The Impossible Fairy Tale Read online

  Cho Yeonjeong remembers a certain concert. When it was announced that a popular American singer would be coming to Korea on tour, she and her friends cheered. After several days of pleading with her father, she was granted permission to attend the concert. But while she was there, her father saw a news bulletin that said the concert had reached critical capacity. He bolted to the venue and managed to find Cho Yeonjeong among the tens of thousands of spectators. She was dragged home, unable to stay to the end. But after she left, screams ensued, instead of a song. The stage had collapsed. The next day on the news, two deaths were reported.

  Before the apartment towers went up, Park Yeongwu reigned as the king of the vacant lot. He and his minions didn’t care about the chunks of broken brick or shards of glass; they played soccer or brawled until the sun went down. One day, a group of middle school boys came looking for Park Yeongwu. Without knowing why, he took a beating in front of everyone he’d treated like his personal servants. While being pummeled, Park Yeongwu saw a piece of rebar sticking out from under a plank. He pulled it out and began to whirl it frantically through the air. The nervous middle school students backed away. The other children looked on dumbly. That day, two boys suffered fractured skulls and a broken arm. Park Yeongwu’s parents visited the parents of the middle school students fifteen times but were never forgiven.

  Yang Yeong-ae received a bicycle for her tenth birthday. It was a child’s bicycle with training wheels. Her mother stubbornly insisted that Yang Yeong-ae was not allowed to ride the bicycle unless she wore knee pads. Then why don’t I just wear a helmet everywhere I go? she complained. She rode the bicycle into the elevator. On the way down, the elevator stopped and a man got on. After glancing at her and the bicycle, he grinned, saying that girls shouldn’t ride bicycles. When she asked why, he said that she’d find out when she was older, and she was filled with an unnameable shame.

  Jang Minguk liked dogs. His whole family liked dogs. They had four. One by one the dogs died, starting with the oldest. When there was only one beloved dog left, his family decided to let it roam free in the house. One evening, Jang Minguk’s family grilled meat inside, right on the dinner table. Drooling over the smell, the dog put its paws on a chair and barked. Jang Minguk’s father said it should be tied up. No one objected. Even after it was tied up, it kept barking. Jang Minguk’s father rummaged through the first aid kit and found a roll of white tape. He wrapped the tape around the dog’s muzzle a few times. The dog looked at the family with mournful eyes, its long tongue dangling from between the tape. It wasn’t given any meat. After dinner, Jang Minguk removed the tape from its muzzle. On the sticky side of the tape were its hair and whiskers.

  The day before Arbor Day, Kim Jongho received moss rose seeds from school. When he asked why they were planting flowers on a day they were supposed to plant trees, his teacher didn’t reply. Back at home that afternoon, Kim Jongho didn’t know where to plant the seeds. He went to the playground. He failed to note the difference between soil and sand. He was eight years old. He dug up the sand under the slide and poured in the seeds. Starting the next day, he kept watch over the spot under the slide. Even after a month, the moss rose didn’t sprout. Tired of waiting, he dug up the sand again. But where the seeds had been, he discovered two rusted coins.

  Lim Ojeong didn’t get along with her older brother, who was two years older than she. Somehow, things always descended to violence when they were with each other. It was Lim Ojeong’s birthday. When the boy’s mother reprimanded him, saying he should be more affectionate with his sister, he gave Lim Ojeong a model battleship as a present. She accepted the box with a puzzled look. She was too young to know how to put a model together. Her brother took it back, assembled and painted it, and then displayed it on his desk. On her next birthday, she didn’t get anything from him.

  Yun Kyeonghui liked to read. Christmas drew near. The kindergarten she attended had all the students write down what they wanted for presents. On a slip of paper she wrote the title of a children’s book she had always wanted to read and then submitted it. The day before Christmas, the man from the business next door came dressed in a Santa Claus costume and took out a box with her name on the label from his large red sack. Heart pounding, she opened it. But inside was a different book. The book she had wanted was in another child’s hands. Yun Kyeonghui remembers the name of that book. But she still hasn’t read it.

