by Seong-nan Ha
The fire started in Room 204 of Building B, the middle structure of three, and it swallowed up the entire place in seconds. Inside Room 204, children exhausted from the day’s travel and activities lay fast asleep. Because the campsite was in a mountainous area, there were many mosquitoes. The teacher had left after lighting a mosquito-repellant coil in the middle of the room. Rumors spread. The room was locked from the outside to prevent the children from wandering out. The teachers had left the kids sleeping on their own and were drinking out on the beach.
By the time they smelled the smoke and came running, the fire had raged out of control. It was impossible for anyone to get near Room 204, located at the end of the hallway. Inside the room, twenty-two students from the Forsythia Class of Morning Star Kindergarten had been sleeping. The cause of the fire was the mosquito coil.
By the time the woman arrived at the scene, the fire was already put out. The building had collapsed in a heap of ashes and the walls had melted away, exposing the skeletal metal frames of the cargo containers. She stood in front of the black wreckage and howled her daughter’s name until she fainted. Her child had been one of the twenty-two lost in the fire.
The woman gazed at the blurry photo of her smiling daughter. Her job had required an unusual amount of overtime. Whenever she had rushed to the kindergarten after work, she had found her daughter sleeping in a corner of the room and the rest of the children gone. As she urged the sleepy child home, she was so exhausted she felt as if her spine would snap. So when her daughter would lag behind to look at every little thing, she would smack her in the back with her purse. The girl would then sniffle quietly as she followed. Her daughter had wished that she worked at a bank instead. In her kindergarten class, there had been a classmate whose mother worked at a bank; she always got picked up early. Too busy catching up on sleep during the holidays and weekends, the woman never once took her daughter to an amusement park. When she’d wake around ten in the morning, her daughter would be sitting by her feet, eating a big bowl of cereal.
Once the parents were able to accept that their children were gone, they wanted to claim the bodies as quickly as possible. But it was nearly impossible to identify the bodies, which were burned beyond recognition. The six-year-olds had been wearing identical outfits, and they had been more or less the same height. At the news that they would not be able to see their children’s bodies intact again, the mothers beat their chests and swooned.
The woman wasn’t able to write down a single distinguishing trait about her child on the form that the police distributed. The girl didn’t have a wart or even a birthmark on her fingers or toes. She didn’t have any scars, either. Her hair had been kept short, since there was never enough time to comb or style it in the morning; so of course there would be no special accessories in her hair that would help tell her apart from the other children. She never had cavities that would have required her to get fillings, and she didn’t have braces. There wasn’t a single clue the woman could think of that would distinguish her daughter from the rest of the children. The girl was truly ordinary in every way. But this girl, who had never received much attention, earned her greatest distinguishing trait that summer, when she became one of the victims of the tragic fire that filled the front page of the newspaper for days.
Hun’s mother rolled about on the sand, clasping her son’s picture to her chest. Her face was crumpled with pain, but no tears came. Saliva driveled from her parted lips, the way crabs foam at the mouth. Her black pants became covered with sand. Several men tried to help her up, but she swung her arms and legs so violently that she knocked them down. The men didn’t get up. They simply sat on the ground and buried their faces between their knees or gazed out at the mud flat with vacant eyes.
Two months after the fire, their daughter’s remains were returned to them, but the woman’s husband would not allow her to see the body. She tore at his chest, demanding to see their daughter one last time. His shirt buttons flew off and a red scratch appeared on his neck. A fistful of ashes was the last thing she saw of the girl.
The tide was coming in quickly. The parents who’d been sitting along the beach got to their feet. They unpacked the food they’d brought as an offering and scattered it along the sand. They then laid out the rest of the food, but no one really touched it. Hun’s mother stuck the box of cold chicken between her legs and stuffed a piece in her mouth until her cheeks bulged out. Before she could even swallow, she crammed another piece in her mouth. She beat her chest as if she couldn’t get it down. Half-chewed chunks of chicken fell out of her mouth and onto her shirt and pants. It was clear how she had gained so much weight in just a few months. The woman’s husband pitched the flower bouquet as far as he could into the water and lit a cigarette.
