat in front of the glass. A uniformed man had followed us into the room. He sat down at a steel desk to the right.
The man in uniform pushed a button on top of the table. As soon as he did, a steel door on the other side of the glass wall opened and the superintendent entered. The superintendent was wearing all blue from head to toe. On his right breast the number 115 was written. We hadn’t seen him for months, and his hair had grown whiter than before. Nonetheless, his cheeks and his jaw were clean, as if freshly shaven. We even smelled the smell of peppermint lotion.
When the superintendent looked at us from the other side of the glass he grinned widely. As soon as we saw that grin, Si-bong and I both stood up from the steel chair at almost exactly the same second. We bowed politely at the waist to greet him. That was on account of our always having greeted the superintendent that way when we met him.
2. The Thing I Wanted to Know
“I knew you guys would come looking for me.”
The superintendent spoke from the other side of the glass as he sat down. Si-bong and I were still stand
ing in front of the steel bench. The man in uniform looked at us for a moment. He continued jotting things down.
“So, how is it? It’s a pretty tough world out there, isn’t it? I bet you guys are starting to miss the institution a little bit.” He spoke to us looking us straight in the eye. He kept on smiling.
“And what about your medicine? You came for that, didn’t you?”
We answered that that wasn’t why we’d come. We told him that we weren’t missing any medicine, that we were taking it every day.
“From where?”
“From your storehouse, sir. There’s no need to worry. Now we know how to take it ourselves.”
As soon as Si-bong said that, the smile suddenly disappeared from the superintendent’s face.
“So . . . you’re saying you went back?”
We nodded our heads without saying anything.
“But the doors . . . the doors were all locked, weren’t they?”
We told him that we’d broken the living room window and gone in.
“No need to worry, everything else is okay. We’re even holding on to your diaries for you.”
The superintendent glared at us without saying anything. We told him that when he was released we would return them to him. He continued to sit there without saying anything. He even closed his eyes at one point and let out a long sigh.
I added, “Actually, there’s something I wanted to ask, and that’s why we’re here.”
The superintendent’s eyes widened as he looked directly at me.
“There’s something you want to ask? Something you want to ask me?”
“Yes. Actually . . . it’s because I’d like to see my father.”
“Your father?”
“Well, you’ve met my father before, of course. I thought maybe you’d know where he lived.”
I asked the superintendent exactly what it was I wanted to know. That was what I wanted to know. I couldn’t stay at Si-bong’s house forever. It was also what Si-yeon wanted.