  Huh Namjun’s family on his mother’s side lived out in the country. His maternal grandparents, who raised three Jindo dogs, lived up in the mountains a little ways from the village. Whenever he visited, he was allowed to pat these ferocious dogs on their heads. During the winter break, Huh Namjun and his family went to visit his grandparents. But the dogs were gone. When he asked about them, his grandparents said they’d all been killed. The dogs had broken free of their chains and gone down to the village; there, they had attacked and killed all the village dogs. In turn, his grandparents’ dogs were shot and killed. Huh Namjun could not tell the difference between “killed” and “were killed.”

  Kim Injung’s mother remembers all the days he struggled with math. She taught biology at a middle school, and spent countless hours teaching him addition and subtraction. But he couldn’t understand subtraction. If you take 10 away from 12, what are you left with? she asked. From 12, answered Kim Injung, blinking his dark eyes. She has never hit her son before. It was at the hands of Kim Injung’s older brother that the beatings usually happened, when she was still at work. For the older brother, Kim Injung was a problem he could not solve.

  Kim Taeyong remembers the summer he was ten years old. On the day his entire summer Bible school class went to an outdoor swimming pool, his bag, clothes, and shoes were stolen. He had to walk home barefoot. The asphalt was hot. He left behind damp footprints, at first from the water from the swimming pool and then from the sweat that trickled down his back. He wore only his swim-suit. One summer, he took his young daughter to an outdoor swimming pool. He kept an eye on both his daughter, who was playing in the water, and their locker.

  Kim Inju lost many friends. During the winter of her first year in college, she took a trip to Gangwon Province with three of her school friends. One of them had borrowed a car from her father. The girls were all rather inexperienced drivers, and on the highway they encountered the heaviest snowfall ever. But heavy snowfalls always tend to be the heaviest ever. The car slipped on the slippery road. When Kim Inju woke up, the car was totaled and her friend who had been sitting in the passenger seat was already dead.

  Lee Jun-gyu’s grandmother enjoyed cultivating the small garden on the rooftop of their house. His family liked to keep pets. Tropical fish, hamsters, guinea pigs, cats, chickens, dogs. One day, he turned up his grandmother’s vegetable garden to dig a pond. While he was busily digging out the soil with a trowel, he found the carcass of a small animal. It looked like a hamster or guinea pig. Grandmother, he called. What? she said. A piece of flesh that hadn’t rotted away was stuck to the gray bones. Lee Jun-gyu flung aside the trowel. He felt as though his house were an old graveyard.

  Lee Muyeong learned about cyanotypes in his third-grade science class. Lee Muyeong, who purchased a sun printing kit at a stationery store, sat in a sunny corner of his apartment building’s parking lot and placed small trinkets on top of a photosensitive sheet that was the size of his hand. He waited for an hour. The clouds moved. While he wasn’t paying attention, a butterfly alighted on top of the sheet and then fluttered away. He managed to obtain a print with the faint image of a butterfly. White powder from the butterfly’s wings rubbed off onto his fingertip.

  Whenever Kang Myeonghwa became angry, she locked herself in her room and refused to come out. And every time, she banged her window open so that her family would hear it, and hurled objects out the window, such as her melodeon or globe, things that would make a loud noise when they crashed to the ground. Day by day, her belongings dwindled. Once all the heavy objects had disappeared out the window, the lighter
ones soon followed, one by one. Unable to stand by and watch any longer, her mother finally took the bedroom door off its hinges. Kang Myeonghwa slept in a room without a door until she graduated from senior high school.

  Choi Mia had two fathers. She received twice as many presents as the other children received on birthdays and Christmas. She had no siblings. The other children were jealous of her face, clothes, and school supplies. She has never been jealous of other children. Choi Mia was not given enough time to learn about jealousy.

