You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

‘What are you doing?’ Hae-jin opened the door and pulled on my elbow. I stumbled through. The ridiculous scene of me stopping, then dragging my feet a few steps when he tugged at me, and then stopping again when he let go continued until we got to Mother’s car. Hae-jin seemed to think I’d had a change of heart. Holding onto my elbow, he opened the passenger door and shoved me in. I made a show of resisting before crumpling inside. He slammed the door behind me. It didn’t take more than ten seconds for him to walk around and get in the driver’s side.

‘Put your seat belt on,’ he said, buckling his own.

I did so, sinking deeper into the seat and taking off my shoes.

He started driving. We encountered Hello’s owner’s car by the exit. Hae-jin flashed his lights to let her go first, but she didn’t move.

Once we were out of the car park, Hae-jin said, ‘We’re going to the Gundo Patrol Division.’ That was in District One. It would take less than five minutes to get there; it was just on the other side of the bridge after the junction.

‘I don’t care,’ I said, looking out through the windscreen. It was snowing. The first real snow of the year. It was really coming down, but it fell slowly. Hae-jin turned the wipers on. The clock read 8.36. I wondered about Yongi’s. Would Mr Yongi close early today? The first snow of the season had to be a reason to shut early, right?

Hae-jin drove towards the back gate. I looked at the side mirror; the lights of Hello’s owner’s car flashed as it emerged from the garage. We made a right towards the junction, and she followed; she must be headed to the sea wall.

‘You’re doing the right thing,’ Hae-jin said, glancing at me. ‘It’s the best option at this point.’ He looked sure of himself, but I could also sense guilt, nervousness that I might try something in my defeated and desperate state and the responsibility he felt to get me to the patrol division. He was probably saying this to reassure himself. The right thing, for me, wasn’t always the best option. The right thing also wasn’t the obvious thing; the right thing now was to hold on to my life. That would be the best option for both of us.

‘Whatever,’ I said, glaring out through the windscreen. Red light.

‘I never imagined this when I got home yesterday,’ Hae-jin said. We stopped at the lights and Hello’s owner stopped behind us instead of pulling up next to us. ‘Or even this morning,’ he continued. ‘I never thought you and I would be in Mother’s car like this, in this situation. I could tell something was wrong. When I was waiting for you to come downstairs earlier, I was thinking, is this a dream? None of it feels real.’

I bit on the inside of my cheek. It sounded so much like the kind of things Mother had written in her journal – I love you but I have to do this, this is harder for me than it is for you, even though you’re the one this is being done to, and I want you to know that.

‘And now I’m driving you to the police station.’

The light turned green.

‘I have a request,’ I said as he pulled away.

‘What?’ He checked the rear-view mirror.

‘Can I just have twenty minutes?’

He glanced at me suspiciously.

‘I want to go by the observatory.’

‘The Milky Way Observatory?’

What other observatory was there? ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to run away. You’re the one driving anyway. I won’t get very far.’

‘I’m not worried about that, it’s just—’

‘I just want to stop there before going to the police station.’ I remembered the countless nights I had suffered from headaches and tinnitus. The countless mornings I’d sprinted to the observatory. The railing along the cliff, Yongi’s across the way. That was when I didn’t know anything, when I still dreamed of declaring my independence from Mother. The bridge came up ahead. ‘Just one last time. I won’t be able to come back here again. I don’t need to get out of the car; we can just drive past it.’

Hae-jin drove past the bridge. At the sea wall, Hello’s owner turned right towards Incheon and we turned left towards the marine park. The road was darker and emptier than usual, with hardly any cars. The bus stop was deserted too. I glanced at Hae-jin. He could let me out here and I could do us both a favour and vanish. I knew he could feel me looking at him, but he just kept staring straight ahead. I looked at Yongi’s, still brightly lit even though it was closed. Mr Yongi would be inside, transforming himself into a businessman coming home from a trip. The patrol cars that had been parked in front of the ferry dock weren’t there now.

Ten minutes later, we were on the suspension bridge; we had entered the point of no return. We passed a patrol car halfway across the bridge, on its way out after circling the park. Hopefully it would continue without paying attention to us. It disappeared behind us. But when we entered the park, it appeared again and began to flash its lights.

‘They want us to pull over,’ Hae-jin remarked.

A bitter taste spread inside my mouth. This was the variable I’d been worried about. It was going to get harder. The sign we’d just passed indicated that the cliff was less than five hundred metres away, down a stretch of road as straight and wide as an airstrip. It was time.

‘Gun it.’

‘What?’ Hae-jin looked at me.

I opened my window. ‘I said gun it, bastard.’ The wind whipped through the window and snow rushed inside.

The patrol car switched its siren on.

Hae-jin put a hand on the window buttons. ‘They want us to—’

I rammed my left elbow into his eye. He gasped and let go of the steering wheel; his head and upper body snapped back. His foot slipped off the pedal. I shoved a leg into the driver’s side to slam down the accelerator, pressing my upper body into his face and torso. I grabbed the wheel and held him down. One, two, three…

Mother’s car, with its powerful engine, let out a low roar and sped up. Hae-jin struggled under me but I didn’t budge. We raced towards the cliff. The yellow metal railing came towards us. I took my foot off the pedal and slid back into my seat just as we smashed through the railing and burst into the air, swirling white with snow.

I felt myself levitate. Time slowed to a crawl, just the way it had done when I’d killed Auntie last night. All the nerves in my body became eyes, reading the situation moment by moment. Then the seat belt caught me as I lurched forward, and my head and neck snapped back. There was an enormous crash. The car pitched. The airbags deployed, then deflated as water poured in through the open window.

Darkness and quiet descended on us. The car was nearly vertical in the water, about to flip over. The waves coursed in. The water was up to my neck. A chill seeped into my bones. I could hear the siren above us. Soon more would assemble, summoned by radio. It would take a little longer for them to get down to the water though, or for the marine police to mobilise. The car would sink before then.

I unfastened my seat belt and escaped through the open window. I braced myself against the body of the car, held onto the roof, and took off my shirt and trousers. The searchlight cut through the water. That helped me figure out which direction I had to go in. It would have been easier if the police hadn’t shown up; I could have just climbed up the cliff. Then I wouldn’t have had to swim through open water in a snowstorm.

I breathed deeply a few times, then closed my eyes. This wasn’t the ocean; it was a swimming pool. I was about to begin the 1,500 metres, my main event. This was the last competition of my life. I ignored the fact that I hadn’t trained since I was fifteen. I forced myself to forget that I hadn’t actually been in the water since last summer, in Cebu. I trusted the alluring voice of the optimist in my head: You can do this. At most it’s two kilometres. That’s nothing. Take your time.