Almond Page 5

  I told him I’d think about it, just like I had told the social worker. I had learned to respond to unusual offers by buying time first.

  “Let me know if you have any problems. I’m a little surprised that I enjoyed our talk so much. Do your best to sell as many books as you can, might as well do a good job, right?”

  “Were you her boyfriend?” I asked him when I was about to leave. His eyes widened, then narrowed.

  “Interesting you thought of it that way. We were friends . . . very good friends,” he said, his grin slowly fading away.

  22

  After a few days, I decided to accept Dr. Shim’s offer. All in all, his suggestion didn’t seem to hurt me. My life went on with no more challenging situations. As Dr. Shim had suggested, I tried to increase sales and spent time every day researching bestselling used books and civil service exam guidebooks that were in good condition and buying copies. Some days when the weather was freezing, not a single customer came and therefore I wouldn’t say a single word. When I opened my mouth to drink water, my bad breath assailed my nostrils.

  Inside a picture frame on the corner of the table, the three of us remained the same. The smiling mother and daughter, and the emotionless me. Sometimes I would get lost in a meaningless daydream, imagining that they had just gone on a trip somewhere. But I knew their trip would be never-ending. They had been my whole universe. But now that they were gone, I began to learn that there were others in this world. These other people entered my world gradually, one at a time. The first was Dr. Shim. He stopped by the bookstore every now and then, handing me bread or tapping me on the shoulder to say, Cheer up, when I didn’t really feel down.

  When the sun set, I would go see Mom. She just lay still, like Sleeping Beauty. What would she want me to do? To stay by her side and flip her over every few hours? Probably not. She would want me to go to school. That would be the “normal” life for anyone my age. So I decided to return to school.

  The bitter winds slowly lost their force. Lunar New Year came around, then Valentine’s Day, and by the time people’s coats got thinner, I finally graduated ninth grade and moved from middle school to high school. There were endless complaints on television and radio of how January and February flew by so fast.

  Then came March. Kindergarteners became elementary schoolers and elementary schoolers became middle schoolers. I became a high school student. Back to seeing teachers and kids every day.

  And slowly, things began to change.

  23

  The new school was a coed high school that had been around for twenty years. It didn’t have a high admission rate to top colleges, but it didn’t have a reputation for unruly or delinquent students either.

  Dr. Shim offered to come to the entrance ceremony, but I turned him down. I watched the ceremony from afar by myself. It was nothing special. The school building was red outside, and inside it smelled of new paint and new construction materials from the recent renovation. The uniform felt stiff and uncomfortable.

  On the second day of the new semester, my homeroom teacher summoned me. She was a chemistry teacher in her second year of teaching. She looked maybe just ten years older than me. As she flopped down on an old purple couch in the counseling room, a dust cloud billowed from the impact. She gave a dry cough into her clenched fist, clearing her throat, Ahem, in a small voice. Here, she was a teacher, but at home, she might be the doted-on youngest daughter. Her constant coughing was starting to annoy me when she cheerfully struck up a conversation.

  “It must have been difficult for you. Is there anything I can help you with?”

  So she had some idea of what I had been through. The psychiatrist and lawyer working for the bereaved must’ve contacted the school. As soon as she asked me the question, I said I was fine. Her lips stretched thin and her eyebrows raised slightly, as if that wasn’t what she had wanted to hear.

  * * *

  Something happened the next day, just before class was dismissed. The homeroom teacher must’ve put a lot of effort into memorizing the students’ names the last couple of days. But no one seemed to be impressed, because the names she had diligently memorized were followed by remarks like “be quiet” or “please sit down.” It was clear she didn’t have a knack for drawing people’s attention. And it must’ve been a habit of hers to clear her throat because she did that every three seconds.

  “Listen up, guys.” She raised her voice suddenly. “One of your classmates has been through a tragic incident. He lost his family during the last Christmas holidays. Let’s give him a warm round of applause as encouragement. Seon Yunjae, stand up, please.”

  I did as I was told.

  “Cheer up, Yunjae,” she said first, holding up her hands high to clap. She reminded me of those floor directors I’d seen on television shows who prompted the audience to cheer from the back of the studio.

  The kids’ reaction was lukewarm. Most of them only pretended to clap, but a few genuinely cheered, so I heard some applause at least. But the clapping waned quickly, leaving dozens of their eyes fixed on me in complete silence.

  It was incorrect to say I was fine to her question yesterday.

  You can just leave me alone. That was what I should’ve said.

  24

  Rumors about me didn’t take long to spread. If I typed “chri” on a search engine, “Christmas murder” and “Christmas crisis” came up as related keywords. News articles about a fifteen-year-old with the family name Seon who lost his mother and grandmother occasionally turned up. They had pictures of me taken at the funeral with my face pixelated, but it was done so poorly that everyone who knew me would recognize it was me.

  Every kid reacted differently. Some pointed at me from a distance in the hallway and whispered as I passed. Others sat next to me at the cafeteria and tried to talk to me. I would always meet someone’s eyes whenever I turned around in class.