  When Jang Kihyeon entered the second grade, he went to the house of his new desk mate. The girl’s name disappeared from his memory long ago. She led him into her room. Her mother came in with a tray full of snacks and soon left the house. The girl coaxed him to play a fun game. She got him to lie down on the floor and then climbed on top of him. What are you doing? he asked. I don’t know. I saw my mom and dad do this, she answered. Mom, my desk mate climbed onto my stomach today, he said to his mother when he got home. Is your desk mate a girl or boy? she asked. Jang Kihyeon’s mother called his teacher and demanded that he be assigned a new partner.

  Kwon Yeoreum’s sole hobby was dancing. But her parents strictly forbade singing and dancing. They kept the television in a large wooden cabinet under lock and key. Whenever their parents left the house, she and her younger siblings would open the cabinet doors with the key they had secretly copied. They would watch television and mimic the singers’ moves. Having determined the order ahead of time, they would take turns keeping watch from the balcony. This continued until Kwon Yeoreum became an adult.

  Mun Suyeon recalls the yogurt drinks she was never allowed to finish. Because they were expensive, her mother had only one yogurt drink delivered to the house per day. Strawberry, apple, or grape. Mun Suyeon was forced to leave half for her younger brother. A fight ensued if she happened to take one sip beyond the halfway point. The yogurt drink tasted sweet and sour. She had to mark the container at the halfway point with a pen.

  Kang Jiyeong recalls the orange juice. Once a week, her mother had a carton of Sunkist Family Juice delivered to their house. Every morning, she had to drink a glass. One morning before school, she dropped her juice-filled cup. It was a mistake. Her mother, who had been spreading jam on her toast, spat out a single command: lick it up. After hesitating for a moment, Kang Jiyeong got down on her hands and knees and lapped at the juice. It was sour. The family dog came running and started lapping juice alongside Kang Jiyeong.

  Ahn Jonghyeok remembers the railroad tracks. He and Park Yeongwu often played near the tracks. They placed two coins on top of the rails and waited for a train to run over them. Their favorite was the Saemaeul train. When that train passed, the coins ended up as flat as disks. They did this again and again until they managed to get ones that were perfect circles. The spoils from these expeditions eventually disappeared. But the thin, flat coins weren’t all they lost.

  Song Ho-myeong wore shirts that were held together with safety pins instead of buttons. His mother had died before she could teach him how to sew buttons on his shirts. His father, who didn’t care whether his son even wore a shirt, didn’t notice that there were safety pins instead of buttons on his son’s shirts. When Song Ho-myeong was able to buy shirts with buttons, he got a girlfriend. This girlfriend, who had gotten a divorce right before she met him, had a ten-year-old daughter. This girl taught Song Ho-myeong how to play chess. They played against each other on their mobile phones. He rarely won.

  Shin Munhui was good with her hands. When she entered the tenth grade, sewing was popular among the girls. During breaks, the girls would gather in groups of two or three to sew makeup bags and handkerchiefs. Even during class, Shin Munhui secretly sewed under her desk. Shin Munhui! the geography teacher called. Focused on her sewing, her head bowed, she didn’t hear the teacher call her name. Again, in a loud voice, the teacher called her. Shocked, she jumped to her feet. The needle that had been dangling under the desk stabbed her in the thigh and snapped.

  Hwang Guenmo remembers Park Yeongwu. In fifth grade, Hwang Guenmo was Park Yeongwu’s partner. Park Yeongwu began stealing Hwang Guenmo’s change on the first day of class. Hwang Guenmo carried two sets of journals and notebooks. He did Park Yeongwu’s homework. He also filled out Park Yeongwu’s journal. Once when the homeroom teacher called Park Yeongwu’s name during attendance, Hwang Guenmo answered for him without thinking. The next day, Park Yeongwu threw Hwang Guenmo’s shoes into the incinerator. Hwang Guenmo had to walk home barefoot.

