The first person I ever killed was my father.
It was a winter night when I was thirteen.
People called me a poor, unfortunate child that day.
A boy who had lost his mother.
The son of a serial killer.
And the boy who killed a monster.
The news pixelated my face.
Reporters erased my name, and people imagined whatever stories they wanted about me.
“How scared must that little kid have been to do something like that?”
“Still, he did kill someone.”
“I heard his father was a serial killer.”
“Didn’t he kill his mom, too?”
They all had it wrong.
They didn’t know how badly I had trembled that night.
How long I had held my breath.
Or that, in the final moment, I had truly wanted to kill my father.
My father was a good man.
At least, he was in front of the rest of the world.
He always wore a neat shirt to work, and he greeted the neighbors first whenever he ran into them.
He never missed a school counseling day, and my homeroom teacher called him a responsible father.
I believed it, too.
My father was quiet and kind, and sometimes he even patted me on the head.
He often came home late at night, but I thought it was because of work.
At least, I did until Mom locked my bedroom door and spoke through her tears.
“Doyoon, listen carefully.”
Her hands were strangely cold that day.
Her fingertips were trembling.
“Your father… He isn’t a normal person.”
I didn’t understand what she meant.
My father wasn’t normal?
What was that supposed to mean?
He didn’t drink, he didn’t yell, and he had never hit us.
But then Mom pulled an old box out from under the bed.
Inside were scraps of newspapers.
Articles about missing-person cases.
Articles about unsolved murders.
Articles saying the police still hadn’t caught the culprit.
And photographs of unfamiliar people.
Mom looked at them and sobbed quietly.
“Your father did this.”
Even then, I didn’t believe her.
No, I couldn’t believe her.
Then the front door opened.
Click.
The sound was unnaturally clear.
The air inside the house froze in an instant.
Mom shoved me into the closet.
“No matter what happens, don’t come out.”
I watched through the crack in the closet door.
I watched my father walk into the living room.
I watched Mom stand in front of him.
And I watched my father smile.
“So you finally found out.”
That wasn’t the voice of the father I knew.
It was low, calm, and strangely gentle.
He sounded as peaceful as someone asking what they should have for dinner.
Crying, Mom asked,
“Did you… really kill them all?”
My father didn’t answer.
His silence was the answer.
My memories of what happened next are incomplete.
Mom’s scream.
A picture frame hitting the floor.
My father’s slow footsteps.
And the moment his eyes met mine as I hid inside the closet.
My father smiled when he saw me.
“Doyoon.”
I couldn’t even breathe.
“Come out.”
I didn’t move.
“It’s okay. Dad won’t hurt you.”
Those words terrified me.
Because he must have said the same thing to Mom at first.
I came out of the closet.
Something was clutched in my hand.
Even now, I don’t remember exactly what it was.
There’s only one thing I do remember.
In that moment, I was no longer a child.
My father kept looking into my eyes until the very end.
He didn’t look surprised.
He didn’t look sad.
If anything, he looked satisfied.
And just before his breath stopped, my father said to me,
“You really are my son.”
Those words became a curse.
I killed my father.
But my father didn’t die inside me.
After the case, the world protected me.
I was a juvenile below the age of criminal responsibility.
The dead man had been a serial killer who had murdered countless people.
Above all, I was a victim who had lost his mother.
The law didn’t punish me harshly.
People said,
“That child doesn’t need punishment. He needs treatment.”
“He stopped a serial killer.”
“He’s a victim, if anything.”
That was how I gave up my name.
The name Kim Doyoon disappeared.
I was given a new identity and transferred to a new school.
And I went to live in the home of Kang Taeseok, the detective assigned to the case.
Uncle Taeseok was a good man.
He didn’t treat me like I was pitiful.
He didn’t force me to smile, and he didn’t ask if I was okay.
On the first day I went to his house, he set out a warm meal and said,
“No one here will call you a monster.”
I wanted to believe him.
I really did.
I thought I would be okay if I lived under a new name.
