Blood Sisters Read online

  The street has regained its vitality now that school is in session. I walk past the seasonally exotic decor of a new café, past a group of college students looking at all the vendor carts with their various accessories, and arrive at a scrap metal shop in the back of a building. I ask for a crowbar, but the old man with a skewed spine gives me a hammer that looks like an ax, which he calls a biru. It’s expensive, but I buy it without hesitation. I pay five hundred won for some metal wire, too. As I leave, I get paranoid that a man with hair gelled and propped up like a rooster’s comb is following me, so I enter the arcade and hide in there for a while.

  I go into the café kitchen and get a knife. I walk up to the fourth floor, and the stairs rattle under my feet as though they are actually made of rotting wooden planks. My footsteps—thump, thump—ring loudly. The decal on the window of the billiard parlor, with crossed cues that look like a giant forbidding X, warns me not to proceed. But I continue up the stairs. I’m just trying to open a door, that’s all. I feel it, the compulsion, precognition, even a sense that all this is destined to be. I know I have the right to unlock this door. The right? Am I thinking about ethics right now? Is this act an ethically justified act? Why am I worrying about justice? The image of Raskolnikov killing the hag appears in my vision. This is what I get for my bad taste in books. The so-called Western canon only encourages my paranoia.

  I open the door to the vestibule. Another door presents itself. My hand holding the knife trembles. The skin on the back of my hand looks rough, and the veins are popping out—it looks like a hag’s hand. It’s so quiet. I bend the wire and push it into the keyhole, barely larger than a needle’s eye. It doesn’t open, even as I struggle to poke and jiggle the doorknob. I push in the knife at the gap between the door and the threshold and twist it. The knife blade comes out gnarled. I don’t know what to do with my biru. Why can’t I make this hole do what I want? I stab the hole again and again. Open, open, goddamn it! Cold sweat bubbles up on my skin and trickles down. At any moment Sungyun could leap out of nowhere and grab my neck, yet the door refuses to open.

  I turn around and sit down, trying to take my shoes off. I’m angry when I catch myself adhering to indoor etiquette out of habit, even in this kind of situation. I put my shoes back on, tighten my laces, and start kicking the door. The door rattles. Alright. I’ll kick harder. I’ll kick until the door breaks open. I don’t care if I break my leg. I take a few steps back to ram my shoulder against the door. Again. The door of someone else’s room opens, and a woman looks out to see what’s going on. Another door opens, and a man notices the knife, wire, and wood chips from the door on the floor. I shake the biru in my hand and make a face at them to go back in. We all live in the same flat, but we don’t know each other at all. Just as they shoot back into their rooms, Sungyun’s door unexpectedly opens.

  “Get in!” He grabs me and pulls me into the room, locking the door.

  “Why didn’t you open the door if you were home? How long have you been here?”

  Sungyun covers my mouth with his hand and quietly whispers. “Are you going to be quiet? Or do you want to fucking die?”

  I blink. Yes, I’ll be quiet, and he pushes me onto the bed. The blanket is creepily white and soft. The room is freshly done with pearly white wallpaper. It looks like a brand-new room. The room is several times larger than mine. It’s nearly unbelievable that such a nice room exists in the same building I live in. The shower is made of curved glass, and a window with white blinds halfway open looks out over the city. Sungyun opens the refrigerator next to the washing machine and grabs a beer from it. He looks too calm, almost as if he had been expecting a guest. The place looks freshly tidied, and he looks like he just finished taking a shower.

  “Do you want some beer?”

  I bend up my knees to my chest, wrap my arms around them, and hold myself. “What did you do to Jimin?”

  “Why are you in such a hurry to learn everything? Don’t worry. I’ll tell you. Drink up while it’s cool.” He pours the beer into the glass; the foam rapidly rises like it’ll go over the lips of the glass but stops short, and the head sits perfectly.

  Along the wall there is a wooden display case filled with various objects: a bronze doll playing violin, a colorful elephant sculpture, and multiple picture frames. One of the frames has a naked woman in it. She is wearing a pair of dark sunglasses, so I’m unsure, but it looks like Eunyong. I realize there are about ten pictures of nude women—one curled up into a ball with her cleavage showing between her knees, another woman with disheveled hair with her hips high in the air. None of them look like models or porn stars. What the fuck? Manet’s Olympia innocently lying on her side, Gustav Courbet’s L’Origine du monde—her pink areola, her milk-colored belly button, her thick, black, mossy pubic hair—I could draw them with my eyes closed. I kept prints of the paintings in my desk drawer during high school. They’re unmistakable. Why did he put my favorite paintings alongside these photographs?

