You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

As we approached the crossing, she broke into a run. She kept looking back, almost twisting her ankle in her heels. She was a wuss. But even for a wuss she had some nerve. When she got to the crossing, she whipped around and screamed, ‘Who are you?’

I didn’t answer. How dare she speak to me that way? What the hell had I done? I hadn’t spoken to her, I hadn’t bothered her; I hadn’t even appeared in her sights. All I was doing was going where I had to go.

Right then, her phone began ringing. She screamed and flapped about. The phone flew into the middle of the road as she dashed across and screamed again. A car that had rounded the corner in front of the primary school had to screech to a stop. All the sounds mixed in the fog: the tyres skidding, the screaming that echoed and grew fainter, the sound of the phone ringing in the middle of the street.

Quiet returned. The car and the woman were both gone. I strode towards the crossing. I stood under the light for a moment, my arms limp. The joy was gone. I was so hungry. I was drained and my head felt muffled. What had I done? What was I yearning for that made me so famished? I picked up her phone. The name of the caller was on the smashed screen. Mimi. I walked over to the water and tossed it in.

And that was the last time I’d seen the woman. Maybe she’d made sure not to be out alone in the dark again. As for me, I developed a habit of going out in the middle of the night to see if the electric feeling the woman had given me had been real. After several test runs, I confirmed that I liked following women more than men. Their sense of what was behind them was better attuned, and they were much more afraid. There was nothing more thrilling, honestly. When I reached the crossing by the sea wall after rounding the observatory, it was fifty-fifty whether someone would get off the last bus. And the possibility that it would be a woman was half of that. The road by Dongjin River was my playground. But the baseline for getting that jolt went up each time. Each time I went out, I’d need to take a new object with me, something to set the mood and get my imagination going. Like heavy metal in my headphones, a disposable mask, or latex gloves.

I didn’t go out every night. I went out when I was off my meds, and only if I had the urge. If I encountered a woman and got my fix, I could start taking my pills again, and I wouldn’t feel like going out for a while, as though I were in remission. But if I didn’t see a woman, the urge continued unabated. Since that August day, I’d felt it a total of six times. Two of those times, I’d seen a woman. The first was on 15 November, and the second was last night, the only time I’d run away when I was following someone.

I thought she’d got off the bus alone, but now a question popped into my head: had she really been alone? I remembered waking up this morning with the vision of the crimson umbrella rolling along the road. I’d remembered something else when I left Yongi’s – a woman opening the crimson umbrella as she got off the bus, and the drunken man who followed her, his singing reverberating through the streets.

Another question occurred to me. Had I really been standing in front of the crossing last night? A chill began creeping up my legs. No. I had been behind Yongi’s. I hadn’t even been standing; I was sitting on the railing, looking down at the ocean, waiting for the last bus to arrive. That made the most sense. Mr Yongi usually closed his shack at 11.20 and was on the bus ten minutes later. I arrived at Yongi’s after rounding the observatory around 11.50. The last bus got in around midnight. That had been the schedule every night I’ve been out via the roof; last night would have been the same.

Had I really run away from her? Or maybe the question was: had I really been feeling the symptoms of a seizure all day today? It wasn’t like I’d had an episode every time I stopped taking the pills. Did I think I was about to have one just because that was the easy explanation for why I couldn’t remember anything? Perhaps the confusion and memory loss I’d been experiencing today was actually due to something else entirely.

A bright light blinded me. A screech behind the curtain of light; the sound of a car braking suddenly, skidding on the wet road. The sound of a car door opening, and Mother screaming, ‘Yu-jin!’

The man’s singing had stopped a while ago. It was deadly quiet. Only the wind was screaming past.

I know I saw him. I’m cold and scared and terrified.

Please stop! I wanted to scream. The voices and images flashing in front of me were jumbled; I couldn’t thread them together into chronological order. I lay down on the journal, my cheek resting on the page. The things on my desk rotated across my visual field as though they were on a conveyer belt. The razor, the pearl earring, the key to the roof. I raised my head. I stared at the iPod and earphones, feeling unsettled. I thought back to the very beginning, right before I left my room last night. I picked the iPod up and pressed the power button; my playlist was stopped at Vangelis’s ‘Conquest of Paradise’. If I listened to this playlist from the beginning, this was the song that came on exactly one hour and fifty-two minutes later. So I was right. I’d left the house at 10.10 p.m., rounded the observatory, and turned off the music when I arrived at the crossing by the sea wall around midnight.

I slid the earphones into my ears. I closed my eyes and thought back to last night, when the clock in the living room had chimed ten times. I tapped the first song on the playlist and hit play. The song, ‘Mass’, began. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom boom, boom, boom boom, boom…

The clock in the living room chimed ten times.

Mother had gone into her room thirty minutes ago and closed the door. Hae-jin wasn’t home yet. For the last half-hour I’d been lying on my bed with my head in my hands, not because of a headache but because of my insane urge. It had been four days since I stopped taking the pills. I’d been roaming the neighbourhood like a wild dog for the last three nights. A part of my mind was coaxing me, trying to convince me to go out and play just once more. The faint buzz I was still feeling from last night fervently supported that. Don’t be such a wimp. You’re not hurting anyone, you’re just enjoying yourself. How is it different from masturbating? And you didn’t land anything the last two days. Just do it, unless you plan to stop altogether. You’re not one to do things halfway.

I flipped onto my back. I laced my fingers under my neck and calculated the date. I’d stopped taking my pills in August, before the exam, then two months later before the oral exams in November, and now, not even a month later, for no particular reason. Maybe I’d stop taking them completely. Then either I’d have another seizure, or Mother would figure it out before it got to that point.

So the only solution was to go out tonight. If I didn’t, it was likely that I wouldn’t take the pill tomorrow either. The danger would grow. Today was the last day. Tomorrow, or maybe the day after that, I’d become the best person I could be.

I got up. I opened my wardrobe and took out some clothes and put them on quickly. A black turtleneck sweater, sweatpants, socks, the padded vest and the Private Lesson jacket. I stuffed a pair of latex gloves, the roof key and the building entry card in my left jacket pocket. I put on a disposable mask, slid my iPod into my right pocket and secured the earphones with a clip under my ears. I pulled the hood onto my head and cinched it with the cord. I took my shoes from the panel in the bathroom ceiling and picked up the razor. I’d never gone out with the razor. I’d saved it for the end. Since tonight was probably – definitely – the last time, I put it in my pocket. My heart was already pounding from that simple act.