Semantic Error

Memory.

Sangwoo was frequently puzzled by his memory. When all similar-looking boys were gathered in middle school and in high school, he had given up trying to distinguish them at all, and it may have been impossible to get through a regular military life if everyone didn’t have their names embroidered on their uniforms.

The first time he recalls  having difficulties with his memory dates back to when he was seven years old. Sangwoo, who had gone to his relative’s house for Chinese New Year, had made his five-year old cousin cry while playing together.

‘Don’t make fun of my mom’s name, you bad… bad boy!’

‘I wasn’t making fun of it, though.’

His cousin had run to his parents in tears and tattled that Sangwoo had insulted his aunt. He had said his aunt’s name meant ‘to dance’ in front of the adults, who had asked to hear the entire story, and it was the first time Sangwoo had seen his father angry.

His father had apologized to Sangwoo on their way home, saying that he was sorry for being scary, but complained that he shouldn’t change and make fun of people’s names. When Sangwoo told him that he didn’t intend to tease his aunt, that he had just talked about her name, his older sister mocked him for being an idiot for not even knowing their aunt’s name.  When she had asked what the names of their relatives, from their grandmother to their cousins, were one by one, Sangwoo had sincerely answered, but out of 21, he had gotten 18 answers wrong. His father had sighed while his mother had stayed silent, and then said that she wanted to check Sangwoo’s IQ.

Sangwoo had gone to a large general hospital with his parents the following week. A doctor in a white gown had told Sangwoo that he didn’t need to be scared, and that they should play various fun games. Contrary to her words, however, she had forced him to draw more than five pictures and continued to ask him useless questions.

‘Wooooooow, this is really fun, isn’t it?’

‘No. I want to go home.’

Lastly, he had played a game where he had to memorize numbers and solve figure problems on a sheet of paper. That was the only part that he enjoyed.

He later found out that the activities in fact were 13 in-depth tests, including a memory assessment test, MMPI, a psychiatric diagnosis test, an intelligence test, and a social relationship ability test.1 When Sangwoo was 13 and had a quarrel over a similar incident at school, he had gotten called a ‘moronic bastard,’ so his mother had shown him the assessment documents and explained the results.2

‘There were no findings of your frontal lobe being damaged, so you don’t have to worry.’

‘The suspected symptom of prosopagnosia (face blindness) is due to a lack of relationship attachment, and they say it’s selective memory loss, not a problem with his cognitive intelligence. I didn’t tell you about it because I was afraid you’d get cocky, but the memory assessment came up with an ultra-high result, in the genius range.’

‘I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?’

‘Of course not. Normally, the human brain disposes of unnecessary information. Your brain has a slightly different priority than other brains, so it works more efficiently.’

‘It’s a relief that I’m not a moronic bastard.’

‘… That’s not the type of word to use for it. And the doctor said she was worried because your emotions are extremely stable, but I don’t know what the problem is with that. Apart from that, you have moderate OCD, so take that into consideration.’

‘Is it really detrimental?’

‘No. It’s not really a disability, so there’s nothing to worry about. I have the same symptoms, but aren’t I living well without discomfort?’

Selective memory loss. The technique of erasing useless memories and only leaving what’s necessary. It was definitely an ability he needed at this moment, but strangely, his brain didn’t work as usual.

The memory of the precious day was horrifyingly vivid. Even if he had been mentally and physically weak after drinking alcohol, the time after he got into Jaeyoung’s car remained as clear as a video shot with a high-definition camera. It wasn’t just seeing and hearing it. It was also the smell, the touch, the tastes. He could recall every part of it, what Jaeyoung’s skin had tasted like, how much he had tensed his shoulders, and how hot it had been in the car.

The smell of oil on his sweaty forehead, the feeling of how his heart had dropped when the seat fell backwards, the sound of short breaths, the rough moans that leaked out of Jaeyoung’s mouth, the sweet whispers in his ears, Jaeyoung’s spitting on the ground with an frustrated look on his face, and all the words that poured out.

Apart from the moment right before and after he came by Jaeyoung’s hand, Sangwoo remembered everything else in too much detail.

‘Mom, I’m doomed.’

Sangwoo got out of bed while muttering weakly. While he had mindlessly laid idle, it had become time for lunch. After taking a shower, he grabbed instant rice and curry from the shelf and cooked them. He finished washing the dishes and sat down in front of the computer.

