Footsteps on the Empty Road

Around the time the man who had fallen silent was sampling the various drinks one by one, the power went out. When one o’clock arrived, even the neighboring room with its five funeral wreaths saw the stream of mourners thin to almost nothing. Just as the man had said, I was in no position to sit there at ease. The time to leave had come. In the moment of departure, though, it still felt like a proper funeral. Following what I had been taught, I lit incense for Eui-joo and bowed twice.

The man who had spent the entire time behaving as if he had swallowed every scrap of etiquette followed me out as far as the front of the funeral hall. Inwardly startled, I told myself our paths must simply be overlapping, or that he was only heading to the restroom, and tried to put it out of my mind. But when the man came down the funeral-hall stairs alongside me, I could not help asking.

“Excuse me.”

Wondering how far he meant to follow, I stopped midway down the stairs. The man, who had been walking with one arm dangling and the other hand shoved in his pocket in the most delinquent posture imaginable, stopped as well. Standing with only his left foot on the lower step, he asked in a thoroughly subdued voice,

“Not going?”

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

When the man said “Yeah,” the air of pure annoyance was especially strong. Clutching my bag strap tightly, I jerked my chin toward the empty road where the buses had long since stopped running and not a single car passed.

“I’m going to walk down.”

“What?”

“On foot. Once I get into town I can use a payphone. Mom will come pick me up there.”

There had been nights when I studied until three in the morning, the hour the reading room closed. When study time ended I would use the payphone out front to call my mother. She never slept; she waited, then came for me in that ancient wreck of a car. It was because I had that to rely on that I could afford to be so calm.

But the man, who had no way of knowing any of that background, brought his right foot down onto the step as well and closed the distance between us. The secluded winter night around the funeral hall suddenly felt chilling.

“Where’d you leave your cell phone?”

“I don’t have a cell phone.”

I did envy the other kids exchanging texts or making calls. These days it seemed every kid had a computer at home as a matter of course and carried a personal cell phone. That pretty flip phone that folded neatly at the waist was tempting, but since it would only interfere with studying I didn’t need one for now. Mom and I had pinky-promised that we would buy one when I went to university.

The man looked at me as if he were staring at some uncivilized alien. Instead of a phone I pulled out the MP3 player I had won by fasting for ten straight days. I pushed the earphones into my ears and gave the man a polite bow from the waist.

In any case I wanted to show courtesy to him as the chief mourner. He did not look much older than me, and I thought that much was enough to fulfill my duty. There was no trouble until I crossed the roadway and started up the sloping path. Past the large pine with its bent branches a suspension bridge appeared. My steps slowed as I watched the black stream flowing beneath it.

Kang Eui-joo, who had lived in hiding as if to tease me. That boy who avoided me, insisting there was nothing good about getting involved with him. There had been a day when I happened upon Eui-joo bathing in the river. My heart ached at his words that he meant to catch marsh snails to fill his empty stomach. From that day on I began bringing him side dishes in secret from Mom. If she ever found out that every extra dish I had begged for on the excuse of a growth spurt had gone straight to Eui-joo’s house, she would have thrown me out naked.

Eui-joo, knowing that, refused the side dishes a few times, but they say there is no tree that will not fall after ten chops. Considering the sincerity of leaving the containers in the mailbox in front of his house, from some point on he came out to receive them himself.

I did not mind if it was called useless meddling. I liked Eui-joo, who was calm and intellectual, different from the other boys who snickered while lifting high-school girls’ skirts. That he was pale and thin and sickly was no obstacle to our friendship. I even wanted to show our case to those who claimed there was no such thing as friendship between a boy and a girl.

“With your brother?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s your dream?”

“Yeah.”

A boy who said living under the same roof with his brother was his dream. Not that he would get better, not that he would go to university, not that he would start some business. Yet for someone who called wanting to live with his brother a dream, that so-called brother had not shed a single tear at the funeral hall.

I lowered the volume of the music that had entered the chorus and pulled out the earphones. I was about to sit on the bus-stop bench and finally let out the tears I had not finished shedding. But then—roll, roll—the sound of a pebble tumbling broke the mood. It was the shadow that had followed me all the way to the stop. As if a playful impulse had seized him, he was kicking a stone around. Eui-joo’s brother, who should have parted from me long ago in front of the funeral hall, had followed me. The man who ought to be guarding the funeral parlor had no business being here. Even I, with my shaky sense of reality, knew that—did that man not know it?

