She had waited too long. Was it still daybreak? The translucence of early dawn showed no sign of ebbing. Was she really waiting for the sun to break through the clouds? When she registered at the hotel, Ha Young never gave a thought to the Eastern seaboard sunrise. Even when the front desk receptionist handed over the key and proudly pointed out that the room had a wide open view of the sunrise, she was unappreciative of her good fortune. The dignity of the phrase “Eastern seaboard sunrise” failed to elicit a response from her. But as soon as she opened her eyes, she lay on her side and looked out the window.
With the sky and the sea coming together like ink dissolving in water, the horizon line remained undefined. High above where the horizon should have been, the sky ripped into a long, crimson line. But no light poked through. It was only a celestial wound about to bleed, not at all helpful in pushing out the chalky dawn. It did, however, make Ha Young realize that the sun had risen, but the sky was extremely overcast.
She crawled out of bed as sluggishly as an old person and walked toward the window. The mellow shoreline and the vast, sandy beach came into view. It was a well-known beach that was often featured on television in the summer. The recent late-summer heat wave made it just as hot as the peak of summer, but the beach was empty and quiet. Drawn by its undisturbed serenity, Ha Young dressed herself hurriedly and went outside.
The hotel entrance was just across the road from the beach. Just outside the entrance window was a zinnia plant blooming against the backdrop of a dense bamboo forest. Ha Young trembled. Perhaps because of the bleak weather, the vivid scarlet blooms weighing down the branches of the small sapling seemed so out of place. The riot of color that inundated her vision turned into a bunch of immature girls snickering. Why did you? . . . Why? . . . Her meaningless mumbling was only an attempt to control her breathing. She hated immaturity. No, not hate. It was more correct to say that she was afraid of it, of the irresponsibility that comes with immaturity.
The road leading to the beach was a winding slope. The damp shade of the thick trees on both sides of the road made dawn seem just like dusk. The road wrapped around a U-shaped bend and the beach loomed ahead. It was still free of people. Heading toward the beach, she walked down the street with its rows of sushi joints. They were all closed, but squirming fish in tanks meant that they were still in business. What was inside the hearts of the captive fish gazing at the raging ocean in front of them? Did they even have feelings inside their cold hearts?
Ha Young leisurely walked along the shoreline immersed in these choppy, off-the-wall thoughts. She avoided the wet parts of the beach that had been licked by the waves, but with each sinking step, the sand that made its way into her sneakers felt damp.
Just ahead, she saw a ring of people. They seemed to be looking down at something. They looked like locals because they weren’t dressed like the usual out-of-town beachgoers in fun vacation clothes. Their drab appearance blended in with the damp, depressing landscape. Although worried about looking like an out-of-towner, Ha Young could not quell her curiosity. She inched closer, clutching her chest with one hand as her heart tightened. This was a common tick of hers whenever she became nervous.
She finally saw what everyone was looking at. In the middle of the circle was a person lying down. She knew right away that the person was dead. The head and the upper body were covered with a flimsy sheet of newspaper so she couldn’t see the face. No living person would be treated that way. White sneakers were on the feet of the corpse. Seeing them, she trembled all over once and pushed her way through the crowd. Then she kneeled at the feet of the corpse and grasped a sneakered foot in each hand. People began whispering, but she didn’t care. The feet were damp and heavy. They were only slightly damp, but to her, they felt sopping wet. The fear that weaved through her body like a network of blood vessels converged and charged toward the white sneakers at full speed. She couldn’t stop it. Tumbling forward, she hugged the sneakers she was clutching in each hand to her chest. She gave in to a surge of tears. As she wept out loud, her own wretched wailing intensified her fear and woe. Even while bawling, she could still make out the murmur of the crowd.
Who’s that? Someone Choon-Shik knows? She doesn’t look like a local so how does she know him, I wonder? Even if she knows him, was she that close to him? Who knows, maybe they had a long distance thing for each other. No way, with an older woman like her? We’ll soon find out when his family shows up. Anyhow, what do we do about his poor mother? That jerk. I knew that he was lame but never imagined him to be this callous. How could he shove pills down his throat knowing that she has no one else in the world? He could have spared his life if he didn’t take so many. Why did he have to be so stupid? I guess he felt hopeless with nothing working out for him. Still, it’s not like he was forty or fifty. At twenty, how much life experience could he have had to be that hopeless? What a shame.
Ha Young’s wailing was closer to a spasm than crying, so it toned down like an unwinding spring. With the realization that the death she was lamenting had resulted from a suicidal overdose and not from drowning, she lifted her head and grinned sheepishly. Her hair was disheveled and grains of sand were stuck to the edges of her mouth, but no tear smudges remained. Her dry, flushed face shocked the onlookers.
