Chapter 16I Know This Kind of Light

Eleven o’clock. He leaned against the doorframe and did not go in.

The door was open only a crack. Through it he could see one corner of the mirror, and half the body of the boy in the mirror. The doorframe was wood. The paint had come off in one place, showing darker wood beneath, and the wood was cool to the touch. His left hand rested on the frame, his thumb scraping at the pale edge of the patch. A little white flake came away and fell by his foot, and he nudged it under the threshold with the toe of his shoe. The old scratch on the doorframe was beside his shoulder. The corridor smelled faintly of mop water, mixed with the smell of wood.

On top of the doorframe stood a bottle of cold drink. The writing on the bottle had blurred in the water, and water ran down the bottom of the bottle onto the wood and soaked a ring of paint white. The same kind was in the chiller at the night-shift convenience store at the foot of the hill. She had been here. Each time she came, she did the same thing: she left something on the doorframe and did not go in.

The first time, there was a packet of rice balls on the doorframe, unopened, the triangular flaps of its wrapper pressed flat. The second time it was an umbrella, its ribs still wet, leaning against the frame. The drops falling from it had made a small pool on the corridor floor. He stood there a while before he saw it.

He did not take the bottle. It stood where it was, and the water was still running down.

The broken silver microphone earring in his right ear flickered, the electric violet core in the break pulsing on and off. The break ran a little hotter than the rest, and when it ran hotter it pulsed faster. Today it was slow. The shadow print on the back of his black leather jacket came half a beat late, catching up with his shoulder.

The corridor lights were sound-activated. He stood still, and the lights went out one by one until only the tungsten bulb by the door was still on. It gave a warm yellow light that reached the doorframe but not the threshold. Inside the lampshade a moth had stopped moving, its wings still letting the light through.

The mirror covered a whole wall of the room. The long light above the mirror frame was cold white. It lit only the face of the mirror, and the wall behind it stayed dark. He had stood under this kind of light for more than four hundred hours, most of them at night. Alone in front of the mirror, he danced the same eight beats until dawn. When the tubes flickered, he counted the flickers, and all night he counted into the thousands. By the end the numbers and the beats could no longer be told apart. The mirror showed only the half the light fell on. The other half stayed in the dark, and he had never once looked at it. The teacher had said his beat came in from another room. By the time it reached here, it was half a beat late.

The boy knelt in front of the mirror with his back to the door. The hood of his hoodie had fallen onto his back, and two drawstrings hung down over his chest, one long and one short. His shoulders rose and fell. His lips moved once, without sound. He was counting, and what he counted was millimetres. His hand was still pressed to the right side of his jaw, his thumb on the mark, pressing until the edge had gone pale. On the floor beside his knee lay a plastic ruler, its edges worn round. Along the bottom of the mirror frame ran a strip of black tape, level with that height, one end lifted.

In the mirror, the right side of the boy’s face was lit, and the left had been pressed into a flat grey by the light. The light fell only on the right. The right side was the one he had pressed the most times.

Jaewon did not go in, and he did not make a sound. He was counting the boy’s breaths, not the beats. At the twelfth breath the hand slid off the jaw at last and came down on the knee, leaving a white mark across the knuckles.

The boy in the mirror lifted his head half a beat before him.

The boy lifted his head too. His chin stopped at the height he had raised it to with two fingers, three years earlier. The boy’s back straightened as well.

His left leg had gone numb. He shifted onto the other foot and leaned his shoulder against the doorframe.

Cold pink light spilled in from the far end of the corridor, seeped through the gap into the room, and ran along the floor. It flattened the shadow of the boy alone.

Beyond the window at the end of the corridor was the hill. The tower on the hilltop should have gone out by now, as usual.

It did not go out.

His reflection stood up first and stepped out of the frame. Its foot came down on the third board from the window with a dull thump, exactly as the boy’s foot did each time he landed the first beat. It moved to the boy’s right, reached out and straightened the drawstrings. The drawstring brushed against the hoodie with a faint, gritty sound. The short one was tugged out by half a finger, and the long one was pushed back in. Now both were the same length.

Jaewon recognised the gesture.

