Almond(10)

“Happy birthday,” Granny said. “Thank you for being my son,” Mom added, squeezing my hand. Happy birthday. Thank you for being my son. Somewhat clichéd. But there are days when you are supposed to say those things.

We stood up to leave without deciding where to go next. While Granny and Mom were paying, I spotted a plum-flavored candy in a basket on the counter. It was actually an empty candy wrapper someone had left there. A waiter saw me fidgeting with it, smiled, and told me to wait and he would get some more.

Granny and Mom went outside first. The snow was still falling hard, and Mom looked so happy, jumping up and down, trying to catch snowflakes. Granny shook with laughter at the sight of her daughter and turned, beaming, to look at me from the other side of the window. The waiter came back with a large, new candy bag. He tore the seal and out came the candy, filling up the basket like tiny presents.

“I can take this many, right? It’s Christmas Eve,” I asked, grabbing two fistfuls of candy. The waiter hesitated a little but nodded with a smile.

Outside the window, Mom and Granny were still all smiles. Parading by the two was the long procession of a mixed choir. They wore red Santa hats and red capes and were singing carols. Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel. Born is the King of Israel. I stuck my hands in my pockets and felt the prickly edges of the candy wrappers as I walked to the exit.

Just then, several people shouted at once. The singing stopped. The shouts turned into screams. The choir parade was in chaos. People covered their mouths and hurried away.

Out the window, a man was swinging something against the sky. It was a man in a suit that we had seen lurking about before we entered the restaurant. In sharp contrast to his outfit, he held a knife in one hand and a hammer in the other. He wielded both with such force as if he meant to stab every snowflake falling down on him. I saw him approaching the choir as some people hastily took out their cell phones.

The man turned, and his eyes fell on Granny and Mom. He changed course. Granny tried to pull Mom away. But at the next moment, something unbelievable happened before my eyes. He swung his hammer down on Mom’s head. One, two, three, four times.

Mom keeled over, blood spraying across the ground. I pushed the glass door to get outside, but Granny screamed and blocked it with her body. The man dropped the hammer and sliced the air with the knife in his other hand. I pounded on the glass door, but Granny shook her head, barricading it with all her might. She said something to me again and again, half weeping. The man bore down on Granny. She wheeled around to face him and roared. But just that once. Her big back covered my sight. Blood splattered over the glass door. Red. More red. All I could do was watch the glass door turn redder and redder. No one stepped in during that whole time. I saw a couple of riot police, all frozen. Everyone just stood there and watched, as if the man and Mom and Granny were putting on a play. Everyone was the audience. Including me.





18


None of the victims had any relationship to the man. He was later discovered to be a very typical working-class citizen living an ordinary life. He had graduated from a four-year college and worked in the sales department of a small business for fourteen years before he was suddenly laid off due to the recession. He had opened a fried chicken diner with his severance pay but had to close it in less than two years. In the meantime, he fell into debt, and his family left him. He shut himself in his house afterward, for three and a half long years. He never left his semi-basement room aside from grocery shopping at a nearby supermarket and visiting the public library every so often.

Most of the books he checked out from the library were introductory manuals about martial arts, self-defense, and wielding a knife. But the books found in his house that he owned were mostly self-help books about rules for success and positive habits. On his shabby desk was a will he wrote in large, crude letters as if he didn’t want anyone to miss it.


If I see anyone smiling today, I will take them with me.



His journal contained further traces of his hatred of the world. Many sections implied that he felt an urge to kill whenever he saw people who smiled in this miserable world. As details of his life and background rose to the surface, the public’s interest shifted from the crime itself to a sociological analysis of what inevitably drove him to do what he did. Many middle-aged men found his life no different from their own and despaired. The public grew more sympathetic toward the man and began focusing on the realities of Korean society, which had allowed this to happen. No one seemed to care about the victims he had killed.

The incident made the headlines for a while, with titles like “Who Made Him a Murderer?” or “Korea: Where a Smile Will Kill You.” Before long, as quickly as foam dissolves, even those subjects were no longer talked about. It took only ten days.

Mom was the only survivor. But they said her brain was in a deep sleep with very little chance of waking, and that even if it did, she would not be the person I knew. Soon after, the victims’ families held a joint funeral. Everyone was crying except for me. They all wore the expressions you’d expect, standing before your brutally murdered family members.

A female police officer stopped by the funeral, and as she bowed to the bereaved, she burst into tears and couldn’t stop. Later I saw her at the end of a hallway being scolded by an elderly male police officer. You’ll witness this kind of thing every so often, so train yourself to be numb. Just then, his eyes met mine. He stopped talking. I just bowed at him as if nothing had happened and walked past to the restroom.