Before she left, Yuri suggested I keep a diary. If nothing else, you can find yourself there, she told me as we said goodbye at the ferry terminal. That was more than a year ago. As far as I can remember, I’ve never kept one. It seemed like the most twisted form of exhibitionism. Anyone who writes a diary has the hope, though it may be secret, that someone will read it. Not like the sounds or words we say to ourselves with no idea where they’ll end up. And besides, you can only ever hope to offer an incomplete version of yourself. Not for nothing are we like the water I see from my office window—down below, beneath the apparent stillness, we’re ceaselessly changing, all the time, without even knowing it.
Illuminate the cave I inhabit? That doesn’t interest me. I chose to follow Yuri’s advice only so that I might find, in my notes, some hint or clue related to the Gold Sea case. That was it. We always miss something, always. It’s not my intention to have anyone read what I’ve written, so I’ll burn this undated diary as soon as I find the guilty party. And if I burn it, it’ll be like it never existed.
It wasn’t an accident. Those were the words Ro screamed like a lunatic, over and over, at the police. If it wasn’t an accident, the officers concluded, then the death was premeditated. Without meaning to, Ro had confessed. That’s why they took him right down to the station and locked him in a cell. It’s possible Ro isn’t guilty, but he can’t accept the fact that the death was caused by a mistake on his part either. Not even an engineer whose bridge fails, or an architect whose building collapses, faces the total disgrace of a cook who admits to mishandling a knife, especially when it comes to a restaurant like Ro’s. Admitting his failure would mean the complete ruin of the Gold Sea. On the other hand, not admitting it, multiple decades in jail and the title of murderer.
I review the dead man’s information: Baik Eujin, thirty-seven years old, architect, married, two children. His father was a senator. He was the one who hired me. The police won’t do a thing, I’m sure of it, he told me on the phone. As a politician, he must have put pressure on them not to do anything more than once. Five years before, Baik’s wife had been paralyzed in an accident and he’d been tending to her around the clock ever since. I confirmed this with multiple neighbors and coworkers. He went right home after leaving his architecture firm. No late-night dinners, no noraebangs, no excursions to the mountain. And yet, I can’t rule her out. The human heart can be a catacomb riddled with secret passageways, a monster lost in its own labyrinth. It was a car, the woman told me when I asked her about the wheelchair, but that’s all she would say. And what if Baik was involved somehow?
I shave as if wanting to correct my face.
In the morning, I went to see Dr. Hwang. He’s no longer employed at the university hospital, where for many years he ran the unit that dealt with facial traumas, destroyed noses, and punctured eardrums. The breadth of his knowledge has always surprised me, extending far beyond his medical specialty. Hwang is an otorhinolaryngologist, but he didn’t hesitate when I asked him about globefish. Tetrodotoxin, that’s the keyword. It’s a neurotoxin ten times more toxic than cyanide, he explained. Some estimate it’s two hundred times as fatal. It’s found in the internal organs, especially the liver and the ovaries, as well as in the eyes and skin. Tetrodotoxin blocks the electric signals in the nerves when it interacts with the sodium channels and, as a result, causes muscular paralysis. The victim, who remains conscious the whole time, cannot move or speak. They begin to have difficulty breathing and in a short time die of suffocation. A horrible death, Hwang said, looking up at the ceiling, moving his head from side to side, as if he couldn’t get enough air. He also explained that although experienced cooks can clean a globefish thoroughly, nevertheless, trace amounts of the toxin sometimes remain. There are reports of some clients who feel their tongue fall asleep after eating sashimi of tiger globefish, the most dangerous species. And some people say globefish have a narcotic effect on dolphins; they’ve been seen to swallow one at high sea and then apparently become entranced by their own reflections in the water. Did you know globefish is the only food the emperor of Japan is not allowed to eat?
