Bae Suah - Nowhere to Be Found

The whole time I was reading the flier the dog kept pacing around the bus stop. September 4. That means the crime had happened over three months ago. Had their murder become this village’s great unsolved mystery? Or was it simply that nothing else had happened after the case was solved, so they forgot to take down the flier? Just as I was debating whether to give the chicken to the dog, the bus came.

When I got off at the fishing hole, there were signs pointing the way to the base. The signs directed me to a steep, narrow mountain path. The snow was still falling and the path was dark. I popped into a store near the bus stop and asked for a cup of instant coffee to warm myself up. I felt feverish. My shoulders and hair were damp. Once I felt a little warmer, I started walking up the path to the base. Under my jeans, my legs had long since lost all feeling. I stopped thinking about why I had come all that way, what Cheolsu was to me, and whether I had a future. How long had I been out in the cold? I was hungry and dizzy. I was freezing but craved a glass of cold water at the same time. I sat on the side of the road and absentmindedly reached into the bag of chicken. I thought I would have just a bite, but when I opened the aluminum container and saw the chicken carcass looking like the body of a woman frozen to death in Siberia, I lost my appetite. Fortunately the snow wasn’t sticking; it was settling lightly on the ground and melting away like dew. Had it not melted, I would have wished for the snow to turn sharp instead. Turn sharp and pierce through me. I arrived at the base entrance and told the guard I was there to see Officer Kim Cheolsu, who was on a training exercise.

“Ah, you mean Officer-in-Training Kim Cheolsu?” The guard was friendly. “If you head up that way, you’ll see a burned clearing. That’s where everyone should be.”

“Is it far?”

“No, it’s not far. You just can’t see it from here because of the tree cover.”

A burned clearing: that was how the guard had described it. And just as he said, in the middle of the forest I came across a deep water hole that appeared from between blackened and burnt trees, a huddle of soldiers, and fire. The soldiers had gathered firewood and were clustered around a bonfire. Dark, shining faces that I couldn’t tell apart. Cheolsu’s face was not among them. But then again Cheolsu’s face could have been planted right before my eyes and I would have walked on past, too full of disappointment to recognize him. The soldiers’ faces were that uniform, and that unfamiliar. I told them I was looking for Kim Cheolsu. They looked around at each other and shook their heads. The paper bag with Cheolsu’s chicken fell from my hand. Out past the treeless clearing I saw a white cliff wall, and somewhere a crow let out a sharp cry. The wind blew through the branches and scattered the lacework of snow that had settled there. The wind flattened the tall autumn grass that had not yet died.

“I came all this way because I was told he was here.”

There were about ten soldiers gathered around the fire. None of them spoke, as if the wind had frozen their mouths shut. Their lips looked chapped and malnourished. I stared at the cliff wall.

Cheolsu, where are you?

After a dull and interminable length of time had passed, one of them finally spoke.

“Kim Cheolsu didn’t come to training.”

“But I was told he was here.”

They kept quiet. Branches crackled and snapped in the fire. I bent over to pick up the bag of chicken.

“We have some hot water. Would you like some?”

I accepted a cup of the water that had been boiling in a camping pot. A stab of pain ran through my head like a knife. I felt frozen. I sat down on the snow-dampened mud with the soldiers.

“Kim Cheolsu didn’t report for training,” the soldier repeated.

“But they told me he did.”

“There must have been a mistake. Maybe they confused him with the Kim Cheolsu who was in an accident.”

“What do you mean, ‘the Kim Cheolsu who was in an accident’?”

The hot water exploded in my head. The soldiers stopped talking again, as if they didn’t know what they should say. None of them appeared to be in charge. That’s probably why they weren’t sure how much they should tell me.

“Actually, there are two officers-in-training named Kim Cheolsu,” said the soldier.

I didn’t respond.

“The Kim Cheolsu who was supposed to be on this training exercise isn’t here. I’m not sure which one you’re looking for, but you should go back to the base where you first checked in. The Kim Cheolsu who is there is probably the one you’re looking for.”

There were two officers-in-training here with the same name. No one had told me, and I never would have guessed. Maybe one of them really was the Kim Cheolsu I knew. All I did know was that, for reasons unknown to me, I could not meet the Kim Cheolsu who had been here. I would never get to see the Kim Cheolsu who’d met with some mysterious accident on a snowy winter day. If I went back to the beginning, there would be another Kim Cheolsu, and I would be able to find him. No one knew if that Kim Cheolsu was the one I knew, the one I’d wandered all that way for, carrying a bag of chicken to give to him.

“I’ll head back.”

I handed back the hot water and nodded good-bye to the soldier who’d spoken to me.

“Wouldn’t you like to warm up a little before you go?”

He looked at me with sympathy. I wanted to stay there forever. Give Cheolsu’s chicken to a rabid dog to rip apart and eat. But instead I stood and watched the crows as they dove from the cliff. I couldn’t bring myself to approach the blazing fire. Where was Cheolsu? Was he here? Was he there? Had the Cheolsu I was looking for died in some accident? Was he in the hospital? Or was he sitting with the other middle-class officers-in-training, surrounded by giggling girlfriends and mothers and sisters, laughing and joking over shots of alcohol, having forgotten all about me and the stupid chicken? What was real and what was fantasy? And what was it that I really wanted — reality or fantasy? The same old apathetic Cheolsu who’d been waiting a long time for his chicken, or the malnourished Cheolsu out here with the crows at the bottom of that cold cliff?

When I returned to the first base, other soldiers were signing in for visits at the PX. Just as I had before, I gave my name, ID number, and address and said I was there to see Kim Cheolsu. The soldier pointed to where he was sitting. He was on a bench beneath a tarp roof. He was with the other officers-in-training and their girlfriends, mothers, and sisters who’d come to visit them, drinking cheap whiskey — alcohol that was officially forbidden on base. They were giggling, and everything was exactly as I had imagined it. I walked over to Cheolsu, whose back was turned to me, but still I could see he was laughing. Someone nudged him in the side and whispered something in his ear. Finally he noticed me. The closer I got, the more people turned to stare. They stopped laughing. The girlfriends and mothers and little sisters stopped smiling and looked at me warily. The snow was still falling, but they didn’t look cold in their wool coats.

“What took you so long?” Cheolsu asked awkwardly, taking the tattered paper bag of chicken from my clenched hand. “I couldn’t wait any longer and decided to join my friends. We’ve been talking about how to build bridges. One of the guys specializes in bridge construction.”

Bridge construction. Building bridges. I didn’t hide the look of scorn on my face. Cheolsu was probably hurt, but he didn’t say anything in front of his friends.

“Would you like a cookie?”

One of the girlfriends offered a plate of cookies and sliced fruit. The faces and clothing of the women gathered on the bench in the falling snow were so different from my own. Their breath came out white. I shook my head coldly, without saying a word. Cheolsu took my hand and wrapped his arm around my shoulders.