Your Republic Is Calling You (29 page)

"What?"

"The lady who lives downstairs is a total psycho. All she does is like, listen to see if we're making any noise. She's like glued to the ceiling. She probably heard that."

The intercom starts ringing—the ring tone is Dvorak's "Humoresque." Jin-guk picks up the handset in the living room, rolling his eyes. The music stops. "Yes, yes, yes, okay. Sorry. Oh, my mom? She's not home. Okay. Sorry."

He hangs up, shaking his head, and rotates his finger next to his ear. Hyon-mi giggles.

Jin-guk raises his finger to his lips and whispers, "The
family downstairs had a daughter in high school, and she jumped off the eighteenth floor."

"Oh my God, when?"

"She was crazy good in school, too. She was like, at the top of her class."

She widens her eyes. "So is that lady her mom?"

"No, after that they sold it and left. But the real estate people didn't tell the lady downstairs about it, so she bought it without knowing about that girl. It's not really their fault either, I guess. It's not like it happened in the apartment. Anyway, so she found out afterwards, and like, went crazy or something. That's what my mom says, anyway."

"Oh."

"Anyway, sit down. I'll go bring the cake. My mom bought it for my birthday."

"Want me to help?"

"Nah, I got it."

Shortly, he brings back two slices of cake. Cheesecake. It isn't half bad. If she weren't so full, she would enjoy it more. They eat quietly, licking their forks.

"So where's Chol?" She looks at her watch. It's already 7:40.

"Oh, I dunno. He'll be here soon," he replies nonchalantly. He gets up and goes into his room and comes out with a photo album.

"So where does he live?" she asks.

"Huh? Why do you ask?" He rubs the album cover with his hand.

"Oh, sorry. I was just curious."

"No, it's okay," he says, shaking his head. "It's just ... well, he lives here."

"Here? With you?"

"Yeah."

She looks around again. It's a typical three-room apartment. It isn't so tiny that another kid couldn't live there. She points to the room next to the bathroom. "So is that his room?"

"No." He looks a little deflated. It's clear that he doesn't like to talk about it.

She wonders if she should stop asking questions, but thinks it would be awkward if she suddenly changes the subject. "So do you guys share a room?"

"Yeah." He keeps fingering the album.

Hyon-mi is more interested in this kid Chol, who shares a room with Jin-guk, than flipping through some photo album. But she figures she will meet him soon enough, since he's bound to come home. Maybe he is a relative of Jin-guk's, which makes her feel more at ease. Until she got here, she was a little wary at the prospect of meeting his friends who don't go to school. What do they do all day? Are they delinquent pickpockets? She worries even though she figures she doesn't need to if Jin-guk is friends with them, but she also knows that you can never really know.

"So does Chol work at your parents' karaoke bar? Is that why he doesn't go to school?"

His face freezes. "My parents don't know about him."

She frowns. "What? How's that possible?" She looks around again. The apartment is small enough that it would be impossible for anyone to live there without the rest of the family finding out. Even if his parents run a karaoke club and come back dead tired at dawn, how can they not notice another boy living in their home? It doesn't make any sense, even if they don't pay any attention to their son.

"I've never told anyone about him. You can't tell anyone, okay?"

"Okay, sure."

He looks at her, gauging her reaction. "He's a good guy. His parents died when he was really young. He was in an orphanage but he was only there for a little bit, and he's been living here ever since."

"Without your parents knowing?"

"Yeah. They wouldn't have allowed it."

She opens the album. "Is he in this album too?"

He closes it. "No, he doesn't like to get his picture taken."

"Why not?"

"He doesn't like to be in front of people."

"So you're like his only friend?"

"I guess so. He likes the Internet and guns. He's crazy good with computers; he's a hacker, too."

"Really?"

"Yeah. If he wants to he can even hack into the site of the Office of the President. But if he did, they might be able to trace it and he would be investigated. Then they would find out he's living here, and he doesn't want to do that to me. He uses other people's citizen ID numbers and can even download porn. He can do anything."

"Wow."