I often go to Dr. Hwang for this kind of information, even when I don’t have a case. As he wrote down the chemical formula of tetrodotoxin for me, I realized he’d been concealing his trembling hands under his desk in embarrassment. He’s over eighty now, officially retired, and yet he goes up to his third-floor office every day and stays there from eight in the morning until six in the evening. I wonder what he does all day. Talk to the skull perched atop of his cupboard, like Hamlet? Wait for an old patient to show up for a consult? Wait for me? Park, you’ll never really retire either, believe me. The parades of criminals and the sick will never end, he said when we were saying goodbye, as if reading my mind.
Finally, I was able to talk to Ro, the cook. I cashed in a favor the chief of police owed me. Five minutes, he muttered reluctantly. Ro confessed that on the day of the architect’s death, he left the broth simmering in the kitchen to go buy cigarettes. He never does that, but the week before, the Chinese waitress he’d hired recently had quit, and he’d been unable to find someone to replace her. When he ran out of cigarettes, she was the one who went to buy them. I asked if anyone else worked with him. He said there was nobody else at lunch. In the evenings, he has an assistant and two young waiters. After hearing that, I told him my theory: someone came into the kitchen while he was gone and swapped the fish from which he’d already removed the poisonous parts for another one. He said that was impossible—the store where he buys cigarettes is less than thirty meters away. It just takes him five minutes to go out and come back. Did you leave the door open? Ro didn’t remember. Locking it had always been the waitress’ responsibility. I left him in his cell, downcast, like someone who, when he looks in the mirror, sees only the reflection of his own stupidity.
Something else happened. Coming back from the police station, I ran into a man I thought I recognized. Young, slightly taller than me. He had a camera hanging around his neck and was walking through the market on Gukje, peering attentively into stores but not giving the impression of being a tourist. Just the opposite—he moved as if he knew every nook and cranny of the market. I noticed his camera was an old analog model, yet it appeared brand-new, as if he’d just taken it out of the box hours before. The thing is, his face was very familiar. I spent a long time thinking about where I might have seen him before, but nothing came to mind.
A student passing by the Gold Sea saw Baik face down in his cup and thought something seemed off. He didn’t have the look of a drunk, she told the police. So she went over to him, shook him, and only then did she realize he was dead. Baik couldn’t call for help or even bring his hands to his throat. Paralyzed, there was nothing he could do but realize he was dying. I wonder if we fight for our lives until the last second or if the brain can anticipate certain death and, in the end, lets go, like releasing the handbrake and letting the car roll down a hill. Ro says he didn’t hear anything from the kitchen, not even when Baik collapsed on the table. He only realized something had happened when the student began to scream.
The sea. The waves. The waves breaking on the rocks. The sea. The waves. Her coming out of the sea. Youthful among all the old people. Five kilos of oysters. How? Both of us young, she younger than me. Click, click, click. Change rolls. Naked now, there, among the pines, on the sand. Her cold hand on my nape, my warm hand between her legs. Then we go up on the cliff. Let’s jump together, she says, let’s jump. Down below, the sea. The waves. The waves breaking on the rocks. The sea.
Ro is guilty and it’s all part of a perfect strategy: deny the possibility that someone could die in his restaurant, hold up the prestige of decades free of accidents as a shield, plant the doubt of an apparently unintentional confession, and, later, amid tears and shame, admit his fatal mistake. It’s not so common anymore, but in Busan, it still happens sometimes: someone gets accidentally poisoned eating globefish and dies. They strip the responsible party of his license, fine him, give him a short sentence, and that’s that.
But why would Ro want to bury forty years of fame and three generations of cooks in one fell swoop? It has to be about revenge—that’s the only explanation. There’s a reason we use the expression “a thirst for revenge.” There’s no thirst for joy or comfort. Only the burning desire for revenge produces such a real and urgent physical effect that, like thirst, must be sated. A thirst that sometimes can only be quenched with a death, a thirst for which we’re prepared to risk everything. Having gotten his revenge at the Gold Sea, Ro can plead guilty to homicide and get out of jail in a year. A year is nothing to someone who has been dreaming of revenge. I need to find out if Ro had some relationship with the dead man, beyond the fact that he was a regular customer.
