Seven Years of Darkness

Lighthouse Village

On Christmas Eve, a black SUV screeched to a stop in front of the pharmacy, and the driver walked inside. I was just about to dig into my ramen. It was three in the afternoon, but it was my lunch break. I forced myself to get up.

"Hey. I have a question," the man said, taking off his Ray-Ban sunglasses.

I reluctantly put my chopsticks down. Hurry up, man, I thought.

"How do you get to Lighthouse Village? I don't see any signs for it." He gestured toward the intersection.

I glanced at his big, powerful SUV. What was it, a Chevy?

"Hey! Did you hear me? Where's Lighthouse Village?"

"Don't you have GPS?"

"I'm asking since the GPS can't find it," the man snapped, clearly irritated.

"How would I know if the GPS doesn't?" I said, equally irritated.

The man left in a huff and gunned his SUV across the intersection.

I turned back to my lunch. Lighthouse Village was what the locals called Sinsong-ri. He should have turned left at the intersection, not gone straight through. I knew, because that was where I lived.

The village wasn't on any map; it was as though it was so insignificant that it wasn't worth calling out. According to Mr. Ahn, it was the tiniest village on Hwawon Peninsula. My boss, the owner of the pharmacy, said it was a dismal, out-of-the-way place that was impossible to get to. The village's so-called youth club president referred to it as the edge of the world. It was true that the place was remote-you had to drive down an unpopulated stretch along the coast for about ten miles before you spotted it. The lighthouse from which it had gotten its name stood at the end of the jagged, beak-shaped cliff that jutted over the sea. Rocky mounds rose from the water and a long, tall ridge enclosed the village from behind.

When we first moved here, I'd gone up to the top of the ridge with Mr. Ahn. From there, you could see the other side of the mountain, a treeless wasteland as vast as the sea. The government had purchased the land for a tourism complex, but so far nothing had come of it. I'd heard that it had been covered with sorghum once, with a small village at the far edge. It was the kids of that long-gone village who had come up with the local name for ours.

With only twelve residents remaining, our town was also facing extinction. That number included Mr. Ahn and me; everyone called us "the little ones" because the average age of the residents was nearly seventy. Most were sweet potato farmers; although we lived in a coastal town, everyone was far too old to fish. Sometimes they were able to cajole us "little ones" into catching something. The last baby born in the village was now sixty-one years old-the youth club president. He owned the sole motorboat in the village and rented us one of the rooms in his lodging house; he also rented out to scuba divers who came to explore the underwater cliff off the coast. That was why Mr. Ahn and I had first come here, before deciding to stay on. Perhaps the man in the Chevy had been lured by the underwater cliff, too, though I hoped that wasn't the case.

Even though Mr. Ahn was only thirty-nine, his hair was already thinning, and he had long white hairs sprouting from his eyebrows. His performance was pathetic at our version of Ironman, which we held every day. We would take the youth club president's boat to the rock island not far off the coast and anchor it. First, we swam around the island. Then we swept the ridge of the underwater cliff to fill our bags with sea squirts, clams, and sea cucumbers. After that, we played basketball; we had nailed a hoop to the trunk of a pine tree. The first to sink five baskets won. Mr. Ahn had lost nine out of the past ten games. Last week, he pulled a muscle in his neck when he tried to dunk. Since then, he was always muttering about how some bastard had shoved his head down when he was trying to score.

My boss came in around seven in the evening and opened the safe, which signaled the end of my shift.

"I'm heading out," I called out. I hopped on my bike, coasted through the intersection, and barreled down the meandering coastal road. It wasn't too dark; stars dotted the night sky. The sea shimmered, the waves crashed against the cliff, and a silvery seabird banked silently through the air.

I pulled up to the house to find the black Chevy parked next to Mr. Ahn's purple van. I could hear Mr. Ahn arguing with someone in the yard. "The current is strong and unpredictable, with undertows. It's like a maze around the island. It's too dark, and you've all been drinking . . ."

"Who are you to tell us what to do?" the other man interrupted.

I pushed the gate open. Four guys were facing off against Mr. Ahn and the youth club president. I recognized one of them; he was the one who had come into the pharmacy, asking for directions.

"Have you ever done a nighttime dive?" Mr. Ahn asked, crossing his arms. "If you're reckless you can get in serious trouble."

The guys laughed at him.

"Boys, he's trying to prevent an accident," the youth club president interjected. "He's our diving expert. Listen to him. I'll rent you the boat tomorrow morning, so let's call it a night."

I kicked the gate closed behind me, and everyone turned to look.

"Oh, hey," the guy from the pharmacy said. "It's the very helpful clerk from earlier. How did you manage to find your way here, when you couldn't tell me where Lighthouse Village was?"

"I don't think you should take them out tonight," Mr. Ahn said to the youth club president. With that, we went inside. Soon, we heard their van revving and driving off.

I shook my head in disgust and went to wash up.

They say a cat can sense thunder right before it rumbles. Perhaps the human brain has a similar sensory ability-the clock of anxiety that begins ticking when catastrophe looms. Later that night, in the room I shared with Mr. Ahn, I lay in bed but couldn't fall asleep. I drifted into my memories, back to that day seven years ago when the police had separated me from Mr. Ahn.

After they released me, my mom was cremated without a proper funeral, and I was entrusted to my dad's younger brother, Uncle Jongu, in Seoul. On my first day at my new school, before I could introduce myself, I realized that the kids already knew who I was. To them, I was the son of a crazed murderer who had killed an eleven-year-old girl and her father, thrown his own wife into the river, and then opened the floodgates of the dam above Seryong Village, drowning four police officers and wiping out nearly half the town.

