Jin Hyun-kyung
In the kitchen of the one-room outbuilding behind the Cheongsan office, three women were busy at the cooking.
Soon-young watched with open curiosity as Hyun-kyung finished the last of the dishes.
"Hyun-kyung, what did you say this fish was called?"
"In Masan they call it multumbung."
"Multumbung?"
"The fishermen thought it was too ugly to keep, so they used to throw it back. It hit the water with a tumbung—a splash—and that's how the name stuck. Even so, it was cheap during the war, and a lot of people ate it."
"That's right," Sunrye said. "Ugly as it looks, it's good eating. We cooked it now and then when we lived in Busan. Down there they call it mulkkong. The flesh is tender and mild, and the taste is clean."
The fish was strange to Soon-young, but Sunrye, who had lived in Busan, knew her monkfish.
"Let me have a taste of this."
Soon-young spooned up some of the monkfish stew Hyun-kyung had simmered and brought it to her lips.
"I ought to try it too. It'll bring back our days in Busan."
Sunrye lifted a spoonful of the broth. "Mm..."
She hardly knew what to say. Boiled with radish and green onion, it ought to have come out clean and refreshing, but the flavor sat strangely in the mouth—not bad enough to call bad, and not good enough to call good. She smiled. Hyun-kyung isn't much of a cook. She went from schoolgirl straight into the women's army. Of course there was never time to learn.
"Hyun-kyung, shall we put in just a pinch more salt? Our family likes things a little salty."
"Oh—yes, ma'am."
Even blunt Soon-young couldn't quite bring herself to say it was delicious. She was still hesitating when she heard the men coming into the office.
"They're here already. Let's get this out."
The women picked their way around the coils of communications wire heaped across the backyard and hurried the food inside.
Gijo, Ma-ryang, Hansu, and Wang-chul looked at the spread the women had laid and drew a breath of admiration.
"Well, now... when did you find the time to make food this good?"
Talkative Wang-chul praised it without having tasted a bite.
"It isn't much," Sunrye said kindly. She was seeing him for the first time. "But please, eat plenty."
"All right, then. Let's all eat."
At Gijo's word, the four men and three women sat down to one table and began the meal.
Hansu had eaten often enough at Gijo's house and at Ma-ryang's to know, at a glance, whose hand was in each of the three dishes. The spicy grilled deodeok—a mountain root—was the younger madam's; Soon-young had a gift for heat. The mild tofu fried in egg was a dish the elder madam often made. And the fish stew he had never seen before could only be Hyun-kyung's.
He meant to try the monkfish stew first. He was lifting a spoonful of broth to his mouth when Wang-chul spoke.
"Oh, this is multumbung. Multumbung in Masan, mulkkong in Busan—am I right?"
Sunrye and Hyun-kyung both brightened.
"Goodness, you know it well."
"Of course I do. I've been all over the eight provinces—there isn't a thing I haven't eaten, I'll have you know. Mind you, multumbung is only really itself when it's fresh. But this is Seoul, so you used the dried kind, didn't you?"
"Yes, that's right."
Hyun-kyung nodded and gave Wang-chul a wide, bright smile.
The sight of it went through Hansu like a pang. Perhaps that was why he could taste nothing at all in the stew she had made. He praised it even so.
"Wow. This stew is delicious."
Everyone at the table smiled. Only Hyun-kyung's was truly bright. The other five were awkward. The stew was far too salty to deserve the word.
Sunrye blamed herself. They had rushed the dishes out, and she had never seen how much salt Hyun-kyung put in. To mend the moment, Gijo looked at his wife.
"It's been a long time since we've had a stew like this. Makes me think of Busan. Doesn't it?"
Asked so, Sunrye nodded.
Whoever had tasted the stew moved their chopsticks, as if by agreement, to the egg-battered tofu Sunrye had made, soothing salt-stung tongues with something plain. Hansu did not. He stirred rice into the salty broth and began to eat nothing but the monkfish stew Hyun-kyung had cooked.
