You-jeong Jeong was born in Hampyeong, South Korea. You-jeong initially trained as a nurse and is now South Korea’s leading writer of psychological crime and thriller fiction. She is often compared to Stephen King and Raymond Chandler. You-jeong is the author of four novels including Seven Years of Darkness, which was named one of the top ten crime novels of 2015 by the German newspaper Die Zeit. Her work has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Thai and Vietnamese. The Good Son is the first of her books to be translated into English.
Chi-Young Kim is the translator of the New York Times bestseller Please Look After Mother by Kyung-sook Shin, as well as fiction by Sun-mi Hwang, J.M. Lee and Young-ha Kim, among many others. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
COPYRIGHT
LITTLE, BROWN
First published in South Korea in 2016 as Jongui Giwon by EunHaeng NaMu Publishing Co.
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Little, Brown
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © You-jeong Jeong 2016
Translation copyright © Chi-Young Kim 2018
Song on p. 3, p. 121 and p. 156 from ‘Woman in the Mist’ by Shin Juang-Hyeon
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4087-1123-1
Export ISBN: 978-1-4087-0974-0
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The Good Son
Table of Contents
About the Author
COPYRIGHT
I: A CALL IN THE DARK
II: WHO AM I?
III: A DANGER TO OTHERS
IV: ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES
EPILOGUE
I
A CALL IN THE DARK
The smell of blood woke me. It was intense, as though my whole body were inhaling it. It reverberated and expanded within me. Strange scenes flitted through my mind – the fuzzy yellow light of a row of street lamps in the fog, swirling water below my feet, a crimson umbrella rolling along a rain-soaked road, a plastic tarpaulin shrouding a construction site snapping in the wind. Somewhere a man was singing and slurring lyrics: a song about a girl he couldn’t forget, and about her walking in the rain.
It didn’t take me long to figure out what was going on. None of this was reality or even the remnants of a dream. It was a signal my head was sending my body. Stay lying down. Don’t move. It’s the price you have to pay for not taking your medication.
Not taking my meds was a quenching rain in the desert of my life, even if it sometimes caused a seizure. Right now, I was experiencing the unsettling hallucinations that warned me a storm was imminent. There was no safe harbour; I could only wait for it to arrive. If past experience was any indication, when it was over, I wouldn’t remember what had happened. It would be simple and intense, and afterwards I would be tired and depleted. I deserved this; I knew full well what I was getting into when I chose this path. It was an addiction; I kept doing it again and again despite understanding the risks. Most addicts get high to chase after a fantasy, but for me it was a different route: I had to get off my drugs to reach a heightened reality. That was when the magic hours opened up – my headaches and tinnitus disappeared, and my senses became acute. I could smell like a dog, my brain whirred quicker than ever, and I read the world by instinct instead of with reason. I felt empowered and superior.
Even then, I still had tiny dissatisfactions. I never felt superior to Mother and Auntie. These two women treated me like a seat cushion – something to be suffocated and smothered. I knew what the chain of events would be if Mother were to witness me having a seizure. As soon as I recovered, she would drag me straight to Auntie, the famous psychiatrist and director of Future Paediatric Clinic. Auntie would look into my eyes and talk to me kindly to try to get me to listen to her. Why did you stop taking your pills? Tell me honestly, so I can help you. Frankly, though, honesty is neither my strong suit nor something I aspire to. I prefer to be practical, so my answer would be: I forgot to take it one day, then the next day I forgot that I’d forgotten the day before, and while I’m at it, why don’t I just say that I’ve forgotten about it every day until this very moment? Auntie would declare that I was falling into another dangerous pattern, and Mother would order me to take the pills at each meal under observation. They would drill into me the steep price I would pay for a few thrilling days, making it clear that as long as I continued to behave this way, I would never be free of their gaze.
‘Yu-jin.’
Suddenly Mother’s voice popped into my head. I had heard it, soft but clear, right before I woke up. But now I couldn’t even hear her moving about downstairs. It was so quiet. A deafening stillness. It was dark in my room; maybe it was still early, before the sun was up. She might still be asleep. Then I could have this seizure and be done with it without her having to know about it, like last night.
Around midnight, I’d stood panting near the sea wall on my way back from a run to the Milky Way Observatory in Gundo Marine Park. I ran when I got restless and felt my muscles twitching with energy. I thought of it as ‘restless body syndrome’. Sometimes I ran in the middle of the night; it wouldn’t be exaggerating to call it a mad urge.
The streets were deserted, as they always were at that hour. Yongi’s, the street stall that sold sugar-filled pancakes, was closed. The ferry dock below was shrouded in darkness. Thick fog had swallowed the six-lane road by the sea wall. The December wind was biting and powerful, and a torrential rain was falling. Most would consider these adverse conditions, but I felt as though I was floating in the air. I felt fantastic. I could float all the way home. It would have been perfect if it hadn’t been for the sweet smell of blood perfuming the wind, suggesting an impending seizure. A girl got off the last bus to Ansan and tottered towards me with her umbrella held open, pushed along by the wind. I had to get home; I didn’t want to crumple to the ground and roll around, contorted like a squid thrown on the grill, in front of a complete stranger.