What, was she mad? Well, that explains it.
Each concentric ring opened up as Ha Young made her way out of the crowd. She was soon forgotten when the hysterical mother arrived at the scene, propped on her feet by several people. If it weren’t for the mother, some of the onlookers may have followed her, curious, or hopeful, to see if she would do more crazy things. Was it because of the overcast sky? The villagers’ faces were especially grim, unbefitting of people who live by a vast ocean.
Ha Young did not look back, but she didn’t hurry either, leaving the scene behind as if nothing had happened. Loud sirens caused her to look back, and she saw that an ambulance and a police car had arrived simultaneously. That’s when she hastened her steps, cutting across the beach onto a paved road in front of the sushi shops. She felt no panic up until then, but the moment her feet stepped off the plush sand and touched down on hard pavement, she felt a rush of relief. But it lasted for only a brief moment. She had to hide herself somewhere, anywhere.
Ha Young slid open the door of a sushi shop in front of her. A bedroom door all the way in the back opened, and a buxom woman bursting out of her shirt came out yawning and welcomed her in. It was apparently outside opening hours, but the place was not closed. A fishy smell that was different from the smell of the ocean pervading the air outside the shop raided her empty insides. Against her will, her stomach clamored for food, grumbling menacingly. The mingled smell of stale fish, wasabi, soy sauce, bean paste, and chili pepper sauce became overwhelming, making her salivate uncontrollably. She wasn’t sure if what she felt was a hunger pang or nausea. It just felt like something she should suppress.
“Do you want to eat something?”
The woman sounded indifferent, like someone who didn’t care to serve customers at that moment. Through the open bedroom door in the back, Ha Young could see the back of a man’s head and a television screen. Comedians jostling each other, emaciated African children surrounded by pestering flies, two lithe Caucasian bodies intertwined in a lovemaking scene—channels were quickly flipped through until the screen rested on the weekly singing contest emceed by the television host Song Hae. The background mural of the outdoor stage was, incidentally, a beach painted in bright blue like a common landscape painting.
“Maybe just something to drink for now,” Ha Young mumbled timidly.
“Well, that’s good. It’s too early for lunch, and we don’t do breakfast.”
“Yes, that’s fine with me.”
She must mean that they don’t serve breakfast, not that they don’t eat breakfast. Ha Young let out a wry chuckle, and the woman became friendlier.
“Would you like to go upstairs? We have the best view. The beach on one side and a lake on the other.”
Ha Young followed the woman upstairs, taking hesitant steps on the filthy carpet. Upstairs was spacious and empty. She liked the space, not because of the view but because she could be alone. In front of her was a refrigerated case filled with beverages. The woman saw Ha Young staring at the beverage case, not the view. She said kindly, “You don’t have to drink anything. It’ll be lunchtime soon anyway. I can get you a cup of coffee if you’d like. On the house.”
“Nope. I’ll take a bottle of soju.”
What she had wanted to subdue with all her might was neither hunger nor nausea but a pressing need for soju. Soju on an empty stomach was just the thing to revive the tree that seemed to have fallen inside of her.
“Soju? By yourself?” the woman asked, surprised.
“Why? I can’t drink by myself?” she countered defiantly, spurred by a sense of urgency.
“No, no. That’s fine. Anything to eat with your drink?”
“Just soju for now. I’ll order food later.”
The woman was about to say something, but she changed her mind and went back downstairs. Soon she returned with a bottle of soju, seaweed salad, and a couple of side dishes made from unidentifiable bits of salted seafood. She laid the food down on the table slowly but somewhat impolitely, and left the table after removing the soju bottle cap with a bottle opener. With great effort, Ha Young waited for her to leave. Despite the haste she was in, Ha Young refrained from drinking straight from the bottle. The first shot of the clear liquid touched her tongue, and then turned rose-colored upon hitting the back of the throat. Pushing forward to create a new path where none existed before, the cool liquid passed over her throat, traveled down her esophagus and settled in her stomach. Sensing every inch of this burning passage, Ha Young shuddered from the electric jolt and the ensuing bliss. With the second shot of soju, branches burgeoned from the main route. The third shot induced even more splitting into tertiary branches. If someone were to ask, she’d be able to replicate in detail the circulatory path of the liquid, including every minute capillary tube. It was like a tree inside her, now fully watered and standing erect. The tree felt turgid, like it was about to spew out fuchsia camellia blooms any moment. That point, when reached, would be the culmination of being alive. She must not be impulsive. She must bide her time in cultivating her tree.
