I stepped out quickly, and closed the door. I lunged towards the stairs, taking several steps at a time. Was Mother’s bathroom clean? Had I left any trace or object that would draw suspicion if Hae-jin were to enter her room? I was convinced I had cleaned up as much as I could, but I got the key and locked the door just in case.
I picked up Mother’s mobile phone from under my bed. I must have dropped it at some point. The screen was dark. The battery was dead. Damn. I should have checked her texts, in case she had a conversation with Auntie or Hae-jin I didn’t know about. But I didn’t want to charge it now. Mother was supposed to be at a religious retreat; it would be safer to leave it like this, so it wouldn’t ring or buzz, and in case someone overzealous decided to track its location.
The clock chimed downstairs – it was noon. Whatever else was going on in this flat, the clock continued to do its job. I placed Mother’s mobile on my desk and laid next to it the following: jacket, vest, iPod, earphones, roof key, disposable mask, razor, car key and Mother’s notebook.
I was the investigator interrogating the criminal. But the two were one and the same, the criminal had a slippery relationship with the truth, and his memory was spotty. If I couldn’t learn more, I would come to one obvious conclusion: for some unknown reason, Mother had tried to kill me. Therefore, the murder was self-defence. Maybe excessive self-defence, but self-defence nonetheless.
I put on trousers and took out a T-shirt. I heard footsteps. Hae-jin was coming upstairs. I looked at the door. I hadn’t locked it. The tussle that had happened an hour before by Mother’s bedroom door would be reprised here. The murderer’s and victim’s belongings were strewn on my desk, bloodstained cleaning tools and a bin bag were in front of the door, the floor was streaked with blood, and my bed was a tangle of bloodied sheets and blankets.
Damn it. Why was he coming up here? I lunged towards the door, my arm outstretched like a goalkeeper diving for the ball. I opened it and stepped out into the hallway, closing it just as Hae-jin arrived in front of me. We stood facing each other, only a foot apart. My T-shirt was in my hand.
‘Dude. Why didn’t you come and talk to me before you came up here? I was banging on Mother’s door…’ He stopped short, his eyes widening. ‘What’s going on here?’ He grabbed my left arm and lifted it.
I hadn’t expected this. ‘Oh. I bumped into the mop handle.’ I tugged my arm away.
He studied the bruise on my chest. ‘Doesn’t look like it’s from bumping into something.’ He reached over and grabbed my arm again. ‘Let me see.’
‘Stop it!’ I yanked it away violently.
Hae-jin gaped at me. A red flush began creeping up from below his collar.
‘I bumped into the mop, okay?’ I put on my shirt and hardened my expression so he would stop asking.
‘What the hell, man.’
‘What’s up?’ I said.
‘Did you see it?’
It? Did I leave something in the living room? The kitchen? By the front door? ‘What?’ I studied his expression.
He looked like he was trying to be casual, but his large brown eyes were sparkling; I could swear he was about to burst out laughing. ‘Isn’t that why you just ran out like that?’
Half my mind was on Hae-jin, and the other half was on what I had just seen in my room. The objects on my desk skittered past my eyes. None of that could have anything to do with his grin.
‘No?’ He cocked his head.
I crossed my arms. Stop fishing. Just spit it out.
‘Then why did you run out so fast?’
It took me a few moments to dig up a normal-sounding excuse. ‘I’m starving. I have to eat something.’
‘Oh, you haven’t eaten anything yet?’ Hae-jin looked sympathetic.
I didn’t like this expression either; maybe he was trying to wait me out. ‘So why did you come up, then?’
‘Well…’ he said, then stopped.
My fingertips twitched. I wanted to throttle him and yank out what he was hiding.
‘I was waiting and counting down,’ he finally admitted. ‘It was posted at exactly noon. Congratulations!’
I blinked stupidly.
‘What the hell, you bastard? I said congratulations! You got in!’
My arms fell limply to either side. My cheeks crumpled and my mouth stiffened. Oh, that. Law school admission.
‘Han Yu-jin,’ Hae-jin said, waving his hand in front of my face. He must have thought I was in disbelief, or so happy that I was dazed. That might have been the case if nothing had happened last night; after all, my college years had been focused solely on getting into law school.
