One Hundred Shadows Read online

  I worked at an electronics market, a ramshackle warren of tiny shops close to the heart of the city. The market had originally consisted of five separate buildings, labelled A, B, C, D and E, but had been altered and added to over a period of forty years so that it was now a single structure. You had to know where to look to spot the signs that it had ever been otherwise. The market was where I first met Mujae. I manned the customer desk and ran errands at Mr. Yeo’s repair shop, while Mujae was an apprentice at a transformer workshop. One day I went down there with an old transformer that needed its copper wire replaced. There in that cramped space was Mujae, wearing wrist guards and an apron. Next to him, Mr. Gong was spinning the wheel with the copper wire twined around it. I held out the old transformer, needing both hands to lift its weight. Mujae took it casually in one, put it down on the table among all the copper wires, and made a note of the shop’s name and phone number. The only remarkable thing about him was his beautiful handwriting. I’d seen him several times before, on my way in and out of the building or running errands to other workshops, but nothing had made those encounters stand out.

  I nodded off, wondering whether I would see Mujae at work on Monday, since we’d said, See you on Monday. When I started awake, the sun was about to go down. The light of the setting sun filled the room. I realised that I’d left my packed lunch in the woods.

  —

  My shadow rose, I said, and Mr. Yeo blinked.

  He was sitting on a stool, holding a probe connected to an oscilloscope. He furrowed his brow under his salt-and-pepper hair, blinked once, then twice, and asked,

  So what did you do?

  I followed it.

  You followed it?

  Just a little way.

  You shouldn’t have followed it.

  I’m not going to any more.

  That’s right, Mr. Yeo said, touching the probe to the circuit board and peering at the screen. The green line that had been streaming across the palm-sized monitor morphed into an undulating wave.

  Those shadows, Mr. Yeo said, then stared intently at the monitor for some time. Whenever I assumed his thoughts had drifted he would reposition the probe, and when I thought he was engrossed in his task he suddenly came out with, those shadows, you know. After a while more of this abstraction he finally looked up at me.

  So how did you feel, when you were following the shadow?

  Pretty good, I said. I couldn’t help but follow it. Mr. Yeo nodded as if to say yes, that’s how it is.

  That’s what’s scary, you feel light somehow, carefree, if you surrender to the shadow’s pulling at you, so you keep on following it, and that’s when it strikes. People turn slow-witted when they’re in that kind of daze, so it attacks when your wits are slowest of all, he said, and gently set the probe down on the worktable. Wait and see, it’ll start growing now.

  Growing bigger?

  That’s right.

  And then what happens?

  It becomes more dense. Gravity, or something.

  Oh.

  Don’t worry too much. They say you can survive as long as you keep your eyes peeled, even if you’re captured by a fox.

  Isn’t it a tiger?

  What do you mean, a tiger?

  The saying is that you can survive as long as you keep your eyes peeled, even if you’re captured by a tiger.

  A tiger, a fox, it’s all the same, Mr. Yeo said, pushing a lamp with a tin hemisphere shade right up against the board. What I’m saying is, you need to keep your eyes peeled when what’s in front of you has teeth.

  —

  Do shadows have teeth?

  Of course they do – they’re attached to things that have teeth, aren’t they?

  And when they rise, they look a lot like the things themselves, since after all, these are shadows we’re talking about, he said, and in the meantime our dosirak box lunches arrived, but Mr. Yeo set his aside, saying he didn’t have an appetite. I ate my Young Master’s Dosirak Box Lunch by myself, and went out to buy some ice flakes with syrup, at the request of Mr. Yeo who said he just wanted some ice. Mr Yeo’s repair shop was situated in Building B, which was second among the five buildings, building A to the north being the first. Building B was also the most frequented of the five, though its air of dereliction was increasingly apparent, with one out of every eight shops having stood empty for months. On the ground floor, small appliances such as stoves, fans, and radios were sold, while the first to the third floors consisted of small shops barely managing to keep their heads above water, selling spare parts for various electronic devices, and household items such as brooms and mops. The fourth floor felt more isolated than the others; here, Mr Yeo’s repair shop shared the space with various storage facilities, jewelry appraisal shops, and radio labs, alongside shady-looking offices that claimed to be engaged in some form of research, though all that could be said for certain was that it was the kind which involved wiretapping.

  As I descended the scuffed, worn-edged stairs I heard someone call my name. I turned around and saw Mujae at the top of the stairs, wearing wrist guards and a work apron.

  You have a double crown, Eungyo. Two hair whorls, not one.

  I know.

  Have you seen them?

  No.

  You haven’t?

  I haven’t had the chance, I said, and was about to ask whether a whorl wasn’t something you had to make a special effort to see when Mujae chimed in with, That’s too bad. Your whorls, Eungyo, have interesting shapes.

  Whorls have shapes?

  They do, Mujae said, arriving at the bottom of the stairs. He stood in front of me and looked into my eyes. It seemed weird to look away so I returned his gaze, then immediately realised that was just as weird, but by that point it was too late to do anything else so I just kept looking into his eyes. He was smiling, wordlessly.

