SOTL - 3

The reason Yoon-hwan’s father bought the forest land in Gapyeong County was not for the picturesque scenery or its property value. The landscape, with its dense coniferous forests and the North Han River encircling it, unfolded like a painting, but it was not his father’s interest. The real estate agent had expressed surprise, saying it was a difficult place for development news to come through.

The reason development was difficult was that the area was designated as a fixed hunting ground where wild animals could be hunted. That was also the very reason his father bought the land.

The secluded location, with few people around, also played a part. Once the foundation was laid, Yoon-hwan’s father, as a matter of course, put a lot of effort into building a villa.

On weekends, the family of four would head to the villa. There was the father and mother, Yoon-hwan, and a hunting dog they called Laika. The father had named the dog Laika for the simple reason that it was a Laika breed.

The two-story house built of red old bricks was large, but Yoon-hwan’s family was the only one who used it. The place was remote, and a tall wall surrounded the house, so the view of the river winding around the mountain could only be seen from the second floor.

If they wanted to buy even a single pack of ramen, they had to go to a town 20 kilometers south of the river. The father was a regular at the gun shop at the entrance of this town. The owner of the gun shop, who saw the father every quarter, welcomed him very much. He said that if he brought his catch to the health food store across the street that his wife ran, he would give him 20,000 won and 10,000 won more than the original bounty of 120,000 won for a wild boar and 30,000 won for a water deer.

Every time, his father would let out a hearty laugh, saying that if he were that good, he would quit and become a hunter. He never forgot to hand out a box of makgeolli to the elders of the village before he left.

Yoon-hwan hated the weekends he spent at the villa. To be more precise, he loathed it, and in the depths of his heart, he feared it.

When Yoon-hwan turned 10, his father took his son up the mountain. Yoon-hwan did not show his dislike. His father was not just a judge who dealt with the law; when he came home, he became the law himself. According to that law, Yoon-hwan had to learn how to handle a shotgun that was as tall as he was.

He followed his father through the mountains and learned various skills. He had to learn to play the role of a beater to drive prey, to distinguish animal tracks, to track the smell of blood as it changed with the direction of the wind, to set traps in the kill zone, and to remove the internal organs of a captured animal to get rid of the gamey smell, all while staying at the villa.

“Now that you’ve grown up enough, you have to do it yourself.”

His father said he would teach his son what he had to do in society. He made Yoon-hwan kneel in front of an animal that was dying from a fatal gunshot wound. He put a well-sharpened knife in his hand. It was a slaughtering knife with a sharp point and a blade on only one side.

For the first time, Yoon-hwan refused his father’s command.

As he followed his father’s instructions and pressed down on the water deer’s long neck, he could feel its arteries pulsating in his palm. The black eyes, without any whites, were calm compared to its body, which was struggling in pain. Laika, excited by the smell of blood, barked so loudly that the mountain echoed.

The smell of blood that stung his nose, the pulsating heartbeat against his palm, Laika’s frantic barking, his father’s压迫ing gaze. Thump, a drop of sweat from his temple fell onto the back of his hand, which was pressing on the water deer’s neck. For a moment, he felt dizzy and dropped the knife.

“For a boy to be so timid.”

Tsk tsk, his father clicked his tongue. It was a message of disappointment. The sound of his tongue clicking twice, without a long explanation, pierced Yoon-hwan’s ears.

His father roughly grabbed Yoon-hwan by the back of his neck and pulled him away, then began to finish the remaining procedure.

After the hunt, there was a final ritual that his father would perform. It was raw consumption. He would butcher the prey’s liver, gall bladder, or testicles on the spot and eat them raw. He would offer a piece of the blood-soaked flesh to Yoon-hwan, calling it a rare delicacy. Yoon-hwan would swallow the flesh without chewing and then hold his throat, suppressing the urge to vomit. When he got home, he would quietly go into the bathroom in his room and vomit until his stomach acid came out.

His father would bring the remaining carcass to the villa and throw it on the kitchen counter. Then his mother, with a pale face, would struggle in the kitchen all afternoon. After that, dishes whose raw ingredients were unknown, such as hamburger steaks or dumplings, would appear on the dinner table.

To match, his father would open a bottle of vintage wine and put on a record. The wine was always Château, and the music was always Karajan.

