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Something Sae-byeok never tells anyone is that the ringing in your ears never leaves after the shot of a gun.
It comes in less than a second. It’s a bullet, a gasp of air, and a bang —It’s gone. She doesn’t know if it lands, but the echo does, and it lingers next to her like a friend waiting to hold her hand.
Here’s the thing. It’s a weird affair, hearing things underwater. It’s odd, because you hear it, but you also don’t, and for all the effort you make to try and understand it, the most you can perceive is a muted vibration of the real thing.
The water lives and breathes in her in this moment, like all other moments, when she lies down to think. It was dark then, and it’s dark now too, on a bunk bed that’s trembling in beats while whoever is sleeping above her is shifting around, like they can’t figure out which side is more comfortable.
She blinks. And blinks. Blinks another time, for good measure, but her brain is whirring, like the adrenaline is still in her veins. Like after it trickled in for the first time, it decided to never leave again. Like it dipped its toes into the water of her body, only to create its own waves—stronger and stronger and stronger, ones that are capable of making her drown.
Here’s the thing. Hearing things underwater is a lot of things at once, most of which she cannot explain. It’s the feeling of the river engulfing her, for example; it’s how it seeps into the eyes, into the nose, into the lungs she cannot hold for longer than a minute. It’s the kick of her throbbing, blistered feet against the water—burning like there’s fire licking at her soles as she flees. It’s her hand, clasped in the frantic grip of her brother, who’s kicking with her—kicking so hard, it’s like they’re fighting an invisible foe pulling them under.
It’s a lot of things: hearing things underwater. It’s the bang in the middle of the night; it’s the gasp of air in the dark; it’s the ripples in the water behind you, where a certain someone was just a second before.
But more than anything, it’s washing up on the shore on the other side of a long, horrifying ride; brother limp on the ground beside you, coughing water but alive; and finding out that your father is underwater somewhere in the river (oh, so that’s where the gunshot went) and there’s absolutely no way to go back and check.
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Daybreak. That’s what her name means.
It’s not something that Sae-byeok thinks of all that often, but it’s something that comes up everytime someone asks for it.
“What’s your name?” the man asks her now, eyes boring into her skull.
She’s so taken aback she almost doesn’t reply. But now the people in the circle are looking at her, like they’re waiting. And the man’s stare is unrelenting, heavy.
She gives him a hard look. She almost says, It’s Kang Sae-byeok. Kang Sae-byeok. It’s the name my father gave me when I was born, because he loved the daybreak so much he couldn’t dare name his daughter after anything else.
Her mouth opens, like she’s about to reach out.
Instead, she asks.
“Why would I tell you that?”
Her nails bleed into the palm of her hands. They’re melting. They’re melting. They’re melting. Like the icebergs on the edge of the map. The longer she stays here, the more her lungs are water-deep. And it’s horrible how she’s still breathing, after everything.
I’ll kill you, you bastard!
Fuck you!
DIE!
The crash of the bottle. The chase in the night. The almost-death, by gutting, like a fish.
But— “Because we’re going to be working together,” the man says, with conviction. Eyes lit, like he has all the hope he can give. “And we’re going to need to trust each other.”
She can’t help but find it funny. You know, what they’re doing. All of them are going to die anyway, no matter what they do. Money or with no money, shot or not shot, named or unnamed, lost in the greed of a piggy bank in the sky.
But he looks like they’re all still going to be fine. He—what was his name again?
Gi-hun, that’s what he said his name was. Gi-hun. Gi- hun. It’s stupid, but she can’t help but feel like laughing. Gi, like ‘energy.’ Hun, like ‘teach.’ She wasn’t able to go to school for long, not from where she was from, but he sure did remind her of an energetic teacher—or at least, how annoying they were at dragging answers from people.
Fine. “Sae-byeok,” she gives.
He nods and takes it.
“Nice name.”
