Chapter 51

I asked if I could have Taejun be in the room with me as Investigator Cha conducted the interview.

“Unfortunately, no,” Investigator Cha replied. My brother’s expression was surprisingly level, even as he left me alone with Investigator Cha. He had probably expected it. That only added to my increasing anxiety towards this upcoming conversation. Without Taejun in the room, I was afraid I’d say the wrong thing and incriminate myself. Taejun hadn’t even allowed me to give him my recollection of that night's events prior to the interview. True to his word, as soon as I was comfortably able to speak, he summoned Investigator Cha.

I fiddled with my fingers as Investigator Cha set up a recording device and took out a type-pad. He cleared his throat.

“Can you tell me what happened on the night of the 11th?” he asked me.

I thought it would be difficult to tell him, but I guess I’m pretty succinct with my words. I didn’t have to go into detail about the horror of being down there in that merciless sea. Just that I was thrown in, and pulled out in the nick of time. In his professional career he’d probably heard plenty of horror stories like mine, probably quite a few even worse. But his unchanging, unsympathetic expression almost irritated me.

I felt more awful telling him about my compliance with helping Sungmin attempt to move the stash of drugs. I’d been terrified for not only my but also my family’s safety that night, but now, safely removed from that impending threat, it felt like I had given in too easily. I was anxious that Investigator Cha might feel the same way.

For a few minutes after I’d finished telling him my account, he seemed to mull it over.

“So you truly believed that there was an immediate threat to you and your family’s safety if you didn’t go with Han Sungmin?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I replied in a whisper.

“Why didn’t you try to signal that threat to your friends when you and Han Sungmin encountered them?” Investigator Cha asked.

That was hard to explain. I could have. I wanted to. “I… I wasn’t exactly friends with them anymore,” I said falteringly. “And I didn’t think they would be able to help. Or maybe I thought it would make it worse. Maybe I… it was hard to think rationally then.”

It felt like a weak excuse. If Ryu really had been the one to alert the police, he really had stopped the entire situation, and I wouldn’t have even had to go with Sungmin in the first place. I wouldn’t have been arrested trying to break into a car.

But Investigator Cha moved on with the questioning. “How did you know Han Sungmin prior?”

I tried not to let my anxiety show on my face. Innocent, law-abiding citizens didn’t join street racing teams. I hadn’t even thought to prepare for a question like this. Neither did I know if they would have asked Sungmin this question, or how he would have answered.

I told him as much as I could without going into the races. I told him about how his car had caught my eye at Do Hoon’s shop, and how I’d followed him to a meet after I saw it again in the city. Then we’d become friends through that.

“Were you aware that Han Sungmin was the son of Han Jungho?”

“No. I found out later.” It was just my shit luck that in all of Seoul, the one guy I’d run into just happened to be the son of my family’s debt collector.

The questions continued.

“How?”

I was exhausted by the time the questioning ended and I was returned to my brother. He didn’t ask about how it went as he thanked Investigator Cha and sent him off. He didn’t say much afterwards either.

The doctors cleared me to go home that afternoon, and I was discharged from the hospital.

“Come back if you begin experiencing increasing pain or discomfort in your chest.”

I was given a bag of pills and Taejun and I went home.

As soon as we crossed the threshold of Taejun’s apartment he said, “We can talk now if you want.”

“What happened to our parents?” I blurted out.

The abruptness of my question startled him. Taejun let out a huff. “It always surprises me what you ask first.”

“They were interviewed about you,” Taejun said. “But I can’t tell you what they said. I was taken off the 7D case.”

I almost asked why, but the answer was obvious. I remembered how fiercely he’d tried to protect me against Investigator Cha. Now that his family was involved, Taejun would be too partial in the investigation.

“They didn’t know about your being in the street racing scene, did they?” Taejun asked.

“No,” I said.

He let out a sigh of relief. “Good. Did you tell Investigator Cha about that?”