Just when Ha Young’s self-control was on the verge of collapsing, the owner returned with a large group of customers. Fussing over the second-story view, they stampeded over to the window overlooking the beach and then to the side of the room with the lake view. Tourists, no doubt. Ha Young felt dizzy, like someone on a boat rocking from side to side due to a great shift in weight. Sure enough, she spilled the next glass of soju she was pouring as if she were actually on a boat. To make matters worse, the group settled down at a table adjacent to hers. One seat short, a man came over to Ha Young’s table to take a chair. His eyes roamed over her table, questioning and condemning. By then, the beautiful tree in bloom was already gone. Ha Young started to get up when the owner rushed over to take her order.
“I’ll take my meal downstairs.”
“Good idea. I’m sure you’ve had enough of the view.”
The woman did not return with the bottle she had seized upstairs. Instead, she laid on the table a paltry array of side dishes, clear clam broth, fish stew, and stale steamed rice. Ha Young didn’t remember ordering these. But a sudden and intense hunger overwhelmed her and she ate ravenously. The man in the bedroom had stepped out and was now haggling over the price of fish to be filleted for sushi with the man from upstairs who had eyed Ha Young. While waiting for the woman to reappear, Ha Young watched the fish—either a flatfish or a sole, she could not tell—scooped up from the tank by a metal hook and thrashing around on the cement floor. Inside the tank it had been sluggish, barely alive, but now it was putting up one hell of a fight for its life. The woman bounced down the steps, and Ha Young quickly caught her attention and asked for the bill.
“How was the food?” she asked brusquely, handing over the change. Ha Young quickly left without answering. No one had forced her to stay inside, but she felt a great rush of relief once outside. The corpse with white sneakers and the onlookers were nowhere to be seen. At first Ha Young only darted her eyes in that direction, but to confirm their disappearance she swung her head around and looked searchingly. The people, the ambulance, and the police car were all gone. There was no trace whatsoever of the commotion that the accident had caused. She thought she could at least find tire tracks on the sand, so Ha Young started to head toward that direction but stopped. Did the incident that she had witnessed actually happen? Doubt and accusation made her afraid to go on.
While she was walking away from the beach, a dreary wind accompanied her. It was the kind of wind that could easily have erased the prints on the sand. Having walked for some time, she came upon another area quite different from the row of sushi restaurants. Almost every structure was plastered with signs, most of which were for chodang tofu. Original tofu, old-fashioned tofu, all-natural tofu, grandma’s tofu . . . each sign boasting of being the very best of the best.
These days chodang tofu can easily be found in Seoul, but Ha Young had already experienced the real thing from Gangneung, where seawater is traditionally used as a coagulant instead of salt. It had been a cold and snowy day the first time she’d tried it, and she remembered how the steaming, soft tofu warmed her up inside. She didn’t remember the taste being so extraordinary. She was now delighted to come upon this place not because of the tofu but because it was the actual Chodang village.
She was with her husband on her previous visit. It was their first long distance trip after his car accident. They stayed overnight in downtown Gangneung and asked around for directions to Chodang village. They weren’t searching for the famous tofu huts but the village itself. One of the huts in the village is said to be the birthplace of Heo Nanseolheon, the renowned poetess from the mid-Joseon Dynasty, and the daughter of Heo Yeob, whose own pen name was Chodang. This unconfirmed piece of information was acquired by Ha Young haphazardly and wasn’t included as part of their original travel plan. It was only on the day before, while they were sightseeing at Ojukheon Shrine, that Ha Young mentioned visiting Heo’s birthplace. She might not have wanted to go if the Ojukheon shrine wasn’t so well preserved. Its flawless perfection actually left her feeling unfulfilled.
Her husband suggested that they make the trip the next day and have sushi by the seaside. Up until that point, they only knew that Chodang village was Heo’s birthplace and had never heard of it being known for tofu. When they woke up in Gangneung the next morning, it was snowing heavily. The snow resembled giant, plush cotton bolls, the likes of which they had never seen in Seoul. They drove while listening to a snowstorm watch being issued on the radio. The vertigo they experienced navigating through the storm was as dizzying as being sucked into a sweet but tragic movie scene. On that day, too, they knew they had found the village because of the tofu signs. The village was eerily silent. The snow was still falling heavily, so no attempt had been made to clear the fronts of the houses.
“I’ll go and ask.” Her husband stopped the car in front of one of the tofu huts. It’s always easier to approach a business than a residence. Ha Young squinted and watched her husband’s manly figure braving the elements outside, knee deep in snow. The blistering snow made it difficult to see just a few feet away. No one must have come to the door right away, for she heard her husband banging on the door yelling, “Is anyone in there?”
After a long while a head poked out.
“May I ask you something? I’ve heard that Heo Nanseolheon’s birthplace is near here. Can you tell me where it is?”
