GO!
by
Kazuki Kaneshiro
translated by Paul
Sminkey
INTRODUCTION:
Sugihara has fallen in love with Sakurai, a Japanese girl, but he
has not told her that he has Korean nationality. After the tragic
death of Jong Il, Sugihara's best friend, Sugihara and Sakurai
decide to spend the night together. How will she react when she
discovers that he is not Japanese?
5
A seventeen-year-old
boy from a city high school fell in love with a girl he saw on the
train platform on the way to school. The girl also attended a
school in the city and was extremely attractive.
The boy’s heart would ache whenever he saw her, but he
didn’t know how to communicate his feelings. To begin with,
he wasn’t even sure what language he should use. The adults
he knew never told him, nor did they adequately explain what people
like her were like. She wore a traditional Korean dress as her
school uniform.
After much hesitation, he decided to discuss his problem with his
friends. They made fun of him and pressured him to tell the girl
how he felt. They promised to go with him for moral support. He
wasn’t strong enough to oppose the plan because he was timid
and shy. One of his friends handed him a butterfly knife, saying it
would give him the courage he needed.
One Wednesday morning, the boy and his friends gathered on the
platform where he often saw the girl. She appeared at the usual
time, and her beauty took their breath away. A nearby passenger
overheard the spiteful words of one of the boy’s
friends.
“If this gook gives you the cold shoulder, we’re gonna
make you our gopher, so you better make it good.”
They pushed him in her direction, and he went up to her. He stood
slightly behind her to the side.
“Excuse me . . . .”
The girl shivered instinctively, for her Korean attire made her a
target of Japanese animosity. Her slender shoulders bore the burden
of North Korean terrorism, the alleged abductions of Japanese
nationals, the suspected development of nuclear weapons, and much,
much more. Once before—at this very station—a
businessman about fifty years old had punched her in the
back.
She timidly turned around, and the jittery gaze of the boy jumped
at her. She recognized him. He often was on the same train as her,
and he had once stared at her with an expression that sent shivers
down her spine.
She unconsciously hugged her bag to her chest in a futile gesture
of self-defense.
“What do you want?” she asked.
What went through the boy’s mind then? Was he in awe of the
beautiful sound of her voice? Or was he shocked that she could
speak Japanese? Regardless of what he might’ve been thinking,
he stared at her in silence. The girl shrunk back, and sensing a
threat, glanced around nervously in the hope that someone would
help her. The numerous passengers nearby diverted their eyes to
avoid her pleading gaze.
Just then, another student came up the stairs and appeared on the
platform. He caught her voiceless appeal for help as if it were the
normal thing to do. She was a younger student at his school. He
hated North Korea for making his classmate go though such an
ordeal, and he hated the Japanese, who bullied the weak for no
reason at all. He rushed to the scene, and before doing anything
else, violently shoved the boy in the back. I can’t blame him
for getting the wrong idea. If I had been there, I would’ve
done the same thing. We lived in a society that gave rise to these
kinds of misunderstandings all the time.
The boy staggered forward, recovered himself, and turned around. A
male student in a school blazer was glaring at him
menacingly.
For a short time, they glared at each other in silence. I read in
the paper that the boy thought the guy was her boyfriend and was
terrified he might resort to violence. And with everybody looking,
he felt completely humiliated. That’s what he told the
police. He also told them that he couldn’t remember what
happened next.
An incoming train was announced, and as if that were a signal, he
pulled the butterfly knife out of his school jacket, opened it
clumsily, and pointed it at the guy’s chest. This particular
guy, though, had never been in a fight, and needless to say, had
never had a knife pulled on him. I’m used to fighting, but
the first time I had one pulled on me, I started sweating like a
pig and nearly pissed my pants.
This guy—which is to say, Jong Il—displayed a lot more
courage than me. Without even flinching, he attacked with his bag
to knock the knife out of the boy’s hand. I should’ve
told Jong Il that the first time I had a knife pulled on me, I ran
away faster than Carl Lewis. I also should’ve told him that
only the cowards survive, and that the truly courageous ones are
destined to die young. Most importantly, I should’ve told him
that he’s desperately needed in the world, and that if
someone turns a knife on him, he should run off faster than a
speeding bullet.
After stepping forward and swinging his bag upward, Jong Il brought
it crashing down as hard as he could. The boy raised his knifeless
hand in front of his face to block the blow, and the distance
between them closed. Jong Il swung his bag up again, and out of
fear, the boy reflexively thrust the knife upward and outward. At
the same moment, Jong Il was swinging his bag down with all his
might, and his momentum carried his body down with it.
The knife pierced the left carotid artery running through his neck.
The boy pulled the knife back instinctively to shake off the
strangely unpleasant sensation that ran through his arm, and as he
did so, Jong Il’s bag came swinging down into it. The knife
tumbled to the platform with a clang. The train pulled into the
station. Jong Il reflexively pressed his hand down on the gash in
his neck, but the blood began to spurt out between his fingers with
great force. The girl, who had witnessed the entire event, opened
her eyes wide in disbelief. Her mouth dropped open slightly, and
she let out a silent scream. The white shirt under Jong Il’s
blazer turned dark red in a matter of seconds—and I do mean,
seconds. The boy doubled over at the sight of all the blood and
began to vomit up everything in his stomach with great force. Jong
Il fell to his knees. The girl went to him and placed her small
hand over the hand he held to his neck. In a matter of seconds, her
hand was covered with blood. The train stopped, and the doors
opened all at once. Not a single passenger boarded through the
doors near the three students. “Call an ambulance!” the
girl screamed, to no one in particular. The passengers paid little
heed to her words and boarded the train in orderly fashion. She
turned to the closing doors and screamed again. “Call an
ambulance!” The train pulled away and headed to the next
station as if it were nothing—absolutely nothing at all. The
kids who had pressured the boy were gone.
Eventually, a young station attendant appeared.
“What happened?”
“Call an ambulance!”
The gravity of the words seemed to sink in, and he immediately ran
off to call for help. Jong Il’s limp body leaned against the
girl, and she held him tightly. She planted herself on the ground
and laid him on her lap, so that she was hugging him from behind.
There was nothing more she could do for him. Until the ambulance
arrived and the stretcher brought in, she occasionally glared at
the boy, who continued throwing up, and the other passengers, who
only gawked curiously from afar. When the rescue workers finally
appeared, large tears poured down her cheeks, and she sobbed
loudly. Jong Il died from excessive bleeding. By the time they
reached the hospital, it was too late.