  One day, a kid had the guts to ask what everyone was curious about. I was heading back to the classroom after lunch. I saw a small, flickering shadow outside the hallway window. A branch was tapping against the window. At the tip of the branch, tiny forsythia flowers were blooming. I opened the window and pushed the branch in the opposite direction. I thought that way the flower could get some sunlight. Just then, a loud voice echoed in the hallway.

  “So what was it like to see your mom die in front of you?”

  I turned toward the voice. It was a small kid. A boy who often talked back to the teachers and found it amusing that his actions could stir up the crowd. You see that kind everywhere.

  “My mom’s not dead. My grandmother is,” I responded. The boy quietly exclaimed, Ohh. He looked around at the other kids, caught some of their eyes, and they snickered together.

  “Oh yeah? I’m sorry. Let me ask you again. How did it feel to see your grandma die in front of you?” he asked. Some of the girls booed, Hey, that’s not funny.

  “What? You guys wanna know too,” he said, shrugging and raising his hands. His voice was smaller now.

  “You want to know?” I asked, but no one replied. Everyone stood still.

  “I felt nothing.”

  I closed the window and walked into the classroom. The noise returned, but things couldn’t go back to the way they had been a minute ago.

  25

  That incident made me kind of famous. Of course, not in a good way by normal standards. When I walked down the hallway, the crowd parted like the Red Sea. I heard murmurs here and there. That’s him, that boy. Well, he looks normal. Some of the seniors came all the way to our floor to see me. That’s the boy who was at the murder scene. The boy who saw his family bleeding to death in front of him. But said he felt nothing without batting an eyelash.

  The rumors grew bigger and bigger on their own. Kids who claimed they had gone to elementary school or middle school with me said they had borne witness to my strange behavior. The gossip became outrageous, as gossip often does. According to one rumor, I had an IQ over 200. According to
another, I would stab anyone who came near me. One even claimed that it was I who killed Mom and Granny.

  Mom used to say that every social community needs a scapegoat. She’d given me all this training because she thought I had a very high possibility of becoming one. Now that Mom and Granny were gone, her prediction turned out to be true. The kids quickly realized that I didn’t react to anything they said and started asking me weird questions or more blatantly making fun of me. Without Mom to come up with sample dialogue for every new scenario, I was utterly helpless.

  I was a topic at the teachers’ meeting as well. They received calls from parents complaining about how, despite not acting in a visibly strange way, my presence itself was disrupting the class. The teachers didn’t quite understand my situation. A few days later, Dr. Shim came to school and had a long meeting with my homeroom teacher. That evening, he and I had dinner at a Chinese restaurant, with jjajangmyeon between us. When we almost finished them, Dr. Shim got to the point after beating around the bush for some time, basically suggesting that school might not be the best place for me.

  “Are you saying I should quit school?”

  He shook his head. “Nobody can tell you to do that. What I mean is, can you put up with all this kind of treatment until you come of age?”

  “I don’t care. You know that, if Mom has told you about me.”

  “Your mom wouldn’t want you to be treated this way.”

  “Mom wanted me to live a normal life. Sometimes I get confused what that actually means, though.”

  “Maybe it means living an ordinary life?”

  “Ordinary . . .” I mumbled. To be like others. To be ordinary without having experienced terrible ordeals. To go to school, graduate, and if lucky, go to college and get an okay job and meet a woman I like and get married and have kids . . . things like that. Put differently, to not stand out.

  “Parents start out with grand expectations for their kids. But when things don’t go as expected, they just want their kids to be ordinary, thinking it’s simple. But son, being ordinary is the hardest thing to achieve,” he said.

  Looking back, Granny must’ve wanted an ordinary life for Mom, too. But Mom didn’t have it. Dr. Shim was right—being ordinary was the trickiest path. Everyone thinks “ordinary” is easy and all, but how many of them would actually fit into the so-called smooth road the word implied? It sure was a lot harder for me, someone who was not born ordinary. That didn’t mean I was extraordinary. I was just a strange boy wandering around somewhere in between. So I decided to give it a try. To become ordinary.

  “I want to continue school.” That was the decision I came to that day. Dr. Shim nodded.

  “The problem is how. My advice to you is this: remember that the brain grows. The more you use it, the better it becomes. If you use it for bad, you’ll grow a bad brain, but if you use it for good, you’ll have a good brain. I heard certain parts of your brain are weak. But if you practice, you can make them stronger.”

  “I have been practicing a lot. Like this.” I pulled the corners of my mouth upward. But I knew my smile didn’t look like other people’s smiles.

  “Why don’t you tell your mom about it?”

  “About what?”

  “That you’re a high school student now, and that you’re going to school every day. She would love to hear it.”

  “That’s not necessary. She can’t hear anything.”

  Dr. Shim didn’t speak anymore. Of course he couldn’t, no one could object to what I had said.

  26

  Long streaks of rain slid down the window. It was a spring shower. Mom used to love the rain. She said she liked the smell. Now she could no longer hear or smell it. What was so special about the smell anyway? It was probably just the fishy stink of rainwater, rising from the dry asphalt ground.