“I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“She’s a poet and Heo Gyun’s sister. You must know Heo Gyun? The guy who wrote Tale of Hong Gildong?”
“Dunno anything about that. There isn’t a single family with the last name Heo in this village.”
Baffled, her husband turned around to face her and shrugged his shoulders with his arms wide open in an exaggerated manner. He had lived abroad for about half a year, and didn’t look half bad pulling off this Western gesture. Their conversation was so amusing that Ha Young indulged in frivolous laughter inside the car.
“Ask them if they serve food. I’m hungry,” she said, still giggling.
That’s how they came to eat soft saltwater tofu and rice at one of the chodang huts. There were no other customers, so they were able to kill time in a cozy nook with under-floor heating. It was the perfect place for loafing while waiting for the snow to let up. Later on, the owner joined them for a chat, but neither Ha Young nor her husband asked again about Heo’s birthplace. Chodang. Heo Yeob. Weren’t they already in a Heo residence of some sort? She wondered if the owners of the tofu place also thought so.
It had stopped snowing but radio broadcasters continued to cover the storm. They reported that more than two feet of snow had accumulated that morning and that snow removal at the Daekwan Pass was going at a snail’s pace. Repeated reminders of the necessary gear that every car should have and the precautions that must be followed were made. With more than two feet of snow, it was fortunate that the roads were not closed. Ha Young did not show any kind of anxiety over the perils frantically announced over the radio waves. It wasn’t like her to panic. What Ha Young feared was the kind of misfortune that happened without warning. She knew that true calamity always strikes unannounced. Uneventful times, monotony day after day, were what troubled her the most.
Although Ha Young remained unperturbed, her husband still minded her and drove extra cautiously. Somehow he managed to go over the Daekwan Pass before it got dark. Ironically, it was after they had gone over the pass that Ha Young was shaken up. On the other side of the pass, the heavy, wet snow that clung to and split asunder live pine branches had disappeared without a trace. Just like the day before, the bare winter landscape spread out abundantly before them.
Since then, she’d had another similar experience going over the pass. A friend living in Gangneung was getting married in the middle of winter, so Ha Young and a group of her friends rented a van to attend the wedding. Among her close-knit group of high school buddies, this was the last friend to be married, and everyone was excited. There were two other unmarried friends with doctorate degrees in the group, but they had sworn themselves into singlehood and were determined to live out their lives in that fashion. Everyone had come willingly, but the absent bride made her an easy scapegoat for their irritation with the bitter cold.
Maybe if she was twenty-nine. But what’s the difference between thirty-six and -seven? It will soon be March with spring in all its glory. What’s the big hurry that she has to don a veil in the dead of winter?
You really don’t know what the hurry is at her age? It’s criminal of you to be so judgmental just because you’ve settled down and got it good now.
That must have been around the eleventh or the twelfth month of the lunar calendar. It was brutally cold, so much so that the thick frost on the window refused to thaw out even at high noon. Scratching off the frost cleared the view only briefly, because the window froze up instantly again. But after the bus reached the peak of the Daekwan Pass and started downhill, the thick, stubborn frost melted and flowed down like streams of sweat. In no time, the view of the ocean loomed ahead, and everyone cheered.
The instant transformation of the weather from one extreme to another over the treacherous and winding Daekwan Pass represented something of a hope or the will to change for Ha Young. She had no appreciation for the kind of transformation that was gradual; she wanted complete, groundbreaking change. But she had no idea how to make this kind of change happen.
While mulling over this and that, Ha Young stumbled upon an unusual house that immediately stood out. She had not intended to seek out Heo Nanseolheon’s birthplace. With no tofu sign in sight, the Chodang village that the house stood in the middle of looked like any other rural village with thatched-roof cottages. The house looked big enough to have accommodated a noble family back in the day, but now it was quite decrepit. The collapsed central ridge of the roof was covered with a navy plastic tarp. The cheap plastic covering seemed out of place against the aged patina of the mossy roof tiles, but at least it didn’t look overly tacky. The village possessed a dignity that could not be undermined by a piece of plastic.
Inside the house was a notice board on the wall explaining the significance of the house and the reasons for its designation as a historical landmark. The years that Chodang Heo Yeob resided there and the belief that Heo Nanseolheon was born there were engraved on a cheap, gold-plated plaque. Dogs, not people, were the first clue that the house was occupied. Both inside and outside the front door, sleeping dogs lounged and awake ones gazed at passersby. They were big in size but not too scary. In fact, even when Ha Young tripped over one clumsily, it neither welcomed nor resisted the human contact. Well, someone must be feeding them, she thought, as they seemed to be living in idyllic comfort.
