“What are you doing?”

Tao stiffened to attention at the accusatory voice.  “I was just...working on...something...”

Mae Baksanim, the Department Chair of the School of Fine Arts leaned past Tao, squinting at the secretary’s screen.  “That something doesn’t look like university work.”  

“Well, since it’s the last day before summer break, and everything has been turned in, and the students have all gone home, I thought...”

“Yah, Huang Zitao.”  Baksanim walked around the chair to perch on his subordinate’s desk, carelessly causing a pile of papers to slide.  “Listen to me very carefully.  You...are not paid to think, you’re paid to do a job.  And you’re especially not paid to do personal work on university equipment.”

“I’m sorry,” Tao muttered, standing to make a small bow.  Seemingly appeased, his boss rose, scattering even more carefully organized papers.  “Baksanim?”

“Why?”  The other man stopped, but didn’t turn around.

“Well…” Tao started nervously, “ Since I finished all of my work, and I still have three hours left...what should I do?”

“Heol,” Baksanim scoffed, turning to look begrudgingly up at the taller man.  “Bragging that you have no work?”  He nodded in consideration.  “Alright.  Then you can catalog and hang the new hanbok donated to the costume shop from KBS.”

“Yes,” Tao answered quietly with another small bow.  

With one last derisive glance, his boss stalked off, but then paused, looked over his shoulder.  “Ah, and make sure that you don’t go home until it’s done.”

“Baksanim!” Tao protested, “That donation contains at least a hundred pieces!  It usually takes the costume manager a whole day to do that many!”

“Ah, is that so?  Well, then...I guess you had better get started.”

***

Tao stumbled down the steps to his banjiha, almost drunk with tiredness as the grey pre-dawn light started to seep through the ground floor window.  Groaning with relief, he crawled into his bed, collapsing onto the soft yo and pulling the fluffy ibul over his head, too tired to even wash up.  Almost weeping with joy, joints creaking one by one as his body relaxed, he slowly and studiously became one with the mattress.  Sighing with relief, he started to drift, his mind a perfect haze of candy pink cotton.

His phone rang.

Yanked back to consciousness--without even looking at the screen--he swiped in its general direction, and then dropped the phone on his ear.  “Hello?”  his voice was thick, raspy, but he was too tired to care.

“Huang Zitaosshi?”

“Yes, this is Huang Zitao.”

“Yes, I’m looking to get my distributor cap replaced.”  A man’s voice, melodious, but clipped.

“Please let me check my schedule, Beloved Customer.”  Unmoving, Tao allowed himself a twenty second catnap.  Jerking himself back from the brink, he said, “Ah, yes, I’m free later this afternoon.”

“I called you now, because I need it done, now.  If it could wait until this afternoon, then I would have gone to a shop,” he snapped.

Tao sighed. “Do you have the part?”

“No, I didn’t know what to buy.”

“Then, how do you know that it’s the distributor cap?”

“Naver.”

A stifled yawn.  “Beloved Customer, the auto stores don’t open for another three hours.”

“Can’t you do something?”

Like what?  Build a distributor cap? Tao thought.  “What is your address?”  

The man gave it.  

“Ajusshi, you live on the other side of town.  Even if I were to purchase the cap as soon as the store opened, and then come directly to you, it would still take at least four hours.”

“Well, if that’s the best you can do,” he grumbled.

“That’s the best that anyone could do,” Tao said, the exasperation starting to wear through his customer service voice.

“Fine,” the ajusshi growled.  “How much?”

“100 thousand won for labour, plus the cost for parts.”

The man sputtered.  “100 thousand won?  That’s ridiculous!  At Park’s Bodyshop, it’s only 80 thousand!”  

“Do his mechanics make house calls?”

“Well, no, but--”

“100 thousand won sir, transferred into my account, as soon as I arrive.”

“This is outrageous! I have never--”

“Please have auspicious luck in finding anothis mechanic, Beloved Customer,” Tao sing-songed, lifting the phone from his ear.    

“Wait!  Fine!  I’ll pay it!”  

“Thank you, Ajusshi.  To be respectful of your time, I will start work as soon as you have transferred the money, after my arrival.”

“I’ll give you your money,” the caller groused bitterly.  “Have you been lied to all your life?  Do you think that I”m going to stiff you?”

Fighting a jaw-cracking yawn, Tao said, “No, Beloved Customer.  I wouldn’t dream of such a thing.”

***

“A warm sense of satisfaction blooms as I carefully slip the second body into the water, crouching as I watch the brothers slowly bob away into the black vastness of the bay.  Smiling, I think back to the time the three of us spent together.  I wish that we could have had longer, but what to do?  I have to get back to my wife.  It was hard enough as it was, slipping out of her arms, out of her bed in the soft black dark, night after night, to go play. 

Standing, I slip hand into pocket, playfully toss my trophies, the dull click-clack of the smooth dry bones comforting as lullabies.  She likes lullabies.  With her eyes shining up at me in the dark, looking only at me as I sing, I feel...transcendent.  Like I’m full of light; like I’m made of it.  Having her trust me, lean on me, makes me feel as if I’ve found a safe, quiet space in this dirty world.  Like I’ve finally found what I’m meant to be.  

The soothing sound of crickets in the summer night surrounds me, and I can’t help but chuckle.  I had been hunting for these two for so long...  When I finally, finally caught them, it was like...a gift.  Watching the bodies gradually grow increasingly indistinct as the sight of them is swallowed by the darkness, I think about life’s little coincidences.  Like how, when I finally found them, I realized that they were the same two men that had harassed Aeri and Mina, all those months ago, at the Bluebeard Festival.  I will admit, that did give me a little extra...spark.  I discovered another side of myself this time.

