Chapter 9
I practically burst down the door to my house. I lay Hyun down in the bedroom, wrapped her in a quilt, and, not knowing what it was I had to protect her from, I locked the door and closed all the windows. I looked at the state of the place. The house was cleaner than that basement, at least.
The kid will want to see outside. They kept her in the darkness. Ah, she needs a warm bath. I’ve got to turn on the heating. There should be a new bedding set in the attic. Where did I put her warm clothes?
I rushed around, tripping here and there, as I chased the urgent tasks that kept coming to mind.
It was only after I had gotten the new bedding down from the attic and spread it on the floor, and gotten new clothes out of the suitcase that hadn’t once been opened in all that time, that I realized Hyun was standing up and looking outside.
She had wriggled out of the quilt and crawled to the window.
She must have missed the sea, I thought.
Something unbounded. Whatever it may be.
I hugged Hyun from the back. Her body was cold and slick as a corpse.
I stroked her head, and the sparse remaining hairs fell away like lint.
When Hyun let out a purring breath it gave off a rotten smell like decomposing leaves.
It’s alright. It’s all fine. What does her hair matter?
No one who lives here is much to look at.
Let’s just never leave the village, and live here for a thousand, ten thousand years.
If we do that, we’ll be alright. It’ll all be fine.
“What are you looking at?”
When I asked, Hyun lifted a swollen, elongated finger and pointed out the window. I looked outside.
Burning torches appeared one after another in the dark streets.
The windows and doors of every house were opened wide.
From this house and that house, one alleyway and then another, people were emerging.
There were people whose family members opened the door for them and others who came out of their own accord.
As the infected escaping the hospital returned to their homes, houses that had been dark for a long time glowed bright.
All of the people in the street were removing and discarding the fabric that had covered their faces.
There were some who had taken off all their clothes, exposing their naked bodies.
Mottled bodies filled the streets. I hugged Hyun tight.
This is it, the day when all the doors open, I thought, my face buried in Hyun’s back. The day when all those who had lived in hiding come out into the world.
Hyun wriggled in my embrace. She squirmed out of my arms and started toward the door.
“Hey Hyun, where are you going?”
Hyun gestured outside and pulled at my hand.
She looked like a tiny animal that had nothing left in it but innocent instinct.
She opened her mouth and said something, but I couldn’t understand.
I tried to lip-read, but I couldn’t read her deformed mouth.
Hyun kept speaking without letting up, as though she believed with certainty that I would have the capacity to understand her.
“I’m sorry, Hyun, I can’t understand,” I said regretfully, trying to pull her back and sit her down. Hyun kept moving toward the door.
“Hey, you should at least have a bath before you go. Change your clothes if nothing else. You’ve got to eat something. Auntie will make you some rice. I’ll mix an egg into it for you.”
Hyun shook her head.
“I have to go. My family is there. My friends. I belong with them,” she seemed to say.
As though drawn by magnetic force, I followed Hyun outside. The rain had eased off, but the wind was still fierce.
I walked along, trying hard to shelter Hyun’s body with my arms and clothes.
It was only much later that it occurred to me that this weather was better for the infected; it energized them.
As we passed out of the stone-walled alley and began to descend the hill, the number of people with torches grew and grew.
From every street corner, I could hear the sound of people murmuring each other’s names after a long time apart.
They all touched each other’s deformed faces and hugged.
When we arrived at the black seashore, villagers were gathered under Professor Shim’s guidance, holding up their torches.
I knew that, mixed among them, there were members of a completely different species.
Complete organisms, neither deformed nor infected.
Things with green skin and fins and webbed paws.
I had the thought that, mixed among the infected, they had probably looked after them so that the transition wouldn’t drive them mad; so that their minds and bodies weren’t ruined.
They must have taught them the laws of a different world, and showed them how to live life in changed bodies. Stayed to guide and comfort them.
I held onto Hyun with both hands. To protect Hyun, yes, but also to preserve my own safety. No one lay a hand on this child, because I am beside her. No one lay a hand on me, because one of yours is my companion.
Standing on the coastal road for a long time, watching things unfold, I spotted groups of the strange creatures approaching from the opposite direction, bearing long, fabric-wrapped bundles on their shoulders.
The long-dead bodies were set down at the seashore in ones and twos.
The creatures took their time. After placing one down, they would go bring another from who knows where.
And in the darkness there was a splashing.
They were pushing the corpses out into the sea.
This is a funeral, I thought. They’re holding a funeral.
These folk that came up from the ocean floor.
They had been huddled indoors for all that time, like caged, wild animals, and the thing that they most longed for was not food or a warm bed.
It wasn’t even freedom. They wanted to hold a funeral for their dead.
They wanted to mourn those who were lost.
Just then I heard a shutter tone from close by. The sound of a phone camera snapped the bizarre illusion spread out before me in an instant. Turning to look, I could easily spot someone attempting to hide between two houses, repeatedly photographing the scene.
Even in the darkness, the person stood out.
There was no one else around with such an unscathed appearance, in no way deformed or distorted.
His expression was resolute. You could feel a determination from him, like that of a reporter who has pledged to put their life on the line for the human race.
I couldn’t recognize him straight away. Within the space of a day, his face had gone completely wild.
“Woojin?”
As soon as I called his name, he went white with fear and began convulsing.
“Are you alright?”