The others watched in something close to horror. Ma-ryang nodded to himself. So the woman Hansu has his eye on is Hyun-kyung. Figures.
Talk wandered easily on through the meal. Hansu finished a full bowl of the stew, then filled his soup bowl with another. Ma-ryang could hardly believe what he was seeing. The boy never eats his food salty, and look at him forcing it down... He was just deciding that to eat Hyun-kyung's cooking in silence was Hansu's way of showing he cared, when the man's spoon suddenly stopped.
"Hyun-kyung, do you have a boyfriend?"
At Wang-chul's question, Hansu looked at her.
"Well... about a hundred."
Hansu's mouth fell open.
"Really?" Soon-young asked, just as startled.
"Yes. About a hundred men have asked me if I had a boyfriend, the way Mr. Wang-chul just did."
"Oh, that's right. You were in the women's army, weren't you, Hyun-kyung? Living with men all around you—of course that happened. Didn't it?"
"Yes, it did. But I've never actually been in love. Not even once."
Hyun-kyung said it with a bright smile. While the others laughed, Hansu swallowed a sigh of relief so hard he nearly came to tears.
When the meal was done and the women had carried the empty dishes out to the backyard, the men turned in earnest to the work.
Wang-chul listened to what Gijo had to say, then offered his own view.
"If we're hauling beer down to Busan, we'll have to steel ourselves. I know the men who move beer on that side. Every one of them is a gangster."
"We haven't left that unprepared. Manager Jang and Manager Shim have been training the transport crews."
Wang-chul tipped his head.
"The moment we enter the city of Busan, we're on their home ground. It's the same as dropping paratroopers smack into the middle of the enemy's camp, sir."
Gijo nodded. He had lived in Busan; he knew the rough shape of it. Even in his days as a day laborer on the docks, the union men had split into two camps and come to blows constantly over who held the work. When a real fight broke out in Busan, the police could do nothing about it—or else they simply took one side. If it came to a clash with the local men, Cheongsan Transport would be the side at a disadvantage.
"So you want to pull out?" Ma-ryang asked, point-blank.
Wang-chul waved both hands.
"What kind of talk is that, Manager Jang? I'm still a Cheongsan man. I've got four more jobs ahead of me—pull out? You'd only say a thing like that if you didn't know Ko Wang-chul. All I mean is we go into Busan carefully and get back out fast."
To that counsel of caution, Hansu answered almost as if taking up a challenge.
"I'm confident."
Wang-chul stared at him a moment.
"Ah, of course. We go in confident, just as Manager Shim says. Flinch in Busan and they'll take the trucks and everything on them. Ha ha."
"Don't worry too much over that," Gijo told the three of them. "I'll have several measures ready."
"I'll trust you, sir. Even on the way to Daegu, I could feel how thoroughly you'd prepared."
Perhaps thinking he had darkened the room, Wang-chul tried a joke.
"If we just loaded a hundred or so Seoul gangsters onto buses and took them along, I'd feel a good deal steadier."
"Shall we?"
Gijo asked it so calmly that Wang-chul startled.
"Ah, it was only a joke, sir. Ha ha."
"No. We could actually do it."
"Ah, I was only saying it, but... if we really could, they wouldn't dare get rough on the other end..."
He glanced from Gijo to Ma-ryang. Both of them seemed to be taking the joke in earnest.
"Brother-in-law, how many fists out of the Jongno Faction could you gather?"
"Enough to fill a bus, I'd say."
"Then if I go to Myeongdong and have a proper talk with Lee Hwa-ryong, we ought to fill two. Shall I ask Assemblyman Kim Doo-han to lend us his weight as well?"
Names of real weight started tumbling out one after another, and Wang-chul was thrown. He turned to Shim Hansu, seated beside him.
"Manager Shim, those two are joking, aren't they? Lee Hwa-ryong and Kim Doo-han are both big men."