  Why are you smiling?

  I’m not smiling.

  Yes you are.

  Have you had lunch?

  No.

  I blushed, flustered at having had the wrong answer jerked out of me. Mujae suggested that we go and get something to eat, and I followed him down the stairs. Once we reached the ground floor we left the building and crossed the parking lot, a dim, shadowy place even at the height of summer, then turned into an alley which coiled around the electronics market. We passed shops selling cables and all kinds of tools, then a row that specialised in repairing clocks and watches. A man standing outside his shop looked up from his newspaper as we walked past, fixing us with an intent stare. It felt awkward to just trail after Mujae in silence, so I wracked my brain for something to say and landed on the topic of Saturday’s excursion.

  I heard there were forty-six.

  Forty-six what?

  In the mountain. Mr. Yeo said that when they did a head count before coming back down the mountain, there were definitely forty-six people.

  Really?

  That’s why they didn’t realise that anyone was missing; because they counted exactly as many people as they’d started out with.

  So two new people replaced the two who’d gone missing.

  Is that what it means?

  Do you think they were shadows?

  I’m not sure.

  They could have just miscounted, Mujae said, ducking in between two of the clock-and-watch shops. I thought we were turning down another alley, but when I followed him I saw it was a noodle restaurant. Once we’d sat down, Mujae took off his wrist guards, rolled them into a single ball and set it down on the table. A waiter brought us a kettle of steaming beef broth, and Mujae poured me a cup. The broth had a rich umami flavour. The cold noodles are really good, he said, and the beef rib soup. I said I’d have the beef rib soup, but when it came I wished I’d thought about the weather and ordered something cold. Mujae looked cool and comfortable as he ate his chilled noodles, whereas
I had to keep wiping my forehead to stop the sweat dripping into my soup. Every time Mujae lowered his head to take a bite of his noodles, I saw his whorl neatly curling at the crown of his head.

  About whorls, I began. If you asked ten people, How many of you have a whorl? how many do you think would raise their hand?

  Hmm, Mujae said. Maybe all but one or two.

  But probably all of them.

  Probably, yes.

  Then if you asked how many had taken a close look at it?

  I’m not sure.

  I always thought, Mujae, that a whorl was just a whorl – I never thought it could have a shape.

  You mean a whorl that’s a whorl, but not really a whorl?

  What do you mean?

  Try saying ‘whorl’.

  Whorl.

  Whorl.

  Whorl.

  Whorl.

  It’s strange.

  Whorl.

  The more times I say the word ‘whorl’, the more it seems like this whorl isn’t the whorl we were talking about.

  Yes, it seems that way, doesn’t it? Whorl.

  Whorl.

  The thing about whorls, Mujae began, is that each one is unique. I read it in a book once that each person’s whorl is a different shape.

  Really?

  We find it convenient to lump them all together as whorls, but from the whorl’s point of view we’re doing them quite a violence.

  From the whorl’s point of view?

  A whorl might think, Hang on a minute, that guy called “Whorl” looks nothing like me! So that’s why the more you say the word, the stranger it feels, because the truth comes out.

  You think so?

  Whorl.

  Whorl.

  Whorl.

  It’s confusing.

  It is, isn’t it?

  Whorl, whorl, I repeated to myself, while absent-mindedly examining a sliver of spring onion that had stuck to a corner of the table. What is a whorl, if it’s a whorl that’s a whorl but not really a whorl? This riddle had me more than a little puzzled. Mujae turned back to his noodles and cut the boiled egg in half with his chopsticks.

  Do you like beef rib soup, Eungyo?

  Yes, I do.

  I prefer cold noodles myself.

  Oh yes?

  What other things do you like?

  Well, this and that.

  This and that what?

  Just this and that.

  I like people with straight collarbones.

  You do, do you?

  Yes, I do.

  You like collarbones?

  I like you, Eungyo.

  But my collarbones aren’t straight at all.

  Yes, but with you it doesn’t matter.

  Is that so?

  Want some egg?

  Sure.

  Mujae transferred one of the egg halves to my bowl, and popped the other half in his mouth. There was a mirror hanging on the far wall of the restaurant. I glanced at it and saw that my face was bright red. Mujae asked me why I was sweating so much. The soup’s so hot, I said, and pressed a napkin to my sweaty forehead.

  —

  Mr. Yeo mixed the sweet red beans into his shaved ice.

  Do you like red beans, Eungyo?

  Not really, I said. They’re too sweet.