When I took a step toward him, Woojin screamed and crawled along the ground. A few people looked our way, but they didn’t take much interest. It occurred to me that he might have been afraid of Hyun’s appearance, but I wasn’t about to let her out of my arms.
“Woojin, you don’t look good…”
Woojin struggled frantically, waving his hands as though trying to rub everything from his vision.
“Guh, guh, get away! Get away, you hideous monster! Go, you devil! Be gone!”
That was when it happened. A sound like an explosion jolted the village.
The echo reverberated off the hillside and the buildings and echoed back from far away.
One of the people on the sand furthest from the sea crumpled like a dry leaf.
People nearby who hadn’t yet realized what was going on continued to mill around.
A person who had bent over to try to wake the one on the ground crumpled down too with the splitting cry of another explosion.
Their flaming torch tumbled onto the sand.
The word “gun” rang out among the gathered crowd, along with the slap of the waves. Screaming all the while, the crowd dispersed like a flock of birds. They trampled rotting, gas-swollen fish underfoot, making them pop.
From the other side of the coastal road, substation commander Jeon Sucheol was yelling and firing off shots.
His face had turned purple and his eyes were stretched wide with fear.
Acting out of desperation, having lost all sense of reason, he was shooting randomly without even taking aim, reloading right away.
He looked like a crazed vigilante who had discovered a swarm of monsters from an alien planet occupying his backyard.
Instinctively, I held Hyun tight and pulled my knife.
I felt her turn her body and cover me in her embrace.
With a p’i-yung, a sharp wind brushed against my body.
Thank goodness, I thought, the bullet only brushed past. But at that moment Hyun became heavy and her weight pulled me to my knees.
Hyun swayed like a gentle wave and collapsed. At first I thought she was just drowsy, fighting off sleep. Just like in the train station. That was what I wanted to believe. Hyun clawed at my arm and then pulled me into a tight embrace.
Out of the corner of my eye I spotted Professor Shim running, practically on four limbs.
His speed far exceeded that of a human. His muscles were swollen almost to bursting, and the teeth cramming his jaw tore open the skin of his face.
Bullets pierced his body, but he didn’t stop.
The professor pinned down the substation commander with his heavy body, bit into his neck like a lion, and shook.
I watched him feed on the substation commander, mauling his prey.
The gunshots continued, mingling with terrified screams. The rattling clack of the hammer went on for a long time and then finally slowed to a stop.
Only then did the professor’s superhuman, beastly energy gradually calm.
Hyun didn’t even cry much, only clung onto me to the very end.
As though to leave no doubt that she had lived through all her hardship for that one, slight movement at the right moment.
I held her right back. Where did my child learn to die?
Who taught her that one day, life ends and never comes back?
While I was holding Hyun, thin, high-pitched laments sounded from all directions.
I was oblivious to my surroundings. How long had I been there like that, collapsed on the sand? A shadow was cast over me, and when I looked up I was surrounded by four of the creatures. Not infected people, not deformed humans, but perfect organisms, the things they were born to be.
Smelling their muddy scent of death, I waited without knowing what I was waiting for. Then, all of a sudden, I realized that it wasn’t me they wanted but Hyun. They wanted me to hand over their friend, their family member.
“Never! Leave us be!”
I hugged Hyun tight and hunched over her.
“I won’t give her to you. Get away!”
They waited without a word, as though they could stand there for an eternity if that’s what it took. No, please. Not unless you take me too, to sink with her beneath that rotting sea.
I slowly began to realize, though, that this child belonged to them. She was no longer mine, no longer part of the world on land. She had to go to her new home, back to the sea.
All strength left my hands. The creatures wasted no time and pulled Hyun out of my arms. Dark blue hands lifted her up by the arms, legs, and neck and carried Hyun away. I balked as though I’d just been stabbed, then grabbed her from them and curled my body over her.
As I bawled and shook, they waited again. Hyun was theirs, and they knew it. But they knew, too, that I had earned this time. They could wait just that long, but they would never leave her with me.
“We’ll give you the time you need to say goodbye,” they seemed to say. “But this does not belong to you. The child is one of our kind now. She comes with us.”
I clung onto Hyun until I was barely conscious, but in the end, my body gave out and collapsed on the sand. With all reverence, the creatures lifted the child out of my lifeless arms.
The last creature to remain knelt before me and took hold of my hand. It felt cold, slippery, and damp. Their glistening eyes, huge and unblinking, looked into mine as they whispered something I could not understand. “R’lyeh fhtagn…”
What was this creature trying to tell me?
Had I been wrong? A thought occurred to me. What if, maybe, this wasn’t a funeral? Just as moisture and cold helped their bodies thrive, what if seawater cured them? What if, in that dark, deep sea, they could even be revived from death?
“Hyun … Are you taking Hyun to revive her?” I squeezed the creature’s hand. “That’s it, isn’t it? So she can live? That’s why you’re gathering the bodies of your kind, isn’t that right? And that’s why you’re taking Hyun too, right? To live with you in your underwater kingdom. Isn’t that so?”
The creature carried on speaking in a hushed tone, but didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear.
“Answer me,” I howled. “Please! I need to know!”
But the creature must not have understood what I was saying, just like I couldn’t understand them. It patted the back of my hand and left me.
I watched from a distance as the procession reformed and headed toward the shore. I looked on helplessly as my child accompanied those creatures deep into the rough black sea.