You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

‘Apparently it’s not his car and he’s with a group, so it might be tricky.’

‘So if Yongi’s isn’t open, I have to stand there and wait?’

‘It’s almost always open at this time,’ Hae-jin said, sounding a little deflated. I could hear him thinking, I went all the way to Yeongjong Island for you when you thought you’d lost your phone, and you can’t do this one thing for me? ‘It’s okay if you’re too busy.’

I managed to stuff the words ‘I’m too busy’ back into my mouth. It would take only twenty minutes if I ran. As Mother always said, if someone gives you something, the best thing to do is to return the favour. I didn’t want to refuse this small favour and risk him getting suspicious. ‘No, no. I’ll run over. I don’t have anything going on right now.’

Hae-jin’s voice brightened instantly. ‘You don’t have to run. It just has to happen in the next half-hour. Just tell Mr Yongi about it.’

I hung up and approached the bedroom door to listen. I couldn’t hear a thing. Maybe Auntie hadn’t been rummaging around in the room all this time. Was she reading a book from the study? Had she in fact had a wash and fallen asleep like she’d said she was going to? Other than that, what was there to do in there for hours? It would be okay to leave for a little bit.

I left the TV on and went into Hae-jin’s room. I found the DVD right away, where he had said it would be. I slid the door to the foyer open and picked up the running shoes I’d worn to Yongi’s last night. The front door lock would beep if I left that way, and Auntie would realise that she could roam around the house freely.

I went upstairs. I locked my door behind me and put on my padded vest. The entry card and my mobile phone went in my pocket. I left the glass sliding door open a crack, walked quickly across the roof deck, and stepped into the stairwell. Hello started barking as usual, so I went down to the ninth floor and took the lift in case the barking brought Auntie out. It went straight down to the ground floor.

Clouds covered the sky, and the air was cold and damp. It was going to start raining soon. As I walked slowly towards the side gate, something nagged at me. I felt as if I’d overlooked something important, or left something vital behind. I walked through the gate and my mind murmured, If this is Auntie’s plan… I stopped in my tracks. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut with a realisation. How long would it take her to go through the entire house?

I looked back towards the building with unfocused eyes. Ten minutes.

The lift was still on the first floor. I got off at the ninth and walked up the last storey, the way I’d done on my way down in reverse. I heard Hello growling but I didn’t rush. I wanted him to bark ferociously; I wanted Auntie to hear it. I wanted her to realise what that meant. But for once his growling grew quieter, and by the time I got to the door of the flat, he was silent. Fucking useless mutt.

I punched the code in and walked inside. I didn’t detect any noise. I put the DVD on the kitchen island and went to Mother’s bedroom. I quietly pressed down on the handle. Locked. I put my ear to the door. Nothing. She must be asleep. For a moment, relief washed over me. I’d been overly suspicious and deluded, I decided. There was no way Hae-jin would join forces with Auntie, of all people.

I turned around to face Hae-jin’s door and felt another nagging in my gut; something said, ‘Are you sure?’ The best way to confirm was to see it for myself.

I went inside his room and headed straight to the door that opened into Mother’s dressing room. I opened the door to her bathroom. It didn’t look like it had been used. There wasn’t a single drop of water on the sink, in the bathtub, on the walls or floor. The toilet lid was up, the same way I’d left it yesterday. The only difference was that the bathroom slippers were squarely on the floor. I’d left them leaning against the wall, I knew I had. So Auntie had come in here, maybe to look around or to call someone.

I went back out and stood in front of the closed door to Mother’s room. I paused for a moment. Auntie would either be in there or not. If she was, I needed a reason for why I was walking straight in: I needed something from Mother’s desk but I thought I’d wake her if I knocked. That sounded like a lame excuse. Maybe it was better to just not care and not give a reason, just the way Auntie had acted when she came into my room.

I pushed the door open slowly, hoping: please be inside; whether you’re sleeping or not, please be in the room. Didn’t some famous novelist say that all of humanity’s problems stemmed from the fact that a person couldn’t just sit quietly in a room and do nothing?

I stepped inside. The room was empty. My heart speeded up a little. So she’d left, whatever the cost. I started to feel hot and my skin and muscles prickled. Noise rushed into my ears – cars driving along the road far away, the sharp laughter of kids ringing from somewhere in the building, the lift moving up and down, the fridge in the kitchen, my pulse pounding in my head. I knew now that this wasn’t a precursor to a seizure; that it was what happened when I felt the urge, a reaction born from my excitement and my need to follow it.

I paused at the desk. As I’d imagined, Auntie’s coat was on the back of the chair and her handbag was on the desk. I couldn’t tell if she’d gone through the drawers or not. Everything, including Mother’s wallet, seemed to be in its rightful place. I noticed that the curtains to the balcony had been pushed aside. The bed – the blanket I’d pulled tightly and neatly over it – was slightly disturbed. She hadn’t used it. She’d lifted the covers to look.

I went over to the bed and threw the blanket back. The sheet underneath had come loose. Did that mean she’d seen the bloodstain? I had flipped the mattress over when I carried it downstairs, so she couldn’t have stumbled upon it; she would have had to pull the blankets back and pick up the mattress to take a look underneath. She must have gone into the bathroom to quietly call Hae-jin. Did she tell him, I think Yu-jin killed your mother? I have to search the house so can you lure him out?

What are you doing? You busy? Hae-jin had sounded out of breath when he called. Maybe he was excited. His voice had been half an octave higher than usual, as if he were in a good mood. There was no way he would sound like that if he’d heard about Mother. And Hae-jin and Auntie weren’t so close that he’d just believe her without seeing the bloodstains with his own eyes, unless they’d secretly communicated all along without my knowledge.

Maybe Auntie hadn’t explained the exact reasons, and Hae-jin had followed without knowing the full truth. Still, that meant he had collaborated with her.

I closed the bedroom door behind me and went into the living room. I checked the key cabinet; all the keys were gone. She was doing exactly what I’d thought she’d do, heading down the path I’d hoped she wouldn’t. I didn’t want to rush upstairs and stop her, though. As long as she hadn’t gone past the sliding door in my room, I’d be okay. She’d better not go beyond that, for both our sakes.

I heard a thud from above, a low, dull vibration. I quickly realised I was out of luck. The noise was her closing the sliding door to the roof deck carelessly. I instantly realised what events would unfold and my heart started thudding in my chest. Wasn’t it enough for my life to be in this desperate place? Now it was finally pushing me into a dead end and forcing me to choose.

I climbed the stairs slowly, quietly. I walked down the hallway feeling as though I were floating outside of myself, just as I’d felt when I was carrying Mother’s dead body in my arms. I stopped at the door and pressed down on the handle. It wasn’t locked. As I’d expected, Auntie wasn’t in my room. A bunch of keys was on my desk. The sliding door was closed tight; air should be coming through if they were open even a crack, but I didn’t feel anything. The journal was open. She’d moved swiftly in the ten minutes she had.