Missing
by Anton Hur
Gunnie went missing in Chile. It is not the kind of place a young Korean man goes missing in. Jungmin, one of his best friends at university, has been on the phone for three days. The Korean consulate, the authorities at the University of Santiago and anyone else he could get on the phone insist he left on his own, emptying the room at his homestead in the middle of the semester, and there is not enough cause to file a report.
The Gunnie Jungmin knows is not someone who would willfully make himself disappear. To Jungmin, Gunnie is a soft-spoken Spanish major who shows little emotion beyond mild pleasantness. Of course, Gunnie may have changed. When they returned to their junior year of college after their two years of military conscription, they were too busy being returning students to see much of each other. Gunnie had said he was capitalizing on his multilingualism to prepare for jobs in international banking, and Jungmin took a second major in Communications with the vague intention of working in journalism. Both goals were fairly ordinary ones by fairly ordinary undergraduates.
Then Gunnie had won a place in their university’s foreign exchange student program, and after a semester at the University of Santiago, he disappeared.
—
In the middle of Jungmin’s packing, Hyojin arrives in his father’s car. Jungmin buzzes him in.
“Thanks for giving me a ride.”
“Why are you leaving the country all of a sudden?”
“They found Gunnie”
“Is he alright? What was he doing?”
“What he’s doing is...”
Jungmin tries to zip his carry-on. Hyojin tries to help, then takes out all the clothes and begins refolding and stacking them properly, one flat layer over another.
“Where did you learn to do that?”
“I Googled it.”
“Gunnie is acting strange. The police got a call from a Korean church in Santiago. Gunnie used to go there for the Korean food, I saw it on his timeline. The youth pastor received a postcard from him, he’s living alone in some country village where there’s no police. The Chilean authorities sent someone there. He’s not doing anything illegal, just living in this house, by himself.”
“But what about his visa? How is this legally possible? Or financially?”
“I don’t know. The Korean consulate is, of course, useless. He still has some time left on his visa, but if the school dismisses him . . . His parents want me to go instead. They’ve never left Korea in their lives. They’re country people.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Determine if he’s sane. Take him back to Santiago. Then bring him back to Seoul. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
They try the zipper. This time, it locks into place.
“What do you know about Chile?”
“It’s long. FTA. Pinochet, the Park Chung-hee of South America. Spanish speaking. Something clever with the fruit produce policy. What the hell am I going to do?”
Silence, at night, is louder, an effect of the cooler air. Jungmin is suddenly exhausted. He hasn’t even left his own door.
—
The plane lands in Santiago on a Thursday afternoon.
The Andes looks down on the peaceful city. The mountains are jagged and alien, incredibly large, making the city look timid. They make Jungmin cower inside.
He is not staying in Santiago, but there is one more thing he needs to do before leaving for Gunnie’s village. He drags his luggage to the Korean church to speak with the youth pastor.
“Thank you,” Jungmin says, accepting a cup of juice he knows he won’t drink from. “Have you tried calling him again?”
“There is only one phone in his village, and it’s a public phone. He has to call us on it. You’re a friend from college?”
“Yes. We were in the same division as Freshmen—”
“He seemed like such a nice young man. Is he a good student? How are his grades?”
He gets A’s in minding his own business, Jungmin contemplates answering, but he chooses to ignore the question. “He didn’t say anything strange while you knew him, did he? He didn’t get any . . . weird ideas?” Like joining your church?
As if reading his mind, the pastor asks, “Did he go to church in Seoul?”
“Thank you for the juice. I can’t miss my train.”
—
He arrives at the village a little after noon the next day, around two. A bus takes him from the station to the hamlet. It is so quiet he wonders if this is indeed the right place. There are no signs, but the bus driver insists it’s the correct one. The driver grins at him as he drives off, and Jungmin watches the bus disappear.
He walks the deserted streets, dragging his luggage along. It seems a little too early for siesta, but even if there are no people, the stores seem clean and not abandoned, worn but cared for. This is somehow more unsettling than if the village had been obviously neglected—where were all the people? He begins to look for a police station and remembers being told there isn’t one. He looks for a post office or any kind of municipality instead.