The boy who stabbed Jong Il was arrested. His mental state,
however, was extremely unstable, so the police discontinued their
questioning and sent him to a detention cell. In the middle of the
night, he had a severe attack of diarrhea and became dehydrated. He
was taken out of detention and sent to a university hospital
nearby. The room where he was being prepared for an IV was on the
sixth floor and had a large half-opened window. It only took a
second. Up until then, he had been lying in bed without the energy
to walk, but all of a sudden, he dashed to the window, thrust it
completely open, and lifted one leg through. Then he paused, turned
back to the room, and to no one in particular, muttered,
“I’m sorry.” Then he lifted his other leg over
the ledge and threw himself into the darkness. He received medical
treatment, but it was hopeless. He died on the same day and at the
same hospital as Jong Il.
It was a tragedy. Nothing but a tragedy. But from all tragedies,
people try to find some glimmer of hope, and I was no exception.
About two days after the accident, an old friend from my Korean
school days passed on what he heard from the girl about Jong
Il’s last moments.
Apparently, while Jong Il was still lying limp in her lap, his head
suddenly started to move. The girl peered at him, and a slight
smile came over his pale face. His eyes had turned to the track
and, as if following an incoming train, slowly moved down the
line.
He must have had a flashback of me outrunning the train. I’m
sure that’s how it was. Or at least that’s how I want
it to have been. And what’s wrong with
that?
I received the news in a phone call from Jong Il’s mother the evening of the accident. Not even twenty-four hours had passed since his call from the night before.
“ . . . Jong Il is dead,” she said, as soon as I answered the phone. Her voice was clearer than usual and sounded very beautiful.
The words hadn’t sunk in, and I only muttered, “Huh?” That seemed to be the signal for her to start crying. Low, fragile sobs poured from the receiver. I suppressed my desire to hear a detailed explanation and patiently listened to her weep. While she was still crying, the callwaiting signal sounded three times. I cursed the person that came up with such an invention and ignored every last beep.
After about twenty minutes, she settled down and said she was sorry. Then she gave me an account of the incident leading to her son’s death.
“Jong Il was really fond of you,” she said, just before hanging up, “and I truly appreciate your being such a good friend to him all these years. Thank you.”
We said goodbye, and I hung up. Then I threw myself on the bed and stared at the ceiling. It must’ve been over an hour, but I can’t remember a thing that passed through my mind.
I got out of bed and headed to the living room. My old lady was away in Phuket with Naomi, so she wasn’t home. My old man was watching an instructional golf video.
“Jong Il is dead,” I said.
He immediately picked up the remote control, stopped the tape, and turned off the TV. I told him what happened. “I see,” he said with a heavy sigh. Then he stood up from the sofa, came over to me, and roughly rubbed my head.
“Don’t give it too much thought for now,” he said. “Just get something to eat and have yourself a good cry.”
I nodded, thanked him, and left.
I returned to my room, and a few minutes later, the phone rang. I picked up the extension. It was Sakurai.
“Why didn’t you answer when I called before?” she asked.
I debated with myself whether to tell her, but decided not to. I didn’t have the energy or the confidence to explain everything all at once.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ll tell you about it soon.”
“Well . . .uh . . .okay. I’ll wait for your call tomorrow.”
I was about to hang up when she seemed to remember something.
“You didn’t forget about Sunday, did you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Okay, then.”
I hung up.
On Sunday morning, I got up and left the house.
When Sakurai and I had first started going out, we agreed to go to the opera as part of our “search for cool things.” Neither one of us had ever been before.
We listened to a lot of famous operas on CD and spent a long time trying to figure out which one we’d actually go to see. We listened to the Marriage of Figaro, Tannhäuser, Madame Butterfly, Der Rosenkavalier, Cavalleria Rusticana, La Traviata, and many others. I wanted to see Cavalleria Rusticana, but Sakurai insisted on seeing La Traviata, which in Japanese is called the Tsubaki Princess. Needless to say, I was the one that gave in, and we decided on La Traviata, but unfortunately, it wasn’t playing anywhere for quite some time. Sakurai had set aside several months, beginning in November, to study for the college entrance exams, so our deadline for the opera was October. And in the middle of October, Cavalleria Rusticana just happened to be playing.
Early in August, we bought shockingly expensive tickets for a public performance and began preparing ourselves for the experience. We listened to the CD in the AV room many times, so that we’d understand the lyrics and the story. Our preparations for our first opera had progressed smoothly and steadily.
We were completely prepared. So, when I called on Saturday, the night before the performance, to cancel, Sakurai was understandably upset and demanded an explanation.
“I have to go to a friend’s funeral,” I said.
She was speechless for a moment, and then asked, “When did he die?”
“On Wednesday.”
“Why did you wait until today to tell me?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Well, something’s definitely wrong there.”
“Yeh, you’re right.”
There was a long pregnant pause.
“Was he a close friend?”
“Yeh.”
“Hey, listen, don’t you think you can trust me?”
“Why do you say that?”
“If a close friend of mine died, I’d definitely talk to you about it, so you could cheer me up. Besides, you said if you got depressed about something, you’d talk to me about it.”
“I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t trust you. Because I do. I just need a little more time.”
She didn’t criticize me again. I told her it’d be a waste not to use the tickets and that she should go with someone else. In a cheerless voice, she said that maybe she would.
I arrived about an hour late for the funeral because I had gone two train stations and three bus stops too far. When I entered the enormous funeral parlor, the ceremony had already reached the climax. Jong Il’s uncle was giving a speech. I couldn’t understand why Jong Il’s mother wasn’t giving it, but I didn’t mind. I just absent-mindedly gazed at her standing there with the portrait of her son hugged against her chest. She looked extremely haggard. I listened to the speech halfheartedly.
I only heard the last ten minutes, but Jong Il’s uncle mentioned three times that Jong Il hadn’t become an adult. I felt dizzy every time I heard that.
The ceremony ended, and the funeral director requested that we proceed to the second floor for lunch. As everyone headed to the stairs, I worked my way through the crowd to Jong Il’s mother. At the wake, we had only exchanged silent bows, and I wanted to properly express my condolences.
When I appeared in front of her, she heaved a deep sigh that seemed to release every last bit of air from her body. Then she pressed her face against my chest and began to sob. The frame of Jong Il’s portrait knocked against my chin several times. Through her tears, she kept asking why her son had to die. I stood straight as a board and passively listened to her words.
Her brother came over and put his hands on her shoulders. She lifted her head from my chest and moved away. As I watched her heading off to where Jong Il would be cremated, someone slapped me on the back. I turned around and was greeted by a large group of guys in school blazers. I gave the guy who slapped me a fake punch to the stomach. It was my old friend, Wonsoo. He held his stomach with both hands in pretended agony, but his stern, square face soon broke into a smile.