On Sunday, I walked around thinking about the case until nightfall. A blank screen with nothing useful coming to mind. I didn’t see anyone I knew, apart from the woman who owns the dry fish shop. We ran into each other in the hallway; she didn’t greet me. I’ve been renting the second floor of her building and using it as an office for more than a year. She thinks I spend hours and hours working at night. She doesn’t know that I actually live here now, that I sleep on the couch, that I shower in one of the public bathrooms on Jagalchi. I’ve found a way to change the bathroom I use every day so nobody notices. When I paid for several months up front, she was all smiles. Mr. Park, Mr. Park, do you want some bacalao? It’s a gift, don’t worry. I got some seaweed from Wando, oysters from Tongyeong. Go ahead, take some. Now she growls at me with her eyes. A few days ago, I explained to her I was in the middle of an important case and as soon as it was solved I would have plenty of money. She didn’t believe me. I owe her three months’ rent. One night, when we were still speaking to each other, she invited me to drink soju in her store. She’s a great drinker. She almost drank me under the table. She’s been living in this same place for fifty years. We talked about the neighborhood, the Yeongdo Bridge. She told me they were thinking of demolishing it. I remembered: at home I had a picture of my father holding me in his arms, looking out as they raised a section of the bridge so the ships could pass by. We also talked about the fortune tellers. At first, they gathered on the bridge’s piers. There were many of them, around fifty. The oldest one always frightened me. My father explained to me that people went to them to try to find family members who had gone missing during the war, but the old man specialized in sailors lost at sea. Imagining someone underground isn’t as horrible as imagining them adrift out on the ocean, at night, their feet and cheeks being nibbled at by jellyfish. A magnolia can grow atop a dead person, but at sea? That’s what my father said. Why am I writing about him? Yuri and her damned ideas. If she’d never come into my life, maybe I would still be in my tranquil office in Nampo and not in this room that always reeks of dried anchovies and sweat.
Cold noodles while I look at myself in the mirror. There are two of us, at last. Four bitter eyes. I pick up the camera and take a shot of my reflected face. I see a spiderweb of excruciating lights radiating from my nose.
Let’s assume Ro is telling the truth. If so, then he wasn’t out for revenge against the architect Baik; just the opposite—someone wanted to take revenge against Ro. Someone hated him so much, they killed one of his clients just to bring him and his business to ruin, to turn him into a zombie. The perfect revenge. And Baik? Why him, exactly? Happenstance? Throughout all my years as a detective, that’s been the hardest thing to accept. That one person can kill another as if they were just picking up a rock and throwing it into a lake.
I haven’t slept much in the last few days. Just as I’m about to plummet into the pool of dreams, I feel like I’m drowning and wake up. It’s as if there were a small animal on my chest, a little rabbit, a rat. Or a globefish. And it goes on like that four, five, six, up to seven times a night.
I convinced one of Baik’s coworkers to tell me what Baik was working on before he died. At first, he refused, but I pressured him. I tried not to leave marks on his neck. Baik wasn’t designing apartment towers, or schools, or anything like that. He ran a small firm the city hired every so often to do architectural conservation research. He’d just submitted a report on the Japanese houses from the colonial period that were still standing in Nampo and Gukje.
I went to the street where I used to live near the Gukje market. I always avoid it, but this time I let my feet lead me there. A four-story building now stood where our house had been. On the first floor, there was still one hanbok shop in operation. The whole street used to be full of stores like that, rolls of cloth stacked to the ceiling and loose threads on the floor. I remembered one afternoon, it must have been twelve or thirteen years ago, I hid in a dressing room and watched two young women change. It was the first time I’d seen bare legs up close. They looked as soft as the fabric of the skirts they were trying on. I almost reached out from behind the curtain to touch one of their thighs with the tip of my index finger. My father would’ve thrown me off the roof if I’d done that. I settled for smelling their perfume. I inhaled deeply, trying not to make a sound, pulling that smell into my nasal cavities to take it home with me, unwrap it like a gift and enjoy it on my own. I’d completely forgotten about that.