Three years earlier, someone had done this for him too. It was the morning he was leaving. She had practised with him in this room, and later she had left as well. Her hands were cold, and her nails were cut very short. She stood on his right, pinched the short drawstring between two fingers, tugged it down half a finger, and pressed the long one in. Now they were the same length. She said it was lined up now. He said thank you. His voice came half a beat after hers, very thin. That day his hair was still long, tied at the back of his head, and she pressed a loose strand back behind his ear. She did not turn to look at him.

That week the company photographed him in a studio downstairs. The studio was white, the floor was white, and the backdrop was white. The person standing in the middle had no shadow. Lights came down from all four sides, and he stood for two hours. Every few minutes the photographer called out “Good” and changed the angle. The photographer said the light fell only on the retouched side, and the other side was left for post-production. He was allowed down to drink water only after the forty-odd shot.

Afterwards someone showed him one of the pictures on a tablet. With a fingertip they traced a line along the jaw and said the jaw had to be tightened here, and that it could not go on camera until it was fixed. He touched his own jaw. The bone was there. There was no line. On the tablet the line was very fine, and the place the finger had traced stayed lit until he took his hand away.

He said he would not change it.

On assessment day, the one sitting in the last row looked at him for three seconds, and the pen did not touch the paper. He did not move until the three seconds had passed. In those three seconds he stood in front of the mirror, and every part of him knew where it was. The tip of the pen was a finger’s width from the paper, and he counted that finger’s width. That time, no one called his name. On the notice board in the corridor, that month’s list had been replaced with a new one. His name was not on it, and that line stayed empty.

On the evening he left, he came out of the room with a bag on his back and a bottle of water in his hand. The teacher stood at the far end of the corridor with the roll book in her hands. Both her hands hung down, her thumbs pressed to the seams of her trousers. Her eyes were on the scratch on the doorframe, and she did not come over. He reached the door and stopped. Then he crouched, lifted a child’s chin on two fingers, and raised it to a certain height. He held it there for a second, then let go. He did not say why.

Later someone passed on the teacher’s words: that person’s beat had been late because he had been counting all along.

By the time he reached the stairs, the water in his hand was no longer cold. He sat at the bus stop until the last bus. The bag lay on his lap, and the cap of the bottle stayed screwed on, unopened.

That morning, his name sticker on the wall was still whole.

※

He stepped back from the gap in the door, and a light came on in the corridor. He did not look back at the mirror. He went down the stairs.

The stairwell lights were sound-activated too. He took one step down and a light came on; the light behind him went out. On the notice board at the end of the ground-floor corridor, the list was still pinned up. On the twenty-third line there was a name, and he did not read it.

All the glass on the street flipped at once. The convenience store doors, the barber’s window, the advertising box at the bus stop, the big screen at the crossing: in the same second they all became mirrors, and in the mirrors was the same expanse of cold pink. Several cars had stopped in the middle of the road with their doors open, and no one got out.

Someone sat on the bench at the bus stop, holding an empty bottle with its cap unscrewed. The one in the glass held an empty bottle too.

He stopped in front of a shop window and saw himself in the glass. The right side of his face was lit, and the left was grey.

People came out of the glass. One after another, they were a little better looking than real people. Their jaws were sharper, their hair was neater, and they walked with strides of the same length. They came out of the glass and stood beside the people on the street, reaching out to comb those people’s hair. Each strand of the freshly combed hair lay flat. On the glass they had passed, a faint handprint was left, and after a while the handprint was gone too.

The passers-by did not dodge. Some stopped, lowered their heads and stood still to be combed. Those being combed closed their eyes and did not move. When it was done, not a single hair stood up. No one looked up.

Someone’s shoulder knocked against him. That person did not apologise, and did not look at him. That person turned and stood beside one of those who had come out of the glass, and let that one comb his hair.

A woman stood at a shop window and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. The person who had come out of the glass also tucked a strand of hair behind the ear.

A small child stood on the steps, looking up. One of the people who had come out of the glass bent down, rested a hand on the back of the child’s head and pressed it lightly. The child’s head dropped.

This was not the only street. From the foot of the steps of the old building, the glass near and far was flipping, all of it the same cold pink, lighting up one strip after another. In the guardhouse at the foot of the steps the electric fan was still turning, and there was no one inside.

The door of the night-shift convenience store at the foot of the hill had flipped too. Inside, the television hung in a corner with no sound. Its picture showed the lower half of the tower, lit cold pink. Behind the till, someone was stocking the chiller, row after row, every bottle facing the same way. That person’s hands paused for a moment, then carried on. Jaewon did not stop. He walked up the hill against the stream of people who had stopped.

