PD Ch1

“I know you’re in there! Open the door!”

It’s been thirty minutes already. Bang, bang, the man knocked on the door.

I was startled and took a step back. The man was still there.

“I have nothing to say. Please go away.”

“Junghyun, just a moment, let’s just talk for a bit.”

“If you keep doing this, I’ll call my mother. Go away!”

The banging stopped abruptly. I held my breath, tense.

How much time had passed?

There was no more sound or sign of him. Finally, he was gone, and I slumped onto the sofa, relieved. A repulsive, chilling feeling, like a snake coiling around my neck, made me shudder.

“…”

It felt like someone hidden in the darkness was watching me. I couldn’t move in the empty house, just sat there blankly for a long time. Only when fatigue began to push back the fear did I finally get up. I went straight to my room and collapsed on the bed.

I thought he was a good person.

My mother, a single mother, gave birth to me and left Korea as if she were being chased out, immigrating to America. She survived without hope, eating into my maternal grandfather’s support, until she was scammed again. This time, she had to leave America. Desperate, my mother met a man.

He was devoted to her, paid off all our debts without any conditions, and after dating my mother a few times, he invited us to Korea. We left America as if we were running away. It all happened in the dead of night.

I thought he was a good person, he had to be a good person.

He was the man who would have a simple wedding with my mother next week and start a life with her at his family’s home somewhere in Pyeongchang-dong.

We should have stayed in America. We should have survived there somehow. I kept repeating the unsolvable proposition and clenched my fist slightly. When I supported his staggering body when he was drunk, I shouldn’t have mistaken his lips on my earlobe as just drunken behavior. It wasn’t just unpleasant, it was an instinctive revulsion.

Whenever I thought of my mother, I felt suffocated and tormented. That dirty feeling, as if I had committed a crime even though I hadn’t, was indescribable. I had advised her to reconsider the marriage several times. Each time, my mother got angry.

She said she was finally trying to live a stable life, that her life, which had been mortgaged since she gave birth to me, was finally being released, and she flared up, asking why I was ruining it. She said I was old enough to understand, and she scolded me for being immature, saying I didn’t know anything. I had known since I was old enough to understand that she, as a woman and a person before being a mother, had feelings of considering her own flesh and blood as burdensome and cumbersome, but hearing those words directly from my mother’s mouth made the blood in my body run cold. After that, I didn’t interfere with her marriage to that man anymore. It was a petty act of revenge.

That man liked me. My mother was being used by him. Let her be used to her heart’s content. While I pretended not to know, we liquidated our life in America and packed our bags onto the plane as if it were a lie. We moved our base of life, trusting only in the man who would become our stepfather, without any plan. It was too late to regret it like crazy now.

Buzz, the cell phone on the table vibrated. I got out of bed and picked up the phone.

[Make sure you come to dinner the day after tomorrow. It’s been too long since I’ve seen your face.]

It was a text from the man. I was dumbfounded, fed up, and hated the situation itself so much that I threw the phone down roughly.

I stared blankly at the cold Seoul night sky.

It was the seventh night view I’d seen in Seoul.

∞ ∞ ∞

As soon as I opened my eyes, I quickly washed up and left the house.

Even though it was rush hour, the officetel was eerily quiet. Most of the people living there were living alone, so there was an atmosphere of not caring about others everywhere. It was subtly different from the individualism I experienced in the United States. It wasn’t that they didn’t care at all, but they were aware of it and deliberately pretended not to know, a silent observation rather than complete indifference. The silence of wanting to be deeply involved in other people’s lives was unfamiliar and awkward to me, who had grown up in the United States.

I got on the elevator, crossed my arms, and leaned against a corner. Maybe it was because I had only lived in warm areas, but I wasn’t used to the cold. When I first arrived in Seoul, it felt like I had taken a handful of cool spring water. The freshness of the winter weather was only for that time. Seoul was terribly cold and terribly snowy.

The man who came to pick me up at the airport took my mother’s luggage and said to me.

“Do you like snow? If you’ve only lived near LA, you’ll find snow amazing, right?”

The image of his face, glancing at me and smiling slyly, came to my mind. The face in the elevator mirror was stiff.

I walked to the subway station not far from the officetel building and put earphones in my ears. A song by my favorite band was playing. I got on the subway with my hands in my pockets. The feeling of being carried somewhere on the busy morning subway was very unfamiliar. I had the same hair color and spoke the same language, but I was a stranger in this land. The train ran, making my ears numb. It let people out and took them back in as much as it let them out. The entrance opened and closed its mouth several times, but the number of people in the train remained constant.

I arrived at the station where I had to get off and stood behind the people. Following their tails, I got off the subway and checked the exit number and building name that I had briefly written down on my phone.

Exit 3, Daekyung Building, 10th floor. I believed there was a convenience store on the first floor.