I couldn’t remember what happened after that. I must have lain down as soon as I walked into my room, without bothering to change. I probably fell asleep snoring. It had been the third seizure I’d had in my life, but this was the first time I’d sensed another one coming so quickly after the last. And this smell was a different beast altogether: my skin was stinging, my nose was tingling and my mind was foggy. The episode that was about to come felt like it could be the most intense one yet.
I wasn’t anxious about the seizure’s severity; whether it was a drizzle or a downpour, I’d still get wet. I just wished it would come quickly so that I could be done with it before Mother woke up. I closed my eyes and stayed still. I turned my head to the side to prevent any possible breathing distress. I relaxed my body and breathed deepl
y. One, two… When I got to five, the cordless phone on my bedside table began to ring, jolting me out of my preparations. I flinched, knowing it would be ringing downstairs in the living room too. Mother would startle awake. What bastard calls in the middle of the night?
The phone stopped ringing. The grandfather clock took over and chimed just once in the living room. As well as ringing out on the hour, the clock chimed once every thirty minutes. I reached over to the alarm clock by my bed and peeked at the display: 5.30. Waking early was a legacy from my years of competitive swimming. No matter what time I fell asleep, I would wake up one hour before practice. That meant that Mother must be sitting at the writing desk in her room, reciting Hail Marys to the statue of the Virgin Mary.
After she prayed, Mother would take a shower. I listened for a dragging chair or running water, but all I could hear was the loud ringing of the phone. This time it was my mobile. Maybe the earlier call had been for me too.
I raised a hand above my head and felt along my pillow for my phone. Where was it? On the desk? In the bathroom? The ringing stopped. Then the landline began going off again. My head jerked up and I grabbed the receiver.
‘Hello?’
‘Were you sleeping?’
It was Hae-jin. Of course. Who else would be looking for me at this hour?
‘I’m up.’
‘What’s Mother doing?’
What a weird question. Did he not come home after his meeting with the movie studio yesterday?
‘Aren’t you home?’ I asked.
‘What? Why would I call if I’m home? I’m in Sangam-dong.’ The director of Private Lesson, which Hae-jin had worked on last summer, had found him a new gig, he said. To celebrate signing the contract, they’d gone out for makgeolli, then they’d gone to a friend’s studio to edit a sixtieth birthday party video he’d filmed during the day, and fallen asleep. ‘I just woke up and saw that Mother had called in the middle of the night. I thought it was a little weird – she should have been asleep.’ He added that he’d thought we would be up by now, but that he’d got worried when nobody picked up. ‘Everything’s okay, right?’
Just then, I realised that something stiff was crusted all over me. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ I replied absently as I touched my hardened, tangled hair.
‘Why isn’t she picking up, then? She didn’t answer the home phone or her mobile.’
‘She’s probably praying. Or in the bathroom, or out on her balcony.’ I felt my chest, then my stomach, then my legs. I was still wearing the same clothes from last night but they felt completely different. My soft, airy sweater was stiff. My trousers were hard, like raw leather. I raised my foot; that was caked with something too.
‘Oh. So everything’s fine?’
I murmured in annoyance. What could be wrong, other than the fact that I was apparently covered in mud? ‘If you’re so worried, just give her a call later.’
‘Nah. I’ll be home soon.’
‘Okay.’ Why was I muddy, though? Had I fallen on my way home? But where was there mud? Had I gone the long way round, past where the new flats were being constructed? Had I slipped, maybe, as I tried to leap over a flower bed?
‘I’m going to take a shower. I’ll be home by nine at the latest,’ Hae-jin said, and we hung up.
I sat up, placed the phone back on my bedside table and turned on the overhead light.
‘Yu-jin!’ Mother’s scream rang in my ears. But it wasn’t real – the flat was silent.
I looked around the room. My breath caught in my throat and I began choking and coughing, pounding on my chest as I fell forward on the bed, tears springing to my eyes.
Once, after I’d won gold in a 1,500-metre race, a journalist had asked me, ‘What would you say your strengths are?’ Modestly, the way Mother had instructed me to, I answered that I had relatively stable breathing. When the same question was posed to my swimming coach, he’d said, slightly less modestly, ‘He has the most extraordinary lung capacity of all the kids I’ve ever coached.’ There were few things that could affect my extraordinary lung capacity; they included the two women who used me as a sofa cushion, and the torpedo that seemed to explode in my throat as I looked around my room now.
Bloody drips and footprints were smeared all over the silvery marble floor. They started by the door, crossed the room and stopped at the foot of the bed. Assuming that the person leaving the prints hadn’t walked backwards, whatever had happened had occurred outside my bedroom door. My bed was drenched in blood – the sheets, blankets and pillow. I looked down at myself. Clots of the stuff hung all over my black sweater, sweatpants and socks. So the tang of blood that had made me lurch awake wasn’t a sign of impending seizure; it was the real thing.
