Mother told me it had been a few days. Min and Tae-kwun came to our house after I had left them on the road. Knocking on our door, asking for me. Worried, wondering if I might need anything. That was when Mother found me—in my bedroom, sick. For two, three days, Mother said, I had slept. I had lain in my bed with a fever that would not go down, in and out of sleep, my consciousness refusing to wake.
Now, my bedroom was dark. I turned my face to the bubbling noise.
A humidifier. Hissing and gurgling, spewing out vapors. On the desk, there was medicine, a thermometer, a towel, and a cup of water. Mother must have gone back and forth, checking on me. I remembered hearing her, vaguely. The sound of my door creaking open and shut, footsteps walking up and down the hall. Mother’s soft voice. I sighed, hurting even as I tried to breathe, to sleep, to fall into rest. I had never been sick like this, not without the few hints and signs that came before, a runny nose or a sore throat. Never this sudden burst of pain. An aching all over my body. And especially, this weight. The weight of my arms, my legs, my head, every part of me. I wanted nothing to do with it.
An alarm. My cell phone. A buzzing vibration. I turned, wincing. My cell phone was stuck between the wall and the bed, and it was flashing. I pushed my hand into the gap. Unread texts.
Sister: The passcode is the same. Let me know if you need anything, and I’ll see you when I come back.
Min: You okay?
Hi, Yewon. This is Tae-kwun. I hope you feel better soon.
Min must have given my number to Tae-kwun. I rolled to the side, hurting as I tested the feeling of a blossoming smile.
It was decided then. For sure, now. I was going to Seoul.
I had to. As soon as I was better. In just a few days, I would join the footsteps of hundreds and thousands. Everyone moving busily in their own time. What to do? What to eat? Min had said she would show me around. We could get off at any station in Seoul and still find so much to do. Italian, Japanese, Mexican, Southern-American BBQ, Vietnamese, and Chinese restaurants, all in one building. Every block in Seoul had at least one coffee shop, or a retail store, or a restaurant. Seoul was known as a forest of buildings growing on every street. Buildings taken root, everyone walking under their expansive shade. I was going to the city that stayed awake. I would live without the sound of scrubbing.
You better take a nicer photo of us next time.
It was Min. She had created a group chat. Min sent an angry emoji with steam coming out the ears. Tae-kwun sent a laughing emoji. My bad. I scrolled up to see what they were talking about. Tae-kwun had sent a photo. Our faces were blurry and unrecognizable. Min and I looked as if we’d been rubbed with an eraser. Tae-kwun must have taken it when Min was handing me her lip balm as I was tying up my hair. I zoomed out to see the background. The surrounding mountains were clearer—I could see they were beginning to shed, losing their slip of cover. They revealed their ground, piled with dead leaves, the trees losing all that they had bud.
Father had always taken care with his photos. They were never out of focus. Never blurry. His photos were always sure. Clear. Simple. Never confusing. Father’s photos said, here. I was here in Dalbit, and outside, there was a world.
A stench.
It is coming from below.
Looking down, my feet are balanced on a diving board. Just over the edge—one step over, and I would plunge into the water. The pool, a stagnant green. Its color, the color of burial. Algae, like diseased skin, crawls through the decomposing blue, along with a few deflated float tubes. The pool, fifty feet at most. The green body reaches to the far end of the room, the arched ceiling, the tiled walls. Cracked and crumbling. Some pieces have already fallen, shattered on the floor. The air, rot.
I move back, slowly bending my knees. Crouching as I try hard not to look at the water under me. Slimy with its rotting fume. The board shakes. The water, calm. Unstirring as it waits for someone to slip. My fingertips reach for the hard plastic but feel the water lick my fingers. Warm as it starts to swell up to the diving board. The water rising like a living body. Open water under the moon. An ocean trying to break out from the pool. I hug the diving board, gripping it tightly as the water begins to thrash. My fingers, slippery.
A hand.
Someone flails. A body fighting, drowning below. The foul water laps over the pool, crashing over, reaching for my shoes.
“—Noona.”
I know that voice, its raspy tone.
Jae-hyun.
The water calms, the ripples flatten, the hand disappears. There is nothing inside. The pool, like a stretch of moss, sits still in its decomposition. Quickly, I climb down from the diving board, pass the scatter of lounge chairs, the tipped-over lifeguard chair.
Jae-hyun, he is fine. He can’t be here, not inside the hotel.
There is only one path ahead, only doors. On my right and on my left. A number is hung on each slat of wood. All of them, erased and impossible to read. Rusty doorknobs stick out. Like eyes, they watch me, following. The hallway bends to the right, where I hear a single knock.