“I left out as much as I could,” I admitted. I tried to recount exactly what I had told Investigator Cha. “Did our parents know I was in the hospital?”

Taejun looked agonized by this question. “Yes,” he said, finally.

They had known, and they hadn’t come. The realization was crushing. I knew I couldn’t rely on them financially, and neither had I ever gone to them for emotional support. And yet an overwhelming feeling of abandonment swallowed me up.

Maybe my father had really meant it when he told me I wasn’t his son anymore. Had he really thrown me away so easily? Before I’d even been convicted, he had already blacked me out as guilty. Or…

Had he thrown me away because I was no longer useful to him? The thought was too miserable to even consider.

As for my mother… I knew she was far too weak willed to ever stand up against my father. If I was dead in my father’s eyes, I would have become a ghost in hers as well. Me and my brother’s relationships with our parents had always been strained, and I’d already begin distancing myself from them. But having them abandon me so easily after all I’d done for them hurt me so much more than I could have even known it would. They’d been shitty parents, but they were my family. It’s easy to say that blood doesn’t make family. But these were my parents. They’d brought me into this world. Of all the people in the world, the ones who should have been most obligated to care about you, even a little, should be your parents.

I had no one now.

Taejun’s expression grew even more agonized as he watched mine. We’d fought constantly over our differing opinions on how to deal with our parents. In the end his assessment of them was better than mine. But he wasn’t gloating now.

“I’m sorry,” he said faintly.

“You were right about them,” was all I could manage to say.

I didn’t much feel like talking after.

After that I just felt numb for a very long time. The case closed out. Strangely enough I never went to court. Taejun came home one day, excited and pleased.

“You were pardoned,” he told me. “I was even able to get your record expunged.”

I barely cared. The way I was now I didn’t care if I was in prison or not. It was all the same to me. I spent all day indoors, barely functioning. I didn’t know where the time went, only that it did.

I didn’t care about what happened to Sungmin, but Taejun told me what he knew anyways. Someone had found Sungmin a lawyer who helped him argue that he’d been unfairly coerced by his father into the gang. They had been able to prove somehow that through his actions my life had been spared. Under his lawyer’s guidance Sungmin had agreed to become an informant to help the case flesh out whatever information was still missing. He wouldn’t be able to get a full pardon, but because of his help, he would only be receiving a light sentence.

Taejun had also confirmed that Han Jungho and his faction had been convicted. That was all I needed to know. That conflict in my life was over. No need to revisit it.

Taejun’s smile faded at my lack of response. “I thought you might be relieved to hear about how the case ended,” he said.

It should have. But nothing got through to me anymore. I didn’t feel anything anymore.

“I am,” I said half assedly.

Taejun frowned at me. I wasn't very convincing. “Ok… well," he said hesitantly. "I was thinking we might go out and celebrate the fact.”

It seemed tactless to do so. It was only a victory to be proven innocent if you weren’t and it was just rubbing it into the faces of all the people who were now behind bars. I told him so. “And I don’t feel like going out.”

“You haven’t gone outside in ages,” Taejun said.

That wasn’t true. I went out yesterday to get beers from the convenience store.

“I’m worried about you,” Taejun said.

It was exhausting to hear it. “You always are,” I said to him. “Just leave me alone.”

Taejun looked at me hard for a few moments. Then he retreated into his office.

A few days later over dinner, Taejun asked me what I wanted to do now.

“Your record is clean. The gang is gone. You can resume your life, Jae. Have you thought about returning to your classes?”

“No.” I hadn’t thought about much at all lately. But as soon as Taejun mentioned the classes, weariness weighed down on me. It sounded so unappealing. I knew instantly that I didn’t want to go back to them.

“You don’t want to continue them?” Taejun asked.

It all felt so pointless. Even if I got my certifications, I knew I didn’t want to go to university. And I didn’t need to. I was just fine working a labor job or a trade job. I didn’t have to try to catch up to Taejun’s standards.

