Like a fish, Sunghwan flitted around the roads and bridges and stone barriers, taking pictures with his underwater camera, documenting what he might otherwise have believed to be figments of his imagination. Where only the walls of a house were left standing, he could almost see an elderly couple enjoying a relaxed evening meal. He sat on the bench at another bus stop, listening to people make small talk as they waited, a young mother explaining how she had met her husband as she pushed a stroller down the street. His muse had finally arrived, he thought. He could piece these stories together and write something remarkable.
But time underwater flowed as capriciously as the current. In an instant, an hour had gone by. Sunghwan realized that he felt numb. Everything before him was shaking, and not because of the current. The village was suddenly painted in vivid colors. He felt ecstatic—he was starting to reel from the effects of nitrogen narcosis.
Last one, he told himself as he pointed his camera at the nameplate hanging on a house at the highest point of the village. He pressed the button, the flash popping over the dark letters on the nameplate. It vanished under the light and the letters floated up as though they were embossed.
It was 10:45 and he only had 120 bar of oxygen remaining. Sunghwan had to get up to the surface. He started to dump air out of the buoyancy compensator and began to ascend. He didn’t have time to return via the same route he had taken in; he had to ascend directly above that last house. He looked down as he rose steadily at thirty feet per minute. Everything was starting to return to gray. His mind lingered on the final nameplate: Oh Yongje.
As he floated up to the surface, he thought back to his first Friday night at Seryong Lake, before his battle with insomnia and writer’s block had begun. His boss had gone home to Seoul for the weekend and Sunghwan was alone in the house. As he was nodding off around midnight, he heard a piercing scream. His eyes flew open, but everything was quiet. He closed his eyes again, thinking he’d dreamed it. That was when he heard a quiet weeping from just outside his window. He picked up his flashlight and peered out into the darkness. Cowering behind the entwined branches of a cypress tree was a young girl, her arms crossed in front of her chest. When he pointed his flashlight toward her, she curled in on herself and whimpered, “Don’t look, don’t look!”
Sunghwan nearly acquiesced. The girl looked as though she’d been attacked. Her nose looked swollen, and phlegm rattled in her throat each time she drew in a breath. Her body was covered in bloody gashes, and she was wearing nothing but her underwear. Suddenly, the girl collapsed. Regaining his faculties, Sunghwan climbed out of his window, wrapped a blanket around her, and carried her as fast as he could toward his car. He recalled having seen a twenty-four-hour clinic in the commercial district. Figuring out whose child she was and who had done this to her was a secondary concern. She needed medical attention.
The doctor, a young man with a buzz cut, examined her and took X-rays. He confirmed that the girl’s nose was broken. “What happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Sunghwan said. “She fainted just outside my window.”
The police officer who arrived knew who she was: Seryong, the eleven-year-old daughter of the man who owned the arboretum. He took out his cell phone and made a call.
Not long after, a man in a navy suit and polished shoes appeared.
“Not coming from home?” the police officer observed.
“I was on my way home when I got your call,” the man said, not bothering to so much as glance at his daughter. He stood blocking the door and looked at Sunghwan. His dark pupils were wide open. “And who are you?”
Sunghwan cleared his throat. “I live in unit 102.”
“Since when? I’ve never seen you before.”
Sunghwan felt his breathing grow shallow. He’d glimpsed something unsettling in the man’s eyes—something like a challenge. “I moved in a few days ago,” he said slowly, trying to calm down. “I didn’t know she was your daughter.”
“Why did you bring my daughter here?”
“Let me ask you this,” Sunghwan retorted, his cheeks burning. “Why did your daughter faint outside my window?”
The girl’s father turned to the doctor. “Is there evidence of assault?”
The doctor repeated what he’d told Sunghwan earlier. “Her nose is broken, and there are abrasions that look like she was beaten with something . . .”
“Is that it? What I see is that a strange man brought my daughter to the clinic half-naked in the middle of the night.”
Sunghwan stared at the man in a daze. The optics of the situation hadn’t even occurred to him.
The officer looked down at Seryong, who was stealing sidelong glances at her father.
“What did this man do to you?” her father asked. He turned to his daughter, pointing at Sunghwan. “Did he hurt you? Did he touch you?”
Sunghwan held his breath.
“No,” whispered Seryong.
“How did you get hurt?” asked the officer.
Seryong’s eyes searched the faces of the cop and the doctor. She glanced at Sunghwan before returning to the officer. She seemed to be avoiding her father. Her large, cat-like eyes glistened, but not with tears. Sunghwan realized it was fear. She said nothing.
“Did you say your name was Ahn Sunghwan?” the police officer asked. “Please step outside for a moment.”
Sunghwan couldn’t do that; the girl had his life dangling between her small lips.
“You, too, Dr. Oh.”
But Dr. Oh didn’t move, his gaze fixed on his daughter.
“Both of you, now, please,” the police officer pressed.
Dr. Oh and Sunghwan glanced at each other before turning toward the door.
“Don’t go far, this will just be a minute,” the officer said.
Dr. Oh sat in a chair just outside the door. He leaned on the armrest and looked down his nose at Sunghwan. His dilated black eyes and tense, coiled shoulders reminded Sunghwan of a wild animal about to pounce. Sunghwan sat across from him, trying to look calm and relaxed. Rational thought leaked out of his head, replaced by rage and humiliation and nerves. His breathing grew more ragged. He was desperate for a cigarette, but he couldn’t step outside; who knew what these people would conclude if he wasn’t there to defend himself. He couldn’t hear anything from the exam room. Twenty minutes crawled by. By the time the police officer opened the door, Sunghwan was on the verge of passing out.
“She says she was playing Red Light, Green Light with a cat she came across in the arboretum and ran into a tree,” the police officer reported, standing in the middle of the hallway. “When she tried to get home, she accidentally went to the wrong house in the dark. Her bloody nose made her feel dizzy and she fainted. She wanted me to tell you, Dr. Oh, that she’s grateful to your next-door neighbor for bringing her here and that he never touched her.”