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Here’s how you enjoy a drink. Pop the bottle open. Hold tightly by its neck. Twist your wrist and swirl it around a little; watch as it makes ripples in the waves. You have to pull it up. Okay, here, brace yourself: Tilt your head. Breathe it in. It’s you, it’s you, it’s you, sour and sticky and death of body against the rocks. Listen carefully, because this is where it starts. Here you go, dear: Take a sip. Down its fill. It seeps into the bellows of your throat. It lives in the hollows of your bones.
This is what Saebyeok learns only a few minutes before lights-out: Take a swig of apple cider fast enough, and it burns straight through your soul.
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There’s a vague vision of Jeju that forms now, as they sit, almost casually lounging, on the rigid staircase of a house there-but-not-there. In a neighborhood there but not there. Among people there but not there.
There’s a seething vibration in the ground. People moving, people desperate. People on the edge of death, feet against the sand. There’s water there too, somewhere in that equation. There’s always water, where she is. In her hair, in her ears, in her skin. At some point, she thinks. Maybe she is the water. Maybe the water is her.
From where they are, a distant gunshot rings from the left.
“Where do you want to go?” The girl is curious now. That’s what she said, at least. That they’d spend the rest of the time talking. There’s still time left, if anything. Until the moment one of them will die from a gunshot in the head. Blood splattering. Eyes rolling. Corpse falling, or drowning, or sinking into the air.
She sees herself there, sometimes. Losing track of her brother’s hand in the night. Someone dragging her under. Water in lungs, lungs in her, her in water. One breath, then water, then gone for good.
But the question makes her think, now, on things other than her imminent death. Money, for one. And the things she’d do.
It’s easy.
“Jeju Island,” Sae-byeok says. Because it’s somewhere she’s seen in posters. In the newspaper, sometimes, headlines reading Top 10 Best Places to Visit in South Korea. On TV, with its snaking roads, jutting landscapes, and fluttering waterfalls. Something straight out of a storybook; nothing she has ever seen with her own two eyes.
But, “Jeju?” the girl says, almost incredulously. “Come on, you have to dream bigger than that. Like Hawaii, or Maldives. Have a glass of mojito while you’re there, too.”
Sae-byeok looks at her almost blankly, because the thought has never even crossed her mind. All her life, it was just leave leave leave, live live live, all the way from North to South, that the idea of other countries never even registered as a possibility.
“Jeju…” she ponders over the idea. It’s a moment of pause, where the two of them float in their thoughts. Jeju, dipping their toes into the sea. Jeju, lying down, staring into the sun. Jeju, cocktails in hand, licking the lime off their fingers.
Eventually, she agrees. “Not bad, Jeju.”
Then smiles, like a maniac who’s forgotten why the two of them were even there in the first place—sitting by the staircase, their time ticking down in bold red letters.
“Once we’re out of here, should we go to Jeju Island together?”
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When Sae-byeok was young, her father made many promises.
“I’ll get you that jacket tomorrow, if you want it.”
“I promise I’ll play with you after work!”
“I’ll bring home that book you really liked from the store.”
Simple, small promises. Things that he never broke.
She’s never cared for them, though. She could have lived without a new jacket, without a new book, or even if he had come home too late from work to play.
One of the biggest promises he’d given her was this:
“We’ll leave, Saebyeok-ah, we’ll leave. I promise you, our life will be so beautiful out there.”
Sometimes the biggest promises are always the ones they break.
The word leave had always sounded synonymous with the word live, when her father said it. Until her father got shot crossing a river, that is, and Saebyeok realized that there was no living in the leaving when one of you is dead.
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“Sae-byeok.”
“Huh?”
“My name. It’s Kang Sae-byeok.”
“Oh! Nice name.”
“Yours?”
“Ji-yeong.”
Ji-yeong. Ji- yeong. Ji, like ‘wisdom.’ Yeong, like ‘glory.’ Sae-byeok. Sae- byeok. Sae-byeok, like ‘daybreak.’
Do you know what else is nice, other than a name?
Knowing the day breaks nonetheless, even when you’re no longer there to see it.