“Do you want to see a doctor?” he asked me after I didn’t respond.

“No.”

He knit his brow in frustration, but only for a moment, before he was able to wrestle that constructed sympathetic look he’d been giving me for the past month or so. He’d asked me that question several times before and each time I’d told him no. He never pressed the issue after.

“Then what do you want to do?” Taejun looked at me. I think he knew that I was just going to answer that I simply didn’t want anything. He quickly rephrased the question. “What do you think you can handle doing?”

“Work?” I wouldn’t have mind worked something mindless, like my old job at the convenience store. But the thought of job searching was exhausting. “I can ask my old manager if he’ll take me on again.”

Taejun didn’t like that answer. “Sure. Working might be good. Then after a while you can go back to your–.”

“No,” I interrupted rudely. But it was far too exhausting to try to explain my thoughts to Taejun, who had always been so resistant to my way of thinking.

I could see him struggling. He was trying to be sympathetic, but I could see how frustrated he was getting. “Jae. I know you’re having a hard time right now, and I’m just trying to help. But you won’t see a doctor, and you’ve lost all your drive…” He trailed off.

Taejun cleared his throat as he continued. “I know it's hard right now,” he repeated. “But that doesn’t mean you should give up thinking about your future. I think we should…” he was still talking but I wasn’t listening.

I felt a surge of irritation. My brother was always looking towards and thinking about the future. I didn’t have that kind of foresight. My whole life I’d only ever struggled with getting through the now. And that’s just what I wanted to do.

“I’m not like you, Taejun,” I interrupted. I didn’t even know what he had been saying. “I’m not going into higher education. I’m not going to university. I don’t even know what I’d study there. I can’t visualize my future like you can, hyung. All I ever want is to get through the day. All I need is a job, a simple one that I can do and make a living from. I don’t have grand aspirations like you. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but I’m never going to excel in life. I just want to be able to get through it. Please. Stop trying to get me to be better than what I am now. I’m fine being what I am.”

I hadn’t spoken so much at once since my return to Taejun’s apartment. It would have been a lot even before then. It was probably more than the total of all the words I’d said since I’d come back from the hospital.

Taejun was a little stunned by my response. He didn’t seem to know what to say. “I’m not trying to get you to be like–” he cut off his own words. His fist clenched until the knuckles turned white. I watched it with mild disinterest. Finally he sighed and unclenched it.

“If that’s how you feel, then maybe you should just go ahead and finish your military draft first.”

So that’s what I did. Most people dread the draft. But I was relieved to finally be away from my brother. His sympathy, or his attempt at it anyways, had been stifling.

“Are you nervous?”

“No.” The military would give me something to do instead of drowning in my thoughts all day. I actually looked forward to it.

Taejun chuckled. He ruffled my hair, but my lack of response made him remove his hand awkwardly.

At the end of the orientation ceremony they had us all turn around to salute our parents. I knew Taejun was in that crowd. But as encouraging shouts and cheers rang out from the gathered families and friends, I still felt a particular emptiness knowing that my parents weren’t there.

“I’ll see you after your training ends. Let me know what weekend,” Taejun said, as we bid each other goodbye. “It’ll be tough, but keep your head up.”

I hugged him wordlessly and turned to follow the rest of the initiates.

Taejun was right. It was tough, but I welcomed it. No one here knew my past, or the recent trauma I’d gone through. No one asked. Here in the military, every initiate was just trying to get through the day. Like I had always done.

It was astonishing to see how much everyone around me was suffering. At night after the trainers had left us for the day, they complained about everything. Needing to wake up early (it wasn’t that early). The food (sure, the portions were meager and sad-looking, but it sated and gave you the energy you needed). The training (running wasn’t that awful and yet it was so thoroughly hated). But most of all, my peers complained about the trainers and higher ranking officers.

