You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

Hae-jin was about to wipe the table clean with a cloth, but he paused. ‘You’re not hungry?’

I was. But I wanted to avoid a long conversation even more than I wanted to eat. ‘I came down because I washed some clothes yesterday. They’re not there, though. Did you take them out?’

‘I found them on the counter here and hung them to dry on the balcony. Since there were just a few, it seemed a waste to run the dryer.’

I nodded.

Hae-jin asked the question I least wanted to answer. ‘Have you heard from Mother?’

‘No, not yet.’

He cocked his head. ‘Still? Do you think something’d happened? Like a car accident or—’

‘If there was an accident, we would have got a call, don’t you think? She left her car here, too.’

Hae-jin’s gaze followed me, perplexed. ‘She’s never been unreachable for so long.’

‘I’m sure she’ll call today. Or come home.’ I walked out of the kitchen.

‘Did Auntie say if she’d called her, at least?’

‘I don’t know, I didn’t ask her.’

Hae-jin kept asking questions. ‘So Auntie came round yesterday? I saw the cake in the fridge. What time did she leave?’

I stopped in front of the stairs and turned to look at him.

‘It’s just I can’t get in touch with her either. Her mobile’s turned off and she wasn’t answering her home phone.’

Since when did they talk on the phone like that? ‘Why do you need her anyway?’ I snapped. ‘To get your key card back?’

‘What?’ Hae-jin came out and stood facing me.

‘She called you two days ago, so you went to her clinic. To give her the key.’

‘Who told you that? Did she say that?’

I didn’t answer.

‘Don’t make assumptions. You always talk as if you know what’s going on, but you don’t. She did call me, but I didn’t go to the clinic. She was asking me all kinds of things, like did I see Mother leave, was I home yesterday. Then I mentioned that you’d passed your exam, and she said she wanted to throw you a little surprise party. She asked me for the code to the front door, so I told her. She told me not to tell you, that it was a surprise.’

‘So that was why you asked me to run that errand?’

‘You didn’t know? Didn’t she say anything?’ Hae-jin suddenly looked flustered.

I didn’t answer.

‘I wasn’t trying to fool you. Honestly. She said you were watching TV in the living room, which made it impossible for her to set everything up. I said I’d get you to leave for a little bit. I thought she was going to plan something fun. I felt bad I wasn’t able to celebrate with you. I just thought Auntie was taking care of it since Mother wasn’t home. I did think she was overdoing it, but still…’

She did overdo it, I thought. She ran around like an insane bitch. She held me and Mother hostage for sixteen years and did whatever she wanted with us. I needed to find out exactly why she’d done that. I needed to go up to my room.

‘But when I got home, I saw that the cake was still in the fridge. The box wasn’t even open. I know you don’t like Auntie, so… I was actually a little worried. I wondered if you’d had a fight, but you were sleeping. So I called Auntie, but she didn’t pick up. It’s weird, isn’t it? Auntie going incommunicado when we still can’t reach Mother?’

The family cemetery on the roof came into my mind. I didn’t know what to say. ‘I don’t know. Maybe Mum wanted to go somewhere without telling us.’

‘What about Auntie? She wanted to go somewhere at the same time?’

‘Why are you asking me?’ I snapped again. ‘What do you want me to do about it?’

Hae-jin stared at me with his mouth open. ‘I don’t want you to do anything about it. I’m just worried. I want us to think about it.’

‘I’ll think about it starting from now.’ I turned around and went upstairs.

Hae-jin didn’t say anything; he just watched me go.

I slammed the door behind me so that he wouldn’t disturb me for a while and sat at my desk. I was running out of time. I had reached the end of the road. Tonight would be the critical point. I just had to do what I could until then. I had to decide what to do. And I had to act quickly once I made my decision. But I still felt as if I were perched on a slide leading straight to hell. I opened my drawer to take out the journal again.

Psychopath. The inside of my head went blank with shock and Yu-jin’s eyes from That Day flashed before me. The way they were when he turned to look at me as I called his name in front of the bell tower. His pupils were dilated, like an excited beast’s. They shimmered, flickering with something like flames.

Hye-won said that psychopaths understood the world differently from normal people. She said they didn’t have any fear, they didn’t get nervous, they didn’t feel guilt, and they couldn’t empathise with others. But what they could do was read other people’s emotions and use them. She told me that was just how he was born.

I wanted to put my hands over my ears. I almost screamed at her. There was no way that this could be true. Why my child? Hye-won said That Day wasn’t an accident. That it was the first harmful thing Yu-jin had done. That if we ignored it, it could be repeated at any time. She said I had to go to the police and tell them the truth, and that he would need to be isolated while they intervened medically.

Isolation. I gripped my hands together in my lap, forcing myself to remain seated. I couldn’t repeat the mistake I had made three years ago, but I couldn’t tell the truth either. No matter what Yu-jin is, he’s my son. He’s my responsibility, and I have to protect him. I have to find a way to help him live a normal life.

I begged Hye-won, saying I would do anything. I would make it my life’s goal to be responsible for him. I would take care of him to the end. I’d live longer than him to make sure that happened. I wanted to show her how much I meant it. I wanted to cut my chest open and take out my heart if that would convince her.

Hye-won gave in on one condition: that I didn’t hide anything about Yu-jin from her. She said treatment would take a long time, maybe even his whole life. She would try everything from medication to individual therapy to hypnosis to cognitive treatment to group therapy but she couldn’t guarantee that any of it would work. Even if it did work and everything looked fine, he would have to be over forty before we could relax; she said statistically these tendencies lessened a little bit in middle age.

The point of the treatments wouldn’t be to nurture ethical concepts. She said that would be impossible. No matter how much we taught him that something was bad, he wouldn’t comprehend it. We had to show him how to calculate profit and loss from every situation, and I had to stick to that attitude.

I started to shake. I’d got a promise out of her but I didn’t know what to do. I was scared. I felt hopeless. Could I do all of that? Could I forget what had happened? Could I love him as I used to? I was overcome by fear, which was larger than the despair I felt.

I glared at the last sentence. It wasn’t just Mother who was afraid; I was scared to turn the page. I couldn’t believe I was afraid of something after everything had gone to shit like this. But I couldn’t stop now. You couldn’t leave a boat in the middle of the Pacific because you felt queasy, could you?

Sunday 30 April

Yu-jin is sleeping peacefully, deeply. I still can’t sleep. It’s been two weeks. I left my job. I spend nearly all day at home. I don’t do anything other than go to the market, make food for Yu-jin, and lay his clothes out for him. I don’t clean or wash or answer the phone. I don’t see anyone.