I Hear Your Voice

by Young-Ha Kim

  For the first time in ages, Jae returned to Daehangno. He didn’t see the b-boys he’d met before, but he did see other b-boys practicing on an open stage. There was no sign of Mokran either.

  Jae went to the café where he’d heard she was working. He strode down the stairs and headed straight for the cube so no one had time to stop him. Mokran, lying inside the cube, didn’t recognize him right away, not until he breathed onto the clear acrylic wall and drew a J on the fogged-up surface. Their eyes met. He pushed the cube with both hands and it gave easily. The cube’s fragility shocked the bystanders, for it had resembled an object from a sci-fi movie, an impenetrable planet surrounded by a strong magnetic field.

  The surprised employees dragged Jae away, though he didn’t resist, even when the café owner repeatedly punched him in the chin. Mokran rose from the collapsed cube as if bewitched, and followed as they took Jae away. The owner and his employee pulled Jae upstairs by the waist of his pants and waited for the police to arrive.

  Only then did Mokran intervene. She said to the café owner, “I’ll say you work in the prostitution business.”

  The owner was silenced by her sudden attack, but the other employee spoke up. “Do you know what happens if you falsely accuse an innocent person?”

  “What’s ‘falsely accuse’?” Mokran said sarcastically. “Is it something you can eat?”

  The café owner looked from Jae to Mokran in disbelief. “Is this homeless asshole your boyfriend?”

  Mokran glanced at her cell phone. “The police should be here any minute. It takes the 112 patrol cars about five minutes, you know. You could end up on the nine o’clock news. People always believe what they want to believe.”

  “You bitch!” he said. “What the hell do you want?”

  She pointed at Jae. “Let him go.”

  “If you come back for your paycheck, I’ll kill you.”

  With that, he released Jae.

  Mokran got her motorcycle, then drove back so Jae could get on behind her. He didn’t care that a wad of the owner’s spit landed on his back; his clothes were filthy anyway. They headed toward the Han River.

  When they arrived at the riverbank, Mokran asked, “How’d you know I was there?”

  “I ran into Donggyu.”

  She looked up at Jae, intrigued. His face was unwashed, grubby, but his eyes glimmered. They mesmerized her.

  “You’re pretty tough,” she said. “Coming into a stranger’s shop and causing hell.”

  “Nothing ever truly belongs to anyone. Being an owner doesn’t mean anything. And anyway, you were locked up in the cube. The cube didn’t want that, either.”

  “That’s not it,” she said. “I was making money. Going in the cube was my choice.”

  “I heard the cube’s voice as I was coming down the stairs. It said it was ashamed.”

  “You really hear strange voices coming from nowhere?”

  “I know if I say things like that, I’ll be hauled off to a mental hospital, but I’m not schizo. The voices I hear don’t scare me or anything like that. I just talk to them.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “I’m not asking you to understand. But I definitely heard its voice.”

  “So you weren’t trying to rescue me, but trying to rescue the cube?”

  “I saw you when I got close to the cube. That’s when I started getting chest pains again.”

  “You felt sorry for me? It’s not like I was imprisoned or anything.”

  “You’re not meant for that place. What I mean is, it’s unnatural for you to be inside there. Right here, like this, this is more you. There’s the river and the wind blowing. The wind’s lifting your hair, and it’s like the sun’s rays are shining down through the strands. It’s beautiful. You in front of me this way, it’ll probably be one of the last scenes that will come to me right before I die. But that cube in the basement wasn’t right for you at all—that’s why it was wailing.”

  “So why haven’t I heard it before?”

  “Because your senses are broken.”

  “What senses?” she said. “I’m perfectly fine.”

  “They say that the Native Americans pleaded for forgiveness from trees before cutting them down. They understood what it meant for a tree to disappear. In asking the trees for forgiveness, they were able to cope with the trees’ absence. Cutting down a tree that they’d spent their entire lives looking at was no different from cutting off a part of themselves. They didn’t have any concept of money—they were directly connected to the objects around them. The act of accepting money to work blocked you from your own awareness. That’s why you couldn’t hear the cube.”

