The Law of Lines Page 2

  It occurred to her then why she disliked him so much. The boy had the confidence and arrogance unique to those born lucky. The kind of luck that meant having rich parents and a nice house and being able to buy new things anytime you wanted and never having to worry about how you were going to make a future for yourself.

  “Look at me.”

  Do-jun hesitated before lifting his head. The blood had rushed to his face, making him a little flushed.

  “Why’d you do it?”

  She asked the question gently, but the boy didn’t answer. She had expected as much, so she wasn’t disappointed. No child would feel inclined to immediately blurt out that they were led astray by bad kids and then name the ringleader. Fifteen was the age at which you started to learn that blaming everything on someone else was both the easiest and the hardest thing to do. Ki-jeong had to avoid injuring the boy’s sense of pride while helping him explain to her why he’d gone along with the ringleader. The teachers at the other schools would likewise be coaxing their students in whatever way they needed in order to avoid having the ringleader turn out to be from their school. The truth of what had happened would turn on whoever told the most convincing story first.

  Ki-jeong decided to stall. She would tire the boy out with a long silence and then soften him up by saying things like, I’m just disappointed that you let me down, and, This isn’t who you are, and, You’ve made things really difficult for me. If that didn’t work, she would try scaring him instead. She would talk about the police, or pressing charges, or she would mention juvie. Then Do-jun would make some exaggerated and obvious excuses about how it was all the fault of the other kids.

  “Look at him sitting there, saying nothing,” said a fellow teacher who taught trigonometry and had a desk next to hers in the teachers’ lounge. “As if he did something to be proud of! How much did the little son of a bitch steal?”

  Trig gave the boy a hard smack on the head. Do-jun’s head sank further. Ki-jeong let out a sigh just as Trig plunked back down in his chair.

  “Do you want my help, Ms. Shin? Words don’t work on brats like these. You gotta rough ’em up.”

  Ki-jeong didn’t answer.

  “You’ll never catch a thief by acting soft, you’re not his pediatrician. With brats like that, you gotta think like you’re in homicide. Act like a cop.”

  Trig was so loud that other teachers nearby burst into laughter, and they all started cracking jokes: “Homicide sounds like a good career move for Ms. Shin!” “You didn’t know? She moonlights as a detective!” Ki-jeong chose to ignore them.

  Trig loved sticking his nose into everything. He was always rapping the heads of students who’d been called before other teachers and lecturing them. He thought of it as playing bad cop, but he didn’t realize how much it weakened the other teachers’ authority. Ki-jeong tried to hide the fact that she couldn’t stand him by keeping her words kind and friendly, but this only invited more interference from him.

  “Ms. Shin, you want me to introduce you to a good friend in homicide? He’s tall and good-looking. Got a bit of a temper. But he behaves himself when he’s around a pretty girl. I wonder if he’d behave himself with you.”

  Trig chuckled. Ki-jeong turned her head so he couldn’t see her openly sneering at him. When she looked back at Do-jun, her conscience pricked at her. The boy was staring right at her. He looked relaxed. She wasn’t sure if he was thinking that he’d paid fairly for his crime by taking a rap on the head from Trig, or if Trig’s teasing of Ki-jeong had given him courage, or if he’d seen Ki-jeong sneering at Trig.

  “Well? Why’d you do it?” she asked in a low but tense voice.

  “The bitch is nuts.”

  Do-jun looked right at her as he said it. Ki-jeong was shocked; she thought at first that the boy was talking about her.

  “What? How dare you speak that way to a grown-up!” Trig bellowed from behind Ki-jeong. Ki-Jeong frowned. She regretted not having used the counseling office instead. Both the counseling office and teachers’ lounge were designated for one-on-one talks with students and were intended to avoid the kind of unsavory incident that could arise when a teacher and student were alone together without closed-circuit cameras.

  “Who’s nuts?”

  “The old lady who owns the grocery store.”

  “Why is she nuts?”

  “Because she went nuts and called me a thief.”

