I Was Angry When My Father Disappeared, Until I Saw What He Was Watching

Min-seo was halfway through telling her father that they were absolutely not going to see the shark when her father sent her a photo of himself already standing beside it.

She stared at the picture for three seconds.

Then she called him.

Where are you?

North Port.

You said you were going to the pharmacy.

I went to the pharmacy first.

Dad, you are wearing the same slippers you wear to take out the rubbish.

There was a pause.

They are comfortable.

That was how Min-seo, who had spent most of her adult life trying to make sensible decisions, ended up taking the subway toward Busan North Port on a Sunday afternoon because her sixty-eight-year-old father had apparently decided that a three-and-a-half-metre shark was more important than his blood pressure, his slippers, and the fact that he had told her he was staying home.

The shark had been in the news for days.

A large shark had appeared in the waterway at Busan North Port Waterfront Park on September 18 and kept returning to the same narrow canal. By the following weekend, thousands of people were turning up to see it, phones held over the railings, while officials tried to keep visitors at a safe distance.

Nobody in Min-seo’s family had ever planned a shark-viewing trip.

Nobody had planned for half of Busan to do it either.

When Min-seo reached the park, she understood why her father had stopped answering his phone.

There were people everywhere.

Young couples stood shoulder to shoulder. Parents lifted children so they could see over the railing. Office workers were still wearing shirts and trousers, as if they had walked straight out of work and accidentally entered a wildlife documentary. Teenagers were comparing phone cameras.

Someone nearby was eating tteokbokki from a paper cup.

Someone else was selling drinks from a cooler.

A woman in front of Min-seo had brought a professional camera with a lens so large that Min-seo briefly wondered whether she had come to photograph the shark or the moon.

This is ridiculous, Min-seo said to herself.

Then the crowd suddenly moved.

A ripple went through everyone at once.

There!

There, there!

I see it!

The shark appeared beneath the surface.

It moved slowly.

Almost lazily.

For a few seconds, the entire crowd became quiet.

Then hundreds of phones rose into the air.

Min-seo forgot to be annoyed.

The shark was enormous.

Its body moved through the water with such calmness that the noise around it seemed even stranger. People had travelled across the city to stand beside an artificial waterway and watch an animal that probably had no idea it had become the most famous creature in Busan.

Her father waved from about twenty metres away.

He was smiling.

Not the polite smile he used when someone asked how he was doing.

A real smile.

The kind Min-seo had not seen often lately.

She pushed through the crowd.

You could have fallen in.

I did not.

You could have been pushed in.

I was careful.

You are wearing slippers.

Dae-hyun looked down at his feet.

Good slippers.

She wanted to argue.

Instead, she laughed.

For the first time in several weeks, her father laughed too.

They stood beside each other and watched the shark circle.

Her father had retired the year before after working for decades at a small machinery company. Retirement had sounded wonderful when he first announced it.

He had talked about fishing.

He had talked about travelling.

He had even downloaded a language app because he said he might finally learn English properly.

Then the months became quieter.

His friends were busy.

His knees hurt.

The fishing trips became less frequent.

His apartment started feeling too small.

When Min-seo asked how he was spending his days, he usually answered with something vague.

Cleaning.

Watching television.

Going to the market.

She knew what the answer really was.

Waiting.

Recently, he had started asking questions about financial advice.

Not serious investment questions.

Small ones.

How much does your company contribute to your pension?

Do you think I should cancel that insurance?

What is the best way to save money when prices keep going up?

Min-seo had tried to help.

She sent him articles about budgeting for beginners.

She showed him how to track expenses on his phone.

She even made him a spreadsheet.

He looked at it for two minutes.

This is very organized.

Thank you.

I hate it.

She laughed so hard she nearly dropped her phone.

That afternoon at North Port, however, he looked different.

The crowd had given him somewhere to be.

That mattered more than Min-seo had expected.

A little boy beside them suddenly shouted that he had seen the shark’s eye.

His mother told him not to lean over the railing.

The boy leaned anyway.

Three adults told him to step back.

The boy stepped back.

Then he leaned forward again.

His mother sighed.

Dae-hyun watched the whole thing.

Children have not changed.

You did the same thing when I was little.

I was a responsible father.

Min-seo looked at him.

You once climbed onto our apartment roof to fix a television antenna during a storm.

The television was broken.

The roof was wet.

The television was important.

She laughed again.

Then her father said something that made her stop.

I am glad this happened.

She thought he meant the shark.

The shark?

He nodded.

The shark.

The strange thing was that the shark had become a local celebrity without doing anything at all. It had not performed a trick. It had not attacked anyone. It had simply entered a canal connected to the sea and stayed there.

News reports said attempts to guide it back toward open water had failed, and officials were being cautious about forcing it because doing so could injure or agitate the animal.

Meanwhile, the city had become obsessed.

People gave the shark a nickname, Bukangi, based on Busan North Port. Social media filled with photographs, jokes, memes and videos. More than 600,000 people eventually visited the area over roughly two weeks, according to reports published on September 30.

Min-seo opened Instagram and showed her father one of the memes.

He stared at it.

Why is the shark being interviewed?

Because people online have too much free time.

Is the shark famous?

Very.

He nodded seriously.

Good for him.

She laughed.

Then she noticed something.

Her father had been holding his phone the whole time.

What are you doing?

Nothing.

Dad.

He turned the screen toward her.

He had been recording the shark.

Not for social media.

Not for a family group chat.

For himself.

There were eleven videos.

In almost all of them, the shark was barely visible.

One showed the back of a stranger’s head.

Another showed the sky.

One was mostly somebody’s elbow.

Min-seo started laughing.

You are terrible at this.

I know.

Why didn’t you ask me to record it?

He shrugged.

I wanted to do it myself.

That answer stayed with her.

The crowd began moving again.

The shark had disappeared beneath the water.

Everyone waited.

Some people checked their phones.

Others searched the canal.

A few children complained.

Then someone shouted.

There!

The entire crowd turned.

Min-seo felt her father grab her sleeve.

For a moment, they were both seventeen years younger.

Or maybe thirty.

It was hard to tell.

They watched the shark pass beneath the surface again.

Her father lifted his phone.

This time, the video was steady.

Later that evening, they ate noodles near the station.

Her father showed her the recording.

The shark appeared for six seconds.

That was it.

Six seconds of grey water, sunlight, a moving shadow and the edge of a railing.

Send it to me, Min-seo said.

Why?

Because it is good.

You said my videos were terrible.

This one is terrible too.

He smiled.

She sent him a voice note later, telling him she would help him review his monthly expenses.

He replied with a voice note of his own.

Tomorrow.

That was all.

The next morning, Min-seo woke to a message from him.

It was another video.

She opened it expecting the shark.

Instead, she saw her father walking along a street near his apartment.

He had changed out of his slippers.

He was wearing proper shoes.

At the end of the video, he turned the camera toward himself.

I am going for a walk.

Then the recording stopped.

Min-seo smiled.

She almost replied immediately.

Then she noticed another message underneath it.

Do not tell your aunt. She will say I am becoming too active.

She laughed quietly in bed.

Outside, the city was beginning another ordinary day.

People were going to work.

Buses were filling.

Coffee shops were opening.

Bills were waiting.

Somewhere in Busan, thousands of people were still checking the water for one particular animal that had somehow turned an ordinary park into the place everyone wanted to be.

Min-seo looked at her father’s six-second shark video one more time.

The shark was gone almost as quickly as it appeared.

Her father had finally found a reason to leave the house.

Sometimes, a person does not need a miracle. Sometimes they just need something strange enough to make them look up.