2. Father
2. Father
At first, a Father who tried hard to take care of me.
Looking back now, I think he believed that caring for me well
was the last thread that could let him meet Mother again.
But Mother was a cold person—
so cold that even I, as a young child,
only saw her three or four times a year at most.
And every time we met, she looked more radiant,
so it took me about two years to realize
that I and Father were not the stepping stones of Mother's life,
but rather the stumbling blocks.
At some point,
after returning from what would be his last meeting with Mother,
Father finally snapped that last thread
and gave up on her.
Father, who changed in an instant,
began spending less and less time at home.
And around the time I was in fifth grade of elementary school,
women started coming in and out of the house.
To Mother, he was a pathetic man,
but to other women, he seemed like an amazing one.
He was rich, good-looking, and an excellent talker.
The women changed frequently—
college girls, civil servants, other company presidents, married women—
all sorts of women clung to him endlessly.
Sometimes there was just one woman;
other times, there were six at once.
As if to pay back the scorn he'd received from Mother,
Father showed himself not just as a bad man,
but as the worst kind of trash.
I never once saw any of Father's women
be the first to break up;
they always ended up clinging to him, crying desperately,
and then being cruelly abandoned.
They offered their bodies, their money,
and even their human dignity to win Father's favor,
but in the end, all were brutally discarded.
Sometimes I wondered if Father
was dating women from the start just to abandon them cruelly.
The problem wasn't those women—it was me.
I had become the proof of his failure in life,
the last link to Mother.
But at the same time, I was the last evidence of his love for her.
Father and I became a complicated relationship
that was hard to put into words.
I don't remember being abused,
but gradually, the number of words between Father and me dwindled.
When I was young, I thought Father was a weak man,
but that only applied to Mother.
I think Father had already started going crazy around that time.
If he had just been a womanizer
who liked women,
I would have understood and even supported him.
But the relationship between Father and those women
was not normal love.
In that house, there was an absolute rule for the women:
To them, I was invisible.
They were not allowed to speak to me
or even make eye contact with me.
There was one woman who tried to win me over
to gain Father's favor,
but she who broke the taboo was abandoned the most cruelly,
setting an example for all the women who came after.
To them, my room was a forbidden zone,
and I also had to spend most of my time
inside my room.
But whenever I went to the bathroom, ate a meal,
or left the house,
I couldn't help but witness that nightmare.
Three to five women wearing dog collars,
crawling on all fours,
urine and semen scattered across the floor,
and a woman licking it up.
Small lock-shaped piercings on their nipples and clits.
Rope marks, whip marks, and handprints all over their bodies.
Obscene tattoos scrawled all over their skin like graffiti.
Every hole—whether vagina, anus, or mouth—
had vibrating objects inserted into them.
Their heads buried in dog bowls on the floor,
even as Father stepped on their heads
while they ate.
And in the midst of that humiliation and pain,
the look of ecstasy in their eyes.
Back then, I couldn't understand
that relationship,
but after some time passed, I finally realized
that the title those women used for Father
wasn't "Oppa," "Honey," or "Darling"—
it was "Master-nim."
Whether Father had decided to abandon his humanity or not,
he only grew more reckless afterward.
I'm not sure, but he seemed to start getting involved
in dangerous things too.
The house grew bigger and more luxurious,
and his spending increased to a level even an elementary schooler could notice.
Men who looked like they came straight out of a gangster movie—
the kind that was popular at the time—
started coming and going.
And I—
I realized that staying by Father's side
had become meaningless.
And I also realized that I was starting
to resemble Father.
The women, who had once seemed pitiful,
now looked like nothing more than pets in the house,
or objects that weren't even human.
Watching them being abused,
I found myself getting hard.
I guess I thought that with time,
I would naturally become just like Father.
When I entered middle school,
I spoke to Father for the first time in years.
I told him I wanted to live alone.
After a moment's thought, he agreed
and got me a small studio apartment.
It was small, but it was property in my name.
He also put 30 million won in a bank account
and told me to let him know if the money ran out,
even if it was the next month.
And on the day I left the house,
I saw the complicated expression on Father's face,
and I left without a word.
Looking back now,
if I had known that would be my last conversation
and meeting with Father,
I should have told him to live happily,
in his own way.
The reason I left home, almost like running away, was simple.
I was afraid of becoming like him.
If I had only ever seen his demonic side from the beginning, maybe it would have been different.
But I knew the warm and gentle side of Father.
I was terrified.
Terrified that one day, I too might suddenly change,
as if by a lie.
So after I started living alone,
I never contacted him once.
The 30 million won, which I thought I could never spend in a lifetime,
melted away like snow.
That was only natural for someone like me, who only consumed without any economic activity.
In my third year of middle school, when the money was about half gone,
I started working part-time and tightened my belt.
One phone call to Father would have let me live without difficulty,
but I was afraid.
When I needed a guardian as a student and minor,
I contacted Mother.
Mother was an extremely cold person,
but she seemed determined to at least fulfill
the minimum duties of a mother.
She visited me three or four times a year, cooked for me,
and talked about various mother-and-son things.
At those times, we were just an ordinary mother and son,
like you'd see in any family.
Even now that I'm an adult, we meet once or twice a year.
Even more than Father, who was like a monster,
Mother was like a demonic spirit.
But thanks to those memories, even though Mother was
an awesome and frightening person,
I could accept her as an ordinary mother to me.
The common point between Mother and Father
was that both were so terrifying they didn't seem human.
The difference was that unlike Father, who changed 180 degrees,
Mother had remained the same in personality and appearance
since my childhood.
I actually found that more comfortable.
At least compared to Father...
It was only after becoming an adult that I realized,
in that respect, Mother was far more frightening than Father.
Mother could do what Father couldn't:
reconcile the roles of a parent and a monster.
And I, their son,
also thought I wasn't normal.
Maybe it was genetics,
or perhaps the cause was my unhappy upbringing.
I made excuses.
But—
But I don't want to become like that.
It's not that I want to be a good person because I'm virtuous;
I don't want to be evil because I know what ugliness is.
Sometimes, when I see a child or an old person who looks happy,
I want to trample that happiness-filled face
and ask, "Are you still happy now?"
When I see a happy couple, I want to make the man disabled,
then rape the woman like a dog in front of him
and discard her.
When I see someone who achieved their dream through effort,
I want to shatter that dream absurdly
and make them live like a worm.
I want to test the friendship of my closest friends
and destroy those relationships.
I am probably one of those people
who, the moment they lose their mind, becomes a monster.
That's why I squeeze out time from my busy part-time job
to volunteer.
I greet people I meet kindly.
Even if it's an act, it's fine.
By playing the role of a good person,
I try to become at least a little bit good.
I even received a commendation from the orphanage where I volunteer.
People around me call me a kind young man,
in their own way.
I left the image of a good person
among those who know me.
I'm not a good person, but
I tried to get close to being one.
I didn't want to become like Father.
The last news I deliberately avoided because of these thoughts
was an obituary.
And it came from my divorced mother,
after the funeral.
Whether it's because I too am a monster
or because of my resolve to live righteously,
I felt not even a trace of sadness.
Even though this was the obituary of the person who had the greatest impact on my life,
whether for good or ill.
At that moment—
the doorbell rang, breaking through my tangled thoughts.