As soon as she entered the front courtyard, she could see everyday household items laid out on the open wooden deck. Bowls, buckets, a floor mat, spice jars, and a lone shoe—all of these were flamboyant plastic or vinyl pieces. The faucet area in the yard was sloppily patched up with thick cement. Embarrassed by these cheap furnishings threatening the vestiges of the home’s former grandeur, Ha Young scuttled back, took a wrong turn, and ended up at the back of the house.
She went around the back of the main building and came upon another courtyard. It was the guest quarters. The courtyard was square and was separated from the outside by a stylish brick wall. Although it was a yard, it was the coziest space in the whole house. This area was also infinitely better maintained than the main building. The green carpet of moss-covered clay ground looked more elegant than any manicured lawn, and the garden nook in one corner was overflowing with zinnias in full bloom. These crimson blossoms, poignant in their forlorn beauty, could easily surpass any tended garden at an upscale hotel. Intertwining strands of the main stem climbed up and branched out, asserting their freedom and determination; it was unlikely that they would succumb to shame after the blooms withered. Ha Young had no idea how old the tree was, but she wanted to believe that Nanseolheon had sat by it and daydreamed. The tree, every inch of its growth steeped in suffering and beauty, had such an aura of eternity.
Ha Young sat sideways on the edge of the wooden deck. She slid her hand slowly over the wooden flooring and the columns made from whole tree trunks. Soft parts of the wood had worn out and the tougher fibers have hardened even more, yielding a unique texture to touch. The virgin wood that had never been coated felt like a living and breathing thing. Ha Young reclined and stretched out. Red peppers had been laid out to dry under the sun near her feet, a surer sign than the dogs of human occupancy. Ha Young let go of her innermost cares and allowed her eyelids to glide over her eyes. Through her thin summer clothing on her back, she could still feel the textured pattern of the wooden floor. As sleep came, she felt herself sinking into the floor by the sheer pull of four hundred years.
When she opened her eyes, the day was bright and the sky azure above the zinnia blossoms. Ha Young had never seen such a sky before in her life. Crimson blossoms weighing down forked branches, moss growing in the yard, and the brick wall with a few missing tiles—like an infant just out from a mother’s womb, Ha Young marveled at these sights. The world seemed so clear, unfamiliar, and pure. She was serene to the core. She didn’t remember the last time she indulged in such worry-free sleep.
An elderly woman with silver hair was at her feet flipping over the red peppers. Ha Young got up hesitantly and smiled timidly.
“Those are pretty peppers.”
“This batch is from the first crop. Didya get enough sleep?”
“Yes. How come you didn’t wake me up?”
“What for?”
“This is the Heo family residence, isn’t it?”
“That’s what they say.”
“I’ve always wanted to visit. Last time, I was near here but couldn’t find it. A neighbor said that there were no Heos living in the area.”
“They must be right. Treason can wipe out whole clans. No doubt that’s how the Heo family line ended, don’t ya think?” she addressed Ha Young innocently.
“Can, can I ask . . . who, who are you?”
Ha Young stared at the woman’s puckered, toothless mouth and asked with a quivering voice. Surprised by Ha Young’s sudden change in tone, the woman mumbled something inaudible instead of replying. Ha Young turned pale as warm blood drained from her face. Peace had not lasted long. Nothing had changed. Ha Young ran out without saying goodbye. Although she didn’t go around the yard, she was already outside. The lingering dogs were still unresponsive when shoved out of the way. Not heading in any direction, she quickened her pace like someone being followed. What she was running from was the fear that she somehow always managed to get involved in unhappy events. Truly, it had been a long time since she had enjoyed this kind of perfect rest. But why in the courtyard of an annihilated family?
How long is the life span of a pine tree? She guessed the age of the thick, dense trees blocking the sky to be about four hundred years. The smell of pine was powerful and refreshing. She had calmed down a little but was not completely rid of her fear. The thought that she could never fully escape made her stop running. Nothing grew in the dirt under the permanent shade of the pine branches. Ha Young slumped to the ground and leaned against a tree.
Ha Young turns forty this year. She became a college student at twenty. She was so lucky to get into a school of her choice in Seoul the first time she applied. Her parents and her brothers were all very proud of her. Theirs was a farming family that owned land and an orchard in a rural area. The land that they owned neighbored a developing industrial area, so selling small portions of the land afforded them more than enough money to pay for the children’s education in Seoul. The parents would have been happy with any school located in Seoul, but first their son and then Ha Young had made it into top schools, bringing even greater honor to their family. The parents were simple rural folk, but when it came to self-glorification through the successes of their children, they were just as driven as the other parents from the city. As the only daughter sandwiched in between an older and a younger brother, Ha Young, especially, was the apple of their eye. Her father habitually threatened, after having a drink or two, that he’d shoot any fellow who dared to break his daughter’s heart. Ha Young, of course, never worried about such a thing. As a confident, well-loved, and well-adjusted young lady, she never entertained the thought that the object of her affection would not reciprocate.