Crossing the footbridge, the wind was strong. On the road below, every car had stopped, their headlights white, in rows. The shadow print on the back of his jacket was lifted by the wind, and dropped back half a beat late.

Past the bridge, through the glass door of a barber’s on the roadside, the poster stuck to the mirror had flipped too. The person on the poster had a jaw too sharp to be human, and no pores showed on the skin. That person stepped out through the glass door, stood behind an old man at the roadside, and turned his collar flat. The old man did not move.

The slope was steep. The steps went up one by one, and the edge of each had been worn round. Grass grew in the cracks, and the grass was wet. The people on the street walked with strides of the same length, and his feet always landed half a beat behind theirs. He did not try to catch up. On the slope his breathing grew heavy, and the breath he let out showed for a moment in the cold air, then scattered.

Halfway up, the sounds of the street faded bit by bit. All that was left was the sound of soles, dozens of pairs, all in the same rhythm.

On a telegraph pole by the road was a missing-person notice. The rain had soaked the words into a blur, and only half of one name could still be read.

At the second crossing he lifted his head once. In the north-east sky the disc was still hanging. Its bright side took up two-thirds of it, with a thin rim of pale violet around the edge. On the bright side were white clouds, in clumps, not moving. On the small dark part were a few specks of light. Above the disc, a little higher and on the side nearer the tower, a black mouth stood open. Round its edge ran a very fine white ring, and the stars outside the ring were twisted into curves. The edge of the disc was clean, with no halo. It looked as if it had been cut along a line, and it hung there. Now and then the white ring flashed, then went dark again.

He looked once, then lowered his head again.

Above the trees on the hilltop, the lower half of the tower was lit mirror-silver cold pink, and the whole body of the tower had been washed into a single colour. The light climbed level by level and stopped just under the cloud. A wind blew out of the trees and pressed the cloud lower, and nothing of the tower’s upper part could be seen.

He paused on the steps and rested a hand on the railing. The railing was wet, and his palm went cold at once.

※

The entrance at the base of the tower was one seamless sheet of mirror. There was no door, only a line running from one edge of the mirror floor to the other. He stepped onto it, and his shadow reached the mirror surface half a beat after him. The mirror floor made no sound. The sole of his shoe came down, and the sound did not come back. He walked to the middle of the mirror floor and looked back. There was not a single footprint behind him.

The mirror floor was colder than the wooden floorboards. A ring of lights was set into its edge, cold lights, and they lit a pale ring around his ankles. When he looked down, a patch of sky showed in the mirror floor. The disc was beneath his feet, and the black mouth was in front of his shoe tips. He moved his foot a little to one side, and the disc did not move with it.

The wind on the hilltop was cold. It blew across the broken edge of the earring, and the violet core pulsed a little faster.

Coming towards him was another version of himself.

The same face, but with a sharper jaw and cleaner skin. He wore a black leather jacket too, and the shadow print on its back was not late at all, sitting squarely on the shoulder. The other him had new shoes, their soles never worn. His own left heel had been worn flat on one side from years of walking on the outer edge. The other him reached out to take his jacket, with a movement as precise as if it had been rehearsed. The hand was dry, with no sweat. The other him’s chest did not rise and fall. The other him looked straight ahead, not at him. The other him’s cuffs were new, without a single loose thread. His own cuff had a loose thread. It had caught on a nail in the doorframe three months earlier, and he had tugged it once without breaking it off.

The studio lights on all four sides came on together and wiped both their shadows clean.

He did not hand over his jacket. That face had no expression, and nothing was missing from it.

His right hand pressed the inside pocket of his jacket, through the cloth, once.

There was something in the inside pocket. It was an earphone, the left one, its cable wound into a loop at the very bottom. The week before, her earphone cable had got tangled into a knot, and she had passed it to him. He wound it round, loop by loop, held the end down with a finger, and handed it back. This left one was the one she had left on the doorframe last time, and he had not given it back. Through the cloth of the inside pocket, the earphone was still cold.

He raised his hand and looked at the back of it. The electric violet beat tattoo was still lit. Its glow came half a beat late.