‘How… how did you find out?’ I managed.
‘What are you talking about? With your test ID number, of course!’
I stared at him. How do you know my ID number?
‘Don’t you remember? I took a picture of your ID number when you registered for the exam.’
Of course. Hae-jin always celebrated by taking pictures, and that day he had made me stand against the living room wall with the piece of paper under my face as he took pictures from every angle, as though he were taking a mug shot.
‘This is awesome news, man. Congrats!’ He grabbed my hand and pumped it up and down.
Images of Mother appeared with each upward motion, then disappeared. She lunged at me, brandishing the razor; she lay in a puddle of blood with her throat cut; she was headed to the roof in my arms, wrapped in an old blanket; she rested on the swing; she was locked inside the table.
‘Good job, man.’ He let go and swung his arm around my shoulder. ‘I’m so proud of you.’
My body grew stiff. I couldn’t open my mouth. I was horrified to realise I was on the verge of tears. The fact that my life was over was being confirmed in a dramatic fashion. It felt as though a fist-sized lump of ice was sliding down my throat.
‘Wait, are you crying?’ Hae-jin stepped back and lowered his head to check. ‘That thrilled, huh?’
I looked down. Yeah, sure. Thrilled. So thrilled I want to cry. I want to cry until I fall over dead.
‘Now I get how you must have been feeling. Suddenly cleaning? I mean, you, the toughest guy in the world, getting nervous? You weren’t like this even when you were swimming! No matter how big the competition was, no matter who you were up against, you were always so calm. Like it was just another practice.’
He was right about that. I used to be ballsy. I was never nervous or anxious. In the water, I was strong. After I left swimming behind, I became a dedicated student. Any mother would be proud of a good son like me. Mother had taught me that if you pushed, you got pushed right back; the easiest thing to do was never to push or get pushed, and I hadn’t strayed from her advice until now; I’d lived according to that edict. I couldn’t think of anything I’d done to deserve what she’d said to me last night.
‘You should tell Mother,’ Hae-jin said.
I nodded, still rooted in place.
‘Go on, call her! She must be so nervous right now, just praying for this.’ Hae-jin stood there casually, his hands in his pockets, eager to share his joy. I wanted that too; we were family. It was too bad that I couldn’t join him.
‘I’ll call her when you go downstairs,’ I blurted out.
‘Okay,’ he said, but he didn’t move. He studied me carefully. ‘Are you okay? Have you… Did you not take your pills?’ He said the last part cautiously, as though he was worried that his words would anger me.
It had been four days since I’d stopped taking the pills. A week ago, I had experienced the worst and longest headache of my life, a common side effect of the medication. For several days my pulse surged and my ears rang, and I felt as though a metal skewer was stabbing my brain. Nothing worked. I tried lying still; I fell over with my head in my hands; I moaned with my head stuck between my knees; I pressed the back of my head with my fingers laced together. I waited endlessly. It felt like my tongue was swelling up and blocking my throat. After three days of that, I decided I didn’t car
e if I had a seizure or not. I was enraged at Auntie for prescribing the pills, and at Mother, who was always watching to make sure I took them. I didn’t want to take these stupid pills for the rest of my life.
‘Hey, Yu-jin,’ Hae-jin said, interrupting my reverie.
‘Yeah?’ I glanced up at him.
He looked beyond my shoulder. ‘Phone’s ringing.’
I nodded. It was my mobile, which was in my desk drawer, in my room, of all places. Who could it be?
‘Aren’t you going to answer?’
The phone rang on. I looked down at my feet. ‘It’s probably a cold caller.’
‘How would you know that from here? It could be Mother.’
If only. I would have loved for Mother to call me from the retreat. It would have been amazing if the call revealed it was all a terrible nightmare. The ringing stopped, then started once more.
Hae-jin glanced at my door again. ‘She would know what time the results went live.’ His logic had gone from ‘It could be Mother’ to ‘It is Mother’. ‘She must be so nervous. Go and answer.’ He looked like he wanted to go in and answer it himself.
I just stared at him. If there was one thing I was better at, it was being patient. ‘I will, in a sec.’
