I arrived for my meeting with John a little bit early. Feeling, as I do, a wee bit odd about going into bars by myself, I chose to wait outside in the cold. The street basked in the glow of the neon signs that plastered the sides of the buildings, overhead there was a roof of crisp winter darkness. I checked my watch, 10:50 p.m. Even for that time of night, the foot traffic trudging through the slush was reasonably heavy; university aged couples walking hand-in-hand, groups of high school pupils on their way home from their private academies and drunken salary men staggering arm-in-arm, slurring drunken confessions.
When John finally showed up he was pale, edgy and chain smoking. "Let's find a quiet corner." I still had no idea what was going on but I was thankful that this time John seemed coherent.
The Korean barmaid greeted us with a friendly smile and I ordered a 2000cc pitcher of cheap local lager. Dark with graffiti on the walls, the basement bar was a dump but for some reason incredibly popular with the local twentysomethings, as well as John and me. Thankfully, however, that night business was slow; expect for what looked like one of the barmaid's friends sitting at the bar, smoking and drinking a wildly coloured alcohopop, we were the only other customers.
"So, what happened?" I asked John, after our beer arrived.
"Dan, the pervert; he's been at. Two separate accusations were made against him this week. On Monday the mother of a girl in his advanced kindergarten graduate class came in to report what had happened. She told the vice-principle that Dan had kept her daughter behind after class for not doing homework and that's when it happened.
"Holy good fuck..."
"There's more. Another mother, this time from his intermediate kindergarten graduate class, came in yesterday and she had pretty much the same story. That's the only reason the school let me into on their dirty little secret. Things simply got too big for them to handle."
"Please tell me the bastard has been arrested."
"I'm afraid not. The parents are hoping to keep it quiet so their daughters will forget about it."
"Man, those kids are eight and nine years old. There's no way they'll forget about it."
"I think everybody knows that, but for the sake of saving face and all, eh?"
I gripped the edge of the table; a Molotov cocktail of emotions had just gone off in my head. Gritting my teeth, I held back the tears and let rage well up and over come.
"And as for the school," John continued after ordering another pitcher. "They aren't about to let this out into the neighbourhood by making it official, it would be game over for their business. So basically, they are happy to follow the parents' wishes and hope that the little girls miraculously forget about it. With us all gone this weekend, they'll be able to start over again with their three new teachers on Monday," John said before he was forced to stop, tears welled in his eyes.
When the barmaid brought the beer, he dropped his head and I forced a smile. As I waited for him to regain his composure, I lit a cigarette for the first time in over a year.
"Man, I was sitting in the meeting," John continued a few minutes later, "and Mr Oh, after explaining the accusations to Dan, asked for his versions of events. Of course the bastard denied it, and was quickly excused. And for the rest of the meeting, Mr Oh just kept making excuses for him; he didn't seem to think it was such a big deal. Kept saying about Dan breaking up with his girlfriend and that all he needed was another."
"Jesus wept. Is there anything that your embassy can do?" I asked. "He's Canadian too, right?"
"I already called them, right after the meeting but there's nothing they can do until it's made official."
"You mean to say that he can just leave this weekend and get away with it?"
"Yeah, pretty much. The new teachers all arrived today, so one of them will take over his classes from tomorrow. As for Dan, the school has hid him in a hotel and all he needs to do is hold up there until his flight this weekend. I tried to find out from Mr. Oh where the hotel was but he wouldn't answer me. That said, you know as well as I do that the school only uses one hotel in the area because Mr. Oh is old-school friends with the owner."
"If no one is going to do anything, then it's up to us to do something," I told John. "Just imagine if that was my goddaughter! Or even your sister's kid!"
And with our thoughts fuelled with beer and hate, we ordered a bottle of whiskey and began to discuss plans. Going to the cops would be useless because no one would back our story up and canvassing the local apartment complexes around the school with flyers would do more harm than good. On whiskey vapours, we floated dozens of other ideas at each other across table but none seemed to work. Eventually, we decided that it was literally up to us to deal with him ourselves.
"You know, if we break the law and get caught — which is highly probable, because I'm that drunk I can't really see too good — we're going to a Korean jail for a long time. The school and the parents will turn their backs on us," John reminded me. "Just throwing that out there, don't know if you have thought about that bit."
And with that, an air bag of rationality exploded in our faces.