  “I know you. I can pick out your scent even when you are several feet away from me. I knew we’d click the moment I saw you. It took longer than I thought, but today is the day. You want me, don’t you?”

  I try to throw the beer he gave me at him. He grabs my wrist, and the glass merely falls over. He isn’t even alarmed at my outburst.

  “Is that how it’s gonna be? Come on, I was being nice. With the expensive stuff I put in your drink, you should be feeling pretty good by now, no? You stupid bitch.” He slaps my face, tears the shirt off my chest, and bites into my breast.

  “You fucking filthy animal! You filthy shit!” Trying to get away from him, I arch my back like a bow. I kick his head, my feet still in the sneakers.

  “You bitch, it’s only gonna get more fun.” The asshole hits my face with his fist. Once. Twice. Three times. Again. Again. Blood from my nose sprays across the room. My lips feel ragged and torn. It doesn’t hurt, however. The fucker pushes his mouth onto mine, and quickly pulls down my jeans. His mouth travels down, stops at the pubic mound covered in underwear, and blows his warm breath onto it.

  “Help! Is anyone there? Help!” I scream.

  He reaches under the bed, pulls out a long scarf, and folds it neatly. He pushes it between my lips and ties a knot at the back of my head. He pulls out a rope and ties my arms behind me. He seems familiar with the process. He sniffs deeply into my underwear that somehow he has taken off of me. Sniff, sniff.

  “Well then, it’s picture time.” He claps three times and walks away, cheerfully swinging his hands, and returns with a camera. It’s the same kind of Polaroid camera that I asked my father to get for my birthday.

  Dad. It’s all your fault that this is happening. You wanted me dead, didn’t you? Why did you trust my stepmother but not me? Did you even look at me, see me as I was? Why did you abandon Mom and me? If you abandoned me, why did you take me to that den of danger? What did I ever do to you? It’s not my fault that Hyunwoo died, you know that right? I did my best. That’s just me. I miss you. I miss you, Mother. Give me wisdom, give me strength. Take me away before I break even further. Mother!

  I writhe and cry. I will not cry “mother” out loud, though. I know from experience it’s no use to cry for mother. And it’s difficult to cry because of the gag in my mouth. Get it together, Yeoul! Was my impulse to attack Sungyun really a misunderstanding of my deeper desire to run away? I felt like I had to do something, as a revenge for my whole life where bad things keep on piling on top of each other. I stop writhing and struggling and lie there on my side. The asshole is looking at the freshly printed pictures he has taken. He looks satisfied, standing tall like a large, filthy statue.

  Okay, you’re gonna take pictures? Fine! Out of spite, I open my legs wide. Wider than the woman in L’Origine du monde. My labia must be fully parted, and the pink bits must be sticking out. My arms hurt behind me, but I smile with my eyes. I bring my knees together and draw them to my forehead. Do you like this pose? Does this make you hard, you fucking
asshole? I can’t believe that my knowledge of nude paintings has led to this moment.

  “Hmm. Good, keep going.”

  I hear the sound of his Polaroid printing. But the machine in my head isn’t turning. What should I do next? Should I pose like the woman in Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe? I think my head is bleeding. Should I lie on my side like Olympia—cross my legs and look defeated? Will a black maid bring me flowers like in the painting?

  The monster licks my asshole. With complete disregard for what I want, the dog licks with his nimble and wet tongue, like Nana licking her bowl. My eyes close. I feel like shitting.

  “Nngh! Nngh!” I shake my head, and make a gesture asking to untie me. You fucking bastard. You fucking monster. You fucker, even the word fuck is too good for you. Answer my question. Is this what you did to Jimin? You raped her, didn’t you? Did you impregnate her? Fuck! I feel my eyes bulge out of my skull, and I dry heave.

