You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

I couldn’t keep ignoring his pleading eyes. The coach is there, the other kids are there. What could possibly happen? I sent him without telling her about it. I couldn’t sit still all day. I just stared at my phone. I knew the coach would call me straight away if anything happened.

The phone rang around dawn. I knew it was the coach before I even opened my eyes. He said Yu-jin was missing. He said he found out when he made the rounds. Nobody saw him leave the camp. He said the police and emergency workers were searching nearby but they hadn’t found any trace of him.

I got in the car and the coach called me again as I drove through Inwol Tollgate. They had found him. He’d been at a bed-and-breakfast eight kilometres away. He had come pounding on the door at dawn. My hands were shaking.

He was asleep when I got there. He looked okay; he had scratches and he was bruised in places, but he was fine. I sat down next to him, and a policeman asked whether anything like this had happened before. Did he have a habit of wandering at night? Did he have a chronic illness, like somnambulism or narcolepsy or epilepsy? No, no, no, I kept saying.

Yu-jin said he’d got up to use the bathroom and had heard someone calling for help. He said he went to take a look and saw a white thing fluttering and dancing. He followed it away from the camp but then realised he didn’t know where he was. He realised he’d come too far but he was already lost. There was a full moon that night so it wasn’t dark, and that’s when he saw a yellow ribbon hanging on a branch. He said he remembered how his dad had told him that the ribbons were trail markers. So he followed the ribbons and ended up at the bed-and-breakfast.

It didn’t make any sense, and the coach and the police agreed I should take him home. He slept the whole way back to Seoul. I wanted to wake him up and ask him, What happened? Tell me the truth.

I remembered exactly what had happened, even though it was a long time ago and the events before and after the incident were a little faint. That afternoon, on my way back from playing in the creek, I had found some strange metal contraptions in the potato fields. I asked Coach what they were, and he said they were traps to stop rabbits from eating the crops. He told me not to go near them. Which was the easiest way to send a nine-year-old boy straight to them. At night, when everyone else was asleep, I left the camp with a flashlight. I was curious; could you really catch a rabbit with these traps?

I crouched under an acacia tree where I could see the traps, turned off my flashlight, and waited for the rabbits to appear. I wasn’t scared; it wasn’t dark at all. With the full moon in the sky, the forest glittered, and gold stars hung low above my head. I don’t remember how long I waited. I started drifting off at some point, listening to the sounds of the night as I rested my head. An owl hooting, a frog croaking, a cricket chirping, water trickling…

Suddenly, a strange sound. Under the bright moon, I saw a dark leaping shadow. I stood up. A rabbit. An ash-coloured wild rabbit was leaping up and down, its hind leg caught in the trap. I stepped closer, and a sweet smell washed over me. Its back leg, with the tight loop digging into it, was drenched in blood. Its frightened eyes glistened, wet and black in the moonlight. My heart thumped. ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘I’ll untangle you.’

I began to unwind the wire from the stake. It was wrapped around it several times, but it wasn’t hard to undo it. It just took some time. The rabbit writhed and bucked, and as soon as the wire loosened it bolted away. I followed it. I wasn’t trying to catch it to do anything to it; I was just curious about what was going to happen, where it was going, how far it could go with that long wire still on its leg, whether it could survive the blood loss.

It darted through a bush, across a creek, up a hill and under a tree. I didn’t use my eyes; I followed the scent of blood. It smelled as strong as meat being cooked. I could see it as clearly as a flame. The rabbit slowed. At first, I had to run to keep up, but soon I was just walking. Then it stopped completely. It was hiding under a thorny bush. It didn’t run away when I approached. I stuck my hand in and grabbed it, but it didn’t move. I picked it up by the ears. It was limp. It was dead. I lost interest and threw it into the bushes. I don’t remember much after that. It wasn’t important.

A question occurred to me now. Had that been a coincidence or inevitable? The rabbit sixteen years ago and the woman two nights ago; the two situations were identical in that I’d smelled blood, I’d stalked a frightened creature in the middle of the night, I’d ended up with a corpse in my hands, and both had happened while I was off my meds. The night sixteen years ago was the seed of the flower that bloomed two nights ago. The only difference was that the girl hadn’t been injured when I spotted her.

Maybe she was on her period. It wasn’t rare for me to smell menstrual blood in an enclosed space like a lecture hall or a classroom; it was easy to identify the person who was bleeding since it had a clear, unique smell. But in a forest or on a wide-open road? How was that possible unless you were a hunting dog?

Looking back, I realised that I had been attacked by smells every time I stopped my meds. Usually they were pungent – blood, fish, sewage, dirt, water, trees, grass. Even perfume or scented oil was strong and unpleasant. This whole time I had believed it foreshadowed a seizure. Now that I apparently did not have epilepsy, I didn’t know what my strong sense of smell meant.

Every time I stopped taking the pills, I’d returned to myself. So my sense of smell must be part of my true nature. If that made me see the world a certain way, which affected my life in a certain way, which in turn took my life down a certain path, then I could see how it might become a problem. Maybe that was why Auntie had prescribed the drugs.

Friday 28 July

Hye-won was angry, saying that a mere nine-year-old was toying with her. Smirking all the while. He apparently hasn’t been cooperating in his sessions after returning from camp and going on the new regimen. He exhausts her with crafty wordplay, and in group therapy he sets a bad example by being rude to the other kids and egging them on. During hypnosis, he pretends he’s hypnotised and unspools lie after lie. She says that yesterday he acted like he had become unconscious from being so deeply hypnotised and made her panic.

What do I do? I knelt by the Virgin Mary and asked, Mother, wise Mother, what do I do?

I remembered fighting for years with Auntie. I was resistant to her treatments for a few months after being banned from the pool for taking Yu-min’s box. After we moved to Incheon, Mother offered me a deal. If I underwent treatment sincerely and honestly, she would let me swim again. I accepted. Auntie had won.

I went downstairs. The wash cycle had finished a long time ago. I pressed the drying button and returned to my room with a bottle of cold water. The next entries were in June 2000.

Saturday 3 June

We marked the forty-ninth day of their deaths. After Mass at dawn, we got in the car. Hye-won offered to come with us, but I said no. I wanted it to be just the two of us. For me to be able to continue with this, I have to shake off the things that are hurting me. I wanted this short trip to be a new beginning.

We stopped at the flower market in Seocho-dong and went straight down to Mokpo. He was like a shadow next to me. He didn’t move or talk. He didn’t even say he was hungry or he had to go to the bathroom. He just sat there, leaning back, looking out of the window or playing with his Rubik’s cube.

I realised I’d rarely had Yu-jin next to me in the car like that. If I drove, either his father or his brother sat in the passenger seat. I preferred having Yu-min next to me. I could drive a long time without noticing how tired I was because he chatted so much. I never thought about Yu-jin as he sat in the back. Now that Yu-min isn’t here, I realise how quiet Yu-jin is. I remembered my sister saying that it would take something special to make Yu-jin’s pulse quicken, and how she was afraid because she didn’t know what that might be.