“Dad?”
A man’s voice, reaching for someone too far, too distant. Yearning, as I also yearn to say the word—father—one last time.
I peek around the corner. In the same hallway, surrounded by the same stretch of doors, there is a man. Pale lighting, a bluish hue. Flecks of dust swirling down on the grimy carpet. The man stands facing a door. His eyes, puffy. His jawline, a sharp square. His arms, covered in bloody bruises from years of carrying a door, a window.
“Ha-yun—”
The old man heaves out a name. Then, another.
“Dong-ja—”
His face drops more with each name. His eyes scurrying across the carpet. The old man looks up, raises his arm in the air, his fingers rolling into a tight fist. He stares at the door, waiting for someone to answer.
Maybe I could talk to him. Try asking him about this place, the hotel. For once, the old man looks like he could understand my questions. He might know.
I take a step forward, and the old man suddenly screams, his eyes widening and his mouth sputtering. He pummels his fist on the door, then throws his body against it. Trying to beat down the door, collapsing onto the floor. The old man pushes himself up.
Let me inside too.
His arms curl over his head.
Why, why didn’t you let me go with you.
Choking, I sat up. A wet towel slid off from my forehead. Everywhere, it was dark. My room, outside the window—the night still lingered. The humidifier was quiet. I rubbed my eyes and reached for my cell phone beside my pillow. There was a text from Ms. Han.
Hello, I was wondering if you might be able to drive me to see my brother next Saturday. Next week, I will be in Seoul, though. Please let me know. Thank you.
A loud bang. The window rattled. A faint, heavy sound leaked in from outside. Someone was beating a blunt object. Hammering.
I was not dreaming now. The old man was building again.
I forced myself out of the bed. I grabbed a jacket; I needed to see. Even if it was only a glimpse, a sight from far away. I needed to see that the old man was just the crazy old man I had always known. I thought of the rotten green water, the thrashing swimming pool, the flailing hand. And Jae-hyun. It was a dream. It had to be.
I hurried out of my room, stepping into the hallway. A light came from the bathroom. I walked past it without a glance. Mother, either asleep in her bedroom or maybe kneeling on the bathmat. The television sounded. Turned on, but the living room, dark, empty. Something about North Korea and their other military provocation. I left home.
The night air was brisk, cooling my feverish temperature. I kept my gaze on the small glow of light that came from a lamppost farther up, my feet trudging forward. I put on my jacket and zipped it up. Dogs barked, the sound ringing as their deep growls hurtled through the air, their prickled ears hearing footsteps from miles away, warning people to stay away, to turn back.
I needed to know why it was him. The old man. Why he had appeared in the hotel dream instead of anyone else. It could have been someone I knew, someone who mattered to me. Father, Mother, Sister, or even Jae-hyun. But it was always him instead.
The road split in two, and I turned left, stepping into darkness. I wiped my hands on my jacket. They smelled rotten. It wouldn’t have been Jae-hyun in the dream, anyway. We talked the least, we shared the least. The distance between us was so visible that Min would often ask if we fought. We never fought. Just shrug-offs and silence. And his cruel honesty—Jae-hyun would tell me things he’d never tell Mother or Sister.
That day, before I drove out to Inje and got caught by Mother, Jae-hyun had texted us. He had texted Mother that he was fine and was drinking with his friends while at the same time texting me, I don’t know where I am. Truth to me, lies to Mother. I called Jae-hyun. When my call went to his voice mail, I grabbed Sister’s car key and drove out to Inje, searching every passing alley, every street I knew. When I finally found him, Jae-hyun was slouched in front of a closed pet shop. The sign FOR LEASE hung on the door. The owner was gone and the door was shut, but the large aquarium tank was still on display. The awning’s orange light showed what had become of the abandoned fish tank. A muddy, dark green square. It had become a coffin. Even from the outside, I could smell its decomposition, fatal and gruesome. I shook Jae-hyun, begging him to get up, wake up. His shaved head swaying. He stank of alcohol and vomit.
Behind him, a tail. Somehow alive. Inside the abandoned tank, goldfish were swimming, their heads peeking through the grimy green water. Their fins and tails tried to thrash the muck away, but their bodies were trapped in the slime. The toxic water gripped them tightly, even as they fought. Many had swarmed at the bottom, unable to see anything anymore, sitting in the green muck at the bottom of the tank. Their tails swished and stopped, swished and stopped. They were dying.
