Summary

This chapter opens with a matter-of-fact statement: “At four o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, the editor Kim Eun-sook received seven slaps to her right cheek” (46). The narrator shifts to third person, and the time shifts to 1985. After getting slapped repeatedly so hard that her cheek starts to bleed, Eun-sook loses hearing in her right ear. The chapter progresses through the following week, each day representing one slap by the interrogator that Eun-sook wishes to forget.

On that same day, Wednesday, after being beaten, Eun-sook returns home and pulls the phone cord out of her wall. After hearing it ring, she imagines having to talk with her boss about what has happened to her. She runs through the events again in her head. In the interrogation room, a man asked her to tell him where “that bastard” is (48). “That bastard” turns out to be...