PAX 39

“If you behave like this, you’re just smearing shit on your mother and father’s faces. Don’t you think people will ask what kind of table manners education you received at home?”

“And how much of that ‘table manners education’ did you receive, yourself?”

I don’t know if Ahn Juik ever bothered to teach him anything at all.

For the time being, I just picked up the sashimi pieces one by one and ate them.

“What would I learn from that bastard? Why should I bother keeping up with table manners or whatever? It’s enough to just smear shit on Ahn Juik’s face.”

Ahn Yutan looked pleased for some reason. Then, suddenly, he tossed his chopsticks aside and jumped to his feet.

“Come here.”

As he passed by, Ahn Yutan grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked it upward, leaving me with no choice but to jump up as well.

Ahn Yutan walked into the bedroom and opened the top drawer of the dresser. My forehead twitched instinctively.

Lying in a neat row on the dark-colored velvet cloth that lined the drawer were various types of knives. There were all sorts: antique-looking old hunting knives, fish-filleting knives, meat-butchering knives, bread knives, camping knives, and more. The one thing they had in common was that they all looked expensive.

And at the end of the row lay my old military knife, looking quite out of place. I had last seen it when Ahn Yutan snatched it away and stuck it into his car’s sun visor to drive, and since then, I had mostly given up on it, thinking he wouldn’t return it anyway.

“I’m weighing which one of these I should use to carry out the deed.”

Ahn Yutan picked up a Chinese cleaver, tilted it back and forth to look at the gleaming surface, and set it back down.

He was talking about the day of the fitness test. He was contemplating which knife to use when he killed his father.

“This one’s good for grabbing his hair and ending it quickly with a slash, but this one seems better if I want to inflict pain until the very last moment. Or, I could hold him down so he can’t move and play with him for a while, stabbing him here and there with this one.”

Ahn Yutan said, picking up and setting down various knives according to their intended use.

“Does it have to be a knife?”

I asked after thinking for a moment.

“Wouldn’t a gun be more certain?”

Ahn Yutan tossed my knife into the air, caught it as it fell, and swung it lightly a few times.

“Guns lack the physical satisfaction, don’t they?”

I quickly dodged and backed away from the blade that lunged toward my stomach.

“You really are a capable one.”

With a satisfied-looking smile, Ahn Yutan lightly spun the knife, caught it by the tip, and extended the handle toward me.

I was a bit wary, but I grabbed the handle and pulled. Ahn Yutan let the knife go without a fight.

“Anyway, I want to feel Ahn Juik’s skin being pierced by this myself. Killing him from afar with a gun doesn’t have any of that satisfaction.”

Ahn Yutan picked up a sashimi knife and tapped the pointed tip.

“Give me your opinion. Which one do you think would be good?”

I toyed with my knife and looked down at Ahn Yutan’s collection.

I don’t know. I do think of Ahn Yutan as a psycho, but seeing him be so nonchalant about such things only makes me feel more strongly that he won’t actually be able to kill Ahn Juik. It’s as if all of this is nothing more than the bluster of a young boy consumed by an affection deficit.

Especially when he’s doing this while wearing only his flashy-patterned underwear, with his short hair sticking up in tufts everywhere.

But as I’ve realized many times before, it’s not easy to predict Ahn Yutan. Much of what he says and does often seems completely impulsive, as if even he hasn’t thought them through at all.

“Imagine what would look the most dramatic when it pierces that rotten-sweet potato-like skin of his.”

I turned my head to look at Ahn Yutan.

“Why do you want to kill him that badly?”

“I told you. I’m going to clear the old man out and become the boss.”

“If that’s the only reason, don’t you think you don’t necessarily have to kill him? You could lock him away somewhere and just you….”

Ahn Yutan’s massive scoff cut off my words.

