After washing and putting on her nightclothes she disappeared into her own room rather than getting ready to sleep in the living room as we usually did. I was left pacing up and down when I heard the phone ring: my mother-in-law.

“How is everything with you? I hadn’t heard a thing for such a long time…”

“I’m sorry about that. It’s just that I’ve been so busy lately…is my father-in-law in good health?”

“Oh, nothing ever changes with us. Are things going well at work?”

I hesitated. “I’m fine. But as for my wife…”

“What about Yeong-hye, what’s the matter?” Her voice was laced with worry. She had never seemed to show much of an interest in her second daughter, but I suppose one’s children are one’s children, after all.

“The thing is, she’s stopped eating meat.”

“What did you say?”

“She’s stopped eating any kind of meat at all, even fish—all she lives on is vegetables. It’s been several months now.”

“What kind of talk is this? Surely you can always just tell her not to follow this diet.”

“Oh, I’ve told her, all right, but she still goes ahead and defies me. And what’s more, she’s even imposed this ridiculous diet on me—I can’t remember the last time I tasted meat in this house.”

My mother-in-law was lost for words, and I used her speechlessness as an opportunity to turn the screw a little tighter. “She’s become very weak. I’m not sure exactly how serious it is…”

“I can’t have this. Is Yeong-hye there? Pass her the phone.”

“She’s gone to bed now. I’ll tell her to call tomorrow morning.”

“No, leave it. I’ll call. How can that child be so defiant? Oh, you must be ashamed of her!”

After hanging up I riffled through my notebook and dialed my sister-in-law In-hye’s number.

My ears were assaulted by the sound of her young son bellowing “hello?” down the line.

“Please put your mother on.”

In-hye, who quickly took the receiver from her son, resembled my wife quite closely, but her eyes were larger and prettier, and overall she was much more feminine.

“Hello?”

Her voice as it sounded over the phone, always somehow more distinct than in person, never failed to send me into a state of sexual arousal. I informed her of my wife’s newfound vegetarianism in the same way as I had just done with her mother, listened to exactly the same sequence of astonishment followed by an apology, and put down the phone after accepting her assurances. I considered repeating the process by calling my wife’s younger brother, Yeong-ho, but decided that that would be overdoing it.

—

Dreams of murder.

Murderer or murdered….hazy distinctions, boundaries wearing thin. Familiarity bleeds into strangeness, certainty becomes impossible. Only the violence is vivid enough to stick. A sound, the elasticity of the instant when the metal struck the victim’s head…the shadow that crumpled and fell gleams cold in the darkness.