When he pressed the buzzer for 709 it was exactly twenty minutes past nine. The woman who opened the door and came out said in a hushed voice, “Ji-woo’s been asking for his mother; he’s just fallen asleep a few minutes ago.” A little girl—judging by her braids, she was in the second or third year of primary school—held out Ji-woo’s plastic forklift truck for him to take. He thanked them and put the truck in his backpack. He left the door to his apartment, 710, open, and carried the sleeping child through carefully. The walk down the corridor to the child’s bedroom felt unusually long. Ji-woo couldn’t have been sleeping very deeply, because as soon as he laid him down in the bed he could hear the wet sound of the boy sucking his thumb, a lonely sound in the darkened room.

He went into the living room and turned on the light, locked the front door and sat down on the sofa. He remained lost in thought for a while, then stood up, went back over to the door, opened it and went out. After taking the lift down to the ground floor, he went and sat in the driver’s seat of the parked car. While he was busy rummaging around in the bag that held the two 6mm tapes and the sketchbook, his phone rang.

“Ji-woo?” His wife’s voice sounded subdued.

“He’s asleep.”

“Did he have dinner?”

“He must have done. He was already asleep when I got there.”

“Okay. I’ll be back around eleven.”

“He’s sleeping so deeply I…well.”

“What?”

“I’m just going to pop to the studio. There’s something I haven’t quite finished yet.” His wife didn’t answer. “I’m sure Ji-woo won’t wake up. He’s really sound asleep. You know he sleeps through till morning these days.” Nothing.

“Are you listening?” Still nothing.

“Darling.”

To his surprise, it sounded as though she were crying. Was there no one else in the shop? It would be highly unusual for her to let herself cry in front of others, she who was always so acutely aware of prying eyes.

After a while she appeared to have calmed herself down, and spoke in a voice he’d never heard from her before, such was the complex mix of emotions it seemed to express: “If you want to go, then go. I’m going to close up the shop and head home now.”

She hung up. Ordinarily, she was the kind of person who could never bring herself to hang up first, no matter how busy she was. Thrown into confusion, he felt an unexpected pang of guilt and sat there for a while undecided, still clutching the phone in his hand. He hesitated over whether to go back inside and wait for his wife to get in, but soon made up his mind and started the engine. The roads were fairly empty at this hour; it would only take her twenty minutes or so to get home. In all likelihood, the child would stay sound asleep and nothing at all would happen. But in any case, he simply couldn’t face the thought of sitting there in that brightly lit apartment, waiting for his wife to come home, only to be confronted with the darkness in her face.