by Un-su Kim
‘Thanks for being my friend,’ Reseng scoffed.
Jeongan preened as he lit a cigarette.
Jeongan’s father had been a tracker. Before that he was a career soldier. He’d come back from Vietnam as a much-decorated officer, but turned out to be pretty lousy at tracking. The funny thing, too, was that he only became a tracker after chasing his runaway wife all over the world. Jeongan’s mother had knocked his father out by giving him a beer laced with sleeping pills and run off with every last won he’d earned in exchange for risking his life in Vietnam.
‘Classy lady, my mother, huh? Abandoned her husband and son for true love. When you’re in love, you don’t count the cost. Love is all that matters to me—maybe I inherited it from my mother…’
Jeongan’s father swore that once he caught up with her, he would tear her and her lover limb from limb and then kill himself. He scoured every inch of the country and then searched abroad, chasing rumours, a packet of cyanide and a knife tucked into his shirt. After five years he finally found her. She was managing a successful dry-cleaning business in the Philippines with the man she’d run away with. But Jeongan’s father took one look at her and came home. He did not stab his wife or her lover. He didn’t so much as touch the knife that he’d carried next to his heart for five years. Nor did he commit suicide by swallowing cyanide, or even approach the woman he’d spent so long searching for. He did not say, ‘How could you do this to me?’ Jeongan’s father merely watched from a distance as Jeongan’s mother and her new man hung out washing. Then he returned home.
‘One day my old man got drunk and explained it to me. He said it was the first time he’d ever seen her look that happy.’
Of course there could have been a different reason. Even the most extreme hatred, vengefulness and anger will eventually, like everything else in the universe, dissolve and fade to nothing. Once, when Jeongan had gone to the Philippines for a job, Reseng asked if he’d met his mother there. Jeongan had given him a forlorn look.
‘What’s the point?’ he’d said. ‘After all the trouble she went to so she could be happy, why would I butt in and ruin it for her? Whoever we are, we all have to fight our own battles for happiness.’
Jeongan’s father was only a third-rate tracker, but Jeongan was among the best. He could find any target—anyone at all, assuming they were still alive somewhere on Earth and not on Mars—usually in less than two weeks. But as gifted as he was at finding people, Jeongan was even better at tailing them. In the plotting world, people like him were called shadows. They followed their targets without being spotted, took pictures, calculated their every movement and passed that information along to a plotter. Just as the name implied, Jeongan could follow right on his targets’ heels all day and never get caught. When Reseng asked him what his secret was, Jeongan replied, ‘Being ordinary. No one ever remembers ordinary things.’
According to Jeongan, what you needed to be an excellent shadow wasn’t agility, skill at camouflage and subterfuge, or fancy disguises. And it wasn’t just about being invisible. What really mattered was being someone whom others didn’t need to remember, or who had nothing about them worth remembering in the first place.
‘To do that, you first have to understand what ordinary means. You have to become the essence of ordinariness. People don’t pay attention to things that are ordinary, and even if they do, they quickly forget. But becoming someone unmemorable is really difficult. Blurring your presence. Moving as lightly and indistinctly as vapour until you gradually fade away. Letting people brush right past you, like you’re not even there, like you’re the air itself. Turning yourself into that person is extremely difficult.’
‘Hmm,’ Reseng had said with a nod. ‘That sounds impossible.’
‘When you think about it, becoming ordinary is just as difficult as becoming special. I’m constantly thinking about which things are ordinary. Is it being of average height? Having an average face? Behaving in an average way? Having an average personality or job? No, it’s not that simple. There is no such thing as an average life. Whether brilliant or mediocre, everyone’s unique. Which is why it’s so complicated to love in an ordinary way, be nice in an ordinary way, meet and leave people in an ordinary way. Plus, in that sort of life there is no love, no hate, no betrayal, no hurt and no memories. It’s dry and flavourless, colourless and odourless. But, guess what, I like that kind of life. I can’t stand things that are too serious. That’s why I’m learning how to keep people from remembering me. It’s tricky. It’s not in any book, and no one teaches it. Everyone wants to live a life that makes them special, that makes others remember them. The ordinariness that I’m after is a life that no one remembers. I want a forgotten life. That’s what I’m working towards.’