  The monster pulls down his zipper and takes his pants off. He pulls at the waistband of his boxers to check on his penis, shrugs, and walks toward the shower. This is my chance. I get up, and run to the door. I bang on the door with my head. Please, please, open! The monster grabs my leg. He grabs my hair and pulls hard. The naked monster laughs, dripping with water. Suddenly, there is the sound of the lock being unlocked. The monster tries to stop the door from opening, but he is too late.

  “Oppa, it’s alright, it’s just me. Are you hungry? I brought some fried chicken …” Eunyong enters with a bag of fried chicken in her hand. I shoot through the door. The door is wide open. I stumble toward the stairs. The monster must have kicked me in the back—the next thing I know, I’m tumbling down the stairs. I imagine my naked body folding, crumpling into a ball, rolling somewhere far far away. My flesh crumbles into tiny flakes. I’m glad that I can’t see myself—there is no anger, no resentment, only darkness. I hear someone calling for me. The darkness is deep as a well, so dark, how did my mom get here? How did Mom and Jimin come find me in this cold storm, in bare feet no less? They are waving and calling my name. Why are they laughing?

  Part III

  Formaldehyde

  Heheh. The sound of someone laughing wakes me up. I find the corners of my mouth pulled wide—it was me who was laughing. Yes, right, I was once a child who laughed easily. My head feels clear. It’s time to get up. My body flinches but remains lying down. Lazy ass. I take the lazy ass’s side in this decision-making and stay lying down. Huh, I’m wearing clothes, unfamiliar blue cotton clothes … both sides are open, held together by strings carelessly tied to cover my privates … barely. I look at my surroundings. There are close walls all around me. Is it raining outside? I hear low snoring sounds. Where am I?

  I think someone is on a low cot next to me, but I can’t tell who it is from where I am. My left arm is in a cast, and the ends of my fingers stick out from the top. I try moving the fingers. All this is real. I’m not dreaming. I lift my right hand up to touch my head to see if it’s caved-in. No, it’s still round. I feel several bandages though. The light in the ceiling is dim. I’m glad of that. How about my legs? My left leg seems fine. My right leg is in a cast and is elevated. Even though all this seems to suggest I’m in serious condition, I feel indifferent. Everything probably turned out the way it ought to. I could’ve shattered, like an iconoclast against a sculpture of an idol, completely and irreparably. But here I am, I survived to continue being an inconvenience. I feel like King Kong at the arcade—I have to keep on fighting in order to eat the banana worth 500 points. I need to keep on fighting to level up and save the princess. Am I also programmed by someone to keep on going?

  I don’t know. If only I could say, I didn’t mean things to turn out this way, none of this was intentional, there was no other way, so goodbye, and then die. That’d be all.

  I can tell I’m at a hospital. I can tell by the smell. As I think this, I hear it in the monster’s voice. Is it that monster on the other cot? I consider using my biru to smash him to smithereens. I feel like it’s unfair to take my revenge while he is asleep, but still I want to smash his skull. What’s stopping me is not my ethics but my immovable body. Heh, I guess I’ll postpone things yet again. I haven’t even figured out my life, how dare I take another’s? Does anyone know the meaning of life? Does a fish know the meaning of water? Does an apple tree know the meaning of the sun? Did the monster get a taste of Monster World and come to understand it? Does the monster know what to do next? Why does my mind waver so much? With my body in this mess, my mind must’ve weakened. Why else would I be imagining the monster’s point of view? Am I feeling more sympathetic toward him because he brought me to the hospital?

  My heart aches more than the limbs wrapped in casts. This hospital smells like formaldehyde. Just as formaldehyde preserves decaying things, smell acts like a preserving agent for memories. The hospital smell calls to mind this memory from last summer: It had been pouring since dawn. Half-asleep, I answered a phone call. I earnestly wished for an earthquake or war to erupt, to destroy everything between the moment I received the message and the moment I had to relay it to my father and the mother of my brother. My stepmother nagged me to tell her what the phone call was about. I could barely open my mouth to tell them. My father’s mouth spilled the yogurt he was drinking. I passed out. I don’t remember how we arrived at the hospital. I was bawling—I couldn’t enter because of the repulsive smell. I cried outside. I didn’t care if others thought I was overly dramatic. Fuck them. I preferred to jump off the Han River bridge than to look at my brother covered in a white sheet. Why couldn’t I actually go through with that fantasy?