Now that the <Veggie Venturer> project had collapsed, it had become meaningless to work on it until he found another designer. Despite that, however, he didn’t feel like gaming at all. Sangwoo, who was just sitting still without turning the computer on, saw that the desktop light was blinking.

“What’s this?”

He had a habit of turning off the computer when he wasn’t using it in order to save electricity, so the computer couldn’t have been left on for more than an hour. When he moved the mouse, the screen brightened. Sangwoo opened a few folders with games in them and the download folder, and he discovered that the audiovisual material had disappeared.

“…”

His hands got busy. He wanted to double-check that he hadn’t deleted them by mistake, but they weren’t in the trash folder either. When he checked the access details in the log, there was a record of them being deleted at 00:55:21 a.m.

“Jang Jaeyoung!”

Sangwoo gave out a horrible shriek while violently tugging his hair. It didn’t matter since the videos were going to be deleted anyway, but there was no way he hadn’t seen that folder that was visibly on the desktop. What did he think when he saw all the information that Sangwoo had found on the web and archived?

Sangwoo couldn’t get over his shame, so he permanently deleted the entire Jang Jaeyoung folder. His hands were shaking and his face was burning. Since he lived honorably, he had lived a life without disgrace. Except that recently, all feelings were unfamiliar to him. Sangwoo felt as lonely as if he were drifting in the middle of the vast ocean.

‘Sangwoo? Are you… crying?’

Just yesterday he had teared up because of what had happened. It was a memory that he wanted to delete like he could with a folder. The last time Sangwoo had cried was during CBR training. The time before that was when he had caught a mosquito with his sister’s magazine and that monster then had gotten revenge since he had stained it. She had bought buldalk and lied to him that it wasn’t spicy at all, so he had put it all in his mouth and eaten it, then shed physiological tears.3

Sangwoo had always thought that people cried too easily. For example, on the last day of a retreat, the children had gathered and were holding candles, and they had artificially stimulated the mood by playing calm music. Among the people who were crying like a faucet, it was Sangwoo who had always had vacant eyes.

‘Hey dude, why are you the only one not crying?’

‘I’m not sad.’

Even when he watched movies that were called sad, he hadn’t felt anything. No matter how tragic it was, it was still just the narrative of a character in the movie, so it didn’t affect Sangwoo. To him, crying was only an action that appeared when foreign substances entered his eyeballs, but this time he had learned something. He cried when things were unfair and his frustrated heart became extremely severe. No matter how hard he tried, it didn’t stop and it kept pouring down.

Sangwoo, who had been sitting for a while, wanted to cry again. He didn’t know that his ability to handle stress was this low. His life was a mess without anything going the way he wanted it to. He had thought that the most difficult time was when Jang Jaeyoung was wearing the red-padded jacket, but when he regarded what had happened recently, he thought that those days had been rather peaceful. Sangwoo, who was in a much more tormented state right now than then, was confident that he could laugh at such harassment now.

Because, without overcoming his lust, how could he think of an inappropriate relationship with someone? Also, because, he thought of releasing that sexual desire in a most violent way. It must be written on something, he thought. In other words, after trying to do something that he shouldn’t do, he suffered from the hardships of life as he tried to bite off more than he could chew.

The ill-fated relationship that had started because of a group project had to end here. Although a small error might have developed into an error that dominated the entire program, Sangwoo couldn’t catch the semantic error that was called Jang Jaeyoung, no matter how hard he tried. It was better and fortunate enough to just quit here. Before it got even worse, before it hurt even more.

If he were removed from his life, his state would be at its worst, but he believed that it was in return from making all the wrong decisions.

“I want to go home.”

For the first time in his life, Sangwoo strongly felt homesick. It was a fortress where everything went as planned by his mother and where everything had its place, where no threat could harm him. Perhaps the idea of being independent and living well by himself was conceited. Returning was the logical thing to do, because as he got to know the world here, it turned out to be full of raging waves, and in his trial, the pirate ship that brought about the cannons had wrecked Sangwoo’s ship.

Sangwoo slowly collapsed as he pushed away the keyboard. Just before the wreck, a ridiculous thought came to mind in his distressed state.

Footnotes:

 MMPI: The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is a psychological test that assesses personality traits and psychopathology. It is primarily intended to test people who are suspected of having mental health or other clinical issues.The word for ‘moronic bastard’ here is 빠가새끼, which I think is a combination of the Japanese word baka for idiot/fool.불닭 or buldalk is hot and spicy chicken.