You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

He was obsessed with survival games at the time, the way I was obsessed with swimming. Every day he went behind Mother’s back, waging fierce combat indiscriminately, at school, at the art studio, or in neighbourhood parks, with a BB gun, slingshot or water gun, with friends, acquaintances or whoever else he could find. If Father hadn’t told us yesterday that we couldn’t leave the lodge on our own, he would have dragged me to the bell tower as soon as we woke up.

That morning, I sat on the railing, my legs dangling over, watching the ocean as it swept in and out. Mother would have been horrified if she’d seen me, because it was the easiest way to tumble off down the cliff. But that was what I liked about it – the sensation of the wind wrapping around my ankles and tugging, the tension of my body as I balanced. I liked how the waves pushed in and receded. I felt an urge to leap into the water. Yu-min wouldn’t be able to, but I could easily swim to the horizon.

I heard the bell across the way. Dark clouds swelled from the horizon and thunder growled behind the clouds. Birds flew low through the damp fog. It was quiet otherwise. Not a single person walked up the unpaved road to the lodge. No other guests were in the surrounding area.

‘Yu-jin,’ Yu-min finally said. ‘Want to go and play?’

I pretended not to hear him. Yesterday we had walked along the beach beneath us; Yu-min had been fixated on the smooth black pebbles strewn along the sand. When Mother wasn’t looking, he stuffed handfuls in his pockets. I remembered thinking that the animals in the area wouldn’t be spared once Yu-min had added these pebbles to his secret weapon, his slingshot.

‘Come on, let’s go,’ he whispered. His brown eyes were wide and twinkling, indicating that he had, in his words, a killer idea.

There was no guarantee that a killer idea for him would be a killer idea for me. I kept ignoring him. Mother and Father kept sleeping. They fought a lot yet they had produced two sons almost twelve months apart. We were in the same class in the same year in the same school. We were compared to each other in every aspect at every moment of our lives. Yu-min was superior in terms of appearance and intelligence, as Mother acknowledged. He was always a leader in class, surrounded by clamouring followers and worshippers.

As for me, I was a loner. I didn’t need a playmate; I was used to playing by myself. Explicit rules and tacit promises were involved in playing with others, and it was easier to be alone than to try to understand or follow them. I was branded as weird everywhere I went. A child at school once called me crazy to my face. He didn’t know any better because he didn’t know who my brother was. Yu-min forced him to kneel in front of me to apologise. Yu-min was my protector and sometimes tormentor.

‘Watch out,’ he threatened, jumping up as though he’d shove me off the railing.

If it were me, I wouldn’t be so obvious about it; I would just approach silently and push. I didn’t say anything, though. I calculated which would be worse: what would happen when our parents caught us, or what would happen if I refused to go along with Yu-min’s idea. I knew he wanted to play Survival. I didn’t really want to. Yu-min was better than me at everything except swimming, and survival games were the only time we were evenly matched. He had never acknowledged me as his equal, but the record spoke for itself – over dozens of games, we had each won about half the time. That was the problem, though: he was generous only when his superiority wasn’t threatened. But I didn’t want to lose on purpose; once a match began, I always wanted to win.

‘What do you want to play?’ I hopped off the railing. I shouldn’t have asked; at the time, I had no idea that this one question would completely derail our lives. Then again, how could I have known? I wouldn’t be human if I had.

‘Survival. Up to there.’ He pointed to the bell tower. It wasn’t entirely unexpected. Over the years, our survival game had morphed. The winner used to be the one who took the fewest hits. Now we raced each other to a landmark via two separate routes, trying to slow the other guy down by firing at him until the BB pellets ran out.

It wasn’t that far. The U-shaped cliff that linked the lodge with the bell tower was carpeted with pine trees, crab apple trees and grass. There were also beehives, blackened slash-and-burn fields and an old abandoned village in the forest. We’d gone there yesterday evening with Father before dinner. When we’d got to the other edge of the cliff, the red sun was halfway below the horizon, dyeing the sky a dark bloody crimson and shining a red path to the restless sea. The bell tower and the vines that covered the ruined church were glowing as though on fire. I felt that we had arrived in outer space. If I stood on that red path, the ocean would push me into another world. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.

Father had slowed down and stopped at the edge. I noticed goose bumps on his arms. He looked from the ocean to the rock formations to the sky and back again, perhaps entranced by the view. But Yu-min was transfixed by the bell tower and tore off towards it. Caught off guard, Father ran after him and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck just before he scampered up the steps. ‘You can’t go up there.’

‘Why not?’ Yu-min looked so innocent. ‘Can’t I ring the bell? Just once?’

Even then I knew what he was doing, but adults often got fooled by Yu-min and his sweet expression. Father carefully explained why not, though even a two-year-old would know why. First, the bell tower was on the edge of the cliff and you could fall into the water. Second, the tower was old and dilapidated, and part of the ceiling had collapsed. ‘You boys aren’t allowed to come here by yourselves. And don’t play Survival in the forest either, okay?’

Yu-min gave his word, but here he was, just half a day later, wanting to do the very thing he’d promised not to do. ‘The person who rings the bell first wins. The loser does the winner’s homework.’

I met his eyes. ‘For how long?’

‘One month.’

‘How many shots? Three hundred?’

‘Two hundred.’

We counted out forty plastic pellets each and loaded them into our guns. We put the remaining one hundred and sixty pellets into cartridges. We grabbed our goggles and crept out of the back door to the narrow, winding path lined with pine and crab apple trees that led to the bell tower.

We played rock-paper-scissors and Yu-min won the right to choose his base. He chose the pine grove. It was an obvious choice, since it had tall trees from which he could launch attacks without having to reveal himself. That meant that the hill beyond the crab apple trees was my base. It was exposed and further away from the bell tower; I would have to run at top speed through the forest and the hilly terrain along the outer edge of the U-shaped curve to be in with a chance of reaching the bell tower first. It was as if he was starting with a hundred additional pellets.

We stood side by side on the path. He stood to the right, closer to the pine trees, and I stood to the left, near the crab apple trees. I began to review the path we’d taken yesterday, thinking back to where everything was, whether there had been anything I could use as cover, where the pines ended and what the terrain was like at that point. Maybe I could use that area to fight for victory.

‘On your marks!’ Yu-min shouted.

I lowered the goggles over my eyes. The world turned blue and my breathing calmed. Everything disappeared behind my consciousness: the cloudy sky, the breezy forest, the birds flying in loopy curves, the sound of the waves, my thoughts, and finally my awareness of myself. Only the shape of Yu-min’s body remained and my low, regular heartbeat. The way to the bell tower unfolded like a map before my eyes, and the places to stop and seek cover lined up.