  “She called you a thief because you stole from her,” Ki-jeong said coolly.

  “For fuck’s sake!” Do-jun looked Ki-jeong dead in the eye. “I swear I didn’t steal anything that time! I was handing her my money when Hyeong-cheol ran outside saying he had to answer his cell phone, and then all of a sudden the lady starts screaming, ‘Thief!’ That’s when she ran after Hyeong-cheol. Then she started calling me a thief, too. I was just standing there.”

  “Who’s Hyeong-cheol?”

  “A friend of mine. We go to the same cram school. His grades are damn good.”

  The curse words Do-jun usually suppressed in order to seem well-behaved kept slipping out. He even added details that she hadn’t asked for. She could tell he was starting to get worked up. Ki-jeong relaxed.

  “Was he in on it?”

  “We didn’t steal anything.”

  “Not that time, you mean.”

  “Right.”

  “So?”

  “That’s what happened.”

  “So?”

  “What?”

  The boy stalled as he tried to figure out what he was supposed to say. Ki-jeong quickly asked, “Did you steal?”

  “No, I—”

  “You’re innocent, right?”

  “I didn’t steal nothing, but I got called a thief and hit over the head and yelled at. Hyeong-cheol, goddammit, that lady broke his glasses. She hit him in the face. Everyone walking by saw it. So fucking embarrassing . . . That bitch is always like that. Freaks out and calls everyone a thief. Then she grabs you without even bothering to check if you’re the one who stole, and just starts hitting you and cussing you out.”

  “Oh, what a performance! Bravo!” Trig interrupted again. “Listen, you little shit, you think it’s okay to steal just because you feel wronged?”

  He rapped Do-jun on the head with his knuckles, and the boy swore under his breath. Trig ignored it and walked away. Ki-jeong said nothing. She found herself wishing Do-jun were a little worse at controlling his anger. What a shame. She wouldn’t have minded seeing him take a swing at Trig.

  “How’d the group form?”

  “She’s been mean to a lot of kids.”

  “So you banded together? To get revenge?”

  “That wasn’t it . . .”

  “Whose idea was it? Yours?”

  “No, I swear! I joined them later. Cross my heart.”

  Now that the story was out, the boy seemed at a loss as to what he should say. It wasn’t as if it were some terrible sin to swipe a pack of gum or a bag of chips because you resented being falsely accused of stealing. The problem was that he had shoplifted over and over, in a team, over a long period of time, and the school couldn’t just let that go.

  “Why did you keep stealing?”

  Having cornered the boy, Ki-jeong finally got around to the key question. She left off the part where she wanted to say, You’re supposed to stop before you get caught. Teachers weren’t supposed to say things like that.

  “Because I didn’t get caught,” Do-jun said nonchalantly.

  In other words, the only reason it went so far was because he hadn’t been stopped sooner.

  “What on earth did you steal?”

  This time, she kept her voice low. She didn’t want anyone to hear the question. It seemed to her that asking for all these details was the job of the police, not a teacher.

  “Just small stuff.”

  “Too much to remember?”

  “Nothing special.”

  “What was the first thing you stole?”

  The boy let out
a sigh and answered, “Batteries.”

  “And the second thing?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Then try to list as much as you can.”

  “It really was small stuff.”

  “What’d you do with the stuff you stole?”

  “I gave it to poor kids.”

  “Poor kids?”

  “You know, those kids who look like they got nothing. I gave it to them. I didn’t keep it for myself.”

  Do-jun put on an expression that seemed to say he was a true philanthropist.

  “‘Kids who look like they got nothing’?”

  He grinned bashfully. He was confident he’d done nothing wrong. Ki-jeong spoke firmly as she prepared to confront the boy with his crimes.

  “You’ve bred quite the accomplices.”

  “Accomplices?”

  “Yes, accomplices. Those who committed the crime with you. Your friends who didn’t steal are now accomplices because of you. The things you shoplifted, that’s all stolen property. And accepting stolen property, even if you didn’t steal it yourself, makes you an accomplice.”