  “I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  “Let yourself open up and take a good look around you,” he said. “Don’t believe all the clichés. That’s the only way to save yourself, because you’re worth it.”

  Jae’s last sentence reminded Mokran of a famous makeup advertisement, so she giggled. Jae looked confused, and she realized that he didn’t know the ad.

  Thrown off, she said, “You don’t know that ad, do you? ‘Because you’re worth it.’”

  “No.”

  She grabbed his hand. His hand was warm. “How do you like my bike? Does it suit me?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I like it. It’s comfortable. I think it’s right for me.”

  Jae looked at her solemnly. “Your bike likes you too.”

  20

  Jae went about meeting people in this manner. As he had with Mokran and me, he showed up and surprised them. First, he tracked down Hoodie, who was working as a pizza delivery boy.

  The first thing Hoodie said after he opened the door was “If I don’t deliver pizza in thirty minutes, I’ve got to pay for it.” He stank.

  “That’s shitty.”

  “Some customers won’t open the door on purpose, just so we lose thirty minutes.”

  “Assholes.”

  Hoodie added, “My sister crept back home, but we’ve got enough room to put you up.”

  Next Jae ran into Baseball Cap on the street. Baseball Cap, who hadn’t outgrown his youthful looks, didn’t recognize Jae since he had shot up over twenty centimeters in a year and looked a lot older. Plus, he didn’t dress like kids his age.

  Only when Jae said, “I smashed you up with a beer bottle, remember?” did Baseball Cap realize that it was the “slave.” They had a cigarette together. Baseball Cap was also getting by as a delivery boy at one of the ubiquitous fried chicken fast-food franchises.

  As if muttering a curse, Baseball Cap kept repeating, “Chicken. Our store’s chicken is great. Really, it’s great.”

  Jae also visited the house where Hanna had been trapped and tortured. An ordinary family had moved in. When he visited the local corner store and asked about the boys, he learned that they had been shipped to reform school. No one had heard about Geumhui. Jae next headed for where Hanna and her father were said to live and discovered that within a year, Hanna’s belly had swelled up like a hill. She still cried and said that she was in love with Leader. Jae felt his heart ripping to pieces as he left.

  Jae gave each of them a clear, simple message: “You are all living in the wrong place in the wrong way. It’s not your fault, but I feel so much pain because of you.” The kids sensed that Jae identified with their suffering, and felt awed by his way of life.

  Jae’s actions at the time recall those of a martial arts film character who had returned after finishing a long period of training in the mountains. He fearlessly met people, and his confidence and his eccentric looks made a deep impression on his peers. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes dozens of kids would circle around Jae to hear him speak. Most were runaways or had quit school, but now and then a perfectly normal school kid would show up.

  When I ran into Mokran at one of these gatherings, she asked me, “Don’t they look like a bunch of stray cats in a park at midnight?”

  I agreed. “It’
s like watching cats at a rally, nodding off, grooming each other, then slinking away.”

  Jae walked the entire city and found whatever he required on the spot. He easily picked the locks of donation containers and took whatever clothes and shoes he needed. If necessary, he stole without flinching, for his ideas about ownership were unusual. Because he was able to communicate with objects, he believed that so long as he respected the object’s wishes, there was nothing wrong with taking it and using it for a while. At the same time, he stayed true to his own complex taboos. He avoided the color red because he believed that red symbolized pain and bad luck. He avoided it all: red shirts, beef, bloodshot eyes, and Red Cross blood donation trucks. Whenever he picked up a book, he always ripped out its first and last pages and began reading from the second page. He said that authors had planted something in the first and last page to draw you in. As a result, no one could ever properly read a book that he had finished, and so he became the final reader of every book that he touched.

  He also placed great importance on numbers. If the license plate numbers of the first car he saw in the morning added up to a number that ended in a 4, he retreated and did nothing for the entire day. Numbers that came in integers of three—3, 6, 9, and 15—were holy. He made exceptions for 12 and 24, since they were common multiples of 4.

