You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

Wednesday 31 August

Around 10 p.m. I was getting into bed when I heard a strange bang upstairs. It wasn’t strange in that I didn’t know what it was, but in that I knew exactly what it was. It was the wind closing a heavy steel door. And there’s only one door that could possibly make a sound like that.

Why did he go out through the roof? Where did he get a key? I never gave it to him.

She was right about all of it. The steel door fitted too snugly into the frame, making it impossible to close it gently in a single motion. The only way to shut it quietly was to use both hands, carefully, in a certain way. It had banged against the frame that night by accident, and possibly twice more after that. I placed a finger in between the two paragraphs in the journal. There was a big space between them. I borrowed Hae-jin’s favourite conditional phrase and applied it to the gap. If I had been Mother, I would have gone straight up to the roof as soon as I heard the noise.

That door was a problem from the very first day we moved in. It was constructed shoddily, so it didn’t fit very well into the frame, and therefore it didn’t lock properly. She first tried to get it repaired several times by the construction company that had built the flats, but they went bankrupt and it never got fixed. Someone came from the building management and installed a hook-and-eye closure, but it was like putting disinfectant on a broken leg: when a typhoon came through, that door crashed open a couple of times a day, pulling out the hook and eye. Mother ended up hiring someone to repair the frame, replace the door and install a lock and a deadbolt. The repairman swore that there was no way the door would open on its own again unless the rooftop blew away.

Mother would have wanted to go and check to see if the repairman had been exaggerating. She would have seen the pergola light on, and at the steel door, she would have realised that it was locked but the bolt was undone. Would she have opened the door and looked out? Would she have heard my feet clattering down the stairs? Would she have come into my room to check on me? Did she count my pills that day too? There would have been the correct number. Maybe she went outside to look for me, going to the back gate to ask if anyone had gone by. Did she meet Hae-jin near the side gate that day too? Why didn’t she confront me about it? They weren’t difficult questions. Why did you go out via the roof? Why did you take the key?

Why did Mother not say anything to me while she kept worrying? Why would you do that? It wasn’t such a big deal.

I’d made a copy of the roof key for a reason, but it wasn’t some grand reason that required Mother to roam the cold, dark streets. The thirty-first of August was, I think, the first time I used that key, the first day I went out through the roof. It was the day after I came home from Imja Island, and I still hadn’t taken my pills. Didn’t I deserve to be gentle with myself? I’d had a huge public seizure after unshackling myself from my medication for the first time in a decade. I wanted to remain in a magical state for one more day. Just one more.

I’d spent that precious day in my room, wearing a long-sleeved shirt and long trousers to hide the scratches and bruises on my limbs. I’d blasted the air conditioning and lounged around on my bed. Hae-jin had gone to Sangam-dong early in the morning, so I didn’t have anyone to talk to. Rather, I didn’t have anyone I wanted to talk to; after all, Mother was there and she had a mouth with which she could speak.

That morning, Mother had come up to the roof and bobbed around in my eyesight. She didn’t seem to be doing anything in particular. She crouched by the garden bed and pretended to weed, even though she had already pulled out all the weeds. She pottered around by the pepper plants, constantly glancing over her shoulder at my room. If I closed the blinds, she would come and rap on the sliding door. Of course, there was a new reason she needed to talk to me each time. Isn’t it getting stuffy in there? You’ll catch a cold if you’re in the air conditioning for too long. The sun feels so nice; do you want to come out and have some tea with me?

I didn’t want to drink any damn tea; that was what you did when you were sick. I didn’t have to ask what she wanted either. I could figure out what she was thinking. I could see through her the way she could see through me. ‘Want to have some tea?’ meant ‘Confess to everything that happened at Imja Island.’ ‘The sun’s so nice’ was an offer to discuss my weakness.

By sunset, she had given up and I was bouncing off the walls. I’d realised something so obvious that I’d never even thought about before. Whether young or old, humans needed a place to go to and something to do. I didn’t have anywhere to go or anything to do. I didn’t know how to laze away a day; I had always needed to train or study. I didn’t have anyone I wanted to see; I didn’t have any films I wanted to watch. There was nothing I wanted to do. I couldn’t even go out at night, since I couldn’t drink and my curfew was 9 p.m. That was why I felt destroyed when Mother sometimes asked me, ‘Are you seeing anyone?’ Everyone knew that you couldn’t gain something if you were allowed nothing, but Mother, who knew everything about everything, didn’t seem to know that.

At 10 p.m., I had got up from my bed. I couldn’t stay put any longer. My insane urge was raising its head and my muscles were twitching. I slipped on the Private Lesson jacket and took out the trainers I’d hidden in the bathroom ceiling for just such a day. I opened the steel door. I’d made a copy of the key to prepare for this very day. Even when I took my meds faithfully, I had dreamed of a door I could run through behind Mother’s back. The door slammed behind me because it was a tricky door, of course, but really it was because I was impatient. If I had been a little calmer, I wouldn’t have stirred Mother’s hunting-dog instincts.

Once on the other side of the door, I ran downstairs without glancing back. My feet were restless and my head felt hot. I thought Mother would call my name at any moment. That shitty feeling disappeared only after I’d run out through the side gate and along the river and crossed the street in front of the sea wall. I stopped and took a moment to breathe. I leant against the railing and looked down at the dark ocean. Darkness and fog hid everything – the waves, the gulls, the marine park, the observatory, and at the halfway point of my run, the horizon. Only the searchlight cast a beam as it circled around slowly. I thought I could hear it saying, Come here, let’s play.

Yongi’s was closed, even though it wasn’t yet 11 p.m. Something must be up. Only when something happened in Mr Yongi’s personal life did the stand close early. The following were types of events that qualified for closing early, according to Mr Yongi: he felt physically or mentally unwell; his batter wasn’t perfect; for some reason he got the sense that it was an unlucky day; it was windy and he was feeling lonely; it was raining and he was feeling sad; there was a full moon and he was hating humanity; the weather was bad and he was feeling bad too.

It must be the last reason; it had been hot that day. Now, damp fog lay low and grey clouds were amassing in the dark sky. I wasn’t affected by weather when I was under the power of the insane urge. I practically flew all the way to the observatory and soared back to Yongi’s. Along the footpath by the river, I heard someone laughing up ahead of me. I couldn’t see who it was through the fog.

‘No, that’s not what I mean.’ It was a low voice, but clearly a woman’s. I didn’t hear anyone else; she must be talking on the phone.