Seven Cat`s Eyes

Seven Cat’s Eyes
Choi Jae-hoon
English
Fiction
Seven Cat’s Eyes
205X145mm / 384 pages
ISBN 9788957075418
Copyright Agent
Jaeum&Moeum Publishing Co., Ltd.
Kim Young-lan
[email protected]
82-70-8656-9583
www.jamo21.net
Choi
Jae-hoon
About the author
C
hoi Jae-hoon is an up-and-coming Korean novelist. His first
published story, “The Castle of Baron de Curval,” is a mosaic of a
tale that weaves together various discourses on cannibalism around
a fictitious movie featuring a medieval baron that craves human flesh, The
Castle of Baron de Curval. The author departs from traditional methods of
storytelling in favor of an eclectic range of forms including newspaper
columns, interviews, university lectures, and citations from scholarly articles
about cannibalism, showing impressive virtuosity and experimentation. His
subsequent works have continued to draw inspiration from such Gothic,
fantasy-oriented sources as Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein, witches, and
monsters, offering brilliant remixes and fresh interpretations.
This sensibility shines through in his first novel, Seven Cat’s Eyes. On the
surface the book appears to be composed of four unrelated novellas, but
each of them prove to be related to each other in such a way that creates a
“chain of stories that stretches out infinitely, yet never repeats itself.” Just
like the transcendental number π that “defines the circle, the simplest of
closed curves that repeats itself infinitely below zero,” the characters of this
bizarre yet attractive novel cross paths over and over again as if trapped
inside an enclosure. Individual identity and the boundaries of fantasy and
reality collapse under the infinite variations of the haughty theme. And so
this novel is a reminder that we live the perfect mystery novel every day,
that “the world seems to be hiding something from [us], or rather, [we are]
hiding something from [ourselves],” and that we are powerless to move even
one step away from the mysterious close curve of life.
Other publication The Castle of Baron de Curval
Award Hankuk Ilbo Literary Award
2
3
About the book
Overview
“Each episode in the novel bleeds seamlessly into the next. The plot,
deceptively simple at first, keeps getting more labyrinthine as the book
progresses. Dream and wakefulness, fiction and reality spill over each other
in endless variations of the main theme. The story hardly seems to end
at the last page; the final sentence, “Go on, then. Mustn’t fall asleep,” is a
reiteration of the first one. The story simply refuses to end, swirling in a
pulsing, never-ending loop.”
– Dong-A Ilbo
“I have become completely addicted to Choi Jae-hoon’s Seven Cat’s Eyes.
I can barely recall the last time I read such a provocative yet entertaining
Korean novel. And I cannot think of any other novel that so thoroughly
explores the question of what a novel is without losing humor. Seven Cat’s
Eyes is a novel about a novel, a novel about writing a novel, and a novel about
reading a novel. There are stories within the story, and stories outside of
the story. Each different story is deconstructed and put back together
in a way that calls back to both the horrors of Frankenstein’s monster
and the wondrous microcosm of the Demiurge.”
– Bok Do-hoon, literary critic
I
t is no small feat to attempt a summary of the four chapters that compose
Seven Cat’s Eyes, namely “The Sixth Dream,” “Recipe for Revenge,” “π,”
and “Seven Cat’s Eyes.” Each chapter is linked to the others, omnibusstyle, but rather than form a clearly outlined narrative the story is fragmented
like puzzle pieces, resulting in a reading experience that is as thrilling as
putting together a complicated puzzle.
The first chapter, “The Sixth Dream,” begins on a Friday night in a remote
mountain lodge where the members of an internet forum called Silver
Hammer have been invited to discuss their favorite topic, serial killers.
They have been invited by the forum’s moderator, the Devil, who never
shows up. After a night of revelry, the six guests scatter to their carefully
prepared rooms. This is when the spree of killings begins, with the guests
in the lodge dying one by one. None of their cell phones work and all of
their cars have been short-circuited, so they are stuck in the mountains with
no way of contacting the outside world. The first victim is discovered with
his head bashed in by a blunt object. One of the remaining guests confesses
that she witnessed the killing in her dreams, whereupon the panic-stricken
others decide she must be the murderer and tie her up to the bed in her room. The next morning, however, she
is discovered dead in a grotesque pose that suggests she has been raped. Another of the group is killed in the
bathroom, where she had been secretly eating a snack she had hidden in her purse (there is no food in the lodge],
and the man that saw her being murdered in his dreams is shocked to discover his own hunting knife covered in
blood inside his backpack. In a state of shock he stabs himself with the knife as if he was under a spell. The last
survivors, Min-gyu and Yeonu, confess to each other that they too saw somebody being murdered by a figure
in a black mask in their dreams. As it becomes clear that the scenes they witness in their dreams are actually
happening in real life, they are plunged into confusion as to whether “the Devil is murdering people in [their]
dreams” or whether “[they] are in the Devil’s dreams.” The two survivors swap tales of serial killers as they
struggle to keep each other awake, for they know that as soon as one of them falls asleep the other will become the
next victim. Despite these efforts Min-gyu nods off, however, and jerks up to find Yeonu dozing on his shoulder.
When she does not respond to his calls he begins to hit her, and the next thing he knows he is strangling her.
Behind the two locked in a parody of an embrace, a figure with “a black robe, black mask, and calm black eyes
staring out of two holes” approaches with a clothesline wrapped tightly around its bony hands.
In the second chapter, “Recipe for Revenge,” is composed of five independent yet closely linked pieces of
narrative. In the first a kidnapper asks his hostage whether he likes Schubert. He plays Schubert’s String Quartet
No.14 in D Minor, “Death and the Maiden,” as he tells his victim the story of his life. The kidnapper suffered
from frequent epileptic seizures as a child and relied on his twin sister to look after him. His sister was his
guardian angel in every sense of the word. Time passes and he becomes a medical student, and his sister an
aspiring actress. One night he is awakened by a noise in his sister’s room, where he sees her being raped by an
intruder. The same moment he has a seizure and loses consciousness. When he awakens the intruder is already
gone. His sister commits suicide after the incident and he searches for the rapist for six years, seven months, and
eight days before locating him. With that the kidnapper finishes his story and plunges a deadly syringe into the
victim’s body.
A struggling actress that spends the night in the River Motel with a man she met in a night club, who says
he is a killer, remembers the situation differently. The actress had a twin brother. As a child she was afraid of
her brother when he had his seizures, but as she grows up she begins to resent being known as the stupid, nogood twin compared to her brother, the smart one. She takes care of him as instructed by their mother when he
has seizures, but secretly wishes he would die so she can be free like her friends. One autumn when they are
eighteen years old, a burglar breaks in their house, ties them up and gags them with duct tape before leaving
with his plunder. Unfortunately the next moment her brother has one of his seizures and chokes to death on his
Synopsis
5
Seven Cat’s
Eyes
4
own vomit, unable to breathe through the duct tape gag. Tied to the bed, she
helplessly watches her brother die before her very eyes.
Once there was a man that had the worst possible luck in all things. He
had an older brother that died before he was a year old, under whose name
he was raised because his parents could not be bothered to do the paperwork
of declaring one son dead when they had another, newborn son on hand. The
man believes that this is the source of all his bad luck. One day, desperate to
repay the moneylenders that are hounding him, he breaks into a house. There
he is greeted by the eerie sight of a boy and a girl with the exact same face
holding each other, stark naked, in the moonlit darkness. He is about to scream
with fear when the girl notices him and screams first, and the boy has a seizure
the same moment. The man panics and flees from the house. He drifts from
town to town as a fugitive before deciding to kill himself. He has a final bottle
of whiskey and flings it out of the window of his motel room, meaning to jump
out himself the next moment, but as bad luck would have it the falling bottle
kills a passing pedestrian. He rushes to the scene to clear away the body when
he sees that the dead man’s ID card in his wallet bears the same birth date as
his actual birthday (rather than the birthday of his dead older brother, whose
identity was forced upon him by his parents). He conceals the body and swaps
identities with the dead man. His life immediately improves, with everything he
touches turning into success. Exactly one year after, he calls a designated driver
to take him home after a night of celebrating his new birthday. In his drunken
haze he hears the designated river asking him whether he likes Schubert.
The third chapter, “π,” is about a translator that enjoys leaving his mark by
changing minor details in the original text (Yeonu, one of the characters in the
first chapter, “The Sixth Dream,” was also a translator who confesses to changing
the original text in her translations). The book he is currently working on is a
Japanese detective novel called Seven Cat’s Eyes. In the final chapter, “Seven
Cat’s Eyes,” the main character is reading a translated book in the library called
Seven Cat’s Eyes. When it is time for the library to close he conceals the book in
a corner so nobody else will borrow it and comes home. The man injures his
retinas shortly afterwards, however, so he cannot read, but he imagines the rest
of the story in his head. When he recovers he goes to the library to see how the
actual story compares to what he imagined, but the book has disappeared. It
is as if it never existed: he cannot find any information whatsoever about the
book or its publisher, a company called π. Now all that he has is the Seven Cat’s
Eyes he made up in his mind. There is no such book called Seven Cat’s Eyes in
this world. It only exists in the imagination, in an infinite number of versions.
Are not all stories like the Ouroboros, a never-ending circle biting its own tail?
And so the final sentence of this novel returns to the first one: “Go on, then.
Mustn’t fall asleep.”
Sample
Translation
Seven Cat’s Eyes
Tonight I got home and opened the door
To see seven cat’s eyes in the darkness
I have but three kittens
White, black, and calico
Is it any wonder I left the light off?
The Sixth Dream
Go on, then. Mustn’t fall asleep. I’m tired now. I don’t know who I am, where I am.
What’s the point of hanging on by repeating the same story over and over again? The
point…well, at least you feel boredom. And you’re not repeating the same story over
and over again. It’s changing every time. A little bit at a time. Really? I’m not so sure…
I am. I’m looking forward to how the story is going to change this time. I see. We’re
losing our memories, aren’t we? Don’t worry - we can just keep refilling them. Their
memories are never going to change, no matter what we do. The only thing we can
change is our story. We have to wait inside our story. Well, I guess I can’t complain.
To think how I earned this boredom…Yes, think of that. Oh, all right. Here it goes
again.
Saturday night, the six of us were gathered in the lodge. The Devil that invited us
wasn’t, though. We were all introducing ourselves to each other, polite smiles fixed
on our faces. Really just putting faces to the image we already had of each other as we
said our online handles. Oh, so you’re so-and-so. Nice to meet you. Nobody gave their
real name or occupation. But that was more natural for us. Besides, the secrecy added
a touch of excitement to the gathering. What would we do with that information,
anyway? Right. I really didn’t feel like talking about my offline self, either.
By the time we had grown tired of nodding at each other, taking care to stay out
of one another’s way as we paced the small living room, people started eyeing the
wooden cabinet with its array of whiskies and brandies. Someone opened the cabinet,
reminding us of what the invitation said, and another quickly brought ice and glasses
from the kitchen. A third sheepishly produced some canned nuts and beef jerky from
their bag. We sat in a circle with some Jack Daniel’s Black Label and Camus VSOP
in the middle. We were making the best of our host’s hospitality, without opening
anything so expensive that he might feel put upon when he did show up. The sound of
ice clinking and of glasses shyly nudging one another lent an innocent air of festivity
to the proceedings. People started loosening up noticeably after a few rounds. No
sign of our host yet. What else were we supposed to do? So we made some pleasant
chitchat among ourselves. About murderers.
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“I think Jack the Ripper is overrated just because he was never caught. Did you
know they even have guided tours visiting the scenes of his crimes in London? I give
you that his methods were cruel, but he only killed five prostitutes over three months,
after all. And there’s no proof that they were killed by the same person, either. Yet
people still persist with these theories that the murderer was a mad surgeon, a
butcher, that the whole thing was a conspiracy to get rid of a royal bastard…there’s
even a theory that it was Lewis Carroll. Supposedly he recorded his crimes in detail in
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, in anagrams. Anyway I suppose it is remarkable
that he still appears in films and novels featuring serial killers. It gives the wrong
impression, that he invented serial killing or something. But serial killers have always
been around; it’s just that the tabloids at the time made him a star. Or where else do
fairy tales like “Bluebeard” or “Red Riding Hood” come from?”
Min-gyu tilted his glass experimentally. Bits of ice slid, swirling the water that had
been floating on top into his whiskey. He could feel the eyes of the four other people
in the room following his every move. For an opening move it wasn’t so bad, he
reflected with satisfaction. Unless Jack the Ripper was too tame for this crowd? The
important thing at this sort of gathering, anyway, was to speak up first and set the
tone of the conversation. Min-gyu knew very well how hard it is to insert oneself into
a conversation once other people have decided you are a quiet one.
“I agree. It’s the discovery that makes it complete. Don’t you think that discovering
the killer was somebody completely unexpected is even more terrifying than murder
itself? Take John Wayne Gacy, the ‘Killer Clown.’ He was a successful businessman
and a pillar of the community. He even volunteered at children’s hospitals as a clown.
Who would have ever thought that he would have over thirty bodies buried under
his house?”
Hyun-sook felt herself emphasizing the words “a successful businessman and a
pillar of the community.” She imagined how the face of her husband, eleven years her
senior, would look like in clown makeup. He was the kind of man everybody trusted,
steady, thoughtful, and sociable. He was the kind of man who had everything a wife
could ask for, so that it was impossible to complain of the loneliness she felt in her life
with him. What if he was secretly a serial killer? Wouldn’t that be a thousand times
more surprising than the time he surprised her with a diamond bracelet hidden inside
a black plastic bag? What if, one day, she discovered the naked body of a teenage boy
in the trunk of his Lexus…the days slipping by as she wrung her hands, unsure of
how to deal with the discovery that her husband was a killer… Hyun-sook smiled
wryly at her own fantasy as she checked out the other people in the room. There
were three women, including herself. Bloody Mary looked barely out of her teens, an
aspiring actress type. Pretty enough to be the center of attention at any gathering, but
not so polished yet. She was definitely enjoying how the two men couldn’t keep their
eyes off her as she played with her long, straight hair. The girl who introduced herself
as Deadlock hugged her legs to herself and had little to say. She looked like a teenage
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boy, all sharp edges and no makeup. Both girls looked at least ten years younger
than herself. Hyun-sook twirled her long curls around her fingers and resolved not to
mention her husband or child if possible.
“I’m more interested in what kind of sick and twisted things they do than how many
they kill. If it’s just numbers we’re talking about ‘Dr. Death’ Harold Shipman would
be the best. They say he killed over two hundred. But it was all by lethal injections,
nothing special. I think he’s more like a salesman trying to meet his quota than a
psychopathic killer, no?” Sena said, running her fingers through her hair slowly.
She was enjoying the attention aroused by the gap between her ingénue looks and
bloodthirsty tastes. Her first ever taste of cognac was giving her a tingling flush in
the neck and cheeks. Sena wanted to be different from all the other girls who dressed
exactly the same, according to whatever was in style. She hoped to be more unique
than that: a haunting, slightly spooky charm would do. Lots of girls in her acting class
were prettier than she was. So many girls flocked to the class like sheep, with nothing
more than their looks to fall back on. The boys were busy pulling the same moves on
whichever girl would listen to them. It was a boring and predictable ritual with no
higher motive than trying to get in a girl’s pants. Sena was no tame sheep, however;
she was a mountain goat. If they wanted to be her equal they should be prepared to
jump over the fence and brave tortuous, rocky hills.
“In that sense there’s really nobody like Ed Gein. You know he was the inspiration
for the killers in Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs.
You’ve seen the police photos of his farmhouse, right? Such a dazzling collection! A
vest made of human skin, soup dishes made out of human skulls, a human heart in a
frying pan, severed noses and vulvae…”
“Would you call that a dazzling collection if you saw it with your own eyes?”
Young-su interrupted, from his place against the wall.
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t you think you’re taking murder and mutilation a little lightly? It’s not the
same as a collection of hair clips.”
Sena glared at him, her mouth pinched. Her face, already flushed from the alcohol,
grew even hotter. What a prick. Losers like him always had to walk over other people.
“So what? I’m sure you joined Silver Hammer because you’re into that sort of stuff,
Hannibal.”
Young-su gave his horn-rimmed glasses a slight shove up his nose with a sharply
extended index finger.
“I am more interested in the psychology and early background of human beings
who commit such crimes than how twisted their actions are. Can we dismiss these
acts of unimaginable cruelty as complete madness, or is it society that turned them
into monsters? For instance, Ed Gein was driven by the desire to become a woman.
Wouldn’t it be more useful to examine how this connects to the fact that he lived as a
recluse with his religious fanatic of a mother, before we talk about how dazzling his
“collection” was?”
Young-su glanced in Sena’s direction. She was pouring herself a drink and avoiding
looking at him.
“As you all know, serial killers are merely people who have acted upon their fantasies.
They are the bold doers, not listless dreamers. Then where do they get their fantasies
What was it that drew these people to the world of serial killers? Surfing Silver
Hammer in the darkness of my room, I grew more curious about those on the other
side of the bloodless computer screen that shared my secret interest. Why serial
killers, instead of ball-jointed dolls, or recipes for delicious pies…? Don’t take it so
seriously. Everyone wants something to lose themselves in. It takes their minds off
their problems. After that it’s just a matter of taste. Like picking a flavor of ice cream
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from? Fantasies that go beyond taboo, that are purely destructive. Can we really claim
to be so different from them, once we get to the bottom of their psychology?”
