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Cursed Bunny: Stories
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Stories 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 7 Summary: “Scars”
Content Warning: This section of the guide features descriptions of child abuse and animal cruelty and/or death.
A boy is taken by men, brought to a mountain cave, and chained up. The cave is uninhabited by a large creature, but it does not eat him. The boy’s life is sustained for an uncertain amount of time. Every few days, the creature drags him out of the cave by his chains, swings him through the air, drops him into an icy lake, and then carries him back to the cave again. Once a month, the creature uses a sharp protrusion to suck at the boy’s bone marrow, covering his back in scars. The boy remembers nothing of his identity, but prays that someone will come to save him. When the boy strikes his chains together in the cave, they create sparks, allowing him to glimpse a small insect on the cave wall. He sees the insect only once, though he is so desperate for companionship that he strikes his chains many times, hoping to see it again.
The boy grows into a youth and becomes strong enough to escape the creature. When the creature takes him out of the cave, he swings out of its grasp and lands in a forest. The youth stumbles through the forest until he reaches a village. The villagers regard his scars with fear, except for a bald man who disperses the crowd and leads the youth away. The bald man feeds and clothes him, but only to prepare him to “earn [his] keep” (135). Early the next day, the bald man sends the youth into a makeshift arena in the village square. The youth is forced to fight a rabid dog, which he kills when he briefly loses consciousness. When the fight is over, the youth sees that the dog is dead but does not remember killing it. The bald man applauds the youth and encourages him to keep winning fights but to also exercise restraint.
The bald man tours the youth from village to village to fight other animals in exhibition matches. The youth wins them all. One day, the bald man brings a large man into the ring to demonstrate his strength against the youth. The large man beats the youth down until the youth finally loses consciousness and defeats the man. This causes the bald man to realize that by delaying the youth’s reaction, he can draw out the fights and earn more money.
Before his next fight, the bald man gives the youth a pungent liquid to drink. In the arena, the youth faces another man, who beats him down and causes him to vomit the liquid. When the other man attacks the youth again, the youth’s arm transforms into rock, shattering his opponent’s arm. The youth nearly kills his opponent. After they leave town, the bald man gives him the pungent drink once again. He explains that the drink was supposed to prevent the youth from killing his opponent. He urges him not to throw up again.
The drink keeps the youth nauseous through each of his next fights. In every match, his body grows strange appendages, like scales and wings, that save him from defeat. The youth decides that he needs to escape, but can’t find an opportunity to do so in his weakened state. Eventually, his prolonged consumption of the drink makes him too weak to fight, so the bald man abandons him in the forest. The youth regains his strength and wanders through the forest, ending up back at the first village he found after escaping the cave.
Discouraged by the revulsion of the villagers, the youth returns to the forest. This brings him to an isolated hut. The hut’s inhabitant emerges, believing him to be her brother. The youth is too shocked to respond. Eventually, the woman screams when she realizes the youth isn’t her brother. After stumbling back and losing consciousness, the youth wakes up to find himself bound again, this time by a man.
The man demands to know what the youth was planning to do to his sister, insinuating that the cave monster sent the youth. When the youth fails to answer, the man’s sister urges him to stop interrogating the youth. Only then does the youth realize that the sister is blind. The man releases the youth, instructing him to inform the monster that his sister is “off limits.” The youth begs for food, so the man takes him back to feed him.
The youth spends time living in the shed outside the hut. The brother once again demands to know what the youth plans to do with his sister. The youth, who has never spoken to anyone, cannot answer. The brother brings the youth along to help him forage. The brother tells his sister his theory that the youth has come either to find another sacrifice for the monster or to seek revenge for being turned into a sacrifice himself. He resolves to find someone to take the youth away. Meanwhile, the youth realizes that the brother was the one who sent the bald man after him when he first arrived in the village.
The sister explains their situation to the youth: Every few years, the village is plagued by a disease believed to have been caused by the cave monster, a giant crow. The only way to appease the crow is to sacrifice a young child to it. Although the plague hadn’t struck the village at the time, the sister had been born sick, causing the villagers to believe that it was necessary to sacrifice someone to stop her from dying. The sister identifies the youth as the orphan they had sacrificed for her sake. She has always felt guilty that he took her place. The youth reassures her with a kiss, then announces that he will set out to kill the cave monster and end the ritual sacrifice.
On the way up the mountain, the youth resolves to ask the brother about his origins. He reaches the cave and is immediately struck by a sense of familiarity. The monster arrives at the cave and pins him down to puncture his back once again. Since the youth’s back is covered in scars, however, it takes the monster time to find a spot to puncture his skin. The youth lashes out with his chain, wounding the monster and allowing him to grapple onto its talon.