Then he went round the other him and walked into the light. His cuff brushed against the other him’s cuff. It was the same cloth, and the sound of the brushing was the same. The other him did not stop. The light came from all four sides, and where he stepped into it, he cast no shadow.

The stage was a square of mirror floor. Thin pillars stood at its four corners, with studio lights on top. The stands rose in tiers around the outside of the stage, climbing all the way round to the edge of the woods, and their seat backs were white. On the steps was a thin layer of water, which reflected the lower half of the tower, and the part it showed was cold pink too.

At the centre of the stage, the Perfect Mirror froze in one pose. Her jaw was raised to the best possible angle, and her fingertips rested on her collarbone. For a full half second not even the dust on the mirror floor moved. Her arm and the line of her shoulder formed one straight line, with nothing extra and nothing missing. In the mirror floor her toes were reflected, pointing straight at his. Her clothes had no seams. They were one piece from shoulder to foot, the colour of mirror silver, and when the light moved, the colour moved with it.

She was too far away for her skin to be seen. Only the line of her jaw could be made out, tapering very sharply. The wings behind her were made of broken mirror, and some of the pieces showed his face, one after another, and none of them whole. The wings stirred, and the edges of the broken mirror knocked faintly together. Then they were still again. Her hair was made of diamond thread, and it flashed whenever the light touched it.

What the mirror sequins reflected was not the stage. It was the viewers in the stands, blurred and distorted. The people in the stands stood up together and sat down together. Row after row, they moved at the same speed, and even the rustle of their clothes was the same. Some had their hands on their knees, backs upward, with no tattoo. The people in the front row had stacks of paper on their knees, and each sheet was printed with the same face.

He stood still. The light pressed on his face and lit only one side. This was the kind of light the studio used too. All forty-odd photographs had been taken under this light. His toes moved once inside his shoes. He did not step back. His breathing was uneven. The breath he drew in always came out a beat later than other people’s.

“I know this kind of light. It only lights the side that has been retouched.”

When he had finished, his words landed half a beat after her pause. Her pause did not change.

“The light has found you.”

Her voice had no echo. Two voices lay on top of each other, one low and one high. Every word landed in the same place, close to the ear, and was gone as soon as it was said.

She looked in the same order as the one in the last row: jaw, eyes, hands.

“Don’t rush. First I’ll change you into something that can go on camera.”

Her fingertips curled in once. She did not blink. A ring of mirror ripples pushed out from beneath her feet, skimming the mirror floor, sweeping across his ankles, his knees, his chest. Everything the ripples touched gave out a very faint sound, all of the same pitch. When the ripples reached the inside pocket, they paused and went round it. The cloth there was not peeled away. After the ripples had passed, a faint ring of shine was left on the mirror floor, with a notch in it, and the notch faced the tip of his shoe.

Each time the ripples swept across him, one corrected version was peeled from him. The first: his jaw tightened, and the bone was screwed round one full turn, exactly three millimetres. The second: the sweat at his temple was wiped away, and the skin went dry all at once and stretched tight. The third: every crease in his jacket was ironed flat, and the pale line the cuff had worn was gone.

While it was peeled off, there was a very light sensation on the skin, like someone tearing away a layer of peeling sunburn. It did not hurt. It was only that every time something was torn off, something in him grew a layer thinner. His knees bent, then straightened. The layer that was peeled away did not fall to the floor. It vanished as soon as it touched the mirror floor.

Three people stood beside him without a word, one on his left and two on his right, pinning him in the middle. All three drew their feet back half an inch at the same moment, then stopped together. The one on the left had a cuff that lay flatter than his. The nearest on the right had not a single hair standing up. The one furthest away had new heels. They all had his face. The backs of their three hands were clean, without a trace of violet. The knuckles of all three had gone a little pale, like his, but none of them had a tattoo. Of the four people standing there, only he had a tattoo on the back of his hand.

He turned the back of his hand towards himself. The tattoo was still there, electric violet, pulsing on and off, half a beat behind his hand. His right hand hung at his side. He closed his knuckles one by one, then opened them one by one.

“You are not beautiful enough. You are not successful enough. You are not perfect enough. Retouch it once more.”

Her lips and her voice had no order between them. They landed at the same moment.

She held out her palm to him, palm up, as if inviting him back onto the stage to go again. The whole of the stands was full of the same face.