Young-su took a break to make eye contact with each of the four people in the room.
“The reality principle that separates us from them is not as solid as you may think.
You can pull a trigger in the blink of an eye. This is such a serious, grave issue. We
would be no better than those cold-blooded monsters if we acted like serial killing
was some kind of cutesy affair.”
Young-su allowed himself a smug internal smile, watching the girl’s face turn red
as she seethed. His instinct had been right. A systematic serial killer chooses his victim
with care and acts strictly according to plan to fulfill his fantasies. Young-su’s decision
was made when the girl with long, shiny hair, wide-open eyes and a glowing, rosy
complexion introduced herself as Bloody Mary.
Young-su always knew, from when he was a child, that his short, stubby, and utterly
average appearance was never enough to impress any sort of group. So at the same
time he built up his own kind of strategy guaranteed to make an instant impression.
His strategy was to target the most attractive person in the group and break them
down with logic. In this way he insinuated himself into an equally competitive
position, that of reigning intellectual. True, it might make him look like a jerk, but his
ordinary looks got a boost from his intellect and wit. Negative attention was better
than no attention at all.
“Aren’t you going a bit far?” Min-gyu leapt to Sena’s defense. He made sure to use
his deep voice, dragging it up from the bottom of his abdomen.
“This is a friendly gathering for the club, not some international symposium. Let’s
not try to attack each other; it’s not like Bloody Mary said anything untrue.”
Young-su merely rolled his eyes dismissively. Min-gyu smiled at Sena to see if she
had noticed his successful intervention. She had not, as she was busy gulping cognac
with her eyes screwed shut.
I shouldn’t have come, thought Yeonu from her place slightly outside the circle.
All this petty fighting, posturing, and posing. Not that she expected to make friends
at this gathering, but the others were making her feel more and more uncomfortable.
When she discovered the invitation from the moderator of Silver Hammer, the Devil,
buried in her spam box, she could hardly believe it. Her, one of “Silver Hammer’s
most active members”? The word “active” as a descriptor for her seemed as out of
place as ancient Sanskrit. But then she remembered that her lack of enthusiasm in
speech and manner, the glum look on her face that depressed other people, were
invisible online. She had posted and commented more industriously than anybody,
and had never missed a Wednesday Debate or Friday Quiz, so of course she was one
of the club’s most active members. In the end the reassurance that she was one of the
“most active” gave her the courage to attend.
at Baskin-Robbins. Like picking a flavor of ice cream…You think that’s it? Why are
you interested in serial killers, then? Well…I don’t know. Sometimes I look at pictures
of victims on Silver Hammer and imagine some psychopath like Ed Gein or John
Wayne Gacy caught me and I’m begging for my life. I’m weeping and begging them
to please let me go, let me get back to my damned shitty life. It’s like picking a flavor
of ice cream. Somewhere, somebody is weeping and begging to be given the secret
to the world’s best blueberry pie. By the way, why are there only five people at the
lodge? Didn’t you say six? I told you one person came late. There was a knock on the
door by the time we had drunk about half of the liquor…I don’t remember who it
was. It’s all a blur.
10
Min-gyu rose and opened the front door. A blast of cold air blew in as Tae-sik
entered the room, sizable belly first. The neck of his sweater strained around his
throat, as thick as his wide face. He bent over laboriously to untie the laces of his
hiking shoes. Min-gyu looked down at the back of his head covered in a mess of short,
curly hair and asked,
“Are you, the Devil?”
“No, I’m the Mole.” Tae-sik laughed as he patted his belly. “I was about to ask the
same thing. I guess our host hasn’t shown up yet. So there is a cabin this far up the
mountain, huh. I thought I’d lost my way…”
The circle in the living room widened considerably as Tae-sik sat down. Min-gyu
made the introductions for the rest of the group.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Deep Sedation, this is Hannibal, and this is Bloody Mary.”
“Hey, I knew you would be the kind of girl who gives me the shivers.”
Sena smiled modestly and inclined her head. Why couldn’t I say something like
that, Min-gyu thought discontentedly, as he remembered fumbling and missing
his chance to praise Sena’s beauty when they were introducing themselves to each
other.
“This is Insomnia, and this is Deadlock.”
Why am I always the last? Yeonu grimaced to herself as she nodded towards the
newcomer.
Tae-sik gave the other five members of the group a careful look as he accepted a
drink. He was the oldest, for sure. It was a relief to see that at least they were all adults
over twenty, though. He had been prepared to turn back immediately if they were
bratty teenagers like the ones loafing around his internet café every day. Buried in
huge swivel chairs, batting insults at one another as they called for instant noodles,
snacks, ashtrays… All he wanted was to get away from the little monsters for a while.
He emptied his glass in one go.
“Ah, that’s more like it. How’s the game going?”
“We haven’t started yet. The Devil hasn’t come yet, so we don’t even know what
we’re playing.”
“It’s starting to snow, so I guess it’s going to take a while if he’s on the road.”
Six pairs of eyes went to the window. Thick flakes of snow shone in the lone light
hanging over the porch.
We talked until late that night. We grew bolder in our selections from the liquor
Min-gyu was half asleep when he heard the deep whistle of a boat. He pulled
the covers over his head but the sound dragged on obnoxiously. The whistle grew
11
cabinet as the night wore on, opening a Macallan 18 year old, a Hennessy XO, and
a Johnnie Walker blue label. We talked about all kinds of colorful characters, too.
Edmund Kemper, who mutilated and raped the bodies of his ten victims, including
his mother; Ted Bundy, “Prince of Serial Killers,” who received love letters in prison
despite being a notorious murderer and rapist; Charles Manson, the deranged hippie
guru who mixed up the Beatles with the Book of Revelations and acted like he was
the second coming of Jesus…Deep Sedation’s nose was out of joint because the Mole
was so much better at being the life of the party. Yeah, it was pretty cute to see them
tear each other down. That was Bloody Mary and Hannibal. They were into it so bad
all night, people started egging them on. At some point somebody came back from
the kitchen complaining that there was plenty of liquor but nothing to eat. Maybe the
Devil went hunting because he’s out of food, somebody joked, and we all had a good
laugh. Who was it who went even further, saying that they wanted the thigh steak?
That was when we started talking about the Devil. Exactly what kind of person was
our host?
The Devil was a cipher. In all of his posts he never left a single clue about himself. It
was impossible to guess his age, sex, occupation, tastes, or indeed what he thought about
anything. He was knowledgeable in history and psychology; wrote in an intelligent,
logical voice; and that was it. Where did he get all the information he posted on Silver
Hammer, with its database of the bios of hundreds of serial killers from around the
world, detailed accounts of their crimes and testimonies, recordings of their voices,
pictures they drew in prison, graphic crime scene photos, 3D video reenactments of
notorious crimes, even serial killer action figures… Rumors abounded. The Devil was
a former FBI agent, an eccentric professor at Oxford whose area of study was the
history of murder, a Zainichi real estate mogul who was also a sexual deviant, an
actual serial killer. People like to say that this kind of website idealizes murder, but
Silver Hammer was different. The Devil never tried to glorify or attach some greater
meaning to a serial killer’s actions, but merely provided proven facts from the most
neutral position possible.
Of course, that only added to his mystique. The website was famous among
enthusiasts, but the Devil vetted potential members carefully and only chose a few.
The fact that the six of us had been chosen out of this already select group was a
source of pride to us. Soon we were going to meet the Devil, the mysterious host of
Silver Hammer.
He, or she, however, had still not shown up by the time the night was ready to
give way to day and the number of empty bottles resting against the wall had grown
substantially. Somebody expressed concern, saying that the snow had grown worse,
but everyone was too drunk and having too much fun to care. A group of total
strangers, brought together by chance. The fact that we would probably never see
each other again was enough to turn our initial nervousness into something close to
hysteria. We only scattered into the six well-appointed rooms prepared for us when
the first rays of sun reached over the mountaintop. Everything was going so well, up
to then…
12
weaker and then turned into a single, sharp cry. It was followed by the sound of a
door slamming, and somebody running up the stairs. Min-gyu roused himself and
pulled on his clothes. His stomach felt as raw as if it had been rubbed with sandpaper
after all that whiskey without anything to eat.
People were gathered in front of the central room on the second floor. He stood on
his toes and saw Hannibal lying on the bed. He was on his back, his hands clasped
on his stomach, glasses still on. You’d think they never saw anyone sleeping, yawned
Min-gyu as he was rubbing his eyes, when something made him stop in his tracks.
There was something wrong with Hannibal’s red pillowcase. It was too bright a red.
“Is that…blood?”
“I think he’s not breathing.”
“Shouldn’t we call 911? Or is it 119?”
“Nah, he’s just playing dead. So this is the game. He’s in on it with the Devil.”
Nobody seemed eager to leave their place and set foot into the room. Min-gyu
brushed against the stiffly standing group and approached the bed. Hannibal looked
as resolute as he had last night, his chin down, mouth closed grimly. Min-gyu felt
for his carotid artery with one hand and opened his eyes with the other to check his
pupils. They were as lifeless as the eyes of a stuffed animal.
“He’s dead.”
The others fell immediately silent upon Min-gyu’s short pronouncement. Hyunsook staggered and fumbled at the doorknob for support, but nobody was quick
enough to help her. Min-gyu gingerly turned the body on its side, holding it by the
shoulders and hips. The pillowcase, wet with blood, stuck to the back of its head. He
was trying to pull it off with one hand when he lost grip and the body fell on its face.
Somebody let out a little scream from behind him. He saw blood and bodies all the
time at the hospital, but this was the first time he had ever seen a murdered, mutilated
corpse. The back of the head was bashed in, hair matted with dried blood.
“He was hit on the head. With a hammer or something.”
Sena’a arm went up as if someone was tugging it on a string. With a trembling
finger she pointed to a pewter figurine on top of the bureau. A naked, muscled man
sitting in a hunched-up position with his chin in his right hand stared at Young-su’s
body pensively. Min-gyu grasped the figurine by its head and held it up carefully. The
square base of the statue was stained with blood. Four pairs of eyes immediately went
to Sena. She staggered backwards, overwhelmed by the silent accusation directed her
way, and sank to the ground.
“W-what the…it’s not possible…it was a d-dream. It’s not me. I didn’t do it. I didn’t
do it!”
Sena’s monologue grew increasingly agitated, escalating into a scream at the end.
The others looked at each other blankly. Min-gyu approached and squatted down in
front of her, saying,
“What are you talking about? Calm down, and tell us from the beginning.”
Sena stared off into the distance as she mumbled, “Yesterday, I was drunk and I fell
asleep…And I had a dream. In my dream…I saw someone, some guy, going into that
room.” She corrected herself quickly, from “someone” to “some guy.”
“Hannibal was sleeping on his stomach, when the man picked up The Thinker with
both hands…and hit him on the back of his head. Four times, no, five times. The body
was shaking all over until it…stopped. Then he laid him on his back, put his glasses
back on him, and left the rom. It was such a horrible dream I came here as soon as I
woke up…”
“Did you see his face?”
“His face?”
Sena bit her lower lip and thought hard.
“He was wearing a long black robe. Like a monk from the Middle Ages in the movies.
He had the hood pulled over his head, too…and a mask. Yes, he was wearing a black
mask that covered his face completely. It just had holes for his eyes, nothing else…”
“So you couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman?”
“Well…it was too big to be a woman…”
Min-gyu turned around to look at the others. Three tense, stiffly set faces looked
back at him.
“Are you sure it was a dream?”
Sena nodded frantically.
“What were you doing, in your dream?”
She could not answer. Her eyes were empty as she stared off into space, mouth half
open.
13
Their predicament seemed to grow more confusing the more they tried to do
something about it. It did not take long for them to realize the seriousness of their
situation. First they tried to call the police, but all five of their mobile phones said
they were in an out-of-service area. But I talked to Sumin just last night, Hyun-sook
thought as she clutched her phone compulsively. The picturesque snowflakes of the
night before had turned into a full-blown snowstorm. Tae-sik went out to see if he
could get his car to start and came back covered with snow.
“My battery is dead.”
The batteries of the other five cars turned out to be dead as well.
“I don’t get it, it is cold, but all five in one night…”
“Somebody disconnected them on purpose.” Tae-sik blurted, a conspiracy theory
that brought the worst out of everybody’s imaginations.
“Even if they were working, it would be too dangerous to go down the mountain
in this snow.”
“We can go by foot.”
“In this storm? We’d never make it. We’re not even sober yet.”
“It was a long way up on the highway, wasn’t it.”
“Damn, then what are we supposed to do?”
Panic settled in as they realized how isolated they were. They could feel the world
drifting far, far away, as they watched the snow beat against the window.
“I guess we have to wait until the snow lets up. Let’s take a look around here. It’s a
lodge. There might be a walkie-talkie or some kind of rescue equipment. Or…”
Min-gyu was about to say they could search for any clues related to the murder,
but thought the better of it. Now it felt like a sacrilege to even speak of the word
“murder” that had been tossed around so easily last night.
Min-gyu and Tae-sik led the way. Sena followed the others like a ghost, still looking
as if she had seen one herself. Hyun-sook glanced back at her over her shoulder
nervously. The interior of the lodge was all bright wooden surfaces, neat and clean.
Something about it felt hastily put together, though, like the set of a TV show. Nowhere
was there any sign that it had been lived in. It was a two-story building with three
rooms and a bathroom on each floor, and a spacious living room and kitchen on the
first floor. The front door was locked from the inside, as was the back entrance from
the kitchen, and there was no sign that anyone had tried to break in either. All the
bedroom windows were closed as well.
“The owner of the house wouldn’t have to break in,” Tae-sik grunted.
“Has anyone noticed there are exactly six bedrooms in this house?”
An insidious sense of dread crept into everyone’s heart the moment Yeonu made
her innocent observation. They would have been seven, if their host the Devil had
come…Or was he here already? Nobody voiced the question that had now occurred
to all of them. They searched the lodge from bottom to top, but there was no walkietalkie or rescue equipment that might help them escape. Nor did they find any clues
to the murder. Instead it became clear that they had another problem: there was
nothing to eat in the house except the whiskey and brandy in the well-filled living
room cabinet.
14
Daylight doesn’t last very long in the mountains, in the winter. The weather showed
no sign of getting better, and before we knew it darkness had spread like a drop of
ink in a fish tank. We should have been back to our respective lives by this time, after
a weekend of unconventional fun. Forget all about serial killers and go back to each
of our rigid routines… We sat in a circle in the living room again. The circle was
just a little bit smaller because we were one less now. Did you see how people kept
looking into the middle room on the second floor? Pretending not to look, but really
everyone was just taking turns. Everyone was so tired. The body lying up there scared
us. No, disgusted us. Our stomachs grumbled one at a time as if we were singing a
round, but nobody complained that they were hungry. Hunger took second place to
the question that was bothering five minds. Was the killer somewhere outside in the
snow, or inside the lodge?
Min-gyu poured a glass brimful of water and drank it slowly. After nothing but
water all day it was all he could do to keep from swearing. Everyone looked as if they
had aged years.
“Let’s get some sleep, shall we? We can walk down to the highway tomorrow
morning when the snow lets up. We won’t be good for anything if we collapse from
exhaustion.”
The others exchanged looks after Min-gyu’s speech, but nobody said anything.
They were afraid to sleep alone in their rooms. But nobody was sure that sleeping
together was a better idea, either. Tae-sik glared at Sena out of narrowed eyes. She was
still staring at knotholes in the floorboards with a dazed look on her face.
“Are we going to leave her like that all night as we sleep?” Tae-sik jerked his chin
towards Sena.
“What? What are you talking about?”
Sena lifted her head and blinked her eyes. Four pairs of eyes lingered around her
chin.
15
“Are you suggesting that I…killed him? Are you insane?”
“You said you saw it happen. You’re the one who described it so vividly,” Tae-sik
was not even bothering to use formal address now.
“I saw it in my dream! It…it must have been coincidence.”
“Coincidence? Are you kidding me? You think this is a joke?”
“Why would I kill him? I don’t even know him.”
“You were arguing all the time last night,” Hyun-sook inserted calmly.
“I don’t believe it…You think I’d kill someone over that? Do I look like a murderer
to you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know you,” Tae-sik jeered.
“I said it was a dream!”
Sena looked towards Min-gyu, who was in tears. Min-gyu averted his eyes as he
ran his fingers through his hair. He was not convinced of Sena’s innocence, either. It
was hard to believe that she had dreamed the whole thing. Neither did it seem very
likely that she had witnessed the crime in her sleep. At the moment she was the most
likely, and only, suspect. The other four exchanged surreptitious glances. Finally Taesik said decisively,
“There’s a clothesline in the kitchen. It’s just in case.”
The others half dragged, half carried the struggling Sena to the central room on the
first floor. Each of them gripped an arm or leg and lashed it to the four posts of the
bed with the clothesline. I don’t know about this, Yeonu thought uncomfortably, but
the consequences of “what if” were too great to forego precautions. One of them was
already dead as a result of the consequences upstairs. Yeonu bit her lip and tied the
clothesline around Sena’s slender left wrist firmly. Sena rolled her eyes and gnashed
her teeth. The killer was going to come tonight to kill her, she was sure of it.
“We’ll be in the living room all night. Try to get some sleep and don’t worry, we’ll
untie you in the morning.”