Is there any other time in life more free of worry and full of romantic dreams than one’s first summer as a college student? It was an especially beautiful time for Ha Young. She already had her ideal man picked out: Sejoon, a college buddy of her older brother. Sejoon was a true Seoulite, so he liked to visit their home in the country during summer vacations. He was almost like family to them. To distinguish him from her own brother, Ha Young called him Sejoon-oppa, but as a smitten high school girl, she used to indulge her infatuation by calling him Sejoon-ssi in private, as if he were one of her peers. She was daddy’s little girl, but she wanted to be a grown-up in the eyes of Sejoon. The first thought she had when she got into college was that she was now his equal. The girls from her esteemed school had their pick of guys from other colleges who were eager to date them. But during the first semester, Ha Young avoided Sejoon like the plague. Her plan was to shed her little girl image during the few months of her self-imposed separation. This was all in preparation for the following summer. In order to mature, in order to feign indifference, she went on every available date; but only Sejoon ruled her heart.
Sejoon came to stay at their house that summer, but he behaved like a family member and was treated just like family. Days rolled by and Ha Young was beginning to get anxious, as nothing short of a miracle would change their uneventful time together. One day, they had each gone on walks alone, and they ran into each other in the fields. This was their first time together alone. They walked along a stream on a path lined with poplar trees. It’s always chilly by a body of water but the air around that place was especially eerie and frigid, like cold water that’s thrown on your bare back. They came upon the mouth of the stream where the water emptied into a basin. In addition to the water flowing down from above, it was said to have a natural spring at the bottom from which ice cold water gushed out.
She sat down next to him leaving a little distance between them. Ha Young had never studied a man’s face so close up before. From the side, his head bulged out both in the front and in the back. It was the cutest thing she had ever seen. She became curious. If she were to wrap one arm around his head, would she be able make a full circle? His forehead was handsome, as was his nose. She wanted to come up from behind and blindfold him with her hands. It would be fun to feel his eyes move under her fingers, like the rapid eye movement that occurs during a dream. The area around his nose and chin was a bit scruffy, which made him look refreshingly different. His lips looked so firm and sensitive! It was his handsome lips that made his scruffiness beautiful. Without moving, Ha Young outlined with a fingertip the contour of his lips. Surely most people perceived only the firmness, not the subtle sensitivity, of his lips. That’s what she wanted to believe. Her fingers trembled with the urge to get closer, to touch him. A vague instinct for lust tickled her yet undeveloped sensibilities. Urged by something irrepressible, her gasping breath headed straight toward his lips. The scruffy part of his lip area felt scratchy, and the kiss was fiery.
“What are you staring at?”
He must have felt her gaze on him, for he spoke sheepishly, rubbing his face with one hand in a downward motion. Startled that she’d been caught fantasizing about him, Ha Young asked him an offbeat question.
“Oppa, do you know how to swim?”
“What a thing to ask. ’Course I do.”
“Do you know how deep this pool is here? They say that there’s a ghost of someone who drowned here. That’s why no one comes out alive. None of the village people swim here, you know.”
“That’s stupid. What, you believe in ghosts?”
“Everyone else does. They’re all scared so that means they believe, right?”
“Believing in something that doesn’t exist is just plain foolish.
“What if it exists? What would you do then?”
“What would I do? Fight it, of course. And win.”
“Then go ahead. Do it, in front of me. I dare you.”
How juvenile this whole charade was. This was not her intention. Her intention this summer was to have mature and intelligent conversations with him like enlightened college students. The embarrassment of her first immodest thought probably forced her to play dumb. Something unforeseen happened just then. Sejoon suddenly got up from where he was and dove into the water without even taking his shoes off. His perfect diving form followed by his white sneakers flashed before her eyes. But nothing reappeared. Seconds, minutes ticked by without any movement in the water. Afterward, she had no recollection of how help arrived or how long it took to arrive. Her memory ended after that point in time. It picked up again with Sejoon lying on the ground, his sneakers still on his feet. Shaking off the people trying to calm her down, Ha Young pummeled down on his chest, pounded his abdomen, and sucked his lips. She had never performed CPR or watched anyone do it, but she was trying to resuscitate him. His lips were as cold as ice. No matter how hard she pulled at them, blood did not return to his frozen, blue lips. Others pulled her away, but she managed to get free several times to repeat the act. Even if she had missed the critical time period for resuscitating him, she wanted to believe that the miracle of a loving kiss had no time constraint. After all, the prince charming in fairy tales pulled off this kind of stunt all the time. No one was able to stop her because she was in a state of hysteria. Even nowadays, Ha Young occasionally feels the chill she inhaled from him that day. The chill had frozen into a glacier inside her, dispersing ice crystals throughout her veins.