When dinner started like that, his father always had a peculiar eating habit. He would savor the wine he had opened and watch his mother taste every dish one by one. And as the aroma of the wine, which had been sufficiently aerated, became stronger, he would pick up his spoon and fork. He would only touch the food enough to use it as an appetizer and would finish the whole bottle of wine by himself.

Looking at the food that was mostly left, Yoon-hwan wondered if his father ordered dishes made from the prey just to enjoy his mother’s reaction. His mother had a hard time suppressing the urge to vomit throughout the meal. Yoon-hwan, thinking of his mother who had struggled in the kitchen all afternoon, finished his share, but his mother’s face didn’t look happy as she cleared his clean plate.

“...Laika has to sleep in Laika’s house. Let’s get ready for bed.”

His mother pushed Yoon-hwan’s back, who wanted to sleep with Laika. Yoon-hwan couldn’t understand. When his father first brought Laika home at three months old, his mother was just as happy as Yoon-hwan was. She bathed him with him, gave him snacks, put a leash on him to take him for walks, and allowed Yoon-hwan to hold him while he slept.

Then one day, his mother started making Laika sleep outside. It was the day Laika had succeeded in his first hunt.

His father praised Laika, saying that he had caught a wild boar in his first hunt and that it was worth paying so much for him through a famous hunting dog breeder. Laika, with his mouth full of wild boar blood, was so excited that he was running in circles in the living room. After that day, his mother never called Laika affectionately or stroked his back for a long time.

After dinner was over like that, the day at the villa came to an end. The darkness of the villa showed a true world of night without artificial light. The coniferous mountain that he hated to look at during the day was visible in silhouette, and the river announced its presence only with the sound of water. The sun had set, so it was time for the night hunt to begin.

His father would scold his mother like a child, asking why her attitude was like that at the last gathering, saying her makeup was vulgar, asking why she watched low-level books or movies, and why her cooking and cleaning were so sloppy. His mother would hang her head like a sinner and listen to his father’s increasingly louder voice.

His father would tsk tsk and click his tongue twice. It was a signal for the end of the long sermon and an order for her to come up to the second floor. His father went up the stairs first.

“Yoon-hwan, be sure to wear this. You can’t take it off until Mommy comes back.”

His mother put him in his room and put a pair of headphones the size of an adult man’s fist over his ears. Then she put on a children’s audiobook on repeat and left the room. The door was always locked from the outside. His mother never forgot to turn the doorknob to make sure the door was locked.

At first, she played various audiobooks, but at some point, his mother started playing the same book over and over again. She probably didn’t have the energy to worry about it. So Yoon-hwan had to listen to the book called “The Song of the Little Lamb” again and again.

-A lamb is lost and goes “baa,” a second lamb calls for its mom and goes “baa, baa.”

That song, which seemed like it would repeat forever, kept flowing into his ears. Yoon-hwan pressed the headphones so hard with his palms that his ears were throbbing.

-Three lambs in the forest go “baa”... The flock of lambs gathers on the cliff and goes “baaaa...”

Thump, thump, thump. Since his ears were blocked, the noise from the upstairs was not sound but vibration transmitted through the walls. Thump, thump, thump. The noise struck Yoon-hwan’s heart like thunder. As his father had said, his brain had matured, and what had been vague was becoming clearer and clearer.

The reason why the villa had a second floor. The reason why a tall wall blocked external views despite the place being remote. The reason why this villa existed.

The reason was much like the form of this house. The outside was built magnificently, but the inside was hell. It was as if his father had been embodied in the house. Just as the father outside the villa and the father inside the villa were two completely different people.

“Aah...! I, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. Please... forgive me, ugh... ugh...”

The faint sobs began to mix with the cries of the lambs. Laika, who was tied up in the yard, let out a long, drawn-out howl.

Yoon-hwan pressed the headphones so hard that his ears were raw. Thump, thump, thump, thump. His heart was pounding like an animal caught in a trap. The pulse in his temples was throbbing so much that his head ached.

When the blue dawn came outside the window, his mother returned to Yoon-hwan’s room.

Yoon-hwan was lying on the bed with his eyes closed. When his mother took the headphones off his ears, the sudden disappearance of sound would make his ears feel deafened and his mind would feel like it was floating in the air. His mother would rest her forehead on the headboard like a tired lamb that had been wandering all night, and after a while, she would leave the room. Yoon-hwan would fiddle with the spot where his mother’s head had been. The sheets were damp.

