I Have the Right to Destroy Myself Read Online Free PDF

children's Go. C always won. Even if K really won, somehow C ended up winning anyway. Those who always come out ahead in the end are a different breed. The foreign stamps that a cousin gave K soon became C's. K remembers the German stamps with cars on them. He wants to see them again. And butterflies. C's butterflies, pinned and rendered into ash.

    Once, hearing these stories, Se-yeon remarked, "You guys must have fought a lot."
    "No, by the time I entered middle school I never fought with C."
    "Why not?"
    "When our father beat me for my bad grades, smoking, or because I ran away, C always stopped him. He would calm our father down and come to talk to me gently. Each time C convinced me to shape up. I always thought he was the only one who understood me, and when I left home I missed C the most. Still, when I think about him I get the feeling there's something a little off. You have to be careful with him..."
    Se-yeon giggled. "Stupid, those guys are the scariest. They're the most frightening customers I have at the bar. These assholes look after me when I'm in trouble. They hold me when I'm tired and wipe my tears when I cry. But they're the ones who get mad when I eat a lollipop during sex. They try to get away with not paying for motels, and in the morning they tell me they don't have cab fare. Most
often, the guys who bought me a meal when I was really broke were the violent ones, dragging me by the hair and all that."

    But it's true that K missed his brother when he left home five years ago. Around the time he stopped missing C, he started fixing cars. He lived in a room in the corner of a garage, a huge poster of a Lamborghini hanging from his wall. During the day his entire body was coated in grease as he changed the oil in people's cars, but he spent his evenings dreaming. He read and reread the automotive magazines distributed free at garages. He memorized the specs of the Mercedes 500. He was contemptuous of the cars he fixed for customers. He found his customers laughable for bringing in cars that could only hit 180 kilometers per hour and fussing about small problems.
    Once he saw a Porsche. The man who got out of the car sauntered into the shop, bought antifreeze, and left. He was in his early thirties. How could he drive a Porsche and have such a nonchalant expression on his face? K couldn't understand it. When the man turned on the engine after putting the antifreeze in the trunk, that powerful purr was different from any other engine he'd heard. He realized that he wanted to kill someone for the first time in his life. He was so shocked by this impulse that he tore up his poster of the Lamborghini into bits that night, sobbing.

    K is drinking his second bottle of
soju.
The squid is still mostly untouched. There are only two older men drinking
in the bar. They are talking about Dok Islet. The balding man is saying that Japan should be bombed. The other man agrees, and adds that Korea should hurry up and develop nuclear weapons. The snow starts falling harder. K takes another Chupa Chups and puts it in his mouth. He sees double—two owners of the bar. Either his right or left eye has shifted to the outer corner of its socket. He momentarily sees the world askew.

    "Isn't it uncomfortable to see double?" Se-yeon asked curiously one time, studying his wayward eye.
    "When I'm comfortable, the muscle in my eye relaxes and one eye rolls to the side. It's been like this since I was a kid. When I concentrate on it, it comes back to normal. Or else everything looks overlapped. But it doesn't bother me. I just choose one of the images and go with that."
    Se-yeon shook her head as if she couldn't believe it.
    "Nobody knows, other than my family. When I'm with other people I make sure to tense my eyes," K explained.
    "Doesn't it make you tired?"
    "Life is tiring. I'm used to it, anyway."
    "If you don't show it to anyone, why do you show it to me?"
    "Because of your Chupa Chups."

    K closes his eyes and downs the