Min-gyu was slinking out of the room when Sena called him in a low voice. He
approached the bed warily. Sena was staring at the ceiling with a faraway look in her
eyes, apparently having made peace with her fate.
“Do you think, I really killed that man?...I don’t know. I was so drunk I don’t
remember anything. I hated him. I really did want to kill him. But I would never do
such a thing. Ever. …I think. I was so sure everything was a dream, but now I’m not
sure at all. Did I see the black mask in my dream, or was I wearing the mask…”
Min-gyu stood over the babbling Sena silently. She looked like a human sacrifice
with all four limbs tied to the bed like that. It reminded him of a scene from King
Kong. A drum beating somewhere off in the jungle, torches burning brightly, a blonde
beauty tied to the altar, her eyes dim, long black hair in tangles, breasts straining
against her cashmere sweater, a trim calf sheathed in a black stocking, the enormous
hairy monster pushing the trees aside… Min-gyu shook his head violently. What the
hell am I thinking of. He tucked the covers under Sena’s chin and left the room.
The four of them each picked a corner in the living room to settle down for the night,
taking care to make their beds as far away from one another as possible. After some
minutes of blinking at each other across the room they burrowed into their blankets
with the lights still on. The snowstorm was still raging outside the lodge. The sound
of people turning in their beds amplified as loudly as if there was a megaphone.
16
Tae-sik was using his backpack as a pillow. His right hand was in the backpack,
clutching a Swiss Army knife. He planned to whip it out at the slightest sign of any
funny business. Dammit, I just wanted to get away for a day. I don’t need this mess…
Entering the smoky, grimy internet café under the stairs was like going inside a sci-fi
movie. Like a crack house from some futuristic slum. The addicts in their cubicles, faces
bathed in the pale blue light of computer monitors. His eyes dimmed and his throat
felt like it was caked with soot after a twelve-hour shift down there, where he and
his cousin took turns looking after the place. The underground life was turning him
into a mole, or at least making him as blind as one. The sound of gunshots and sword
fighting, the screams of online characters in their death throes, monsters screeching,
cars roaring, gamblers making reckless bets to the tune of billions of won…Sitting
behind the counter all day, mindlessly stuffing junk food into his mouth, he could feel
his brain disconnecting as he slipped into a hallucination-like state.
Of course that was the moment customers chose to get up and stagger towards
the counter. Pallid of complexion, eyes sunken, bloodstains around their mouths…
fucking zombies! He takes a shotgun from underneath the counter and aims it at
them. It rips off their arms and legs, bursts their skulls and blows their brains out all
over the place. He’s out of ammo. He throws back a handful of prawn crackers into
his mouth and picks up a grenade…Damn, why didn’t I bring a few bags from the
shop. Or a string of wieners. Tae-sik curled up like a prawn as a fresh wave of hunger
washed over him.
Yeonu silently unfolded the creases of the well-worn sheet of paper she had been
carrying in her pocket. “Dear Deadlock, I am hosting an intimate party for Silver
Hammer’s most active members at my cabin this weekend and look forward very
much to making your acquaintance. I will be showing rare footage too sensitive to be
posted online, and will also provide amusing games. There will be plenty of food and
liquor for all, so please do not feel you have to bring anything. Directions to the house
are attached to the invitation. The Devil.”
The rare footage too sensitive to be posted online had exceeded her expectations.
She had certainly never seen a murdered body before. And not just anybody, but the
body of someone she had been drinking with this morning. The corpse on the second
floor was rotting away even this minute… The thoughts racing through her mind at
the moment, however, had nothing to do with the murder. Oh dear, there’s no one
to feed the goldfish, did I set the radiator on “not at home,” I should have brought
some pads, what if Bloody Mary needs to go to the bathroom…Yeonu sighed under
her breath. She was annoyed at herself for searching for insignificant things to worry
about just to avoid the crisis going on under her nose. She peered at the invitation
again. Games. The word pulsed on the page as if it was alive.
We were hoping that the girl we tied up was the real murderer. It would take care
of our fears and revulsion neatly. She was the only one who had a grudge against
him, although maybe not enough to kill him. Right. The dead man was pouncing on
her every word to hurt her pride. She’s not used to being treated like that; you can
tell she’s a little princess. And he was treating her like some dumb bimbo! The drink
didn’t help to make her less mad, either. I remember she was purple in the face in the
end, staring at him like she wished looks could kill. It’s a blink of the eye decision,
pulling the trigger. Yeah, it could happen, if somebody humiliates you enough. Take
someone like Ed Gein, who murdered people and skinned them for no reason, and
you don’t even need that.
17
Hyun-sook laid her head on her arm and looked out the window. Dawn was
breaking but the snowstorm still showed no sign of letting up. But I have to make it
down today… Sumin must have called dozens of times by now. Her phone informed
her that she was still in an out of service area. It felt like an accusation of failure, both
as a mother and a wife. She had told her husband she was going on a weekend trip
with her art school friends to a hot spring. When pressed for details on who she was
going with and where she was staying she told him she was only going to be gone
one night and why did he have to be such a worrywart before taking off. He must be
frantic by now, calling her friends that he barely knew. Hyun-sook sat up. Pangs of
acute hunger hit her in the stomach like a blow. The other three were still rolled up
in their blankets on the floor. She tried to remember whether they had given Bloody
Mary a blanket. Must have been cold in the night… Heaving herself to her feet, Hyunsook swayed from dizziness.
The sight in the room knocked the breath out of her. Bloody Mary’s skirt was
flipped up her waist, sweater rolled up to her neck, ripped stockings clinging to her
legs like stalks of seaweed, pink panties stuffed in her mouth. Her wide-open eyes
stared at Hyun-sook. “I’m more interested in what kind of sick and twisted things
they do than how many they kill.” Hyun-sook backed away unsteadily, as unable
to look away as if she were a fish on a hook. She roused the other three in the living
room, running from one to the other. Her throat refused to produce any sound other
than a wheeze. She dropped down in the center of the living room floor and raised a
trembling finger towards the middle room.
Min-gyu staggered toward the bed. The ritual human sacrifice was over. The deep
abrasions on the victim’s wrists and ankles reproached them balefully. Her face was
puffed up and blue, red specks of blood surrounding her eyes like freckles from the
blood vessels bursting. All classic signs of strangulation. A set of handprints stamped
on her neck corroborated this answer. What the hell…Min-gyu felt his blood run cold.
His right hand inched towards the blue-black bruises on the victim’s neck.
“What happened? What’s wrong?”
The clamoring voices behind him made him pull his hand back quickly. He mopped
the cold sweat off his brow with his sleeve.
“She’s…somebody strangled her.”
Min-gyu struggled with the bonds on her arms and legs as he tried to untie them.
The knots made by four different people were hopelessly tangled every which way.
He gave up after a few tries and pulled her sweater back down over her breasts. The
panties he took out of her mouth and tossed between her legs before pulling her skirt
in place. He was picking up the blanket that had slipped off the bed when his eyes met
the staring eyes of the corpse. “Do you think I really killed that man?” Min-gyu drew
the covers over her face and left the room.
“She was raped, wasn’t she?” Hyun-sook shrieked hysterically, glaring at each of
the men in turn.
“What? Do you even hear yourself? You were right there in the living room with us
all night!” Tae-sik shot right back.
“How do I know, everyone was sleeping.”
“Oh yeah? How do you know everyone was sleeping? What were you doing up all
night, Miss Insomnia?”
“When did I say I was up all night? I said that because I was sleeping, too.”
Hyun-sook turned to Min-gyu this time but found she did not have the heart to
berate him. His face was paler than a corpse.
“W-we were just by the door…how…” Min-gyu stuttered, head bowed.
Yeonu clenched her teeth to stop them from chattering. She could hear the others
talking, but in distorted flashes as if their voices were coming through a broken
speaker. The breath of a vast, unknown being seemed to surround her like heavy fog.
Clutching the Devil’s invitation in her pocket, Yeonu mumbled in a barely audible
voice,
“The game...we’re already playing it.”
18
The snowstorm grew worse by the hour. A blast of icy wind blew through the door
with the force of a machine gun when Tae-sik opened it to look outside, so strong that
he struggled to shut it again. The cars parked in front of the house were now six neat
white mounds in a row. Four haggard faces stared at each other in the living room.
“Let’s say that the Devil did it…” Hyun-sook began, “Where is he hiding outside
in this snow before he comes to kill us? There’s nothing out there.”
Hyun-sook fixed her glare upon the men again. Could it be that one of them was
the Devil in disguise? It was true, however, that she of all people should be aware that
it was highly unlikely. She had barely slept last night, as Tae-sik said. Her nerves were
on edge as it was and she had not bothered to take her pills. The other three had not
left the living room except to go to the bathroom. She could not be completely sure,
however, that she had not nodded off a few times in the night.
“Who’s to say there isn’t a secret room in here? With cameras installed all over the
place like in the movies. Some sicko could be watching us right now from his little
cubby-hole.”
Hyun-sook and Yeonu hunched their shoulders looked around nervously after
Tae-sik raised this possibility.
“There was something funny about this place from the beginning. Who builds a
lodge this far off the trail?”
“Then do you think it was true, what she said about seeing a man in a black mask in
her dreams yesterday night? Do you think he came to get her because she saw him?”
“Shit, all I know is that if this is a game, somebody else’s turn is coming up.”
Min-gyu let the others talk as he lay on the ground, lost in his thoughts. In her
dreams…a black mask…dreams…maybe the Devil had put some kind of drug in
the drinks? Drugs that gave you hallucinations, or made you think what you saw
was a hallucination. No, that didn’t make sense. The drug should have taken effect
immediately. Min-gyu clenched his eyes shut. The sight of Bloody Mary’s blue, puffy
visage refused to go away. “I don’t know. Did I see the black mask in my dream, or
was I wearing the mask…” He rubbed his eyes roughly with the fleshy part of his
hands. Spots of light erased Bloody Mary’s face from his vision. One thing at a time.
Concentrate on getting out of this game alive. Snowed in, no food, new corpses every
19
morning…Fuck, give us a clue. What did the Devil think he was playing at?
“Hey, we’re talking to you.”
Min-gyu opened his eyes. The other three were looking down at him with equal
expressions of consternation. He gave both cheeks a good slap and made himself get up.
“If it’s a game there should be rules.”
Min-gyu held the gaze of the other three, one at a time.
“We came here as members of Silver Hammer. This guy is the owner of Silver
Hammer. There has to be a clue somewhere there. Let’s try to put together everything
we know. From what we’ve seen so far it’s very likely that this Devil fellow is a highly
systematic serial killer. Systematic serial killers pick their victims according to specific
rules and goals they have set out first.”
“And they get pleasure from controlling and dominating them,” Hyun-sook threw in.
“Precisely. If he’s playing serial killer, he wouldn’t have invited us at random.
There must be some kind of connection, something that the six of us have in common.
Why don’t we go from there, and see if we find any clues to solve this game?”
“What difference would that make when we don’t even know where he is?” Tae-sik
retorted gruffly.
“I don’t know. What I do know is that sitting here doing nothing is not going to
solve anything.”
The others looked at Min-gyu quizzically.
“So what are you saying we should do?”
“Why don’t we start by introducing ourselves. We still don’t know who each
other is. My name’s Kang Min-gyu. I’m twenty-eight years old, and I’m working as a
resident anesthetist at a university hospital.”
Min-gyu looked at Tae-sik expectantly after he finished.
“Min Tae-sik. Thirty-seven, I run this crummy internet café.”
“My name is Kim Hyun-sook. I’m thirty-four…I’m a housewife. I have a two-yearold son.”
“Thirty-four? You’re a damn fine-looking woman for your age, aren’t you, Miss, I
mean Missus.”
Tae-sik actually licked his lips in approval. Min-gyu and Yeonu made open faces
of disgust but Hyun-sook only made a little pout, apparently not unpleased by the
coarse compliment.
“Lee Yeonu. I’m twenty-six, and I do freelance translations.”
“English translations?” Min-gyu asked.
“No, Spanish.”
Everyone was silent for a minute. All eyes went to the two rooms with tightly shut
doors shielding their former occupants from view. Min-gyu heaved himself up with
a sigh to collect their bags and coats.
“Do us a favor and see if they have any chow while you’re at it, will you?”
Min-gyu gave Tae-sik a withering glance. Take a look yourself, wise guy. He
discovered nothing to eat in their bags, although he did find their wallets.
“Hannibal’s name was Oh Young-su, age twenty-four. Here’s his student card.
Department of Law, Seoul National University.”
“Huh, that’s why he thought he was better than everyone else. What a nerd.”
Tae-sik sneered, causing the others to look at him reproachfully. Slightly chastised,
He glanced up at the room on the second floor and coughed awkwardly.
“Bloody Mary’s name was Han Sena, age twenty. Looks like she was an aspiring
actress. She has a card for acting classes.”
Again everyone was silent.
“There’s no connection. It looks like he just picked us at random,” Hyun-sook said
tiredly.
“The Devil is not just some guy, we know that from his posts on Silver Hammer.
He’s still controlling us at this very minute. Let’s be patient and keep looking.”
20
We spent hours swapping information about ourselves. It wasn’t like we had
anything else to do, anyway. Date of birth, current address, phone number, family,
friends, work colleagues, hobbies, favorite haunts, how and when we became members
of Silver Hammer, what kind of articles we posted, our favorite serial killers, anything
unusual that might have happened recently, any grudges someone might have against
us, all of our memories related to the word “Devil”…isn’t it funny? We were getting
acquainted with each other exactly as the Devil had suggested us to. At a very fast
pace, too. Within half a day we knew more about each other than friends that had
known us for years. Like prisoners up for execution trying to cram years’ worth of
intimacy in a few hours. No matter how well acquainted we became with each other,
however, we could not find anything we shared in common. It was as if the Devil had
taken special pains to select people who had absolutely nothing in common. We were
truly complete strangers. As suspected from the beginning. This fact did nothing to
soothe our already frayed nerves. Here we were with two people already dead, and
without a clue as to why the Devil had invited us there. At least we would have had
some satisfaction if it turned out we were conspirators in some horrible crime that
had ruined someone’s life. It just plain wasn’t fair if it was really a random selection.
“I’m done here. All this talking just makes me hungry,” Tae-sik complained as he
lied back on the floor. “Maybe he sent invitations at random. The six of us just had
nothing better to do.”
“He wants to control the situation, he would have limited the number of people to
invite. There are only six rooms,” Min-gyu retorted in a tired voice.
“Fuck, I didn’t think about it but six is the number of the Devil,” Tae-sik muttered
from his prone position.
“The sun is already setting.”
All eyes turned to the window at Hyun-sook’s words. Once again darkness was
settling over the snow-covered valley. The sky was turning a dark grey over the
mountains, leeching the color out of their faces as well. Four pairs of eyes followed
the sunset like castaways on a deserted island filled with wild beasts watching a ship
pass by. Tae-sik leapt to his feet and grabbed a bottle without looking at it from the
cabinet. He drank two glasses in a row.
“Don’t overdo it on an empty stomach.”
“Go on and fetch me something to eat if that bothers you.”
Tae-sik snorted, refilling his glass. He made faces as the liquor hit his already sore
stomach and belched melodiously. The other three made faces as well. Tae-sik stopped
in the middle of tipping his fresh glass and abruptly offered it to Hyun-sook.
Nobody went to sleep on the third night. Who could have, in that situation - with
two bodies lying in their former rooms, and four to spare? We spent the night huddled
in the living room, listening to the wind blow like the whistle of the Abominable
Snowman. The heavy silence provided no distraction from our hunger. Starvation
was slowly becoming a threat as real as the possibility of murder. Then there was all
the water we drank to fill our stomachs, meaning all of us were making trips to the
bathroom throughout the night. The rustle of clothing, the creak of the bathroom door,
flushing noises, the sound of footsteps on the floorboards…We were like meerkats in
the desert, craning our necks about at the slightest sound.
This time all of us made it alive to the next morning. I remember the faint rays of
dawn shining into the living room. As we savored the small victory that we were
the same circle of faces as the day before, our minds were taken off the two bodies
in the house and the snowstorm that was still raging outside for a while. A very
short while… Nobody knew what to do with the new day that had been given to us.
Somebody suggested we take the bodies outside before they started to rot, but was
21
“Have one with me, Missus. I saw the way you drank on the first day.”
Hyun-sook gave him an icy glare. Tae-sik merely grinned toothily and continued
pushing the glass in her face.
“Take that out of my face!”
Hyun-sook swatted Tae-sik’s hand like a fly. The liquor in the glass spilled over
his hand. That wiped the grin off his face. Each fixed a beady stare upon the other,
refusing to back down.
“Fucking bitch!”
The sharp sound of glass shattering filled the living room. Hyun-sook screamed
and picked up one of the empty bottles resting against the wall by its neck. Shards of
broken glass lay in front of the middle room. A diagonal splash of whiskey adorned
the door, drops trickling down the grain of the wood. All four were simultaneously
reminded of what lay behind that door.
“Stop it, both of you.”
Min-gyu stood between the two. Tae-sik hung his head and sniffed, looking slightly
more contrite. Just as calmly, Hyun-sook set her bottle down and returned to her seat.
Min-gyu was left standing awkwardly, feeling rather foolish now that the fight had
ended so quickly.
“If we fight we’re giving him exactly what he wants. He’s enjoying this game.”
