Chapter 198 – The Predetermined Ending
As I lay motionless on the floor, I could see overturned liquor bottles rolling around.
The stench rising from the bottles filled with cigarette butts hung low over the floor.
How did I clean those up again?
I couldn’t simply throw them outside because the landlady would become angry, so I needed to dispose of them properly.
Thud!
Distracted by those foolish thoughts, I exhaled sharply when an impact struck my stomach.
My dulled mind cleared slightly.
I did not know whether it was because of the pain or my father’s familiar cowardice.
Kicking the stomach of someone lying on the floor and unable to rise was exactly the sort of thing my father would do.
Perhaps the growing difference between my increasingly larger body and his shrinking frame bothered him as he aged. He enjoyed knocking me down and beating me like this.
Pathetic bastard. He’s nothing but a coward.
But I was probably the more pathetic one for returning to the past and still failing to come to my senses.
The past?
Was this really the past?
Was that why I wasn’t frightened?
“You bastard. Say that again. Where did you say you were going?”
“I already told you. I’m moving out next month.”
My mouth moved on its own.
That was right. I had definitely answered him like this that day.
It must not have been the answer he wanted, because I felt his foot pressing harder against my hand.
My father’s leg trembled where it rested upon my hand.
His legs shook from the slightest exertion, yet whenever rage overwhelmed him, he charged at me as though completely blind to his surroundings.
Once my body grew large enough that I could escape without fearing what he might do afterward, I rarely allowed him to beat me this quietly.
But on this particular day, I had believed that I needed to endure his violence without resisting.
Why had I thought that?
“Where do you think you’re running? How dare you try to live well on your own……”
He muttered like a madman, but hearing him drunkenly spout insanity was hardly unusual, so I continued thinking.
Why had I decided to let him hit me?
Why was I simply lying here?
I knew how to escape from this place, but I could not quite remember it.
It felt as though I had lived another life, but everything else was obscured by the misery before me.
I also knew that something terrifying would happen next, but I could not remember what it was.
Today had been a truly terrifying day.
“What are you muttering about?”
Apparently irritated even by my muttering, my father struck my motionless cheek.
Perhaps because the blow landed near my head, my mind shifted with a sensation similar to the unpleasantness of awakening from a deep sleep.
That was right. Today was the day I told him I would leave home.
I frowned as my memories gradually returned.
“I’m going to cripple your legs today, so prepare yourself.”
That was right. My father had said this too. After that……
“Breaking only one won’t be enough. If I break only one, you’ll run away……”
Feeling flames rise within me, I lifted my head.
Back then, I had also failed to suppress my surging rage and glared at him.
I knew why my father would not be satisfied with breaking only one leg.
He looked into my eyes and snickered.
“What? Does hearing about your mother make you want to lose your mind?”
Today had been a special day.
It was the day I told him I would leave home, the day my father spoke about my vanished mother for the first time in eight years, and…… the day I killed my father.
* * *
Although it did not suit me, the public library was where I spent most of my time after school.
It was the only place where I could pass the time for free until nightfall without anyone looking at me strangely.
I had no money, so I could not visit an internet café. Besides, I did not particularly enjoy games.
The stale cigarette smell clinging to the older men and boys sitting inside those cafés also reminded me of someone.
As long as I held a book, no one paid attention to me or tried to speak to me.
The far end of the library, in the deepest corner of the bookshelves, was my designated seat and my only refuge.
There was a larger library closer to my school, but I preferred this small one.
My hero was here.
The protagonist had a fouler personality than me, was stronger and crazier than me, and was every bit as unfortunate as I was.
His story unfolded inside an old, well-worn book: he gathered companions and defeated the wicked members of the Imperial Family.
I loved it.
There was something strangely similar about us, and I loved watching him navigate his misfortune more calmly than I did.
The reason I enjoyed immersing myself in my hero’s suffering was that the voice pulling me back out belonged to the person I loved most in the world.
“Suhyeon, it’s time to go home.”
I lifted my face from the book and awkwardly looked up at her gentle expression. Ignoring her extended hand, I turned my head away and rose from my seat.
I did not tell her that I was too old to hold my mother’s hand.
I liked that she offered it every time despite knowing that I would not take it.
Unlike my father, she did not shout at me. She quietly waited while I returned the book to its place.
“Were you reading that again?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t you read anything else? There are science books and study guides too.”
I looked at my mother’s youthful face.
“I can’t promise that I’ll become a great person when I grow up and give you a comfortable life. I’m saying that even if I study hard, I’m not smart enough to succeed.”
I had spoken sincerely, but for some reason, my mother laughed softly.
“I wasn’t telling you to study hard. I only asked because you’ve been reading that same book recently. I was wondering what you liked so much about it.”
After thinking briefly, I answered.
“He says the things I want to hear.”
She frowned slightly, apparently unable to understand my answer.
I meant that the protagonist’s words somehow felt as though they were being spoken to me, but even I knew that saying such a thing would sound strange.