The Japanese house was still there. I stood looking at it from the other side of the street. It didn’t seem like much, just an old, two-story building, with a strange roof, small windows, and wood siding, that’s it. I don’t want them to demolish it. Why turn our most painful memories to rubble? I’d rather remember and feel a stabbing pain in my gut when I can’t. Our house disappeared after the fire, but I think everything would be less complicated if I could still see it. Someone who wanted everything to be new, free of memories, good or bad. It must have been someone like that who had Baik, the architect, killed.
From floor to table, from table to bed, from bed to floor. I watch the record turn. The voice rises like smoke up the room’s walls to the ceiling. I imagine a black and cold sun. There’s no more music. It’s been replaced by the hysterical song of the cicadas, their electricity in my teeth.
A horrible death, that’s what Dr. Hwang said. Baik, the architect, was poisoned in broad daylight. No gunshot, no stabbing, no anonymous push down some stairs. It’s a sign. Someone wanted to send a message. But who? Why?
Yesterday I was convinced I was being followed while walking down Gukje.
Today I woke up with a mild fever. I can’t get sick—not now. I need my mind to be clear, cloudless. Before, if I needed to be on my own to think, I went to the Daegaksa Temple or the Anglican church. I’ve always liked their pomegranate-red bricks. Sitting there, something inevitably occurred to me. I solved cases of death, robbery, embezzlement, identity theft, and extortion, staring up at the Buddha’s eyes or the crucified Christ’s stigmata. I can’t do it anymore. I’ve tried a couple times and hear nothing but the sound of my own breathing, an old dog coming and going. I know—I’ll go to Yeongdo, to the Haenyeos’ pojangmacha, where I often went in the past. Yes, that was a place I could sit and think in solitude. You could go all day without seeing anyone beyond a pair of cheating lovers or some lost backpackers. It probably hasn’t changed. The sound of the waves would block out my breathing and I’d be able to think about the message and the messenger.
In the darkroom, among the chemicals, a face is repeated. The same face on the photographic paper, yesterday, today, tomorrow. Shooting a weapon, shooting a camera, is it not somehow the same? Both actions seek to stop time. To take us outside of time.
As I predicted, the pojangmacha was in the same place. That part of the island had barely changed. The woman working in the tent greeted me with a smile and sat me down at the best table, directly facing the beach. There was nobody there. She brought me a dozen oysters she’d pulled out of the water that same morning and a bottle of soju. She left the tray on the table and stood there looking at me with her hands on her hips. And so, where’ve you been, Park Bong Hwang? It’s been a long time since you were last here. Hearing my name on her lips startled me to such an extent that I instinctively reached my hand under jacket, looking for my Beretta. Seeing I wasn’t going to respond, she grew angry and turned around. I’m sure she insulted me on her way back to the kitchen. I heard her slam the door. I didn’t see her again all afternoon. I called her a few times, but she didn’t come out. I had to leave her the money for the bill on the table, under a rock. I’ll go back someday when I’m not so busy and ask her where we’ve met before.
Fortunately, I had no issue concentrating. I opened the bottle and I drank from it slowly, looking over my notes. I’m a fool. In the past, I would’ve had a solid lead within a week. This time, it’s taken me almost two. What a train wreck. In any case, I finally have a decent hypothesis: someone connected to one of the construction companies put a hit on Baik, the architect. Those vultures have been behind a plan to have the city renovate the whole market for years now. The owner of the dry-fish shop told me about it a few months ago when we got drunk together. Her sister owns a sock stand and she’s heard the rumors—they’re thinking of clearing everyone out. They want the land to build a shopping center. And, of course, there are a couple of Japanese buildings from the colonial period in the area that they’ll never be able to demolish if the city declares them sites of cultural interest. The architect’s death is a message from one of the construction companies to the city. Ro, not Baik, is the rock somebody threw into the lake.
