You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

After the funeral, Min-seok’s parents went straight back to the Philippines. I haven’t seen Hye-won since then either. I spend time sitting in Yu-min’s room. I keep thinking about the sixteenth of April. What if we hadn’t gone on that trip? Would we have been able to live a normal, happy life?

It was our first family trip in three years, a celebration of our eleventh wedding anniversary. I was looking forward to it. We had to take an hour-long ferry after a four-hour drive but I wasn’t tired. Everything was going well for us. Min-seok’s business was growing, and I’d just been promoted to head of European literature at my publisher’s. People always wondered how I could bring up two boys who were only a year apart and work full-time, but it wasn’t as difficult as they imagined. The boys were growing up according to their own personalities. I thought of them as colours. Bright, warm, impatient and sloppy Yu-min was orange; calm, polite Yu-jin was a slightly cold blue.

Yu-min ran around the deck, making his father nervous, and Yu-jin sat in the cabin as the ferry heaved, looking silently at the sea. He finally opened his mouth when we got closer to our destination. ‘What’s the island called?’

Tan Island had become popular because of its rock formations and awe-inspiring cliffs. Holiday homes and restaurants were slowly being established, making it a new tourist destination. It was still isolated, though, and retained a primal aura, with rocky islets jutting out of the murky sea, steep cliffs and windbreaker trees surrounding the island, birds flying through the breeze and white petals scattering like snow from the crab apple trees.

We were staying at a wooden lodge built at the top of a small U-shaped cliff. It was just us there, even though it was the weekend. Maybe because it wasn’t peak season yet. It was situated at the end of a road where there were no other lodges or restaurants or even a village. All you could see was the muddy water below and the cliffs thick with pine trees. All you could hear was the crashing of waves, the cries of seagulls and a bell clanging from a bell tower.

The lodge and the bell tower were on either end of the cliff. They were about the same height and faced each other. You could see clearly across, from one to the other, as if looking into the living room of a flat across the street. The bell tower was very old, and next to it was a church with a nearly collapsed roof and a ruined outer wall. The manager of the lodge told us there was also an abandoned village somewhere amid the forest, further back from the cliff.

In the afternoon, the sea retreated from the small space created inside the U shape of the cliff. Below was a long, narrow beach covered with grey pebbles and rocks. We went down and dug for clams and conch. We brought back a lot, enough for dinner. Min-seok took the boys to look at the bell tower on the other side of the cliff, and I laid the terrace table for dinner.

As the sun set, the four of us sat around the table, Yu-min next to me and Yu-jin next to Min-seok. We celebrated the last eleven years of fighting and making up and keeping things going. We high-fived, laughing that we should try for fifty years more. We were loud and happy. It was a good place to be loud; the entire ocean was just for us. A half-moon hung in the night sky, and a gentle westerly wind was blowing. The boys, sitting amid the scene, glowed. Min-seok was tender with me. I got drunk. Later, I fell into a deep sleep for the first time in a while.

The bell woke me. It wasn’t a gentle ringing in the wind. It sounded like someone was yanking on the cord with all their might, making the bell clang in a rushed and careless way that sounded like my older son’s feet when he got excited. Maybe that was why, still half asleep, I called out to Yu-jin, Make your brother stop. He didn’t answer, and the bell rang faster and louder.

My eyes flew open. Intuition pushed drowsiness away as I ran out onto the terrace. The sun was rising and I could see someone ringing the bell across the way. By now, the ocean had risen halfway up the cliff. The bell tower, tilting towards the ocean, looked even more precarious than it had done yesterday. I could make out the person leaning on the railing, yelling, ringing the bell – his outline was unmistakable to me. It was Yu-min, my elder son.

I felt faint. I thought my eyes would pop out of my skull. My hair was standing on end. Why was he up there? He was a curious child, but not one to put himself in danger. Why was he ringing the bell like that? I went to shout: Yu-min, come down! Come down. But strangely, the word that came out was ‘Yu-jin!’

Surprised by my scream, Min-seok ran out of our room in his underwear. Yu-jin appeared in that instant on the bell tower. I immediately recognised his silhouette too. He bounded up to his older brother as though he had heard me. It was a miracle. A flash of relief. Yu-jin would stop him.

But in the next moment, Yu-jin began punching Yu-min. Then he raised a leg and kicked him in the chest. That one kick was enough. Yu-min screamed and plunged from the bell tower. His slim body drew an arc and disappeared below the cliff. I froze. I couldn’t breathe, as though my throat had been cut.

Min-seok dashed out of the lodge, calling for Yu-min. I hurried after him along the forest path. Before I realised it, I had twisted my ankle and tripped and fallen. I also realised my feet were bare and bloody. I got up and hobbled on, panting, chanting like a crazy person: Yu-min is fine. Even if he isn’t right now, Min-seok will make sure he is fine. When I get there, the three of them will be standing side by side in front of the tower, waiting for me.

The forest, thick with pine trees, felt long and endless, and it seemed I would never reach the tower. When I finally got there, Yu-jin was the only one I could see. He was leaning against the railing and looking down at the ocean without moving. I stopped running. Where was Min-seok? Why was it so quiet? What had happened? My body was shaking and I said weepily, ‘Yu-jin…’

He looked down at me. His face was covered in blood. His pupils were big and black. I thought I saw flames in them.

I ran to the edge of the cliff, hoping against hope. The water had come up higher. Yu-min was nowhere to be seen. Min-seok was thrashing in the waves alone, pulled under, then thrust above the surface.

My ears buzzed. The moment when Yu-jin had thrown his first punch at his older brother, when he’d kicked him into the ocean – the scenes flashed past my eyes. I needed to call for help but I couldn’t open my mouth. My vocal cords strained but nothing came out. I watched stiffly as the waves pulled Min-seok up to the crest and threw him several hundred metres further out. I watched the ocean as it held him in its mouth and took him away.

There is a stretch of time I can’t remember: between my standing there and somehow being able to alert the lodge manager. The marine police arrived and rounded up the villagers to get fishing boats on the water. The fishing boats roared between the cliffs, people shouting onboard. The manager suggested we wait back at the lodge, but I didn’t move from the edge of the cliff. I thought Min-seok would suddenly appear, dripping wet, holding Yu-min under one arm. If my mind had been sound, I would have realised that it would be impossible for him, let alone Yu-min, to survive the sea during high tide, even if he had been a national swimming champion.

That afternoon, they returned two hours apart as corpses. The villagers found Min-seok and the marine police found Yu-min. The lodge manager called my father-in-law, who flew in from Cebu and took over. My mother-in-law keened and fainted when she arrived and had to be taken to hospital.

I just sat there, dazed. The police came and the reporters came, but I didn’t answer any questions. Yu-jin didn’t do anything either. After the incident he slept for twenty-four hours straight, a deep sleep closer to a coma. He didn’t go to the bathroom, he didn’t eat. He didn’t open his eyes even when I shook him.