  One by one, the number of kids spellbound by Jae’s odd ways grew. The first time they laughed; the second, they approached him; the third, they paid attention. Then, silently, they began following him.

  21

  No matter what people say, my running away from home had nothing to do with Jae. But no matter how often I explained myself, I was seen as “the guy who left home to follow Jae.”

  My stepmom’s cold, biased treatment of me was a trite, overplayed story. If a life were only a single volume, maybe mine would have ended there. But despite all the banal stories, life continues. The two girls that came along with my stepmother acted as if they had seen a zombie each time they saw me, and hid behind her skirt. Our mutual hatred and suspicion continued to grow.

  The end arose out of nowhere. The night my father was on a stakeout, robbers broke into our house. The men, their faces obscured by masks, climbed across our neighbor’s roof and into our home. After they threatened my stepmother, they seized her jewelry, cash, and bottles of liquor, then calmly left. If I had been home, they would have considered the robbery an unavoidable disaster. But that night, I was with Jae and Mokran. Around that time I thought I’d lose it if a day passed and I didn’t see her. But if I wanted to see her, I had to be with Jae. When I returned home that day around dawn, the house was bright with lights as if filled with mourners paying their respects.

  I was taking my shoes off at the door when my father slapped me across the cheek.

  “Why didn’t you answer your phone?” he said. “Do you have any idea what time it is? Where the hell have you been?”

  My stepmother and her kids were sitting on the couch, staring at me. My father dragged me into the bedroom and began interrogating me. My stepmother must have believed that even if I hadn’t been directly involved, I’d had a hand in the robbery. The thieves, as she explained to my father, had sounded as if they had just passed puberty.

  She said, “He comes home late every night and won’t say a word about where he’s gone. Something’s fishy about it. I think he’s spending time with the wrong crowd.”

  If I wanted to shake off my father’s suspicions, I had hanging out with Jae as my alibi. But I didn’t want to tell him. My father was the kind of man who assumed everyone was a potential criminal. If I told him about Jae’s life, his suspicions would only be confirmed. From the perspective of a cop, there wasn’t a more likely crime suspect than a homeless seventeen-year-old orphan.

  I said, “Do you think I did it?”

  My father gazed sharply at me, but he didn’t go further than that. “Who said I thought you did it?”

  “Why’re you questioning me like I’m a suspect?”

  “Is it strange for a father to ask his son where he’s been, when he comes home at four in the morning?”

  “Because of all days it’s on the day a robber breaks in.”

  “That’s right, I’m glad you brought it up,” my father said. “Where were you tonight, of all nights, when a robber broke into the house? You’re the eldest son in this house, and we have three women—you’re supposed to protect them.”

  “They’ve got nothing to do with me. And isn’t protecting them your job, Father?”

  “You really want to take it this far?”

  “Can I go to bed now?”

  “Then tell me this: Who were you with all this time?”

  “I was with a girl.”

  “A girl?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked at me in disbelief. It was hard to tell whether he couldn’t believe I’d slept with a girl, or if he couldn’t believe I had just straight-out confessed this to him.

  “You trying to show me that you’re all grown-up? Saying you’re going to live whatever way you want, and that we should leave you alone?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “It’s obvious what kind of girl she is, if she’ll stay out all night with a man.”

  I wanted to say: You act like you know what’s up, but you didn’t even know that your wife fooled around with your younger brother. I managed to keep the words down and, luckily, my short silence was interpreted as obedience.

  “Go to bed,” he commanded. “Don’t forget that from now on, I’ve got my eye on you. I’ve spent my whole life learning that men and animals are nearly the same thing. If you come home this late one more time, I’ll lock you out.”

  My stepmother’s anxiety—that worse would happen if I left home—and my father’s shame—in not being able to prevent the break-in despite being a cop—turned the house upside down. The original sin was that my father had ignored my stepmother’s wish to install an alarm system. As for me, I was shocked that someone could take me for a potential criminal. I hadn’t realized just how much my stepmother mistrusted me.

