So I insisted, and Mother acquiesced on the condition that I’d have to give up if I couldn’t fight off the side effects of the drugs. She enrolled me in a swimming club called KIM, and began to stick close to me to watch over my condition. The coach probably thought she was dedicated to making her son the best athlete possible. My teammates figured I was coddled and spoiled, judging from my comfortable family situation, my devoted mother, and my natural talent. Nobody knew that my insides were rotting.
Since I wasn’t on the professional athlete programme, I had to combine studying and training. On top of that, I had to deal with the side effects of my medication, of course. Things didn’t improve in middle school or high school. In fact, the side effects grew worse. I nearly forgot what I’d been like when I first started swimming, when I had more energy than I knew what to do with. That was until I entered a national swimming competition on Jeju Island in March of my tenth-grade year.
I lost my bag on the first day. I’d left it on a chair to go to the bathroom and it was gone by the time I came out. In it were my pills, my iPod and headphones, games console and wallet. It was annoying not to have the other things, but the pills qualified as a real problem. The correct solution would have been to call Mother and ask her to bring me some more. She was in a nearby hotel; it wouldn’t have been impossible, although she would have had to get on a boat or a plane to go all the way home to Incheon.
One doesn’t always choose the right path, as it turns out. I saw a simple solution to my problem: I didn’t have to take the pills. What could go wrong in a few days? What Mother was always worrying about had never happened, and I would be able to avoid the unjust situation of being berated over something that wasn’t technically my fault. I didn’t tell the coach about it either; if I told him I’d lost my pills, I’d have to tell him why I was taking them in the first place. They didn’t screen for Remotrol in the sport, so there had been no reason to disclose it. He also didn’t know I was seeing a psychiatrist. Mother had decided that he didn’t have to know about it. He was led to believe that I was receiving sports psychology consultations at Auntie’s clinic.
That night, I slept more deeply than I ever had. In the morning, my head was free and clear of headaches. I felt light and joyous. I was confident and ambitious. The day was peaceful for once. Thanks to my renewed joy, I beat my personal best by an astounding seven seconds in the 1,500-metre preliminaries and set a new record. Honestly, I wasn’t sure even at that point: was I flying high because I hadn’t taken the pills, or was it a coincidence? Although I wasn’t fully able to shake off my worries about having a seizure, I enjoyed that dangerous edge I had throughout the competition, taking gold in both the 800-metre and the 1,500-metre freestyle. Even the coach was stunned. I was hailed as a rising star who’d arrived like a comet.
When I got home, I became certain that it was my medication that was making me feel so awful. My body returned to its sluggish self when I started popping the pills again. I stopped them once more to test my theory out, and by the second day I was back in an energetic, manic state. I felt the same as I had during the swimming competition. I remembered what I’d been like when I was in the junior division, before I started the medication. I soon grew confident that being off the meds for a couple of days wouldn’t cause a seizure.
A month later, Mother and I went down to Ulsan for the Dong-A swimming competition and the trials for the Doha Asian Games. Everyone was interested in Han Yu-jin; would this boy who’d broken all records in the preliminaries prove his worth here too? Would he end up qualifying for Doha at the tender age of fifteen?
I was ready. I had trained intensively. I was physically at the top of my game, as I’d stopped taking my meds a few days earlier. I knew I’d go to Doha. I came in first in the 800-metre qualifiers. The stadium murmured: I hadn’t appeared in the rankings. Instead, ‘DSQ’ flashed next to my name. Disqualified. Apparently my leg had moved before the pistol went off; it was a false start. I didn’t realise I’d been disqualified until after the race was over. I didn’t even realise that I’d moved my leg.
The next day, as I waited for the 1,500-metre qualifiers to begin, I broke out in a cold sweat and a heavy weight sloshed in my belly. But I couldn’t have an upset stomach; I hadn’t eaten a thing. I figured I was in shock at being disqualified the day before. I tried to forget the nightmare of the 800 metres. I counted, listened to music, focused on the race ahead. The stadium was filled with a metallic smell, but I attributed it to the sweaty crowd in the stands rather than an oncoming seizure.
