Read Online Our Happy Time by Gong Ji-young - Free Book Online Page A

Monica cry, too, and cling to them the way she did with me, and say,
You poor thing, you poor thing
?
    The inmate was led away by the guard. Aunt Monica paused in her steps and sighed heavily, as if it was too much to bear, and muttered to herself, “I wish I had three bodies, or that I could just move in here and live with them.”
    We waited for Yunsu again in the Catholic meeting room. Unlike on my first bewildering visit, this time, I felt like I had come armed with a well-honed knife. When I thought about the fact that I was meeting the type of man who had raped and killed a young girl of seventeen, the desire to die went away and a strange will to fight surged up in me. My whole body was trembling with electricity, but I didn’t mind the feeling. Even if it was just hatred, and even if there were an evil intent to my observing him, it had been a very long time since any kind of desire had welledup inside me. When I had woken that morning, profanities that I had never before uttered were buzzing inside my mouth. An unfamiliar pleasure seemed to have raised my body temperature a degree. I felt like I had been looking forward to this day with the heart of a trapper awaiting a snared animal. Maybe I had finally started to realize that the murderous impulse I had been pointing at myself all that time was actually intended for someone else.
    “They’re all like that at first,” Aunt Monica said. “But Yunsu is a little bit better. There used to be one here named Kim Daedu. He was the so-called serial killer of his generation. He tore up ten different Bibles given to him by a pastor. But when he died, he turned to God and went like an angel. Then there was the Geumdang murder case. What was his name? That one spent his final years living like Buddha. And the one you just saw in the hallway cursed up a storm and refused to come into the room the first time the guard brought him.”
    “No wonder you come here,” I said.
    My words must have sounded barbed. Aunt Monica stared at me incredulously, as if she had felt their sting.
    “You like it when sinners turn into angels. You and the other clergy members wave the word of God like a magic wand and see how it changes people, and that makes you feel godlier, right? There’s nothing weird about that. From where they stand, they could die at any time, so of course they’re afraid. They weren’t afraid when they killed another human being, but now that it’s their turn to die, they’re scared, so they turn good as fast as they can. I guess the death penalty is a good thing. Everyone gets a little bit nicer when they’re facing death. Like you told the guard last time, it really is the best way to rehabilitate them.”
    Aunt Monica slit her eyes at me. I stared back at her at first, unwilling to back down either. But people’s faces, andthe eyes especially, contain so many stories. They say so much more than any number of words can. Aunt Monica seemed to be saying,
Think about your father when he died. Think about the tantrum your mother threw right before her operation. Most of all, think about yourself when you decided to commit suicide and end your own life. Being human does not mean that we change in the face of death,
her eyes told me,
but because we are human, we can regret our mistakes and become new people.
I couldn’t stare into those old eyes any longer–those small and wrinkled, yet dark and impenetrable eyes–and I dropped my gaze.
    Because of our argument, I wound up flustered and unprepared when Yunsu came in behind the guard. While Aunt Monica was taking him by the hand and welcoming him in, I was trying to remind myself of the humiliating fact that a murderer who raped a young girl had watched in thrall as I sang the national anthem at a baseball game. I thought about how I had ground my teeth all night because there was no reason scum like him might not have jerked off to the pictures of me that were printed in magazines back in my pop star days. But