The monster takes to the skies, bringing the youth along. It attempts to overpower the youth, but the youth lashes again at the monster’s eye, blinding it. The monster crashes into the mountain and dies. The youth survives.
The youth returns to the village and finds the hut in total darkness. He enters and takes the hand of the sister, who dissolves into water. When the brother arrives, he believes that the youth has killed his sister. He attacks the youth, but the youth’s arm transforms and breaks the brother’s arm. Soon, the youth collapses.
When the youth wakes up, the hut is gone, replaced by blood and signs of the brother’s violent death. The village has been left in ruins, its inhabitants having died or fled. Those who remain flee at the sight of the youth. The youth despairs over the meaninglessness of his life. He has exacted revenge against the very people who sacrificed him to the monster in the first place. He sets out, seeking another place to accept him.
Story 8 Summary: “Home Sweet Home”
The owners of a blood-sausage stew restaurant demand 30 million won as a “premium” from their landlords, a young woman and her husband. The husband argues that premiums are typically agreed upon between a renter and a subletter, not between tenants and landlords. It is clear, however, that the tenants are attempting to extort them, thanks to the presence of their hired enforcer. The young woman exchanges kind glances with a child in the store.
The story flashes back. Having paid off their loan on an apartment, the young woman and her husband opt to sell their apartment to move to a cheaper, more peaceful neighborhood. They select a mixed-use building in a neighborhood with a predominantly elderly population. The young woman is not entirely pleased with the building, but it is the best they can acquire with their capital.
Once the couple start moving into the building, problems spring up. The fourth floor is a residence that has been abandoned by its tenant, as evidenced by its dilapidated quality and its pest problem. The young woman reaches out to the former building owner, but the owner curses and sends her away. She then turns to the real estate agent, but she can only reach the agent’s wife. The agent’s wife urges the young woman to be patient with her missing tenant, who lost her family and moved away to join a Christian retreat. The young woman hires an exterminator to deal with the pest problem, but this scares away one of her tenants. Soon, a new renter arrives—the blood-sausage stew shop.
The basement is full of belongings left behind by the last third-floor renter, which include mannequins and costumes. When the young woman inspects it for pests, she is surprised by the sight of a child who frequents the basement. The exterminator informs her that the basement is clear of pests, which is unusual considering that most of them have concentrated in the upper floors. The young woman starts visiting the basement with the child to look at its costumes and locked puzzle boxes. The child enjoys playing in the building so much that the young woman fails to get her to walk around the neighborhood with her.
The young woman and her husband get their first taste of turf politics when someone repeatedly damages their car. They suspect that the culprit is a young man whose family has lived in the neighborhood for generations. They install a CCTV to capture the culprit. Instead they get a police summons filed by the young man, who claims that the woman’s husband assaulted him. They review the CCTV footage to verify the young man’s claims and discover that the young man was been attacked using their car. His assailant, however, is invisible. The police accuse the young man of staging the attack to extort the young woman and her husband. The young woman requests leniency, but the detectives charge the young man anyway. His own car is sabotaged as well.
The young woman struggles to find an occupant for the third-floor unit. Her husband suggests remodeling the unit to offer it as an office to his college friend. During the renovation, the woman spends most of her time playing with the child in the basement.
The husband’s friend moves his health drink business into the unit, though the young woman finds it odd that the friend has no employees. Her husband spends more time in the friend’s office, sometimes inviting his wife to join them. Nearly three months later, the friend vanishes, leaving behind crates of unsold drinks. The husband tries to spin the development as a positive one, arguing that they can sell the stock and minimize their losses.
The young woman regrets accommodating her husband’s friend, especially after learning that her husband had secretly invested 20 million won into the business. She always knew that her husband lacked financial savvy ever since they were in college, when his lack of financial acumen manifested as an abstract resistance to capitalism. Ever since they got married, the young woman has had to endure challenging labor conditions in the non-profit sector while her husband stumbled listlessly through different careers in search of his dream “alternative lifestyle.” The young woman becomes anxious over meeting the costs of the building.
One day, while her husband is out on a hike, the young woman finds his phone ringing in the office. She answers it and is shocked to hear the friend’s wife on the other line. The friend’s wife accuses the young woman’s husband of scamming the friend into creating the drink business so that he could run away with the stock and sales money. The friend’s wife further accuses the young woman’s husband of having an affair with the interior designer who remodeled the third-floor unit, also a friend from college.