A short whistle. I took a deep breath. A long whistle. I stepped onto the starting block. ‘On your marks.’ I crouched and bent over. I hooked my hands over the edge of the starting block and raised my eyes to look at the water. There was a hole there. It was like a sink drain. Black water was swirling violently around it, spinning like a storm, the hole widening. The drain became a sewer, then it grew to a manhole, and then a sinkhole big enough to swallow a car. The lane dividers twisted and writhed like enormous pythons; my lane grew wider. A metallic smell surged up from the water.
This isn’t real, my mind reassured me. You’re seeing things because you’re not feeling great. Don’t be scared. I turned to look behind me to find that the entire stadium had become a huge maelstrom: the people in the stands had vanished, and spinning black shapes swirled around the outer edges. Maybe this was what it would feel like if you were in a racing car whizzing around an arena. My gut flipped and surged up my throat, just as the starter pistol went off.
I threw myself into the middle of the black whirl of water. I surfaced and began to swim, but my body refused to go forward. I was circling the edge of the swirling water, as though I were going down a plughole. I began gasping. My body careened from left to right, and I thought I would flip over and be sucked in. I couldn’t rip my eyes away from the giant dark void at the bottom of the whirlpool. I flailed for something to grab on to. I couldn’t breathe.
I realised what was happening. I’d understood its possibility intellectually but I’d never experienced it before. This was the precursor to a seizure. I’d brought this disaster on myself. Fate always lurked; there might be times when it looked the other way, but that couldn’t happen more than once or twice. Things that were supposed to happen did happen and things that were supposed to come around did come around. Fate had sent an assassin, deciding at this very moment to carry out my sentence. It was only the most important moment of my life, and it was about to end in the cruellest way possible.
I could either resist to the end and fall into the enormous void, or get out now and run away. I chose the latter. My hand grazed the touchpad. I grabbed it and came to an abrupt stop. I leapt out of the water, threw off my cap and goggles and left the pool. My coach was yelling at me, but I didn’t look back. Honestly, I didn’t have the energy or the time. Everything started to get darker. I could imagine myself with my eyes rolled back in my head, foaming at the mouth, twisting and curling. I had to go somewhere before that happened in front of all these people. I didn’t think. I didn’t know where I was going. My feet led the way and I managed to cover some distance. When the moment arrived, it was as if a bomb had gone off inside me. Everything turned white, like a snowy field, and the circuits in my brain stopped firing.
Mother told me later that she found me asleep in a corner of the underground car park, snoring and covered in sweat. She put me in the car as soon as I woke up, and slipped out of that place without telling anyone. Five hours later, I arrived at Auntie’s clinic. Instead of explaining to my coach what had happened and trying to figure out what to do, I sat in front of Auntie as she interrogated me about the reason I had stopped taking my meds.
Nobody found out that I was an epileptic who’d had an episode during the race. I was disqualified and wasn’t eligible to enter the next race. And of course, I was out of the running for Doha. My coaches were pissed off. My name was plastered all over the local media; the cameras that were circling the
pool had nationally televised the insane kid who’d run away in the middle of a race. The fact that he had been a rising star who’d come out of nowhere made it even more newsworthy.
None of this meant I would have to give up swimming; if I had talked frankly with my coaches, they would have been compassionate and given me another chance. That was what I wanted to do. I wasn’t afraid of telling them about my epilepsy; any embarrassment would last merely a moment, and swimming was everything. I wanted to speed through the water again. I was ready to be honest. Even if I had to live for the rest of my life shackled and restrained by Remotrol, I was confident that I would never complain.
