As we left the courthouse, Mr. Ahn held out some tofu, the traditional commemoration of leaving jail. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s all over.”
He was wrong. That was only the beginning. Our new landlord received a copy of the Sunday Magazine in the mail, this time along with an article about the fight, and we were kicked out. I was expelled from my new school. Mr. Ahn had to choose between transferring me to yet another school or letting me drop out.
In the end, I never managed to get a middle school diploma. After cycling through twelve different schools, I dropped out and took the middle school equivalency exam so that I could go on to high school. In my first four semesters of high school I transferred nine times. My identity was revealed the same way every time, with a copy of the Sunday Magazine and the article about my fight sent to everyone at school, the parent associations, and our neighbors.
We became drifters, usually staying in port cities. Mr. Ahn was an avid diver; he taught me how to dive, and the sea gave me a sense of freedom. In the underwater darkness, the world vanished, and nothing could reach me. I was safe from people’s prying eyes and their malicious whispers.
The last school I attended was in Sokcho, by the ocean. I entered the class one day and found a copy of the Sunday Magazine on my desk. The kids stared at me silently. One never gets used to certain things, like ostracism. I walked out, enveloped in a cold blue blaze that burned as I crossed the yard and went out the school gates. I headed straight to the convenience store where I worked part-time.
My boss was there, and it was busy. I spotted a copy of the Sunday Magazine on the counter. I asked for my month’s wages. My boss told me to wait as he finished ringing up a customer. I waited thirty minutes, which quickly turned into an hour. There were so many customers that day; my boss grumbled that I was in the way. I moved from the counter to the back door to the storage room to the front door, waiting all the while. I refused to give in to anger or humiliation.
By that time, I never got flustered or angry. I didn’t expect anything from anyone, which meant I never panicked, no matter what happened. I knew it was normal to be flustered when you were surprised, to be angry when you were humiliated—Mr. Ahn kept telling me it was okay to live like that. I disagreed: I had to live, period. And to live, I couldn’t panic or get angry or feel vulnerable. I had to withdraw further into the cold, remote core inside myself, and wait there, where I was safe. This tenacity was what kept me going—what kept me from killing myself.
When I finally got my pay two hours later, I was famished. I took a lap around the store, selecting a hamburger, rice rolls, a hot dog, a sandwich—as much food as I could afford with what I just got paid. I piled it all on the counter. It was enough to feed half the homeless people living at Seoul Station. I threw the cash at my now-former boss and headed to the pier.
No one was around. I stuffed the food down, watching the seagulls diving against the backdrop of the setting sun, the boats coming and going, the stray cats meandering with nothing to do, like me. Finally, night fell. It was time to go back to the Rose Inn at the end of a nearby alley, where Mr. Ahn and I rented a room by the month.
That was the day I was honest with Mr. Ahn for the first time. I told him I would drop out of school for good. The next time we moved, I wanted to be scrubbed from the world and forgotten.
Mr. Ahn shook his head.
“I give up,” I said.
“You can’t give up,” was his retort. “It’ll get better in college.”
I almost laughed out loud. College? Was he serious? None of that mattered anymore. My life had ended the morning I left Seryong Village. I had been branded with my father’s crimes and Mr. Ahn had been forced to become a drifter because of me. The Sunday Magazine would follow me everywhere I went; nothing would change. This was what my life was and would forever be. Why couldn’t he understand?
“All I want to do is live quietly by the coast somewhere.”
Mr. Ahn shook his head stubbornly. I stared at him.
He relented a little. “Okay, then take a year off. You can make a decision about school then.”
“Okay,” I said, taking a step back, too. I didn’t feel like arguing.
We followed the sea, from east to south to west. Mr. Ahn drove and I navigated. We unpacked when we could find a room for rent and slept in the van when we couldn’t. We ate when we felt like it and dived whenever we had the chance. We left whenever someone started to show an interest in us.
We came to Lighthouse Village in early January of this year, and it seemed as though perhaps we had finally found a home. We should have done this from the beginning, I thought; I should have quit school sooner. Then we wouldn’t have had to roam around all these years, rootless and searching.
I was beginning to hope again. Mr. Ahn would continue his ghostwriting gigs, I would work at the pharmacy, and we would live here for a long time, maybe even until we both grew old. But for that to happen, the outside world couldn’t discover this tiny hamlet. That was why people like the guys in the Chevy made me so nervous.
Mr. Ahn was tossing and turning in his bed. I could hear the waves crashing in the darkness. The clock in the youth club president’s room next door chimed. I closed my eyes. A vein throbbed in the center of my forehead, and the clock of anxiety inside my head ticked louder and louder.
* * *
• • •
THE PHONE RANG, jolting us awake. Mr. Ahn picked up. “There’s been an accident by the island,” he said. “One man’s still missing.” I got out of bed and turned on the light to get ready, though I’d started deep-sea diving only a year ago.
We sped to the lighthouse and ran down the path to the water. The youth club president was tying the boat on the mooring post. He had managed to find three of them, though one was unconscious. The last one was still underwater.
Mr. Ahn and I took the boat to the island. The wind was gentle and the waves were calm. We anchored the boat, put on our gear, and jumped in. The water was frigid. We paused at the ridge of the pitch-black cliff. Mr. Ahn pointed his thumb down, signaling descent. I gave him the okay sign.
Fifty feet, sixty, seventy . . . at a hundred feet, Mr. Ahn gave me the stop sign. We swam south along the cliff wall thick with black horn coral. A few minutes later, Mr. Ahn pointed at overlapping arches below, where a light was visible. We passed through an arch and saw the missing man, lying still in a cave-like space, his headlight still shining bright. Mr. Ahn signaled at me to kneel next to the body. Mr. Ahn crossed two fingers in front of his mask, telling me not to look at the dead guy’s eyes, but he was a beat too late. I was already having trouble breathing, just like that time at Seryong Lake.
Mr. Ahn blasted his horn at me, wresting me from my memories. We went up slowly, holding the body between us. The beam from the lighthouse skimmed across the water, and sirens blared from far away.