“Well I’m fucking tired of this game. Some game,” Tae-sik mumbled, head down.
“Our only chance is to stick together. The only clue we have is ourselves. There’s
got to be something we have in common.”
“Shit, we ain’t got nothing in common, except the fact that we’re all honest citizens
trying to get by.”
“Who says we don’t?”
Yeonu said unexpectedly, after an afternoon of giving monosyllabic answers to
questions and not talking if she could help it. Six eyeballs immediately fixed their
gaze on her.
“All of us are crazy about serial killers. Isn’t that why we came here in the first
place?”
quashed by the argument that we should not disturb any evidence. All of us agreed
on that point. It meant that there was hope the police would catch the culprit and we
were going to get out of the place at any minute. There’s always hope at the bottom of
the box, I say. Assuming Pandora’s Box is already open.
22
Yeonu peered out the window with bleary eyes. The snowy whirlwind had now
swallowed the mountain completely, obscuring everything as far as the eye could see.
“Isn’t it strange? This isn’t exactly the top of Mt. Everest.”
Min-gyu, standing by her side, was thinking the same thing. When he had checked
the weather forecast just before he left, the reporter had blithely promised nothing but
clear skies for the foreseeable future. Was it possible that the Devil had planned for
this unseasonable weather as well?
“Don’t you get the feeling that this is all an illusion?”
Yeonu reached out to run her palm slowly down the frosty window. The chill went
right through her bones.
“When do you think the hallucinations began? When Oh Young-su was murdered?
Or the minute we got here? When we joined Silver Hammer? Or…from the minute I
was born?”
Min-gyu turned towards the rambling Yeonu. The third day of fasting. Muscles
begin to lose nutrients and vision starts to blur. Aggravated symptoms: impaired
judgment, visual and auditory hallucinations. At least the water was still working.
The human body can survive at least three weeks only drinking water. But that was
without accounting for any other variants besides starvation. Fear of their unknown
killer, anxiety and distrust, but mostly lack of sleep was threatening them even more
than starvation. Min-gyu stared at the pale, haggard man looking back at him in the
window.
“If all of this is a hallucination, so are we. Let’s figure out how we’re going to
survive this hallucination.”
Min-gyu called the others together.
“We can survive for a month without food, but we won’t last five days without
sleeping.”
“Survive for a month while we’re starving?” Tae-sik rolled his hollow eyes.
“I know all about the pain of insomnia,” Hyun-sook agreed, ignoring Tae-sik.
“Let’s try to sleep at least during the day.”
They agreed to take turns sleeping as Min-gyu suggested. It was harder to decide
how and in what order, however. At first they thought of one person standing guard
while the other three slept, like in the barracks of an army. The same thought occurred
to all of them at the same moment, however. What if the guard was the Devil? Sleeping
in mixed pairs did not seem any safer, either. If the Devil turned out to be male, it
would only take a minute to dispose of one starved woman. Finally they decided to
take turns letting one person sleep for three hours while the other three watched each
other. The situation called for safety over efficiency.
Hyun-sook drew the straw to sleep first, followed by Yeonu, Min-gyu, and Tae-sik.
The latter who had been loudly in favor of “drawing straws equally” changed tune
upon drawing the shortest straw, complaining that the number four sounded the
same as the word for death. The others took no notice and Hyun-sook went to take
the first nap in the room at the further end of the first floor, leaving the door open. The
other three took their places in the living room as guardsmen. Tae-sik hovered around
the liquor cabinet, while Min-gyu and Yeonu each staked out a wall to sit against and
look up at the clock occasionally. The second hand dragged itself over the numbers
on the clock’s face as if it had been weighted with sandbags.
23
“I have to give it to this Devil person, at least he’s not stingy. Fuck, when would I
ever get my mitts on classy liquor like this?”
Tae-sik was chugging a 3,000-dollar Remy Martin Louis XIII straight out of the
bottle. He had already polished off a bottle of Richard Hennessy. Min-gyu tried to get
him to slow down unsuccessfully.
“Damn shame I’ll never get the chance to thank him, though. You wanna know
why? Because I’m going to heaven, that’s why! I’ve been such a good person. Never
conned anyone, beat up anyone. All I ever did was wipe those ungrateful brats’ asses
in that hellhole, twelve hours a day, money in the bank, sending money to the old
folks in Jejudo every month, tossing change to the bum on the subway every now and
then… Fuck, why me?”
Tae-sik blathered on with bloodshot eyes as Min-gyu looked at him anxiously. He
was blotchy down to his neck and arms from alcohol poisoning, curly hair lank and
greasy, dark stubble covering his entire jaw. A giant of a man half out of his mind.
Another strike against their favor. Fear brings the violence out of people. Fear that
cannot be pinned down or defined, even more so.
“It’s all over. We’re all gonna die here. They’re gonna find a row of stiffs lying down
on the floor. Like wieners on a string. Either we starve to death or some psycho gets
us, whatever.” Tae-sik sniveled, holding his head in his hands.
“You’re going to die of alcohol poisoning first if you keep on drinking like that,”
Min-gyu replied brusquely, giving Tae-sik a case of the hiccups as he cracked up.
“Alcohol poisoning, ha! I like that. Hey, Sedation. You think you’re so great, don’t
you? I think you’re the Devil. I think you put us all to sleep while you grabbed some
ass. I saw the way you looked at her on the first day. She was a peach, huh? So how
was she? Nice and tight?”
Min-gyu flushed a deep red. He refrained from giving Tae-sik a good kick in the
face, although he badly wanted to. No point in wasting his strength.
“Hey, Miss Deadlock. Whaddya say to a Friday Quiz? What’s the day today…Shit,
who cares. I’ll go first. What do Albert Fish, Jeffrey Dahmer, uhm…Andrei Chikatilo,
and Hannibal Lecter have in common?”
Yeonu made a face from her place in the corner where she sat, hugging her knees,
and turned her back on Tae-sik.
“Bingo. I knew I could count on you. So, aren’t you hungry? Our catch is waiting
for us just there. Got ourselves a nice, fresh pair. They’ll go bad if we don’t eat them
soon.”
“Give it a rest, will you?” Min-gyu frowned.
“Huh, give it one more day and you’ll see. You know they survived on human meat
when some plane crashed in the Andes Mountains, or something like that. We could
do that too. Shit, who says we can’t? So which part do you think is the tastiest? Breast
or thigh?”
24
“Just shut your mouth and fucking drink already if you’re going to drink,” Mingyu grated out between gritted teeth. The haggard men exchanged deep glares of
hate. Yeonu hugged her knees closer. Tae-sik looked away first as he got up. He began
ambling away to the empty room at the end of the hall, bottle in hand.
“Where are you going? It’s not your turn yet.”
“You know what, take your damn turn if you want…we’re all going to die
anyway.”
Soon enough, snoring sounds could be heard from Tae-sik’s room. Min-gyu decided
it was probably better to let him sleep.
“He’s scared, that’s all. It’s the worst thing…” Min-gyu glanced at the clock. “It’s
time. Go and take your turn.”
Yeonu got to her feet, leaning against the wall for support, and went to the room. The
steady sound of breathing floated over the doorstep. Well, I’m glad somebody is getting
some sleep. Yeonu briefly stood watching Hyun-sook, who was drooling in her sleep,
before shaking her awake. Hyun-sook opened her eyes blearily and sat up.
“Is it time already?”
“Yes, three hours.”
Hyun-sook wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and smiled sheepishly.
“You must be thinking how someone called Insomnia can sleep in a situation like
this.”
“What? No, of course not…”
Yeonu trailed off. Hyun-sook got off the bed and stretched luxuriously.
“Well, you can’t have insomnia if you’re dead. Go ahead and get some sleep. I feel
so much better.”
“I don’t think I can sleep.”
Yeonu sat on the bed and fiddled with the pillow. Hyun-sook rummaged in her
Boston bag and fished out a small plastic medicine bottle. She took Yeonu’s hand and
shook out one pill on her palm.
“Take this. You’ll sleep like a baby,” Hyun-sook whispered in Yeonu’s ear.
“Isn’t that aspirin?” Yeonu also lowered her voice as she gestured toward the
bottle.
“Sleeping pills. Stilnox. They work fast, and they don’t give you headaches. They’re
the best, according to my expert opinion.” Hyun-sook smiled and added, “I just
changed the bottle.”
Min-gyu was having trouble keeping his eyes open, his face drawn from lack of
sleep. Hyun-sook returned to the living room looking much better.
“Where did Mr. Internet Café go?”
Min-gyu jerked his chin towards the room where Tae-sik was sleeping. Hyun-sook
took a look inside and tut-tutted.
“I’m sorry, you must be so tired,” Hyun-sook offered in consolation, earning a
shrug from Min-gyu. She did not sit down immediately but paced the room, bag over
her shoulder. She fussed with her hair for a minute, looking at her reflection in the
window, before turning abruptly towards the bathroom.
“I’m going to take a shower, if you don’t mind. It’s been two days…”
The bathroom door swung shut and sounds of it being locked from the inside
could be heard before Min-gyu had time to reply. Unbelievable. What if I was the
Devil? Left alone in the living room, Min-gyu curled up in a sitting position with his
head on his knees. He felt like a fossil stuck between layers of sedimentary rock. This
is what I get for sticking to my stupid rules... Living, breathing human beings were
so much more tiresome than unconscious ones. Selfish, ungrateful, and impulsive.
Had they honestly forgotten all about the Devil and the dead bodies, when they had
been so happy to set up these rules to keep them safe? In a way he envied their easy
forgetfulness. The sleepiness he had shoved aside was creeping up on him as he sat
there all by himself. Once upon a time there were three bears in a house…One bear
went to sleep because it was its turn…One bear went to sleep because it was dead
drunk…One bear got up and went to take a shower…One bear—no, there were only
three bears…And his drooping eyelids shut down like a roller shutter.
25
Hyun-sook pressed her ear against the bathroom door for a moment. Outside all
was silent. She walked over to the triangular-shaped bathtub installed in the corner
of the bathroom and turned the shower on. Water gushed out and plopped noisily
against the floor of the bathtub. Hyun-sook sat down on the cover of the toilet seat
and took out a packet of organic potato crackers from her bag. She counted out exactly
ten and stowed the rest away in her bag again. Careful not to make any noise, she let
each cracker melt on her tongue before sucking down the soggy mess a little bit at a
time. A few crumbs of cracker had never tasted so good. It felt like her entire body
was trying to absorb them as soon as they went down.
Since her son had become old enough to bring outside she always kept a few snacks
in her bag. She recalled how Sumin looked in his father’s arms as they saw her off in
the parking lot. The toddler had pouted and refused to look at her when he heard that
Mama was going to spend the night away. He must be fussing and crying for her by
now, she wondered if he was eating at all…I have to survive, if only for Sumin, Hyunsook resolved as she gulped down her slurry of cracker. The ten of them were gone
in instant. She stopped herself from eating just a few more, although she wanted to.
There was no telling how long she would be stuck here. Hyun-sook washed her hands
in the sink and cupped some water in them to drink. The hollow-cheeked woman in
the mirror laughed at her. Ha, so she had to live for Sumin?
If not for him…How many times had she said these words to herself, looking at the
child that was always clinging to her? She could divorce her husband in an instant,
start painting again and finally go study art in New York, get back her own life…
By the time she was free from his clutches the best years of her life would already
be behind her. When the newborn babe suckling at her breast reminded her more
of a parasite than anything, it finally sank in. The experience of giving birth did not
necessarily come with the guarantee of maternal instinct.
The healthier the child grew, the deeper ruin her life and dreams seemed to sink
into, like that of an abandoned house. Afraid of how attractive the view from the
verandah of her 25th-floor apartment was becoming as she held the child in her arms,
she volunteered for sessions with a psychiatrist and a prescription for antidepressants.
If not for him…How often had she used the innocent toddler as an excuse for her own
incompetence as she wallowed in regret? And now she was using him again. Sitting
on the toilet seat, sneaking cracker crumbs as she told herself that she had to survive
at whatever cost because she was the mother of a helpless child.
26
The woman in the mirror had bits of cracker in her teeth. Hyun-sook took out
her toothbrush and toothpaste from her bag and started brushing. She stared hard
at the mirror and scrubbed so vigorously her jaw flinched. She just had a slightly
aggravated case of postpartum depression. She still loved Sumin, didn’t she? Now
she had to focus on survival. The others were probably doing the same. Who was
there to say that they weren’t eating their own rations in secret? She just had to hang
on a little bit more. Her husband must have surely contacted his powerful friends in
the prosecutor’s office by now, and maybe the police had already found the Devil’s
invitation in her inbox. There was a map attached…
Hyun-sook bent over the sink and rinsed her mouth. If she made it back home,
she was confident that she could do anything. She was also aware where her sudden
confidence came from. It was enough to make anyone rethink their position in life,
witnessing two perfectly healthy people die so pointlessly before their very eyes. She
was still young. There were still plenty of opportunities for her in life. She would quit
whining and get herself a studio. Sumin would be proud to have a real artist as a
mother, wouldn’t he? But first she would suggest a family vacation. A few days on the
beach in Hawaii would blow this nightmare right out of her mind. Or they could go to
the hot springs in Beppu…Hyun-sook spat into the sink and looked up at the mirror.
The woman in the mirror was there, looking much better, with a black shape hulking
behind her like a statue. The shower was still running noisily against the bathtub.
The thing swathed in a loose black hood raised one arm threateningly. A plain back
mask covering its face, bloodshot eyes staring out of round holes, a Swiss Army
knife glinting high above the woman’s head…Hyun-sook watched impassively, like
someone observing a movie poster on the street.
Have I mentioned this before? There’s something I always wondered about
Bluebeard when I was a child. What if Bluebeard’s wife respected his orders and
never opened the door to the secret chamber? Would she and Bluebeard have lived
happily ever after, in their nice big castle? Eating and sleeping and dancing to a merry
tune in the ballroom…with that room full of dead bodies hanging on the wall right
next to them. Wouldn’t that be an even more horrifying story? He would have been
mad at her if she hadn’t opened the door. “Don’t you have any curiosity?” Haha, I
guess he would have been mad because he wouldn’t have an excuse to marry again.
What if his wife before that hadn’t opened the door either, she wouldn’t be hanging
on the wall there. Or the wife before that, and the wife before that…The story would
have been, Bluebeard lived a long live with his faithful wife until they died. We can’t
say if they lived happily ever after, though. But, you know…if nobody ever went
inside that room, if there were never any bodies to hang on the wall there at all, what
do you think was inside the room before that?
Somebody was poking him in his sleep. Tae-sik opened his eyes, smacking his lips.
Damn, just when he was in the middle of an amazing dream… Min-gyu and Yeonu
were looking down at him. Tae-sik remained in his prone position, blinking his eyes to
focus them. The empty bottle of Louis XIII sprawled next to him, having regurgitated
that last of its contents on the bed.
“Kim Hyun-sook has been murdered. Just now, in the bathroom.”
27
Tae-sik sat up at once. His head throbbed everywhere, as if it was peppered with
bolts and somebody was tightening them. Shit, were they all going to die in this place?
The nagging feeling of fear and anxiety crept up again as sobriety returned.
“Apparently the murderer struck when she was eating something in secret. There
was a snack wrapper in her bag.”
Min-gyu tossed the bag he had been holding next to Tae-sik.
“So they got her, heh heh. Serves her right.”
“Were you sleeping here the whole time?” Min-gyu asked, staring him in the eye.
“What’s it to you?”
“I was in the living room by myself and…I fell asleep. Just answer the question.”
His manner spoke of someone struggling to contain his animosity. Tae-sik finally
noticed the stick in Min-gyu’s hands. It was one of the kitchen table’s legs.
“Are you accusing me? Do you think I’m out killing people when I can barely sit
up?”
“What are those crumbs on your lip, then?”
“What…”
Tae-sik swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. A wealth of sandy crumbs
fell off. They tasted salty on his tongue. More of the pale stuff was stuck to his sweater,
on his chest and belly. His head twinged again. He looked up at the other two in
bewilderment, but was only met by chilly gazes. A shaky picture was slowly surfacing
in his head. He could see it more and more clearly, as if someone was adjusting the
focus.
“How…did she die?”
“She was stabbed in the neck, from behind.”
Tae-sik broke out in goose bumps. He almost fell off the bed and crawled to his
backpack lying in the corner of the room. His Swiss Army knife was right where it
should be. The blade that flicked out was covered with blood. Tae-sik felt his heart
turn into ice. Min-gyu and Yeonu approached from behind.
“Don’t come near me!”
Tae-sik whirled around, brandishing the knife. He grabbed Yeonu by her hair and
was holding the knife to her throat before Min-gyu knew what was happening. The
bloody blade trembled precariously. So did Yeonu.
“Hey, hey there, relax, put that away.”
Min-gyu reached out to reassure him, but the stick in his hand rather spoiled the
effect.
“Put the stick down. Now!”
Tae-sik’s face was gleaming with cold sweat. His bloodshot eyes looked ready to
burst a vessel at any moment. Yeonu was looking peakier than ever, her face squashed
under his chin. Min-gyu tossed the stick away. Tae-sik gave a look around, panting
heavily, before dragging Yeonu out of the room by her hair. He returned with a
clothesline over his arm and proceeded to tie her hands from behind. It proved to be
not so easy, however, with one hand on his knife and one eye on Min-gyu. He tossed
the clothesline at Min-gyu’s feet and turned Yeonu around.
