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

I thought I would rather sit through therapy again than have to visit that ungrateful piece of trash who shamelessly demanded to be killed. I suddenly loathed Aunt Monica for giving him long underwear and packing pastries for him, and pleading,
You have a good heart. No matter what your sins are, they are not all of you
. I got up, went to the kitchen, poured a tall glass of whiskey, and drank it in one gulp. My racing heart seemed to slow a little. I went back to the computer, as if drawn to something, and sat down.
Raped a seventeen-year-old girl
… Her screams echoed in my ears. The terror and shame she felt were as clear to me as if I werewatching them on a movie screen.
    After he and his accomplice left with the money and valuables and ran away, the accomplice turned himself in, while Yunsu broke into a family’s home and took them hostage. Then the police shot him in the leg.
    There were more articles. Editorials, even the society pages, went on and on about the case: “Murder Case Grows More Savage: Criminal Jeong Yunsu killed an older woman who had been helping him, stole her money and valuables, raped and killed her daughter, then killed the poor, innocent housekeeper, and still he shows no remorse.” My computer screen filled with the tut-tutting of sociologists, psychiatrists, and journalists who naturally understood all of the problems facing our society and therefore had no end of things to say when handed a microphone. I kept clicking.
    The article about his hostages included a photograph.
    In the photo, he was wailing, his arm wrapped around the neck of a middle-class woman who looked like she was in her thirties. I took a closer look. His features were the same, but he looked completely different. He wasn’t wearing the black-rimmed glasses, and his hair was very short. During the half-day standoff, the police had sent in a Buddhist monk who made prison visits. An interview with the monk was included in a separate text box.
    “I told him my name was Beomnyun and that I was a monk, and I was going to step inside. I asked him to let the woman go and said, ‘What has she done? If you want to kill someone, then kill me.’ Then he said, ‘Who the hell are you?’ So I told him again, ‘My name is Beomnyun, I’m a monk,’ and he said, ‘Well, nice to meet you. You monks and pastors and priests—it’s assholes like you that made me this way. Come on then, if you want to die! Come on! I’ll kill you, too, and then I’ll die, too!’ That’s what he said. The momentI heard those words, my heart jumped. I was ready to rush in there, but the police officer held me back.”
    I forgot all about how I had thought of him as trash and laughed to myself. I had already emptied half of the whiskey bottle. Even if he were trash, I was intrigued by what he said. I thought,
He thinks the same way as me!
I would never be able to forgive my family members, who were oblivious to even one-millionth of what I’d gone through, for turning their backs on me. My mother, who lied and said,
She must have had a bad dream.
My father, who didn’t want to hear any more about it. My brothers. The priests and nuns, who took my confession and pressured me to forgive. God, who ignored my desperate prayers to be rescued. Thanks to them, I was falsely accused of the sin of lying and of not forgiving. The only person who did not say anything to me at the time was Aunt Monica. I clicked on the next article. After Yunsu was arrested and taken to the hospital, he was questioned by reporters and said, “I regret not killing more. All those rich people in their fancy houses, I regret not killing more of them!”
    The reporters blamed the gap between the haves and the have-nots and the extravagance and self-indulgence of the wealthy in our country. At the same time, they said that such anger was misguided. Everyone seemed shocked by the audacity with which he had brazenly said that he regretted not killing more people. The all-knowing