  They’re not that sweet, Mr. Yeo countered, then paused to eat a spoonful of the mixture. I wasn’t a big fan of red beans either, when I was young. But now that I’m getting on in years I find myself craving it more and more – that, how can I put it, that subtle sweetness, that almost bitter bite they have. In the summer when it’s really humid, just before the rains break, I dream of shaved ice with red beans, then in the winter when the cold gets into my bones, my mind turns to thick red bean porridge instead, with sticky rice on the side. Since we’re on the subject, let me tell you about a friend of mine who had a real thing for red beans. He had a little factory that made electronics parts. He’d always regretted his lack of an education, so he sent his kids to the States, with his wife to look after them, and worked to support them. It must’ve cost him a great deal, to get them out there in the first place, and then the private school fees on top of that. And that’s without taking the exchange rate into account. Your money goes ten times as far here than it does over there, and there was just no way he could earn enough to make up the difference. Still, he seemed to be giving it his best shot – doing odd jobs on the side, and scrimping wherever he could. He didn’t even own a car, when he was, after all, a plant manager. Every time I saw him I asked him what the hell he was thinking living half way around the world from his family, but he always laughed it off. He only visited them once a year, around Seollal or Chuseok, or twice a year at a push. The flights weren’t exactly cheap, you know. Mr. Yeo broke off for a while, and crunched a few mouthfuls of ice flakes before resuming his story

  One day, a little after Seollal, I was here in the workshop. A tube had been brought in a few days earlier, and I was wrestling with it till that hour because the problem wasn’t that simple. Anyway, my friend pokes his head around the door, checking to see if I’m still here, and when he sees I am he comes right in. He’d brought us each a bowl of red bean porridge, though I can’t think where would’ve been selling them at that time of night. Let’s eat, he said, so we did. I asked him if he’d spent Seollal with his family and he said yes he had. Everything’s so big over there, he told me, the land itself is big and so are the houses they build on it, even my kids are big now, so big that they’re not really kids any more. Jenny, my eldest, is fifteen; her friends came over to the house while I was there and I said, Hi, nice to meet you, and Jenny blushed and whisked them straight up to her room. Later, once her friends had all left, she asked him to please never talk to them again. Your English sounds weird, it’s embarrassing, she said. My friend was taken aback at first, but then he burst out laughing. Later, though, he found he couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said. So he sat her down and gave her a good scolding, telling her she shouldn’t treat her dad that way when he led such a difficult life. And this is what she said to him: You’re the one who chose this life, not me, so there’s no point acting the victim. You’ve no right to lecture me like this, you call yourself my dad but that’s bullshit, you’re barely ever here.

  She said all that in English? I asked, and my friend just nodded like an idiot.

  And you understood it all?

  Well, he said, I got the gist.

  I was really angry, genuinely quite upset, but I diddn’t want to let on so I just kept stuffing myself with the porridge. After a while I said, so, is that what you came to tell me? and my friend rubbed his face as though he was tired. No, that’s not it, he said, it’s just that lately, well, my shadow’s been rising. He said that each night when he turned the lights off, his shadow would rise to the window. I live on the thirteenth floor, he said, but it still keeps rising.

  At that, Mr. Yeo clamped his mouth tight shut. He sat there staring glumly into his bowl, then applied himself to the sweet snack as though hoping to stop his mouth with ice.

  —

  So when my shadow rose, Mr. Yeo said.

  By that time he had polished off the last of the shaved ice, which had melted into a pinkish puddle, fixed an amp that someone had brought in and sent it back to them.

  It rose? I repeated, startled.

  Mm, that’s right. Mr. Yeo glanced over at me, nonchalant. My life hasn’t exactly been plain sailing, so it was inevitable really – no big deal. I was at my front door when it happened, just putting on my shoes. I thought to myself, this is what you’ve been dreading, now it’s finally happened, and I thought of my friend, the one I told you about, Eungyo. As I watched the shadow rise, it occurred to me that whoever made up the saying about your hair standing on end must have witnessed something like thi
s. There was nothing I could do – I mean, it was a shadow. Once it had risen I could feel it pulling at me, and who knows what would’ve happened if I hadn’t stood my ground? But I was more concerned by my family’s odd reaction. The shadow didn’t go far, just roamed around the house, and I wasn’t sure whether my family genuinely couldn’t see it, or whether they were simply pretending. This shadow would sit among us at meal times, you see. And my wife and kids never batted an eyelid, but at the same time they managed to avoid sitting near it, or touching it in any way. Whenever they passed each other one of the side dishes or a second helping of rice their arms never went too close to my shadow, and they even angled their heads slightly to the side so they could see each other round the shadow.

  But shadows are visible, aren’t they?

  Of course they are. They were just pretending not to see what was clearly there, even when I pointed right at it and said, My shadow, that’s my shadow. Like this, Mr. Yeo said, and put his left thumb and forefinger together, as though to pinch the air. They’d just frown a little and glare as if they couldn’t stand the sight of me. In a situation like that, wouldn’t it be natural for me to think that they didn’t care about me, that as far as they were concerned, I could follow my shadow and good riddance too? So then I started thinking, well, damn it, what’s stopping me?

  So you followed it?

  Yes, but it wasn’t easy. Because you’ve got your voice following too.

  Your voice?

  That’s right, whispering in your ear the whole time: you mustn’t, you mustn’t. So anyway, I ended up turning back before I’d even gone ten miles. It was pathetic. I mean, what kind of idiot can’t even follow their own shadow? I called myself all kinds of names. That night, the moon was so full and bright you could see its craters.

  Mr. Yeo heaved a long sigh. I pictured him trudging wearily home with his shadow tacking along in his wake and the moon hanging bright in the night sky, its craters clearly defined.