“You! Tie her up.”
Min-gyu slowly picked up the clothesline and began tying Yeonu’s wrists from
behind. Tae-sik stood facing Yeonu, holding his knife to her throat as he mumbled
like a crazy person.
“It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it. It was a dream. I didn’t even know she was hiding
food, dammit. It was…it was him, in the black mask, in my dream…holding my knife,
oh shit…”
Tae-sik ordered Min-gyu to tie Yeonu’s ankles together as well. He was squatting
down by her feet when he heard a sudden thud, right next to his ear. Searing pain
settled into the back of his head as blackness washed over him. He was being sucked
into a deep hole in the ground. The sound of a woman’s scream lingered in his ears.
28
Tae-sik paced the living room frantically. He started at the sight of the bloody blade
in his hands and tossed it away. The knife bounced against the wall and fell to the
ground with a dull thud. Everything was deathly silent afterwards, as if the sound
had been a signal to stop time. He peered about, neck scrunched, before scuttling to
the front door.
“Fuck, I’m not going to die here.”
The powerful gust of wind when he opened the door drove the snow that had
been piled chest-high straight into his face. It was a struggle to shut it again. He just
managed by heaving against it with his shoulder, and fell into a panting slump when
it was done.
“Shit, I bust my ass for too long to die like this. I just need a few more years, just
three more years. Me and my cousin, we’re gonna go to Jejudo, build ourselves a nice
guesthouse, not like this shithole, no way, gonna fix it up real nice, take a few lodgers,
spend the day fishing…”
Tae-sik’s monologue was interrupted by the sight of the bathroom door hanging
ajar. His heart started beating madly. The sound of a standing ovation crashed in his
ears, the audience calling for an encore. His legs stumbled by themselves and took
him to the bathroom. It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it. Tae-sik said to himself like a prayer
with his hand on the doorknob. The applause grew even more deafening. He peered
inside the gap of the open door. Hyun-sook was kneeling on the tiled floor, draped
over the sink with her head stuffed inside. The toothbrush clutched in the corpse’s
dangling right hand, the three gaping red slashes on her neck, the rivulets of blood
dripping down the mirror…it was just as he had seen it in his dream. Backing away
into the living room, Tae-sik fell down hard on his bottom.
“It’s not me, not me. I’m going to go to Heaven. I was good.”
Tae-sik sobbed on his knees like a child being scolded by his mother. The discarded
knife on the floor caught his eye. He leaned over and picked it up.
“I didn’t even know she had food hidden away. I would have fucking taken it if I
knew she was stuffing herself in secret. Even if I had to kill her. No! No I wouldn’t.
Not for some stupid crackers.”
Tae-sik held the knife so that it pointed towards himself and stretched his arm back.
The tip was positioned precisely above his heart. His hand trembled uncontrollably.
The bloodstained blade seemed to nod in understanding.
“It really was…a dream.”
He opened his eyes in darkness. The back of his head felt as sore as if it had been
burned by fire. He tried to rub it but found that he could not raise his arm. Both his
29
hands and feet were tied securely. Every time he struggled he could hear creaking
everywhere. It seemed that he was stuffed inside a closet. He tried shoving against the
door with his shoulder but only succeeded in rattling it. Shifting position, he tried a
kick this time. The gap between the two doors of the wardrobe showed the clothesline
that had been used to tie the handles together horizontally. He made himself as small
as possible before throwing himself against the door with all his strength. The door
flew off and out fell Min-gyu with it.
Yeonu lay inside the other corner of the wardrobe, trussed up in the same fashion.
She made no sign that she had heard the sound of the door being kicked down. All
was quiet outside the room, as well. Min-gyu rubbed the clothesline securing his
wrists against the hinge of the door. It had not been tied with great care and the knots
came undone quickly once one of the cords broke. He untied his feet and took a step
towards Yeonu. She was in a deep sleep, a peaceful expression on her face. How could
she sleep now? He released her bonds and gave her a light slap. Yeonu opened her
eyes with a moan.
“Where…where is this place?”
“Ssh! He might hear us.”
Min-gyu peered outside the crack of the bedroom door, but there was no sign of Taesik. He was pushing it open a bit further when he caught sight of the big man lying in
the middle of the living room. Min-gyu picked up the stick that he had tossed aside.
He motioned to Yeonu to stay where she was and crept outside. Dizziness assailed
him immediately, so hard that he could barely walk straight. He could see the knife in
Tae-sik’s hand. Min-gyu clutched his stick and leapt forward. He stopped abruptly,
however, from bringing the stick down as he intended. Orange-colored clothesline
was wrapped around and digging into the thick neck. The tongue sticking out of the
open mouth hung slackly. Min-gyu stood frozen in place, looking down into Tae-sik’s
unblinking eyes. The living room floor seemed to spin like a roulette wheel.
Yeonu staggered up to him. She squatted next to Tae-sik and calmly began to untie
the clothesline wrapped around his neck.
“I had a dream,” Yeonu murmured in a dreamy voice, like one hypnotized. “He
was sitting right here, holding this knife and crying like a child. That was when the
man in the black robe appeared. Or maybe it was a woman. Holding the clothesline
in both hands like this, sneaking up on him from behind…throwing it around his
neck…and then, a sharp tug. It wasn’t easy because his neck was so thick.”
Yeonu held out her hands. Two angry red lines of rope burn stood out against her
palms.
“I could hear the sound of him choking, feel the rope vibrating from his spasms.
But I couldn’t stop myself. I wasn’t afraid, when I was pulling the rope. Not of that
knife over there, nor the bodies, the hunger, the Devil…it was like they were wiped
out of my mind.”
She looked wonderingly at her hands, a dreamy expression on her face.
“It was just like everybody said. The black mask…in my dream…”
Yeonu turned towards Min-gyu abruptly, as if she had just remembered something.
“The second time, when Sena was killed…”
Their eyes met. Min-gyu flinched.
“You had a dream.”
Yeonu rose and went to the window. The piled snow was dancing in the wind and
climbing up the sky like white smoke.
“I think I know where the Devil is now.”
30
Do you think the Devil is really committing these murders in our dreams? Or are
we the ones in the Devil’s dreams? He just invited us in, when he was having a nice
siesta. But why? Why us? What have we done? Does it make a difference? We’re
dealing with the Devil here. The one that whispers in our ear, the one that pulls tricks
on us, laughs at us. Not some lofty god doling out judgment from above. Still…I don’t
get it. Why? Think of it this way, it’s like Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. Maxwell’s Silver
Hammer? Yeah, like the Beatles song, don’t you remember? That’s where “Silver
Hammer” comes from. It was the tune that played when the main screen loaded, with
pictures of murderers and their victims all mashed up together in the background…
Joan was quizzical, studied metaphysical
Science in the home
Late nights all alone with a test tube
Ohh-oh-oh-oh...
Maxwell Edison majoring in medicine
Calls her on the phone
“Can I take you out to the pictures
Joa-oa-oa-oan?”
But as she’s getting ready to go
A knock comes on the door...
Bang, bang, Maxwell’s silver hammer
Came down upon her head
Bang, bang, Maxwell’s silver hammer
Made sure that she was dead
“He wasn’t right in the head, even when he was a child. His hobby was to collect dead
animals, skin them, and dissolve the meat in hydrochloric acid. He was withdrawn,
didn’t have friends, lived mostly in his fantasy world. Dreaming of murder, torture,
dismemberment, cannibalization, necrophilia…”
Min-gyu did not take his eyes off Yeonu, who sat leaning against the opposite wall.
The sight of her, barely able to prop up her own neck, appeared all blurred to him as if
viewed through a dirty window. His body felt like it was floating on a bed of clouds.
He could not remember anything, what day it was today, how many days he had
gone without eating, how he was going to escape. He could only think of one thing.
When she sleeps, I die.
“He polished off seventeen all told. All black boys. He lured the kids to his house,
and acted out his wildest fantasies. The police officers that searched the house, they
said they saw Hell inside there. In the trial…he was sentenced to…900 years or
something…”
Min-gyu snapped his head back up. Across him, Yeonu’s head had dropped
between her knees. He crawled toward her, panting. His body dragged behind him
like a sack full of scrap metal, regardless of his urgency. He grabbed her chin and
raised her head. She did not open her eyes, even when he doused her face with water
31
from the basin sitting next to her. Min-gyu slapped her wet cheek as hard as he could.
Yeonu squinted her eyes open a crack, frowning.
“I…was…listening.”
Min-gyu sat beside her and leaned back against the wall.
“He was finally beaten to death in jail, by two black inmates.”
“Fish. Albert Fish.” Yeonu said, rubbing her eyes.
“Jeffery Dahmer. It was an easy question.”
Min-gyu scolded with disapproving eyes.
“It’s your turn now.”
Yeonu thought for a long time before she opened her mouth and began in a listless
voice:
“He had a serious complex about his masculinity, because he thought he was
too short and his voice was too much like a girl’s. And so he was consumed by this
fantasy of cannibalizing big, blonde women. He wanted to…become one with them.
So finally he met this woman, Renée, when he was studying in Paris, and acted out
his lifelong fantasy. He lived with the body for four days…satisfying his appetite and
libido at the same time. But he was pronounced insane and walked free after a short
stay in the hospital. He wrote a book about it later that became a bestseller, bragged
about it on TV…”
“Sagawa Issei.” Min-gyu said, and the name was like a sneeze.
Yeonu nodded her head slowly. Min-gyu gazed at her wasted features. Her cheeks
had sunken, giving her a skeletal appearance, and her eyes were clouded over. The
fathomless expression of calm on her face made her look like somebody with one foot
already in death’s door. Min-gyu thought he must look much the same.
“Just hang in there a little longer. The snow is getting weaker. I think we can go out
once the wind settles down.”
“Really? Looks like it’s getting worse, to me.”
Yeonu snickered, looking outside the window. It did look like the snow was getting
worse. But was it cold? Where does the wind come from? Min-gyu rubbed his face
with a hand dipped in water.
“Shall we continue? This person…had trouble relating to other people. He suffered
from the paranoid belief that everyone wanted to control him, that they were pretending
to be his friend, hiding their true thoughts. And he was afraid of being outed as a
paranoiac, so afraid and anxious all the time. And so…he started to feel an attraction
to patients under anesthesia. He would pour his heart out to them when they were
still asleep, ‘cause he felt like they had a real connection, you know? Of course they
wouldn’t remember a thing when they woke up, but they would remember what I
told them subconsciously…Honestly, I can’t say my intentions are entirely honorable
when the patient is a young woman. It’s not necrophilia, but I just feel like lying down
on the table and holding them close to me. Not demanding or hiding anything…the
pure body, castrated of consciousness and sensation…”
“Have you ever killed a person?” Yeonu asked suddenly, jerking Min-gyu out of
his reverie. “I have.”
“…Really?”
“In my translations.”
Min-gyu’s face crumpled into a laugh. Yeonu gave a dry laugh of her own.
32
“At first I tried switching little objects in the text. Things that no one would notice. I
would translate milk tea for coffee, change the color of the curtains, the dog into a cat…
It’s very hard to catch something like that, as long as you don’t go over the original and
the translation side by side. Not that anyone would do something like that for the books
I was translating…I felt secretly validated, like I had planted signs in the world only I
knew about. Like magic stones that would glow only when I said the spell…Almost
like I had changed a part of the world. I could never do that in real life.”
Yeonu was thinking, as her consciousness flickered like a faulty light bulb. How
long could they keep watching each other so they never fell asleep? The game was
almost over…when they reached their limit, there was only one way this man was
going to sleep peacefully.
“And when I got tired of that…I killed a man. It was an Argentinian novel called
Recipe for Revenge, and there was this character I couldn’t imagine why the author
had written in the first place, who does absolutely nothing for the story. So in his last
scene…I killed him off, just like that.”
“A classic case of unprovoked murder. How did you finish him off?”
“I…I made him walk in a deserted alley in the middle of the night, and had him get
hit on the head by an empty bottle somebody threw from the building above. Pretty
stupid, right? I thought it suited…”
Min-gyu whipped around when Yeonu stopped mid-sentence. She was grimacing
while she held her abdomen. A faint moan slipped out between clenched teeth.
“What’s the matter? Are you in pain?”
“Yes, I am in pain. A pain you’ll never feel.”
Yeonu forced a grin on her face. She located Hyun-sook’s Boston bag from the pile
of bags in the corner and took out a white medicine bottle. Min-gyu craned his neck to
see what was written on the label. Yeonu opened the cap and shook out three tablets
on her palm. She gazed at them for a moment. Finally she shook out one more and
washed them all down with water from basin.
“It’s not good to take so much aspirin for cramps. You should see an ob-gyn if they
give you severe pain.”
“Sure, I’ll go see one. Later.” Yeonu sniggered again.
The two were silent for a while. Min-gyu fought drowsiness by banging the back
of his head on the wall from time to time like a woodchuck. Both felt that were
approaching their limit, mentally and physically. Yeonu resumed speaking in an
expressionless voice.
“After Recipe for Revenge was published, I went to the big bookstore downtown to
check it out. To read about the murder I committed, surrounded by all those people…
You know how I felt? I felt so guilty. For a while I couldn’t leave the house, and at
night I had these nightmares about that Argentinian guy chasing after me with blood
spurting out of his head…what a mess. It was on a completely different level from
changing a dog into a cat. But when the guilt went away, somewhat…I kept thinking
about doing it again. The thrill, you know, was so much better than changing a dog
into a cat.”
Min-gyu gazed dreamily at Yeonu gazing dreamily at the angry snowstorm outside
the window. A screen seemed to furl down between them, blocking her from his
sight. Only the sound of her voice came through, in erratic spurts.
Snowflakes arrive on the wind, attach themselves to the window and peer inside.
An emaciated man is sitting on an emaciated woman, his hands pressed around her
throat. Spittle drips down from his curled lip. His eyeballs protruding to the point of
falling out, his face twisted in an expression that resembles both crying and laughing…
The woman underneath, however, lies as limp as a rag doll with her eyes closed. A
black shape approaches the tableau from behind. Black robe, black mask, holes cut
out for a pair of impassive black eyes. Moving as noiselessly as a shadow, it takes
33
“And so when I get a new book…it’s like I can’t stop…looking…for a new victim.
Somebody no, one, would no, tice…ev,en…if they di…e…sud,den…ly…, what,
should I, do….to them…this ti…me…”
The dragged-out, broken bits of sound tickled at his ear, but the syllables were
meaningless to him.
“You, told….me…if, all…thi…s…is a, hall,u,ci,na…tion, so, are...we…sh,ould…
tr,y…to fi…gure…..out, how, to, sur, vive…”
Min-gyu opened his eyes because of the sensation that something was clinging to
his shoulder. Yeonu’s eyes were closed and her head lay lovingly on his shoulder as
if they were lovers. Soft breaths fell on his cheek. Min-gyu shoved Yeonu’s head away
with the palm of his hand. She toppled over without a sound.
“Wake up.”
He kicked at her bottom, but Yeonu lay absolutely still. Min-gyu sighed and
crawled towards her. He splashed water in her face and gave her a few slaps. But she
remained as limp as some giant doll and would not open her eyes. Something was
wrong. He bent over and put his ear to her lips that were slightly parted open. Her
breath so weak it barely registered, but she was breathing in and out evenly. Min-gyu
grabbed her by the hair and jerked it violently.
“Wake up! Wake up, dammit!”
He gripped her collar and hauled her up into a sitting position, hitting her face
every which way. No response. The moisture in his mouth turned into ashes. Mingyu picked up one of her arms with both hands. He opened his mouth wide and
sunk his teeth into the bony limb. The effort made his already weakened teeth wiggle
every which way. Blood seeped out of the fresh marks on her arm, but it seemed that
nothing could waken her from her sleep. She was like a patient under anesthesia. Not
demanding or hiding anything, a pure body castrated of consciousness and sensation…
Deep inside his chest, Min-gyu’s heart was ready to burst out of frustration.
“Fucking hell, wake up! Open your eyes!”
There was a sudden chill behind him, as if someone had opened a refrigerator
door. He whirled around but there was nobody. The snowstorm was still going
strong outside the window. Min-gyu wheezed and huffed frantically. A faint smile
spread on Yeonu’s face as if she was having a pleasant dream. The smile whispered
in Min-gyu’s ear, I win. Min-gyu gulped a dry swallow. He reached forward slowly
and wrapped his hands around Yeonu’s throat. Bulging with veins, her puny neck
fit perfectly inside his grip. He felt like he could snap it in two like a twig. Min-gyu
began applying pressure to his fingers. What the hell am I doing? Is this really me?
Regardless of the alarm bells clanging in his head, his heart was squeezing out every
last drop of energy and channeling it to his ten fingertips.
an orange clothesline out of its sleeve. The man is still latched to the woman’s neck,
laughing and crying at the same time. The woman wrinkles her nose, once. Behind
the man’s back, the black mask draws the clothesline tight in its skeletal hands.
What time is it now? I don’t know. This place feels like time has stopped. Is it still
snowing outside? Well, if you call that white stuff outside snow, it could be light
shining on us, or something so dark it swallowed up the light…what difference does
it make? I don’t even want to go outside anymore. You know, I have an idea, the last
person to survive this game becomes the Devil. I have a quiz for you. What do I have in
common with…Albert Fish, Jeffrey Dahmer, Andrei Chikatilo, and Hannibal Lecter?