“I like the protagonist.”
When I answered vaguely, my mother nodded.
“If you like it that much, you should borrow it and read it at home. I have a library card.”
“No, it’s fine.”
I shook my head.
If my father noticed the book, he would undoubtedly tear it to pieces.
Then my mother would have to apologize to someone again.
She would cry, and I would confront my father and be beaten.
I preferred reading at the library like this and walking home with my mother at night.
We matched our steps as we headed home.
Sometimes we indulged ourselves by buying fish-shaped pastries to share. On even more extravagant days, we bought egg bread.
Those walks were the only times when laughter blossomed between us.
But once our home became visible in the distance, we both grew noticeably quieter.
We both knew why, but neither of us dared mention it.
I became anxious as her steps slowed the closer we came to home.
It was not because I feared the monster inside.
I simply hated that if we continued onward, my mother’s bright expression would fade.
Watching fear gradually spread across her face, I blurted out the words swelling within my chest.
“Mom, when I grow up, I’ll kill father for you.”
What expression had my mother made then?
I remembered her silently placing her hand upon my head. She stroked my hair very slowly and gently.
That was why I thought she was praising me.
“No matter how much you hate your father, you must never say that. If you say such frightening things, you’ll be punished later.”
I raised my head and looked at her grotesquely swollen eyelid.
My father had caused it by throwing her Bible at her.
I knew my mother only spoke that way and that, deep inside, she hated my father.
Whenever I said something harsh about him, she would initially be startled by the violent words she could not say herself. Then, for the briefest moment, she would appear pleased. Finally, she would calm herself and tell me that I must never speak that way.
I liked seeing my mother happy, even if only for a moment, so I occasionally insulted my father like that.
I wanted her to feel even slightly happier and love me slightly more.
Ironically, my mother abandoned me despite those desperate efforts, while my father was the one who raised me.
* * *
After my mother left, I began getting into more fights at school.
I gradually learned how convenient violence was, how easily fear could control people, and how crushing another person’s dignity could feel both repulsive and exhilarating.
I was slightly larger than the other children my age and always had bruises on my face, so delinquent children frequently approached me.
I was not inclined to avoid fights others started, and as my body continued growing, I rarely lost.
I had been beaten far more often than the other children, so I knew exactly how to strike someone hard enough to leave them in too much pain to stand.
However, even that did not last long.
Children’s fights generally resulted in parents being summoned to school, an outcome that placed me at a considerable disadvantage.
My father never came to school, but receiving telephone calls from my teacher apparently irritated him enough that he would beat me like a dog.
After repeatedly earning several additional blows by mocking him for finding everything so bothersome despite never even coming to school, I stopped fighting.
As though wary of my gradually growing body, my father had begun beating me more violently.
I felt that I might die if he continued, and I was tired of the revolting way he looked at me as an opponent he needed to overpower and defeat.
If such trivial reasons were all that made me stop beating people, then I was probably not particularly different from my father.
My mother must have noticed that before leaving.
She must have abandoned us because she believed people of the same kind belonged together.
Just as she expected, I suspected that I would behave similarly if I grew up and married.
In that case, I would rather live and die alone.
That would be fine.
Living alongside other people had never suited me anyway.
Even after my mother disappeared, I continued leaving home and visiting the small library as though following a predetermined routine.
As a middle school student, I still had no money, and the library remained the only place where I could comfortably pass the time until my father fell asleep drunk.
I did not know whether I was searching for the quiet hero inside the book or the person who had abandoned our home.
Whenever I sat and read, I disappeared into the world inside the book again.
Perhaps because I was older, or because I had carefully read the book dozens of times, I came to understand the protagonist more deeply.
Learning why Ratel hated people, why he opened his heart, and why he ultimately made those choices consumed time. For me, it was the perfect task.
Today, I had reached the section where Ratel crossed the cave at Wolf Cliff.
The scene in which Ratel suffered while crossing a passage that no murderer could traverse was my favorite.
Was it strange to call it my favorite?
I simply found it difficult to look away from that part.
Looking back, perhaps it was also the scene I found most heartbreaking.
Perhaps I wanted to tell the suffering Ratel directly that it was not his fault.
But why had I wanted to say that?
He was the protagonist of a novel, so he eventually achieved victory without needing help from someone like me.
This time as well, he safely overcame the ordeal and defeated the Werewolves.
Feeling an inexplicable sense of sympathy and kinship with a character I had never met, I accompanied him on his adventure.
Strangely, imagining the characters in the novel made breathing slightly easier.
I knew the liberation I felt—as though I had finally removed ill-fitting clothes and put on my own—was merely the weakness of someone desperate to escape reality.
Even so, I could not stop.
If I denied myself even this, I would go insane.
After I spent the entire day reading, the elderly librarian’s voice pulled me back into reality.
When she announced that the library was closing and told me to leave, I returned the book to its place and stood.
The misery of knowing that no one would come to collect me forced me to confront an even more miserable truth.