“Hey, you naive bastard. Do you think you can take control of a place like the Nagun District by showing such spinelessness? I’ve told you several times why I’m doing it in front of people on the day of the fitness test. I said it’s important to show them vividly, right before their eyes, what kind of things I’m capable of. That’s where charisma comes from. Don’t you know what fear politics is? Why do you think those fucking insane dictator pigs slaughtered their opponents left and right? You talk about revolutions in history or whatever, but it seems you’re the one who hasn’t learned anything from history.”

Ahn Yutan slammed the drawer shut and went back out to the kitchen.

“Is it because you’re a pigeon? Is your head filled with nothing but peace?”

There’s no way a pigeon’s head is filled with peace. It was humans who associated the bird called the pigeon with peace; the pigeons themselves probably don’t think about anything at all.

I followed Ahn Yutan and sat back down facing him at the dining table. I placed my knife safely in a corner of the table.

“Do you have no hesitation at all?”

I asked Ahn Yutan, who had started eating his sushi diligently.

“Hesitation about what?”

“About killing your father.”

“Whether it’s a father or a mother, if you need to kill them, you kill them—what’s there to hesitate about?”

It’s all bluster. That’s all just bluster, and inside, there’s nothing but an affection-starved child.

“Do you have no feelings at all toward your father?”

“I have plenty of feelings. Annoyance, hatred, disgust, feeling like he’s a nuisance, nausea, wanting to throw up, wanting to spit on him, wanting to smear shit on his face, etcetera, etcetera.”

That, too, is all bluster. And he’s just being deliberately malicious.

I watched Ahn Yutan eating nonchalantly, then cast my eyes downward and ate my own share.

I don’t know. It might not be bluster or malice, but a sincere hatred for Ahn Juik and a genuine intention to carry out the deed.

It’s possible to hate a father. One can hate him to the point of wanting to kill him and make plans to do so. It’s not something that never happens in the world, so it can’t be considered something entirely unique.

However, I was curious. How can he keep that hatred toward his father in the present tense like that? How can he burn only with hatred without even a fraction of doubt that he might actually love his father?

I am so torn even with just the smallest doubts about my own Mom and Dad.

I’m even hesitating to confirm it because I’m afraid I’ll end up having negative feelings toward Mom and Dad if I find out those doubts are true.

Is it because of the time we spent together? Because Ahn Yutan lived away from his father for a long time, while I lived with Mom and Dad for a long time? Because I have memories of hugging each other tightly in the lukewarm downpour of a summer day?

I looked at Ahn Yutan again, and our eyes met immediately. Ahn Yutan was staring straight at me, chewing on fried food.

“Why?”

“Can’t I look? The landlord wants to see the face of his guest.”

“Sure. Look all you want….”

Resignation.

Ahn Yutan rested both arms on the table and leaned forward.

“They say your Mom and Dad cut your hair, too, right?”

“Not all of us. Sometimes the older family members cut the younger ones’.”

“Younger family, older family?”

Ahn Yutan laughed, spraying fried food crumbs.

“That’s what you call them? Ah, the more I know, the more it sounds like a perverted cult.”

“Think what you want. Your opinion isn’t important.”

“Then who cut your hair?”

A hand reached out and roughly grabbed the hair above my ear.

While chewing on an egg sushi, I looked back at Ahn Yutan.

“Dad did.”

“He cut it like shit.”

Ahn Yutan let go of my hair and ate the sashimi with his fingers.

“As expected, dads can’t do a single thing right.”

I combed through my sticking-up hair to tidy it up roughly.

Dad is good at handling the chickens. He uses boxing techniques well and knows a lot about plumbing. He’s good at math, so he’s in charge of the family’s math tutoring. Dad is also the one who taught me the basics of parkour.

“You like your dad, don’t you?”

Ahn Yutan asked.

I thought about it for a moment, then gave a short nod.

If it were two years ago, wouldn’t I have nodded immediately without the hesitation of thinking about it? For those past two years, I’ve been living with the feeling of something constantly bumping and rattling, like passing over an endless series of speed bumps.

“Did you hate your father even when you were really young?”