A little before 3 a.m. They quietly turned off the boat’s engine, concealing themselves in the waves with the black cliffs of Magnolia Island’s western Danghwa Mountain looming three hundred meters ahead.
Yoon Hwa-kyeong lowered the rubber boat into the water.
“We could swim there.”
Lee Young-jin looked at the rough waves and the dark, rocky coast instead of replying.
“It’ll take only five minutes.”
“Even with me hanging on?”
“Can’t swim?”
“I can, but…”
Not in the wave-hit sea at night.
“I swam from Santiago de Cuba to Port Antonio once. About three years ago.”
Yoon Hwa-kyeong sang as he dropped the rubber boat into the water.
“It’s just over two hundred kilometers, took me sixteen hours. Lost a shoe in the middle because I got distracted and caught in a current. Tried to find it for a bit, then just took off the other and let it go.”
“How did that happen?”
“Ah, got caught in a current while I was distracted. That’s when one got lost, and after a bit of searching, I just decided to take off the other.”
“No, I mean, why did you swim there?”
“Oh. For a job. Had to escape some bad guys, so I jumped off the port, but waiting under the pier as they shot at me, somehow it just seemed better to swim away.”
“Did you carry something then too?”
“Wasn’t alive. And certainly not as big as you. About this big.”
He showed the size of about a 500 won coin with his thumb and forefinger.
“Must’ve been about sixty carats.”
He gave a light chuckle, grabbed the plastic oars, and jumped onto the rubber boat. The boat rocked. Lee Young-jin followed him, grabbing the boat’s railing and going down.
Yoon Hwa-kyeong rowed. Each stroke pushed the round rubber boat forward.
Lee Young-jin took out a small pouch from his backpack. Inside were a lens case and earphones. He inserted one earphone into his left ear and handed the lens case to Yoon Hwa-kyeong. Yoon Hwa-kyeong, not seeming to struggle with rowing through the waves, looked at him.
“Lenses. They let me see what you see. Precisely, like this….”
Lee Young-jin showed his smartphone.
The waves splashed, and a few drops of white foam landed on the protective film.
“It’s not dangerous. I’ve used it several times in actual situations…”
He stuttered a bit.
“We might need to move separately on the island. You’re not familiar with the geography…”
“Uh, okay, I got it.”
Yoon Hwa-kyeong took the lens case and the earphones.
Lee Young-jin was worried that he might have angered him, so he carefully observed his face. However, all he saw was a bright, carefree expression on his soft, cream-like face.
It didn’t take long for the rubber boat to navigate through the rocks and reefs and enter the coastline. Yoon Hwa-kyeong stood up in the boat and pushed against the black water below with the end of the oar. The rubber boat scraped up onto the gravel-covered shore. Lee Young-jin jumped onto the wet gravel. Behind him, Yoon Hwa-kyeong dragged the rubber boat along. The sound of the rubber bottom scraping across the rough sand and gravel was drowned out by the waves.
They hid the rubber boat behind a rock at the bottom of the cliff.
The wind rolled the white granite gravel towards the cliff where it hit with a sharp whooshing sound each time.
Yoon Hwa-kyeong sat down on a long, flat rock, crossing his legs, and inserted the lens into one eye.
“This is amazing.”
“Don’t you feel dizzy?”
He jumped in place a few times.
“No. Not at all.”
“Good. I’ll show you the direction and location through that lens. It won’t be very detailed since I’m not using a computer.”
Lee Young-jin adjusted his backpack and pulled up a 2D map on his smartphone. Yoon Hwa-kyeong came closer and leaned forward to look at the screen. A few buildings were marked on the sparse map. Lee Young-jin pointed to a small building on the southwest side.
“We need to go here first. We’re on the west side of the island… There shouldn’t be anyone on the island. Probably.”
“Do we have to climb the cliff?”
“No. There’s a path leading inside. It’s a bit dangerous, though…”
“Hmm. Alright. If it’s this high… Falling wouldn’t kill us.”
