You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

I didn’t understand what he was talking about. He was a few months older than me, but he seemed ten years older and a foot or two taller at that. It was almost as though he was Mother’s peer.

‘Do you think the world is unfair?’ Mother asked.

Hae-jin paused again. ‘I have to believe that it will become more equal at some point. I mean, if we work towards it.’ He looked out of the window.

Mother watched him through the rear-view mirror. I turned back to the front.

‘How did you like the movie?’ she finally asked him, when we were waiting at a red light near Gwanghwamun.

‘I read a review saying that if Tarantino had done the Godfather , it would have been something like that. I think I know what they meant,’ Hae-jin said.

Did that mean he liked it? Or hated it?

‘So you liked it?’ Mother said.

‘Yes.’ Hae-jin didn’t say anything after that. Maybe he was still thinking about the film.

As we drove on, the bell at Bosingak began to ring, marking midnight. It was quiet in the car, each of us immersed in our own thoughts, until we pulled up at the hospital.

‘Thank you for today,’ Hae-jin said as he opened the door.

Mother followed him out of the car. From inside, I watched as Hae-jin bowed. She held out a hand for a handshake, as if they were equals. Hae-jin hesitated before taking it. The interaction couldn’t have lasted more than five seconds, but they seemed to be confirming something inexpressible, something I couldn’t understand.

Mother returned to the car. Hae-jin stood there, his yellow scarf fluttering in the dark. I realised that I’d lost mine. I had held it in my hand after I took it off, but I must have let go of it at some point during the movie. Maybe it was when I was laughing but then met Mother’s eyes, the moment when Li’l Zé gunned people down in time to samba. A line from the film came to mind: ‘The exception becomes the rule.’

I was Mother’s only son. That was the rule. The exception happened soon afterwards. Hae-jin became her adopted son the following March, taking Yu-min’s place. The exception had become the rule.

I looked back down at the razor in my hand. Clues to who had killed Mother were all over the place, including the decisive evidence of the murder weapon. Without a single clue pointing to a different conclusion, I would be implicated. How would Hae-jin take this? No matter what he asked me, I could only answer one way – I don’t remember a thing. The time-worn excuse made by thousands of criminals over thousands of years.

Would he believe me? Or would he call the authorities? Would he tell me to give myself up? I couldn’t do that. But all of that would come later. What I needed now was time to think. I needed to find evidence that made sense. If I really had killed my mother, shouldn’t I at least know why?

‘I should have done away with you.’ Mother’s voice. It wasn’t in my head; it was coming from behind me. I turned towards the sliding door to the roof deck. I saw her standing out there, her hair in a ponytail, wearing a white nightgown, her feet bare. The way she must have looked before she died. I remembered now. She didn’t have a speck of blood on her. Her throat was intact.

‘You…’ She glared at me, her eyes burning. Scarlet veins popped in the bluish whites of her eyes. ‘You, Yu-jin…’

I flinched and stepped back towards my bed.

‘You don’t deserve to live.’

My pulse thumped at my temples. My hand gripped the razor tightly. ‘Why? What did I do?’

She didn’t answer. Fog coursed forward like an avalanche and swallowed her. I looked around my room at the blood, the footprints, the stained blankets. All of this happened after she died. The words I’d just heard – Mother had spat them out when she was still alive. Was it because I’d gone out in the middle of the night? Why would something so inconsequential make her tell me I didn’t deserve to live?

My head began to pound. Heat flared up the back of my head. Black spots danced in front of me. I felt dizzy. I turned round and went into the bathroom. I tossed the razor into the sink and filled it up with cold water. I dunked my head into the water to cool it down, so that I could keep my focus and not get discouraged or angry.

‘Tomorrow, Mum. I’ll tell you everything in the morning.’ That was my voice. I looked up and met my own eyes in the mirror. Tell her what in the morning?

I stared at my blood-crusted head and the blood that had dissolved in the water and was now streaming down my face. The sink turned scarlet and the razor shimmered like the shadow of the moon. A thought glimmered in the pitch-black darkness of my head. Maybe… I looked down at the razor, aghast. It couldn’t be. I blinked the bloody water out of my eyes. But maybe… I shoved my hand into the cold water and fished the razor out. Maybe.

I ran out of the bathroom. Before I could change my mind, I opened my bedroom door and stepped into the hallway. I went down the stairs as slowly as possible. One, two, three, I counted, my gaze fixed on my toes. Four, five, six. Counting usually helped me to keep control and cut through distracting thoughts, but it wasn’t working this time. My whole body was alert to the orders being issued by my sympathetic nervous system. It was as if a beehive were stuck to my forehead: my thoughts bounced around, and noises of all frequencies funnelled into my ears – the sound of the river swirling, the spray of water, the wind rattling the door to the roof, Mother’s voice lowering into a moan, ‘Yu-jin…’

There were countless reasons why I should toss the razor aside and return to my room. I was tired, my eyes hurt, my head pounded, my thoughts were muddled, I was scared that I was actually going crazy. But I forced myself to continue down the stairs. I held my breath and stepped into the living room. Mother greeted me, her eyes wide and staring, her mouth open, her cheeks and jaw smudged in red, her neck clotted with blood.

I clutched the razor, which kept slipping out of my hand. I knelt next to her. The razor had been something to remember Father by, but now it had morphed into something completely different. It threatened to open a door I wasn’t sure I wanted to go through. I swallowed hard. My throat was scratchy. My mind taunted me: Are you shaking right now?

I was. A blue chill pressed on the nape of my neck; I felt like it would suffocate me to death. I wanted to run away. I wanted to take fistfuls of aspirin and sedatives and lie down. Fuck. What was I supposed to do?

Run , my mind offered. Nobody knows she’s dead yet. You know where her bank card is, and what her PIN is, from doing all those errands over the years. Take out a load of cash. You have more than a year before your passport expires. If you run to the other side of the world right now, no one will stop you. Whatever happens after that isn’t your problem.

But I had to know. A conclusion arrived at via clues had no meaning; I had to hear it from myself. Was there someone inside of me other than the ‘me’ I believed I was? I couldn’t continue living the way I had without knowing what that someone had done, even if my life would be turned completely upside down because of it.

I studied the wound below Mother’s jaw while trying not to meet her fixed gaze. Reddish-black film covered the incision from under her left ear to her right. I wiped it away with a finger. A long, deep wound appeared.

I closed my eyes, taming my leaping breath, and summoned the boy from long ago. I brought out swimming champion Han Yu-jin, bent over at the starting block, waiting for the signal. The boy beyond the reach of Auntie and Mother’s watchful eyes, focusing only on the moment of flinging his body into the air over the water. My heartbeat began to slow. The goose bumps on the back of my neck settled back into my skin. The breath that had been trapped at the top of my throat moved easily in, then out.