A great ballroom. A solitary couple twirls as their families toast and applaud in their honor. The man and the woman are enveloped in flame.
The fever comes and goes. Today I felt like a burning torch, like people could see my flaming silhouette as I walked. It all started after I saw the camera man, I’m sure of it.
Outbound ferry: 3:05 p.m.
Return ferry: 11:05 a.m.
Three days in Kamagasaki.
23 years.
Vulvas and phalluses.
I lie down, thinking about strange, nonsensical things. I’ve come to believe that every time I had sex with Yuri, I lost some part of my memory, entire months of my life, all for the way it helped me solve a case. That was the price to be paid when the Buddha’s or Christ’s silence no longer worked. I needed to get out of my head, so last night I went to see Lou. The first thing he said to me was I should go to a barber. What a jackass—where does he get off? He’s over fifty now and goes around with a ponytail like the ones we had in the ’70s. But it was good to see him, to verify he still existed, that he hadn’t disappeared. I need his silences. Lou never asked what happened with Yuri, and I’m grateful for that.
We sat there in his store listening to music long after closing time. We ordered a delivery of ham hocks and he went to 7Eleven for beers. It seems like he has more records all the time and sells fewer and fewer; I hope he’s not broke. I’ve always assumed that if the owner of the fish shop kicks me out, Lou’d let me sleep among his records, even if only for a couple of nights.
I asked him if the first record he got was one of Neil Young’s. It was actually a David Bowie album he bought from a soldier, he said. And that’s how it all began, getting records from American soldiers and reselling them in a grubby stall in Gukje, along with military rations and shampoo. We used to spend hours listening to “Heart of Gold” or “Like a Hurricane.” He never had any interest in selling Japanese records. When Lou found out I’d started smuggling in contraband from Osaka, he stopped talking to me for six months. Six months. I was going to tell him about the camera man—maybe he’d seen him around the market too—but I changed my mind; I’m not sure why. Embarrassment, I suppose. To admit I was losing my memory was to admit I was getting old.
I stumbled out of his store at three in the morning and got lost on the way to my office. I fell asleep in an alleyway. Luckily, I woke up in the predawn hours, before they came around to pick up the trash.
Sometimes I think my life is like a boat that’s sprung a leak and the water is rising.
I saw him again, finally. I’d been thinking I’d invented him. This time, he was carrying the camera in one hand and a small canvas satchel in the other. I had to go to the records office to get the list of construction companies interested in Gukje. I needed to get my hands on them before somebody else got wind of my poking around, but I chose to follow him instead. He was in a hurry. Yet he still stopped to take a couple pictures. At a café, he met an older man who was wearing a long coat, buttoned all the way up, lapels popped, and sunglasses. They didn’t appear to be friends. They exchanged a few words and then the camera man removed an envelope from his satchel and gave it to the other man. They looked at each other and that was it. They paid for their coffee and suddenly, just as they were saying goodbye at the door, the man took his camera and aimed it right at me. I turned quickly away, but I think he was still able to capture my face.
Obviously, I couldn’t keep following him and decided to trail the other man. After circumventing Yongdusan Park, he sat down on an isolated bench and, before opening the envelope, looked around to make sure he was alone. He took out what I assume were photographs. He looked at them for a long while, then put them back in the envelope and stood up among the crazed cicadas. He left the park and walked quickly to the Jungang Church. He entered the rectory and didn’t come out all afternoon except to give the six o’clock mass.