The owners of the blood-sausage store demand a premium difference from their landlords. The young woman’s husband counters with the facts of their tenancy contract, which angers the tenants. The store owners bring their enforcer on their next visit. Frustrated by her tenants, the building costs, and her husband, the young woman weeps in front of the child. The child asks what’s wrong, but the woman dismisses it as the kind of “complicated [situation]” adults normally get into.
Several days later, the husband of the blood-sausage store owner is found murdered. The enforcer is killed next, and the store owner’s daughter and son-in-law go missing. The young woman is relieved that her tenancy issues have been resolved, though she cannot help feeling disturbed by the means it took to get there.
The friend’s wife persists with her angry calls. Her calls reveal that she doesn’t know where the friend is, leaving her to deal with his creditors. The young woman pities her for her unfortunate situation. She checks her husband’s phone and confirms that he has been having an affair with the interior designer. The 20 million won hadn’t been invested after all, but paid to the interior designer for remodeling fees. The friend had never asked him to remodel in the first place. The woman’s husband merely wanted to impress his lover.
The husband goes to see his lover one rainy evening and is killed in a road accident. The young woman’s mother checks in after her to make sure she is stepping out of the building from time to time. The woman refuses to go out, finding comfort in the child’s company. The woman, assuming the role of the child’s mother, asks the child if she wants to go outside with her. The child declines, so the woman decides she will never leave again either. The child is fully formed by the end of the story, having appeared as a faint shadow in the early days of the woman’s occupancy.
Stories 7-8 Analysis
In these stories, Chung examines community politics, showing how isolationist principles can cause formerly inclusive groups to turn exclusive. The impulse to exclude other people from one’s community can quickly become the source of destructive tension, as evidenced by the unconscious actions of the youth in “Scars” and the young woman in “Home Sweet Home.”
Throughout the first half of “Scars,” the narrator-protagonist has no context that would allow him to understand his harrowing experiences. In the middle of the story, his sister tells him a story that contextualizes the events through the lens of a dark fairy tale. The giant crow is demonized as the monster that plagues the village, the sister’s blindness is living proof of the fairy tale, and the sacrifice of the youth is the magical act that suppresses the monster’s magic. It is important that this story comes in the middle of “Scars,” rather than opening it as a conventional fairy tale or fantasy story might. Where the youth serves as a reader surrogate, learning about the beliefs that dictate the village culture for the first time, the sister has been living inside the context of the fairy tale her entire life.
The contrast between their perspectives helps to clarify the narrative impetus for the story, which is the question of what happens when a community chooses to make one child suffer for the sake of their collective well-being. Because the story is all about the youth’s escape from the cave, his presence becomes an indictment of the village’s actions. While the sister feels guilt over what happened to the youth, the village reacts to the youth by turning the violence against him into a spectacle. While the sister has physical blindness, the villagers display emotional blindness to the youth’s suffering. The sister is the only person who questions the structure that the fairy tale story imposes on her life and the life of the youth. She thus demonstrates Resisting Systems of Power and Control as a theme.
The youth’s narrative arc revolves around the impact that violence has on his life. The titular scars he carries are physical reminders of the choice the village made to give his life to the cave creature. The fact that his superhuman appendages only emerge when he is unconscious suggest that his propensity for violence is impulsive, not something he actively desires. The only time the youth is said to speak is when he expresses his desire to kill the crow to end the need for sacrifice. Rather than question whether the crow is truly responsible for the plague, he accepts the reality of the story the sister tells him. As a result, he becomes the monster that plagues the village, killing the crow and then destroying the village in an unconscious act of destruction.
In “Home Sweet Home,” Chung puts the protagonist in the role of a landlord to interrogate the ethics of property ownership and tenancy. The author’s decision to examine the morality of the landlord’s position is evidenced by the in medias res opening of the story, where the young woman is framed as the one being exploited by her tenants, the blood-sausage store owners. As the story progresses, however, it becomes clear that the building represents the fulfillment of the woman’s aspirations toward upward mobility. Having committed herself to her career for several years, the woman sees property ownership as a validation of the sacrifices and efforts she’s made since finishing college. That validation is fraught with responsibilities, however. Her mounting debts alienate her from her tenants, her neighbors, and eventually, her husband. This increasing alienation suggests that the validation the young woman feels from her status as a property owner is illusory.
Recurring throughout the story is the woman’s relationship with the ghostly child who haunts the building and refuses to leave it. This relationship represents the woman’s increasing commitment to the building as the driving force of her life. With the death of her husband at the end of the story, the woman resolves to never leave the building again because she relies on her relationship with the child—and thus, the building—to give her life a sense of meaning. The story thus drives The Perils of Capitalist Greed and Upward Mobility as a theme.
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