We stood there for another ten seconds or so. It felt like an eternity. His eyes were probing. Why aren’t you going into your room? Why are you making me stand outside like this? What’s inside that you don’t want me to see? Is that why you’ve been acting so strangely this morning? I pulled the shutters over my eyes and emptied my head of thoughts. Finally the phone stopped ringing.
‘Okay then,’ Hae-jin said, breaking into a grin. ‘Take your time. I’ll make us some lunch.’
I nodded. He turned around and disappeared down the stairs, and I went into my room. I pulled my mobile out of my desk and checked to see who had been calling. Aunt Hag, it said on my screen. That overeager witch was as annoying as the yappy dog three floors down. She’d been calling since seven in the morning.
I didn’t have to wrestle with whether I should call Auntie back or not, because the cordless phone began to ring insistently. I didn’t hesitate; I picked up so that Hae-jin wouldn’t. If she asked for me, he would obviously come back up to bang on my door. ‘Hello.’
‘Are you busy?’ Auntie asked. Her dignified question masked her true thoughts: What the fuck are you doing that you’re only answering now?
I, too, spoke politely. ‘Have you had lunch?’ when I really meant: If you have nothing to do, fucking eat something instead of calling me.
‘Where’s your mother?’
I was expecting that. In as casual a tone as possible, I told her the same thing I’d said to Hae-jin. ‘She’s gone on a religious retreat.’
‘Retreat? What retreat? That’s out of nowhere.’
I didn’t answer, so she moved on to the next question. ‘Where exactly has she gone?’
‘I didn’t ask.’
‘You didn’t ask?’ Auntie repeated.
I looked for him until 2 a.m. but I couldn’t find him, Mother had written. If she had called Auntie while she was out, Auntie would have asked her where she was, since it would have been obvious from the ambient noise that she wasn’t at home. Did Mother answer truthfully? That I’d snuck out through the roof door in the middle of the night, that she’d come after me but couldn’t find me? Did she ask her sister what she should do? What would Auntie have said? Would she have told her to go straight back home? Maybe she would have said, get in the car and look for him more thoroughly. Why did Mother call Hae-jin before calling Auntie, anyway?
‘When did she say she was coming home?’ Auntie asked.
I looked down at Mother’s mobile on my desk. Hae-jin was next to Hye-won – my auntie’s name – in the list of contacts. Did she press the wrong name? That was possible: Mother’s eyes were getting worse. If she was outside, on some dark street corner, it might have been easier to find the wrong name than the right one. Everything seemed to click into place. If Mother had listened to her sister and come home, changed out of her wet clothes and taken the car to search for me, then some of last night made sense: her soaked trainers, the car key in the pocket of her nightgown.
‘Yu-jin, what are you doing?’ It was a criticism, not a question. She meant: Answer my questions properly. She had been calling from the crack of dawn, probably wondering if Mother had found me or not. She likely knew about my habit of sneaking out when I stopped taking my pills. She and Mother shared all kinds of information about me, probably down to how much toilet paper I used when I took a dump.
‘I don’t know when she’ll be back,’ I finally answered. ‘I didn’t ask.’
‘Are you guys not talking?’ She was probably trying to figure out if we’d fought last night.
I quickly calculated how long it would take for her to come barging into the flat if she couldn’t get hold of Mother. Maybe one day, two if I was lucky. ‘She wasn’t home when I woke up.’
‘Then how do you know she’s gone on a retreat?’
‘She left a note on the fridge.’
‘Your mother?’ Auntie said, disbelieving.
‘Yes,’ I said confidently.
‘You’re saying that she left the house quietly, without telling anyone, at dawn?’
‘I slept in, so I don’t know if it was at dawn or later.’
‘You slept in?’ Auntie zeroed in on that piece of information. ‘Did you get to bed late?’
What was it she wanted to know? What time Mother left the house? Or how late I went to bed? I had to be careful. This hag always hung on every word I said. I pivoted. ‘If you’re so curious, why are you asking me? Why don’t you just call her?’
‘Maybe I called you because she isn’t picking up.’ Auntie put on this air when she was pissed off. It was a warning for me not to answer her questions with my own.