“Excuse me.”

I hated to death the man who made Eui-joo lonely whether alive or dead, yet because of his quiet atmosphere my voice only buzzed like a mosquito. Certain he had heard me, I went on.

“Why are you here?”

At that the man who had been busily moving his feet alone—defending, attacking, as if playing soccer with the pebble—lifted his head. His expression, seen in the light of a streetlamp whose power was nearly spent, was not merely indifferent.

“What if guests come?”

The man leaned his back hard against a completely bare tree the way someone with a bad leg might. A truly quiet smile rose to his lips.

“Can’t you tell by looking? There was only you.”

“…Ah. Maybe friends of your older brother, or people like that.”

The cold wind that entered and left the man’s mouth turned into a laugh. To someone as easily frightened as I was, it sounded like mockery.

“If there were any, they would have come. I told you—there was only you.”

“Ah… yes.”

Even after ten minutes Eui-joo’s brother remained exactly where he was, and the burden only grew. The night road was frightening, but this was the neighborhood I had known since the days I ran around with a runny nose; I knew better than anyone which ways were safe. I carefully spoke to Eui-joo’s brother, who stood staring at his empty cigarette pack.

“Um… if it’s because of me, maybe…”

Whether he had finally grown tired of kicking pebbles, the man’s gaze at last returned to me. I put on the smile that adults always praised so highly.

“You can go now.”

“I can go, you say. And you?”

“If I just go a little farther it’s town, so you don’t need to worry at all.”

But the instant my words ended the man let out a laugh as if the whole thing were absurd. The words that followed were almost like a monologue.

“Whether you’re naive or what…”

“Pardon?”

As the man’s words trailed off I glanced at my wristwatch. I stood up as if to escape the man who showed no intention of leaving. Just as I turned my back, reassured by the complete lack of interest in his reaction—

“Use this.”

A hard object flew and struck my back. I reached behind me to rub the stinging spot. A gray cell phone lay alone on the ground.

“Why did you throw this? What a waste…”

I picked up the phone and wiped the scratched surface with my palm. Just then the heartless owner walked over and lowered his voice.

“Call your mom. Tell her to come pick you up.”

“Ah, yes.”

I hurriedly dialed Mom’s number. After a long series of rings she answered, and at the news that I had borrowed someone else’s phone she seemed startled. The call ended with only the words that she would come right away. I listlessly returned the now-quiet phone to its owner.

Even though I bowed my head to indicate he need not follow, the sounds behind me continued. The combination of the leaden pale moonlight and those rough footsteps made me dizzy. To think that besides the stars lighting the rural night path there was someone else watching over me. Eui-joo, too, even though it was a road he walked every day, would worry about me and see me nearly home. I had been constantly doubting whether this man was really Eui-joo’s brother, yet discovering points of similarity between the two brothers, a little interest stirred.

Passing the uneven dirt path, the dark-colored stream, the giant pillars supporting the elevated road—landmarks that served as guides—I gently turned my head. I threw a question at the man who walked expressionlessly, eyes fixed only on the ground.

“By any chance…”

The man who had been kicking nearby pebbles as if they were mortal enemies lifted his head.

“Which high school did you graduate from? Have you lived around Wari the whole time?”

Every time I asked some question the man could not hide his laughter. Of course it was never the positive kind.

“Just look ahead. Don’t take an interest in me.”

“Why? Can’t I even ask this much? Then shouldn’t you not be following me either?”

“You talk a lot.”

“Not really that much. It’s just that you keep following silently and it’s uncomfortable, so I’m asking.”

I answered with force in my eyes, unwilling to lose even a single word. The man’s deflated laugh became a sigh and sank to the ground.

“I couldn’t graduate. Dropped out.”

“…Dropped out?”

Hearing only that far, I looked ahead again. The man’s monologue that did not quite sound like one dug into my back.

“Looking at the level of your questions, I can tell how you live.”

The man’s words that I had thought were not particularly grating stuck to my mind like leeches. Emerging from the path under the elevated road, I walked about twenty minutes and arrived in front of the blue phone booth. In the meantime the man had provided free escort service for the mourner and then vanished without so much as a goodbye.

Eui-joo’s brother really seemed like a strange person.