  The next day when I told Jae what happened, he said, “Stay with me for a few days.” So I did.

  He was sleeping in a few different locations—alternating between them. Mokran was staying at a friend’s house where Jae could occasionally crash. In addition, there were five or six other places where he slept. Most often, he ended up at a gas station lounge, a room off a Chinese restaurant, or a shelter run by a church. And, more frequently, girls who lived alone let him sleep over.

  When I decided not to return home, he encouraged me. “Good decision. Even if it took you a while.”

  At first I thought that Jae was backing me, but I began having doubts. Mokran sat at his feet, gazing up reverently at him as he offered up radical solutions for my problems. To Mokran, who had lived a pretty sheltered life, since her father was a movie producer, Jae was the essence of cool. Though Jae’s difficult past was unimaginable to her, he had quickly become a full-grown man with a unique worldview, and though she had met b-boys and many other types of men, she had never met anyone like him.

  He said, “Siddhartha also left home as a teenager.”

  “Siddhartha? Who’s that?” Mokran asked.

  “Buddha.”

  “So Buddha was a person first?”

  “He was once a teenager, like us. He was even married.”

  Mokran was filled with awe. Of course I knew that Jae had been abandoned twice and had led a rough life, and he had read more widely and pondered things more deeply than me. But the advice he casually offered me seemed to diminish what seemed to me the crisis of my very existence. To Jae, all my problems were “no big deal.” My parents getting divorced, my father remarrying a woman who came with her two girls, and her suspicions of me—he treated all this as little more than a trite drama you could watch anytime on TV. To him, escaping my situation was simple. He once explained my position to me with a metaphor: “When you raise an
elephant tied up, it won’t attempt to leave even if it has the ability. The elephant doesn’t know its own strength.”

  According to Jae I was strong enough but had stupidly been tied to the halter called family, no different from the elephant. Mokran marveled at the clichéd comparison and looked in awe at him. Jae’s reading mainly came from whatever he found in recycling bins, so it wasn’t exactly orderly or systematic. His dramatic speeches were steeped in mixed-up maxims from self-help books, religious teachings, and over-the-top heroic phrases from popular fiction. When Jae spoke about other people’s lives or about society, nothing he said bothered me. But when it was about my life, I suddenly realized how meaningless his words were. The urgent issues surrounding my family degenerated into trivialities. Maybe Jae was even right. Or maybe my pathetic way with words limited Jae’s imagination—when I spoke, all my family’s pressing problems became just one more mundane story. I had thought that at least Jae would be different, but he no longer tried to read my inner thoughts and was still somehow confident that he knew me better than anyone else. This made him even more arrogant.

  Mokran acted as if she sympathized with me, but at heart she was indifferent. To her, I was an excessively ordinary model student who didn’t suit someone like Jae. I wasn’t actually a brilliant student either, so I was just a nobody who had happened to be Jae’s childhood friend. Whenever Jae tossed solutions my way that appeared perfectly clear-cut, I felt humiliated—like a commoner seeking aid from a powerful man. Years later, I saw The Godfather on cable TV, and in one scene Marlon Brando asks someone seeking his help, “Why didn’t you come to me first?” I immediately thought of Jae. But the reproach lurking behind Jae’s bravado was probably aimed more at the world than at me.

  To Mokran, I probably seemed like someone who pestered Jae with my small problems, but then hesitated when he gave me invaluable advice. She assumed I wasn’t able to accept his straightforward solutions because I was an indecisive person. Still, I didn’t lose hope in him, but Jae ended up disappointing me. Just as when we were young, I had faith that he would be sympathetic and understanding. That was why I continued trying to explain what I was going through, but the more I explained, the more unclear and repetitious I became, unable to truly communicate because my words only moved between meaningless complaining and whining. Finally Jae stood up, looking a little bored.