Bound to the Man Who Saw My Death

If I die, I always thought it would be in May. The season when wisteria hangs in heavy purple clusters like bunches of grapes, and dandelions spill across the ground in a dizzying yellow carpet. ◆ ◆ ◆ My childhood memories are nothing but blue. From my earliest days, I was surrounded by blue wherever I turned. My mother was an artist, and she loved the color blue—especially Prussian blue. She chose it for her clothes, her shoes, the furniture, the curtains, the sofa. She loved that shade of Berlin blue so much that she named her first daughter after it. Siana. All that blue that wrapped my early years was always filled with a golden-sunlight kind of laughter—my mother and father, still as in love as newlyweds even after ten years of marriage, my little sister’s giggles, and my own happy laughter. I often wore a Prussian blue dress with matching enamel shoes and spun in circles. When I did, the golden sunlight glittered like jewels around me. “We should put Siana in ballet.” “Siana, keep spinning. I’ll take your picture.” “Me too! Me too!” Round and round. Like a ballerina in a music box, those fragments of memory always spinning to the same sad melody. Even now, when I think of happiness, the color that comes to mind is blue. That endless, deep Prussian blue. ◆ ◆ ◆ I was six years old. That May, my father—who loved to travel—took the whole family down to the countryside. As always, we left on a Friday afternoon and planned to return Sunday morning: a three-day, two-night trip. The place my father had rented was an empty house nestled in a thick mountain grove. It was surprisingly clean for a remote farmhouse. The village chief, who guided us there, explained that the area had good mountains and a river, so outsiders sometimes came with their families. They’d decided to turn some of the vacant houses into guesthouses, so they’d put up new wallpaper and made simple repairs two weeks earlier. My family was the second guests to stay in that house. The first visitors had been very satisfied. My sister and I explored the place. “What’s that?” my sister asked, pointing. Behind the house, she’d found a large dragon tail. It looked like a carved wooden toy, but it was oddly attached under the eaves—gaudy and ridiculous. Why was only the tail there? Curious, I suddenly thought the dragon’s head must be in front. I ran to check, but there was nothing above the front door. No—there was a trace. A mark where something had been. The dragon’s head had been there, but someone had removed it. When I asked my father why they’d taken down only the head, he shrugged. “The village chief probably thought it looked ugly at the entrance.” ◆ ◆ ◆ Night came quickly to the mountain. We were tired from leaving Seoul on Friday afternoon, so we ate a light dinner and decided to rest early. That night, I had a strange dream. I dreamed my family—my mother, father, sister, and I—were inside a house made entirely of glass. Outside, dark, long, frightening things crawled ceaselessly through the dawn. “They can’t come inside,” I thought in the dream, but I was scared because the house, made of glass from ceiling to floor, seemed so easy to break. ◆ ◆ ◆ It was a frightening dream, but when the sun rose bright and the landscape turned green and gold, my spirits lifted. After eating noodles for lunch, my sister and I played near the house. We picked wildflowers and watched frogs. In the distance, pale purple wisteria swayed in the wind, and dandelions bloomed thickly along the path below the empty house. While I was busy picking flowers, I found a dog hiding in the bushes. “Here, boy,” I called, reaching out my hand. But the dog, crouched low, didn’t move. I pulled a snack from my small backpack and held it out. The dog watched me warily, motionless, then slowly, very slowly, crept onto the path. It was a skinny yellow dog, half-starved. And it had only three legs. One front leg, two back legs. My sister hung back, scared, but I felt sorry for it and gave it all my snacks. Despite its size, the dog was gentle, turning its head this way and that as it carefully took the food, as if worried its teeth might hurt my hand. I stroked its fur lightly. Beneath the yellow, I saw a little white. It was originally a white dog, just very dirty. As I kept petting it, the dog quietly lay down, making it easier for me to reach. It seemed to have missed human touch for a very long time. I gave it a name and kept petting it. “Lincoln. Good boy, Lincoln.” Lincoln was the name of a president from the biography I was reading—a man who had done many good things. While I played with the dog, my sister crept over. But she didn’t get to touch it. An elderly woman from the village, carrying a basket of mugwort, shooed the dog away harshly. “Shoo! Get out of here, you beast! You kids will get hurt!” She took us straight back to the guesthouse and found our mother. “There’s a vicious dog around here,” she warned. “Keep the children away.” Then she chatted on and on. That dog, she said, used to belong to a shaman. The shaman had said four years ago that something ominous was moving across the mountain toward this area. “She made a fuss about finding the right dog,” the woman explained. “And look what she ended up with—a cripple like that.” It had already been three-legged when the shaman got it. The shaman had been very powerful. She had spent all her money to bring that very dog home. She died two years ago. After that, the dog just wandered like this. And the shaman’s house was the very one my family was staying in. My mother’s face wrinkled with unease and discomfort. The village woman looked around the empty house and kept talking. “The shaman said that even if something evil came down from the mountain, the dragon would eat it all. She said never to take down the dragon ornament. But the village chief wanted to invest in the guesthouse…” He had removed the dragon’s head that guarded the shaman’s door. They had taken it down, killed it. Maybe because of what the village woman said, my mother gently hinted to my father that afternoon. “My dreams feel off. This rest doesn’t feel restful. Should we just go back to Seoul?” “Why suddenly? You said there were lots of places to sketch around here. The kids are having so much fun… We were so busy last month I couldn’t take time off. Next month is packed too. Since we’re here, let’s stay one more night as planned.” So we stayed that Saturday night. ◆ ◆ ◆ The shaman had warned the villagers while she was alive: never open the front door or windows on a new moon night. The villagers ignored her. Nothing bad ever happened. Everyone lived fine. Only the shaman died. Now I know what she meant by “new moon.” It’s the first day of the lunar month, when negative energy is strongest and ghosts gain power. A day to avoid surgery, moving, even making kimchi. A day when everything goes wrong. A night when the moon doesn’t rise. And “night”—from eleven to one. The last night we spent in that empty house was exactly such a new moon.