“Coreano?”
He jumps and turns around. An old woman has come up to him, is looking up at him. Her clothes are dull and neat, her eyes very blue, her gaze meets his with polite inquisitiveness. He knows, then, that Gunnie is here. Otherwise, the woman would’ve asked if he were Chinese, or Japanese. Or Jackie Chan.
“Sí, Coreano.”
The woman nods, and points to a low hill beyond the street. On the foot of that hill is a large house; her message is clear. Jungmin thanks her, and she nods again, and disappears into one of the dark, silent storefronts. Jungmin is alone once more in the village. He doesn’t even feel he’s being watched, although of course he is, from several directions.
He makes way for the house on the hill.
—
The brass knocker gives a satisfying clap that echoes off the adjacent dry hills.
Jungmin calls out in Korean, “Hello? Gunnie? It’s Jungmin!”
There is no answer. Because Gunnie is a close friend, a friendship sanctified by how they were college freshmen together and shared the same ceremonious bowl of rice wine, Jungmin tries the door. It opens.
He stops the door at a crack. He calls out again. “Is this a trap?” Korea has stringent gun laws. He hopes Chile does, too.
He swings open the door.
—
The house seems to have been built with a grand design in mind but was limited during construction by space; its elements are dramatic, but a touch cramped. The spiral staircase in the middle of the marble floor—the floor and walls are of green marble—is tightly twisted. The dark wood trim feels too close all around, and so are the various vases and antique furniture, over which glasses and books and magazines are carelessly stacked over.
One thing reassures him; there are shoes strewn at the entrance in loose pairs, Korean style. He takes off his own shoes and parks his wheeled luggage next to a Louis XIV console.
“Gunnie?”
—
He decides to look for him on the first floor first.
The house looks lived in, like an expensive bachelorette pad with a careless owner. The clothes strewn about are women’s, there are stacks of Vogue magazines and the like. In the kitchen the dishes fill the sink, looking from a distance as if they’d been carelessly thrown into it to be dealt with later, but up close they are curiously clean of any trace of food. There is a living room with a television showing only static. He turns it off after a few attempts to find a channel that can cut through the silence.
Something catches his eye on the coffee table.
—
It is so small he could’ve missed it. It is only a little larger than a glint, but its shield-shape is so familiar it snags his attention. He picks it up. A tiny, polished steel thing, with red enamel sunk into tiny grooves, the profile of a roaring tiger. It is their university centennial badge. Gunnie had kept one pinned on his backpack.
He places it back on the table.
Gunnie walks by the doorway.
—
Jungmin lets out a short shout of sheer surprise. He quickly makes for the doorway and bangs his knee painfully on the table, and swears. He goes into the corridor but by then, Gunnie is not there. He hears the back door open and close.
—
There is a garden, a great overgrown garden at the back of the house. It has low stone walls, clouds of flowers, untrimmed shrubs, picturesque trees looking awkwardly transplanted. Underneath one tree is a wrought-iron table and a pair of chairs with their white paint peeling off, showing rust underneath.
Next to this, rearranging some glasses on the table, is Gunnie. His manner is completely ordinary, a little hesitant with the glasses, as if he isn’t sure where their exact positions are supposed to be. He is wearing the same clothes he used to wear in Korea, and looks the same, with the same micro-mannerisms in movement. For some reason, this unsettles Jungmin more.
Jungmin walks up to him, as if to a sleepwalker.
—
“Gunnie?”
“You’re here.” This is said in a manner of light greeting, as if they had just met in class.
“Yes.”
“The garden is the hardest part. Because the seasons keep changing. And the weather. And things keep growing. And it’s so big.”
Gunnie has not looked up from the glasses. They contain what looks like lemonade. Three glasses are fresh from the kitchen, but two are bug infested, as if they had been left out for a long time. Gunnie tosses the contents of the old glasses into the grass.
Jungmin is unsure of how to begin. A flood of words crowd up in his esophagus, and what finally comes out is, “So what are you doing?”
“Replacing these glasses.” Gunnie fiddles with their position on the table some more. Then, satisfied, holding an old glass in each hand, he looks at Jungmin. “Do you want to help? Come back inside.”
