Our Happy Time by Gong Ji-young Read Free Book Online

from rolling over on them while sleeping. After they receive their deathsentence, they spend up to two or three years in shackles before they die.”
    “How do they eat?”
    “They can’t use chopsticks, so they lift the bowl to eat, or if there are several of them in a room, someone else mixes their rice for them so they can eat with a spoon. What’s more, the guard said he was in solitary for two weeks. When they’re in solitary, they don’t see so much as another person’s shadow. Their hands are shackled behind their backs, so they have to bring their mouths down to the bowl to eat. That’s why they call it ‘dog food.’ Since he was in there for two weeks, he must not be in his right mind. Sometimes they can’t even use the toilet. They just go in their pants. Two weeks…”
    I sighed and resisted asking if they really had to live that way. I had been clueless before, but it was different now that I knew and had seen it with my own eyes. I felt a sense of foreboding, like when you accidentally take a step into a neighborhood where you would never want to live.
    “He murdered someone, right? He said so himself. Who did he kill? And why?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Aunt Monica’s response was so simple and forthright that I doubted my own ears for a second.
    “How did he do it? How many people did he kill? He was in the papers, wasn’t he?”
    “I said I don’t know!”
    Her tone was stern. I turned to look at her. She was staring at me as if there was something unusual about my questions.
    “How can you not know? I saw that you’re a member of the prison ministry. Didn’t you bother to check his records when you started writing to him?”
    “I met him for the first time today, Yujeong. Todaywas our first meeting. That’s it. When people meet each other for the first time, they don’t ask, ‘So what kind of bad things have you done?’ If he talks about it, then I listen. But I never saw him before today. To me, what we saw of him today is all there is to him.”
    She sounded resolute. It felt as if each word struck me in the chest. I was reminded anew that she was a nun.
    “Light’s green. Pull up next to that station entrance on the corner. I’ll call you later tonight.”
    With that, she got out of the car.

O King! Do not weep. There are none who have not longed for death more than once in this short life.
    – Herodotus,
The Histories
B LUE N OTE 5
    Misfortune poured down like a sudden rain shower. One day, I came home from school to find Eunsu as white as a sheet and crying. I asked him what was wrong, but he suddenly started to gag.
    He said,
Father made me drink something weird. I keep throwing up.
I went into the room, and a strange scent pricked my nose. The smell was coming from a bottle of farm pesticide that our father had spilled while trying to feed it to Eunsu. I screamed at our father,
Die! If anyone should die, it’s you
! I don’t know if it was the force of my wrath, but he paused in the middle of drinking and silently turned to look at me. To my surprise, he didn’t try to hit me. He just looked at me through bloodshot eyes—eyes that bore a strange mocking gleam. It might have been a smile, or it might have been a look of bitter agony. I didn’t know if he was going to change his mind and come after us with a stick, so I grabbed Eunsu’s hand and ran away. We went to the same place we always did, a barn behind anabandoned house near the entrance to the village, and we spent the night there. When I went back home in the morning, the person that I used to call Father was dead. The bottle of pesticide that he had drunk was lying empty beside him.

P ART 5
    T hat night, after returning from that place, I didn’t exactly sleep soundly. I had met him, and I had looked at him. He had left, and I had dropped Aunt Monica off. Afterward, I had headed downtown, where I shopped for a few things that I needed for Christmas, and was getting back into my car in the department store