“Hey, long time, no see. Why don’t we hear from you anymore?”
“Why don’t I hear from you?”
We smiled uncomfortably.
Wonsoo and I were bad company for each other since grade school. Whenever I did something wrong, he was always at my side. He was the one who threw the paintfilled balloon at the police car and the one who went with me to Nagoya. I should also mention that after I stopped hanging out with him, he was the one who tailed me to the cram school and ratted on me to the entire school. After I started attending a Japanese high school, I never heard from him again.
“You weren’t crying, were you?” he said, sticking his face in mine. His breath stunk of nicotine. This time, I punched him in the stomach for real, and he groaned in pain.
“You’ve been smoking, and we agreed to that, didn’t we?” I said.
During the summer break of our second year in junior high, we had sworn to each other that we’d never smoke. Part of the agreement was that if one of us did, the other guy would get a free punch.
He rubbed his stomach and smiled contentedly.
“Tomorrow let’s go crazy for a change,” he said.
“Crazy doing what?”
“We’re going on a manhunt.”
“For who?”
“The guys who got that kid to kill Jong Il.”
“Do you even know who they are?”
“How the fuck would I know?” he spit out. “If we just grab somebody from their school and rough ’em up a bit, they’ll cough up the names soon enough.”
I stared at him in silence. Then I looked at my former classmates standing behind him. They were hankering for a scapegoat.
“Count me out,” I said.
“Huh?!”
He furrowed his brow.
“It’s been getting a lot of coverage in the media, ” I said, “so the police will be staking out the school for a while to make sure nothing happens.”
“Who gives a shit about the cops?!” He was fuming with rage. “So that’s why you want us to count you out, huh? ’Cause the cops might be watching?!”
“What good’s it gonna do to rough those guys up? Even if you do, it’ll just—”
He jabbed me in the chest to cut me off. But then he promptly jerked his hand back and stared at his fingers in bewilderment. He had poked the spot that Jong Il’s mother had been crying on.
He wiped his wet fingers on his blazer, and said, “So what’s it gonna be? You coming with us or not?”
“No, I’m not,” I said flatly. “That’s not what Jong Il would’ve wanted.”
“You’re talking shit,” he said, keeping his voice down. “I feel sorry for Jong Il, but he’s dead, and it’s up to us to take care of the problems he left behind. He would’ve been counting on you—more than anybody else—to get the job done. And now you’re being a pussy and talking shit.”
“You’re the one who’s talking shit,” I said, also keeping my voice down. “What do you know about Jong Il? You’ve never had a serious discussion with him about anything. You guys just want to go on a rampage. That’s all. So why don’t you go fuck with some gang instead?”
The atmosphere had grown intensely heated. The piercing glares from Wonsoo and the cohort behind him shot right through me. I heaved a sigh and said, “Let’s not have any trouble at Jong Il’s funeral.”
“I don’t know what’s happened to you,” he said, with a look of disgust. “Now that you’re at a Japanese school, I guess you’ve sold them your soul, huh?”
His mention of souls reminded me of Jong Il’s quote from I am a Cat about the Japanese Spirit, but I couldn’t recall the exact words.
“I don’t know shit about souls,” I said after a moment of indecision, “but if I did have a Korean soul, I’d sell it in a second. You wanna buy it?”
He looked at me like he didn’t know me.
Come on, I wanted to say, don’t look at me like that. Don’t you remember the night we arrived in Nagoya? We didn’t have money for a place to stay, and we were sleeping out in the parking lot of that pachinko parlor. We were lying on our backs, looking up at the night sky, and we were saying how we wanted to go somewhere even further. Well, we could, man. We could leave right now.
He poked me in the chest again.
“I’m finished with you, you got me? If you see me on the street or something, don’t even talk to me. ’Cause if you come strolling up to me like we’re pals or something, I’m gonna kick your ass.” Then he turned around to his friends and said, “Let’s go.”
As Wonsoo and his friends filed past, one of them hissed in my ear.
“Loony bird!”
After they had all gone past, I turned around. Wonsoo was staring at me with a terrifyingly deadpan expression. I forced a smile, but he ignored it and turned his back to me.
I left the funeral parlor. I went four bus stops too far, and then on the way back, I went five stops too far. By the time I finally made it to the nearest train station, it was already getting dark.
As I was heading down the stairs to the platform, the phrase “loony bird” kept ringing in my ears. I thought how great it’d be to be a bird. Then I could fly away to wherever I pleased. The thought made my head spin, and I started to lose my sense of balance. I plopped down right in the middle of the stairway. The dizziness disappeared right away, but then, for no particular reason, my chest began to ache and a low moaning issued from my lips.
“Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!”
The strange moaning started when I was in my second year of junior high school. My basketball team had made it all the way to the Korean school national finals. Our opponent was a school from Osaka, so the atmosphere was as heated as a Tokyo Giants-Hanshin Tigers baseball game. Violent play led to several injuries on the court, and bloody fights led to injuries in the stands. I got in the game as a point guard, and the guy marking me snuck in four punches to my face. I got him back with a knee kick, an elbow jab, a head butt, and an eye gouge. The referee caught the last one, and I was called for a foul.
We ended up losing by one point. After the game, we headed back to the locker room with our heads down and struggled with our disappointment in silence. If one of us had started crying, it would’ve spread through the team in a second, and we would’ve all been in tears. Our coach came into the locker room with the principal of our school.
“You guys did a good job. We’re proud of you,” he said.
This triggered something in one of the first-year guys, and he started to cry. We were all about to turn on the faucets when the coach went marching up to him. His hand came flying around with the velocity of an Olympic discus thrower, and he smacked the kid right across the face. The kid went flying backwards and smashed into the lockers with a loud crash. The jolt shook us out of ourselves.
“Anybody else want to cry in public?” asked our coach, to none of us in particular. His tone of voice was extremely calm. “You guys are surrounded by enemies all the time. And letting an enemy see you cry is equivalent to begging for mercy. It’s the same as admitting defeat. And when you admit defeat, you admit defeat for all Koreans in Japan. Don’t ever get in the habit of crying in front of people. If you wanna cry, lock yourself in a room and cry by yourself.”
He glanced over to our principal, who gave a slight nod as if nothing had happened.
“Hurry up and change. Your principal’s treating you all to dinner tonight in recognition of your great effort.”