I went out Exit 3 and looked for the convenience store first. It was near the station, and the convenience store immediately caught my eye. The name of the building was written in English on the cornerstone in front of the building. And below that, there were Chinese characters, but I couldn’t understand them at all. Perhaps because I didn’t know the meaning or sound of Chinese characters, they felt like the most foreign language.

I went inside with an awkward feeling. There was a reception desk in the middle of the wide lobby. I walked over there and spoke to the staff.

“Excuse me. I’m here to see someone. Mr. Hwang Minho of Dream Communication.”

The man, who appeared to be an information clerk, handed me a list.

“Please write down your name, contact information, and the company you’re visiting, and give me your ID card, and I’ll give you an access card.”

“ID card?”

I had received documents from immigration, but I had left my passport at home. I didn’t have anything to prove my identity. Even though I had nothing to show, I unconsciously groped my back pocket with my hand.

“Don’t you have an ID card? Then I’ll contact the office for you. Please wait a moment.”

The man kindly picked up the phone. Not even a few minutes later, he came running out from inside, wearing an access card around his neck. He was quite a bit older than me, but he was the man I had come to call “senior” because of our connection in the United States.

“Senior.”

“Oh, you’re here. How did you find your way here without getting lost?”

When he came out, I was able to go inside without going through any other authentication procedures. He put his hand on my shoulder in a welcoming gesture and led me to the elevator. At the same time, he asked for a handshake. When I shook his hand, the trust that is unique to someone in charge of publishing sales came over to me through his firm grip. Confidence, diligence that he could do anything twice as well as he was told. Seeing that he put even that into his handshake, it seemed that my senior had become a complete salesman.

“How many years has it been, Seoul?”

Hwang Minho got on the elevator, pressed the 10th floor button, and asked impatiently. I smiled slightly. I nodded once.

“Probably.”

“Weren’t you settled down there?”

“It just happened that way.”

“What do you mean it just happened that way?”

“It’s a bit complicated.”

As I talked to him about this and that, I arrived at the 10th floor before I knew it. The elevator opened its mouth. I got off the elevator and followed him.

“Come in.”

He put his card key on the entrance, and the door clicked open. As befitting a publishing house that hadn’t been around for long, the interior of the office was decorated in a clean and sophisticated style. Perhaps because it was the morning of the start of the day, everyone seemed busy. I passed through a somewhat complicated and noisy place and entered a separate office. Seeing that the nameplate said “Director’s Office,” it seemed that my senior’s title was director. I looked back at my senior and asked.

“Is director high up?”

“Of course it’s high up. It’s an executive position. Sit down.”

I sat on the sofa he recommended. My senior asked for coffee outside and sat in the chair across the desk, making eye contact.

“Why do you have such a cold expression? Aren’t you excited to be in Korea?”

“It’s all the same everywhere.”

“What kind of talk is that, you rascal. A young man making such depressing noises. But what brings you here this morning?”

Just as I was about to answer, there was a knock, knock. Soon the door opened and an employee came in with coffee. I awkwardly got up, thanked her, and took the mug. The woman smiled kindly and went outside. My senior also drank coffee leisurely. I fiddled with the mug.

“So, what’s going on?”

“Senior, do you remember that I wrote fairy tales when I was in school?”

“Um, yeah. You did. You even won an award, didn’t you? You signed a contract with a major company, too. You’re still working as a writer from time to time, right? If you let go of it, your sense will drop. Try to release works regularly.”

“…By the way, perhaps-”

“Oh, did you graduate and come here? You don’t have much left, do you?”

“No, I had one semester left, but I couldn’t finish it.”

“You rascal, even if you wanted to come in, you should have finished school and come in.”

“I should have.”

I couldn’t say what I really wanted to say, and I just listened to what he was saying. It wasn’t that I quit school because I wanted to come to Korea. I couldn’t afford to go to school. I did everything I could to pay for the state university tuition, which was more than $20,000 a year just to register. The money that I had prepared every year, no matter what I did, was blown away by the scam my mother suffered, and I gave up hope. The man appeared in the pitch-black darkness where I couldn’t see anything. I thought about that and lowered my head.

I was no different from my mother. I needed the man’s money as much as my mother was desperate. I knew in my heart that he didn’t love my mother. However, I didn’t know the exact reason why he was so nice to my mother, why he was so eager to pay off our debts. No, I didn’t want to know and I didn’t care. I just wanted to get out of this poverty that was terribly holding me back and dragging me down. If I had a man, I thought I wouldn’t have to live in hardship anymore, as my mother dreamed. I could abandon reality.

That’s why. When my mother told me to go to Korea, I packed my bags without thinking. I’m being punished. I’m paying the price now for greedily accepting the favors he gave me without knowing what they were.