They gathered up the pictures and boarded the bus. The bus bounced along the gravel road. The woman kept glancing back. She could see the ocean spread out below as the bus climbed to the top of the cliff. The bouquet of chrysanthemums was rolling on the rising waves. The last time she looked back, the bundle had separated and the flowers were floating toward the deep.
Hun’s mother sat next to her, sweat beginning to bead on her forehead. Her round face turned white and she hurriedly covered her mouth. Stringy fluid leaked out from between her fingers. Instantly, the pungent smell of the sweet-and-sour chicken hit the woman. The driver had to make a sudden stop. Hun’s mother raced frantically toward the pine trees with her hand over her mouth. Hun’s father hadn’t come. The woman followed Hun’s mother off the bus and pounded her back. Every time she heaved, vomit splattered between the weeds. Hun’s mother looked up at her with watery, bloodshot eyes.
“It’s sick, right? I know I shouldn’t do this to myself, but if I don’t eat, I keep thinking about what happened. I eat, then throw up, eat, then throw up. I don’t know if it’s because of all the weight, but my back and my knees hurt. And my husband, he doesn’t even come home anymore. I don’t blame him … I know I look hideous. I disgust myself.”
When they came to the first town a bit later, the bus driver stopped in front of a small store. The woman’s knees buckled as she stepped off the bus, but her husband reached out to steady her. The store had been converted from a traditional house. A middle-aged man woke up from the noise, sluggishly put on his slippers, and came out from the back room where he’d been sleeping.
Connected to the store was a courtyard with a water pump in the corner. While the men sat on benches, drinking cold drinks and beer, the women went to the pump and washed their faces and splashed water on their feet. The water was ice cold. The woman brought her mouth to the spout and drank greedily. Some water went up her nose and she choked and spluttered. Coughing, she remembered how she’d been the year before. When her daughter had died, she had wanted to die as well. But now, she felt guilty that she couldn’t even tolerate the heat or thirst.
A thick layer of dust had collected on the snack bags, balloons, and a plastic toy bugle on the store shelves. The storeowner seemed to have thrown back a few drinks earlier. Every time he opened his mouth, the stench of alcohol assaulted the woman’s nose.
“So, where you all coming from?” he said, accepting the change and putting it in the pocket of his coveralls. “Been a while since we’ve seen a tour bus round here.”
He took in the dusty bus windows and the people sitting on the bench or standing around listlessly.
“Ah, I see you went down there. Business was good for about three years until the accident, but it’s nothing but flies now.”
When no one answered, he put his grimy fingers in his tangled nest of hair and scratched.
“It sure was a sight to see. Could see the flames from all the way up here.” He licked his lips. “But you know, just before the fire, around eleven or so, a wee little thing in yellow passed by, crying all by itself.”
“Did you say yellow?” cried several of the women in unison.
“That’s right. The kid wasn’t from around here, that’s for s
ure. Stuck out like a sore thumb if you ask me, dressed all in yellow, top to bottom. Was headed for the new road right over there.”
The people who had been standing around the store gathered around the owner. The students of Morning Star Kindergarten had also been wearing yellow. The fire had started around eleven o’clock that night and it sounded like one of the children had passed the store right before eleven. One woman moaned and sank to the ground.
“Do you remember what the child looked like?” asked a trembling voice.
“Not too sure. Couldn’t really see ’cause of the dark. I think it was a girl … I called out to ask where she was headed, but she just kept walking, crying for her mama. Then shortly after, I saw the flames shoot up. I had no time to worry about her after that.”
