I’d come home to her curled up on the couch, her eyes lighting up when I walked through the door. She’d beg me to join her in watching whatever new K-drama she was binging. I could never resist her; I was eager to be near her after long and difficult days.
Finally, I was able to relax with my little rabbit.
Other nights, she was reading in bed—almost always waiting up for me or at least trying to—and I got a dopamine rush just from climbing under the sheets with her.
Just from listening about her day as she told me about the mischievous boy who made paper airplanes in her class or complained about some new curriculum change at the school.
Simple things. But it’s often the simple things that bring the greatest pleasure in life.
A lesson I’ve quickly learned in her absence.
Those simple pleasures are gone and only cold darkness fills the space where she once existed.
I toe out of my boots and shrug off my leather jacket, moving through the dark apartment by memory more than sight. I go straight into the kitchen for the cabinet where the liquor is kept.
The smell of burned flesh still clings to me. Joo-wan’s screams echo in my ears, and the faces of everyone in the chamber appear behind closed lids when I blink.
But I don’t regret any of it. I only crave more; I only want more destruction as I come home to the dark reminder why I feel this way.
I’ve never been a drinker. It’s always been an indulgence weak men seek.
Tonight is yet another exception as I pour myself some soju and swallow it down whole. Any discipline is on hold as I fill the glass again and then drinkthat too.
Two glasses turns into three and four. Four into the whole bottle.
I stand in the dark, not even bothering with the light, tipping my head back and guzzling down the soju bottle ’til the very last drop.
Then I go for another.
The late hour passes this way—with me drinking myself belligerent until the dark shadows in the room start to morph into other shapes.
I blink blearily and find myself in the hanok again. I’m peeking out of the wardrobe as a man in black grips a blade in one hand and moves toward my mother.
Tears stream down her face as she screams and presses her hands together in a prayer motion.
Begging him. Pleading for our lives.
But with a quick flick of his wrist, her throat is sliced open and she’s drawing her last breaths.
The blood forms in thick puddles. More blood than I’ve ever seen in my life, even to this day. It’s a syrupy pool of crimson that spreads across the floor.
When I rush forward to intervene, my mother’s gone. The woman lying in her place is Monroe, belly round and swollen and cut open.
There’s no life to be found in her beautiful brown eyes.
She’s dead.
Killed by the man standing over her. His mask conceals his face, the texture of it like the shell he names himself after.
He remains silent as I gape in horror at what he’s done. Once again he’s taken my loved one from me.
I lurch forward to attack only to come to my senses and realize it’s a hallucination. The hanok walls vanish for my cold apartment, and I’m suddenly drunkenly staggering down the hallway.
The blood is gone and so is Black Shell. Monroe’s deadbody was nothing more than a disturbing image stuck in my head.
I stumble my way into the bathroom so fucking drunk I can’t walk straight. Twisting on the faucet, I splash cold water onto my face to shock myself back to sobriety.
But when I straighten up and look into the mirror,he’slooking back at me.