  “Really? Great! That’s what I thought.” Do-jun chuckled. “Because now I remember what I stole.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Those.”

  Do-jun pointed at Ki-jeong’s slippers. The expression on his face was the exact opposite of when he had pleaded that he’d only stolen out of resentment at being falsely accused.

  “And there’s more. Perioe toothpaste. Chupa Chups lollipops. Boddo crackers. Choco Songi cookies. Baked potato chips. Highlighter pens. Garglin mouthwash. Febreze. Rice soap. Or was it barley soap? Whatever. Soap.”

  Do-jun looked her dead in the eye as he spoke. Now that he was on a roll, he was recalling everything he’d ever given to Ki-jeong along with the slippers. Perhaps he’d been too caught off guard to remember, but now that she’d mentioned accomplices and stolen property, it was coming right back to him.

  Or maybe not.

  As much as she wanted to believe otherwise, he had to have planned it this way. He’d known from the start that it would blow up like this, and that was why he’d kept giving her little things every day. He wasn’t seeking attention or making up for a lack of affection; his goal from the very start was to turn a teacher into an accomplice. Out of boredom. What a sly and vicious child.

  The fake brand logo on the instep of her slippers grated at her. She had thanked Do-jun for them, unaware that they were stolen. She had worn stolen goods while walking all over the school and meeting with students’ parents. She had worn stolen goods while reading Baek Seok’s poetry in class and taught the structure of expository writing with an essay on ocean ecosystems. She had worn stolen goods while instructing her students to write an essay on ethics and responsibility, and had graded the results.

  She wanted to rip the slippers off of her feet and whack the boy over the head with them, but she couldn’t. She was interrupted by her cell phone ringing from its perch atop a pile of homework to be graded. Ki-jeong was relieved by the timely phone call. Thanks to whoever was calling, no one would catch her losing her temper. No one would know how upset she was by what the boy had told her.

  Do-jun raised his head stiffly but then leaned back in the chair and made himself comfortable. As the cell phone kept ringing, he even made a show of crossing his arms. Ki-jeong slowly answered it. Her plan was to buy herself a little time in this war of nerves. If she was too short with the person on the other end, Do-jun would see at once that he was getting to her.

  “Hello, I’m looking for a Ki-jeong Shin.”

  It was obvious who was calling. A delivery person or the like. Most people who called addressed her as Ms. Shin or Teacher Shin. Faculty colleagues or students’ parents.

  “Who is this?”

  Ki-jeong kept her voice deliberately cold. The boy still had his arms crossed and was leisurely looking around the office. The moment she got off the phone, she didn’t care who saw or not, or whether she would get a lecture from the principal later about how corporal punishment was strictly forbidden no matter the circumstances or not, she was going to take that slipper off and beat him silly over the head with it.

  “This is the police.”

  “The police?”

  Ki-jeong glanced at Do-jun. The boy flinched. She watched as he slowly released his arms. Ki-jeong kept her eyes on him as she asked, “What seems to be the matter, Officer?”

  What came out of the officer’s mouth next was, to her surprise, the name of her younger sister. The moment she heard that name, she had a premonition that her becoming an accomplice to some pipsqueak thief and having worn stolen property would soon seem like nothing at all.

  After listening to the officer, she brought one hand up to cover her face. Do-jun looked terrified.

  Ki-jeong quietly ended the call. The hand that held the phone was trembling. She was barely able to muster the strength to address the boy seated in front of her.

  “Leave.”

  “Leave?”

  He sounded incredulous. Ki-jeong nodded weakly. The boy muttered something. She didn’t respond. A loud noise was beginning to wail inside her ears. The sound was coming from her own living body. Ki-jeong focused on that unpleasant sound to the exclusion of all else.