When he mentioned that it had been a girl, the women who’d lost their sons in the fire burst into tears and clung to those standing next to them. The mothers of girls pressed in around the owner and begged for every detail. The woman started to feel dizzy and leaned against the cooler. She saw her daughter crying out for her while walking toward the new road. The image then vanished, as quickly as it had come. If the storeowner was right, one of the twenty-two children could still be alive. If it really was a girl he saw, one out of thirteen girls could still be alive. Whose girl could it be?
“Well now, can’t be too certain. It’s a little foggy, but I think she had short hair—”
“That’s her!” shouted several women to their husbands. “Our daughter had short hair!”
“But if the child had short hair, couldn’t it easily have been a boy?” yelled Hun’s mother, who had been sitting in front of the store.
At her words, the parents who had lost their sons grew excited.
“Well, I’m pretty certain it was a girl. Sure seemed like it, from the way she walked. And she wasn’t wearing her shoes properly. She was just scuffing along.”
“That’s our girl!” another woman shouted. “She always wore her shoes that way!”
The women’s eyes shone. Then an older woman pushed her way in through the crowd, slapping a towel against her dusty trousers. As soon as she saw the storeowner, she began to rail at him.
“You been drinking again, in the middle of the day? That’s it, I’ve had it! What’s the point of working myself to the bone when you go drink every penny away?”
The storeowner coughed and cleared his throat. But the people pressed him for more details. “Please! Do you remember anything else?”
“Well, I don’t know. Only saw her for a second. And it was dark, too.”
“Damn it, what kind of nonsense is this?” the older woman cried, raising her voice. “Now folks, don’t pay any attention to this good-for-nothing. He lives with a bottle all year round. Says he even saw a ghost once—in broad daylight, too!”
“You think I was the only one who saw it?” he barked. “Mr. Choi from the electronic shop saw the ghost, too!” He turned to the mothers again. “Let’s see, she was wearing a yellow T-shirt with yellow shorts, isn’t that right?”
“That’s right!” cried the women.
“So it’s this nonsense again?” said the owner’s wife. “Buses full of kindergarten students passed by all summer last year. Every day this store was packed with kids buying ice cream and drinks. You must be mixed up. You think it makes sense for a kindergartener to walk three kilometers from the camp at that hour? Alone and in the pitch black? So keep your mouth shut and leave these good people alone. They’ve already been through hell, so don’t go turning their whole world upside down again.”
There wasn’t a single streetlamp on the gravel road leading to the campground. Occasional signs that announced the camp were all there was. If the child had passed by the store around eleven that night, she would have had to leave the campground at nine. There would have been no cars passing at that hour. It was a little farfetched to think that a six-year-old would walk so far in the dark by herself. Deflated by the older woman’s words, people began to climb aboard the bus. The woman’s husband pulled her along. The ground seemed to sink below her feet. The new road sparkled in the sun and disappeared into the mountain. She felt dizzy and put her hand on the dusty store window to steady herself.
“You think I was seeing things?” the storeowner grumbled. “I even saw the pin on her chest. I saw it with these two eyes. It was a pin in the shape of a star!”
“Idiot,” his wife jeered. “Why don’t you just go back inside and sleep?”
He returned to the back room, dragging along his slippers. The woman found her seat on the bus, but the dizziness didn’t go away. A pin? Her daughter didn’t own anything like that. If she’d been wearing a pin, it could have helped identify her after the fire. Even if a child had walked past the store at that hour, it couldn’t have been her daughter.
When they arrived in front of Deoksu Palace past midnight, the area was completely deserted. But it was a different story across the boulevard, with its flashing neon signs. The bus sped away as soon as it had unloaded its passengers. The men shook hands. Because Jonghyeon and Mihyeon’s families were planning to move out of the country soon after, the goodbyes took a long time. Under a different sky, they probably thought they could be free from the thoughts of their children. The parents’ committee had refused to accept that a mosquito coil had started the fire. The parents had demanded that the government carry out a detailed enquiry into the true cause of the blaze. Couldn’t an electrical short-circuit have started it, for example? But their request was never fulfilled. Jonghyeon’s mother said she couldn’t bear to live in this country any longer. She clasped the women’s hands.