Jungmin has no choice but to follow his friend, who seems almost cheery, who doesn’t seem any different from the mildly pleasant friend he knew in Seoul.
—
“Your parents are worried about you.”
“They are? They shouldn’t be. Nothing is going on.”
“Are you returning to school for the rest of the semester?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”
“What about your visa? What about your life?”
“You really don’t have to worry about anything. I’m fine all around. Have you had lunch?”
“Are you sick? Are you insane?”
Gunnie laughs. To Jungmin, he realizes it is himself who sounds insane. Gunnie, in the kitchen, begins to wash the glasses. He washes them over the stack of dishes. He puts the glasses neatly away.
He doesn’t touch the other dishes in the sink.
—
Dear Hyojin,
It’s my third day here and I’ve had no progress. Gunnie is . . . He lives in a house doing a kind of bizarre housekeeping. It’s a messy house, a large one, and he has to keep the mess just the way it is. Stacks of laundry, books, magazines, windows and doors open just so. If I change anything he changes it back later without saying a word. And he doesn’t seem angry or incoherent or obsessed. He’s completely calm and himself.
I’ve asked him who owns this place and he said it had an owner “somewhere,” but he had to take care of it for the time being. I asked who lived here before him and he said some girl. A Chilean girl. He didn’t tell me how he knew her exactly, but I think they met at his university in Santiago. He said he didn’t know her all that well. I asked him what happened to her, and he said she was dead. I asked him what of, and he said it was hard to tell. That she disappeared on the day, but everyone was assuming she was dead. I asked him who “everyone” was, and he said, “Just, everyone.”
He could not have killed her. Then again, he also “could not” be here, doing what he is doing now. And who is this girl? A ghost, an angel, a god? A friend-blinder.
I don’t know what to do.
I asked him why he had to preserve this place as is. He just smiles.
I don’t know how I’m going to mail this. There’s no post office, no police station, no local administration that I recognize. The village is too small and nobody will talk to me. They act like I’m just another Coreano passing through. I haven’t seen that bus since coming here. And the public phone doesn’t work anymore.
What am I going to do? Shiang.
—
“What are you writing?”
“A letter. To Hyojin.”
“We have no post office.”
“How did you send your postcard?”
“I went to the next town. It took half a day to walk there.”
“Is there a bus? A bike?”
“I hope you put that pen back on the living room bookcase. Are you staying longer? I’m fine, as you can see.”
Jungmin finds it impossible to argue with his logic. Unless he overstays his visa, which he hasn’t yet, there is no law being broken, no charge to file. No reason to drag him back to Korea. Or even argue with him.
—
Gunnie refuses to accept Jungmin’s thick envelope of cash, both Chilean and American. He pushes it away from himself, back to Jungmin, who leaves it on the kitchen counter when Gunnie isn’t looking. They walk in silence to the road where the bus had come, a week ago.
“You better get going if you want to reach the next town by this afternoon.”
“Take care of yourself. Come home soon.”
“Have a safe trip back.”
On top of the hill before the road disappears from the village for good, Jungmin turns. Far away, Gunnie is still standing. He waves. All is well. Jungmin waves back.
Jungmin feels sick, physically nauseous, and terrified. He has failed, his friend will be here all alone, and all is not well.
It will be a long time before he forgives himself.
—
On the bus, Jungmin sits uncomfortably in the dimness, trying to go to sleep. It is deep into night. In his mind he broods over his failure, over and over again. There is nothing to report to the consulate, to the university in Santiago, there is nothing he can say to reassure Gunnie’s country parents. He tries to remember what Gunnie is like but he finds his friend is already fading. Stripped of the things that were familiar to them both, Jungmin is forced to see he had no idea what would remain unchanged in Gunnie without the comfort of their beloved university, without the supercharged matrix of their priorities and ambitions in Korea flashing in the spaces between them, or the rice wine, or how everything they knew of each other would dissolve under the gaze of a ghost and a foreign, dry sky in a garden where time was kept at bay. Beyond the window and the highway lights, all Jungmin could see is the passing kilometers of pitch blackness as he is rapidly taken back into the light where he will lose himself in once more.