They left, and an oppressive atmosphere hung in the air. One of the older players went over to the kid who was slapped and patted him on the shoulder. When our captain saw this, he suddenly started to moan. “Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!” His eyes were all bloodshot. The odd moaning soon infected the entire team. We frantically fought back our tears, and with bloodshot eyes, we moaned. “Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!” After that, unbeknownst to our coach, it became the team’s habit to moan whenever the pain or sorrow became unbearable.
And so, I sat there on the steps of the train station and continued to moan. Although it was rush hour and rather crowded, it was shockingly impressive how people managed to avoid me. An occasional young businessman would glance over at me with an annoyed look and shake his head. Were these the enemies my coach was talking about?
An image of a reassuring ally popped into my head. I stopped moaning and spoke to him.
“Come on, Jong Il, what’s the great news you were talking about? Was it something greater than mitochondrial DNA? Something that would eliminate discrimination from the world once we found out about it? But wouldn’t it be great if there were something like that? Wait a second! Don’t tell me you met a girl. As far as I’m concerned, that’d be even better. I never once saw you with a girl. What a shame! You would’ve been a real hit with the ladies if you went to college. I mean there’s nobody like you. So why did you have to die? It’s tough being all alone. Why? Why did you have to die?”
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and lifted myself up. I went down the stairs to the platform and looked around for a pay phone. I spotted one next to a newsstand and headed for it. When I picked up the receiver, I noticed that I had forgotten my telephone card and reached into my pocket for a ten-yen coin. I didn’t have any, so I put in a hundred-yen coin, and slowly dialed the number for Sakurai’s house. If she had gone to the opera, she wouldn’t be home.
“ . . . I was watching this show on TV the other day, and they were saying that the ancestor of modern man isn’t Neanderthal man or Peking man. Apparently, it’s an apeman who originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago. They proved this by comparing the mitochondrial DNA of Neanderthal man to modern man. Mitochondrial DNA is pretty complicated, so I’ll explain it to you later. Anyway, a new kind of ape-man was born in Africa, and after many, many years of evolution, he became the new modern man that’s our direct ancestor.
“After a while, a group of these newcomers decided to leave Africa and spread throughout the world. The reason might’ve been a power struggle, or it might’ve been environmental changes. About 130,000 years ago, the world entered an interglacial period, so Africa would’ve been pretty cold, and they might’ve been searching for a warmer place to live. Personally, I think it was something completely different, but I’ll give you my opinion later.
“Anyway, somewhere in the Middle or Near East, the groups that left Africa divided into one heading towards Europe and one heading towards Asia. That was the division into what we call the Caucasian and Mongoloid races. In other words, that was the beginning of our race, the yellow race. The groups that chose the Mongoloid route headed for Asia, and their bodies and faces gradually became suited to the Asian climate. They never stopped moving along the way. When the parents died, the children inherited their passion and devoted themselves to the journey.
“At the end of a journey of nearly 100,000 years and approximately 8,000 miles, some Mongoloids made it to Japan. Those are the so-called Jomon people, the inhabitants of ancient Japan. This sounds like a happilyeverafter ending, but actually, this is where it gets really interesting. Even though they’d gone as far east as they could go, there were still some Mongoloids that wouldn’t stay put. They pushed up through Eurasia, arrived in Siberia, and then walked across the Bering Strait, which during the ice age had become land because of the incredible drop in sea level. They had reached Alaska, the western tip of the American continent. But that still didn’t satisfy them, and without stopping, they started heading south—creating the Mayan and Aztec civilizations along the way. Finally, they reached the southernmost tip of South America.
“The journey took many generations, but the honor and the courage of the guy who took that very first step are still imprinted on the genes of his descendents. Genetic analysis proves that the people that made it to South America are from the same group as the Mongoloid people that were in Japan. A comparison of the mitochondrial DNA of American Indians living in the Andes with that of the Ainu, who are the descendants of the Jomon in Japan, showed that the genetic sequence is nearly identical. Don’t you think that’s absolutely incredible? If you include the distance from Africa, they traveled over 15,000 miles. What do you think drove them to make such a journey? It’s just my personal opinion, but I don’t think it was a power struggle, and I don’t think it was the environment. I think it was just that they wanted to see what the rest of the world looked like. I’m sure that’s what it was. That simple and meaningless impulse, which was imprinted on the genes, was passed down through the generations and has never disappeared. Human beings don’t have it in their nature to stay put. It was only with the invention of farming that—”
“So what is it you want to say?” interrupted Sakurai, a soft smile forming at her lips.
“What I want to say,” I said, staring straight at her, “is that I think what they did was extremely cool, and that I wanna be like them.”
“In other words, you’re trying to impress me, right?” she said, her smile widening.
I nodded as expected, and she giggled under her breath. Then she gazed into my eyes.
“I was watching this show on TV the other day,” she began, “and apparently up in Hokkaido, they have a retirement home for seeingeye dogs that are too old to work. Even the idea of such a place impressed me, so I was really glued to the set. Anyway, they showed the farewell scene between an owner and a dog that had been together for ten years. It was a blind lady and her male golden retriever, and they were locked in a hug for about an hour. Finally, the guy from the home had to tear them apart. As they drove the lady away, she leaned out of the car window and waved goodbye. She kept calling out the dog’s name, but he just sat there staring at the car as it drove away. I guess that’s what you’d expect, since that’s how seeing-eye dogs are trained. They’re never allowed to bark or get excited. But even after the car disappeared, he stayed glued to that spot and kept staring in that direction. And he kept staring for hours. They had been together for ten years, without even a moment’s break, and now she was gone. I think the shock immobilized him. It was early in the afternoon when they said goodbye, and early in the evening, it started to rain. It really started to come down, and he finally stopped staring and raised his head. I thought he was just looking up at the rain, but then he suddenly started to howl. He howled again and again, but it wasn’t at all miserable or pathetic. His back was taut and straight, and his chin and chest formed a perfect line, so he looked like a well-sculptured statue. I was really bawling, too. It was like I was crying along with him.”
“So what is it you want to say?” I asked.
“What I want to say,” Sakurai said, “is that I wanna love someone like that. The sound of that howl was more beautiful than any music I’ve ever heard. I wanna be the type of person that can keep loving someone and who can cry like that dog when the person I love passes away. Do you get what I’m trying to say?”
I nodded firmly, and then reached out my hand and placed it on hers. We silently gazed into each other’s eyes. The waiter came by and refilled our glasses with water.
“You’ve been looking like you’re about to cry.”
“You think so?”
“Yeh.”
She nodded slightly, looked away, and sighed. Her chest was gently moving up and down.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She raised her eyes and looked at me.
“If you like, I’ll spend the night with you.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll stay with you until tomorrow morning.”
“Is that okay?”