  The boy raised his finger and drew circles by the side of his head before jumping up from the chair and rushing out of the room. Ki-jeong pretended not to hear any of the things he said. She ignored the gesture he made. She would have reacted no differently no matter what he said or did. After hearing what the officer had to tell her, nothing else mattered. According to the officer, a dead body presumed to be her sister’s had been found.

  4

  It is a matter of course that when death overtakes life, the body undergoes a transformation. Ki-jeong had learned this from her father’s funeral. Her father had lain on a hard bed, his body yellow and swollen head to toe from the fluid that had built up in his abdominal cavity. His body demonstrating the fact that concluding a life was never easy. The swelling was, in a manner of speaking, death’s war trophy in its victory over life.

  Her father had been hospitalized for symptoms of jaundice. The jaundice turned out to be caused by cirrhosis of the liver. The cirrhosis worsened rapidly, the fluid in his abdomen refusing to budge no matter how many diuretics were administered. Ki-jeong was twenty-two at the time, her younger sister only nine.

  Now the deceased body presumed to belong to her younger sister looked almost nothing like her sister had in life. But Ki-jeong was convinced it was her. She was certain that, just as with her father, death had left its trophy behind. And, as if to tell her that the battle had been more vicious than ever, the condition of her younger sister’s body was beyond gruesome.

  The corpse had been found in the lower reaches of the Nam River in the provincial town of J—. A housewife had drowned herself in that river right after a Buddhist lantern festival, and during the search for her, Ki-jeong’s sister’s body had been recovered instead. It would take some time before her body could be buried. There was still the autopsy, among other necessary procedures. Since no suicide note had been found, the coroners could not confirm the cause of death. That is to say, while it was obvious she had died by drowning, they did not know whether it was a suicide or an accident. Even with an autopsy, they said, they could estimate the approximate time of death, but they might never know the circumstances that had led up to it. While listening patiently to their long-winded explanation, Ki-jeong had already reached the conclusion that her sister had committed suicide. It was bound to happen eventually, she thought; it’d only been a matter of time.

  The officer who had escorted Ki-jeong into the morgue was called away to check some documents. He stepped out, leaving just the two of them, Ki-jeong and her sister, alone in that chilly room. Or to put it more accurately, Ki-jeong was alone, the sole life among a roomful of deaths.

  When she was face to face with her sister, the thought oc
curred to her that she had wished for this to happen. For the sister who had tormented her mother her whole life to disappear for good. She tried to deny the thought but couldn’t. Nevertheless, she hadn’t imagined it would happen quite like this.

  No, that wasn’t true either.

  The truth was she’d imagined it often. Her little sister mangled, charred to black, torn to shreds. That was what made it all the more painful to see the body cold and stiff and so badly damaged.

  Her time alone in the morgue with her sister seemed to stretch on forever. The unreal cold chilled her to the bone, reminding her that she and her sister were both made of flesh. And that her sister was now a cold and distant being, a phantom.

  Ki-jeong asked her sister as she lay there silently: What happened? Her sister didn’t stir. Yet she felt as if she heard an answer.

  One thing led to another.

  If she could have spoken, that’s what her sister might have said.

  Her sister had been accepted to a university out in Wonju and had moved into the dorms. Ki-jeong thought she could have made it into a better school in or near Seoul, but her sister was stubborn. Ki-jeong didn’t do much to dissuade her. At first, her sister had come back to Seoul during school vacations, but eventually she stopped showing up even then. She kept changing her phone number, making it difficult to stay in touch with her. Once, she returned home out of the blue after a year or so of no contact. Ki-jeong and her mother had been inwardly convinced that she’d left for good, so when she came back, they felt both disappointed and relieved.

  When she tried to ask her sister where she’d been and what she’d been doing all that time, her sister gave the same non-answer:

  One thing led to another.

  Ki-jeong knew that, of all laws, this—the way one thing leads invariably to the next—was the only of life’s laws she couldn’t find fault with. But it was still an upsetting answer. Her sister seemed to leave everything up to luck and chance. It wasn’t that one thing led to another, it was that her sister left life to its own devices.