I tried a suggestion instead. ‘Then maybe you should try again. Maybe she didn’t hear it.’
‘I just did. It’s off. So what time did you go to bed?’ she asked.
I didn’t need to answer her every question; after all, she hadn’t told me why she was calling. ‘Do you need to talk to her urgently?’
‘It’s not urgent, but it’s a little strange…’ Auntie paused.
I waited patiently.
‘She had a nine o’clock appointment, but she’s suddenly on a retreat. It’s just odd.’
Could that be true? If Mother had a nine o’clock appointment, why would Auntie begin calling from seven in the morning? And why would she call so frenetically, trying the home phone and her mobile over and over? She was lying. I offered a banal but safe answer. ‘Then I’m sure she’ll call you soon.’
‘Probably…’ Auntie didn’t hang up. She hesitated, as though she was trying to find something to say.
I was so annoyed, I wanted to scream into the phone.
Only when someone said, ‘Doctor?’ behind her did she reluctantly wrap up the call. ‘If you talk to her, ask her to ring me, okay?’
‘Sure.’
‘And you’re still taking your pills, right?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ I said, pulling out the medicine bag I’d shoved in the bottom of the drawer to check. There was still ten days’ worth in there.
‘Isn’t it about time for another prescription?’
‘No, I have about a week left.’
‘Are you sure you’re taking the right amount? I think you should have three days’ worth at most.’
‘Well, maybe you can check my charts,’ I suggested.
‘I will,’ she said, and hung up.
I threw the phone onto my desk and flung the medicine bag down. Mother and Auntie had unleashed the medicine into the centre of my existence, even though the pills had made me feel numb at every single important moment of my life. I’d started taking medication when I began swimming competitively, the spring I turned nine, when I won the junior Seoul City Children’s Swimming Competition.
&
nbsp; I suffered from severe side effects at the beginning. Once, I had to be hauled off to hospital because I began to slur my words, my body was covered in a rash and I was burning with fever. After switching medications several times, I was put on Remotrol, which was what I still took now. Auntie hadn’t chosen badly; at least I didn’t have to be carted off to hospital at regular intervals. The only thing was that Remotrol slung a metal ring around my head and shackled my hands and feet, taming me. I was flattened by horrible headaches, and a constant ringing in my ears made it impossible to find quiet. Sometimes I’d find that there were gaps in my memory. I became sluggish and less fit. I’d come home from training practically a corpse. But Mother and Auntie didn’t give up on the regimen, saying that the side effects weren’t fatal. The same way I didn’t give up on swimming.
I’d learned to swim in second grade, in the spring. I’d joined an extracurricular programme at school to keep up with Yu-min. He was better than me at everything – school work, drawing, piano – but he was awful at swimming. He hated it and ended up giving up only a term later, while I learned and mastered all the different strokes in the same time frame. The following spring, I won a schools competition, and the year after that, I represented my school and won us a gold medal.
It was my coach who suggested that I swim competitively. Mother wasn’t keen on the idea, but she didn’t stop me either. Later, she admitted that she’d thought I would quit soon enough, either because I got bored of practice or because I realised that I wasn’t all that good at it after all.
Unfortunately for Mother, I didn’t get tired of it. I began to distinguish myself in national youth competitions. When I look back, I can see that I was fully myself, the way I was created, during those two years. It was before I was sent to Auntie for treatment and before I had to start taking medication – these two things happened in May of 2000, a month after Father and Yu-min died.
In October of that year, Mother and I moved from Bangbae-dong to Incheon. My new school didn’t have a swimming team. Mother suggested that I give it up. But I liked water more than anything. I liked every moment of reaching out with my arms, slicing through the liquid, embracing and pushing it away. I liked the moment I shot forward like a shark. I liked competing with everything I had against someone else or even myself. I liked that moment every night, just before I fell asleep, when I saw myself standing in an Olympic stadium, on the tallest podium. I was free underwater, unlike on the ground, and I felt more comfortable in the pool than at school or at home. It was the only place Mother couldn’t barge into; it was exclusively my world. I could do anything underwater. Anything, the way I wanted to.
The Good Son Page 8