You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

Hae-jin turned to look at Mother. Mother, who had been continuously and anxiously sweeping her hair to the side, froze. Her mouth dropped open. She stopped herself from speaking. I watched her with interest, knowing what she’d almost said. Mother, who was normally so calm, was clearly shaken, completely taken aback. She looked like she had forgotten that the old man was there, that I was there, that people were coming and going, or even that we were in a hospital. I knew what she was feeling, since I’d felt the same thing when I saw this kid on the first day of middle school.

That day, Hae-jin had become the star of the school. Right when the welcome ceremony was about to start, a strong, high-pitched voice rang out. ‘Hae-jin! Hey, Hae-jin! I’m here! Grandpa’s here!’

The auditorium hushed in an instant. Hundreds of pairs of eyes looked over at the old man who was rising in his seat, waving his rake-like hand, and the boy turning beet red.

‘Here! Right here!’ the old man continued to yell, finally standing all the way up. He was in a suit he must have worn fifty years ago on his wedding day. He was so thin that it looked like a feather duster was poking out of his sleeve, not an arm.

The boy waved back, but his hand didn’t go side to side; it went up and down, indicating, I know, I know, sit down .

I was sitting right behind him. I couldn’t take my eyes off his face. I nearly called out, ‘Yu-min!’ It wasn’t a passing resemblance; he looked exactly like my brother. The same gentle brown eyes, the same wavy hair, the same neat demeanour of a star student. My eyes slid down to find his name pin. Kim Hae-jin.

Our names even shared the same last syllable. If we had the same surname, people would think we were siblings. I felt as if I had just found out about a brother Mother had kept hidden from me.

Mother was probably feeling all of this here in the hospital; she would be thinking she was meeting a son she hadn’t known she had. ‘Are you Hae-jin?’ she managed to say, her voice trembling.

‘Yes.’ Hae-jin looked at me standing next to her. We stared at each other for a long time.

‘Do you know each other?’ Mother cut through the awkward silence. ‘Same school, I see…’

My eyes still on Hae-jin, I didn’t answer. Hae-jin didn’t have the chance to say anything, as his grandfather called him and he immediately turned towards him.

‘What are you doing just standing there? Go and get the nurse. It hurts so much! I think I’m going to die!’

That day, I didn’t end up going to Auntie’s office. The old man was admitted at 8 p.m., and Mother volunteered to handle the paperwork normally done by the insurance company. She requested a good room, lobbied for an earlier date for surgery, and pushed the old man’s gurney from the X-ray room to the examination room to the ward. It was obvious what she was doing. She didn’t want to say goodbye to Hae-jin. She would have wanted to show him what kind of person she was: I did break your grandfather’s leg but I’m not so bad.

On our way home, she asked, ‘Yu-jin, you know that boy, right?’

‘Yes.’

I could tell she wanted details. I was strangely annoyed by all of this, so I didn’t offer anything else.

‘Are you in the same class?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Are you not friends?’

‘No.’

‘He’s pretty tall, too. Does he sit at the back with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you’re not friends?’

Honestly, what did that have to do with anything? Was it constitutionally mandated that people who sat near each other had to be friends? I didn’t answer.

‘Does he not talk to you?’

‘No.’

‘And you don’t talk to him?’

‘No.’

Mother nodded dreamily and didn’t say anything else.

Looking back now, I could see that Hae-jin hadn’t been Hae-jin to Mother over the last ten years. To her, he was Yu-min, which meant that she could have told him her secrets. The only question was whether it was possible for Hae-jin to keep those secrets. He was so transparent. It was impossible for him to hide what he was thinking or feeling; anything she told him couldn’t be kept quiet. I was an expert when it came to him, and from how he’d acted today I was sure he didn’t know a thing.

So then the journal wasn’t for Hae-jin. But it wasn’t as though she didn’t have time or a way to get rid of it; all she had to do was burn it in the barbecue on the roof and it would disappear into a pile of ash. I thought about the second person Mother had called last night. Was it Auntie who knew everything about me?

I thought carefully about each word I had heard from Auntie on the phone earlier today. I didn’t get the sense that she knew anything in particular; she’d asked questions that poked around every which way. It was 1.31 a.m. when Mother and Auntie had spoken. Mother would have just returned home. What did they talk about for those three minutes? Did she tell Auntie everything she’d seen? Did she ask her for advice? It couldn’t be. If that had happened, there was no way Auntie wouldn’t have taken action. She would have reported it immediately and she would have turned up at the flat herself with the police.

My head pounded. My thoughts were so tangled that I couldn’t even remember what I was trying to figure out. But a feeling of regret pressed down on my chest. Why had I come home? If I’d stayed out, Mother wouldn’t have died. If I’d come home just a little later, everything would have turned out differently.

I let go of the journal. I looked down at my hands, which appeared so alien to me all of a sudden. Twenty-seven bones, twenty-seven joints, one hundred and twenty-three ligaments, thirty-four muscles, ten fingerprints. My hands, which had held food, washed themselves, picked up objects and touched the things I loved the most, had become murder weapons overnight. I tried to focus my thoughts. I thought about my twenty-five-year-old life that had become wrecked, the rest of my life that was looming outside, the things I could and could no longer do. Nothing could save me now. Hope slipped out of my grasp. Cold, heavy fear tightened its grip around me. There was no way back. I couldn’t fix any of it.

Just a few hours ago, I’d believed that I had to know. I had wanted to hear it from myself. I’d thought I had to see the real me. I was human, after all; Hello could live happily without knowing that he was Hello, but I couldn’t keep on living without knowing who I was or what I had done. Now that I knew all of it, I realised it was a pointless exercise. No matter what I knew, I didn’t have a way forward.

I turned my despair on Mother. Why hadn’t she kept calm even when she got angry? Why hadn’t she followed her original plan? Why hadn’t she just shoved me in the passenger seat and driven into the ocean? Then I could have left these secrets where they were. I wouldn’t be looking at myself with such hatred and misery. I wouldn’t have had to face the enemy inside that had pushed my life to ruin.

I laid my head on my desk. My body went limp. I closed my eyes and listened to the creaking swing outside. Wait! My eyes flew open. The sound wasn’t coming from outside. It wasn’t the swing. It was downstairs, the intercom from the entrance of the building. I looked up at the clock: 9 p.m. Who would ring the bell at this hour? It wasn’t Hae-jin. Was it Auntie? The security guard? Maybe Hello’s owner? Sometimes she forgot to bring her entry card and rang us when nobody else was home. I’d rung her myself twice.

The buzz was persistent. I swept the things on my desk into the drawer and went downstairs. It was the intercom. But it wasn’t Hello’s owner. When I turned on the screen, a man in a black cap and black jacket appeared.