I was sure that Mother would agree. She had dedicated herself to supporting my ambitions. She knew how rigorously I’d trained. She knew more than anyone else the importance of swimming in my life. But I had overestimated her. She dredged up the promise I’d made when I first began swimming, and told me I was done. She said she’d made her decision when she drove me out of the car park. She acted as though she’d been waiting for something like this all along.
Nothing worked. No excuses, no pleas; I knelt in front of her, weeping, protesting, asking if she was that embarrassed that I was epileptic. I threatened to leave school. I staged a hunger strike until I collapsed. My coach came over after he received notice from Mother that I was quitting, but he was sent away at the door. She didn’t budge, not even when her beloved Hae-jin spoke up for me. She was a woman of steel, unmoved by anything, resolute and constant.
I even went to see Auntie on my own for the first time ever. All I had was epilepsy; I wasn’t going to keel over and die if I swam past the age of fifteen. This was beyond unfair. Auntie listened to me with a smile on her face. I know, she said. So why did you stop taking your meds?
There are some people you just can’t love. Even when they smile, they make you want to pull on either side of that smile and rip their mouth off. I scratched at my knees, my forefinger twitching, and pulled out my ace card. I asked her not to tell Mother, and confessed to it all. It was the first time I’d told anyone why I had stopped taking my pills. For the first time ever, I spoke honestly about myself, my dreams, why I had to swim, my desire not to be defined by my epilepsy. I beseeched her to talk to Mother for me.
The following morning, Mother called me to the living room. I’d never felt so nervous. I sat in front of her, my eyelids trembling as I looked down at my palms, which were damp with sweat.
‘As long as you keep swimming, there’s always the possibility that you might have a seizure in the water.’ Her voice was gentle but firm.
The world spun around me. That won’t happen, I wanted to say, but my mouth was glued shut.
‘Someone who’s already crossed a line will cross it again. You know what’s on the other side, so you’ll stop taking your pills again and again. You know that you’ll feel so much more agile and that you can set records.’
I looked up at her. I realised that Mother would never change her mind. I also realised that Auntie had not kept her promise.
‘I’m scared,’ Mother said, her voice shaking. ‘I’m so scared I don’t know what to do. Your brother and father drowned in the ocean, in front of my eyes. That day in Ulsan, in the pool… I thought I was going to lose you too. My only surviving son.’ Her eyes filled up.
I gritted my teeth. I couldn’t feel her fear, but I could understand it. Of course she would be scared. But why did I have to be sacrificed for that fear? I took my meds in spite of horrible side effects. Couldn’t she just watch me swim in spite of her fear? Didn’t that make us even?
‘So let’s stop,’ she said. ‘Let’s stop all of this now.’
Mother deregistered me from competitions. I gave up. I shoved everything related to swimming in a big box – medals, scrapbooks of newspaper clippings, photographs, my training suit, my competition suit, even towels. I dragged it up to the roof and burned it all. I wanted to ask: Are you happy now?
It wasn’t that hard to return to being a normal high-school student. I’d always studied alongside swimming, so I just went to school as usual. I didn’t put in any special effort. My plans then were to laze around for the rest of my life, leeching off Mother forever. That was how I would get my revenge.
I changed my mind the following spring. I was in Hae-jin’s room, flipping through a book, and I started to get excited as I read it more closely. It had been written by a defence lawyer whose clients included a young man who’d got drunk and hacked his father to death, a woman who’d killed her husband for insurance money, a man who’d strangled his family and tried to hang himself, an unmarried woman who’d killed her newborn baby and left the body in a bathroom. I was more captivated by the trial procedures than the incidents that preceded them. According to this attorney, criminal cases fell into two categories: those where you fought for acquittal and others where you entered a guilty plea and then fought over sentencing. The latter were harder to defend, as sentencing required consideration of the defendant’s age, intelligence and environment; his relationship with the victim; the reason he committed the crime; the method and result of his acts; and what he did afterwards, in addition to ethics. What was important at this point, the lawyer wrote, was to find out what kind of life the defendant had led. I understood that passage to mean that morality was all about painting a picture to help your case. I found other similar books to read. I was drawn to conjuring stories. Perhaps I was disappointed that I couldn’t defend myself properly when Mother laid down the law. Or maybe I liked this new idea of morality. Who knew? What was important was that I’d found something else intriguing. Any time a heinous crime became the target of the nation’s outrage, I would appoint myself the invisible defence attorney and think how I would change various parts of the picture. After all, being true to life wasn’t the only way to tell a story.