Reseng had liked the sound of that. It was why they’d become friends. Jeongan had grown up tagging along with his father, studying in spare moments, and had graduated from high school, gone to university and majored in geology. Not because his marks weren’t good enough to get him into law or economics—geology had been his first choice. He said he chose that major because, whenever he got bored while travelling with his father, he used to suck on small rocks like they were sweets, to learn their different flavours.
‘Rocks have flavours?’
‘Of course. Granite and gneiss are as different as plums and lemons.’
‘You mean you majored in geology so you could learn more about how rocks taste?’
‘In a manner of speaking, yes, but I probably should have studied gastronomy instead.’
Reseng couldn’t imagine basing a life decision on something like that. But Jeongan, the born optimist, didn’t seem to care. Jeongan had rolled with the punches in college, maintained perfect attendance and received his diploma. Though, in keeping with his particular set of skills, none of his classmates remembered him.
Jeongan always had a girlfriend. And his girlfriends changed very frequently. A love life like his would have been a full-time job for any normal person.
‘How is it that every girl likes you?’ Reseng asked.
‘It’s not that. They don’t actually like me. No girl can love a man who doesn’t exist.’
‘Yeah, right. Look how many girls you’ve dated.’
‘They’re just lonely. It’s a phase they’re in. And they need a man to keep them company during it. They could have picked a tree or a houseplant. You know that’s my specialty: being as quiet as a houseplant,’ Jeongan said with a smile.
Every time Reseng saw Jeongan, he thought about his pursuit of ordinariness. It was a very unusual ordinariness. Like a face you’d know anywhere and yet had never seen before. Jeongan’s face was reaching the level of ordinariness he was after: you’d be sure you’d met him somewhere, something about him was so familiar and approachable. And yet he was so ordinary that it was impossible to find the right words to describe him. Reseng imagined that the security and ease women sensed in Jeongan was of a piece with his ordinariness. Which might have been why Jeongan and the women who went for him found it so easy to date, and so easy to break up.
Reseng checked his watch: 2:40 p.m. The woman was still talking on the phone. He turned back to the file.
‘Is Mito her real name?’ Reseng asked.
‘Looks like it. Her younger sister’s name is Misa.’
‘Mito and Misa? As in Soil and Sand? Their father must have a weird sense of humour.’
Reseng held out a photocopy of a newspaper article to Jeongan. It was about a family who had been in a car accident. ‘What’s this doing here?’
Jeongan took the photocopy. ‘There was a car accident twenty years ago. Her parents were in the front seat. They died instantly. She and her younger sister were in the back. They survived, but her sister’s spine was badly injured and she ended up paralysed from the waist down. The father was driving—it says here the cause of the accident was speeding while under the influence. Based on the tyre marks, he was going over 150 kph.’
‘Drunk-
driving, and at that speed, with his beloved daughters and wife in the car?’
Reseng scanned the article again. The car had been found scorched and totalled at the bottom of an eight-metre-high cliff, near a quiet country town, on a warm day in May. The family had been enjoying a rare day out. There was no reason for the father to be driving that fast while drunk. It definitely smacked of a plot. And a very hackneyed one, at that. Even worse, the whole thing was sloppy. Why go after the entire family? If the woman’s father was the target, they could have taken him out by himself, cleanly.
‘What did her father do?’
‘High-ranking government official. There’s something fishy about him, but I’ve been too busy chasing after her to look into it.’
‘Even if a plotter was behind the car accident, why the fuck is she coming after me? She was eleven when that happened. I was barely twelve!’ Reseng was suddenly annoyed.
‘What are you getting mad at me for? Just go over to her and calmly explain that you were twelve years old at the time. And keep your knife out, you know, to keep things amicable.’