It took more than just the midsummer heat threatening to putrefy the body to make Ha Young stop; Sejoon’s family arrived and the body was handed over to them. They caused quite a commotion, erupting in grief and anger. The main gist of their screaming was that their family lineage had now come to an end with Sejoon’s death, that she was the one responsible for this tragedy. This was the most excruciating thing for Ha Young to hear. The bitch who terminated their family line—how that accusation horrified her. She trembled like an aspen leaf in the blistering wind.
But that was nothing compared to what happened afterward. A few days after the funeral, Sejoon’s mother reappeared with his two older sisters. They all seemed to have made a remarkable recovery in just a few days and eyed Ha Young with unctuousness and predatory tenacity. Their sympathetic gaze was much harder to endure than the screaming accusations and open hostility. Out of the blue, his mother grabbed her hand and begged her to bear them a son.
You’re with child, aren’t you? I know you are. It’s okay. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Just help us carry on our family line. We don’t want anything else from you. And if you want, we’ll keep this a secret just between you and us. But you’d better not have any other intentions with your present condition. Just so you know, we’ll never forgive you if that happens.
As though possessed, she hissed words to this effect in her ear. The sisters were less forward, but apparently they were the ones who had started all this trouble by instilling the impossible hope in her heart. They had whispered improbable what-ifs to their mother who had taken to a sick bed in her despair. They said they had no idea that their wishful thinking would have such a powerful effect on their mother, for she jumped out of bed instantly. Time will take care of everything so be patient, they said, implying that they, too, were banking on the same possibility on the off chance that they were right. The three of them were determined to claim what was rightfully theirs, Ha Young’s body merely a means to an end. In order to dispel their gross misunderstanding, to assert her rights, and to guard her body as her own, Ha Young had to suffer through unspeakable humiliation and harassment. Her father, who had so often joked about shooting anyone who harmed his daughter, said nothing and drowned himself in drink.
For Ha Young, kissing a corpse was the first and only contact she had ever had with a man. She couldn’t say this out loud. Whether or not anyone would believe her was of no importance. The fact that her first kiss had been with a corpse was a secret she could not bear.
Once convinced that their hope had been futile, Sejoon’s family lashed out one last time. You killed my son, you ended our family line . . . Let’s see how well you turn out. We’ll be watching you, we’ll be watching. You murderous bitch . . . You bitch . . . Only after wreaking havoc all over town, bashing her to their hearts’ content, did they leave her alone.
Before the year was over, Ha Young’s family had left their hometown and moved to an apartment in a satellite city. Her father, who had always been of the opinion that apartments were unsuitable dwellings for humans, acknowledged that they were just the thing for living anonymously. The move was perhaps his sad concession for not having fought off her foes. Ha Young took a year off from her studies and did nothing, spending her days moping around in a daze. Finally, with her brother’s earnest plea to resume her life, she slowly prepared to return to school. One night, she stepped out onto the veranda to get some air. Everyone else had already gone to bed. From the veranda, she could see the river that wrapped around the city like a belt, and over and above that, the national highway running alongside the river. The day’s bumper-to-bumper traffic had eased and cars sped by sporadically. Why was she standing there? On sleepless nights, she usually read while listening to music. Was she waiting, or beckoning, for something to happen?
In front of her, two cars on opposite lanes of the highway ran straight into each other without swerving. She was too far away to see which driver had been at fault. She rubbed her eyes in disbelief and by the time she opened them again, both cars were ablaze. With barely any traffic at that time, there were no cars in front of either car for the drivers to pass. Unless one of the drivers was insane or had a death wish, the thing that happened couldn’t have happened. It was so unreal that Ha Young thought she was hallucinating. What’s happening to me? Concerned more for herself than for the burning cars, she stumbled back into bed, with the incident already leaving her mind like a distant memory of fireworks. She somehow managed to doze off and when she awoke again, the incident seemed even further removed from reality. The next morning’s newspaper, however, gave a full account of the previous night’s head-on collision. There were no survivors from either car. It suddenly dawned on Ha Young that that day marked the anniversary of Sejoon’s death. This realization shook her to the very core. She began to doubt that the accident would have happened if she hadn’t been looking in the direction of the highway.
It was probably from that day on that she began to comprehend that she possessed an uncanny power to harm others against her will or knowledge.
