by Han Yujoo
The Child’s journal is filled with the most beautiful words; the mice and ants have been erased and are nowhere to be found. Nothing has been transformed and nothing looks familiar.
I looked up into the sky on my way home from the after-school academy and saw many stars. I could even identify some constellations. The moon was very large and very round. But it appeared more red than yellow. Because the sky was black, the stars were more visible. The constellations were scattered everywhere. I learned how to find the Big Dipper.
Every time the Child gets her journal back, there is the same comment. No concrete story. But she doesn’t know how to write a concrete story. No, even if she knows how, she must not write that kind of story. Although there is no concreteness in her story, she herself is concrete. But most of all, what is concrete is her sense of pain.
I saw a white butterfly. Butterflies don’t leave any footprints. It seems that spring is here.
The Child could not write anything, but still, she must write something. Her inability to speak, her inability to write, paint her redder and bluer and yellower and darker.
The Child sticks her hand in her pocket and checks that the key is there. She hears the thud of the front door opening and shutting. She’s been left alone. She slips out of her room and begins to inspect the apartment. As though checking to see if someone who’s been watching her has really left, as though she couldn’t be certain unless she checked. She opens the kitchen window and peers down at the parking lot. Soon a car with its headlights on pulls out of the parking lot. She whistles. No one is home. She is able to accept the fact only after she’s checked every corner of the apartment, again and again. She must hurry. She doesn’t have much time. She quickly puts on her jacket and running shoes, and steps out of the house with a flashlight. It is about a fifteen-minute walk to school. She runs. Her breathing grows heavy. She reaches the school gate and takes a minute to catch her breath. The flush fades from her face. She passes through the gate, wearing a dark face. She knows where the open window is. Before heading home that afternoon, she had carefully and unobtrusively left a hallway window open on the ground floor. She walks quietly toward the back of the building. In the distance, the field is sunk in twilight. All of a sudden, she is curious whether the coffee milk she left on the stands in the afternoon is still there. Also the food she had left in front of the cat—is it gone? She must hurry. She walks toward the window she had left open. She opens it. She hears metal slide over metal. She grabs the ledge with both hands and lifts herself up. She crawls over the windowsill. Her hands smell of metal. When she gets home, the first thing she must do is wash her hands. After climbing through the window, she lands softly on the floor. She tiptoes down the hall toward the stairs. She walks up. No one is there. On an ordinary evening in March, no one expects someone to sneak into the school. The teacher on duty is probably watching television in the warm night-duty room. The Child passes the second and third floor and continues up to the fourth. Her classroom is located in the middle of the fourth floor. She stands in front of the door to Grade 5, Section 3. She puts her hand in her pocket and touches the key. It’s safe. She takes the key out of her pocket and before she pushes it into the keyhole, she scans the hallway once more. No one. It’s dark. Even though the shaking of the thin wooden door echoes louder than the turning of the key, no one hears. She carefully opens the door. She slips into the classroom. She carefully closes the door.
The desks inside the classroom glare at her. The clock hanging on the wall glares at her. The organ placed at the front of the classroom glares at her. The chalkboard eraser placed on the ledge of the chalkboard glares at her. Kim Injung’s desk, set at a different angle from the other desks, glares at her. The bell on the teacher’s desk glares at her. The children who are not present glare at her. The teacher who isn’t present glares at her. The timetable hanging beside the chalkboard glares at her. The Child looks blankly at the objects glaring at her. She approaches the teacher’s desk. The attendance book, documents, and textbooks are piled neatly on top. The students’ journals are stacked on the floor under the desk. The Child snatches a pencil sticking out from the teacher’s pencil container, crawls under the desk, and turns on the flashlight. Her face becomes dappled from the light. Beyond the light is shadow. Her ears are turned toward the hall outside the door. Because her hearing was as good as an animal’s, even if a mouse or ant should pass in the hall, she would probably be able to hear it. She picks up the journal on the top of the pile. With eyes that resemble the eyes of a fish, she spreads open the notebook. The flashlight shines on the child’s bad handwriting.
I went to the market with Mom. I wanted to eat spicy rice cakes, so I asked her to buy me some, but she didn’t. But she made them for me at home. I hope spring will come soon. I realized today that a sudden frost is harsh. (Spring doesn’t come. Spring that doesn’t come is passing. Spring is blue, yellow, red, black, white, and murky.)
I practiced the violin all day. The sheet music looked really easy at first, but it’s much harder than I thought. The competition is coming up. My violin teacher said that my right hand is too tense. I have to practice again tomorrow right after school. (I don’t want to play the violin. I want to throw it away. I don’t like my violin teacher. I hate her. The bow is long. The body of the violin is hard.)
