Crime Fiction

It’s a good turn out, Eunkyung tells Jongwoo. It’s the night of his book launch, and the shop is filling up, they’re making sales, and Jongwoo can even believe that maybe one in three of these people are here because they’re interested in his stories as opposed to being interested in his story.

His earlier stories had been published under a pseudonym, but when he’d started talks with Eunkyung, she’d encouraged him to put that aside. People who wouldn’t pick up a collection of crime fiction by an unknown might pick up a collection by that poor young man who was caught up in those residence murders four years back. That’s the story that sells – that gets him interviews and placements he wouldn’t get otherwise.

‘Once you have that,’ Eunkyung had told him, ‘your writing can speak for itself.’

Jongwoo hopes she’s right.

The early part of the evening drags. Tedious small talk with people in the business; awkward conversations with people who want to know what it was really like, that night at Eden Residence. Jongwoo gets through those as best he can. The saving grace is a conversation he has with an older gentleman who does accounts for the bookshop, and who turns out to be a real crime aficionado. Jongwoo regrets it when Eunkyung pulls him away to get ready for the speeches, and for his reading.

Jongwoo has just started the reading when he sees Moonjo standing at the back of the store. That familiar closed-off posture, the steady gaze. Jongwoo wants to tell himself that it’s only a man who looks like Moonjo, but he knows in his gut that’s not true.

Jongwoo stumbles over the sentence he’s reading; he has to take a moment to reorient himself on the page, and when he looks again, Moonjo is gone.

Jongwoo’s reading never quite regains its fluency, after that. It’s a shame, people will say later, that he was so nervous.

Nervous is a poor synonym for sick with fear.

When Jongwoo goes out for dinner with the publishing team afterwards, he drinks more than he means to. Thinks more than he’s meant to, too – zoning out of the conversation, distracted by the memory of Moonjo’s neck in his hands, by all the times he’d thought he’d seen Moonjo when he couldn’t have.

It’s a relief when it grows late and Eunkyung pushes him into a taxi. The driver tries to chat, but Jongwoo gives him clipped, one-word answers, and he gets the hint quickly. Jongwoo leans back to watch the city go past in silence.

The staff at the publishing house, the people who showed up for the launch, they all believe one thing about him – the first story Jongwoo ever sold – that he was only and purely a victim. Sometimes he believes it himself.

But when he sees Moonjo places – it’s that other story sitting underneath, the one Moonjo tried to tell him. It’s the monster in Jongwoo creeping out again.

Is it better to think that than to imagine maybe he sees the real thing?

---

Jongwoo lives in a real apartment these days. When he enters the foyer, he’s somehow not surprised to hear footsteps behind him; he turns on his foot, ready to react whether it’s a neighbour or a threat –

But not ready to react to Seo Moonjo standing there, the man who was both.

‘You’re dead,’ Jongwoo says stupidly. He still has the scar on his neck from when Jongwoo killed him.

Moonjo smiles at him, in that slightly condescending way.

‘I didn’t think you’d like me to approach you at the signing,’ he says. He’s carrying a copy of Jongwoo’s book, which he holds out toward Jongwoo, there in front of the elevators.

‘You don’t want me to sign it?’ Jongwoo says.

‘Naturally,’ Moonjo says. ‘I’m sure you can think of an appropriate inscription.’

Jongwoo thinks of all the days when all he wrote was die die die die over and over until his hands ached and grew cold. He doesn’t take the book from Moonjo.

‘Or we can take this upstairs,’ Moonjo says, unconcerned with Jongwoo’s rudeness. He tucks the book back under his arm, and leans forward and presses the call button on the elevator. It lights up around the edge, and Jongwoo wonders, can a dead man press a call button? He should have read more ghost stories.

Moonjo seems completely calm, waiting beside him. Jongwoo is still but it’s with a suppressed shaking. They’ll step into that elevator and Moonjo will slam his head against the walls. Or Jongwoo will slam Moonjo against the walls. Can you kill a dead man twice?

He asks the question out loud, staring at the elevator doors and not looking at Moonjo: ‘Can you kill a dead man twice?’

Moonjo inclines his head, his expression pleasant. ‘Only if you didn’t do it properly the first time.’

The elevator dings and the doors open; Moonjo indicates for Jongwoo to step in first. Which he does, feeling as if he might be about to step into hell. The doors will open again and he’ll be back in Eden, where he only returns in his dreams; he’ll step out and the door will disappear behind him, and he’ll be in that dingy corridor again, with the walls too thin and everyone behind the doors listening.

‘This was meant to be a good night,’ he says, when it’s him and Moonjo standing side by side in the lift.

‘Of course,’ Moonjo says. ‘That’s why I’m here. To celebrate.’

Slowly, Jongwoo turns his head to look at him. The scar on Moonjo’s neck is ugly, and he has made no attempt to cover it up. It’s a shame, on a guy like him.

Moonjo catches him looking and smiles; Jongwoo looks away. The elevator comes to a stop and when the door opens, it’s just the usual bland corridors of his apartment building. If Moonjo does kill him, it will show on the security cameras that he came in with Jongwoo. They’ll know who did it.

If Jongwoo kills Moonjo, on the other hand, who will know to look? Jongwoo has been so good, so careful, ever since he got out of the hospital.

He gets to his apartment, and he lets Moonjo in. It’s just a studio, but it’s infinitely nicer than where he and Moonjo lived together. The soundproofing isn’t perfect, but no-one complains if he takes a phone call; he never worries that anyone’s been in while he’s gone. He keeps it tidy – sterile, even. He can’t stand it otherwise.