Had she ever felt this power before? She must have. How could she forget Sejoon’s mother’s blame and accusations? What she’d witnessed by chance simply provided an opportunity for her to throw her hands up in the air and accept what she had tried so hard to ignore. Not that bad things always occurred on the anniversary of Sejoon’s death. It was a matter of how she put two and two together. Unless she made an intentional connection, the anniversary of Sejoon’s death and the car accident were two unrelated events. An infinite number of good things, bad things, and neither good nor bad things happen in this world day after day. The rhythm of life will continue to make the world go round as long as the world continues to exist. The problem was the feeling she had, the feeling that she was always connected to grief and sorrow. This feeling might have even compelled her to seek out unhappy events to attach herself to. This world was too, too small, and allowed all kinds of associations. One could always find a link, however remote, among relatives, school friends, and hometown acquaintances. Even a bottom feeder and a top dog were connected in some way, if one searched hard enough.
After they moved into the city, Ha Young’s family never again spoke about what happened in their hometown. This unspoken taboo prevailed because rehashing that affair would be like rubbing salt into Ha Young’s old wound. Her mother mentioned their hometown just once, some time after Ha Young graduated from college. She broached the subject gingerly, as if carefully lifting off layer after layer of bandages on a wound that may or may not have healed.
“I went back there once. For no reason, really. But how much it’s changed! There’s not a single soul we know who lives there anymore. Oh, and that pool. It’s now paved. In fact, they’ve covered up the whole stream. After we left I heard that factories moved in and polluted the stream. So maybe they sealed it off.” After a long silence, she eyed Ha Young cautiously and added, “Well, I wonder whatever happened to the ghost.” Thinking that her mother was searching for the ghost inside of her, Ha Young shuddered.
Her father’s one wish was to see his daughter happily married, but he passed away before fulfilling this wish. Cancer. When he was hospitalized, her mother never left his bedside. She looked so drained that Ha Young offered to watch him one night. But on that very night his condition took a sharp turn for the worse and he died. She couldn’t take her father’s death at face value. She couldn’t shake off the belief that her presence that night had triggered his death.
She married her current husband in her thirties. She had no thought of marriage up to that point, but she finally agreed to go on a series of arranged dates. This was purely due to her mother’s incessant oh-what-do-I-do-with-my-unmarried-daughter nagging, and Ha Young interpreted her maternal concern as blame for the downfall in the family’s prosperity. So she thought it best to get out of their hair.
She hastily married the first suitable guy. He wasn’t the handsomest man, but he was kind and affectionate. They had a son and a daughter, their wealth grew, and other good things followed, with an occasional flu suffered by their children being their only hardship. Her mother was so happy for her good fortune that she credited her deceased father for looking after her from heaven. Ha Young didn’t appreciate this thought. Why should she be so grateful for things that so many other people enjoyed in life, or think that she didn’t deserve them?
Despite such bravado, Ha Young was the one who didn’t feel worthy. She lived in vague fear of eventual doom, wondering why nothing had happened thus far. All that waiting—and agonizing—made her wish that she could preempt her ill fate. Her way of preempting fate often took the form of suddenly and arbitrarily running away from home. I can’t live like this anymore! This life is suffocating me! She engaged in this kind of outburst every once in a while. Her husband was more than understanding about her periodic fits, referring to them as her spring or fall mini-vacations.
This time, it’s different. It has to be. Ha Young told herself firmly, staggering out of the wooded area with pine trees. Turning forty this year. As if folding a square piece of origami paper in half with the edges perfectly lined up, she mentally folded her life in half. At age twenty, her life was turned upside down, and she had since lived another twenty years. What may line up perfectly is not origami paper but the recurrence of tragedy. I must take the initiative. I have to prevent this curse from happening, because I love my family. The sudden flow of love sent a lump to her throat. She hurried back to the hotel.
Would her mother be home at this time? Her mother-in-law? It’s too early for her husband to be home from work. She wants to hear her children’s voices, too. It doesn’t matter who picks up the phone. She has to let her family know that this trip is different from the other trips. It might be easier to get her point across to either her mother or her mother-in-law rather than her husband. Unable to wait until nightfall, Ha Young dials the number of her home. After two rings, she hears a recorded message: “We can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message and we’ll return your call.” A gentle, polite voice—a voice that she’s never heard before in her life.
“Hello, who’s this? Who’s calling? Hello?”
Panicking, Ha Young drops the phone and steps back. Her fingers and toes become numb and she loses all sensation as everything becomes a blur. She is acutely aware, however, of the ice-cold blood shooting through her veins. With the vividness of the blue blood vessels detailed in a poster of the human body, she feels the chill spread.