It rained a lot. All the other moms were waiting behind the school gate, but only my mom wasn’t there. But I still waited for her at the gate. I was really cold. She didn’t come, so I just walked home. Then I realized my mom has never come to meet me with an umbrella. I’ll always carry my umbrella with me now. (It didn’t rain yesterday. My mom will never come to meet me. An umbrella is hard. A broken umbrella is useless.)
I kicked a ball without realizing my shoelaces were untied and tripped. The field was hard, so I skinned my knees. My mom saw my ripped pants and got angry. She sewed up the holes. She said she wouldn’t buy me new pants, because I was going to rip them again anyway. (The field isn’t thawing. Mom will get angry again. Shoelaces hurt. A needle is pointy.)
A boy who sits in the next row bought a chick. I didn’t buy one, because Mom doesn’t like animals. I don’t know the boy’s name. I want a puppy. (The boy’s name is Park Yeongwu. Park Yeongwu killed the chick.)
I want to kill a chick, too. (I want to kill, too.)
The Child uses the flashlight to read the children’s journals and adds a few sentences to the end of their entries by imitating their bad handwriting. Most children don’t have secrets. Or perhaps, most children don’t know how to properly reveal or hide secrets. Or perhaps, the Child doesn’t consider the things that children consider to be secrets as secrets. She puts the journals back in their proper place and crawls out from under the desk. She pictures the expressions on the children’s faces when the journals are returned. She could have been a little more daring. She could have written sentences that were a little worse with her bad writing. But she doesn’t have much time. The wall clock that is half-submerged in darkness indicates it is 8:15 p.m. Her pulse isn’t used to running this fiercely. Her shadow, which objects have gobbled up, jolts fiercely, but without sound. She heaves a low breath. She doesn’t have to rush. She has about five minutes to spare. No sound comes from beyond the classroom, but she must be careful. If she is found and the news reaches all the way home, she will probably have to endure pain that is incomparable to anything she has experienced until now. She might not be allowed to go to school. She already had many experiences of being locked up, and each time, her shadow seized her throat. Without thinking, she covers her throat with her hand.
Before switching off the flashlight, the Child inspects the classroom once more, and wipes the pencil she had been holding with the hem of her shirt. No trace must be left. In the future, the Child will remember nothing. The sound of the pipe will not reach her ears. The mouse will not appear. Even if it were to appear, it will not appear in the image of the Child. Nothing can take her place. The Child will simply, ju
st as she always has, disappear without a word, without a sound, without a trace. She must wait for that time. That time. Time’s grime. The Child goes back home, retracing in reverse the steps that had brought her to the school. There is no one at the gate. The streetlights that dot the alley leading to the distant main road are lit. All of a sudden, she wonders if the cat ate her lunch for her, but she thinks it’s better to hurry home, rather than waste time on something like that. It probably ate her lunch for her, and would have grown for her by a corresponding amount. The coffee milk would have now turned to ice in the shape of a pyramid. Except for that, nothing has happened. Not yet. The Child will cause more things to happen. More things than what has happened to her so far. And yet, she probably won’t catch anyone’s eye. She must believe that. She must not catch anyone’s eye. Her dark face slips out of the alley. Her shadow urges her on. She begins to run. Toward home.
8
The children are choking one another at the back of the classroom. They call this “the fainting game,” but because they are given only a ten-minute break, no child has actually fainted yet. Ten minutes isn’t enough time for a victim to step forward. Plus the homeroom teacher rarely leaves the room at recess. The children wait only for him to leave. More incidents than one can imagine occur at the back of the classroom. All kinds of fun things. The children exchange meaningful, significant looks, but there is neither meaning nor significance here. They merely want to see someone collapse. They merely tear the wings off butterflies, they merely kill chicks. Without meaning or significance. They merely choke one another for fun. And they call this “the fainting game.”
Inju hands Mia a pen. It’s a pink pen, filled with pink-colored ink. Mia’s face is still a little puffy. Mia removes the lid and sniffs. Inju is sorry, but she hides what she feels. She thinks she could make amends with a single pen. It’s possible, of course. Can I have it? Mia asks. Sure, I have two anyway, Inju answers. Mia asks nothing else, because she doesn’t know Inju was the cause of yesterday’s incident. Inju won’t say anything to Mia, and what Mia doesn’t know today she won’t know tomorrow. Mia is lucky … Once again, Mia’s mother has tied Mia’s hair back too tightly. Mia wants to cut her hair in a bob like a middle school student. She wants to wear thin nylon stockings like a middle school student, not thick tights. She wants to wear a uniform of starched shirt and plaid skirt like a middle school student, not a child’s dress with lace and frills. She wants to wear a tie and Adidas running shoes like a middle school student. These things have not yet been given to her. The time for these things has not yet come. Mia must wait two more years. Two years later, Mia will want to grow her hair long and wear knee-high socks and curl her lashes like a high school student. These things also have not yet been given to her. The time for these things has not come, not yet. Mia must wait. It’s not yet certain whether Mia, who has gotten a pink pen today, will lose something tomorrow. It could be said that so far she has merely lost yesterday’s journal. All she has lost so far is yesterday’s journal.
