You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

He stared out of the window, looking blank for a moment, the way he did when he thought about his grandfather. ‘I read once that there are three ways to protect yourself from the fear of death. One is repression, forgetting that death is approaching and acting like it doesn’t exist, which is how most of us live. The second is never forgetting about it, living every day like it’s the last day of your life. The last is acceptance: people who truly accept death aren’t afraid of anything. You feel peaceful even when you’re at the point of losing everything. But do you know what the three approaches have in common?’

I shook my head. It would be easier to just keel over and die rather than worry about this.

‘They’re all lies. They all are manifestations of fear.’

‘Then what’s true?’

‘Fear itself, I guess. That’s the most honest emotion.’

I didn’t ask what the point of all of this was. Hae-jin had given me a perfect gift, and I’d liked the film, especially when Edward said, ‘The simplest thing is I loved him and miss him.’ If fate called Hae-jin first, I thought I’d say something similar, and I was pretty sure he would feel the same way about me. ‘Let’s do it too,’ I said.

‘Do what?’ Hae-jin looked at me.

‘Let’s write down one thing we want to do before we die.’

Hae-jin grumbled – why would we do something like that, that’s stupid – but when I took out two scraps of paper and a pen from my bag, his demeanour changed. He covered his note with his hand and wrote down his wish as though he thought I would peek.

‘Hand it over,’ I said, folding my note four times and giving it to him.

He folded his and passed it to me.

‘One, two, three,’ we said, and opened each other’s notes and put them side by side. Going out on the ocean in a yacht for a year. Celebrating Christmas in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.

The yacht was mine. Rio was his. We smiled at each other. We knew exactly what the other meant.

‘Happy stories aren’t usually based in reality.’ That was what Hae-jin had said after we saw City of God . I wanted to ask him what truth he was hoping to find in Rio, but didn’t. The train was already crossing Han River; we had to get our things together.

Mother never found out about our secret. She was so focused on her own hopes and dreams that she probably didn’t even know what mine were, or that I would be able to grant Hae-jin’s wish with her credit card.

I took out a USB drive from my desk and plugged it into my computer. I was the one who made the airline reservations for us to visit my grandmother in Cebu each year, so everything I needed was in here – the certificate of authentication for online banking and copies of our passports. I reserved a round-trip ticket to Rio, connecting through Dubai, the return valid for six months. My Christmas gift to Hae-jin. I would go on my own trip and disappear forever, and the truth of what had happened in this house and where I had gone would remain a mystery. I forgot about my situation for a moment as I thought about Hae-jin’s face when he saw this electronic ticket in his inbox. I grinned, imagining how he would explore the alleys of the favelas, camera in hand, tanned from the sun.

But now someone was pounding on my door. Had he seen the email confirmation already? He was supposed to spot it only after I left. I shoved Mother’s credit card into my desk and closed the browser. ‘One sec!’

Hae-jin was outside my door, looking not surprised or happy but pale and nervous, almost confused. ‘We need to talk.’ His voice was cold and stiff.

My smile faded. ‘I’ll be down soon.’

‘No. Now.’ He stepped closer.

I moved aside grudgingly. ‘Come in then.’

He stood in front of my desk, shaking his head. He seemed confused.

‘Do you want to sit on the chair?’ I offered.

‘No, I’ll just sit here.’ He sank onto the corner of my bed, looking flustered. He put his hands on his thighs and breathed deeply, then bent over, his elbows resting on his knees. He gripped his hands together before opening them.

I perched on the edge of my desk.

‘I… I have something to ask you.’ Hae-jin’s voice was shaking.

I hoped he wasn’t going to ask about the airline ticket. I was going to have to give him an answer; maybe I would say, Do you remember when we took that trip on my birthday and we wrote our last wishes down? This is my present to you.

‘I don’t know why, but what you said earlier bothered me. That Mother left her car. She never goes anywhere without her car. Especially when she goes somewhere far away.’

I shoved my hands in my pockets and looked down at my feet. So what?

‘So I went downstairs to see if I could find anything in the car.’

My chest was tight. I suddenly felt cold, dark and lonely. I had a hunch that I’d arrived at that very moment I’d been dreading.

‘And I found Auntie’s car next to Mother’s.’

I felt him looking at me. I heard him take in a deep breath and let it out. When did he go to the basement? When did he come back? I hadn’t heard him open the front door. Was it when I was burning the journal on the roof?

‘I thought it was weird that they would both leave their cars in the garage and go somewhere. It’s too strange to be a coincidence, right? But for some reason I didn’t want to follow it up, so I worked on my film, cleaned my room, stuff like that. Then I went into Mother’s room.’

My brain whirred. I could make up some kind of excuse. Auntie had gone to meet someone, and since it was late and they were having drinks, she left the car here. She’d said she’d be back late but she hadn’t come back at all, and whatever she’d done with whoever it was last night wasn’t any of my business.

‘In the cupboard, in one of Mother’s suitcases, I found Auntie’s handbag and shoes. I don’t get it. Why would Auntie’s things be there when she supposedly left yesterday afternoon?’ Hae-jin rubbed his palms on his thighs. ‘I suppose Mother could have gone on a trip without her wallet or car, and Auntie could have left her things and gone home barefoot, and you could have decided for the first time ever to lock Mother’s bedroom door.’ He got up and stood in front of me, his hands shoved in his pockets. His brown eyes looked hard as they stared me down. He was impatient, suspicious, angry, disbelieving, wishing for something else. ‘But no matter what, I couldn’t stop imagining the worst.’

I sensed what would come next. I was screaming in my head, Stop. Stop there. Just shut up.

‘I thought… I thought maybe something had happened in Mother’s bed, because when Auntie called me yesterday, she said she was lying on Mother’s bed because she was tired.’

I wanted to close my eyes. I felt as though I was falling. Why didn’t you wait a little longer? Why couldn’t you have waited until I left? I was making a plan to leave too. That would have been good for both of us. You wouldn’t have had to speak about these things, and I could have left safely, believing that you were still on my side.

‘So I looked under the covers. The rest – well, you explain.’

We stared at each other, not saying a word. He refused to back down, defiant. It felt tense in the room, as though everything could come tumbling down around us.

I felt dizzy. How would I start the story? What should I say? I couldn’t excuse my actions rationally and logically, and I honestly couldn’t decide what my attitude should be. Losing his trust was worse than killing someone.

Hae-jin swallowed. He looked fearful and expectant, as though he was hoping he’d misunderstood everything; that I would say, No, you have it all wrong. I gritted my teeth so I wouldn’t say that. I didn’t want to be a coward.