________________________________________

After spending the weekend at the villa and returning to Seoul, his mother was, as always, elegant and beautiful. She wore a gentle smile on her face and, even in the mid-summer heat, she would wear a half-turtleneck and a cardigan that covered her sleeves, and on top of that, she would adorn herself with a fancy watch and jewelry. But Yoon-hwan, who saw her every day, knew that her posture was somehow unnatural and hunched. And he also knew that she sometimes bit her lip and held back.

His mother rarely went out unless it was for a gathering with his father. She spent most of her time at home, and the only time she went outside was to take care of the trees and lawn she had planted in the garden. Seeing her grow potted plants in a glass greenhouse even at the villa, Yoon-hwan thought that the only beings his mother communicated with were plants and the grandmother who came to help with housework three times a week.

“Yoon-hwan’s mother, how long are you going to live like this?”

The grandmother often asked his mother that question.

The grandmother was Yoon-hwan’s favorite person. He loved his mother, but because seeing his mother made him feel miserable, his favorite person was his grandmother.

When the grandmother quietly called his mother to the study, Yoon-hwan would secretly come out of his room. He would sit with his ear pressed against the study door and hold his breath.

“I’m just too lacking. If I try harder, maybe he’ll recognize me...”

“I’m worried something bad will happen. Every time you come back from the villa, you look like you’re about to die... Sigh... Every Monday when I come to work, my heart trembles. If I’m like this, how must Yoon-hwan’s mother feel?”

“...”

Yoon-hwan knew without seeing that his mother was hanging her head like a sinner.

“And what about Yoon-hwan?”

“If I raise him alone, I can’t raise him in a good environment like this...”

“What kind of good environment is this? A child is only happy if their mother is happy. And I’m sorry to have to say this...”

The grandmother let out a long sigh.

“...Even a beast wouldn’t raise its child in an environment like this.”

“...”

At those words, Yoon-hwan recalled the wild animals that would close their eyes at his father’s feet.

“I tried to run away a few times before Yoon-hwan was born... but it’s no use. No matter where I go, he always finds me. I have no family to lean on... At first, I was just grateful that he wanted to marry me, who had nothing, but in reality... that’s why he chose me.”

“Sigh, is that why you stay cooped up at home all day and don’t meet anyone?”

“Yes... He won’t let me contact any of my old acquaintances... Even when I go to gatherings, no one thinks well of me... They’re all frugal people, but I’m the only one who dresses up to his taste... Even I feel ridiculous looking in the mirror, so how must I look in their eyes...”

The grandmother’s long sigh was heard.

“I tried to end it, thinking I could escape if I died... but because of that incident, I was declared legally incompetent, so even if I report him, it’s no use. I tried once, but they believed him, a judge, over me. They even saw the scars he gave me as self-harm. Now that I think about it... I wonder if it was all part of his plan. How meticulously he monitors and suspects me... But still, since he doesn’t touch Yoon-hwan, if I just endure a little longer...”

“Is this something you can just endure? If you decide to, I’ll help you. If you report him, I’ll tell them about Yoon-hwan’s father, so you can take Yoon-hwan and leave. I couldn’t raise my own grandson with my own hands, but I fed, washed, and put Yoon-hwan to sleep since he was an infant. He’s like my own grandson. Just the two of you can come stay at my house. Even if it’s a tiny little villa, it would be better than here.”

“...”

“Think about it carefully. For Yoon-hwan’s sake.”

“Yes... I will.”

Hearing his mother’s faint answer, Yoon-hwan thought of that tiny little villa. Even if it was small, it seemed like it would be a clean place, like a polished piece of furniture after his grandmother had taken care of it. Or, since his grandmother always smelled like well-dried bedding, it seemed like it would be a house with a lot of sunlight.

Yoon-hwan waited. When would his mother take him to that tiny little villa?

Every weekend, he hoped they would go to that villa instead of the one in the mountains. Not this time, but maybe the next week, or the week after that.

However, dozens of weekends passed and the seasons changed twice, but they still headed to the villa on weekends.

________________________________________

Yoon-hwan especially hated the month of August when the heat was at its peak. Thanks to his father, who had a court summer recess when school started, the trips to the villa, which he only had to endure for the weekend, had to be endured for more than a fortnight.

Yoon-hwan hated the dark forest even in the middle of summer. He hated the wild animals hiding in the forest, and his father who hunted them. Most of all, he hated the red flowers blooming everywhere in the forest. The scent from the flowers, which were scattered like splashes of blood, filled his head with the hot air and made him unable to think.