My cousins, who attended the same school, came home in tears; their classmates had taunted them for being related to me. Uncle Jongu had to quit his job as a physical therapist. Soon, our landlord asked us to vacate the apartment. We fled to an apartment in Sanbon and I was given a room at the back, albeit with its own enclosed balcony. My aunt was terrified that people would find out I was living with them. My cousins avoided me at all costs.

I emerged from my room only when the apartment was empty or everyone was asleep. I ate if there was food and went hungry if there wasn't. I rushed to the bathroom, having held it in all day long, and washed. This became a ritual of sorts, my way of confirming that I wasn't a monster. I still had two legs, two arms, a pair of irises, a soul.

Back in my room, I curled up next to the window, alternating between napping and daydreaming. I missed Mr. Ahn. I wondered if he ever tried to contact me. I wouldn't know if he had; Uncle Jongu had smashed the cell phone Mr. Ahn had given me against the wall when he found it, telling me that I was forbidden to remain in contact with anyone my father had known if I wanted to continue staying with them.

Three months later, he sent me to live with his older sister. After three months there, I was sent to their other sister. Things were the same wherever I went. As time passed, the events of Seryong Lake faded from the collective memory, and fewer people recognized me. But eventually, someone would always figure it out, and they would drive me out of school.

The only person in my family who was kind to me was Aunt Yongju, my mother's younger sister. She took me in for a month longer than any other relative before or since. After I'd been there for four months, she sent me to her brother, Giju. "I'm so sorry, Sowon," she said, her eyes filling with tears. Maybe she would have let me stay longer if it weren't for her husband. He despised me. He would come home drunk, drag me out of my room, and pummel me. He would push his wife away as she tried to intervene.

I'll never forget what I overheard him say the night before I was sent away.

"Have you ever looked into the kid's eyes? He never cries. He just stares at you, blankly, even if you curse at him or beat him. It makes me crazy. It's not a child's gaze. It's the gaze of someone who would do something terrible. I can't have him here anymore."

Three months later on a snowy January morning, I came out of my room at Uncle Giju's, and he handed me two one-thousand-won bills. "You know how to get to your uncle Jongu's place, right?"

I figured I could find my way somehow. I nodded. He apologized for not being able to drop me off. They were moving that day, and they neglected to tell me where they were going. I threw my stuff in my suitcase, shouldered my backpack, put on my hat, and walked out of the apartment. The wind sliced through me. The streets were icy. My hands were cold and the tip of my nose was numb. But I didn't look back. I would not beg them to take me along. I didn't much care where I lived, anyway. I thought of Mr. Ahn again.

I found out later that my aunts and uncles had taken my inheritance and divided it among themselves for child-rearing expenses. They had taken everything, including my mom's savings account, life insurance, and our brand-new apartment. But that hadn't been enough to buy their generosity for more than a few months at a time.

I got lost on my way to Sanbon and it took me five hours to get there. When I rang the doorbell, I heard an unfamiliar woman's voice call out, "Who is it?"

I asked for Uncle Jongu, but she answered that nobody of that name lived there. I checked the unit number; maybe I had come to the wrong place. I went outside to check the building number. I wasn't in the wrong place. They, too, it seemed, had moved. I rushed to the phone booth at the entrance of the apartment complex, but Uncle Jongu had changed his cell phone number, too. I called Uncle Giju, but I couldn't get through to his cell phone or his landline. I stood there, stunned. Uncle Jongu had moved away from Sanbon before his turn came around again, but Uncle Giju had sent me there anyway. I called all of my aunts, but no one answered.

Snow swirled into the phone booth through the gaps around the door. My jacket was too thin and my jeans were too short-my ankles were bare. I had grown out of my sneakers, so I was wearing them with the heels folded down-like slippers. I hadn't eaten anything all day. I only had a hundred-won coin left.

There was only one number I hadn't tried-Mr. Ahn's cell phone number. There was probably no point, since he'd given me his phone and Uncle Jongu had broken it, but I dialed, cautiously hopeful. Maybe he'd bought a new cell phone after giving me his and was still using the same number . . .

It rang for a long time. Finally, a slow, clear voice said, "Hello?"

It was Mr. Ahn. I had never forgotten his voice. My throat closed up and I couldn't speak.

Mr. Ahn persisted. "Hello? Hello? Who is it?"

"It's me," I managed. "Your roommate."

I waited for what felt like an eternity for his purple van to pull up in front of the apartment complex, though in reality it was only an hour.

He was living in Ansan, not far from where I had been living. His place looked just like the room we'd shared in Seryong; it was as if we'd gone back in time. His desk, with his laptop, notebook, keys and wallet, the pack of menthol cigarettes, empty beer cans, sticky notes everywhere. He was the same, too-the same short salt-and-pepper hair, a hint of a smile on his face, his habit of taking off his socks and tossing them aside the instant he entered his room. The only thing that had changed was that now he worked as a ghostwriter.

Mr. Ahn didn't ask how I had been. My appearance must have told him everything. Instead, he said that he hadn't changed his phone number all this time, thinking I might call him at some point. I rushed into the bathroom when he said that; I didn't want him to see the emotion on my face. I didn't want him to know how relieved I was that he hadn't gotten married-if he had, surely his wife wouldn't have wanted me around-and that he was still living alone. I didn't want to let on how nervous I was; would he let me stay, or track down my relatives and send me away?

As winter turned into spring, Mr. Ahn completed the legal steps to become my guardian. I'm not sure how that was possible, as I still had living relatives, but I never asked. The only thing that mattered to me was that Mr. Ahn wouldn't abandon me.

In school, all I did was study. It was my silent vow to Mr. Ahn that I would be on my best behavior; I didn't want to give him any reason to cast me off.