You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

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 the 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.

I washed my face and every bit of it hurt. My life had disintegrated. I took out a towel and dried my face, then threw it by the bathroom door. I stepped on it carefully to dry the soles of my feet. The rough sensation of the towel underfoot brought me back to the present. Hae-jin was waiting for me.

When I got downstairs, Hae-jin was at the stove, checking the seasoning of the soup with a ladle. ‘What were you doing all this time? I thought you said you were starving.’

The table was set with a few side dishes, steamed egg in an earthenware pot, and a spoon.

I sat down and he placed a bowl of seaweed soup and rice in front of me. ‘What about you?’ I asked.

‘I just had ramen. I can’t eat right now.’

I looked down at my soup bowl, chock full of seaweed and beef with barely any broth. That was the way Mother served me soup; I was on a low-sodium diet per her sister’s direction.