In the summer of the year the incident occurred, his father treated Yoon-hwan like prey, as if he had made up his mind to do so.

When they found a water deer caught in a snare, his father made Yoon-hwan kneel and said, “Don’t disappoint me anymore.”

In his hand was a knife. It was a custom-made slaughtering knife with a sharp point and a blade on only one side. Yoon-hwan knew well what kind of sound that knife made when it scraped between bones.

As if he could hear that sound, Yoon-hwan just held the knife. Suddenly, a hand flew to his cheek. Then the other cheek was slapped. As Laika barked, his eardrums, along with his cheeks, became numb. When his cheeks had lost all feeling from the repeated slaps, his father spat on the water deer’s head and said, “There’s no way a kid with my blood could be this pathetic. Maybe it’s because of the dirty maternal blood mixed in.”

A boot flew into his abdomen. It was when his father was yelling at him, saying he couldn’t act like a human even at his age, and was pressing the butt of his gun into the back of Yoon-hwan’s head.

Grrrr, Laika bit the bottom of his father’s pants and shook his head frantically. This son of a bitch! The gun butt was moved from Yoon-hwan to Laika. Once, twice, three times, and after more than a dozen blows, Laika’s head was thrown back with a thud. His father pulled the bottom of his pants out of Laika’s limp teeth and spat on Laika as well.

“This is all my fault. I raised him wrong. A stupid kid and a dog who can’t even recognize its owner... Tsk tsk.”

His father, as always, clicked his tongue twice.

After staring blankly at his father’s back as he went down the mountain first, Yoon-hwan carried Laika on his back. The black nose that touched his cheek was not giving off the usual moist breath. It was cold. The heart that touched his back was silent. The soft and warm body became stiffer as he went down the mountain.

Why did this happen to Laika, why did it have to happen? Yoon-hwan was lost in thought about that the whole way home while carrying Laika on his back.

“Are you crazy! Am I not enough for you? Why are you touching Yoon-hwan, why!”

When they returned to the villa, this time his mother was wailing. Unlike when Laika had defied him, his father seemed a little flustered.

“Mi-ae, you can’t raise a child to be a cripple like that and then yell at me. Neither you, nor your father who died after a lifetime of going in and out of jail, have any conscience, any conscience. That’s why commoners are no good.”

“You’re the one who should be in jail. It’s disgusting to see you act normal outside, but I put up with it. Because it was only me. But not Yoon-hwan. Don’t ever touch my child again... Aah!”

“You really picked a fight, didn’t you.”

At least Laika had sharp teeth. Even though he could only bite the bottom of his father’s pants.

“Don’t... don’t come any closer. If you do, I’ll stab you!”

Saying not to come closer, his mother held a knife she had gotten from the kitchen. But his mother’s slender wrist was caught in his father’s powerful hand and was twisted behind her back without a fight. Yoon-hwan thought that her pale, slender hand looked like a broken flower.

His father grabbed his mother’s hair. He wrapped it around his hand twice like a rein and dragged her to the second-floor stairs. Following that, thump, thump, thump, bang! Crash! bang, crash! With the sound that seemed to be breaking the ceiling, Yoon-hwan ran to his room. He instinctively put the headphones over his ears. His heart... was pounding like crazy.

-A lamb is lost and goes “baa,” a second lamb calls for its mom and goes “baa, baa.”

In his mind, the water deer’s eyes, blinking as if it was waiting for its fate with its neck stretched out, came to mind. The image of his mother’s slender wrist becoming a long neck and breaking like a flower was endlessly repeated. His mother, who had become quiet and cold like Laika, was clinging to his back and becoming stiff.

-In the dark night, the lambs gather together and go “baa,” until the morning comes, they go “baaaa.”

The little lambs, Laika, the wild animal that Laika had bitten, and his mother were wailing as if to tear open his eardrums. The screams echoed all over his body. His blood was boiling as if it were engulfed in a wildfire. The surging adrenaline made his senses as sharp as a finely sharpened knife.

Suddenly, Yoon-hwan felt an intense urge to wield that knife. Yoon-hwan’s bloodshot eyes stared out the window. The forest that he had been wandering in to hunt during the day had become one with the night and was no longer visible.

________________________________________

The next day, Yoon-hwan held a knife to the neck of a water deer with a gunshot wound on its hind leg. The water deer turned its head toward Yoon-hwan and trembled. The black eyes under its long eyelashes stared intently at Yoon-hwan. Facing himself, who was reflected clearly in the deer’s eyes, Yoon-hwan wielded the knife for the first time.