Reseng checked the time again: 2:55 p.m. She would leave work any minute now. He put the photos and file back into the envelope, stood up and straightened his clothes. He could feel the weight of Chu’s knife in the inner pocket of his leather jacket. He retied and tightened his shoelaces so he’d be ready to follow her the moment she came out. He could see her laughing inside the shop.
But at the stroke of three, she was still behind the counter. Not only did she not clock out, she was still giggling and chattering into the damn phone ten minutes later. A young woman who looked like a part-timer went into the convenience store, but the woman behind the counter showed no signs of preparing to leave, even though it was already three-thirty by then. Reseng looked at Jeongan.
‘I thought you said she got off at three.’
‘She must’ve changed her work schedule,’ Jeongan said, scratching his head. ‘Every day for the past week, she’s left at exactly three. She’s just trying to make me look bad.’
Things get dicey whenever a target suddenly changes their pattern. It’s irritating and nerve-rattling. Because that’s when assassins make mistakes. Either the target changes their pattern, or the assassin changes his. Both scenarios end poorly. You make mistakes, you leave behind fatal evidence, the plot goes awry. And when plots go awry, assassins die. Why? When you retrace the events, it’s always something very minor. A wallet left at home, running out of shampoo that morning, walking down a laneway when a kid on a tricycle suddenly shoots out of nowhere.
The woman was still in the shop. No matter. There was no way Reseng was going to kill anyone today. But his heart was racing all the same. Anxiety was coursing through his nerve endings. She should have come out at three p.m. Reseng would have followed her. Jeongan would have slowly paced them in his car. A little way ahead was a quiet side street where there were no security cameras for two hundred metres. She always took that side street. Reseng would have tapped her on the shoulder. If Reseng were her target, she would recognise him at once. ‘Shall we go somewhere quiet to talk?’ If she agreed, that would be the end of it. No need for long explanations or threatening words, no need for his knife.
Reseng and Jeongan waited another thirty minutes in silence. At four p.m, Reseng put on his black sunglasses and stomped over to the shop.
‘Hey, wait!’ Jeongan yelled. ‘You can’t just storm into a convenience store with your knife out. Those places are full of security cameras!’
X
‘Welcome!’
The woman covered the phone with one hand and greeted Reseng loudly. Her voice was cheerful. Reseng stood just inside the door and stared at her. But she turned away, showing no sign of recognising him, and went right back to her phone call. Everyone in the shop could hear it.
‘Oh, you know that one song, Uh oh, I’m in love with my best friend’s girl, what do I do…Yeah, that one! He was singing it like he was about to cry! And he kept shaking the tambourine even though it’s a ballad! I almost died laughing…Shut up! As if I’d do a duet with that guy! But then he gets to the second part of the song and starts blubbering for real, like his friend’s girlfriend has been whacked in the head with a hammer. He’s a big guy, too…I swear… What could I do? I put my arm around him and patted him on the shoulder. I felt like I had to. He put his head on my chest and tried to act like he was still crying, but I saw the way he looked at my miniskirt. He actually thought that was going to get me in the mood. I was like, are you kidding me?…Well, you know, I couldn’t not kiss him. But that wasn’t enough for this guy…No, it’s not that I didn’t want to, I just didn’t want him to get the wrong idea about me. We’d just started dating. It’d be one thing if we’d gone back to a hotel. But at a karaoke bar? The guy was clueless…No, no, he’s not that bad. I mean, there’s something cute about him, and he seems alright… Exactly, it’s important to start off on the right foot. Once they get the wrong idea, there’s no going back.’
Reseng was still standing in front of the door, staring at her. She glanced over at him. He took off his sunglasses. ‘Hold on, don’t hang up.’ She covered the phone again and cocked her head at Reseng.
‘Sir, can I help you find something?’ she asked in a lilting voice.