Of course, I knew that to do it for real, I had to become a lawyer. To do that, I had to go to law school; to get into law school, it was advantageous to enrol in an undergraduate law programme; and to do that, I had to study hard. I wouldn’t even have attempted it if it hadn’t been for Hae-jin. He helped me every step of the way, encouraging me when I was denied admission the first time I applied before finally getting into my choice of college the following year.
Ever since then, I’d remained devoted to my goals. I’d given it my all, the way I did when I was swimming. Maybe even more than that. Yet today, when I could finally see the results of all that work, I was sitting again with my neck bared in front of the assassin sent by fate. Of course, it was entirely my own fault: I’d made the same mistake that had torpedoed my life at fifteen. But as my own defence lawyer, I wanted to ask fate: wouldn’t you too want to have just a few clear sunny days after living through sixteen years with a pounding head, a permanent screech in your ears, and limp muscles?
I picked up my medicine and threw it in the bin. I had to find the real reason why my life had been burned to the ground. I had to paint my own picture, and I had to do it fast, since Hae-jin was waiting for me downstairs. Who knew when Auntie would burst through the front door? I couldn’t figure anything out if my skull was pounding and my ears were ringing. My body and mind had to be in that clear sunny space, even if it was dangerous.
I started cleaning my room. I swept all the things on my desk into the drawer. I hung up the jacket and vest in the wardrobe and folded away my self-pity while I was at it. I tossed my clothes, underwear and bedlinen into the bathtub. I flipped the bloody mattress over to hide the stain. I’d have to deal with these things later. If I could, I’d discard or burn or bury them. At the very least, I’d try to wash them.
I wiped the blood off the floor, door and door handle with the dirty steam cleaner pad I’d brought up. I rinsed the broom and bucket in the bathroom, and took them out to the roof deck with the bin bag. I threw the bag in the round lidded bin next to the tap; Mother used that bin to make winter kimchi or store water. I leant the broom and bucket against the tap, then screwed t
he hose that was lying nearby onto the tap and washed the blood off the roof deck, the pergola, the swing and the table.
By the time I was done, the winter sun had poked its pale face out from the middle of the grey sky. The air was still chilly. The strong ocean wind was sharp and cutting. I cupped my frozen hands as I headed back to my room.
‘Yu-jin!’ Mother’s scream stabbed me in the back of my neck.
I froze. I heard the rush of a river bubbling up from the depths of my memory. I closed my eyes and saw the yellow light of the street lamp. I saw myself running through the rain as Mother’s scream echoed in the fog and disappeared into the darkness. A tarpaulin covering a construction site flapped loudly in the dark.
I opened my eyes. The images dissipated. I went back to my room, keeping the sliding door open. It would take a while for the smell of blood to go away completely. My mobile notified me of an incoming text. Hae-jin.
Lunch is ready.
Irritation flared up before simmering down. I checked the time. 1.01 p.m.
Coming, I tapped out, figuring he’d come back up if I didn’t reply immediately. I looked around. Other than the stench of blood and the stripped bed, everything was the same as usual. I washed my feet and stood in front of the bathroom mirror to make sure my face was clean. I was met with thick, stiff hair, the round forehead I’d inherited from Father, and the black eyes and protruding ears from Mother. My reflection was the person I’d thought of all along as ‘me’, but who now looked wild and frazzled and anxious.
The Good Son Page 9