The trainers were gleefully quick to punish any infraction, real or imagined. And usually the punishment was doled out in an ironically Communist fashion. If one guy pissed off a trainer, we all had to suffer the consequences. The trainers were incredibly creative with their punishments, but the end result was always the same. Everyone walked away with aching bodies and bruised egos. For me, my ego had been crushed into compact nothingness long ago.

“Aish, if I knew the army was going to be so tough I would have tried harder to get into the navy,” lamented one of my dorm mates one evening.

“I can’t believe the abuse they put us through here. How is this allowed?”

The abuse they were complaining about today was our most recent one. A trainer had inspected our bedding, and been displeased about the way one recruit had folded his. We’d all been made to kneel for an half an hour instead of sleeping as the trainer walked up and down yelling about how worthless we were. Occasionally he’d sneer at a person who was wincing and give them a hearty smack. When the punishment had ended, a couple of recruits had collapsed a little too eagerly, and then the trainer had made us start all over again.

We’d all have bruised knees that would ache during the training tomorrow. But the pain was only physical. Only temporary.

My dorm mates were looking at me as if waiting for my contribution. I just closed my eyes and focused on trying to sleep. We’d already lost an hour of our strictly regulated sleeping time.

I’d long learned to deal with abuse. There was no point in complaining. All we could do was keep going.

The next day they taught us how to use a gas mask and had us walk into a gas chamber to show their effectiveness. Then, in a cruel twist, they commanded us to take them off. My group hesitated. I’d learned the hard way that not immediately obeying a command was a fatal mistake in the army. So I didn’t.

Instantly everywhere that was exposed on my face prickled with hard, stinging pain like someone was maliciously stabbing me all over with a hot needle. Instinctively I closed my eyes. I don’t know how long they planned on making us suffer this, but I knew that prolonged exposure would only make it more agonizing.

I could hear the panic and chaos erupting around me as my fellow trainees reacted to the pain.

My nose and throat stung and seemed to close off. For a moment I felt like I was suffocating, that I couldn’t breathe. Panic crashed over me like a dark wave as memories of drowning rose to the surface unbidden.

You’re not drowning! It’s just gas. The army wasn’t about to kill a bunch of hapless recruits for no reason. Any pain they were forcing on us now could only be temporary.

I forced myself to inhale deeply. The gas burned and stung all the way in. And yet to my surprise I realized it wasn’t half as painful as seawater. The seawater had been hot and scalding like lava going into my lungs, and hadn’t even given the relief of oxygen I had desperately craved.

I almost laughed. The gas chamber was famously one of the worst experiences in army training. And yet somehow it didn’t even measure up to what I had already experienced.

I could get through this. I felt numb now even to the prickling pain on my skin as calmness overtook me. I even dared to open my eyes a little.

My fellow trainees were screaming and madly scrabbling at anything or anyone they could grab onto. The trainers were also in a mess yelling at us and trying to control the panic as people lashed out or tried to escape.

Despite the chaos around us, one of the trainers was standing tranquilly with his arms crossed and staring right at me. I stared into the dark lenses of his gas mask until my vision blurred and my eyes burned. Then I closed them again and waited for it all to end.

With so much to occupy the time, the five weeks flew by for me. We lined up to be assigned to our units. The traits they used to select us for our specialist units seemed strange and arbitrary. But bit by bit we were funneled into our various groups.

I was almost sectioned off into an artillery unit. But as I stepped forward, I was stopped.

“Not this one,” said the trainer. I kept my expression level despite my confusion. I kept looking straight forward and held my posture. Some of the higher ups found it a punishable offense for us to look at them when we weren’t being addressed.

The other officer shrugged and left me with the one who had held me back.

“What’s your name?” he asked me.

I’m certain he knew what it was if he had picked me out of the crowd, but I answered anyway. “Recruit number 392, Baek Jaehyun, sir!”

“Congratulations, Recruit Baek Jaehyun, you've distinguished yourself with your hard work and resilience during the initiation training. You've been offered an invitation to enroll in the Special Warfare Command preselection.”