Demons Don't Photograph

The man's words were not entirely without foundation.

Someone had said something similar before. The fifth doctor. He had been an elderly gentleman who insisted that Gayoung's illness would only heal if they left the island, and he had once offered Gaon that kind of counsel.

At the time, she hadn't understood. Gayoung's terror of leaving the island had left her no room to dwell on those words. As the years passed, though, they returned to her often. It was hardly surprising. Gaon knew perfectly well that she herself was far from normal.

She had followed her little sister all the way to Baekam Island and spent nine years discarding every scrap of a life of her own, clinging to Gayoung, tending to her and nothing else. Anything involving Gayoung made her hypersensitive, selfish, obsessively clinging. So perhaps this, too, was merely an extension of that abnormal behavior.

Baek Gaon had begun observing Cha Taekyung's every move. She recorded the man's schedule by the hour in a small notebook. She didn't even bother hiding. On the first day she had stayed awake all night waiting, just to catch the hour he first stirred — and at seven in the morning, she watched him emerge through the back door. Then she went as far as the mansion's entrance and watched his retreating figure as he ran along the sea path below the island. At ten, she confirmed in passing that he was having breakfast with Cha Gil-ho in the kitchen, and noted that the main fare was simple fruit and cereal. Whether they noticed Baek Gaon drifting through like a ghost, she did not care. In fact, it would have been better if Cha Taekyung noticed, and was made uncomfortable by it.

And then it was the third day of watching him.

The man's daily routine was simple. Simple — too simple.

He rose early, exercised, ate breakfast, rested a moment, and then spent nearly five hours cultivating orchids, holed up in a corner of the garden. She could not begin to understand what there was to occupy him for so long.

Watering, wiping leaves, repotting, fertilizing, shifting the pots from here to there for no apparent reason — did that really consume so much time?

Perhaps that sort of thing was a symptom of his compulsion. If it weren't, who on earth would grow plants for five hours straight?

From the window of Gayoung's room, she watched the garden and photographed Cha Taekyung. Even from a distance, the man's large frame was easy to make out. Click. Click. The crisp snap of the film camera filled the room. Thus far, she had observed no unusual behavior from him. Smoking, for instance. Or — smoking. As far as Gaon was concerned, that was the truly demonic act.

"What are you doing?"

With her eye still pressed to the viewfinder, she glanced sideways to find Gayoung looking up at her. Round eyes, a pale face, a cute bob — click. She pressed the shutter.

"Taking pictures."

"You just took a picture of me, didn't you?"

Gayoung pouted. The expression was so adorable that Gaon took another shot, and the girl lunged to snatch the camera away.

"I'm in my pajamas! Why would you take that?"

"You just look cute. If you don't like it, go change."

"I don't have other clothes. I like my pajamas."

Gayoung retreated to the bed and soon began assembling the puzzle spread across the mattress. Her small hands plucked up the pieces with brisk competence, fitting them together one after another. It was a worn old puzzle she had used since childhood, a picture she had already completed dozens of times. Even when Gaon bought her new ones, Gayoung insisted on this and this alone — a children's puzzle mixing Korean characters, the English alphabet, and pictures. A game that had delighted her since she was four years old.

"Did you finish your homework before playing?"

"Of course. I did everything you told me to."

Gaon approached the desk and opened the workbook. It was a sixth-grade mathematics set. Every problem up to the point Gaon had marked had been filled in without a single gap. She hadn't even noticed the child working through them, so absorbed had she been in watching Cha Taekyung.

"Well done."

"I am pretty good, you know."

Looking at that smug, clear little face, Gaon burst out laughing. Ever since that night when Gayoung had come down the stairs trembling, insisting a demon had arrived, her symptoms seemed to have vanished. She ate well, took the medication mixed into her food, slept well, played well.

The child had been homeschooled with Gaon since she was small. Korean and English, mathematics, the fundamentals of learning — all of it she had learned from Gaon. When Gaon herself was young, a teacher had come all the way to the island to instruct them, but once Gaon became an adult, Gayoung's education had fallen entirely to her.