  So Yeonghyeon had a close friend. The friend’s name was In-kyeong, or perhaps Inseon. In-kyeong, or perhaps Inseon, had a brother who was ten years younger. A rumor began to spread that In-kyeong, or perhaps Inseon, breast-fed her brother. Even children from another class came up to So Yeonghyeon to ask whether or not it was true. It was ridiculous. But when all the children ended up believing this ridiculous story with the exception of So Yeonghyeon, she no longer needed to keep saying it was ridiculous.

  Yu Huikyeong remembers the chicken. On a certain day in March, she bought a chick in front of the school gate. She kept it in a cardboard box she obtained from the produce market. Whenever it got too loud, Yu Huikyeong’s mother would cover the box with newspaper. The chick then became quiet. It met a fate far different from the chicks in the fists of other children. The chick died before it could mature into a chicken. She didn’t know whether to call it a chick or chicken.

  Choi Hayeon remembers the piano. She hid a few trivial, but meaningful, objects inside the piano bench. When that spot was discovered, she opened the lid and hid the objects inside the piano. She wouldn’t practice pieces that required her to hit high notes, since the weight of the objects on the strings prevented the higher keys from moving. Choi Hayeon was the only one in her family who was intimately familiar with the large, elegant instrument. The piano was never once tuned.

  One time around Christmas, Wu Jina swiped Christmas cards from around her apartment complex. She stole perhaps a hundred altogether. A name was written on every card. She couldn’t figure out a way to reuse them. Before her family could find out, she stuffed all the cards minus their envelopes into a mailbox.

  Lee Dongju recalls the seagulls. Lee Dongju and his mother went to visit his aunt who ran a bed-and-breakfast on an island off the west coast. It was to be his first time meeting this aunt, as well as his first time on a boat. Shivering at the quayside, he ate some instant noodles. When the boat started to move, Lee Dongju, who had been standing by the railing on the top deck, heaved up everything he had just eaten into the sea. The seagulls circling overhead dove diagonally toward his vomit that was now floating on the waves. The same thing happened on the boat on their way back.

  Na Yunmi had three friends. She began to receive an anonymous note every day. You’re a sheep dressed in wolf’s clothing. Die. Just die. Na Yunmi hid the notes in her textbook and refused to go to school. Her mother took her to see a child psychiatrist. The doctor offered only one answer: nerves. The sender of the notes was one of her three friends. Na Yunmi still has those notes.

  Park Jihye recalls the time: 8:40. It was winter. After coming home from school, she fell asleep in the living room. No one was home. When she was startled awake by the chill that crept in, the hands on the clock were pointing to 8:40. Shocked, she hurried to the bathroom and washed her face. She then realized she hadn’t done her homework, but she was already late. She put on her backpack and was hurrying down the stairs when she ran into her father. Where are you going? he asked. To school, she answered. Why are you going to school at night? he asked.

  Jung Yongjun recalls that convenience store at night. When he was about ten years old, the first convenience store opened in his neighborhood. The lights of the store’s sign never turned off, no matter how late it was. One evening on his way home from a tutoring session, he thought everything looked strange. What was it? Was the earth collapsing? he wondered. Even the store’s blue sign that always shone brightly was out. The dusky street was quick
ly growing dark. Candles were lit at his house. There had been a power failure.

  Oh Sora was a gifted ballet dancer. Or perhaps the ballet teacher simply flattered Oh Sora’s mother. Starting a month before the ballet competition, Oh Sora skipped dinner. Every night, she fell asleep while thinking of all that she wanted to eat. On the night of the competition, she failed to win a prize. As she and her parents were driving from Seoul back to their city, they decided to make a quick stop at a highway rest area. Oh Sora wanted to eat a hamburger. But the only place where the lights were on was the bathroom. She demanded that her parents buy her a hamburger. Her mother, unable to cope with her own disappointment and exhaustion, slapped her. Oh Sora quit ballet.

