You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

I suddenly remembered the crimson umbrella rolling along the road. And the woman I’d seen at the crossing last night. Was her umbrella crimson?

Mr Yongi continued. ‘So she sits here for close to an hour but she doesn’t eat a single pancake! She says she’s allergic to flour or whatever. I mean, if you stay that long, shouldn’t you buy a bag? Just to be polite? I don’t care if you throw it on the street on your way home. Anyway, finally a man walks in and they leave together.’

‘So she’s the one who died?’ I asked, swallowing the pancake down. I sure hoped so. If she was the victim, then I was clearly irrelevant to the incident. Another man had left with her last night.

Mr Yongi, who was holding out my change, tapped the bills on the back of his hand. ‘What? Are you listening? When did I say that?’

‘Oh… no?’ My voice crawled into my throat.

‘The plain-clothes police officers who came showed me the dead girl’s picture and asked if I’d ever seen her, had she come into the shop… I looked at it, and honestly, I nearly had a heart attack!’ He stopped and put the change back into his money belt.

It was clear that if I wanted to hear why he had nearly had a heart attack, I’d have to forgo my change to make up for the pancakes the girl didn’t buy last night. I blinked in agreement so he would go on.

‘I remembered her. She’d come in a few times. She wasn’t a regular, but I remembered her instantly. Because she wore an earring on the outer rim of her ear, but only on one side. I asked her about it once – I couldn’t help myself, I was so curious – and she said it was her late mother’s and she’d lost the other one. I told the police, and they asked me what the earring looked like.’

Without realising it, I put my hand in my pocket. The sharp end of the earring grazed the tip of my finger, and I flinched.

‘No point in describing it really,’ continued Mr Yongi. ‘It was just a simple earring with a single pearl on it.’

The world spun. Mr Yongi’s voice faded and returned. ‘Man, those dirty flies are back.’ He was looking behind me.

I looked back too. A black car had stopped in front of the shack. Two men got out and strode inside. The first had short hair and eyes that were set far apart. The other was older, middle-aged, and wearing a dark coat. They both looked at me.

‘We’re closing,’ Mr Yongi said.

The one with the goat eyes looked at his watch. ‘It’s still early.’

‘I’m all out of batter,’ Mr Yongi said, throwing his tongs into a plastic bowl with a clatter.

‘Are you a regular customer?’ the one in the dark coat asked. It was clear they were detectives.

‘He’s a student who lives around here,’ Mr Yongi answered for me.

This was the perfect time for me to leave. ‘See you later,’ I said to Mr Yongi, and walked out before the detective could start asking questions. It was only a few steps to the crossing, but I nearly fell over several times, my knees were shaking so hard.

It was just a simple earring with a single pearl on it.

I looked back at the shack. Mr Yongi was gesturing and making grimaces as he delivered some sort of fiery speech to the two men. I took out the earring. It had a single pearl on it. I closed my fist quickly. It couldn’t be. I shook my head. My mind started babbling. Don’t worry about it. It’s just a coincidence. Any woman would have at least one pair of pearl earrings.

Bright light shone from the bus stop. I turned and saw a bus drawing up. It wasn’t raining hard, but the windscreen wipers were on. A woman and a man got off the bus, and the woman opened a red umbrella and walked towards the crossing. The man followed, his hands in his coat pockets and his shoulders hunched, heavy. They weren’t together. He looked like he was drunk.

I started to cross the street and passed them. Behind me, the man, slurring, began singing loudly, something about a girl in the rain who he couldn’t forget. He must have had at least four or five bottles of soju .

Something felt off. The man’s bellowing song was all around me, but I didn’t hear any footsteps. In the centre of the road, I looked back. There was nobody there. Not the woman or the man. Not even the bus. Only the song rang out in the fog.

I looked over at the shack again. The detectives were standing side by side, facing Mr Yongi. Had they not heard the singing? I broke into a run. Everything was spinning; dozens of crimson umbrellas flapped like a colony of bats. The singing followed me all the way home. I must be slowly going crazy.

I got a text from Hae-jin as I stepped inside the flat.

On my way to Muan on the KTX. Just got asked to fill in to film a wedding. I’ll be back tomorrow night. Did you talk to Mother? Her mobile’s still off. Text me when you do. Sorry I can’t celebrate with you tonight.

I sent my reply. No worries. Take your time. I had so much to do too.

I trudged up the stairs. Nothing made sense. I still couldn’t remember what had happened. But now I was starting to realise something. The things that had seemed unrelated to one another and the clues I’d shrugged off or ignored were beginning to come together. I just had to figure out what had happened during the two and a half hours between midnight and 2.30 in the morning.

I took off my jacket and hung it on the back of my chair. I sat down. I put the bag of pancakes and the pearl earring on my desk. It was just a simple earring with a single pearl on it. I thought of the sentence in the news article that had made me go to Yongi’s in the first place. Police sources said that the possibility of homicide was high; the body had been damaged by a sharp object.

I took out the razor from my desk drawer. I unfolded it. You, Yu-jin… You don’t deserve to live. What should I do? Where should I begin? Even the thought of doing something frightened me. It seemed that anything I could do would result in putting shackles on myself. I was just falling further into the hell I’d glimpsed earlier. Wouldn’t it be better to sit still and not do anything at all?

Exhaustion rushed at me. I wanted to crawl into my bed and sleep, even if it was just for a moment, until I reached the catastrophic end. I closed my eyes and pressed my hands to my forehead. There were things you couldn’t avoid in life – being born, becoming someone’s child, and for me, the events that had already transpired. Still, I didn’t want to speculate; I wanted to take control of my destiny. No matter how this fucking situation was going to end, I would make the decisions in my life. That meant I had to do what I could and uncover the two hours and thirty minutes shrouded in darkness.

I put the razor down next to the earring. I took my iPod, earphones, key to the roof and car key out of the drawer. I touched each one. I opened Mother’s journal. It was the best place to start.

I flipped through it from beginning to end. It was longer than I’d thought; blue tabs separated the years from 2016 to 2000 in reverse chronological order. The records were separated into months, also in reverse order, from December. The notations on each page were in chronological order, though. Some months she had written nearly every day, while in others she’d written only a few times. Sometimes she’d skipped entire months. The entries ranged from a single line to long ones that ran to two or three pages. Nothing was standard. That was probably why she kept it in a binder, so that she could add pages easily. There was another benefit to this: I could check for specific months in a particular year, like a library catalogue.

The notations had started sixteen years ago, on 30 April 2000: Yu-jin is sleeping peacefully, deeply.