You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

An hour later, we were sitting on the deck of the old ferry, heading back to Jeomam Quay. We didn’t talk much. When Hae-jin asked, ‘Are you hungry?’ I shook my head, and when he asked, ‘Are you feeling better now?’ I nodded. The evening sun hung between the rocky islands that flanked our passage home. Red waves blazed and bobbed under the orange sky. The spray of water behind us and the strong sea breeze were red, too. The ferry sliced through the flames like a speedboat.

‘That sunset’s killer, isn’t it?’ Hae-jin said.

I got up to look out over the ocean. I unzipped the jacket and breathed the hot wind deep into my lungs. The chill in my chest seemed to melt away.

Hae-jin came and stood beside me. ‘Remember when I said I wanted to show you something? This is it.’

I turned and faced him. His eyes were smiling kindly. Hae-jin’s smile was like a gift to me. While Mother poured endless fear into my bloodstream, Hae-jin warmed me like the sun, always on my side.

I wanted to believe Hae-jin would be on my side today, too. In fact, I believed he would be. I stood, picked up the home phone from my bedside table and dialled his number. It began to ring. Something that had fallen between my bed and the bedside table caught my eye. I bent down to pull it out – a straight razor with its blade open. Dark blood was crusted on the long wooden handle and the sleek blade.

‘Hello? Mother?’

Hae-jin’s voice receded. I stared at the blade, stunned.

‘Yu-jin?’

With my fingernail, I scraped off the blood at the end of the handle. Familiar initials appeared.

H. M. S.

Han Min-seok. Father’s razor. I had found it years ago in a box in the study and brought it up to my room. I had hardly any memories of him. I didn’t remember his mannerisms or his voice, and even his face was fuzzy in my mind. I remembered only that his cheeks and chin were covered in dark stubble, and that every morning he shaved with this very razor in front of the bathroom mirror. A frequently constipated child, I would be on the toilet, straining, my chin in my hands, watching his stubble disappear with the suds. I liked the sound of the razor scraping and sliding along his flesh. Once, I asked him what shaving felt like. I wasn’t positive but I thought he said something to the effect of: It feels like you’re pulling up the hair embedded deep in the skin, and it makes you feel clean and fresh . He said you needed to learn how to use a straight razor properly – your chin wouldn’t emerge unscathed until you figured it out – but that the feeling it gave didn’t compare with any other razor, annoying as it was to keep the blade sharp.

I remembered what I said after that. I asked if I could have it after he was dead. I recalled his foamy reaction: a soap bubble flaring from one of his nostrils, his eyes turning round and big like full moons. He was laughing. Emboldened, I asked him to promise me. Father said: Sure, I don’t know when I’ll die, but when I do, I’ll definitely leave it to you. We did pinky swears and even pressed our thumbs together to seal the promise. Mother couldn’t have known about that, and when Father died, I didn’t feel like explaining it. I just took the razor without telling anyone.

‘Hello? Hello?’ Hae-jin was getting louder on the other end of the phone.

‘It’s me,’ I managed to croak.

‘What…’ Hae-jin grew quiet, then annoyed. ‘Why didn’t you say anything? You nearly gave me a heart attack.’

‘I’m listening. Go on.’

He snorted. ‘Go on? You’re the one who called me.’

Right. I’d called him. I was going to say I needed help, that I thought I was in serious trouble. I pointed the razor up so the blade stood vertically under my chin. I’d never once used it to shave. After all, I wasn’t as hairy as Father, and I could make do with an electric shaver. In fact I only started growing light facial hair when I was twenty-one. It wasn’t that I was saving the razor for a special occasion, either; I just kept it hidden in a panel in my bathroom ceiling, out of Mother’s sight. I’d never taken it with me anywhere until last night, when I went out of the roof door with it in the pocket of my sweatpants.

‘Yu-jin?’ Hae-jin prompted.

I found myself at a loss for words. Before I’d found this razor, there had been so many possible explanations. But now…

‘Where are you?’ I managed to ask.

‘I just got to the train station. I’m not feeling that great, so I made myself some ramen before I left.’

He’d probably had two. He always had two ramen when he was hung-over, a habit he’d inherited from his grandfather, who was drunk seven days a week. So Hae-jin was still in Sangam-dong.

‘Why, is something up?’ he asked.

‘No.’ I changed my mind. ‘Yes.’ It couldn’t hurt to buy some time. ‘I have a favour to ask.’

Hae-jin was silent, waiting.

‘Do you remember the raw fish restaurant in Yeongjong Island? The one we went to for Mother’s birthday?’

‘Oh yeah. Léon or something, right?’

‘No, Léon was where we had coffee after. It’s Kkosil’s, about fifty metres further in. At the end of the beach.’

‘Oh yeah.’

‘So last night, after the drinks party, we went there for another round.’ They say that a normal person lies on average eighteen times an hour. I probably come in a little higher than average, what with my difficulty with honesty. My extra output makes me very good at it, able to spin any kind of story in a believable way. ‘I left my mobile there, but I can’t go and pick it up right now. I have to send some documents to the dean this morning, and today’s the day they announce the law school entrance exam results. I have to be home to check online.’

‘Today’s the day already?’

‘Yeah.’

Hae-jin gave me the answer I wanted. ‘No problem. I’ll swing by on my way home.’

‘They won’t be open until after ten, though.’

‘I’ll just wait at Léon and get some coffee.’

‘I’m happy to pay for a cab,’ I said, in the hope of finding out how Hae-jin would return.

‘Are you insane? A cab from Yeongjong Island?’

Good. He would rather get the bus. Just as I thanked him and was about to hang up, Hae-jin asked, ‘So, is Mother up yet?’

I pressed the end button, pretending not to have heard. I thought about Mother lying in the living room. The blood could be explained in different ways, but the discovery of the razor was proof of a singular truth. It had been in my jacket last night, and now it was under my bed. How would Hae-jin take this? How would he take Mother’s death? Would he be shocked or sad or enraged? Would he believe me? Would he still be on my side?

Eleven years ago, I was fourteen and Hae-jin was fifteen. We were about to graduate from middle school. Following Mother’s wishes, I had selected a humanities high school where I could continue swimming alongside my studies. Hae-jin, whose grades were good enough to get him into an exclusive high school, instead selected an arts and culture vocational school. He’d decided on that path on his own, refusing to listen to his teacher, who tried to persuade him to aim higher. He was swayed by the fact that he would receive a full scholarship from the vocational school in addition to a living stipend, and that going there would help him achieve his dream of working in film. He didn’t have much choice: at the time, he was basically on his own. His parents had died in a car accident when he was three, and his grandfather, who had taken him in and brought him up, had been in the hospital for several months with cirrhosis and renal failure; nobody knew if he would ever get better. Hae-jin was the busiest student in the world: he went to school every day, worked in the evenings at a petrol station for 2,900 won an hour, and slept in the hospital by his grandfather’s side.