I thought everything would be over if I put on a new uniform, carried a new backpack, and went to a school where no one knew me.
But changing your name doesn’t mean you’re born again.
I dreamed every night.
The crack in the closet door.
Mom’s hand.
My father’s smile.
And his final words.
You really are my son.
At first, I thought they were only dreams.
But one day, they stopped being dreams.
“Doyoon.”
It was two in the morning.
I woke up drenched in cold sweat.
The room was dark, and rain was falling beyond the window.
I should have been alone in the room.
But someone was sitting in the chair at my desk.
It was my father.
He was looking at me with the exact same face he’d had when he was alive.
“You’ve grown a lot.”
I couldn’t scream.
I could only draw breath, as if my throat were blocked.
My father smiled.
“Why are you so surprised? You called me.”
My father didn’t disappear after that day.
When I went to school.
When I ate.
Before I fell asleep.
He whispered in my ear.
“You can’t live a normal life.”
“Blood can’t lie.”
“You’ll find out someday.”
“How quiet it is when someone disappears.”
I endured it.
I pretended not to hear him.
I pretended not to see him.
I pretended nothing was wrong.
I didn’t tell Uncle Taeseok, either.
Not because I was afraid he would take me to a hospital.
I was afraid the way he looked at me would change.
No one here will call you a monster.
I wanted to keep that promise.
At least in front of Uncle Taeseok, I didn’t want to be a monster.
But the second murder came far too easily.
It was an ordinary afternoon.
Puddles remained on the playground after the rain, and the faint smell of wet earth lingered in the classroom.
After the final bell, I tried to take the usual route home, the one where no one else went.
The alley beside the storage shed behind the school.
Teachers rarely came there, and there were no security cameras.
The students called it Dead Road.
That was where I heard crying.
“Hey, if you don’t have any money, you get beat up.”
I stopped walking.
There were three people in the alley.
One was sitting on the ground, while the other two rummaged through his backpack. The boy standing in the middle was well known in our grade.
He smiled in front of teachers, but his fists came out first whenever he was around weaker kids.
I tried to walk past.
It had nothing to do with me.
I had to live quietly.
I absolutely couldn’t cause trouble.
That was when I heard my father’s voice.
“You’re just going to leave?”
I clenched my teeth.
“People like that are the ones who survive the longest.”
My father was laughing.
“Just like me, when I killed your mother.”
At those words, my mind went cold.
I walked into the alley.
“Stop.”
All three of them looked at me at once.
The boy in the middle snorted.
“What’s your problem?”
“I said stop.”
He came toward me.
“Why is the transfer student sticking his nose in?”
He shoved my shoulder.
I staggered back one step.
“Just leave.”
“And if I don’t?”
He grabbed me by the collar.
In that instant, my father’s voice bored into my ear.
“That’s right, Doyoon.”
I held my breath.
“You know what you have to do.”
“Shut up.”
I muttered it, and the boy’s face twisted.
“What did you say?”
“Not to you.”
And then, in the next moment,
I shoved him.
I hadn’t meant to kill him.
I really hadn’t.
But the boy stumbled backward and lost his footing on the wet ground. His body tumbled down the stairs.
A short scream.
Then silence.
The world went quiet again.
I looked down the stairs.
He wasn’t moving.
My hands were shaking.
I didn’t know whether it was from fear, anger, or something else.
That was when my father appeared beside me.
My dead father, wearing an utterly satisfied expression.
“See?”
He whispered,
“It’s easier than you thought.”
I stared at the boy collapsed at the bottom of the stairs.
And I had a terrible thought.
That boy would never bully anyone again.
The moment that thought crossed my mind, I became afraid of myself.
Not because I had killed someone.
Because, for just a moment, I had thought his death was a good thing.
Footsteps echoed in the distance.
Someone screamed.
A voice calling for a teacher tore through the hallway.
I didn’t run.
I couldn’t run.
Because my father was laughing beside me.
“Tell me, son,”
he asked gently.
“Are you the victim this time, too?”