Jin-guk keeps talking, getting excited. "He reads a lot, too, so he scores with girls when he's chatting online."

"What does that have to do with chatting?"

"Doesn't it make sense? Girls love that stuff. He even chats with college girls."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, and he makes money selling in-game items. He hacks into the games and sells 'em to other players. He's really busy when I'm in school."

"Are you guys friends from elementary school?"

He shakes his head. "No, from before. We met at the playground in front of the apartment complex. We played together all the time and became best friends. We used to go play computer games at Internet cafés and go to baseball games."

"So you guys have known each other for a long time, huh?"

"Yeah. But why do we keep talking about him?"

"Oh, yeah, that's true. It's your birthday! Happy birthday, by the way."

"Thanks."

They sit there silently. The TV isn't on and the album is still unopened. Jin-guk jiggles his leg a little. Hyon-mi places her hand lightly on his knee, as gently as if a pair of butterflies landed on it. "My dad says it's unlucky if you do that."

It's the first time they've touched. He puts his arms around her. His lips touch hers. She's surprised, but doesn't make a big deal out of it. Her hands are raised in the air, floundering, not holding him but not pushing him away either. He rubs his lips against hers a little awkwardly, then cautiously slips in his tongue. His tongue flicks her front teeth, then pushes through. Her tongue comes forward to meet his, slowly, and slips around his. Like snails who crawled a long way and were checking each other out with their antennae, their tongues greet each other carefully. Each time their tongues touch, they automatically retreat a little, shyly. Finally, their tongues are intertwined passionately and fill their mouths, and she opens a little wider to enable his tongue to move a little freely. Spit pools in her mouth and drips down to her thigh.

Her hand now on his back, she pulls him to her. His hand fumbles near her waist, burrowing into her shirt. Shocked,
she pushes him away. Their eyes meet. He looks down. She gets up and goes into the bathroom. She sits on the toilet and retraces what has happened. Her heart is pounding. It isn't her first kiss—in elementary school, she once French kissed a boy in the hallway of their apartment complex, but that was child's play. This time it felt different. She feels like her whole body is damp, almost as if she's angry at someone. She feels hot. Her face is flushed. She doesn't know what to say, and she can't begin to forgive herself for what just happened. But she also wants to call a friend and tell her about what she's feeling. She wants to read a book that really understands and addresses this feeling she has, and she wants to listen to music that makes her feel this way.

Jin-guk knocks on the door.

"Yeah?" Hyon-mi calls.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah."

"Are you mad at me?"

"No, I'm coming out." She flushes. The water is sucked down to the bottom, free-falling into the depths of the plumbing system. She straightens her clothes, checks her face, and walks out. He's standing outside the door, looking guilty. His face is flushed. She reassures him as if she were his mother. "Jin-guk, I'm fine. It's okay. Let's go look at the pictures in the album."

He follows her to the sofa without a word. They sit a bit further from each other than before and flip through the pictures together. He looks just like he used to as a baby. His one-hundredth-day commemorative picture shows him with his penis exposed, smiling. He looks surprised on his first birthday. He ages quickly in the picture album. He goes to kindergarten in white knee socks, then quickly becomes a
Boy Scout in uniform. The little boy who rides on the carousel in his mother's arms turns into a student going to cram school, waving from the bus. She suddenly wonders what it must be like to be a mother. She wonders whether it will happen to her. She assumes it will be terrifying, but isn't that the same with kisses? Life is a continuous cycle of once-terrifying things becoming normal.

