I dropped the manuscript. Mr. Ahn—whose first name was Sunghwan, though I never called him that—had written this. His style was as familiar to me as my own face. I could guess what loomed on the following pages. The Sunday Magazine had carved that story into my bones. I didn’t need to read about it again. Why did he write this manuscript, which seemed to be a fictionalized account of what had happened at Seryong Lake? Why would he send it to me, when we lived in the same room? (I didn’t recognize the handwriting on the box, but whose else could it be?) And where had he gone?
I biked to the lighthouse and sat at the edge of the cliff, looking out at the sea. Friday, August 27, 2004. The girl was still alive that afternoon. I couldn’t stop my mind from going back to that summer seven years ago.
We moved to Seryong Lake on Sunday, August 29. My father had been transferred there as the head of security at Seryong Dam. There were only two bedrooms in 102 and Mr. Ahn was already living there. My parents took the master bedroom and I became Mr. Ahn’s roommate.
Mr. Ahn showed me that path leading up to the rest area the first day we got there. We were on a mission to find my father, who had left the house to get some supplies. Two hours after he left, he still hadn’t come home, and my mother asked us to go find him. Mr. Ahn and I climbed that narrow path and arrived at the highway rest area where my parents and I had stopped on our way in to Seryong Lake. I was confused. We had stopped at the rest area, then driven through the interchange that led to Seryong Village, and then traveled for another stretch before arriving at the lake. Mr. Ahn saw my puzzled expression and pointed to the path we had just taken. “It’s a magic shortcut.”
I almost believed him. You could walk up that path and get to the rest area in five minutes, while driving would take over ten minutes. That wasn’t the only strange thing about this place. It was a basic highway rest area, but it was also the center of daily life for the people of Seryong. The rest stop eateries were their restaurants, the convenience store was their supermarket, and the tables topped with umbrellas on the observation deck functioned as the village bar.
It was there that we found my father, along with two empty soju bottles. We sat down next to him, looking down at the lake below.
“How does it work—the magic?” I asked Mr. Ahn.
“What magic?” my father asked.
“The magic of that path.”
Dad looked at Mr. Ahn, who laughed. “Sowon, you know what a spiral is, right?”
I drew a whirl with my finger.
“That’s right. Seryong Lake is at the foot of the mountain, with the new village beneath, in the lowlands. The highway travels along the mountain ridge. So if you can imagine the lake as the first floor and the rest area as the second floor, the highway is the spiral staircase linking the two floors. But the path is a ladder. If you take the path, you can climb straight up to the second floor.”
Forgetting that we were supposed to bring Dad home, we stayed there awhile—I had a Coke, my father drank more soju, and Mr. Ahn had beer. The sun turned crimson and the shadows grew longer. A faint vapor rose from the lake. Mr. Ahn pointed to a spot far away where the plain met the sky. He said the ocean was out there, by Dungnyang Bay. On nights with a southerly breeze, if you opened our bedroom window, you could smell the sea. But when I did that, what drifted in instead was a voice—her voice. Red light, green light.
* * *
When I got home, Mr. Ahn still wasn’t back.
“But something else came for you,” the youth club president said.
It was another box. This time the sender was “Your friend.” I didn’t recognize the handwriting: it was neither Mr. Ahn’s nor the same hand as on the package I’d received two hours before.
Back in my room, I opened it. Inside the box was a copy of that blasted Sunday Magazine and a yellowed Nike basketball shoe. Just one, size six and a half. A name was written faintly on the inside of the tongue.
Choi Sowon.
I’d owned a pair of Nikes exactly once in my life. I won an award in a math contest at school when I was eleven, and my father had given them to me as a present. He had written my name on them, and I’d lost them at Seryong Lake.
I closed the box. Who sent this? What did they want? If they wanted revenge, they should target the man on death row in Seoul Prison, not me.
I took out my mat and blankets and lay down, even though it was still early. More questions kicked around in my head. Where was Mr. Ahn? Why was he out so late? Why wasn’t he calling? Who sent the Sunday Magazine? Was it a coincidence that Mr. Ahn’s things and the Nike were sent on the same day? What was going on? Until this moment, I had assumed the person sending the Sunday Magazine to my neighbors and schoolmates was a relative of one of the victims. I figured nobody else would pursue me this doggedly. But the Nike proved me wrong. A stranger couldn’t have known what it meant to me.
I called Mr. Ahn, but his phone was off. I turned on his laptop and plugged in the USB drive. A digital copy of the manuscript had to be on there somewhere. I needed to find the part I wanted, the part that would give me a clue as to who was doing this to me, without having to read the whole thing. Luckily, the drive contained two folders: “Reference” and “Seryong Lake.” In the “Seryong Lake” folder there were ten Word files. I opened “Final Draft” and searched for “Nike.”
Last spring, Sowon had won a prize in a math contest at school. Hyonsu bought him Nike basketball shoes to congratulate him.
I kept pressing “Find Next.” A few more sentences went by, all with Hyonsu as the subject. Until I saw a different name.
Yongje took the Nike basketball shoes out of his bag. “Could these be your son’s?”
Yongje. A man’s face flashed in my mind. Our neighbor in unit 101.
My hair stood on end. That girl’s father. He’d had the Nikes. Could he be the one sending copies of the Sunday Magazine? No, that couldn’t be. He died seven years ago. The entire world knew that he died by my father’s hand. A sickening confusion churned in my gut.
I glared at the name highlighted on the screen. I took a deep breath and scrolled back to the beginning.
SERYONG LAKE
PART I
Sunghwan opened the glass door that led from the living room to the veranda. The wind was coming from the south, and the salty ocean air flooded the dark room. The path in front of the Annex was blanketed in fog and it was starting to rain. It was quiet; nobody was out. He heard the tinkle of a music box: Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars . . .
Sunghwan flipped open his cell and called Choi Hyonsu, but his call went straight to voice mail.
Choi Hyonsu was the new head of security at Seryong Dam. Starting Monday, he would be Sunghwan’s boss. Hyonsu was planning to move in on Sunday, but he’d wanted to come by tonight, Friday, and take a look at the place his family would be sharing with Sunghwan. He was supposed to be here at eight, but it was nearly nine now. He couldn’t have forgotten. They had just made these plans at lunchtime, and he hadn’t called or texted to say he would be late.