  19

  The children’s journals are not on the teacher’s desk. The children are silent. The sentences that the children could not and cannot write are not on the teacher’s desk. As always, the potted plants on the windowsill complain of hunger and thirst. The children have all committed sins large and small during their brief lives. Sin. It is only after they have committed a sin that they understand the weight of the word sin, or perhaps of evil. The sins, or evils, both large and small that the children have committed and will commit choke them. It’s still April. Friday. Clear. Exactly 9:00 a.m. Cold spring air blows in through the half-open window at the back of the classroom. The children in the back rows wince. All thirty-five children have their mouths closed. Kim Injung raises his dark eyes and gazes at the teacher. The teacher turned forty-nine this year and also greeted his twentieth year teaching. He looks at the children. The children, whose gazes are lowered, stare blankly at the scribbles on their desks. He thinks this incident is truly the first of its kind and the first in every way. The journals the children had submitted have now disappeared altogether. He glances at the children’s small heads. Who could it be? There is no way of knowing. Who in the world would do such a thing? He thinks that perhaps it’s not a child’s doing. He can’t imagine any child who would dare sneak into the classroom with a stolen key and take only the journals. And yet. Nothing else, apart from the journals, is missing. And yet. No child he knows would be bold enough to trespass into the empty school in the middle of the night, and at least twice. That morning, immediately after he had checked under his desk, he had gone looking for the teacher who had been on night duty. After hearing the full story, that teacher gave a bewildered smile. Maybe a child played a prank on you when you weren’t watching? Anyhow, he hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. And yet, the homeroom teacher thinks there is something disturbing about the whole incident. The incident itself isn’t so serious. But it’s a rather elaborate act for a child to commit. There is no trace. The evidence has disappeared. And yet. The teacher thinks about the clear penmanship of the person who had added sentences to every journal. I hate you. It hurts. I despise you. A fire is hot. A long and hard thing. A needle is pointy. It hurts. It hurts so much I can hardly bear it. I want to kill, too. I want to kill. Bad things are painful. Painful things are bad. And yet, as far as he knows, there is no child in Grade 5, Section 3, with such penmanship. It didn’t look like a child’s handwriting. It looked more like a grown-up’s handwriting. If it indeed had been a child, the teacher thinks he would have entered that child as class representative in a penmanship competition. And yet. The writing in the journals looked like the writer had intentionally imitated the bad handwriting of children. The teacher shakes his head. There is no longer any need to wait until Monday. At a loss, he stands on the platform at the front of the classroom. He doesn’t have the nerve to become the piper himself and pretend to lead thirty-five children to the police station. It only takes about fifteen minutes to walk to the police station. Fifteen minutes isn’t enough time to obtain a confession. The children’s attention scatters. Their mouths are still closed. Looking bored, Kim Injung throws his head back. The Child glances at him. With his head tilted back, he is staring at her with dark eyes. She meets his stare calmly. Gieok. Niun. Digu. Riul. Mium. His tongue darts in and out between his open lips. Knife. He is watching her, and she is focused on watching Mia. Yesterday. Thursday. It rained yesterday. Rain is good. Rain erases footprints. She once read a book from the school library about a detective who lost the culprit’s tracks because of the previous night’s rain. Swamp. Mud. Quagmire. The detective, his assistant, and the police inspector, who dragged along a dog, all fell into the mud. While the Child read the book, the two-lane asphalt road came immediately to mind. Footprints can’t be left on asphalt. And yet. At the end of the story, the detective finds the culprit. The detective possessed other evidence. Evidence that wasn’t erased by the rain. Evidence that didn’t drift away with the rain. Evidence that the culprit had carelessly left behind. The Child nearly shakes her head without thinking, but stops herself. She must not attract any attention. The detective was able to find the culprit because the culprit happened to be one of the characters in the story. Because every story needs a conclusion. But the Child isn’t merely a character. She has no conclusion. At least not yet. Besides, she didn’t leave behind