‘I’m surprised,’ Moonjo says, as he takes in the space. Jongwoo ignores him and goes to the fridge to get a beer – not that he needs one, except in the sense that he’s not sure he can deal with this if he’s not actively drinking.

‘It’s a little soulless, don’t you think?’ Moonjo continues.

Jongwoo stops with the fridge door open, to stare at him.

‘Anyone could live in an apartment like this.’

He makes Jongwoo so angry.

‘Right,’ Jongwoo says, ‘because it takes a certain type of human to live in hell.’ He shuts the fridge door and he opens his beer, which he fully intends to drink without offering Moonjo anything.

Moonjo laughs. ‘I’m not back from the dead, babe. You just didn’t do as thorough a job as you thought you did.’

‘That’s rubbish,’ Jongwoo says. ‘There was an investigation and everything.’

‘Are you sure the cops were investigating what you thought they were investigating?’

Jongwoo is so angry. The feeling bubbles up inside him, and usually when he feels this way he tries to get it out at the keyboard, but that’s not an option right now. Moonjo is.

‘What are you doing here?’ Jongwoo says. His voice is loud enough that maybe he will be overheard. The neighbours can put that on their witness statement. ‘You’re not here to celebrate –’

‘Don’t you want to know,’ Moonjo says, ‘what I thought?’ He lifts Jongwoo’s book up.

And Jongwoo’s anger goes still. He does want to know. He wants to know enough that he turns back to the fridge and he takes a beer to offer Moonjo as an apology – a way to keep him here after all. He goes to sit in the chair by his desk, and lets Moonjo takes the comfy seat. Jongwoo realises that he’s nervous, more than he was at the book launch, more than he’s ever been, waiting for rejection emails.

‘When did you read it?’ Jongwoo says. It’s strange how quiet his voice is, when he was so angry before.

‘I bought it the day it came out,’ Moonjo says. ‘Of course, some of them I’ve already read, in the magazines. The Terrarium. The Light at the End of a Long Path When You’re Already Tired – I noticed you didn’t include that one here. Was there a reason for that?’

‘It was too much,’ Jongwoo says, and he crosses his hand over his face. That was one of the ones he’d published under a pseudonym. ‘Too much torture porn, they said. It’s not a good look when everyone knows …’ He takes a drink. What people know is that he killed a serial killer in self defence.

And yet here that serial killer is before him.

‘It’s a shame,’ Moonjo says. ‘You don’t want to hide away from the visceral reality of what a crime is. I thought that was a particularly illuminating story.’

Jongwoo flushes. Maybe it’s only that Moonjo’s words make him wish he’d fought harder. He’d let himself be convinced that The Light at the End of a Long Path was little more than ephemera. But none of his stories were ephemeral, when he was writing them.

‘And what did you think of the new stories?’ Jongwoo asks. ‘What about And the Night Has Teeth?’ He almost hadn’t offered the publishers that one.

Moonjo’s mouth curves up slightly. ‘It was a bit on the nose, I thought.’

‘On the nose?’

‘I mean really,’ Moonjo says, leaning forward – Jongwoo leans unconsciously back toward him – ‘you could make it a bit less obvious. It’s a sin for fiction to be too autobiographical, don’t you think?’

‘What?’ It hadn’t occurred to Jongwoo that the story was. And the Night Has Teeth was a fairly typical it turns out the protagonist was the culprit all along story, drawing more on western vampire stories than anything from his own life – but no, that wasn’t true.

‘It’s normal,’ Jongwoo says, ‘to use themes from your own life …’

‘And what’s the theme of your life?’ When Moonjo lifts a hand, Jongwoo notices the ring he’s wearing – a ring with a human tooth in it. Like the charm bracelet he made for Jongwoo.

Jongwoo still wears the bracelet when he works.

Jongwoo doesn’t answer Moonjo’s question, and Moonjo leans back again.

‘I liked The Phone Charger better,’ Moonjo says. ‘There’s something so fascinating about human pettiness.’

Eunkyung had liked The Phone Charger better too. It was more realist than some of his other fiction, and had been harder to write as a result. But everyone could relate to wanting to get your own back on a shitty workmate.

‘It’s strange though,’ Jongwoo says, ‘why do you think And the Night Has Teeth is autobiographical, but that one isn’t?’

‘Ah,’ Moonjo says, ‘perhaps that’s just my own sensitivity. The Phone Charger isn’t about me.’

Jongwoo wants to argue with him, but Moonjo is right. And the Night Has Teeth is about Moonjo. It’s about Jongwoo’s desire to be free of him; his wish that when he had killed Moonjo, that had been the end of it. His wish that Moonjo could ultimately be irrelevant in his life.

Moonjo puts his beer can on the ground. The can is a physical object. Moonjo can interact with it; he’s not just a figment of Jongwoo’s imagination. Unless he is.

‘Tell me,’ Moonjo says, ‘is it as satisfying to write those things as to do them?’

Jongwoo meets his eyes. ‘You know it isn’t.’

‘Then why did you stop?’

Jongwoo feels a chill go over him. He knows, in that moment, that this Moonjo is not a hallucination; is not something his mind has made up because it can’t stand to be too happy about anything damn thing.

‘What makes you think,’ Jongwoo says, ‘that I did?’

They sit there for a moment, staring at each other. It’s unusual for Jongwoo to look so directly at someone for so long, but it’s Moonjo who breaks the moment first – he smiles. It’s that smile that haunts Jongwoo’s dreams.

‘I guess I underestimated you, babe.’

Jongwoo lifts his eyebrows, as if to say yeah, and then he lifts his drink and drains it. ‘Do you want another?’ he asks, already heading to the fridge.

‘Thanks,’ Moonjo says. ‘I feel like we’ve got a lot to catch up on.’

And he’s right. They do.