창작과 비평

She could hear the waves below. The tide must be coming in. Her husband knew all the right shortcuts to the campground now that they had been back so many times. The store where the man said he saw a little girl in a yellow uniform was closed now. It was past midnight and the village was quiet like the inside of a well. Now and then a young delivery woman from the local coffee house would put across the road on her scooter.
The pavement came to an end. It was completely dark along the unpaved road. The car shook as they passed over the gravel. The woman and her husband had not said a word to each other since leaving Seoul. Her husband put the high beams on. They could see farther than when the headlights were lowered, but the road had a lot of curves in it and they had to go at the same speed. The darkness over the cliff could be seen in the distance. A squirrel stopped and sat in the middle of the narrow road, caught in the headlights. Her husband pressed the horn lightly and the squirrel ran into the woods. Soon they could see the campground.
A full hour after they started on the unpaved road they arrived at the campground's parking lot. Even with a flashlight they were unable to find the path down to the main part of the facility. Her husband tried to make his way through the shrubs but he soon gave up and turned back.
A year ago at around the same time a young child left the campfire and came up this way. With the light from the campfire it would not have been difficult for her to find her way up here. There had been lights in the parking area, even if they were not working anymore. The path did not lead anywhere else. She could not have lost her way.
Her husband spoke for the first time in hours. "This is crazy. I want to believe that old man just as much as you do. I felt the energy coming back to my head when I heard him. But I confirmed her with my own eyes!"
The woman got out and stood next to the car. The mosquitoes smelled flesh and were at her at once. She walked slowly as she tried to imitate her daughter's stride. Dew had fallen and the gravel was slippery. Her husband followed her in the car. The road shined bright in the headlights. Her husband yelled out the window.
"They found twenty two bodies. They could've gotten mixed up, but obviously she couldn't have been missing. Listen to me. Stop this senselessness and get in the car. Let's forget about it now. Let's forget and move on."
Sometimes she imagines what kind of woman her daughter will grow up to be. She imagines her having her first period and being so shy about it the stain on her underpants that she washes it in secret. Next her daughter would be on her way to school wearing white spring and autumn dresses with long white socks. The woman had planned to leave work early the day her daughter came back from summer camp. She was going to go and wait in front of the kindergarten. Her daughter would get off the bus slowly and she would be in need of a bath. On the way home her daughter would proudly show her how many crabs she had caught with her plastic bottle. Everything the woman imagined was compensated for according to the Hoffmann method of calculating loss.
She yelled to her husband but did not look back. "He said it was a pin the shape of a star. But it wasn't a pin, it was a stain."
"What are you talking about?" he asked.
It was a year ago, the morning her daughter went to camp. On that day as always the woman got up at six in the morning and made a breakfast of toast and fried eggs. Her daughter was up earlier than usual and was going around the living room in her underwear. As she helped her daughter get her uniform on she realized that she had forgotten to wash it. She had spilled chocolate syrup on it, and there was a stain the size of a W500 coin. She whined about having to wear clothes that were dirty. The woman quickly tried to wash out the stain but the syrup only spread into the shape of a star.
"Oh dear. The other kids are going to tease you. They're going to say you're wearing dirty clothes. That you spilled your food like a baby."
The woman put her daughter's arms in the sleeves. "Your clothes are going to get dirty anyway once you start playing. Your friends' clothes are going to get dirty, too. Just wait a little bit until everyone else gets their clothes dirty like yours."
She helped her get her backpack on and strapped the string on her plastic bottle diagonally from her shoulder to her waist. She would not have much time to get to work if she tried to do something about the stain. She grabbed her daughter's hand and walked so fast they were almost running. She had a hard time keeping up and stumbled as they went. They parted in front of the kindergarten. Her daughter walked up to the door and suddenly turned around. She called and waved her hand.
"Annyeonghi gyeseyo, mommy. 'Stay in peace.'"
The woman waved back.
"You're supposed to say Danyeo ogesseumnida. 'See you when I'm back.'"
The time and date were imprinted in the lower corner of Miss Kim's video. It was around 9:50pm the night of the fire. Even if her six-year-old had left the camp and walked all the way to the store, she still would not have been able to get that far in so little time. Maybe the star-shaped pin the old man said he saw really was a pin-shaped star. And children that age are always getting stains on their clothes. Or he could have been acting up from having drunk too much so early in the day, as the middle-aged woman claimed.
Her husband honked lightly from behind as if trying to scare a squirrel, but the woman did not run off into the woods. She walked forward, little by little. She wanted to believe her daughter had not come home because she took such little steps.
She would have to wait a lot longer for her daughter to come home at that pace.