Cursed Bunny

by Bora Chung

  This set off the old man, who kept repeating “Young people don’t know what’s what these days” and “Let’s see what happens when you stay on your high horse” before getting up and leaving. And it wasn’t long after that when the old man came in with an “assistant” who was dressed entirely in black. A veiled threat that if the woman and her husband did not hand over the thirty million won, they would be inflicting a lot more than just monetary damage.

  “We’ll record them next time and have the lot arrested,” said the woman’s husband, unfazed as usual.

  Whether there would be a “next time” to record and report was the question on the woman’s mind. And the word “record” brought on a flood of memories of when she answered his phone and the things she discovered. This frustrated her so much that she could no longer speak, and her husband mistook her silence for acquiescence and was satisfied. That was the end of their conversation.

  In the basement, as she played with the child, the woman suddenly burst into tears.

  When the child asked her what was wrong, the first thing that came to the woman’s mind was the face of the old man from the blood-sausage stew restaurant. They simply did not have thirty million won on hand to pay them off—nor were they even legally obliged to. But they couldn’t afford the back taxes, either. Her husband had already spent the twenty million won he had borrowed, the third floor was still vacant, and the first floor, declaring their intent to move out soon, had been refusing to pay rent since the previous month.

  “It’s all right,” said the woman as she shook her head and forced a smile. “Sometimes, adults get into complicated situations.”

  She tried to raise the corners of her mouth, but tears kept leaking from her eyes.

  The child crouched before her and gazed wordlessly at the woman as she cried.

  The blood-sausage restaurant owner never did get her premium.

  The owner's husband was found dead in the kitchen of their restaurant. When his body was discovered, it was said that a part of his corpse had been boiling in the giant stockpot they used to make broth.

  As the police descended on the crime scene to investigate the grisly murder, the likes of which had never been heard of before in the neighborhood, the owner’s daughter and son-in-law, who were said to have been employess there, suddenly vanished without a trace.

  A few days later, the woman saw in the papers a photo of the black-clad “assistant” the old man had brought with him that time. According to the accompanying article, the assistant was a gangster who had been found dead in the bed of his lover.

  This lover, who had discovered the body, stated to the police that she had left for work after seeing he was still asleep but had found him lifeless upon her return. The man’s upper body had been crushed in a strange shape, leading the police to suspect that a rival gang had taken some kind of revenge on him.

  Even as she played with the child in the basement, the woman couldn’t shrug off these strange events.

  But not being threatened was admittedly a good thing. There was no one to report them to the tax office or demand the difference on their premium, which meant she didn’t have to worry about money for the time being. The clothing boutique that had been planning to move into the first floor was now dithering between breaking their signed lease or pushing back their move-in date, but the woman didn’t have to worry about such things anymore.

  Clunk

  The woman looked up in surprise. The child had brought forth a new locked box from somewhere and was playing with it in front of her. This one had a simple lock that released when it was twisted. The child seemed amused by repeatedly locking it shut and then twisting the lock open. As the woman stared at the brightly smiling child’s hands locking and twisting open the contraption, she was suddenly reminded of a line in the news article she had read earlier: “The body’s torso had been crushed into a particular shape …”

  Clunk

  The child looked up at the woman and smiled proudly.

  Life is a series of problems. Especially when one is married and has a family. Because even when you manage to avoid the problems of the outside world and return home safely, your family is there waiting with a whole different set of problems of their own.

  Although the issue with the blood-sausage stew place’s premium was resolved (albeit in a way that left a queasy feeling in the woman’s stomach), the caller did not relent with her attacks. They’d been receiving calls long before that, but her husband did not pick up on purpose and the woman didn’t have any strength left over to make an issue of it. This agitated the caller even more. The caller somehow got the woman’s private number and began to harass the woman on her own phone as well.

  —Your husband is sleeping with the interior designer!

  —You pretending to not see makes me sure that you’re a scammer, too!

  —The three of you went to college together, I’m convinced you were the one who introduced the interior designer to your husband!

  —I know you are the one who goaded your husband into having an affair and ripping off my husband and that you’re only pretending to be a victim!

  —Make your husband return the money he stole and tell me where my husband is!

  —I can’t breathe with these creditors coming after me. Tell me where my husband is or take legal responsibility for his debts!

  The more the woman listened to the caller, the more she thought of this wife of her husband’s friend as mentally ill or something close to it. She could almost pity her. Because, from the caller’s perspective, her husband had simply said he was going into business before one day disappearing altogether, and now creditors were swarming around her, demanding to be paid.

  But the woman herself could not afford to help this other woman who cursed and shouted down the phone at her at all times of the day.