“Don’t keep asking, okay?” she said, with a warm smile.
We left the Ginza coffee shop and went to Yurakucho Station. While Sakurai was calling home from a pay phone, I went to put my school jacket away in a coin-operated locker. Before closing the door, I pulled two envelopes out of the inside pocket. Because of my lateness and the argument with Wonsoo and his friends, I had forgotten to give my condolence money at the funeral. First, I pulled the 30,000 yen from the envelope from me and shoved it in my pocket. Then I opened the envelope that was from my old man, who couldn’t attend because of urgent business. It contained ten crisp 10,000yen notes. I shoved that money in my pocket, too. I knew that Jong Il and my old man would forgive me.
I went back to where I had left Sakurai, but she was still talking on the phone. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was ten before ten.
At exactly ten o’clock, she came running up to me.
“Any problem?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” she said quickly, shaking her head. “No problem at all. I told my dad I was staying at a friend’s house.”
We headed towards the elegant Imperial Hotel. We weren’t doing anything wrong, so I strolled into the lobby without even thinking about my appearance. I asked Sakurai to wait for me at the sofa next to the tearoom.
I headed to the front desk. The young clerk didn’t show any signs of distress upon seeing me and bowed politely.
“May I help you?” he asked.
“Yes, I’d like a room,” I said.
“Do you have a reservation, sir?”
“No, I don’t.”
I listened to his short explanation about the types of rooms and rates, which varied according to floor and view. After talking it over with him, I decided on a deluxe room on the twelfth floor facing Hibiya Park. The view was supposed to be spectacular. The condolence money more than covered the cost.
“Will you be paying by cash or credit?” he asked.
“Cash.”
Thinking I had to pay in advance, I reached into my pocket.
“We accept payment at checkout, sir,” he said with perfect timing.
I filled in the registration card that he handed to me. To save myself the hassle, I put Sakurai down as my wife and wrote “Sugihara” for both of us. The problem was that I didn’t know her first name. It would’ve looked suspicious to go ask her, so I just put down “Keiko.” He handed me the key, and I walked away.
I joined Sakurai, and we took the elevator to the twelfth floor. We passed the floor reception desk and walked down the long hallway to our room. I opened the door and we went in. The door closed behind us, and we sighed, one after the other.
“That was nerve-racking, wasn’t it?” she said with a smile.
I nodded in agreement.
The room was more spacious and elegant than any hotel room I’d ever been in. It had an imposing wooden writing desk, an imposing sofa and chair set, and imposing pictures hanging on the walls. We were a bit wound up, so we avoided all the imposing stuff and headed to the spacious double bed.
As if it were perfectly normal, we took off our shoes, climbed on, and started jumping up and down. As she was bouncing, Sakurai expertly peeled off her red cardigan sweater and tossed it towards the wall. She seemed unperturbed by the fact that every time she landed her white dress flew up so I could see her underwear. She was just having a great time.
After we had jumped about thirty times and started to lose our breath, she dove right at me. I caught her in my arms in midair, and we landed standing up. Panting heavily, we gazed into each other’s eyes. Suddenly, she pressed her lips to mine, and our tongues become entwined in a long passionate kiss. We sometimes drew our lips apart to catch our breath before pressing them together again.
I put my arms around her waist and moved my thumbs up and down against the small of her back. She stopped kissing me, rested her head against my chest, and heaved a deep sigh. I gradually moved my hands downward and grabbed the hem of her dress. As I slowly lifted it upward, she raised her hands over her head. I pulled the dress off in one motion and tossed it towards the wall. Now in her underwear, she put her hands to my shirt and carefully undid each button. Following her lead, we took off my shirt and undershirt. She dropped them next to the bed and put her hands to my belt.
“I’ll get this myself,” I said.
She giggled and jumped down from the bed. She went to the wall and turned off the lights. Then she returned, sat on the edge of the bed, and took off her bra.
I got off the bed, and in the dark, took off my pants and socks. I wasn’t sure what to do about my underwear but decided to leave them on for the time being. I looked back to the bed and saw that Sakurai was lying on her back. My eyes were getting used to the darkness.
I lay down next to her and gently traced the various parts of her face with the thumb of my right hand. First her forehead, then her eyes, nose, cheeks, and lips. After I finished tracing them all, I gave each a gentle kiss. Her breathing was regular and shallow.
I held her by the shoulders and slowly turned her over, so that she was lying on her stomach. I ran my tongue along the nape of her neck, occasionally nibbling at her earlobes. Her breathing became irregular and heavy.
I stopped licking her neck and pressed the thumb of my left hand there instead. I gently moved it up and down, and back and forth. Then I pressed my lips to the small of her back, and began to lick her again. She had an oily taste. Not of vegetable oil, but of animal oil. As my tongue moved down along the small of her back, her body sometimes quivered. My head moved up and down with the rhythm of her heavy breathing.
Her right hand, which had been raised above her head, slowly crawled down along the bed. When it reached the nadir of its descent, it began to move around as if in search of something. I brought my empty right hand to hers, and she grabbed it surprisingly hard. Then she pulled it up towards her head, put it in her mouth, and bit down as hard as she could. In rhythm with the pain, my tongue moved furiously on the small of her back. I felt her teeth and the heavy breath from her nostrils on the back of my hand.
I stopped licking her back, lifted myself up, and with my left hand, grabbed her shoulder and turned her over again. She took my hand out of her mouth and said, “I love you.”
All of a sudden, her eyes seemed to be aglow. I desperately loved this woman, this radiant woman. And that was why, before we completely accepted each other, I had to tell her. I didn’t want to hide anything from her.
I knelt on the bed and sat on my heels.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Sorry.”
She let go of my hand.
I continued, “There’s something I have to tell you.”
She lifted herself up with her elbows. “What?”
Being careful that she wouldn’t notice, I took a deep breath. “There’s something I’ve been hiding from you.”
“What is it, all of a sudden?” I could hear the panic in her voice.
“I don’t think it’s such a big deal.”
“What is it?”
“Well, uh . . . .”
As I was struggling to continue, she jokingly said, “Don’t tell me you have a criminal record or something.”
“Oh, I’ve been hauled in and lectured a few times, but I’m still clean.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” she said. “So it’s something to do with your family?”
“They’re not unrelated.”
“Your father’s got a criminal record or something?”
“My old man’s violent, but he’s on the up and up.”
“Your mother’s got a criminal record?”
“You must be joking.”
“Listen,” she said, heaving a sigh. “At times like this, you need an occasional joke or two.”
“Yeh, I guess.”
“Well, hurry up and tell me, so we can get back to what we started.”