Relax. They did it in the Andes or somewhere when their plane crashed. Relax, the
main thing is to survive. Focus on that for now. Am I alive or not? Who am I, though?
You’ll find out, if you keep telling the story. If you survived, if anyone survived…
I can’t. I’m....so, sleepy. So am I. Let’s just hang on a little bit more. Can’t we go to
sleep now? The game is over. You think it’s really over? Are you aware, that if we fall
asleep, that there could be a sixth dream? A sixth dream…I don’t want to know what
that is, whatever it is. Me neither. So I say, buck up. If we’re inside the Devil’s dream,
we just have to stick it out. Until the Devil wakes up. OK, I’ll go first this time.
Friday night, the seven of us were gathered in the lodge. The Devil that invited us
wasn’t, though…
34
Recipe for Revenge
1
35
Schubert: String Quartet No.14 in D Minor, D.810, “Death and the Maiden.” The
Munch painting of the same name graces the cover of the CD. The naked maiden and
the skeleton man kissing as they embrace each other. The maiden’s flesh glows pink.
Red tresses cascade down the supple curves of her back and shoulders. Her demurely
closed eyes seem to be fluttering. The wan skeleton man looks pitifully frail next to
the buxom maiden. His bony claws can barely contain her sturdy waist. He tries to
retreat, pushing his hips awkwardly backward. The maiden has thrown her sleek
arms around his neck, however, and shows no sign of letting go. Her plump breasts
press firmly against his bony ribcage.
The man flips the CD over to examine the back. He adds up the time of all the
movements, checking each carefully with a latex-gloved fingertip. 38 minutes 28
seconds. He glances at his watch and turns to look out the window. The clouds have
just parted to show the pale face of the crescent moon. That’s a bit long…The man
turns around, fanning himself with the CD. A man is lying down on the single bed
pushed against the wall. His posture is as unnatural as that of a corpse on a slab,
lying straight on his back facing the ceiling. A briefcase lies ajar next to the pillow,
showing the portable respiratory equipment crammed inside. The tube connected to
the aluminum oxygen tank coils over the man’s chest and disappears inside his open
mouth. The fluorescent light glints in his pupils, drooping eyelids giving them the
appearance of being sliced in half.
“You like Schubert?”
The man slides the disk inside the portable CD player on the desk without bothering
to wait for an answer. He presses play and the air fills with the sound of faint static.
Majestic cello strains signal the beginning of the first movement. The man stands
with his hands behind his back, listening to the string quartet. He taps his left finger
smartly in time with the music.
“There was also a movie called Death and the Maiden, perhaps you’ve heard of it?
A Roman Polanski movie starring Sigourney Weaver. I think they called it The Truth
in Korea. Supposedly it was better for the box office that way. What kind of title is
that, though? …Stupid, really. No death, no maiden, just the truth.”
The man comes over and plops down on the bed next to the prone figure. The
movement sends a tremor through the other man’s body like a raft rocked by the
waves.
“The movie is set in some South American country that just became a democracy
after years under a fascist regime. The main character used to be a student activist and
she has post traumatic stress disorder now from all the torture she suffered. While
blindfolded, she was raped and subjected to electric shocks over and over again by
this torturer. He always put on Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” while he was
doing it. They really did that in South America, you know. The victims could never
bear that music afterwards, all their lives. Pavlovian reaction.”
The man fixes his eyes on the dark mildew stains in the corner where two of the
walls and the ceiling met.
36
“The regime was finally overthrown and she gets married to another activist, a
lawyer. Except she’s not over what happened to her. She’s afraid to go anywhere
and lives like a recluse in this lonely house by the sea. I guess it would be surprising
if she was okay after all that. Anyway. There’s this terrible storm one day, and her
husband gets a ride home from this doctor because his car broke down. The husband
invites him in for a drink and she’s in the bedroom, listening to them talking. You see
where this is going? Yes, she’s positive this doctor is the same guy who tortured her.
She never saw his face but she recognizes his voice, the way he talks, the sound of his
laugh. What really cinches it is a tape of “Death and the Maiden” in his car. Time for
revenge. I never miss a movie about revenge if I can help it.”
The speaker plays on, the melody of the two violins zipping across the small room
as nimbly as a pond skater on water.
“She waits until he falls asleep to tie him up, and now it’s her turn to interrogate him.
Holding a gun to his head. She just wants one thing: his confession. So poetic. But the
doctor refuses to acknowledge he did anything. He insists that he had nothing to do
with the military regime, that he was living abroad at the time. The husband doesn’t
know who to believe either, because he knows his wife has a history of hysteria. So
who’s telling the truth? The “trial” goes on all night but the doctor won’t admit doing
anything. She finally tells him he’s getting the death penalty anyway and drags him
to this cliff on the seaside. The doctor is staring down at the waves crashing on the
rocks at the bottom of the cliff as the sun is coming up when he finally confesses
the truth. All of the atrocious things he did, the sweet taste of power in the torture
chamber, how much he missed it all. Now we’re just waiting to see if she carries out
the sentence. She doesn’t say anything, just…lets him go.
I don’t like this ending at all. The truth, what does that change? I’m not saying it’s
useless. I’m just saying it’s like a painting in the museum. Like the Mona Lisa, Starry
Night, The Kiss…It’s a beautiful thing, for sure. You go to see it and experience the
aura. Experience a little uplifting of the soul. Of course it’s going to be plunged in the
gutter as soon as you exit the museum, but still. But scars are different. Scars are just
for you. They’re there to remind you to never forget how you got this scar. She should
have pushed the doctor off that cliff. It’s the only thing to do. The only decent thing
you can do for an old friend like a scar.”
The man twists his head to look down at the other man lying in a frozen position.
A reflection of his face appears in the dry pupils under half-open eyelids.
“You can’t move a muscle, can you? Or close your eyes. Don’t worry. You’ve just
had an injection of muscle relaxant. It’s used in surgery with anesthesia to cut the
muscles off from the nervous system. Much easier to cut and slice and dig around the
human body when the muscles are relaxed. You’re still conscious, though, aren’t you?
You can hear well, too. Why don’t you just relax and enjoy the Schubert? I’m going to
push you off the cliff anyway when this masterpiece is over.”
After a short pause, the second movement starts. A doleful tune oozes over the
floor and wraps itself around the man’s ankles.
“Andante con moto. Slowly, but with motion. 26 minutes, 58 seconds to go. In the
meantime, let me tell you about myself. I assume you want to know something about
the person who’s going to kill you, am I right? Don’t worry; I shan’t waste your time
with all the boring details.”
37
The man rolls up his left sleeve and shoves his arm in front of the captive’s face. A
long, jagged scar runs across it.
“See this? I’m just going to tell you about this scar.”
He rolls his sleeve back down and buttons the cuff.
“I was nine when I had my first seizure. I was thumbing through The Brothers
Karamazov at the bookstore. Dostoyevsky. I was always a precocious child. Now that
I think back, that precociousness was my body setting up a defense mechanism of
sorts. I had to learn how the world works earlier than others. Anyway, I was holding
that book in my hand when I lost consciousness, and when I woke up I was in the
emergency room. They said the ambulance crew brought me there because I suddenly
collapsed and was having a seizure. I had nine stiches above my right eyebrow where
I fell and banged my head on the corner of the bookcase. I was still in a daze. The
confusing part was my mother’s reaction. She didn’t say a word, not when we were
listening to the doctor’s explanation, not on the way home while she held me by the
hand. I remember I was touching the bandage on my forehead, and I looked up and
saw the sad lines around her mouth.
“I learned the reason that evening. Mother sat me and my younger sister down
and explained what had happened to Father. He choked to death on his own vomit
because he had an epileptic attack when he was home alone. Not because of carbon
monoxide poisoning from the coal heater, like she told us before. We just nodded. It
didn’t change the fact that he was dead, anyway. But we kept quiet because Mother
was being so serious. There were no funny questions when she started giving first-aid
instructions. Lay him on his side so the spittle doesn’t go down his throat, clear the
area of any dangerous objects, loosen any buttons or belts or tight clothing, stay by his
side until the seizures stop, etc., etc. And she made my sister promise to never leave
my side when she wasn’t home to watch me. My sister just pouted. Mother was away
almost every day because she cleaned houses.
“Actually it’s quite rare to die of an epileptic attack. That’s exactly what happened
to Mother with Father, though, so it’s understandable that she was so vigilant about
it. The sight of me must have been a living reminder of her husband left alone in
his room, choking to death, and all the guilt she carried afterwards for that. Which
became my sister’s to carry from then on. Once she came home from work early and
found me alone in the house. It was bad luck that my sister had chosen that day to go
play with her friends. Mother used the bamboo duster on her calves until they were
black and blue and kicked her out of the house. On a snowy day, without any proper
clothes. I lay on my stomach reading Notes from Underground and I heard her crying
from outside the window. Mommy, I’m sorry, Mommy, I’m sorry, Mommy…
“My sister and I are fraternal twins, born on the same day to the hour. But we
were different from each other. A lot different. She was always laughing, good with
people—she and Mother could be fighting one minute and she could have her laughing
the next—she was passionate about the normal teenage things, like boy bands, and
she would always try out new things even if she didn’t have the patience to finish
them…She was born to light up a room wherever she went. It helped that she was a
beauty, unlike me. Grandmother Samshin must have had a cataract in one eye when
she was blessing us. She gave all the good stuff to my sister, and all the crappy stuff
to me. Stuff like epilepsy.”
38
The man taps his foot in time with the rhythm of the music, checks the digital
screen of the player for the time elapsed.
“Mother’s first-aid lesson turned out to come in handy. For some reason I was
always having seizures when it was just the two of us at home. It made her quite
protective of me. I could be eating dinner, watching TV, having a bath…and I’d go
out like a light, just like that. Like a fuse blowing out. And when I came to my senses
there she would be, looking down at me with her clear eyes. She’d smile and say, hi
there. Those words were like a message of rebirth to me. That I had a new fuse, that
it wasn’t my time yet. She looked like a saint to me, with the halo of the fluorescent
lamp hanging on the ceiling above her head. She was so bright it hurt my eyes to look
at her. I would be lying there on the ground, twitching like a bug somebody stepped
on, and she would be sitting there quietly, watching her other half foaming in the
mouth, eyes rolling back into his head, limbs flailing, shitting his pants when he lost
control of his sphincter. I wonder what she thought of it all?
“I’m sure she must have had her share of complaints. She was just a kid who
should’ve been hanging out with her friends, and she was stuck at home all day
because of me. My guardian angel from the day we were born. I was thankful for
her, and I was sorry for her. But there was always something dark and sticky lurking
under the surface of my human feelings. Spreading like some cancerous growth,
taking over my entire body…Oh, I knew him well.”
The man gazes at the cover of the CD. The maiden’s arm seems to tighten around
the skeleton man’s neck, choking him. A glimpse of fear wells up in his dark, empty
sockets.
“It seems that my first seizure, and the secret of my father’s death that I learned
subsequently, made a great impression on my psyche. Ever since that fateful day my
life was overshadowed by the specter of death. Or the idea of death, to be exact. The
idea that I could be erased from this world by any one of those unexpected seizures.
Like the father I never knew. Eventually that fear shaped my idea of death into a god.
Built an altar to it, complete with rules to obey. That sounds like I became some kind
of slavering fanatic, but I didn’t. On the contrary, my religion gave me a secret pride
that I was one of the chosen people. My unique position on the brink of life and death
made me feel like I was privy to the secret of being, when other kids my age were
passing porn around and playing Street Fighter at the arcade.
“And so as I grew, it became second instinct to minimize everything that gives life
meaning. Everything, from the most basic values like love and friendship, to dreams,
peace, hope, freedom, art, fame, power, wealth, pleasure, sorrow, even despair. I tried
to detach myself as much as possible, to remain above common emotions. I had to be
prepared for the advent of my god. A sardonic smile became my trademark. I took the
utmost care never to trespass boundaries with anybody, always assessing the limits
of their comfort zone to adjust mine accordingly. In this way I succeeded in both
minimizing my humiliation in the event they should see me having a seizure and my
fear of being left alone. It didn’t hurt my personal relationships in any way, really. A
surprising amount of people actually preferred my style. Said my aloofness was part
of my charm.
“Do you know the absolutely best way to conquer fear? You become one with
the object of your fear. So I went to med school. Not because I had any interest in
39
upholding the Hippocratic Oath and giving up my life to the service of mankind or
whatnot, but because I wanted to see how fragile and mortal human beings are from
up close. How easily life is stamped out—all it takes is a disease, an accident, suicide,
so many things besides a seizure that can turn a man into simply a protein bag holding
five liters of blood and 260 bones. And so I prolonged my own life by cloning death
and offering it up to the altar inside me. I think it was good practice for when Mother
died, I could keep my sadness in check. She’d worked so hard all her life…she was
killed in a car crash on an outing with her friends to see the autumn leaves. Her first
outing in three years. But that’s the way it works, death.”
The man takes a moment to gaze at the crescent moon hanging precariously from
the sky. Clouds appear and hide it behind them.
“I continued living with my sister but we almost never saw each other at home
anymore. We were both adults and had our own lives. My seizures were almost gone
after years of medication, but she still called me to check when I was coming home. I
told her it was okay, but it was second nature to her. I think she felt more responsible
for me than ever since Mother was gone. I took to spending more time at school and
coming home late at night.
“That day was a Sunday. My sister knocked on my door and came in with a
frustrated look on her face. Said she had an important audition and had to leave me
at home. Oh, by the way, my sister’s dream was to be an actress. I saw her acting
once in high school; she was Princess Salome. She was pretty good. After graduation
she was working part time and taking acting classes. She’d already had dozens of
auditions. Probably she was motivated by exactly the opposite impulse I had. She
wanted to taste how exciting and diverse human life can be. I guess she was so full of
life it wasn’t enough to have just one. The audition she was going to that day was for
a famous director casting his new play. Supposedly he was looking for fresh faces.
Even I had heard of him. I told her to go, no worries. That I would be going out too,
that I had a seminar at school. I wished her luck and she made a fist pump. After she
went out I stayed in bed all day paging through my anatomy book. I had gotten as far
as the musculature chapter that evening when my fuse went out, just like that.
“When I woke up I’d fallen out of the bed. I had the page with the musculature
chart screwed up in my right hand. The man on the chart was staring back at me,
angry red muscles crumpled every which way. I smoothed the chart out, stuck it back
in the book, and checked myself for injuries. My upper left central incisor was a little
bit loose. Fortunately the X-ray showed that it was only a tiny crack at the root. The
dentist said it would heal by itself and that I should refrain from chewing with my
front teeth in the meantime. It was my first attack in almost a year. Of course it had to
happen when my sister was out.
“A few days later, I came home late to find her having a little party with a couple
of friends. She squealed as soon as she saw me. Her friends applauded and whooped.
She got the job, she was a real actress now. I gave her a hug and told her how proud I
was of her. I sat down to have a beer with them, brushing off the curious looks of her
friends. Apparently it was a pretty big role. The play was about a bunch of people in
a mountain lodge being killed off mysteriously, one by one, and she had the role of
the second victim. Of course it would have been even better if her character made it
to the end of the story, but I guess somebody has to die first. I thought she was going
40
to rush out to find herself a mountain lodge then and there, she was that excited. She
was never one to hide her feelings but I’d never seen her so elated. All flushed in the
face, chattering like a little canary bird in a tizzy…she was beautiful that night. I was
impressed. And curious, wondering how it must feel like. I don’t know why I kept
pushing my loose tooth with the tip of my tongue…
“From the very next day on my sister practically lived in front of the mirror, script
in hand. Now I’m no expert on acting, but even I could tell she was a born actress. All
those people who rejected her so far must have been either blind or stupid. And she
had this line that she delivered with a scream, ‘He’s going to come tonight to kill me
too, I know it!’ It gave me the chills. I felt like she was really somebody else. It must
be such a thrill, don’t you think? Wouldn’t it be convenient if you had several lives
so you could try out how it feels like to be somebody else, instead of having just one
life…it’s not fair. Not to me, not to my sister, and not to you, either. Don’t you think?
My sister only got to live the one life in the end. She never got to play the woman
who’s the second to die in the lodge.”
The man rests his chin in a latex-gloved hand, listening to the final bars of the
second movement. After a short pause the third movement begins exuberantly.
“Twelve minutes and 34 seconds to go. I would describe the third movement as
short but powerful. It’s my favorite part.”
The man stands abruptly and turns up the volume. The room filled up with the
melody of the violin bursting forward like hundreds of petals blossoming from the
speaker. The man inhales the bouquet with closed eyes, letting the petals of sound
wash over him.
“Is this building soundproof? I would hate to bother your neighbors. I could never
stand that kind of behavior myself. Like there’s always somebody who insists on
running the washing machine in the middle of the night. You see, I’m quite a light
sleeper.”
The man turns the volume back down and returns to his seat on the bed.
“I heard something in my sleep that night, too. I went out to the living room and
heard stifled moans coming out of my sister’s room. I knew something was wrong
so I rushed to her room. And what I saw in that room, I can still describe perfectly.