N
ESTLED IN A
dark corner of an Internet café, Ki-yong glances around. The room is filled with teens, smoking and immersed in StarCraft, Lineage, and CartRider, and unemployed men killing time. There are a couple of girls talking into webcams, earphones covering their ears. People are focused only on the monitor in front of them—nobody cares about anything else. He looks over at the monitor of a high school kid next to him, who's immersed in playing StarCraft. The war zone is a dry, barren land. The enemy rushes forward as bullets shower down, but no matter how many bullets they fire, Confederacy marines are falling fast. There is only one point to the game: survive. The marines in the bunker don't retreat even after it's taken, returning intense fire at the Zerglings who come at them, but the Zerglings are cruel and uncaring, tearing them to pieces. The adrenaline-pumped Zerglings, trampling the bunker, attack the command center, while the hydrolisk reinforcements go straight for the SCVs. Two broodlings burst out from a Firebat's body, and the queen, flying over, infests the command center with toxins right before it's destroyed, claiming it as her own. From the command center, the Zerg pumps infested Terrans and sends the walking suicide bomb toward the Terrans' siege tanks. The marines, who surrounded tanks on the hill in a last, protective stand, will have no chance against such
force. The boy's nineteen-inch LCD screen flows with blood. The situation is dire. But from twenty inches away, the desperation of the game fails to be conveyed.

Ki-yong opens the bag Soji returned to him and finds the passport. The front page of the passport indicates one Lee Man-hee, not Kim Ki-yong. He sticks his hand in the bag and takes out the English edition of the Old Testament. It's hefty. He opens it. The Colt is still there, in the nook he cut out five years ago to hide the gun. The bullet that burrowed into Jong Ji-hun's head burst from that gun. Ki-yong closes the book and puts it back in the bag. The bundle of one-hundred-dollar bills is still there too. If he remembers correctly, it totals thirty thousand dollars. With that much, he can survive in Manila for a while.

With the bag resting in his lap, Ki-yong grabs the mouse. He opens a search window and types, "Discount airplane tickets." A long list of Internet travel sites comes up. He clicks on one. He chooses Manila as the destination, but then switches to Bangkok. Then he decides to continue on to Paris. Of course, he wouldn't really go all the way to Paris; he would get off in Bangkok and vanish. He types in the name Lee Man-hee and gets his reservation number. He writes down that number and the name of a customer service agent in his notebook. It's an e-ticket, so he can print it once he gets to the airport.

Only after he finalizes the reservation and purchases the ticket does he notice a small warning at the bottom of the screen. It reminds travelers to check their passports' expiration date. He takes out his passport again, opening it to the front page. The expiration date passed ten months ago. He stares at the passport, now as valuable as a piece of toilet paper. He flips ahead to look at the back page, hoping beyond
hope that he has an extension, but it has already reached the maximum number of extensions allowed. He slides it back in the bag. He takes out the prepaid cell phone he bought today. He can't remember his wife's cell number because he always uses speed dial. After concentrating for a long time, he finally remembers it. His fingers fumble, his heart races. He calls the wrong number twice. He breathes in deeply, and manages to press the correct eleven numbers.

M
A-RI STOPS
in her tracks and tries to open her purse. Since she can use only her right hand, she has a difficult time getting it to open. The zipper is stuck on something. Song-uk holds her purse for her. She pushes her hand in and pulls out her vibrating phone. She doesn't recognize the number. Song-uk and Panda stand with their backs to her, looking around, as if they are bodyguards. Ma-ri doesn't answer her phone and instead slips it back in her purse.

"Who is it?"

"I don't know. I've never seen the number before."

She closes her bag with Song-uk's help and looks up. A small, upscale motel, built of black marble, stands in front of them.

"This is the place I was talking about. I found it online," Song-uk explains, and heads up the stairs first. She looks behind her for a second, as if she wants someone to rescue her, but nobody is paying any attention to their little group. She
feels like a college freshman again, limping along the streets of Apgujong-dong with a sprained ankle.

The three go through the automatic doors, but there's nobody in the lobby. In its place there is a touchscreen about twenty-five inches wide. A sentence floats on the screen: "Welcome, please choose your room." Ma-ri presses "Mediterranean Theme." A picture of the Mediterranean room whooshes into view from the right. They look at the scrolling images of imitation limestone wallpaper, bright lights, and a whirlpool bathtub. The room looks nice and large, the photo probably taken with a wide-angle lens. She looks at the guys, wondering if this is what they want. They nod in excitement. They are impatient. She feels in charge, dominating them like a showgirl onstage. When it was just one guy persuading her to do this, she thought of it as if she were being dragged to the motel against her will, but it feels different when there are two.