For a second, I considered saying it was nothing so we could do just that. But I knew if I let this opportunity slip away, I’d never tell her the truth. I decided to press on. I felt sure that no matter what I told her, she’d accept it, say it was no big deal, and take me back in her arms.
I took a deep breath that she was sure to notice, and said, “I . . . I’m not Japanese.”
A silence of about ten seconds passed, but it felt like an eternity.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Exactly what I said. My nationality isn’t Japanese.”
“So, uh, what is it?”
“South Korean.”
She pulled up her legs, which had been stretched out towards me, and crossed her arms around them. She suddenly looked very small.
I continued, “But up until my second year of junior high, I was North Korean. Three months from now, I might be Japanese. In another year, I might be American. When I die, I might be Norwegian.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked in a flat voice.
My heartbeat quickened.
“That nationality doesn’t matter.”
Silence, silence, and more silence followed. Finally, she spoke.
“You were born and raised in Japan?”
I nodded. “I’ve breathed pretty much the same air and eaten pretty much the same food as you. But my education has been different. Up until junior high, I attended a Korean school and studied Korean.” I changed my tone and tried to joke with her. “Actually, I’m bilingual, but in Japan that only applies to people that can speak English. Even so, when I’m watching the Olympics, I got two teams I can drink to, Korea and Japan. Don’t you think that’s great?”
She didn’t even crack a smile. She stared at me with a completely blank expression. It was a terrifying silence. My heart was beating more rapidly than that first time I had a knife pulled on me. I desperately searched my mind for the right words, but in vain. An awful sense of frustration ran down my spine and spread through my entire body, weighing me down. I slowly reached out my hand to her. She cringed. My brain ordered it to keep moving, but it just floated in the air.
I put it down and asked, “Why?”
She opened her mouth several times, but the words seemed to be stuck in her throat. I didn’t care what she was gonna say. I just wanted to hear her voice. To help her along, I gently asked what was wrong.
She looked down and said, “Ever since I was little, my dad’s told me to stay away from Chinese and Korean men.”
After I managed to take this in, I asked, “Does he have a particular reason for saying that?”
She didn’t answer, so I continued.
“Maybe a long time ago, a Chinese or Korean did something horrible to him. But if that’s the case, the person who did it to him isn’t me. Just like it wasn’t all Germans that killed the Jews.”
“That’s not it,” she said in a weak voice.
“Well, what then?”
“He said that, uh, they have contaminated blood.”
I wasn’t shocked. Those were words spit out as a result of ignorance, lack of education, prejudice, and racism. Disproving such nonsense would be a breeze.
“So how do you distinguish between Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans?”
“What do you mean ‘how’?”
“By nationality? Because like I said before, that’s something you can easily change.”
“I don’t know. The person’s place of birth or language.”
“So Japanese returnees, who were born and raised abroad because of their parents work, and who’ve gotten foreign citizenship, they’re not Japanese?”
“If their parents are Japanese, they’re Japanese.”
“In other words, your identity is determined by your roots. So let me ask you: how far back do you have to trace? For example, if your greatgrandfather has Chinese blood, does that mean you’re no longer Japanese?”
She didn’t answer.
“I guess you’re still Japanese? Because you were born and raised in Japan? And speak Japanese? But in that case, I’d be Japanese, too.”
“Well, it’s not possible that my greatgrandfather had Chinese blood,” she said, sounding annoyed.
“You’re wrong,” I said, a bit forcefully. “Your surname, Sakurai, was originally given to people that crossed over from China. It’s right there in the New Record of Japanese Surnames, which was originally compiled in the eleventh century.”
“Long ago, people didn’t have last names. They were given appropriate names later. So there’s no way you could tell whether my ancestors were Chinese.”
“That’s exactly right. It’s even possible that they were adopted into the Sakurai family. So let’s trace back even further. You said your family couldn’t handle alcohol, right?”
She gave a slight nod.
I continued, “Well, the direct ancestors of current-day Japanese are the Jomon, and all Jomon—or maybe I should say, all primitive Mongolians—were able to drink alcohol. That’s been proven through DNA testing. However, about 25,000 years ago, there was a group of people in northern China with a mutant gene. They inherently couldn’t drink. I’m not sure when, but their descendants came to Japan as the Yayoi, and the gene for not being able to drink spread. You inherited that gene. So do you have contaminated blood because you got a gene that originated in China?”
Silence.
I sat perfectly still and waited for her to speak. She heaved a deep sigh, and said, “You know all kinds of stuff, don’t you? But that’s not it at all. I understand what you’re saying, but I just can’t. The thought of you being inside of me is kind of scary.”
My racing heartbeat began to return to normal, and the sense of frustration that had been weighing on me began to dissipate. I heaved a sigh even deeper than hers.
I turned away from her and got off the bed. I spotted my white undershirt floating through the darkness, picked it up, and pulled it over my head.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she asked. “If you didn’t think it was such a big deal, you could’ve told me.”
I picked up my shirt, slipped my arms through the sleeves, and fastened the buttons.
“You’re horrible to spring this on me at a time like this.”
I was gonna put on my socks next, but I couldn’t find them. I got down on my hands and knees and felt around, but they were nowhere to be found.
Just when I was about to give up, she said, “They’re probably inside the legs of your pants.”
I picked up my pants and reached inside. She was right.
“Guys get all excited, so they usually pull off their socks with their pants. Then the socks get hidden in the pant legs, and they can’t find them.”
I sat down on the floor and started putting them on. After I had finished with the first one, she spoke again.
“My long phone call the other day was with my sister, and when I told her I was gonna sleep with you, she told me about the socks. She said that I should tell you when you couldn’t find them, and that that’d give me the upper hand. She said if you lose your composure the first time you have sex, the guy won’t take you seriously.”
I finished putting on the second sock. Then I grabbed my pants, stood up, and slipped one leg through.
“This was my first time. I was scared to begin with.”
I finished putting on my pants and pulled out the key that was in the pocket. I put it on the table next to the bed.
“Say something.”
As I headed to the door, she flung her words at my back.
“My first name is Tsubaki. As in the Princess Tsubaki. I didn’t want to tell you because ‘Tsubaki Sakurai’ sounds so ridiculously Japanese.”
I put my hand to the doorknob, hesitated for a moment, and turned around.
“My real name is ‘Lee,’” I said. “As in ‘Bruce Lee.’ I didn’t want to tell you because it sounds so ridiculously foreign, and I was scared I’d lose you—like I just did.”
I opened the door and slipped out into the hallway. I thought I heard her say something else, but I couldn’t make out the words.
