The Prosecutor’s Office’s Proposal Chapter 2

My father added some nagging at the end.

“Hey, Lee Chaeha. I might call him Woosung, but you have to call him President. Anyway, go inside and get some sleep. I’m going to watch a little TV on the sofa and then go to sleep.”

“You said I shouldn’t sleep on the sofa…. Okay. Good night.”

I stood up and gave my father a light hug. The scent of the summer breeze clung thickly to my father, who was wearing long sleeves. Along with it, a faint scent of sweat wafted over. Seeing that he had come home so late, it seemed he had spent a hot and exhausting time helping his intoxicated friend and seeing him all the way to his palace-like apartment. Breathing in the scent of sweat, I squeezed the bill in my hand tightly before letting it go.

Once I entered my room, I fell asleep as soon as I lay down. Of course, as if I had a premonition of the fate to come, I could not fall as deeply asleep as I had on the sofa.

I suffered through strange dreams all night. When a large hand finally shook my shoulder to wake me, the last dawn light, which I would not be able to forget for a long time, illuminated my father and the old wallpaper behind him. What if I had just never opened my eyes that day?

Like my mother did, if I had turned one night’s sleep into eternity. I wouldn’t have had to go through the incident that shook my life to its core.

Between my sleep-heavy eyelashes, my father’s face was blurry. His rough stubble brushed against my cheek, and he even gave me a kiss—something he hadn’t done in a while—and patted me as I struggled to wake up, which was unusual for that day.

“Lee Chaeha, wake up. You need to eat breakfast.”

“What time is it?”

My voice felt scratchy, as if sand grains were rolling around in it.

“6:30.”

Only after hearing the time did I realize why it was harder to wake up than usual.

“Dad, 7 o’clock was already early enough for breakfast. I’m the only one in my class who eats at this time.”

“The President has a meeting early today, so I can’t help it. Still, I have to make you breakfast. If Mom saw you cooking your own breakfast and going to school, she’d throw a lightning bolt down from the sky.”

“You’re talking about Mom again. Stop it.”

Complaining, I sat up and stuck my legs out from under the blanket. I turned off the old electric fan that was rattling as it spun and left the room.

We ate breakfast together, and I saw my father off to work. My father’s jacket had smooth, unpatterned gold buttons on it. I suppose he thought he had chosen a high-quality suit, but the design looked terribly tacky.

“Use the bonus the President gave you yesterday to buy yourself some decent clothes.”

“Is that so? I think it looks cool.”

“The buttons are tacky. They’re too shiny.”

“Our son’s aesthetic sense is terrible. You don’t even know that the buttons are the highlight. Oh my, these clothes are hot. I need to get to the car quickly and blast the air conditioning. Well, I’m off to work now.”

“Have a safe trip.”

I stood up from the dining chair because I wanted to see him off to the front door. Thinking about it now, it was a truly good thing I did. Because I got to see my father’s face one more time.

I gave him a casual farewell once more as he put on his shoes.

“Come back safe.”

“Yeah. Study hard today, too.”

“Don’t worry.”

After I finished seeing him off, I did the dishes and got ready for school.

However, because I had woken up so early, I still had a mountain of time left. Even though I watched an hour of TV and left the house, I arrived at school in first place. After changing into my indoor shoes, I looked up unintentionally and the empty playground caught my eye.

The large cloud shadow that had been covering my face lifted, and the July sun that poked its head out from behind it flashed like the gold buttons on my father’s suit. A dry breeze swept through the hot sunlight. Watching the fine dust remaining in the air, I felt lonely, as if I were the only person left on the round Earth.

It was less than half a day later that the strange event occurred.

Around the end of the third period, an unexpected person visited the classroom. Recognizing the face of the unfamiliar visitor, I felt a shock as if the skin around my spine were tightening. It was my aunt by marriage, whom I hadn’t met even once since my mother passed away. A relative visiting during class time meant that some misfortune had occurred at home.

At the appearance of an adult who was not a teacher, the eyes of the students in the class all turned to the front door of the classroom at the same time, and my homeroom teacher left the podium with a surprised look. The complexion of the teacher as she talked to my aunt gradually grew darker. She even covered her lips with both hands for a moment as if she were horrified.

I tried to shake off the familiar energy of misfortune that was stickily brushing down my spine, but the black leech that wanted to bite down hard on my young skin and fill its belly did not fall off easily.

“Chaeha, pack your bag and come out.”

Eventually, the teacher’s shadowed eyes turned to look at me and called my name. As I packed my bag in silence, I imagined all sorts of things in that short time.

Did my father collapse from a heart attack? Was he hit by a car? Did he get cancer like my mother? Could he possibly be dead?

Please, I just want him to be alive.

Carrying the heavy gazes of my classmates on my back, I stepped out and faced my aunt close up; her face was cold, and my fingertips were even colder than ice. The heat of the blood flowing in my veins cooled as quickly as a desert night.

Although ominous thoughts and premonitions felt like they would soon crush me, I feigned composure until I got into my aunt’s car and arrived at our destination. My aunt didn’t tell me anything at all.

‘As long as it’s not a hospital. Just not a hospital….’

I couldn’t ask first for fear that I would hear that my father was dead, so I sat quietly with my seatbelt fastened and looked ahead. Until the car arrived at the police station.

My wish that it wouldn’t be a hospital came true, but the dazed feeling didn’t go away. I went into a small room inside the police station and sat down in front of a burly detective.

“Lee Chaeha, you are Mr. Lee Gilyoung’s son, right? A 6th grader at Danhyeon Elementary School?”

“Yes, that’s right. Dad… is something wrong?”

Even though I asked the question with difficulty, piercing through the fear that gripped my heart, the detective gave me no answer. He unilaterally asked what time my father came home yesterday, what he said when he came in, if there was anything strange, and he took my cell phone and checked all the communications we had exchanged. I didn’t know much, but it took a quite a long time until I was released.

I sensed intuitively that something serious had happened to my father. Something very big.

He must have died in an accident.

Hot tears welled up in my eyes, which were filled with conviction.

While going to my uncle’s house, I barely managed to ask my aunt what had happened, but only a cold reply came back.

“I can’t say it with my own mouth.”

“Dad… he didn’t die, did he?”

I squeezed out all the remaining courage I had and barely moved my lips. Because after my mother died, death was not an abstract concept to me.

“It’s not like that, so don’t worry. Your father is fine. The problem is that he’s the only one who is fine.”

I didn’t know what had happened, but my aunt’s answer was a huge comfort. I knew that a strange incident must have occurred, but I believed that if my father wasn’t dead, we could overcome anything together.

The worst situation I could imagine was my father leaving me like my mother did and going to the eternal sky. Like a cloud beyond my reach, like a star.

Thirteen-year-old me did not know the fact that there were many other ways for a person to leave their child.

It was only after arriving at my uncle’s apartment in the afternoon and facing my uncle’s annoyed face that my body, which had been cold from tension the whole time, began to heat up. Now that the worst fear that my father might be dead had vanished, I began to feel intimidated by the gazes around me.

The remote control in my uncle’s hand flicked toward me.

“Lee Chaeha. Come over here and watch the news.”

I barely managed to detach the bag I had been wearing on my back like a turtle shell all day and took a seat at the edge of the spacious sofa where my uncle was sitting. On the TV, a person with a coat covering their head was sitting in front of a steel desk, surrounded by police and reporters.

Underneath the grass-green jacket that the detective had put on him, cheap gold buttons glittered slightly. They looked similar to my father’s clothes, which I had criticized for being tacky.

The reporter’s voice rang out.