"No. He's close with both of them."
Hansu said it straight-faced, and the look in Wang-chul's eyes changed. What he turned on Gijo and Ma-ryang now held a little more courtesy.
While the two of them talked over the suggestion Wang-chul had made, Soon-young came into the office.
"Brother-in-law, may I ask a favor of Hansu?"
"Go ahead."
"We've finished cleaning up, so we're sending Hyun-kyung home first. I wanted to ask him to escort her."
"All right. Manager Shim, see Hyun-kyung safely home."
"I could do it..."
Wang-chul had barely got the words out before Ma-ryang cut him off.
"Hansu. You go. She's staying at the house where the boss used to live, so walk her there, then get yourself home early and sleep. You didn't get a wink in Daegu, did you?"
"Yes. I understand."
Hansu sprang to his feet and went out to the backyard. Gijo and Ma-ryang kept Wang-chul where he was and went on with the Busan run.
Hansu left the office with Hyun-kyung, and the two of them walked slowly on toward Jongno. White breath smoked from their lips. Neither of them spoke.
He seemed unable to get a word out in front of a woman, so Hyun-kyung spoke first.
"It was hard on you, wasn't it, eating the stew I made?"
"Ah—no."
"I realized too late. It seemed a little flat, so I added salt, and I put in too much."
"It was fine. It suited my taste exactly."
Four exchanges, and no more. Silence took them again.
They had gone some thirty paces when, this time, Hansu was the one to speak.
"That coat... I think the elder madam used to wear it."
"Oh, this? Yes. She gave it to me. She's a truly good person."
The sleeves were a little short, but Hyun-kyung held her arms out all the same, showing off the warm fur.
"And those earmuffs you have on..."
"Yes, these too. Madam gave them to me. They're rabbit fur, so light and so warm." She touched the muffs over her ears with both hands as she said it.
"And the gloves on your hands..."
"That's right. I got all of them from her. You have a sharp eye, Manager Shim."
"That's because I made every one of them."
"You did?"
"Yes."
Color rose in his face. He looked ashamed of having said it.
"That's remarkable, Manager Shim. However did you make them? They're so warm."
Her admiration left him too shy for an answer. They walked a long while before he tried again.
"Years ago I used to hunt. I'd take the animals, give the meat to the people in the village, and make all sorts of things from the hides."
"Oh! I heard about that. Everyone except Mr. Wang-chul used to live in Eundae-ri, didn't they? They said you did all kinds of work there, and that you were wonderful with a bow."
While she was speaking, Hansu caught sight of a drunk on the far side of the alley and fixed on him. Her words never reached his ears. Only after they had passed the man safely did he hear her again.
"...teach me, sometime."
"Pardon?"
He looked at her, this woman asking him to teach her something. Her nose had gone red with the cold, and her eyes were fixed on his.
"Archery. I heard you even taught the American soldiers."
"Ah. Yes. I will."
"You have to keep that promise, Manager Shim."
She pulled off her right mitten and held out her little finger. When he only hesitated, she hooked her own around his without waiting. His face had been stiff the whole way, but making a promise to a brightly smiling Hyun-kyung lit it at last.
"There. That's so much better when you smile. I thought that tasteless soup of mine had given you a stomachache."
"Ah, no. Not at all. Ha ha."
At the house, Hyun-kyung stopped before the gate and looked at him steadily. Under that wordless gaze, Hansu could hardly draw a breath.
"Manager Shim."
"Yes."
"Look at my face. Really look. The madams say my eyes are like yours."
She was nearly his own height. Meeting her eyes from so close, he felt his heart might burst, and he could not endure it.
"I can't really tell."
"Neither can I. It's night, and far too dark. Let's look again in the daytime."
"Yes. Well—please go in."
He never realized she had just asked to see him again. He only bowed and turned away.
Hansu never dreamed of it—that Hyun-kyung, too, had fallen in love with him at first sight the very moment she saw him.