What’s that word? Jae-hyun had murmured. His drunk voice, suddenly sober and sharp. You just watch. He struggled to speak through a hiccup. That’s all you do. I tried to grab his arms, but he wouldn’t let me. You know why I only tell you? Because you never do anything but watch.
Now, in the dead of night, I stopped at the broken lamppost on the road. Its light was flickering. On, off. On again. There was a small trail here, hidden in the thickets. The trail that broke off from the main road and led up to the large empty plot.
The old man would be there. This was where he came, I knew. Where he built. Beyond this trail, I would find him, the madman. Not the fragile creature I saw inside the dream, mourning as he wept.
I stepped forward, pushing away the leaves and branches. The lamppost’s light refracted through the gap of tree branches, like shattered glass. As I stepped deeper onto the rough trail, I couldn’t help but feel like I had made a mistake coming here. I didn’t even know if the old man was still building that thing. That monstrous, harrowing structure, which everyone in Dalbit knew. Even the kids. When I was young, all the kids stopped here. We would chase after the old man, but we never followed him onto the land. We never dared to set foot here. At the broken lamppost, everyone turned back. I stopped, spotting the edge of the lamppost’s halo. Its flickering orange light ablaze, revealing.
In a large clearing, there was a small house, surrounded by the mountains and dark, looming trees. The front facade of the house was made entirely of doors. One steel door and two wooden doors. One upside down. Doors lying horizontally. The hinges and doorknobs had all been pulled out. On the other side of the house was a wall made of windows. An awning window, with its lock latch torn off. A window that had been boarded up somewhere else, then dragged here. I took a few quiet steps, trying to find the spot where the lamppost’s light revealed the most.
There he was. The old man, kneeling on the ground. He was beating the ground with his hands, as if he was trying to wake someone buried beneath. He stood, stumbling to the house, his legs struggling to hold up his body. He began to pound his hands on the doors and the windows. His action, so familiar—I had seen it before, in the hotel. He threw his body against the closed house, which only stood firm. The old man collapsed, like a fledgling that had flown into a wall.
“Please, won’t you let me in?”
Until my dreams, I had forgotten about the old man. Changed the sound of his hammering and screams into a lullaby, taken the veil of the night as my blanket. I stepped back, trying my best not to make a sound, to avoid tripping over his hammer, crowbar, and screwdrivers. A scatter of bent nails, nuts, and bolts. Battered parts of a door, a window strewn all over the ground.
What if what Jae-hyun said was true?
That I only stood in the distance, watching.
Even now, I had only come here to see. To make sure he was the madman I had always known—but now I saw his brokenness. He was grieving.
Watching the old man weeping, I remembered Ms. Han. How she cried, how she tried. Ever restless as she reached out to her brother.
Hesitating, I saw a flicker of flame. A cigarette tip. It lit up, revealing three men who stood in the darkness, just a few steps from my spot in the shadows. Under the trees, they watched the old man as I was watching him. One man exhaled a curl of smoke. I recognized them all, the village elders. Some days after Father told me not to hurt the old man, he brought me out here. There had been only these elders then. Not the old man’s family, but they took care of him, watching as they waited for the old man to lose consciousness, to slip into his dream. Soon, they would step in, destroy, and tear that structure apart. Dismantling what the old man had been building for months. A truck would come in and take all the parts and pieces back to the junkyard. Tonight, they would carry out the old man once he fell asleep. Take him into one of their houses, tuck him into a spare bed. Like they had always done, and would always do. And just as he had always done, the old man would slip out from the house early in the morning. He’d come back here. Soon, he would see this land empty, and he’d start walking again. Back on the road to search, to find all the doors and windows he could. He would begin hammering again. Weeping until he finished it. The old man would never stop building, and they would always take him home to rest.
The old man’s cry ripped open the air, his broken words filling the night. He wailed to be let inside. But there was no opening, except for a few doorknob holes, or slight gaps between the boards. Just large enough to leak out a cry, a wail, a scream. The old man banged his hands on the wall, threw his body at a place he could never enter. Wailing, “Let me in. Please let me inside.”
What if someone was inside?
I refused the thought, even as I pictured it. Someone yearning for the outside, locked up, unable to escape. What if I was seeing this all wrong—if there was someone inside, looking out instead? Hoping for an exit.
Their hands moved. The elders, waiting to take the old man home. They gestured at me. Go, their hands said, go home. You shouldn’t be here. I bowed. The veil of the night ripped, a silent scream echoing across Dalbit. What was behind a door that could not be opened?