  According to the incendiary text messages saved on her husband’s phone, he and the interior designer had been seeing each other for a long time. The twenty million won her husband had said he’d invested in his friend’s defunct company had actually been handed over to this interior designer. Her husband’s friend had never asked for the office to be remodeled. All he had said to him was, “If you have an empty office in your building, can I use it for just two months?” And when her husband had begun remodeling, his friend had messaged, in a disconcerted tone, “You’re going to too much trouble for me, I just need a place to sit down for two months.”

  But her husband had wanted to show off to his lover that he was the owner of a building. “If you need more money for the construction, let me know and I’ll get you whatever you need,” he had boasted to her. The woman realized that it had never crossed her husband’s mind that the money he would use to get whatever she needed was borrowed, nor the fact that the building he wanted to show off had been bought through years of his wife’s back-breaking labor.

  The child was good at playing by herself; this time, the woman did not cry as she watched her. The child kept locking and unlocking the box—clunk, clunk, clunk—as the woman watched in silence, lost in her own thoughts.

  The child, still playing with the box, looked up at her and smiled. The woman tried to smile back, but found that she could not.

  Saying he was going for a hike, her husband left the house late one evening.

  A heavy rain began to fall.

  He never returned from the mountain.

  There was a traffic accident on the nearby highway. A car skidded on the road and crashed into a guardrail. The woman driver had been taken to the ER but was comatose. The man who had been sitting in the passenger seat had flown out the car on impact and was found on a slope. His neck broken, he had died instantly.

  After the death of the husband, the child followed the woman around all day, even while the woman was on the phone with her mother.

  —Are you sleeping well? And eating?

  “I never miss a meal. And I’m sleeping well.” The woman gestured to the child to be
careful as the little one ran across the living room floor, giggling all the way.

  —And how’s the building, are you OK in there? Getting some rent money?

  “Yes, a boutique moved into the first floor, and the publisher on the second floor still pays rent every month.”

  —Do you ever go outside? I hope you’re not holed up in there all day.

  The child leaped into the woman’s embrace. The woman stroked the child’s hair.

  She had just begun to notice that the contours of the child seemed clearer.

  “Well …” Her voice briefly trailed off. “It’s pretty comfortable in here.”

  —But you’ve got to get out and get some fresh air now and then. You’re still young and childless, and it’s not like widows need to hide away from the world anymore. Go travel, meet some people …

  The child reached for her phone to try and take it. The woman shook her head. “No, Mom is on the phone right now.”

  —What? I couldn’t hear you just now.

  She spoke into the phone. “It’s nothing, Mom.”

  —Is there someone in the house with you?

  “No, who else would be here?”

  The woman’s mother sighed.

  —I can’t bear the thought of you being alone in there all the time. And you refuse to let me come and take care of you for a while—

  “Mom.” The woman cut her off before she started her lamentations again. “I’m comfortable the way I am now. I just need more time, some rest, and I’ll have my wits about me again. I’ll take care of everything then.”

  —Your mother-in-law isn’t bothering you, is she?

  “No, Mom. It’s nothing like that.” She had to get her mother off the phone. “Look, I’m boiling some laundry right now and I need to get it off the fire. I’ll call you soon.”

  —All right. Be careful. Don’t do too many chores, and get out of the house every now and then.

  “Bye.”

  She hung up the phone.

  Turning to the child, she said, “Well, it’s just you and me now.”

  The child stopped running around and faced her. She smiled.

  “Would you like to go on a trip with your mom?” the woman asked. “You’ve never been outside this building, right? Do you want to go outside, just the two of us? Shall we go somewhere far, far away?”

  The child looked at the woman’s face with an intense expression. Wordlessly and slowly, she shook her head.

  The woman already knew. The child had always been here in this building. And she would never be able to leave.

  As long as she was with the child, she would never leave this building, either.

  And that wouldn’t be so bad, she thought.

  “Come here.”

  The woman opened her arms wide. The child ran in for a hug. The woman almost fell backwards from the impact.

  At first, the child had only been a faint shadow in the basement.

  Now she had solid form, with real warmth and a soft texture to her skin. She was bigger, weightier, and clearer.

  This made the woman feel immensely proud.

  “You and Mom, the two of us are going to live together,” she whispered to the pale shadow-child she held in her arms. “We’re going to be happy here forever.”

  She kissed the child’s soft, white forehead.

  This trace of a small child, who had waited for her mom for so long in the black basement of a dark concrete building, looked up at the woman she had been searching for and gave a bright smile.

