Have a Nice Day by Sera Yu

The day began before sunrise. Hong Insu woke to a house so dark and quiet it seemed submerged under water. He felt a presence in the room: a fragment of his mother’s unhappiness had slipped in through the wall and was squatting in a corner. The formless figure with red pupils glared at him. Suddenly a terrifying thought shot past. He remembered a local family of four that died in their sleep not long ago. A family suicide from carbon monoxide poisoning. Briquettes were found in the bedroom they all shared. He held his breath and forced himself to go back to sleep. 

When Insu woke again he was sweating profusely even though it was cold. He put a hand on his sunken stomach. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s lunch, a butter and sugar sandwich. The hunger made him sick, yet he dared not make a hole in the rice paper to unhook the lock on the outside. The fact that he could easily let himself out was pointless. The last time he snuck out to get food from the kitchen, she came behind him with a broom. 

Soon, the door opened.

“I need salt and flour,” his mother said, standing with a basket on her hip. She held out a steamed potato.

Scarfing down the potato, skin and all, he could almost taste her springy hand-cut noodles in chicken broth topped with summer squash, his father’s favorite. His chest ached as much as his belly. At that moment, he could not tell the difference between nostalgia and hunger.

Insu always took the same road to get to the market, the only way out of the village. The sky was an unusual blue, perhaps the shade of a distant ocean he’d never get to see in person. He started to feel queasy and stopped to take a break. Village elders shuffled toward him one after another as though part of a funeral procession, their words echoing through an invisible tunnel. “How is your mother…?” Thankfully, they no longer asked about his father who had straddled two households for a year before finally making his choice. It would have made things easier if he had left town and they never saw each other again, but he simply packed up a suitcase and moved into the new woman’s house located at the end of their shared street. The father and son became neighbors.

Like the subtle vibration throughout his body that always preceded a bad dream, the queasiness seemed to portend another dreadful chance encounter. Insu gathered himself and focused on moving as far away from the terrible echoes as he could, only to come upon the tall figure he no longer knew very well yet ran into often. For a second, the boy considered hiding behind a bush but gave up when he heard his father clear his throat. The man was always clearing his throat. He would clear his throat before uttering his last words, Insu was convinced. Unless his father had changed personalities overnight, there would be no variation to their routine: avoiding eye contact, muttering something about the weather, walking away. On Insu’s part, a single rhetorical question: Will you come home for dinner? While the memory of the first time remained as clear as a broken window, he wasn’t sure when the imploring question turned into a perfunctory farewell message no different from Have a nice day. Was it the fourth or twelfth time? He only remembered that it was once meant to be persuasive.

Hong Il stood next to the yellow flowers, face drenched in light. Insu expected his father to comment on the strange looking sky, but he only smiled as the sun lit up the soft waves around his face, creating a nimbus. To Insu’s dismay he looked like a saint.

“Have you eaten?” 

The question wasn’t a part of their normal script. How was he supposed to answer? It was an inquiry into his well-being, certainly, but also a filler for the space between them, just like his own hollow dinner invitation. Was he supposed to tell him the truth, that he wasn’t eating enough? That his mother was locking him in his room at night? That he was cutting himself with a broken pencil so as not to lose his mind? That he had written countless letters asking for help only to tear them up? That now, he was fearing for his life? He nodded. 

“Where are you going?” said the father, looking serene and wistful. Then, predictably, “What a beautiful sky to stand under. Not a single cloud.”

“The market, to buy flour.”

“Hand-cut noodles?” He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply as if he could smell the broth.

“Yes,” Insu confirmed, though he suspected dumpling soup. 

It was time for his farewell message. Why did it suddenly burn in his throat like a real question that deserved an answer, once again a burden to both?

“Will you come home?”

Hong Il cleared his throat and looked up at the solid blue sky. Insu noticed that his father had aged quite a bit since the day he left home. There were many new lines around his eyes and forehead.

He sighed and nodded thoughtfully, then patted the boy on the shoulder and walked off. 

“I’m afraid I won’t make it back in time,” he said as he turned the corner. Then he was gone.

“Have a nice day,” Insu said reflexively. His head hurt from an invisible blow. Had he imagined the encounter? Or did his mind just replay a previous one? He ran to the intersection. The streets were empty and quiet. He looked up and saw clouds that weren’t there a few minutes ago. The sky was back to its usual absence of color. He staggered and searched about for something to lean on, but there was only the concrete wall that extended all the way to the end of the road. He made his way to the wall and sat on the ground, sheltering himself behind a bare forsythia shrub.

When he returned in the evening with the flour and salt, he found the house upside down. It was a scene that would stick in his mind forever, the opening to every nightmare from there on: a heap of torn clothes by the door, baskets and bowls overturned outside the kitchen, his mother slumped against the water basin, emptied. He waved a hand in front of her face, but there was no response. He examined her hands and clothes for signs of charcoal. She was clean. Relieved, he placed the bags of flour and salt next to her. It was then that his mother returned to her body and looked up at him, tears trapped in her eyes. He managed a smile.

The grumbling in his belly resumed, but Insu could no longer feel the hunger. He entered his room and unfolded the bedding. The warm colors of the blankets reminded him of ancient cave paintings he saw in a fancy encyclopedia, which the doughnut shop owner’s daughter brought to school around the time his father left home. He’d sat next to her and endured the rancid oil smell from her hair and clothes, something he normally found intolerable, to get a good look at the pictures. Surprised by his attention, the girl let him borrow the book so he could read it during lunch time. He spent the whole hour reading about the paintings and didn’t even open his lunch box. A long time ago in a small town in France, a group of ordinary boys had followed a dog into a cave which held hundreds of prehistoric paintings of animals on its walls and ceiling. He wondered if such an extraordinary event could ever happen to him. 

He punched a small hole in the door and locked himself in the bedroom. Then he crawled under the blanket and closed his eyes. The horses and bulls from the paintings floated before him, still and in motion at the same time. Some were running; some were preparing to run. He counted the moving animals and waited for morning.

Sera Yu is a writer and translator living near DC. She is currently working on a novel about two brothers separated as children in 1970s Korea.

14 January 2022