Were those my footsteps? What had happened outside my room? Why was I covered in blood? Did I have a seizure? If so, it must have been bad. Did I bite my tongue? Could you bite your tongue so that the blood covered your whole body? Given the amount, it would make more sense that someone had spitefully thrown a bucket of pig’s blood over me, or stabbed me. Neither seemed likely.
Where had Mother been while all this was happening? She must have been sleeping. Mother kept strict routines for most things in life, from eating to going to the bathroom to exercising. Her sleeping habits were another such thing. Each night, she went to bed at nine after taking one of the sleeping pills Auntie had prescribed. I had to be home before then. The only time she didn’t follow her nightly routine was when I was late.
This rule didn’t apply to Hae-jin. Mother justified this discriminatory practice by saying that she didn’t need to worry about him having a seizure on the streets late at night. It was unfair, but I had to accept it; I didn’t want to collapse in front of people, fall onto the tracks while waiting for a train, or flail around in the street and get run over by a bus. Nevertheless, it was my curfew that led me, from time to time, to run in the middle of the night, sneaking out via the steel door on the roof like a person starved of darkness.
I had done it just last night. I’d arrived home at 8.55 p.m., having had to leave in the middle of drinks with professors to make it back in time. I’d had three or four glasses of soju mixed with beer, even though I normally didn’t drink, and had walked home from the bus stop in the rain, hoping it would cool my flushed face. The heat subsided but I was still buzzed enough to feel happy. Maybe I was a little more than buzzed – I forgot that the front door to the flat didn’t work unless you punched in a code followed by an asterisk, so I waged a hopeless battle with the door for twenty minutes. All the flats in this building had keyless locks. After a while, I just stood there with my hands in my pockets, glaring at the malfunctioning lock. My mobile pinged several times. I knew they were texts from Mother. I didn’t have to read them to know what they said:
Have you left?
Where are you?
Are you close?
It’s raining. I’ll pick you up at the bus stop.
Five seconds after the last message, the door flew open. Mother, who dressed elegantly even to go to the supermarket, appeared with her car keys in her hand, looking stylish in a baseball cap, white sweater, brown cardigan, skinny jeans and white trainers.
Annoyed, I pursed my lips and looked down at my feet. Let me be, I wanted to snap at her.
‘When did you get here?’ She secured the half-open door with the doorstop and stood in the opening. No way was she going to let me in without a fuss.
My hands still in my pockets, I glanced down at my watch: 9.15 p.m. ‘A while ago…’ I stopped short, realising I was digging my own grave. My head felt like lead. My face was on fire. I must have looked like a ripe tomato. I kept looking straight ahead so she wouldn’t notice. Then I carefully and slowly rolled my eyes towards her. My gaze met hers. ‘I couldn’t get in. The door wouldn’t open,’ I added quickly.
Mother glanced at the lock. She pressed the seven-digit code, her fingers a blur. The door unlatched with a beep. She looked at me again. What was the problem?
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br /> ‘Oh…’ I nodded, trying to convey that I understood nothing was wrong with it. Water rained down from my wet hair. A drop slid past my eyes and dangled at the tip of my nose. I blew upwards to make it drop. Mother’s eyes were boring into me. More precisely, she was staring at the small scar in the middle of my forehead as though that was where all my lies were generated.
‘Have you been drinking?’
Well, that was an awkward question. According to Auntie, alcohol brought on seizures. Drinking was the ultimate rule I couldn’t break. ‘Just a little. A teeny bit.’ I showed her with my thumb and forefinger.
Mother’s gaze didn’t soften. My scar burned.
‘Just one beer,’ I added, hoping it would turn the situation.
Mother blinked. ‘Oh, is that so?’
‘I wasn’t going to, but my professor offered me one…’ I stopped. Here I was, in trouble for having a few drinks at the age of twenty-five! All because of the damn front door. If it had worked, I would have slipped inside and run upstairs, calling, ‘I’m home!’ as I passed Mother’s bedroom. I wouldn’t have missed my curfew, Mother wouldn’t have come out to accost me, and I wouldn’t have been caught drunk. My legs grew weak and my left knee buckled. I swayed.
‘Yu-jin!’ Mother grabbed my elbow.
I nodded. I’m okay. I’m not drunk. It really was just one drink.
‘Let’s go inside and talk.’
I did want to go inside but I didn’t want to talk. I brushed Mother’s hand off my elbow. This time, my right leg gave way and I tipped towards her, catching myself by hanging onto her shoulders. Mother drew in a quick breath, her small, thin body stiffening. Maybe she was surprised, or moved, or thought it out of character for me to touch her. I held onto her, thinking, Let’s not talk. What’s the point? I’ve already been drinking – it’s too late to stop me now.
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