As if I was seeing it right now. The pale light of the moon slanting in the window,
ivory-colored muslin curtains fluttering around it, the white vapor puffing from the
mini-humidifier shaped like an egg, my sister lying on the bed, the huge man on top
of her, Mickey Mouse’s face split in two where her pajama top gapes open, the hairy
hand stifling her mouth, the relief in her eyes when she sees me, the eyes that always
welcomed me back from a seizure, the eyes of my guardian angel… Did I really see
all of that? It was so dark, even with the moonlight. Or perhaps I’ve been adding to it
in my ruminations. Filling in the details, adding colors. That must be it, since I burned
another fuse the minute I ran into that room.”
The room is filled with the sharp vibration of the strings, shooting through the air
like a quiver full of arrows. The man takes a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket,
fools with it for a while before returning it to its place.
“I must have knocked my head on the ground when I blacked out. It felt like dozens
of bells were going off in my skull when I stood up. My sister was curled up in a ball
on the bed. Hair all messed up, flashes of naked flesh exposed by the wreck of her
41
Mickey Mouth pajamas. Eyes as empty as two black holes. Hi there, she says, the
familiar words of rebirth, before she starts to cry without a sound.
“I knew it must have been terrible for her. She was raped by some hulking monster
in her own bed. While her brother just lay there, eyes rolled back into his head,
twitching and convulsing…What I failed to estimate was just how bad she must have
felt. I didn’t have a scale for pain. To me the burden of pain was nothing compared to
the one and only god of death I worshipped. I just thought she would get over it. I had
long given up distinguishing tears from laughter, joy from despair, but she hadn’t.
She stopped me from going to the police, saying it would harm her acting career,
and I was relieved. I saw her holed up in her room looking completely dazed for a
few days after that, but I had faith that she would put it all behind her soon. That she
would have a good cry on my shoulder, and announce that she was going to forget
this ever happened. That she would pick up that script and start practicing a new life
in front of the mirror again. That was who she was. I never dreamed that she would
come into my secret temple and throw herself upon the altar. Oh, is this already the
last movement? 8 minutes, 57 seconds to go.”
The man takes a perfunctory look at his wristwatch. “So, how does it feel to know that you’re dying? At least you get know exactly
when you’re going to die. Consider yourself lucky I’m doing you such a favor.”
The man rises and goes toward the window. The crescent moon has come out of the
clouds and is shining jauntily. The man draws the curtains shut.
“One day I came back home to find that my sister had hung herself on the laundry
rack suspended from the verandah ceiling. They can’t build bridges or department
stores to last in this country but hanging laundry racks, you better believe they never
collapse. I had a quiet ceremony for her and then I brought her ashes home. The two
of us go back to the womb, when we were just a couple of sightless, fertilized eggs. I
couldn’t bear to leave her alone in the columbarium. She was part of me.
“My sister’s death affected me differently from my mother’s. It refused to blend
in with all the copies of death inside me. Such havoc she wreaked on the altar; I was
at my wit’s end. I was going round and round in space, like a cart that lost one of its
wheels. In the day I would stare at some random object for hours, and at night I was
plagued by nightmarish visions. My father hanging on the gallows, flapping his arms
like a bird; a burning bus carrying my mother down a tortuous mountain path; a
werewolf devouring my sister’s guts under a full moon; and myself, drooling on the
ground like some puppet stuffed in a box…She was my protector for over ten years,
and the one moment she needed me I couldn’t protect her. But what could I do? It’s
not like I can control my seizures… Who knows, maybe the god of death inside me
could.
“And then one day I started hearing sounds coming out of the urn holding my
sister’s ashes. A hearty laugh, a fake sob, an offended huff, a shriek of rage, a chatter
like a canary all riled up…there was this line she had in her high school play, when I
saw her on the stage. “The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.” You
know, I think I was afraid of her natural light, afraid of her beauty. The beauty that
could have swept away my temple of darkness and all the solemn rules I struggled
so long to keep…”
The man strokes the scar on his left arm through the fabric of his shirt.
42
“One night, I woke up from another nightmare with a severe pain in my chest. I
couldn’t tell if it was my heart, my liver, or my lungs, but it felt like an awl jabbing all
over my chest. I’d never felt anything like it. So I’m doubled over in pain, clutching
my chest, when the urn starts talking to me. Hi there. I jerked up and threw that
urn to the ground as hard as I could. Then I took off my clothes, poured her snowy
ashes over my head, and rubbed them all over my body. I stood before the full-length
mirror she used for practice. The sight of that miserable person in the mirror filled me
with indescribable pleasure. I picked up one of the shards of the urn rolling around
the floor and dragged it across my wrist. Like a sign of sorts. It was so perfect, the
contrast of my red blood seeping into her white ashes. I felt like some tribal warrior
preparing for war. I made my decision then, as I stood there painting myself with
the flowing blood. I would avenge my sister. Vengeance? Do you even believe in
vengeance? The mocking started immediately from my temple buried deep inside.
But I ignored it. I didn’t care as long as the pain in my chest went away, and was
replaced by something warm and alive. It was enough to see her ashes on my body
sparkling like powdered stars.”
The prone man on the bed blinks once. His pupil rolls around in search of the other
man’s face.
“Sorry to keep you so long. I’ll skip over the part where I look for the guy who did
it. It took me exactly six years, seven months, and eight days. Isn’t it strange, that I
didn’t have a single attack the whole time?”
The man takes the tube out of the other man’s throat and wipes it with a handkerchief.
He stows the coil away inside his bag and takes out a tin box the size of a pencil case.
It contains a syringe and a small bottle. The light of the fluorescent lamp reflected in
the other man’s eyes flickers almost imperceptibly.
“I had no intention of letting him off with a few years in prison. That wouldn’t be
fair at all. DUN DUHN! No, you were sentenced to the death penalty a long time ago.
I’ve just been following you for the past few days, looking for a chance to carry out
your sentence. Today is that day.”
The man taps the barrel of the syringe lightly, twice. He squirts the plunger slightly,
pushing the air bubbles out. The two violins, viola, and cello are all lumped together
now, rolling down the hill at breakneck speed. Black notes shaped like hooks scatter
everywhere.
“The final climax. Perhaps you’d like to say a few words at this moment? Except
I’m not really interested, sorry. I don’t need any words of confession. I just want
revenge. To avenge my sister, to feel that I’m alive, and to say fuck you to the god of
death that’s ruled me all my life.”
The man bends over the other man’s face. He pushes back the other man’s right
eyelid with his left hand and holds the needle above his eyeball.
“Unfortunately, there will be no pain.”
2
A pagoda toiled over is a pagoda waiting to fall. You want it to be so good that the
smallest defect is all it takes to spoil the whole thing. You get too involved, putting
everything you have into this pagoda, you start jeopardizing everything else. It’s the
path to megalomania—you start investing the pagoda with meaning, blowing it way
out of proportion, until you don’t know if you’re the one building it up or the other
way around. And when it all comes down, there’s no way of getting over that sense
of deprivation. No way you’re going to do it all over again, either. That’s exactly what
happened to me.
43
They start hammering it in when you’re very young, exactly where you place
among your peers. I learned that I was on the short side on the first day of school,
when they lined us all up in the hallway according to height. My report card spelled it
out very clearly that my marks were nothing for my parents to brag about. I was so-so
at sports, according to my 100-meter dash record in PE, and I didn’t get a single vote
in the class popularity contest. None of this means I spent my childhood wallowing
under some inferiority complex. I was part of the majority in practically every way.
I just had a hard time reconciling my place in the herd with my desire to stand out,
to be admired. It’s frustrating because it’s socially acceptable to suffer in silence over
an inferiority complex, but you don’t go around talking about your need for esteem.
Never mind that it’s a natural human need right there on the fourth layer of Maslow’s
hierarchy of needs.
And so I became a devotee of the educational system in this country that throws
every bit of creativity or individuality out the window in favor of rote learning. Unlike
the 100-meter dash or popularity contests, your grades are a proportional result of
the amount of time and effort you put into them (although not in direct proportion).
Now, as far as expendable resources go, everyone is assigned an equal amount of
time and effort. I was prepared to invest all of it in my education, if it meant satisfying
my need for esteem. Everything in proportion. You reap what you sow. How elegant
is that? No room for excuses there. And it’s such a highly exchangeable commodity;
not only will your grades earn you recognition at home and in school, they’ll buy you
a place in society as well. No goal was too high for me as long as all it took was time
and effort! This was the lofty confidence that took root, flourished, and sustained me
throughout the years. It was a stroke of luck that I was born in this country. If my
education had been in a country where even grades were determined by your IQ or
creativity instead of force-fed learning, it would have been too much to bear for me.
In my last year of high school I discovered that they report how you rank nationally
in mock tests for the national college entrance exam. Talk about genius! It was a huge
push for someone attending a so-so school in a small city like me. All of your peers
who entered elementary school with you eleven years ago, all of your competitors
who were in the same starting line and dashed at the same sound of the starting gun,
they’re all squashed together in the denominator of the fraction showing what place
you are and at what percent you stand out of all the students in the nation. All the
students in your year, from the country bumpkins attending some crappy village
school to the haughty offspring of the Gangnam elite in Seoul, all lined up according
to their test scores and nothing else. I cut down on sleep and studied until I had
nosebleeds to whittle down the percentage on my report card. I whizzed past the
number 1, which I previously considered the most perfect number, and drew ever
closer to the number 0 as I surpassed almost all of the herd, entrance exam season
44
nigh upon us. Yes, I made the right choice all those years ago, if I may say so. How
many kids do you think were still running the 100-meter dash at that age, never mind
how naturally talented they were when they started? Damn few.
I didn’t choose to study law at Seoul National University just because my grades
were too good to pass it up. It all goes back to the first time I attended a trial, during
ninth grade summer vacation. My father had a public service job looking after the
court gardens and I tagged along. Such an awe-inspiring experience! The court was
like a microcosm of primal instinct versus civilized reason. The silence of the heinous
criminal that raped and murdered a mentally handicapped person; the lofty authority
of the black judicial robe; the solemnly intoned verdict of the life sentence; and finally
the sonorous sound of the gavel coming down with the decisive zeal of an exorcist,
BANG BANG. That’s when I made a ruling of my own. I was going to become a
judge. I think I don’t have to tell you, when I make up my mind to do something it’s
as good as 90 percent done.
Armed by my grades, I had been invincible within the safe boundaries of school
so far, but I knew that grades only proved who was better at solving quizzes set by
somebody else. A lab rat doesn’t become head of the research team because it aces
the scientist’s maze. The pressure to perform and to perform well didn’t seem to get
any better in the real world after graduation, either—you just get a different kind of
report card. But a judge is different. A judge administers justice to his fellow human
beings, keeps the world in order by seeing that the guilty get their punishment.
Crime and punishment. Everything in proportion. Could I have found a more fitting
profession?
Everything was going swimmingly up to my junior year. I had already passed
the first part of the bar exam and was preparing for the second part. My pagoda
was coming along according to plan; all I needed was to raise the final story and the
finial. But on the eve of the second part of the bar exam, my much-toiled over plans
hit the tiniest snag. It was nothing serious—a small defect I could just as easily have
ignored.
That evening I was taking a walk around the lake at Gwanak Mountain Park with my
girlfriend. I was putting my mind at ease before the big test. Can we take a moment to
talk about my girlfriend? She was an art student who looked like Isabelle Adjani, the
woman of my dreams when I was a boy. She was a real beauty, slender, sophisticated,
and elegant to boot. Jean Renoir, the director, was responsible for introducing us.
We kept bumping into each other at a fortnight-long retrospective of his work, and
I finally screwed up the courage to talk to her on the last day after we watched The
Rules of the Game together. We went to have an espresso and I charmed her with
my witty commentary on Renoir’s subtle mise-en-scène and the seriocomic nature of
the characters. It’s long been a survival strategy of mine to find out everything I can
about subjects I like. I learned at an early age that nobody was going to pay attention
to an average-looking guy like me. I also learned that I could give my looks a boost
by giving the impression I was an intelligent guy with a mind of his own. Add to that
my social status as a law student at a top university, and I was just good enough for
her—guess you understand why I used the expression “survival strategy” now.
Lots of law students give up on relationships when they’re studying for the bar,
but I wasn’t worried. If you have so little self-control that you’re distracted by a girl,
45
1)
Korean rice beer
why bother trying at all? On the contrary, I felt even more motivated now that I had a
girlfriend who was as elegant as an Auguste Renoir painting. She was like a refreshing
oasis in a sea of tomes drier than a desert, if you may excuse the flowery simile.
Anyway, that day she said she had a good-luck charm for me and drew a caricature
of my favorite role model, Napoleon Bonaparte (“The word impossible is not in my
dictionary”) picking a four-leaf clover on the inside of my criminal law book. I was
pleased as Punch. Not that I needed luck.
“Hey, Mister.”
We were on a path near the forest when this voice like flint striking steel pops out
of nowhere. This guy gets up from a stump and comes toward us, dusting off his butt.
We must have walked right by him without noticing because it was so dark. He was
short and stocky, with this big, muscular-looking square head.
“Give us a light, will you?”
His breath stank of makgeolli(1). He thrust his hand in my face, holding a cigarette
between his fingers, when I noticed the tattoo on his arm. It was a butterfly about to
take its first flight out of the cocoon. I guess he’ll be stuck with a cocoon when the
butterfly flies away, I thought stupidly. I don’t know why.
“I’m not a smoker.”
I drew my girlfriend closer to me.
“Fuck, the nerd thinks he’s better than us.”
He flung at my retreating back, trying to get a raise out of me.
“So how did you trip over that piece of pussy?”
I shouldn’t have looked back. I should have ignored him and kept going… He
grinned when I turned back. And then it all happened at once. The sharp pain in my
solar plexus and the bridge of my nose, the salty taste of blood, my girlfriend’s scream
cracking in her throat… I fell to the ground while Butterfly Tattoo flipped through
my wallet. He grumbled over the meager amount of cash and stuffed it in his pocket
before twisting the gold ring off my finger. We had gotten matching rings to celebrate
our first anniversary. I got to my feet and grasped his shoulder but just got punched
in the face again. My girlfriend screamed and he turned to her, kicking her in the
stomach. Her money and ring also disappeared into his pocket. The brute yanked
her head back by the hair and pawed at her breasts while I lay there on the ground
helplessly. I tried to move but my arms and legs refused to cooperate. I felt suffocated,
like somebody had stuffed cotton balls down my throat. The brute was putting his
hand up her skirt, saying something obscene, when he stopped. A bunch of students
were coming up the hill, singing uproariously. Butterfly Tattoo flashed me another
grin and disappeared into the darkness of the forest.
The next morning dawned just like any other day. I went to sit my test looking like
somebody had run over my face but I couldn’t take in a single word of the questions.
Instead I kept having flashbacks of the humiliation I had suffered the previous day.
From every angle imaginable, like the play-by-play of a football match, replay, replay,
replay… While the other test-takers sat there in neat rows, heads down to their desks,
paging through their law books and scribbling answers feverishly, I filled my answer
sheet with profuse drops of sweat. I was shaking all over with a chill and started
hyperventilating. I ended up running out of the place as soon as the first subject,
Constitutional Law, was over.
46
I couldn’t even leave my room for a while after that. My girlfriend came every day
trying to cheer me up with words of comfort and reassurance. To say that it was okay,
that it was just bad luck, like being attacked by a mad dog. That was the worst part,
actually. Having to listen to her being cheerful and supportive. Having to watch your
lover pretend to be cheerful for you. I could hardly bear to look her in the eye, when
that beautiful smile of hers failed to reach her cheeks and got stuck at the corners of
her mouth. The shame and degradation of it all was enough to make my body curl
up like a dried squid on charcoal. I couldn’t forget about the mad dog. It had given
me rabies.
But I couldn’t wallow forever. Like the great Chinese King Goujian, I would sleep
on brushwood and taste gall. Instead of trying to forget, I would use it as a reminder
to do even better. So a mad dog had broken into my garden and stamped all over
it—fine, I would pass this exam so I could judge ruffians like him as they deserved.
I wasn’t going to take my life to the dump because of a minor collision like that.
This kind of pep talk proved to be just the ticket, and I found my spirits renewed
completely. My girlfriend was relieved that I was feeling more like myself again, too.
I took a break from school to focus on the bar completely. I reassured myself that I
was like a first-time athlete in the Olympics; now that I had a taste of the competition
I would do better on the second try. Everything would go back to normal when I
passed this time.
A year later, I was full of confidence when I went to sit the second part of the test
again. I was so well prepared that my brain cells were positively reeling off provisions.
I was off to a bad start, however, as soon as I left the house. I was on the subway when
I broke out into a cold sweat and started hyperventilating. It got so bad I felt like I
was suffocating, so I got off the subway and took a cab. No change. So I got off again
and started running, walking, running…by the time I reached the test site I was on
the verge of collapse. I took a deep breath and opened my test book, but the letters
just scattered apart. And then the previous year’s credits start rolling on the blank
page. Oh God, please no. Calm down. I took a deep breath and tried to concentrate,
focusing my mind on the sonorous sound of the gavel coming down decisively, the
sound that immediately captivated the boy of fifteen, BANG BANG! The picture only
grew clearer, however. As if someone had been restoring the film inside my head. The
steely fist crashing into my nose, the blood dripping into my mouth, the scream of my
girlfriend, the butterfly fluttering up her skirt…Once more I staggered out without
having even finished the first day of the test.