It was easier and simpler than he had thought. Yoon-hwan put his palm on the skin above the heart of the water deer, which was no longer moving. Its warmth was seeping away like grains of sand.

“You’re finally acting like a part of my bloodline.”

His father praised him, saying he was proud. He also asked him what it felt like to have his first hunt.

“It was warm and my heart was pounding... but now it’s cold and not moving.”

“Good. Don’t forget that feeling and engrave it in your mind. You just took a life. To do great things, you have to have that kind of guts. Don’t be swayed by others; you have to live by holding others’ lives in your hands. That’s the only way you can stand tall above others. This father of yours was also raised and taught that by your grandfather.”

Yoon-hwan nodded his head.

His father took out the water deer’s liver on the spot and sliced it up. When he put the thumb-sized piece of organ into his mouth, Yoon-hwan didn’t swallow it right away like he used to but chewed it for a long time.

As he tasted the blood that was still warm, he instinctively understood his father’s words about passing down his blood.

Because just a moment ago, he had felt a thrill as he cut the water deer’s throat. Something that had made his whole body boil while listening to the lambs’ cries all night had turned into pleasure and was relieved. He realized that this was what hunting felt like.

The pleasure he had tasted once made him eager for more, and his hands felt a pang of longing. He realized that this was what his father called “the joy of one’s hands.”

“What, is there something on my face?”

To his father’s question, Yoon-hwan shook his head.

He lowered his gaze, which had been openly directed at his father, and carefully observed him. He recalled all the things he had learned one by one. Recalling how to track a prey’s footprint, he observed his father’s steps. Recalling the wild boar hunting method that he had to aim for the center of its forehead to kill it in one go because it was so strong, he scanned his father from head to toe to figure out where his vital points were. The smell of his father, who was walking ahead of him against the wind, lingered at the tip of his nose. He recalled how he used to track the smell of a prey’s blood following the wind.

Yoon-hwan knew.

That his mother didn’t have the strength or the will to take him to that tiny little villa.

It was something he had learned through hunting, which his father had taught him.

An animal caught in a trap thrashes in agony, but as time passes, it loses its vitality and stretches its neck in front of death. As if it wants it to be over already. It shouldn’t have been caught in the trap in the first place. To not be caught in a trap, one must be a predator by nature.

So Yoon-hwan decided to become a predator instead of a prey, following behind his next hunting target.

________________________________________

“Father... are you alive?”

Yoon-hwan picked up the shotgun that had fallen next to his father, who was lying down. Just in case, he didn’t touch his body but poked his father’s back, which was lying face down, with the muzzle of the gun. There was no movement.

“Or... are you dead?”

At dawn, Yoon-hwan climbed the dark mountain alone.

It was to change the location of the trap his father had set. He had been worried if he could find his father’s hunting route that he had memorized by himself, but once he started climbing the mountain, it was as clear as if a map had been laid out. He collected the chalk his father had scattered everywhere and set the trap on a path his father often took. He didn’t forget to cover the trap with a pile of dead leaves.

His father’s ankle, which had been torn from being caught in the trap, was bent at a strange angle.

Yoon-hwan looked up. The hillside he must have rolled down from after getting caught in the trap was quite high. It seemed unlikely that he was still alive. The hunt was successful.

“It would be... inconvenient if you weren’t dead.”

He was about to take the muzzle off his father’s body, wondering if it was really that simple.

Rustle, rustle.

He instinctively aimed the gun at the sound from the bushes. It would be a problem if a leopard cat or a wild dog came running after smelling the blood. But what he met was a completely unexpected pair of eyes. A pair of eyes that were not in his plan were looking at him.

“Ah... no...”

His mother was backing away. Yoon-hwan immediately lowered the muzzle to the ground. But why was his mother making that face?

“Go, don’t come closer...! Go, go away!”

His mother’s body, which had plopped down as if her legs had given out, started to tremble. Yoon-hwan thought that the eyes looking at him were both unfamiliar and familiar.

Eyes filled with disgust and fear. Even though she had never looked at him like that, they were very familiar.

The eyes that had looked at Laika after he had succeeded in hunting the wild boar. And the eyes that had stared at his father when he ordered her to come up to the second floor. Those eyes were now directed at Yoon-hwan.