I took the opportunity to slip into his office. I went through all the drawers, looking for the envelope. I found it taped to the underside of his desk. I opened it carefully. Inside, I didn’t find photographs, but seven antique Japanese prints. Naked men and women in complicated sex positions. I left everything the way I found it and got out of there.
Walking to the records office, I thought I heard an urgent announcement over a loudspeaker: “An old man has gone missing. He is eighty-six years old, dressed in a suit and hat. His name is Park Bong Hwang.” I stood there a long while waiting for the announcement to be repeated but didn’t hear it again.
To make myself feel less dirty, less unwell, I went to Mr. Yi’s barbershop. A haircut and a shave. Yi always had good magazines. Not the most recent or the most popular. He goes to the secondhand book market in Bosudong and picks them out carefully, as if he were a collector. I was reading about Marlon Brando and learned he’d had his nose broken as a young man. The article had before-and-after images. The same person, yet completely different.
The priest’s lips were too dry. Salt crystals in the corners. Secrets rob us of blood and happiness.
A new LP and an honest conversation, straight as a pine forest. We talked about the smell of gunpowder, the humidity of the tunnels. After I told him about my nose, he showed me the wound on his right leg. A wound that’s actually a hole. I wished I could grow my hair as long as his. We promised to go out drinking the next week, near the market. Oysters. The sailor’s widow, her young breasts covered with sand. I won’t go back. I have no desire to take photographs or sell prints anymore. I want to do something else now. To solve puzzles. I want to destroy the different forms of attention.
The fever came back with a vengeance after I spent the night in the street. I haven’t answered the phone and have been lying on the couch all day. I’m sure today’s calls were from the father of Baik, the architect. I’ve already spent every cent of the advance.
I review my own information: Park Bong Hwang, fifty-three years old. That’s all I’ve got.
Ana’s father has five daughters. Their names are Margarita, Rosa, Azucena, and Violeta. What’s the fifth daughter’s name?
C11H17N3O8.
C11H17N3O8. C11H17N3O8.
C11H17N3O8. C11H17N3O8. C11H17N3O8. C11H17N3O8.
C11H17N3O8. C11H17N3O8. C11H17N3O8. C11H17N3O8.
C11H17N3O8. C11H17N3O8. C11H17N3O8. C11H17N3O8.
C11H17N3O8. C11H17N3O8. C11H17N3O8.
C11H17N3O8. C11H17N3O8. C11H17N3O8.
C11H17N3O8. C11H17N3O8. C11H17N3O8.
C11H17N3O8. C11H17N3O8.
C11H17N3O8.
I should hire him to give a daily report on my activities. Where did he see me on May 27 at eleven in the morning? Was I alone? If you concentrate hard enough, you’ll be able to spy on my mind too. Try it.
I dreamed of twin brothers. They were bald but wore the same wig.
I regained some strength and was able to start working the case again. It helped to have spent all day in the office, under a blanket. Best of all, I finally located the Chinese waitress. She lives alone in a rented room in Yeongdo. Despite how poor she is, the grandmother who owns the house has the living room decorated with hundreds of horses. I thought about something my mother told me shortly before the fire: they say Yeongdo was inhabited by the Chollima, horses so fast they could outrun their shadows.
I found the Chinese waitress sick and in bed. She kept repeating she’d been poisoned. Seeing her writhe like a silkworm, I knew she had kidney stones, like Lou. I’d rather get shot again, my friend repeated whenever he described the experience of a kidney stone. When Lou was doing his military service, a sergeant got pissed at him because he didn’t want to get him a prostitute. In an attack of rage, the sergeant shot him in the right leg. A complete lunatic for whom there were no consequences. He’d been decorated in Vietnam, so they barely reprimanded him.