The same thing happened the next year, when I had to sit the first part of the test
again because I had used up my tries for the second part. I was stuck. I wasn’t used
to having my hard work go unrewarded. I was starting to lose confidence in myself
and began to find fault in everything. My girlfriend’s smile grew brittler by the day.
When I finally sought out a neuropsychiatrist they told me I had anxiety disorder
due to excessive test-taking stress. Me, with test anxiety? The diagnosis was bogus,
of course. Test-taking was the single thing that helped me find validation throughout
my entire life.
Like Xiang Yu at the Battle of Gaixia, I was surrounded on four sides by the songs of
Chu. The only way out for me was the army. Of course, I was forced to make changes
to my plans of serving as a military judicial officer. It was a bitter moment indeed
47
when I stood there in the ranks, wearing a uniform that didn’t even have an insignia.
I had returned to the herd as a lowly enlisted man instead of an officer, an anonymous
entity like all the rest. I was back to the truly impartial ranks where no rewards are
given for effort, with nothing to do but pass my allotted sentence of time.
I had barely received the rank of private first class when my girlfriend broke up
with me by post. I respected her decision. She deserved to be with a promising young
trainee at the Judicial Research and Training Institute, not some loser who spent his
day at the neuropsychiatrist’s. Some like to point fingers at those who refuse to date
or marry people out of their social stratum, but I tend to disagree. “Look for character,
not for a job title.” “Look at what’s on the inside, not on the outside.” “Marry for looks
and it won’t last three years.” Have you ever tried finding something that will give
you three years of pleasure? What’s outside counts just as much as what’s inside. Even
more so if you’ve dedicated your entire life to how you are viewed by others, like me.
It’s my only weapon in this survival of the fittest. I was attracted to my girlfriend
because of her looks and she was attracted to my social status. I had failed to uphold
my part of the bargain, so I deserved to be dumped. It was a relief in a way. At least
that way I was spared half the misery.
My twenty-six months in the army were up before too long. I decided that in
honor of my discharge I would get my act together again. You only live once, after
all, and I was still young. With my girlfriend out of the scene I could focus all my
energy on myself. Hadn’t the army hammered a reckless, no-excuses attitude in my
autonomic nervous system? Or so I believed. I really, really wanted to believe. The
first test I took after being discharged only proved that nothing had changed. I started
hyperventilating and sweating like I was in the sauna right away, with the events of
that day replaying in front of my eyes like those Jackie Chan reruns they show during
the holidays. Minus the comic relief of a Jackie Chan movie…
I started going to therapy again, took anti-anxiety medication, and tried out
everything and anything that held the smallest promise of help, from qigong to mind
control to yoga meditation. None of it helped in the least. In my desperation I gave a
last-minute shot at religion, which I consider to be a social evil and an affront to human
will, but even God failed to save me. Rather than becoming diluted over the years, my
memory provided me with an endless supply of fresh scenes that had not so much
as crossed my mind before. What was once a rough sketch had expanded into a fullblown observational drawing. In the end I wondered if I was actually finding pleasure
in my compulsive obsession with the incident. Like some masochistic stalker.
And so I went on taking the test each year, succumbing to feelings of self-loathing
for a while, and then going back to my robot-like study routine until it was time to
take the test the following year. I had long since put away my ambitions of becoming
a judge. I was also past the stage where I was still determined to succeed because I
had put in too much effort to throw it all away. The bar exam was nothing more than
an annual ritual to me, like the celebrations for National Foundation Day. And so I
slogged through a few more years. It was only well into my thirties that I finally gave
up the one goal that was supposed to be achievable through time and perseverance.
For the first time in my life. Goddammit… Excuse me. I didn’t mean to use such
language.
A university friend of mine found me a law clerk position at a firm. The pay was
48
so-so and I had no other responsibilities than mundane paperwork, but at least I
finally felt at ease. Of course I had my regrets. I was like a marathon runner who
kept a leading position right up to the 35 km mark, only to stumble and fall behind
permanently. Still, life must go on. Over ten years of toiling in vain had pretty much
drained me of all ambition or drive, anyway. Instead I found myself warming to the
small joys of life. I grew to appreciate the taste of soju after a long day’s work, and
took refreshing weekend excursions with my cycling club. I’d binge on American legal
dramas like Boston Legal and Shark that I downloaded from the internet. I even took
comfort in my petit-bourgeois life when the TV was playing something like children
battling cancer or people wrongfully imprisoned. Hey, my life isn’t that bad.
My last feelings of regret, which had lingered like a spatter of kimchi on my sleeve,
were completely washed away when I got married. An old lady acquaintance I got
to know through a real estate suit introduced me to my wife, who possessed all
the qualities considered desirable in the matchmaking market. She was demure in
manner and appearance, came from a respectable family, and had long since given
up on any unreasonable fantasies of married life. She was too good for me to miss,
especially with my dead-end job and receding hairline. The day that she accepted
my proposal in a sunset field of Chinese silver grass, gratitude preceded happiness.
A woman trusted me enough to take me as her mate for the rest of her life. Moved
beyond words, I stood there gazing at the sunlight turning the Chinese silver grass
gold.
The good thing and bad thing about marriage is that you no longer need to worry
about direction or purpose in life. You’ll discover that somebody has already ordered
for you from the set menu based on the choices of countless couples before you. Joint
savings account, house in the suburbs, conception, child rearing, and pension plan
comes with the basic menu; then you have add-ons like shared hobbies, sex life, and
self-fulfillment. Would it be too cynical of me if I defined happiness as the state of
being too busy to think about your unhappiness?
My wife took to tutoring secondary school kids in math, her major in college,
earning a tidy sum that was actually better than my income. After three years of
careful living and planning, we had saved enough for a jeonse deposit on a 72-square
meter apartment in the outskirts of Seoul. Our daughter Yuri was born a year after
we moved in. To tell the truth, I wasn’t particularly keen about having a child, but
changing the set menu proved to be harder than I thought. Such a blessing it was! I
finally realized how wise my predecessors had been to create the set menu when I
held my newborn daughter in my arms for the first time. I experienced something
magical that I had never felt before. It was like somebody had scooped out a handful
of me to fashion another human being, with utter disregard for both flaws and beauty.
It was a completely different feeling of achievement than something I had schemed
and strived for.
I saw a man with a huge smile on his face when I caught sight of myself in the
window. I understood how my friends must feel when we went out for a drink and
they would switch from complaining about their marriages one moment to shoving
cell phone pictures of their children in everybody’s face the next. Now it was my turn
to take pleasure in documenting every moment of Yuri’s growth with my cell phone
and showing the pictures off to anybody who showed the slightest interest. Complete
with footnotes that clearly illustrated what a clever child she was, of course.
I still think of those days sometimes. Would I have been happy, if I could have
continued living that life? I guess I’ll never know. It was the path not taken.
49
“Hey, Mister.”
I was in Seocho-dong, on my way to file some papers at the Supreme Court. I was
passing the wisteria-covered rest area when I was accosted by the familiar voice. Like
flint striking metal. I turned to see a short, stocky man looking at me with a cigarette
between his fingers. The metallic silver print on his black stretch t-shirt gleamed in
the morning sunlight.
“Give us a light, will you?”
And here I had been thinking I’d seen the last of him… Holding a cigarette between
his teeth, the man poked his muscular-looking, square head in front of the light I
held in a trembling hand. He cupped his hands ever-so-gently round it. The freshlyhatched butterfly still clung to his arm. It was now too bloated to fly anywhere. The
man flashed a grin, spewing smoke everywhere.
“Thanks, dude.”
I went inside the court building and hid myself behind a pillar near the entrance.
The man smoked his cigarette down to the filter and entered the summary trial court.
I followed inside and took a seat as if I were a defendant, too. He had been summoned
for impersonating a cop at a drunken brawl. I would’ve thought at that age he’d know
better than to pull that sort of crap. Old habits die hard, I guess. The slimy bastard
clearly had plenty of experience with summary trials and deftly steered the judge
toward the laughably lenient sentence of a 30,000-won fine. Stupid judge, should
have fined him at least 70,000. Under my incredible gaze, the metallic silver print
waddled down the stairs, out the main gate, and disappeared into the crowded street.
I felt the beginnings of a migraine coming on, accompanied by the sound of a chisel
hitting stone. The name I had just heard in court was etched in intaglio on the inside
of my skull.
Running into Butterfly Tattoo reopened the Gates of Hell in my heart. The demons
of the past rushed out with a vengeance—all the opportunities the promising young
law student let slip between his fingers, all the regrets and remorse that I thought I had
put away for good. What was I doing running around like some errand boy for the
lousy third-rate lawyers at my firm? By all rights they should be the ones assembling
case files for my perusal, from my place as judge of the guilty. The 72-square meter
apartment I lived in with my family went from cozy home to suffocating cage. And
I didn’t even own the place—to think I couldn’t even call a dinky little place like
that my own! The sight of the yellowing sludge in the cracks of the old bathroom
tiles was enough to make me throw down my toothbrush in frustration. My gentle
wife suddenly looked dowdy and run-down. The woman was only in her thirties, so
what was she doing with flab swinging around her arms and unsightly blemishes on
her face? Her place should have belonged to a beautiful art student who resembled
Isabelle Adjani. I was even irritated with the clinging Yuri, who had just begun to talk.
I pitied the man I had become, life over at the age of forty; a man who was too chicken
to ever impersonate a cop in a drunken brawl.
The demons mocked me relentlessly, making sure to touch every nerve. I started
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turning up for work late, smelling of drink, and bungling what little responsibilities
I had. I actually talked back to a partner who wanted to have a quiet word about my
sloppy work. I found fault with everything my wife did, from her figure to her dress,
cooking, grammar, and makeup; I lost my temper with Yuri as well, who found that
I had suddenly turned into “Mean Daddy.” Bewildered by my sudden change of
character, my wife suspected me of having an affair. If only… I sank to the lowest of
the low the day I raised my hand at her, after finding out that she had hired a private
detective to follow me.
Do you know how the Eskimo hunt wolves? It’s very simple. You stick a knife
dipped in animal blood in a block of ice and wait. Lured by the smell of blood, the
wolf comes over and licks the blade. It cuts his tongue and he bleeds. He doesn’t feel
it, however, because the blade is so cold it numbs his tongue. He keeps licking his own
blood off the blade, cutting himself to lick it off, and licking off the blood again…until
he drops dead. I, too, had kept licking at that fragment of memory like a blade stuck
in the ice, kept lapping my own blood without a clue, until I finally broke down.
When I finally came to my senses, there was nobody but myself in the grim
72-square meter cell that had once been my home. I had lost my job a long time ago
and my wife had gone back to her parents with Yuri, leaving divorce papers behind
her. You reap what you sow. Who was I to blame but myself? I picked up my phone
to look at pictures of Yuri. Her smiling face on the main screen was the same child
she was one year ago. She must have grown so much. Please, let this child grow up to
reach Maslow’s fifth level of self-actualization…Should I beg forgiveness of my wife
and ask her to start over? No, I was too afraid. Because I knew that history would
repeat itself. Because I was cursed to never be satisfied with anything for the rest of
my life. I was going to lie on this frozen road in the snowstorm, let time pile on my
body before slipping into the past, and live forever regretting that decision.
Did I even want to go through the messy ordeal? Off to the kitchen I went. I selected
a serrated bread knife and held it to my left wrist. Come on, you can do this. Just try.
The faces of my daughter Yuri, my wife, my old dad, and my friends popped up
like a video chat, begging me to reconsider. Sorry, I have no regrets. I screwed up
my eyes and slashed decisively. Or so I thought… Why was there bright red blood
spurting from the fleshy part of my hand? Before I knew it, I was sucking the wound
reflexively. The pungent scent of peppermint filled my head. It felt like fresh life was
running through my veins. Was this how Dracula felt? The events of that day so long
ago swam before my eyes again. My girlfriend trapped in the clutches of the ruffian;
how I watched helplessly; the taste of blood that filled my mouth… Butterfly Tattoo
popped up in the video chat window, flashing his grin. Hey, Mister. Whatcha doin’?
Wait a second. Why was I the one dying? I wasn’t the one who deserved to die.
Something flared up inside me. What the hell was that mad dog doing in my garden
again? Why did he have to insult my hard work? Why was I the one drowning in a
morass of self-hate? Mad Dog obviously hadn’t even bothered to get himself a lighter
after all these years. That bastard, why couldn’t he carry his own lighter? My face flushed
so hard it was ready to burst. I swear I felt steam coming out of my ears. Perhaps it was
not too late to find one thing in life that gave me satisfaction. Just one thing.
Everything in proportion. I talked about proportion before. Mad Dog was the
independent variable x to my dependent variable y. I would like to see a correlation
Stage 1: Buy resident registration number of homeless person, open bank account
in their name. Procure Butterfly Tattoo’s personal details from court records and open
bank account in his name (friends working at court and bank will take care of any
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between his pain and mine, at the very least. Somebody once said that revenge is
like biting a dog because the dog bit you. I chose to interpret this more literally than
ironically. Yes, I would have my revenge. Let him have a taste of his own rabies, it was
my turn to be the mad dog.
I immediately produced multicolored ballpoint pens and a pad of paper to plot
my operation. I had no intention of direct confrontation, like going up to him with a
sashimi knife wrapped in newspaper and brandishing it in his face. That would be
too melodramatic. No, my style was more along the lines of calm, cool, and cunning,
an elaborate plot that would make me a bit of cash in the bargain. I racked my brains
day and night to come up with the perfect plan. It was like old times in school. Except
instead of rote memorization, I was doing independent, creative studies. It was an
eye-opening experience to be investing time and effort not to compete or to impress
but purely for my private satisfaction, a process that I found immensely rewarding. I
felt more alive than I ever felt before.
I could barely contain my excitement when my plan was finally complete.
Operation Code Name 22J, would you like to hear about it? The beauty of this plan is
that it involves a powerful third party instead of myself, thereby increasing chances
of success and removing any foreseeable threats in advance. You could call it adding
another variable to the function: x, y, and z. He’ll never know what hit him. Much
the same way he’ll never know how he ruined my life. The tricky part was to find
the perfect candidate for variable z. I knew I had unlocked that rusty gate, however,
when an unfamiliar key turned up inside the drawer of my cabinet.
Jogging my memory, I remembered that I got the key from Kang, owner of K--Construction. The partner at my firm went to high school with him and also served
as in-house counsel at his company. He had been chosen as a trusted insider to do all
of Kang’s dirty work. Kang himself was a genial, outgoing sort of fellow, with a good
reputation in all matters, from his business skills to his charitable endeavors. Behind
that public mask, however, lurked a repulsive hyena of a man. The most powerful
mafiosi in town were on his payroll and obeyed him like trusted servants. It is a
dangerous thing to cross this man, whether in the public or private sphere. A very
dangerous thing.
Another well-hidden part of Kang’s true self is his sexual deviance. He is said to be
an artist in his craft, such is his zeal and creativity. To satisfy his needs, Kang purchased
a studio apartment in a quiet alley in Hannam-dong. I know it well because I was in
charge of everything from the contract to the registration, decorating the place and
seeing that the maintenance bills were paid. I also know for a fact that he “sponsors”
young, wannabe starlets in exchange for sexual favors. I’ve never seen it with my own
eyes, but I hear that it’s quite the show. A sordid scoop like this could be ruinous for
an important man like Mr. Kang, who hoped to break into politics someday.
So, you get the picture. The key to the studio apartment put the finishing touch
to Operation Code Name 22J, or Yi Yi Zhi Yi (以夷制夷): to use barbarians against
barbarians.
minor illegalities).
Stage 2: Install hidden camera in bedroom of Kang’s Hannam-dong apartment.
Stage 3: Burn XXX-rated footage on CD. Send to Kang with amateurish blackmail
note saying, “Wire 200 million won in cash to this account by the following date or
this video is going on the internet.” Give homeless person’s account number
Stage 4: Transfer money immediately from homeless person’s account to Butterfly
Tattoo’s. Withdraw 200 million won in cash from various ATMs near his address, in
disguise.
Stage 5: Keep cool. Wait.
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Kang is a thorough man. He can afford to toss 200 million as bait. With his
connections in politics and finance, not to mention the police, the prosecutor’s office,
and the national tax service, tracing a basic evasion like this should be a piece of
cake. The personal details of the final account holder will be on his desk in no time.
Guess what happens then? A number of strapping young thugs pay Butterfly Tattoo
a visit. They beat him to a pulp and trash his place. The original tape doesn’t show
up, however, so off they go to a deserted hill, Butterfly Tattoo and shovel in tow…
Or Kang might choose to send someone more professional than a bunch of goons.
Someone to do the job quietly, but efficiently. After I check that everything is really
over, I’ll send Kang’s donation to my wife as support for Yuri. I’m thinking I’ll get my
apartment deposit back and open a bookstore down in the country. One end of the
bookstore will be a café. Where people can kick back and relax with a cup of tea and
a book. I already have a name for it, too. “Three-Leaf Clover Books.” Just a bunch of
ordinary everyday three-leaf clovers going along with the crowd. Pretty cool, right?
I do hope everything goes to plan. Who knows, though? All it takes is some clueless
variable asking for a light to throw the best laid plans off track. I’ve long since gotten
rid of the hubris that I can make anything happen as long as I work for it. As the great
Zhuge Liang said, “Do your best and wait for God’s order.” There’s simply nothing
else to be done. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to Seoul Station to set Stage 1 in
motion. This is it! Wish me luck.
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