A girl in the back makes a choking sound. She gasps. Her face grows pale and she falls forward. The children buzz. Buzzing, they crowd around the collapsed girl. The Child, who had been cleaning the chalkboard, looks at the girl splayed out on the floor. But the Child can’t see, because the children’s shoulders are blocking her view. Her hands, white with chalk, still smell faintly of metal. Even though she had washed them for a long time. Looking shocked, Mia and Inju also get up from their seats. Everyone steps toward the girl on the floor. Everyone except Injung and the Child. Someone shakes the collapsed girl’s shoulder, but she doesn’t respond and continues to lie limply on the floor. However, when someone offers to get the teacher, the girl bolts up right away. The game is over. Looking embarrassed, she returns to her seat. The other children return to their seats, looking both relieved and disappointed. Their breathing goes back to normal. Mia goes back to her seat as well. Mia is wearing a white headband with a bow on it. For an instant, the Child sees that white thing. I want to kill a chick, too. I want to kill, too. The Child knows that Mia’s name is Mia. Mia doesn’t seem to know the Child’s name or she doesn’t care. It will soon be Mia’s turn to be the class monitor for a week, and her hands will also become white and streaked with chalk. Before spring ends. Mia’s hands are fairly white, but they will become completely white, even whiter, and she’ll be able to have hands that are whiter than white.
Do you want to come over to see my puppy? Inju asks Mia. Can I? Mia says. That day, friendship that is the size of a pen buds between Mia and Inju. They will soon forget about yesterday’s event. The Child doesn’t look at Mia and Inju. She can’t grip chalk or pen because of the pain in her fingertips. Still, she must write something. Sentences that are not hers. She hears Mia and Inju whispering. I want to kill a chick, too. I want to kill, too. For an instant, the Child isn’t sure what she wrote in Mia’s journal. I want to kill, too. I want to kill, too. The Child brushes the chalk dust from her clothes. Every time her black clothes get covered with white streaks, her hands grow darker. At that moment, Injung, sitting at his desk that was placed beside the teacher’s desk well away from the other children, holds out a piece of tissue toward her. For an instant, shock spreads over her face. Injung flaps it at her. His eyes resemble the eyes of a fish. His eyes resemble the eyes of an animal. He raises his black eyes and looks at her. She thinks she has seen those eyes before. They reveal no emotion. Perhaps they contain no emotion. Without thinking, she takes the tissue from him and returns to her seat. The chalkboard is wiped clean. There isn’t even a smudge of chalk. The Child wipes her white hands with the white tissue. Her hands grow darker and darker until they are transparent. Her face is still as dark as ever. Injung is gazing blankly at her. She avoids his gaze. With her dark face, she turns and sneaks a look at Mia. Mia doesn’t look at the Child. The white bow on Mia’s headband flutters. It flaps up and down. The bell rings. The Child turns around. All of a sudden, she thinks of Mia’s last sentence. She has forgotten all the other children’s last sentences. She thinks of Mia and Mia’s last sentence. Mia must look at the Child. Mia will soon look at her. She will look, even if she doesn’t want to look. Mia is lucky … We must continue with Mia’s story. Look at Mia.
9
Everything sinks. The children go home, stomping on flower petals. Flowers wither. Spring doesn’t retreat until it has killed the last flower. The hunger of spring is desperate and murderous. The children don’t know the names of many flowers. Yellow, pink, white. The children pass through them on their way home, but their futures will have a different hue. Their futures that are neither red nor yellow are standing by somewhere beyond their gazes. The road in front of the school gate splits into three paths. A forked road always symbolizes the future. Most of the children walk home past the hospital’s back gate. The school is situated on top of a big hill, and the hospital is on top of a small hill. Sometimes children dash into the road to retrieve a ball that has rolled down the hill. They come to a stop. The emergency room and morgue. The parents failed to move the hospital entrance somewhere beyond their children’s gazes. But they needn’t fret so much. Because the children will inevitably pass through these places one day.