Silently, I creep a little further out onto the jutting shoreline, so that I can watch them just a little bit longer.  I had so much fun, and I’m loath to see the end of it.  Is this a kind of post-concert depression?   I will admit, I may have been a bit rougher than usual, but the thought of them putting their hands on my wife made me lose control--just a little.  I don’t usually keep them for days, but, after the first night, I just wasn’t ready to let go.  

And so, I kept them in the back, underground, in a corner, in the dark.  And time after time, night after night, I visited.   You’d be amazed by how little--and how much--it takes to kill a person.  Humans can endure...well, so many nasty little things.  This time, I tried some new games.  Did you know how beautiful human phalanges can be?  I still remember the names from high school anatomy.  Distals, intermediates, proximals, not to mention metacarpals, and carpals.  They’re all so delicate and lovely.  But for all of their elegance, taking them apart, piece by piece, requires strength--and precision--if you want to keep each one intact, so that they can see the beauty that you’ve managed to mine from their filthy piles of rotting meat.  It’s a pity that I couldn’t have kept them, but I have enough.  What I took--what I always take… It is enough.  

The salty smell of the river, the soft lapping of the gentle waves fill me with a blue melancholy.  I have everything that I’ve ever wanted, so what’s wrong with me?  Why do I feel so uneasy?  I feel as if I’m standing on the precipice of a vast, invisible abyss, with a monstrous presence that has suddenly turned its full attention on me, and watches, from just outside of my skin.

Shivering, I shake off the feeling.  It’s time to go.  I shouldn’t overstay my welcome.  “I hope you burn!” I call softly--not loud enough to be heard by any farther than a few feet.  A salute and a bow, and I’m climbing back up the rip rap, and heading to my car.

When I arrive home, there is…”

Tao tapped his thumb against his laptop.  There is...what?  With a sigh, he looked out of his one window, watching people’s shoes as they bustled by, imagining their lives--based on their shoes--curious as to who was alone like him, and who was going home to a wife, to a sibling, to a family.  Not that he had any experience of what it felt like to go home to a family.  Raised in an orphanage, it was only because of his scholastic excellence--especially in Mandarin and Korean--that he was able to obtain a full ride to Sungkyunkwan University to major in Korean literature for his undergrad and master’s programs.  He hadn’t particularly wanted a doctorate--preferring to start work right away, but unfortunately for him, it turned out that the working world was often as much about who you knew as what you could do, and as an expatriate, he had no connections.  After months of fruitlessly searching for any job even tangentially related to his field, Tao had to slink back to the university, tail between his legs, to accept a job as the Fine Arts Department’s secretary.  His plan was to work there just until he found something lucrative enough to support him in his field.

He had been there for 6 years.  

The university paid a pittance, and so he supplemented his meager income by moonlighting as an itinerant car mechanic--a skill taught to him by the Catholic priest who oversaw the orphanage, and loved to tinker on old cars in his limited spare time.  Still, Tao continued in any spare time that he could find, to write.  He was able to find freelance work as an editor here and there, but so far, no one was taking any of his original work, and none of the editing jobs were permanent.  Yet, he persisted, for what else could he do?  Give up?  Resign himself to living underground for the rest of his life, eating ramen and day old samgak kimbap, and working in a dead-end job for a callous boss?  Before he did that, he’d throw himself into the Han.  

So, he scrimped, and he saved, and he dreamt of a better life, but most importantly, he wrote. He wrote constantly--on the subway, on the bus, during meals, during his downtime at the office.   In Baksanim’s defense, this wasn’t the first or second time that Tao had been caught writing while on the job, though he did always make sure to finish his work--as well as ask his colleagues if there was anything with which he could assist them--before indulging.  

Tao was particularly hopeful about a contest that he had recently entered.  Moonji Publishing was accepting short story entries, and the winner would win a book contract, as well as a ten million won prize--separate from the contract advance.  A small nibble on his toe brought his attention to a sleek, fat rat who sat--nose twitching--by his ankle.  “Not now, Hyun, I’m trying to concentrate.”

Hyun squeaked.  

He looked at the time, and sighed.  “No, you’re right, I’m sorry, it is time for your dinner.”  Shuffling to the minifridge, he pulled out the container of dry dog food, and poured it into several bowls.  Within moments, no fewer than 5 rats, equally as fat as Hyun, poured out of cracks and slivers in the wall, to come feast.  When Tao had first moved into the banjiha, he had been terrified of the rats, but soon came to realize that traps didn’t work, his landlord wouldn’t allow cats, and he didn’t have the heart for poison.  The only choice left was to tame the rodents, and though he would prefer to live a rat-free existence, he had to admit that...occasionally--when they weren’t chewing on things, or leaving small poops for him to step on in the night--they were kind of cute.

Climbing back into his bed, he once more stared at the words on the page.  The day before fall semester started found him just before the of his story, but he was having difficulty envisioning the rest.  The deadline for the contest loomed two weeks away, and Tao was growing nervous, especially considering that he knew that he wouldn’t have much free time as soon as school started.  He idly fiddled with the handle of his teacup.  

“When I arrive home, there is an unfamiliar car in my carport, and I sit still for a moment, before turning off the rental, and looking up through the windshield to see the lights on in my house.  Tsks.  Bad form, Mr. Smee. Easing from the car, I silently close the door.  There’s no sound as I creep up the stairs. 

I am a very quiet monster...”

Gazing over his computer, Tao pensively stared into space.  

And then what?