I went to the front desk, and the same young clerk was still there. He only seemed mildly suspicious when I appeared. I paid the bill and told him that I’d be the only one checking out. I thought that’d make him even more suspicious, but it didn’t. I guess this sort of thing happens all the time, and these guys practice keeping a straight face.
“How was the view, sir?” he asked.
I had completely forgotten to check. I lied and said it was great. He thanked me, smiled the proper smile, and bowed.
The trains were still running, but I decided to walk home instead.
I followed the railroad tracks in the direction of Tokyo Station. When I got there, I realized that I’d forgotten my school jacket. It was a chilly October evening.
I passed Tokyo Station and continued to walk along the tracks towards Kanda. When I reached Kanda Station, I went into a nearby convenience store and bought a pack of Short Hope and a 100-yen lighter. The young clerk looked me over and was about to say something, but when I gave him the eye, he broke down and handed them to me.
It was my first cigarette in a good four years. I choked a bit on the first one but soon regained my former smoking prowess. By the time I reached Ueno, I had finished the whole pack and needed to buy some more. The first convenience store turned me down, but I managed to buy some at the second. This time, I bought two packs just in case.
Smoking, humming, and sometimes walking along the rail like a tightrope walker, I made good headway. A little after three, I reached Nishinippori Station. I was nearly home. A little after four, I finally reached the Hakusan neighborhood where my family lived. I was walking through the completely deserted streets towards my house when a bicycle light came towards me. I heaved a heavy sigh. I could tell who it was from how it moved. I had been dealing with cops for a long time, and as Philip Marlowe says in The Long Goodbye, “No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them.”
I debated over what to do with the lighter and cigarettes in my pocket. One time when I was in junior high, a cop was questioning me and made me empty all my pockets. I had a pack of matches and nearly ended up being framed for a bunch of arson cases. I suppose it was my own fault. When he asked me about the matches, I came up with this clever excuse about being in charge of lighting the heaters at school. That really pissed him off, and I ended up being hauled in and nearly framed.
I considered throwing the lighter and cigarettes to the side of the road, but I didn’t want to make any suspicious moves, so I left them in my pocket. When the biker caught sight of me, he picked up speed and headed in my direction, the bicycle light occasionally flashing in my eyes.
“Hey, you, what are you doing at this time of night?” asked the young cop as he dismounted. He gazed at me with intense suspicion, and he had the brutal look of a predator that has found its prey. Preparing for my next move, I inconspicuously repositioned myself so that he was backed against his parked bike.
“I was out with a friend, and I missed the last train, so I had to walk home,” I promptly answered.
“Where did you walk from?”
I answered truthfully that I had come from Yurakucho. He said I must be tired and nodded in recognition of my labor. The normal continuation would be for him to tell me to be careful and send me on my way, but this guy was obviously a pro. He must’ve gotten a whiff of my trouble-making junior high school days because he moved on to one of their favorite questions.
“So where do you live?” he asked, with a stern expression.
Now, if I gave him my address, he’d contact the nearby police box on his radio and have his colleagues check the residence registry to make sure I was telling the truth. As an extra bonus, they’d find out that I was a Korean resident and notify the young cop. Then, he’d ask me for my alien registration card. In Japan, there’s a law called the Alien Registration Law, which is supposed to “establish equitable control over aliens residing in Japan.” This is just fancy talk for saying that foreigners are bad and need to wear a collar. I was born and raised in this country, but I’m still an alien resident, so I’m required by law to register. That means I’ve got a registration card, which foreigners are supposed to carry with them at all times. If they don’t, they can be “punished with penal servitude or imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year or be punished with a fine not exceeding two hundred thousand yen.” In other words, those that take off their collar will be chastised. I’m not the state’s pet, so I’m not gonna put on a collar. And I never will.
I stood before him guilty of this heinous crime.
“What’s wrong? Why won’t you tell me?” He spoke in a sarcastic tone to get me to answer.
I was totally depressed, annoyed, and frustrated. If Philip Marlowe were in this situation, he’d probably give the guy some lip and weasel his way out of it. But I’m more of a Continental Op type, so I decided to punch the guy and run.
With a quick and efficient thrust, I nailed him in the Adam’s apple with the palm of my right hand. He grunted and stumbled back. The bicycle was right behind him, so he couldn’t step back to catch himself. His back struck the seat as he tumbled backwards, and the bicycle, unable to support his weight, toppled over sideways. He landed smack on top of it.
Everything had gone exactly as planned. By the time he was stumbling back, I was already in full stride. I figured I could make a clean getaway before he even got up again. I was confident. I was used to being chased by these guys.
I heard the crash of the bike, but then I heard a second, unexpected thud, too. I slowed to a trot and looked back. The cop, spread-eagled on top of the bike, wasn’t moving. His cap had fallen off and his head was exposed. I stopped. It didn’t at all look like acting. Sighing and breathing heavily, I racked my brain over what to do. I figured that for the time being I’d check on his condition.
Squatting down beside him, I put my right hand over his nose and my left hand to his carotid artery. My right hand detected regular breathing; my left hand, a slightly elevated but regular pulse. I put my hand to the back of his head: he wasn’t bleeding. I looked around: the street was still deserted. I considered running off at this point, but then I noticed the gun hanging from his waist. Considering how my luck had been going, the chances of something bad happening must have been great. I heaved a long and deep sigh, picked up his cap, and stood up.
I dragged him to an open space in a nearby parking lot and laid him down by the wall. I carried his bicycle over, too. Now I only had to wait for him to regain consciousness, so I used the time to smoke another cigarette. I sat down on the ground with my back against the wall and lit up. I inhaled and exhaled deeply. I heard some birds singing off in the distance. Dawn was approaching.
Just when I finished smoking my cigarette, the cop opened his eyes. For a short time, he remained lying down, and his eyes moved about wildly in an attempt to grasp the situation. Our eyes met several times, and I smiled at him.
When I lit my second cigarette, he sat up and frantically frisked himself to see if anything was missing.
“I only took a bullet out of your gun,” I said.
He smiled wryly. Then he came over and sat down next to me with his back against the wall.
“Can I get one of those?” he asked.
I handed him the whole pack. He pulled one out and put it in his mouth. I held the lighter towards him, and with a slight movement of his head, he lit it. He inhaled deeply and exhaled.
“I guess I’m not cut out for this line of work,” he said.
I remained silent and looked at him.
He continued, “I graduated from a sports college, and I only became a cop because I couldn’t get a job. I didn’t really have any other choice, and I just can’t seem to get the hang of it. Whenever I run into trouble like just now, I always end up getting burned. I played handball and was never any good at karate and judo and all that stuff.”