“I just can’t shake off that man’s words. We identified our son’s body, so we gave up hope a long time ago, but that doesn’t mean you should give up. Please, you need to find out who that child was.”
As soon as they came home, the woman went straight to her daughter’s room. Everything in the room—her pillow, blanket, clothes, notebooks, and sketchbooks—had been left exactly as they had been from a year ago. She took out a notebook and flipped through the pages. The edges of the pages were worn, as though they had been thumbed through countless times. She gazed at the writing that was full of spelling mistakes. She had always been too busy to sit with her daughter and fix her spelling or read her a story. The letters were large and uneven, going outside the lines.
Im 6 yeers old and I dont hav a yonger sister or broter I can play with. I dont have a older sister ether. Daddy is waching tv and mommy is on the computr. I hav to be qwite. So I just sit heer qwitly.
The woman buried her nose in the pillow and inhaled deeply. It still smelled faintly of her daughter. She stroked the spot that had turned yellow from her daughter’s drool. Her husband was washing up; through the thin wall she could hear splashing.
Even though a year had passed, her eyes still opened every morning at six. She would rush to the kitchen without washing her face, rummage through the fridge, toast some bread, and fry up an egg. Just when she was about to call her daughter, she would realize she no longer had a child to wake up.
She stopped working after the accident, since she and her husband no longer had need of a second income. Instead of going to work, she began to roam the streets aimlessly. When she came to her senses, she often found herself standing in a dead-end alley in an unfamiliar neighborhood. She had a difficult time finding her way back home, since she had no memory of how she’d ended up there. Sometimes she headed to Morning Star Kindergarten, located three blocks from her house. It had since closed down. There was always a For Lease sign next to the stairs that led up to the school. The colorful animal stickers on the windows were peeling off. The windows were shut tight, even though it was the middle of summer. After stumbling home, she would munch on the hardened toast and greasy fried egg that awaited her on the table.
The woman found a strand of hair fluttering on the edge of the pillow. It was fine, short, and a little wavy—it was definitely her daughte
r’s. Her husband, who had come out of the bathroom, seemed to be standing just outside the door. The knob turned a little, but then his footsteps moved away. Before long, she heard the door to the small room by the front door open and close. After the accident, she and her husband had started sleeping in separate rooms. She took the strand that quivered between her thumb and forefinger and carefully stuck it to a long piece of Scotch tape. Already stuck to the tape was a collection of her daughter’s fingernail clippings and strands of hair that she’d found in the room.
•
It was Kyeonghui’s mother who called to say they had finally managed to track down Miss Kim. Miss Kim had been the Forsythia Class homeroom teacher. The woman hurried to the meeting place Kyeonghui’s mother had mentioned, a basement coffee shop about an hour away by bus. The mothers, who had already arrived, were sitting in a corner.
For the past month now, Miss Kim had been working as an assistant in the apartment manager’s office across the street. Kyeonghui’s mother had to call Miss Kim several times before she finally came. The teacher perched on the edge of the sofa and stared at a spot on the floor. One of the mothers erupted, unable to wait any longer.
“You remember everything that happened that night, don’t you? Well, there’s a man with a store a little ways from the camp, and he’s saying a little girl in a yellow uniform passed by right before the fire started. He said she was crying.”
Miss Kim didn’t raise her face. If the woman’s memory was correct, the teacher was now twenty-four. The fire would have certainly scarred her as well. Miss Kim’s lower lip quivered.
“I don’t understand—”
“What we’re saying is, right before the fire started, a little girl apparently left the camp and was seen somewhere else.”
Miss Kim sat up in shock. “That’s impossible. I made sure they were all there before they went to bed. They were all there in the room …” She couldn’t go on. Her shoulders shook with sobs.
One of the mothers moved closer. “You might be able to cry still, but we ran out of tears a long time ago.”