I offered to take the Chinese waitress to a hospital, but she refused vehemently. Seeing she was writhing more and more from the pain, I called Dr. Hwang. He arrived with a dose of morphine sulfate and I had to give her the injection, because the doctor’s hands were too shaky. Once the drug took effect, the woman’s legs relaxed and she opened up to me, overcome by that combination of vulnerability and gratitude we experience when someone frees us from some terrible pain. She told me that somewhere near Jagalchi, she’d given a man a piece of paper with Ro’s schedule written on it. In exchange, the man promised to get her residency documents and gave her his telephone number, but now she couldn’t find him anywhere. I asked her if she remembered anything about the man, any distinguishing features. She just muttered Ilmak and then fell asleep.
Tiny hairs grow again millimeter by millimeter. Smells return. The broken bone seeks to rediscover its way. The nasal cartilage realigns in the night to return to where it always was. I hope it fails. I’m moved by the possibility of being someone else.
I saw him for the third and last time. He won’t appear again. He didn’t have his camera this time; he was eating in an alleyway behind Daegaksa Temple, absorbed in his food. It was dinnertime, so the place was full of people. When he got up and left, I followed him and, for a moment, almost lost him—I had to throw a couple of elbows to make my way through the crowd.
When I had him in sight again, he was entering the building where Dr. Hwang’s office is, which, of course, seemed like a very strange coincidence to me, though there was a florist and a poolhall in that building too. I decided to wait for him to come out so I could talk to him, say something to him, ask him for directions. I needed to confront him face to face; I was sure his voice would help me solve the mystery of his identity. The stores in the area were closing and soon it was fairly dark.
Finally, the camera man left the building. I’d followed him for half a block when out of nowhere something struck me on the head and I fell to the ground. I heard my Beretta slide into a gutter. There must have been three or four of them. They began kicking me. I don’t know how long it lasted. Then they disappeared into the darkness. At that moment, I thought I was the rock that would end up in the lake, but before losing consciousness, I heard footsteps. It was him, the camera man, approaching slowly. He bent down and we looked at each other for a few long seconds. He had a small bandage on his nose that I hadn’t noticed at a distance.
At first, I thought I’d lost my mind, but I no longer have any doubt. That man was me when I was twenty-three years old. Just before my birthday, I broke my nose when I fell down some stairs, and after that, my face changed—that’s why I’d been unable to recognize myself. I wanted to outrun my shadow, to get away from it like one of the Chollima, and for many years, I succeeded. But my shadow ended up catching me. Now I’m alone, again.
Then I disappeared, and I have no idea who called the ambulance. At almost the very same time, the case of Ro, the cook, was solved. While I was lying in the alleyway, a man came for the Chinese waitress. I’d asked Lou’s son to watch her house and call the police immediately if he saw anyone go in. The killer, who carried a pen with the name Ilmak Construction Company on it in his shirt pocket, confessed to the crime at the Gold Sea once he realized he was caught.
An executive at Ilmak had hired him. The man had been a cook on a boat when he was young, so he knew how to fillet a globefish. Unfortunately, the waitress didn’t survive—the man had strangled her before the police arrived. Not Baik, not Ro, not me. In the end, it was the Chinese waitress who was rock in the lake.
The face won’t be repeated now. I have erased it.
I’ve decided to hang onto this diary, to save it from the fire. Maybe someday the camera man will want to read it. 
Andrés Felipe Solano is the author of the novels Sálvame, Joe Louis; Los hermanos Cuervo; and Cementerios de neón. Corea: Apuntes desde la cuerda floja, a nonfiction book about his life in South Korea, received the 2016 Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana prize and was translated in 2018 into Korean. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, McSweeney’s, Words Without Borders, and Freeman’s. He was featured in Granta 113: The Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists. He currently lives in Seoul.
Will Vanderhyden has translated more than ten books of fiction from Spanish. His translation of The Invented Part by Rodrigo Fresán won the 2018 Best Translated Book Award. Vanderhyden’s work has appeared such journals as Granta, The Paris Review, Two Lines, Future Tense, and Southwest Review, and he has received translation fellowships from the NEA.
Illustration: Sam Ward.