  Ruler of the Winds and Sands

  0

  In the air above a sandy desert floated a ship made of golden gears. Sunlight glinted on each and every tooth of the thousands of gears that went tick-tick-tick, making the airborne vessel shine as brilliantly as the sun. This shimmering, flashing ship of gears slowly traversed the hot air above the desert sands, buoyed by the boiling heat and golden waves of reflected light that surrounded its hull.

  1

  The master of the ship was said to be a great warrior and a powerful sorcerer. According to ancient lore, the king of the desert had battled the master of the boat for control over the land that stretched even beyond the horizon to the golden sun. In the final battle, the king managed to sever the master’s left arm. The master of the golden ship, with blood spraying from his severed arm, shouted and cursed the king of the desert.

  “You have taken my virility, and so I shall take that of your descendants! You have scattered my blood on these lands, and for that, none who rule these sands will ever be safe from harm.”

  The king of the desert did not believe in curses. As he watched the master of the golden ship ride his horse of golden gears up into the air undulating in the sunlight, the king smiled victoriously. Drops of blood dotted the path where the master of the golden boat passed. They boiled like little flames before immediately drying out in the suffocating heat, a sight that made the king of the desert laugh with such malicious will and volume that he clearly hoped it would carry over to the decks of the ship.

  2

  Not long after, the king of the desert had a son. The prince was born blind. The king’s rage pierced the sky. The queen, overcome with disappointment, lingered a little before dying.

  Left without a mother, the prince was raised by the servants and handmaidens of the palace. The handmaidens took great care of him, but their hearts were always filled with fear. The king of the desert was rage itself, and the prince was a curse. The servants and handmaidens, in trying to avoid that rage and the curse, stooped their backs low and kept their heads down at all times. This was why, even as they fed or clothed or rocked the prince to sleep at night, there was no love in their hearts for him.

  In order to survive, children come to their own understanding of their place in their world. It looks as if children are limited in what they are conscious of, but they comprehend very quickly the intention of adults and the trust given to them, better and more precisely than adults themselves do. The prince grew up surrounded by beauty and riches, among people who were polite and well-mannered but had no sincerity. As far as the prince knew, that was just what the world and its people were like.

  3

  The prince became a boy, and after a little while, a youth. He was blind and, as the only issue of the desert king, the crown prince. And so, the king of the desert, when his son came of age, dispatched emissaries across the endless stretches of sand to the people who lived on the grass plains to ask for a princess who would be queen of the desert.

  The ruler of the grass plains knew the prince of the desert was blind, and he made this his reason for refusing at first. But when he was presented with the silks and jewels that the emissaries had brought with them, he soon changed his mind. This was how the princess of the grass plains came to follow the emissaries to the desert where she was to be wedded to the cursed prince.

  4

  The wedding was set for three months hence. All the servants and courtiers busied themselves with seemingly endless wedding preparations. The sleepy palace in the desert suddenly turned into a hive of activity.

  The prince was very curious about the princess of the grass plains who was to become his bride. He wondered whether she knew he was blind and why she would come all this way to marry him if she did, or how she would react if she didn’t … The prince was well aware of the ancient tradition of the groom not meeting the bride before the wedding, but he was determined to know what kind of person his bride-to-be was before it was too late.

  Ever since he was little, the prince had been familiar with the various shortcuts and hidden passages in the palace. Since no one suspected a blind prince would know of such paths, the prince was able to explore the palace to his heart’s content and go wherever he pleased. Even the darkest corner where light didn’t reach was not a problem for him, and the prince was able to hide wherever he desired in the palace. This was how, on a night while everyone else was asleep, he was able to creep into the inner chamber whe
re the princess was being kept.

  She was asleep. Listening to the steady breathing of this unfamiliar woman, the prince stood in place for a while, absolutely still.

  The princess opened her eyes. The prince could not see this, and continued to stand there without realizing.

  “Who are you?” demanded the princess. “Why are you in my chambers at this hour?”

  The prince gave a start. But he managed to calm himself down and slowly replied, “I am here to meet my bride.”

  5

  As the prince carefully felt her face, the princess closed her eyes and remained still. The touch of this stranger’s fingertips on her face made her feel shy and ticklish; it also felt good, somehow. The feeling of doing something forbidden disconcerted her and scared her a little, but it was also pleasurable and secretly thrilling. She could feel herself blushing a little more each time the prince’s fingertips caressed her face.

  By the time he took his hand away, the princess was completely and utterly in love. But she didn’t know whether that love was for the prince or for her own excited emotions.

  “You are beautiful,” the prince whispered. “If only I could see … If only I could see my beautiful bride’s face, just once …” Large tears sprang from the prince’s eyes.

  “Please don’t cry.” The princess tried to console him. “You can touch my face any time you so desire, just like now. I will stay by your side for the rest of our lives.”