Yoon Hwa-kyeong casually looked up at the steeply rising cliff as if it were a trivial matter.
They climbed a perilously carved staircase near the end of the cliff. The staircase was broken in places, sagging down, with some of the wooden steps broken or slippery with moss. A rope railing installed by villagers years ago swayed with every gust of wind. Lee Young-jin carefully climbed the stairs, holding tightly to the rope.
Yoon Hwa-kyeong intentionally followed behind him, grabbing the backpack or shoulder to steady him whenever he wobbled.
As they reached the top of the staircase, the wind grew stronger.
Low bushes stretched along the path up to the waist. The path was rugged, untouched by human footsteps for a long time.
Lee Young-jin staggered along the path covered with bushes, gravel, and wet sand. His thoughts overwhelmed him.
“Is there nobody on the island?”
Yoon Hwa-kyeong’s relaxed voice broke Lee Young-jin’s train of thought.
He glanced up at Yoon Hwa-kyeong walking beside him.
In the darkness, the man’s eyes absorbed light, sparkling heavily, and his step was light. His face was as calm as light cream.
Lee Young-jin quietly nodded.
“Nobody.”
“What’s here?”
“An item.”
“The one you moved from Bogotá?”
Yoon Hwa-kyeong’s pointed question silenced Lee Young-jin for a moment before he slowly replied.
“Yes. That.”
“Hmm.”
Yoon Hwa-kyeong knocked aside a long bush blocking the path and threw it aside.
Instead of asking more about the item, he asked something else.
“Do you know this place well?”
“Pretty well.”
“Did you research it?”
“No. I lived here. For a long time…”
“Alone?”
“Not alone at first, but later…”
“It must have been lonely.”
An unexpected reply came back.
If it had been a while ago, Lee Young-jin would have argued against that statement. Teacher came twice a month, and Uncle Jung-hoon often visited, and he could freely play games and do other things… As Lee Young-jin hesitated without replying, Yoon Hwa-kyeong continued.
“It’s not like that, though. No cinemas, no bookstores, no shopping centers. And no friends.”
Lee Young-jin could only respond with a faint, “Yeah, it seems so.” It felt strange. No one had ever worried if Lee Young-jin would feel bored. Boredom was a secondary issue, and he didn’t even have the luxury to feel such secondary emotions.
“But it’s okay now, right?”
Yoon Hwa-kyeong asked again.
Lee Young-jin looked at his back for a moment and then slowly replied, “Yeah.”
The path widened just a bit.
They reached their destination. The old village hall building loomed damply in the darkness. Below a broken second-floor window, a deserted white truck stood alone. Its paint peeling off and tires deflated, it added to the damp atmosphere of the old building. Lee Young-jin vividly remembered the village head driving around the island, delivering boxes of soju, makgeolli, rice sacks, and occasionally boxes of snacks to each household in the village’s only truck. He also remembered how the village head carefully cleaned the truck every weekend with a hose.
The entrance to the village hall was locked. A thick chain was tightly wound around the door handle. The chain was new. Lee Young-jin frowned.
“It wasn’t locked like this before…”
Yoon Hwa-kyeong shook the door once. The chain clanked. He then looked up at the entire two-story building. All the windows were boarded up and nailed shut.
“Is there a back door?”
“There is, but… it’s probably locked too.”
“Let’s check it out anyway. If the door is weak, we might be able to pry it off with its hinges.”
They circled the building and found the back door, which was also locked. Yoon Hwa-kyeong pulled on the door with one hand. The hinges were solid.
“It looks like a new door; we can’t easily break this without some tools.”
“There might be something in the storage…”
They turned back and left the village hall, entering a neighboring empty warehouse. It was used to store miscellaneous items and a tractor. The tractor was gone, and a thick layer of dust covered everything. Yoon Hwa-kyeong found a short iron crowbar with a forked end in the corner of the dusty warehouse.
“Ah, this is a universal tool.”
He murmured, swinging it lightly in the air a few times. Whish, whish—the sound of it cutting through the air.
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