A Pear Drops Down as a Crow Flies by
Suddenly, a pear drops down to the ground. At the same time a crow flies nearby. Looking at the scene, the pear farmer blames on the crow for damaging his fruit. Actually, this is about a Korean proverb, A Pear Drops Down as a Crow Flies by, which means sometimes coincidence of two separate events makes it look like the cause and effect. What are you going to do if you were in the crow's shoes? When I was 21 years old, I happened to be the crow, and the story starts from this place.
There is a winding path. Along with the light gray tone car lane, red blocks are covering the narrow sidewalk. Following the red blocks, I meet dark brown body of a huge pine tree. If I tilt my head back and look up at the sky, between its needle-like green leaves, I can see a cloud slowly passing by. From the tree, every time I go thirty steps another relatively small but fine pine tree greets me. After I pass four or more trees, I come to be under a dark gray cement bridge. The bridge seems to have been used as a railroad but now leafy bushes and shrubs are covering all over the rail. Under the bridge, it is like a starting point of a maze which looks like an ant's nest. There are so many alleys from the point next to the sidewalk. After ten at night, silence and darkness of the place shows that it's time to sleep. No cars break the silence and no stores tear the darkness. Without the chirping sound of crickets, the place is in the total silence. And without yellow and feeble street light bulbs, light from the moon and stars is the brightest.
For me, this countryside was a calm and peaceful place. It really was. It was a place where I lived in in my childhood and my parents still live there. When I was a kid, I've always walked under the bridge to go to my friend's house. Whenever my friends and I competed with bicycles and inline skates, the cement wall under the bridge was starting and finishing point. Needless to say, I had a lot of precious memories there. However, in my 21 year, a huge wave of an event swept me away and it changed my whole emotion relating to the place.
November 10th, 2012. On a rainy Saturday night under the gray railroad bridge, two police officers stood me up and one of them said, "Wait, wait. May I ask you several questions? We are looking for someone." I was walking back home with my earphones plugged in my ears after drinking a couple of beers with my old friend. I replied taking off the earphones, "What did you say?" Then the police officers started to pour questions from their mouths to my ears. "Did you see a woman while you were walking? What were you doing about fifteen minutes ago? Why are you passing this street this late at night?" While being pushed by those aggressive voices, I heard another voice coming out of the radio in the police car. "A man wearing dark clothes, black cap and holding umbrella."
I felt something was going wrong. "Dark clothes... black cap... umbrella...?" I talked to myself and then realized. "It's me!" The voice in the radio was repeatedly describing appearance of the man and the two police officers were still staring at me. This abrupt situation blew up my mind. "What on earth is happening to me? I must prove my innocence right now, but how?" I thought.
I asked the police officers to tell me exactly what happened, but they refused to answer. The only thing I could do was just to repeat my innocence about the crime that I even don't know. In front of those doubtful eyes, I said, "I'm not the one, how can I make you believe? Please, tell me." However, as I insisted over and over again their eyes became more and more clear and confident. Thus, I closed my mouth. Then one of the police officers said, "Let's go to the police station and prove it there if you are innocent."
"Ok, let's go." I got into the police car. I still cannot get rid of the memory inside the car heading to the police station. Detergent-like but strong smell of the air freshener made me dizzy. Air inside the car felt so wet and heavy that it felt like someone was pressing my shoulders. On the way, my brain felt full but empty at the same time. In other words, it nearly exploded because of so many questions like "What's going on? What can I do? Why did this happen?..." but I couldn't come up with any ideas about the questions until the car stopped at the police station.
When I went into the building, about twenty or more eyes were targeting me. Their eyes said and I heard, "I see... you are the criminal." When I was trying to ignore all their eyes, one of them said. "Why did you throw that bricks and threaten the woman?"
What?
On hearing the name of the crime, I couldn't but laugh at that ridiculous absurdity. "Why should I?" I insisted on my innocence again and again through the whole night. However, nobody in the police station believed in me. They asked, actually commanded, me to prove my innocence. But how could I prove that I didn't do that? What made things worse was that the victim who was an old woman came to the police station and said after looking at me, "It was dark, so I'm not sure. But I think maybe he is the one. I saw his eyes."
What?
"What is she talking about? Does she even know what she is saying?" I thought. I didn't want to be a criminal like that, so I asked the police officers to check CCTVs or car's Black boxes near the crime scene, but they answered that there were no such things on that place. Driven to the corner, I felt the weariest feeling in my life. "What did I do to deserve this?" I thought and closed my mouth. At 4:00 a.m., I went back home. However, I was still the suspect. For a long time, I had a hard time being investigated as the suspect. I realized then how frustrating it is to talk with a person who doubts about all of the words I say. At last, it was a machine that made me free from the case. I sat on the lie detector chair and it was the only investigator that believed in my truthfulness.
The railroad bridge and police cars remind me of this terrible experience. Until now, I cannot get rid of the bitter taste while thinking of it. When I was a kid, I already learned the old story about A Pear Drops Down as a Crow Flies by, but this terrible experience made me think about it seriously for the first time. I myself was the crow and realized there is no exception to that old saying.
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