This, too, was a source of resentment. Baek Jeong-hak had a peculiar way of dismissing Gayoung. He wanted no one to know there was a mentally ill person in the family, and so he hushed it up as thoroughly as he could. Perhaps that was why he had stuffed the two sisters away on Baekam Island like something to be locked up and forgotten.

If Gayoung had liked this island — if she hadn't been terrified of going to the mainland — Gaon would never have endured this situation.

"Sister, what were you taking pictures of earlier?"

Gayoung asked, lying on her stomach on the bed, assembling her puzzle at her leisure. Gaon, gathering up toys scattered here and there, glanced at the child despite herself. She was reluctant to bring up Cha Taekyung in front of her.

"Just the garden."

She answered offhandedly and turned to tidy the desk. Workbooks and classics. Notebooks and pens, slotted back into place. It was several minutes before she realized how quiet Gayoung had become. The humming that usually accompanied the child's play had gone silent. When Gaon turned around, Gayoung was sitting on the bed in perfect posture, watching her in stillness. There was no expression on that white face. Her small body, held so rigidly upright, felt less like a living thing than some other, harder substance.

"Demons don't show up on camera, sister."

That again.

Gaon furrowed her brow.

I thought the medication was working.

A new prescription had arrived, thanks to the one Cha Gil-ho had written. Yesterday and today the child's condition had been so good that Gaon had let herself relax.

"Gayoung, you shouldn't say things like—"

Gayoung whispered it as though imparting a grave secret — so quickly the words were nearly impossible to catch. And the face that spoke them was as innocent as ever.

"The new medication you prescribed."

"Yes. Quetiapine, aripiprazole, propranolol. Three classes. Has she been all right?"

"I don't know. She said something strange again today."

Cha Gil-ho looked up from his diligent note-taking and regarded Gaon. She hesitated a moment before speaking. A sense of futility washed over her — she had been putting off words that would have to be said eventually.

"She said a demon has come. To the mansion."

No one else was listening, and still her voice dropped of its own accord. At those words, Cha Gil-ho's face went deathly pale. Gaon was so taken aback by the doctor's reaction that she hardly knew what to make of it.

What is wrong with this doctor...

She hadn't expected a pleasant response, of course. That was why she had omitted the part about Gayoung calling Cha Taekyung a demon. Ordinary doctors, upon hearing Gayoung's words, would quietly write them down, or look pained, or grow grave. Looking back, the second doctor had seemed rather frightened. A man interested only in his fee, he would flinch and tremble every session — Today Gayoung, well, Gayoung... — and even when he met Gayoung in person, he would freeze up and mumble his way through.

Cha Gil-ho, it seemed, belonged to the second doctor's camp. He was afraid of what Gayoung said. Or perhaps of Gayoung's existence itself. Gaon could not understand how a man this spineless managed to travel around with that peculiar nephew of his.

"...A demon?"

Sweat had begun to pour from him. He asked in a trembling voice.

"Yes. She said it was an old ghost."

A contrary impulse took hold of Gaon, and she tossed the words out with deliberate indifference. Cha Gil-ho's face went from pale to nearly black. With a shaking hand he wrote the word demon in his notebook, then started on ghost — and the page tore with a sharp rip. The nib of his fountain pen crumpled. The thing was ruined beyond use.

"Doctor, are you all right?"

"No."

She had expected him to say he was fine, if only as a formality. Instead Cha Gil-ho stared at her with wide, bulging eyes.

"I..."

The man mumbled. The sound was so faint that Gaon had to lean in to catch it.

Then, all at once, Cha Gil-ho's eyes flew wide. It was the look of a man startled by something he had seen, and Gaon turned to look as well. In the corner of the room, buried in faint darkness, there was nothing but the polished wooden floor.

"That will be all for today's session."

Cha Gil-ho whispered.