any tracks, let alone other evidence. Her daring and meticulousness crush the teacher’s chest. Tracks. Cracks. Backs. But the teacher doesn’t watch the Child closely. He has never properly looked at her. Perhaps she has never properly revealed herself to the teacher. Or to anyone. Time is passing. The hands on the clock on the back wall are pointing to 9:05. Close the window, the teacher finally says. A child sitting next to the window slowly shuts it. The child’s name is Na Yunmi. Child, child, child. Thirty-five children. The journals are missing, the teacher says. I trusted you, but now I don’t know what to say. Kim Injung twists around in his seat and looks back at the Child. Knife. But her gaze is fixed on the scribbles on her desk. Mia, who is sitting diagonally from the Child a few desks away, looks absentmindedly at the back of the Child’s neck. On her bluish neck is a distinct red line. This curved red line doesn’t connect the Child and Mia. The Child’s rumpled collar covers the end of this line. Something pops into Mia’s head, but she soon forgets it. No, Mia finds the thought again. Inju, who is sitting next to Mia, hopes only that this moment will pass. That class will start, that this time of forced silence, perhaps, this time of forced confession, will pass. I was planning to wait until Monday, says the teacher. But instead of confessing, you’ve stolen all the journals, whoever you are. This cannot happen. If you don’t come forward by the end of the day, we will all go to the police station together. Or I will just have to find some other way to track the culprit down. The children whisper. The children stare at those around them. On each child’s face is an expression akin to rage at having been pegged as the potential culprit. Now, the children must peg those around them as the potential culprit. The child sitting next to the Child stares at the Child. The Child stares back. The two have barely ever spoken to each other. Maybe an eraser had passed between them a few times. The Child glances at the notebook and textbook on top of the child’s desk. Yang Yeong-ae. 5-3. It’s a name composed of o’s. Calmly, the Child puts her hands inside her desk and pulls out her notebook and textbook. It’s 9:10. The bell rings through the classroom speakers. It’s journal time. Busily the children glance inside their desks. All of a sudden, the Child feels a pain in her neck. It happened yesterday. No. The day before yesterday, no, the week before, no, a month before, no, perhaps it had been happening for an eternity. The pain spreads down her back and hips. She begins to pant. Teacher! someone cries. Thirty-five gazes, including the teacher’s, swivel sharply toward the voice and affix themselves on the speaker. The Child also turns to look. It’s Mia. Teacher, Mia calls once more. Yes? the teacher says, as though he anticipates something. What is it, Mia? Looking embarrassed, Mia asks, May I go to the bathroom? As soon as she finishes speaking, the thirty-five gazes that were directed at Mia go slack. All at once. The teacher nods vacantly. Mia gets up from her seat, looking relieved. Inju looks up at Mia with a dazed expression. The Child’s neck grows stiff. She turns to watch Mia, who slips out thr
ough the back door of the classroom. A vivid pain runs down the Child’s back. Through the classroom window, she sees the top of Mia’s head as she walks down the hall toward the bathroom. Her hair, tightly secured with a green hair tie, sways from side to side. The Child’s gaze is fixed on Mia’s green hair tie. She must be careful about Mia. Perhaps Mia said that she needed to go to the bathroom for a reason. Perhaps it was a warning to the Child. Perhaps Mia has put everything together. The Child grows anxious, like a block of ice left out in the midday sun. Except she can’t simply melt away and disappear. The teacher coughs. Kim Injung spreads open his sketchbook instead of his textbook and turns to look at the Child. Knife. She avoids his dark eyes. Knife. Every time she moves, pain digs into her body. Like a knife. Calmly, she moves her hands and opens her textbook. She hides her left hand under her desk, under her textbook. She has lost a fingernail. It happened yesterday. But no one notices that her finger is missing a nail. She has lost a key. It happened yesterday. On page 27 is an illustration of the Antarctic Research Station. Without warning, she ducks her head and plugs her nose with her right hand. But there is already a drop of blood on the white snow. One. Two. She tilts her head back. The trickle of blood runs down between her fingers and her bony jaw. Yang Yeong-ae, who is sitting next to her, looks shocked and rummages through her bag for a tissue. The long, red scratch on the Child’s neck swells. The hand that is plugging her nose trembles faintly.