You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

I got up. I found the key and opened the door.

‘Thanks,’ she said as she walked inside. ‘Don’t mind me. I’ll wash and take a little nap until Hae-jin comes home. I didn’t sleep a wink last night.’ She closed the door in my face. I heard the lock engage. I didn’t hear her moving around. Maybe she was standing by the door, listening. I tossed the keys back in the cabinet and went into the living room. I didn’t want to leave her alone downstairs in case she roamed around and found something I’d missed.

I lay on the sofa like Hae-jin had done yesterday morning and started flipping through the channels. Films, fishing… Auntie began moving around in my mind’s eye. She would put her bag down on Mother’s writing desk. She would hang her coat on the back of the chair. What next? She’d fulfil her purpose of coming to this house. I could see her entering the dressing room. She would look in the bathroom, open the door to the study, then come back to the wardrobe and open the doors. She would look over the neat vanity and the things on the shelves, the pots and creams and perfumes, the hair dryer, the make-up brushes, the hats and purses and luggage and backpacks. She wouldn’t find anything suspicious, since she wouldn’t know what Mother would have taken with her. She would return to the desk and open the drawer. What was inside? I tried to remember. A notebook, pens and stapler, glasses case. My thoughts stopped at Mother’s red wallet. I could practically hear Auntie, triumphant: Your mother left for a trip and didn’t even take her wallet? Then I remembered that Mother’s driver’s licence and credit card were in her mobile phone case, and that was in my bedroom. Not bad. She’d have to ask me in order for me to answer, but still.

Next she would open the linen cupboard. She wouldn’t find anything out of place there either, since I’d checked several times and wiped any surface I had touched. The only thing was the mattress. I’d put a white sheet on it, but if she wanted to, she could easily lift it up and take a look. How likely was it that she’d want to?

There was an action film on the TV featuring Kristen Stewart. I placed the remote on the table and lay back on the sofa. I aimlessly followed the story about a druggie convenience store clerk who was planning to marry his girlfriend. The clerk actually turned out to be some sort of a superhuman groomed by the CIA who had lost his memory. I looked up when the clock chimed four times.

I hadn’t slept a wink since waking up at dawn yesterday. I hadn’t even relaxed for a moment. But for some reason I wasn’t tired. My eyes were dry but I felt pretty good otherwise. Even though I’d been watching the film for over an hour, I didn’t feel sleepy. When I thought back to two nights ago, when I was on the verge of collapse, this level of alertness was inexplicable, as though my entire body had entered a state of emergency. Thoughts floated around my head without context and mixed with emotions of all kinds – despair that I wouldn’t be able to lead a normal life, anger towards Auntie for branding me a latent killer, resentment at Mother, who hadn’t given me any choice over my life, scenes from the killings that flickered like embers, the suspicion that I’d never be able to forget the feeling of fullness and pure joy I’d felt with that woman with the earring.

Someone once said that humans used a third of their lives dreaming, and that they led entirely different lives in their dreams. All kinds of foolish, violent and dirty desires came to life during this time. I was the kind of person who didn’t fight against anyone or anything. I was the one who waited all by myself with a knife, along the back wall. Thousands of bastards were on my hit list: bastards I didn’t like, bastards who sided with those bastards, bastards who were friendly with the bastards who sided with the bastards I didn’t like, bastards who walked past the bastards who were friendly with the bastards who sided with the bastards I didn’t like… On nights when my mood was foul, I summoned each one into my dreams and cut their throats. Auntie might say that was psychopath porn.

I was in elementary school when I first dreamed something pornographic. The bastard who appeared was the one Mother mentioned in her journal, the guy who took the medal from me by 0.45 seconds. As the diary noted, I moaned all night long. I fell into a light sleep and woke up having had a wet dream.

I had countless wet dreams after that. I didn’t feel guilt; my dreams only revealed the desires hidden within me. In dreams, everything you wanted came true, and unimaginable things happened all the time in the name of your desires. That was normal and I was entirely normal as well. There wasn’t a hint of any desire that would elevate me to a special level, until last August, when I met the woman with the sparkling ring on the night her car had broken down.

She was the pilot light that made me step into the streets, tired of the same old porn in my dreams. And because of that, I was cornered. I only had a couple of choices. I had to craft a story that made sense in case I was arrested or decided to confess. Nobody would believe me if I said I’d acted out the images in my head without realising that it was real life; that Mother had discovered that and tried to kill me; and that in defending myself I’d ended up killing her but that I certainly wasn’t a bad person. If I decided to flee… My heart began to beat faster. An intuitive thought flickered beneath my consciousness. I didn’t grab it, but left it where I could fish it out any time.

I looked up. The phone was ringing. Hae-jin. I picked it up and pressed the talk button.

‘What are you doing? You busy?’ He sounded out of breath, like he was the busy one. I could hear people talking, something rattling by, cars honking.

‘I’m watching a movie. Why?’

‘I’m going to be on the 6.05 train. I got caught up in something.’

‘So you won’t be back until at least nine?’

‘I’ll be at Yongsan by 8.30, so it won’t be until after ten,’ he said apologetically. ‘Can you do me a favour?’

What kind of favour was it that he was dragging it out like this? ‘Go ahead.’ I picked up the remote and started changing channels. All I saw were food-related shows. On one channel they were eating marinated grilled spare ribs, on another a man was cutting a slab of meat into pieces, and on a third two soldiers were grilling pork belly over charcoal. Every organism learns from the moment of its birth how to survive and how to wait, learning how to eat and how to forge on until it can eat again. But modern-day humans don’t learn how to be hungry. We eat all kinds of things without regard to time and place, indulging ourselves in restaurants and never learning to delay gratification. This obsession over consuming food isn’t any different from psychopath porn. From that perspective, it seemed that humans were the most impatient about their desires out of all living beings on earth.

‘You know the DVD section in my room with Eastern European shorts?’

‘Yeah.’

‘There should be a movie in the middle called Dual . Can you find it and take it to Yongi’s? Now?’

Now, of all times? I was annoyed and didn’t say anything.

Hae-jin added a long explanation as though he could read my thoughts. ‘So the director of Private Lesson needs it immediately, but since I’m in Muan I can’t get it to him. But he and the people from the production company are going to be near the Gundo sea wall. You can leave it with Mr Yongi and they’ll pick it up.’

‘If they’re coming all this way anyway, why not ask them to come to the flat to pick it up? I can take it down to the car park for them.’ I glanced at Mother’s door.