  I sat by Mom’s side, holding her hands. Her skin was really rough, so I put some rose-scented moisturizer on her hands and cheeks. I went out and took the elevator to the cafeteria. As it opened, I saw a man standing outside.

  He was the man who later introduced me to a monster. Dragging the boy into my life.

  * * *

  A middle-aged man with silver hair, he was wearing a nice suit, but his shoulders were drooping, his bleak eyes welling up. He could’ve looked handsome if it weren’t for his gloomy expression. His face was dark and gaunt.

  His eyes quivered when he saw me. I had a hunch that I would see him again soon. Well, I know “hunch” isn’t a word that really fits me. Technically, I never felt the hunch.

  But on second thought, hunches aren’t usually just randomly felt. The brain subconsciously sorts your daily experiences into conditions or results and keeps a growing record of them. And when faced with a similar situation, you unconsciously guess the outcome based on that data. So a hunch is actually a causal link. Just like when you put fruit into a blender, you know you’ll get fruit juice. The way he looked at me gave me that kind of a hunch.

  After that, I often bumped into him at the hospital. Whenever I felt someone’s gaze on me at the hospital cafeteria or hallway and looked around, it was always him. He looked like he wanted to say something or maybe he was just observing me. So when he stopped by my bookstore, I greeted him like I usually did.

  “Hello.”

  With a slight nod, he went on to carefully browse the bookshelves. His footsteps were heavy. He passed the philosophy section and lingered around the literature section for a while before taking out a book and approaching the counter.

  There was a smile on his face, except he didn’t look me in the eye. Mom had told me that this meant “anxiety.” He asked the price, pushing the book toward me.

  “A million won, please.”

  “More expensive than I thought,” he said, skimming through the pages back and forth. “Is it worth that much? It’s not even the first edition. And it’s technically a translation, so it’s not like being the first edition would mean much.”

  The book was Demian.

  “It’s a million won.”

  It was Mom’s book. It’d been on her bookshelf since she was in middle school. The book that had inspired her to become a writer. I wasn’t going to sell it. What a coincidence for him to pick that, of all the books.

  The man took a deep breath. Judging by his stubbly chin, he must not have shaved for days.

  “I should introduce myself. My name is Yun Kwonho. I teach business in college. You can search my name online. I’m not bragging, I’m just telling you that I’m a credible person.”

  “I know your face. We’ve seen each other a few times at the hospital.”

  “Thank you for remembering me,” he said, his expression softening. “I met your guardian, Dr. Shim, and he shared with me your tragic story. I also heard you’re a special boy. Dr. Shim suggested I meet you in person, so here I am. Actually, I’m here to ask you a favor.”

  “What is it?”

  He hesitated. “Where should I start . . .”

  “You said you needed a favor. Just tell me what it is.”

  “You sure are quite straightforward, as I was told.” He gave a light smile. “I hear your mom’s sick. My wife is sick, too. She will be leaving us soon, maybe in just a couple days . . .”

  His back slowly curled like a shrimp’s. He paused for a beat and went on. “I have two things to ask. First, I would love for you to come meet my wife. Second . . .” He took another deep breath. “Can you pretend you’re our son? It shouldn’t be hard. You just need to say a couple things I ask you to.”

  It was an unusual request. Unusual meant strange. When I asked him why, he stood up and walked around the bookstore. He seemed like he always needed time before saying anything.

  “Our son went missing thirteen years ago,” he broached it. “We did everything we could to find him but failed. We were well-off. I came back from studying abroad and became a professor at a young age. My wife had a great career too. She and I thought we had a successful life. Until we lost our
son. Everything changed afterward. Our marriage was falling apart, and she fell ill. These years have been difficult for me, too. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this but . . .”

  “So?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t go on for too long.

  “And then recently, I got a call that they might have found our son. So I went to see him . . .” He stopped and bit his lips for a beat. “I hope my wife could meet her son before it’s too late. I mean, the son she’s been dreaming of.”

  He emphasized the word “dreaming.”

  “You found your son, who didn’t turn out to be what she’s dreamed of?”

  “That I cannot answer. See, it’s hard to explain,” he said, his head hanging low.

  “Then why me?”

  “Would you look at this?” He showed me a piece of paper, a flyer for missing children. There was a photo of a boy around three or four years old, and next to it was a sketch of what he would look like now. I guessed it could be said he looked like me. Not so much that we had similar physical features, but we gave off similar vibes.

  “So the son you found didn’t look like this?” I asked again because I didn’t quite understand.

  “Well, he actually did look like this. That means he might look like you, too. But he is not in any condition to meet his mother. Please, I beg you. Would you do me a favor just this once? I could upgrade your mom’s room. I can pay for her caregiver, too. I can try to help you with everything I can, if you need anything else.”

  Tears welled up in his eyes. And as usual, I said I’d think about it.

  * * *

  The man wasn’t lying. His job, his family, and the tragic story about his missing child were easy to find on the Internet. I remembered what Granny used to say: “It’s good to help others if there’s no harm.” When he came over the next day, I agreed to his offer.

  But I would’ve made a different choice had I met Gon earlier. Because by making this decision, I unintentionally stole something from him forever.