My mother had disappeared forever, and I would have to endure my suffering alone in a corner of that alcohol-reeking home.
Nevertheless, I had no choice but to return.
At least my father had not abandoned me.
We were alike.
“Ghk, ghk……”
I looked down at the man struggling to breathe.
My memories of the past returned with unnatural vividness.
Memories that had grown somewhat faint became clear again, igniting my rage.
When I tightened my grip, his already bloodshot eyes glared at me as every tiny vessel within them burst.
His mouth opened and closed, releasing a repulsive stench as he desperately tried to draw even a single breath of oxygen.
“Who was the cripple?”
“Ghk, urgh……!”
He clawed at my hand, but the trembling hands of an elderly alcoholic could do nothing beyond scratching my skin.
Nevertheless, I loosened my grip slightly so he could answer.
Mistaking that gesture for something else, my father spread a malicious smile across his face.
“W-Who else could it be, you pathetic bastard? Did you think your mother never came looking for you? She showed up looking wretched, probably after getting beaten wherever she had been living.”
His eyes swept across my face.
It was impossible not to know whom he saw through me.
That was also one reason he had beaten me more frequently.
“So…… you crippled her legs?”
When I tightened my hand around his throat, my father hurriedly opened his mouth again.
“Ghk, yes!! That pathetic woman said she was going to take you with her at the very end! After abandoning her own child, she had the nerve to return here……”
I stared blankly down at him.
Beating an old man was extremely easy.
Disappointingly so.
Whenever I watched him wither day after day and felt the growing difference in our strength, I thought about it.
Defeating that man would be easier than I could imagine.
Yet I had never made that choice because I desperately wanted to conceal that I was the same kind of person as my father.
There had also been a small measure of gratitude.
At the very least, my father had not abandoned me.
Even after my mother left, he fed me and gave me somewhere to sleep.
Although he treated me worse than a pet dog, and although the years containing more days when he struck me than days when he did not, he never abandoned me while I was growing up.
But only now did my foolish self realize the truth.
He had not refused to abandon me. He had been keeping me captive.
I felt the blood drain from my face.
Watching me, my father burst into a convulsive laugh as though delighted by my misery, even while cautiously monitoring my reaction.
“I told her clearly. I said that if she came back and stayed here, she could live with her child. But then she started talking about lawyers and lawsuits. Stupid woman. So I taught her again what happens when she refuses to listen to me. Then that madwoman abandoned her child again and ran away……”
I felt as though I knew the remainder without hearing it.
It would be some tragically self-pitying story about how my mother ruined her own life after running away and could never return.
She had always been timid.
She had been someone who feared even the walk home while accompanied by a son entirely on her side.
Yet that woman had come to the house alone.
The person most terrified of being alone with my father had come all this way to take me with her.
And she had ultimately been injured because of it.
Indescribable rage surged through me.
Feeling the strength gradually leave my hand, he shoved me away.
I allowed myself to be pushed backward and watched him flee.
It felt as though half my mind had been blown away. I could think of nothing except catching and killing him.
His retreating figure overlapped with my mother’s.
My terrified father looked exactly like her.
Whenever my father struck her, she had also retreated farther inside.
Away from the outside and deeper inside.
Even though our home was no longer safe.
A warning resounded within my mind, telling me not to enter that room, but I opened the door anyway.
Inside was a bed and a small bookcase. I opened the door fully and scanned the room.
Liquor bottles rolled across the floor. The blanket reeked so strongly of cigarettes that no amount of washing could remove the odor.
And there was the bookcase.
Had there originally been a bookcase there?
I had not bought the bookcase until later, after saving more money, and had purchased it alongside the bed.
No, since when did our home have a bed?
I hesitated briefly at the sense of incongruity that crossed my mind. Then I discovered the small old man crouching between the bookcase and the wardrobe and approached him.
“You insane bastard! S-Stay away from me!”
When I followed him into the room, he wildly swung his arms.
Allowing the weakest punches he had ever thrown at me to land, I wrapped my hand around his throat again.
I needed to kill him immediately.
No other thought entered my mind.
I began strangling him with all my strength.
“Ghk, urgh……!!”
He struggled.
Only now did he realize that he was dying at the hands of the son who had never once struck him throughout twenty-two years. He thrashed his arms in every direction.
When he pulled himself upward in a desperate attempt to escape my grasp, his body pushed against the bookcase. It toppled, scattering its contents across the floor.
But I did not take my eyes off him.
I had to kill him.
It felt as though killing him would finally bring everything to an end.
Only then would I be able to live and breathe comfortably in this world.
His movements gradually weakened.
I knew that I needed to apply slightly more force to stop his breathing completely.
It was easier than killing an insect.
I released my grip.
His unconscious body collapsed onto the floor.
The sight did not significantly alter the emotions inside me.
Instead, it forced me to confront the one truth from which I had always tried to avert my eyes.
I was not particularly different from my father.
I knew how this story ended.
No comments yet. Be the first to leave a review!