Her face bore no hint of fear or suspicion. Plotters always knew their targets’ faces. Just as assassins will recognise their targets anywhere. As soon as the plot is issued, you can’t help staring at your target’s photo every free minute. It’s the nerves. The target’s face stays with you, and continues to float around inside your head for weeks, even after you’ve killed them. You see people on the street who look like them and you nearly jump out of your skin. You have recurring nightmares of running into them. This woman was no plotter. She was no assassin either. She was nothing. Who the hell was she? Had Jeongan made a mistake?
‘Sir, can I help you?’ she asked again.
‘What? Oh. Chocolate! Where can I find the chocolate?’ Reseng’s mouth moved of its own accord.
‘Chocolate? Over there to the left, second shelf from the top.’ Her voice was still friendly.
Why did he say chocolate? He didn’t even like chocolate. Reseng went to the shelf and grabbed two Snickers. He was thirsty, so he also grabbed a sports drink from the fridge. As he was closing the fridge door, he heard her say into the phone, ‘Hey, let me call you back. I’ll fill you in on the details in person.’ She’d been on the phone for hours—what details could she possibly have left out? It was crazy. He would never understand women. He placed the bars of chocolate and the sports drink next to the register.
‘Chocolate fan, huh?’ she asked.
Reseng gave her a curt nod; he was in no mood for chitchat.
‘I like chocolate too, but I see you’re buying two Snickers. Have you tried Hot Break?’
‘What?’ Reseng stared at her.
‘Hot Break. Snickers is made for the American palate, but Hot Break is made for ours, and it doesn’t stick to your teeth, either. It offers very high performance for its price, and it’s only half the cost of a Snickers, though, of course, they’ve had to keep shrinking it so they can keep the price the same as it was ten years ago, that’s the sad truth, but with everything else getting more and more expensive, I guess that’s not so bad. So what do you think? Would you like to exchange one of your Snickers for a Hot Break?’
The woman spoke so fast that Reseng wasn’t sure what she’d just said. He gathered that she’d told him she liked Hot Break better. But so what? Who gave a shit whether she liked Hot Break or not, or whether it was half the price of a Snickers or not? Just shut up and take his money.
‘How much is this?’ he asked, pointing at the Snickers.
‘A thousand won. Hot Break is only five hundred won.’ She held up five fingers.
She gave him a playful smile. Reseng put one of the Snickers back and grabbed a Hot Break. Eager to get it over with, he opened his wallet.
/> ‘You won’t regret it.’ The woman held her fist up in the air. ‘Hot Break!’
‘Thank you very much.’
‘Ha ha! Ha ha! No thanks necessary! It’s important to share valuable information with your fellow countrymen.’ She laughed heartily, as if they’d just met in the middle of the Siberian wilderness.
When Reseng left the convenience store, Jeongan was parked in front with the engine running. He looked worried. Reseng opened the door and got in.
‘What happened?’ Jeongan asked impatiently.
Reseng threw the Hot Break at his face. It bounced off Jeongan’s forehead and fell in his lap.
‘What’s this?’
‘What’s it look like? It’s a bar of chocolate. It’ll fill you with brotherly love.’
Jeongan frowned and ripped open the wrapper.
‘You marched in there like you were going to take down a bull with a kitchen knife, but all you came back with was one bar of chocolate?’
‘Two, actually.’ Reseng opened the sports drink and took a swig. ‘She’s no plotter. Definitely not an assassin either. She didn’t recognise me.’
‘She didn’t?’ Jeongan looked incredulous.
Reseng nodded.
Jeongan took out the ceramic bomb casing and examined it.
‘We know this was made by an amateur, which means she can’t be an expert device-maker either. So who is she?’
‘Are you sure it was her?’ Reseng asked sceptically.
‘What’m I, a rookie? I told you, she definitely ordered three of the parts.’
Reseng stared at the convenience store. The woman was talking to the younger employee who’d come for the shift change. After a moment, the younger employee looked at her watch, bowed several times to the woman and left.