  Hyunwoo, my stepbrother, and I were often asked if we were twins. We went to the same school and were in the same class level, but he was a quiet honor student and I was just another student. Strange rumors followed us. We commuted to school separately and ignored each other when we ran into each other in the hallway or the school yard. He was eight months younger than me, but never called me nuna, or big sister, and I didn’t care about the secrets he so obviously was keeping. I often try to understand why I didn’t kill myself when he died … or after. It feels shameful to keep on living. But sometimes I’m proud of myself and my life. My mind changes so much. It’s like a pot of porridge that rapidly boils over and just as rapidly cools down. I feel addicted to my life, even if it’s meaningless and degrading.

  “Hohoho, you’re awake! You must be hungry.” A woman who looks like a doctor approaches my bed and then addresses a nurse. “It’s been more than six hours since the surgery, right? Okay, bring her some porridge.” The nurse adjusts the IV drip, and leaves the room. “Hohoho,” the doctor laughs again. “Look at him. He is out.” She bends down to shake the man in the low cot awake.

  “Mother, leave me alone. Let me sleep ten more minutes!” the man complains. Then there’s a thump as he falls off the cot—he must’ve tried to turn over. Grumbling, he stands up holding the side of my hospital bed and smiles at me. It’s Jihyun, the dentist.

  “When the nurse gets back with the porridge, you should eat a little, too,” the doctor says to Jihyun. “And then get back to your office. This is my patient, you gotta tend to yours, hohoho.” The doctor laughs at the end of each sentence.

  Wait, did he call the doctor mother? Are they related? Are they a family of doctors?

  “Yeoul? Is it okay if I just use your name?” The doctor asks me, laughing again. “You should’ve seen Jihyun when he brought you in. He was so upset. I don’t know how he manages to operate on his patients. Well, you aren’t too badly hurt, so think of this as an opportunity to get some rest. Let’s get you some decent food, too. You seem malnourished. In this day and age, you shouldn’t look like a war orphan! Since you are Jihyun’s ‘friend’ and ‘tutor,’ you are our VIP at this hospital, okay? Hohoho.”

  “Mother! I think Yeoul needs some rest. You should go check on other patients. I’ll take off in a little bit.” The dentist uses a childish tone of voice to make his mother leave th
e room. “What do you think of my mother? Isn’t she beautiful?” he asks once she’s gone.

  “Yes, she reminds me of Juliette Binoche,” I reply.

  “What a compliment! Did you guys make an arrangement to compliment each other or something? My mom said you are incredibly beautiful, too. She even asked, ‘Don’t she and I look like one another?’ Haha.”

  “You’re making stuff up to make me feel better.”

  “Well, be careful. My mother seems to be taken with you. She has … unusual taste.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well … It’s difficult to explain. Never mind.”

  The dentist asks me to call him by his first name, Jihyun, from now on. I don’t really understand why everyone is dead set on finding the correct term of address for me to use. He asks me not to call him Ajussi, a middle-aged man, even though he is an unmarried bachelor. He’d prefer for me to use his name. He tells me he needs to get going, so he’ll only be able to tell me the basics of how I got here, but that Eunyong and the café owner would be able to get into it with me. I think to myself, I see, he doesn’t want to talk about things that make him uncomfortable. He’ll make the girls deal with it.

  “I didn’t know you had such good reflexes!” Jihyun excitedly retells the story. “Even though you fell down the stairs with your arms tied behind the back, your neck is fine, and there isn’t much injury. It’s almost as though somebody caught you at the bottom of the stairs. It’s extraordinary. Perhaps you should be showcased on TV. Yuri Geller the illusionist is not half as intriguing as your miracle!. Only one of your arms is broken, and a tendon in the leg is torn, which is no biggie.” He suggests that I think of this miracle as a born-again type of fresh start that has been gifted to me. When will he stop talking? I’m bored, like I’m listening to some infomercial about a product I don’t care about. But he continues rattling on. “The people in the billiard parlor all ran out to check out the commotion, and Eunyong called the café owner’s place, but she wasn’t there—she was out getting her hair permed—so my friend, her now-husband, answered and he called me. I rushed over, covered you with a blanket, took you to the hospital, and that brings us here.” He laughs. “You were speaking gibberish on my back, so loudly too. I couldn’t believe you actually were unconscious.”