You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

‘Everything’s okay, right?’ Hae-jin had asked. If I had known that something like this had happened, I wouldn’t have emerged from my bed until he came home. It wouldn’t have changed this ‘something’ into nothing, but at least I wouldn’t have been sitting by myself next to Mother’s body, shell-shocked, lost, not knowing what to do.

My eyes flitted around the flat. Everything looked strange. Questions echoed in my head. Who had done this? When? Why?

Someone must have snuck into the flat. Perhaps there really were thieves and muggers running rampant in Gundo; it seemed believable, aside from the fact that I’d just made it up.

It was true that people had begun to move into the newly developed city, though nearly half the flats were still empty. The area didn’t have much infrastructure yet, with no shops, public transport or communal facilities. Given that only one police patrol division oversaw the two districts it encompassed, it would make sense if all kinds of criminals were running wild through the streets. Among them would be the sort of intruders who entered your building by simply walking through the front door behind a resident. The top floors had their own private roof decks that could be accessed both from inside the flat and from another door leading straight to the central stairwell facing the lift; so there was a sliding door to the roof garden in the bedroom and then there was another door – made of steel – from the roof garden into the stairwell; those units would understandably be their primary target. Such thieves must have visited our home last night.

They would have come through the roof door off the main stairwell. It wouldn’t have been that difficult to pick that lock. After all, I had snuck out through that very door just a few hours before, leaving the deadbolt unlatched. Having entered, they would have ransacked the place – my room, the downstairs bedrooms and the living room. Mother, who was a light sleeper even when she took sleeping pills, would have woken up. She would have known it wasn’t me or Hae-jin; she had a keen intuition. If she’d got out of bed, then…

Would she have opened her bedroom door to look out? Would she have gone out into the living room, calling, ‘Who is it?’ Or maybe she’d called me on my mobile first, but I hadn’t seen her request for rescue because I’d left my phone at home. She would have tried Hae-jin next. That would explain why she called him last night. The thieves, who had searched through all the other rooms by that point, would have come into her room. What would she have done? Maybe she had pretended to be asleep. She might have run into her dressing room or the bathroom to hide. Or maybe she’d dashed onto her balcony. Maybe she’d screamed, ‘Don’t hurt me, please!’ She might have run into the kitchen to resist, perhaps looking for a weapon. They might have caught her in front of the island, and they would have struggled. However it happened, it was clear that everything had gone down in front of the dividing wall between the kitchen and the stairs. It would have ended in just a few minutes. No matter how quick Mother was, no matter how weak that old goat of a thief was, it was still a woman against a man.

Maybe that was when I arrived outside our flat. I would have been in that zombie state I went into right before a seizure. That had to be when Mother fell, moaning my name – the moment I remembered like something out of a dream. I would have run in through the front door. She would have collapsed already, and the intruder would have advanced on me with the knife. For a moment I imagined myself fighting with him. It would have been hard for a single man to subdue me. He would have run up the stairs to escape via the steel door on the roof deck, but I would have caught him. Then what?

I didn’t remember anything that would support any of this. In my mind, nothing remained from the hours after midnight. It still made sense, though. If I’d had a seizure after fighting the thief off, if I’d fallen into a deep sleep after managing to crawl into bed, it was possible I wouldn’t remember those events. So what now? I needed to report it. I had to report it.

I crawled to the living room table and yanked the phone off the hook. Who should I call? An ambulance? The police? My fingers kept slipping off the buttons. Numbers bounced and danced in front of my eyes. It took so long for me to punch them out that I was automatically sent to directory assistance. A grunt leaked out of my throat. I rubbed my palms on my thighs and started over. 1. 1. 2. Carefully, digit by digit, I dialled the emergency number. I went over what I would say. Then I raised my head and froze. I saw in the glass doors leading to the balcony the man I’d caught sight of when I first got out of bed – the man covered in red. The line was ringing. I looked back at Mother. I suddenly realised what the police would see. A dead woman with her throat cut, lying in a pool of blood next to her dazed, bloodied son.

‘Incheon Police Department. How may I help—’

I hung up. What would I say to them? That when I woke up, Mother was dead; that it looked like an intruder had killed her; that for some reason both my room and I were covered in blood, but please believe me when I say I didn’t do it? Would they believe me? The voice in my head said, You might as well tell them that she cut her own throat.

For me to prove that there had been an intruder, there had to be one of two things: the intruder himself, or his body. The only traces of him were on the stairs and the landing. If he had been injured in our fight, he would still be in the flat somewhere. Or if he had hidden and died overnight, his body would be here. Then everything would make sense: why I woke up covered in blood, why there was so much blood on the landing and in the living room, why I couldn’t remember what happened after midnight, and all the rest.

I returned the phone to its cradle. Blood pounded through my veins. My thoughts began to advance rapidly. My hands and feet twitched. My neural circuits whirred. I thought of all the hiding places in the flat. It would be somewhere warm where he could lie down, somewhere hidden where he couldn’t be found easily. There were at least ten places that met those criteria.

I stood up and tiptoed to Mother’s bedroom door, holding my breath. I turned the handle, kicked the door open and rushed in.

The room was pristine. Nothing looked out of the ordinary: there was no blood, no footprints, no evidence of a fight. The double curtains hanging over the glass balcony doors were closed tightly. The bed didn’t look like it had been slept in. The pillows were propped neatly against the headboard and the white wool blanket was taut and smooth. The lamp and clock were in their usual spots on the bedside table and the square cushions stood primly on the couch by the foot of the bed. It was orderly, the way it always looked after Mother straightened her room upon waking.

The only thing that was even a little bit disturbed was the writing desk. A single ballpoint pen was on the edge, and the tall leather chair had been pushed back. A brown blanket, still neatly folded, was on the floor below, as though it had slid off the arm of the chair.

I leapt over the bed and yanked open the curtains. Nothing. No one behind the curtains or outside on the balcony. I opened each of the built-in cupboards. The first had pillows, cushions and curtains; the middle one contained enough sheets and blankets to outfit at least ten groups of students on a school trip, and in the third were boxes holding small belongings. I opened the door to her dressing room, which led to the study and to Hae-jin’s room, and turned on the light. It was the same as the bedroom. The obsessively clean white marble floor shone like an ice rink, the obsessively neat dressing table had jars and tubes lined up in a neat row, the obsessively organised drawers had clothes stacked precisely on top of one another, and the obsessively orderly wardrobe had garments painstakingly separated by season and sheathed in individual bags. There was no hint of the thief. The bathroom was much the same. The floor was dry and spotless and the light scent of shampoo perfumed the clean air.