“There was no way you could’ve dodged that one,” I said. “I’ve yet to meet the guy that could. It’s a move the American army teaches for handto-hand combat.”
“Really?”
I nodded. “So you got nothing to be upset about.”
“Is that right?” he said, looking relieved. He smiled and took a satisfying drag on his cigarette.
After that, I listened to him gripe for a while. He griped about being bullied by older cops, not having any chance of promotion, not having any romantic prospects, and other stuff. Before I knew it, I was telling him all about what happened with Sakurai at the hotel. He listened in earnest, and when I finished, he gave me his opinion. He said that if it were him, he would’ve gone ahead and not said anything, but that he would’ve thought about it afterwards. He said that it was impressive of me to restrain myself like that.
Then he asked, “What famous person does she look like?”
I thought about it and told him I couldn’t think of anyone. He said he hated when your imagination is held back like that. I didn’t know what he meant.
“She said she was scared of me,” I said. “To tell the truth, that really blew me away.”
“I can kind of understand how you feel,” said the young cop, lighting his fourth cigarette. He looked into the distance, and said, “I had a girl tell me I was disgusting.”
“That’s pretty harsh,” I said.
“Even now, I sometimes wanna cry when I think about it.”
“You should just forget it,” I said.
“Well, do you think you’re gonna be able to forget what happened to you tonight?”
I shook my head and he said he didn’t think so.
“I really loved her,” I said.
“So did I,” he said, blowing smoke from his mouth and nostrils. “But in my case, I was dumped before we even started dating.”
I lit another cigarette, took a drag, and blew the smoke into the air. “Up to now,” I said, “all the discrimination hasn’t really bothered me. Half the time, I don’t even understand what these damn racists are saying, so I can just punch them and be done with it. When it comes to fighting, I’m pretty confident in myself, so I don’t sweat it. I don’t think I’ll let them get to me in the future, either.”
I took another drag on my cigarette.
“But ever since I met her, I’ve been afraid of being discriminated against. That’s the first time I’ve ever felt that way. I guess I’ve never met a Japanese who meant so much to me. And she was totally my type of girl. From the very beginning, I didn’t know how to act with her. I couldn’t tell her the truth about my background because I thought if I did, she wouldn’t like me—even though I didn’t think she was prejudiced. I guess in the end, I didn’t trust her. You know, sometimes I wish my skin were green or something. That way, people who wanna deal with me would deal with me, and people who don’t would stay away. That’d be so much easier, don’t you think?”
We became quiet and smoked two more cigarettes.
As he took another one, he said, “At my college, there was a Korean guy by the name of Kim. He was three years ahead of me, and everyone called him ‘the Dreaded Kim.’ He was the fastest guy on the soccer team and was really strong, too. One time, a guy on the karate team made some racist comment, and Kim beat the shit out of him. That’ s how he got his nickname. By chance, I happened to see the fight, and he was incredible. His moves were extremely efficient. I guess you could say he was poetry in motion. Anyway, I didn’t think he was human. His uppercut actually lifted the guy up off the ground. I can still see it now. From that moment on, I admired him. It’s hard for me to put into words, but I don’t mean because he was Korean or anything like that. It was just Kim that I admired.”
He lit another cigarette and nodded to himself several times. “Yeh, he was really incredible.”
I thought I knew who he meant and mentioned Kim’s full name. The young cop was shocked and asked me how I knew. I told him that when I was in my second year of junior high, Kim became our new gym teacher, and that not surprisingly, we knew him as “the Dreaded Kim,” too.
“I had a friend who was really lousy in math. The kid couldn’t even handle the multiplication table, and he definitely couldn’t keep up with junior high math. One day in the middle of winter, he cut a gym class, where we had to do long-distance running. He was sitting in front of a kerosene heater taking a nap when ‘the Dreaded Kim’ appeared.”
The young cop listened to my story with great interest.
“‘The Dreaded Kim’ went straight to the kid’s seat and grabbed him by the front of his jacket while he was still asleep. Then he dragged him out of his seat, and slapped him across both sides of the face so hard that it almost sent his head flying. After that, the kid was a wizard in math.”
The young cop exhaled as if he were disappointed and told me to give him a break.
I explained, “After getting slapped across the face, the kid complained of a horrible headache and went to the hospital. They detected a disorder in his brain waves.”
The cop muttered to himself that one of Kim’s slaps certainly would’ve had that effect.
“The headache disappeared after a week, but after that, he could breeze through simultaneous equations and geometry problems that he could never solve before. And this was a kid that thought nine times four was twentyeight.”
“No way!”
“It’s the truth,” I said matter-of-factly. “After that, not only could he solve junior high school level problems, he could breeze though high school level ones, too. Teachers started calling him ‘the biggest genius in the history of the school.’ Now he’s in high school working on Fermat’s Last Theorem.”
“Is that more difficult than algebra?” he asked.
“It’s like the difference between Little League and the majors.”
“Wow,” he said, deeply impressed. “I guess he’s really indebted to Kim, then.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.”
I told him that I’d be in big trouble if I didn’t get home soon. He put out his cigarette and stood up. I stood up, too.
He slapped me on the back and with a somewhat embarrassed smile, said, “If you’re anything like the Dreaded Kim, you’ll have plenty of women.”
I nodded and apologized for what I did. He put his mouth to my ear and whispered, “That’s our little secret.”
I nodded and smiled. He smiled awkwardly.
When I got home, my old man was waiting up for me.
“What were you doing?” he asked.
Leaving out what happened with Sakurai, I told him that I punched a cop and that that led to our becoming friends. He heaved a deep sigh and muttered that he’d let it slide.
Then he asked, “Are you okay?”
I nodded.
I took a quick shower and returned to my room. I gathered together all the stuff that I had failed to return to Jong Il—novels, collections of poetry, books of famous paintings, books of photographs, and CD’s—and piled them on my desk. Altogether, there were thirty-four books and sixteen CD’s. For background music, I put on Schubert’s The Winter Journey, which was one of Jong Il’s favorites, and then I briefly skimmed through all the books.
As I was paging through an anthology of poems by Langston Hughes, I noticed for the first time that one page had been tagged: it was the short poem entitled “Advice.” I won’t quote it here because I wanna keep it to myself. But even if you knew it, it’d still just be mine.
By the time I finished paging through everything, the sun had risen and it was time to go to school. After a moment of indecision, I decided to skip. And as soon as I made that decision, I started to cry. I put my head on my desk and cried for about an hour. It was the first time in a long time.
After getting into bed and before falling asleep, I said goodnight to Jong Il.
Goodnight.