Chapter 25
"Y-You..."
The old woman was so startled she nearly leapt out of her skin.
I was no different.
"Doctor Oh!"
"No, I wasn’t trying to throw it. It just flew out of my hand."
"What kind of nonsense is that supposed to be?"
"It’s true, I’m telling you it’s true!"
I was about to say more, but then I saw the old man turn pale with fright and shut my mouth.
I’m not family. I need to handle this carefully and not create any trouble afterward. Legally.
"Your hand, young man."
The old woman was trembling as she pointed at my left hand.
The back of it had turned a vivid blue. My fingers ached a little too, but that was the kind of pain time would take care of.
"It’s nothing serious."
"If that’s nothing serious, then what in the world is serious?"
"If it had hit you squarely, ma’am, you might have been the one in real danger."
If it had struck my head, I could have lost my life.
"...Am I the same as an old man like me? Why do you move first with your body? And in the middle of a store, too. This is no time for this. I’ll go get some ointment."
The old woman shuffled off to fetch the first-aid kit.
I watched her for a moment, then took out my smartphone.
Beep.
I started filming the floor, where my hand and the shards from the ashtray had made a mess of everything.
And I included the old man sitting across from me.
"What are you doing now?"
"I’m recording the scene of the incident where Mr. Oh Yoon-sik threw the ashtray."
"Delete it now!"
Panicked, he shot to his feet.
"Mr. Oh Yoon-sik. Are you aware that what you just did qualifies as assault?"
"Assault, my ass! I was trying to threaten you, I said I wasn’t trying to throw it!"
"But it hit me."
"......!"
Beep.
That was the truth.
He had acted knowing that if he threw the ashtray, it could hit someone and injure them.
As with any crime, assault was not hard the first time; the second came easily enough.
"If Madam Lee Kkot-soon wants a divorce because of this, I’ll represent her. Please keep that in mind."
"How dare a lawyer threaten me!"
"Mr. Oh Yoon-sik, that land-compensation pledge alone is enough reason for divorce. And unlike you, Madam Lee Kkot-soon has been handling the household and earning a living as well."
"I could do it too if I put my mind to it!"
"Go ahead, then. Your children might just end up following your lead."
"......!"
He probably knew better than anyone how his children saw him.
And unlike in the days when he had been the head of the household, public attitudes toward divorce had changed a great deal.
"But their children are getting married. What divorce?"
"Stubborn families sometimes call off an engagement if the other side’s parents are divorced. It happens, though not often."
"That’s absurd. Not often? What a load of nonsense!"
"Mr. Oh Yoon-sik, times have changed."
In situations like this, when a minor child becomes an adult after the divorce, parental rights end and child support disappears from the equation.
There was no need to say that parents supporting adult children should divide more assets, or that, morally speaking, practical costs like university tuition should be paid as a form of continued support.
On the contrary.
Given how bound up he is with his brothers, it would be more effective to put pressure on the family.
Especially by tying it to the home.
"As for this house, Madam Lee Kkot-soon can live here with the children, so let’s set that aside. If your children want to visit you, they’ll need to live somewhere nearby, but I doubt finding a place in Gangnam will be easy."
"......?!"
"Ah, for the record, I’m only assuming what could happen. That’s not a threat."
A man who’s never done a lick of housework in his life isn’t suddenly going to start. At first he’ll just throw money at the problem.
Buying side dishes, calling cleaning services, maybe even living like that for a while would be manageable, but keeping hold of what money he had would not be easy.
The refrigerator would gradually empty out. The bathroom would develop mildew. The bedding would go unwashed often enough to start smelling stale and damp.
It was a hundred percent likely that he would end up with a silent, hollow house, longing only for his children.
As if imagining the divorce itself, Mr. Oh Yoon-sik grew visibly restless.
"What, what am I supposed to do? I can’t live without my kids."
A man like that and he never bought them a single present?
I was speechless.
"Can’t you cancel the pledge? If you do that, then won’t their mother stop talking about divorce?"
I hadn’t meant to drive this family to ruin, so I might as well end it on a gentler note.
"We’ll have to find a way to deal with the pledge."
I can think of one good way, but unless he’s retained me, I’m keeping my mouth shut.
"Please listen to Madam Lee Kkot-soon for a moment. She has every right to be angry. That compensation money was your retirement fund, wasn’t it?"
"Retirement fund? Right, that’s exactly what it was."
"You don’t mean that, do you?"
"Huh?"
He looked exactly like a gambler who’d just won some cash and was heading to the racetrack. It was time to put the brakes back on this mark.
"Mr. Oh Yoon-sik, if you carry out the pledge as written, you’ll end up in the red. And if you refuse to carry it out, your brothers will sue you."
"My brothers aren’t that kind of people."
"Then why not call them right now and say you can’t honor the pledge?"
"Ahem. How can a man take back what he’s already said?"
"Is that more important than your wife?"
He cleared his throat awkwardly.
"Then do my lawyer fees free of charge. In return, I’ll introduce you to some friends who run businesses."
Ha.
What kind of bastard is this? Does he think that because Madam Lee brought me here, I’m somehow beneath him?
I was sorry to the old woman, but I had already decided what to do with him.
"...Friends who run businesses, you say. And they’d buy me drinks, would they?"
"If you want to build connections, that’s how you do it."
"Mr. Oh Yoon-sik, do you take me for a pushover?"
"Huh?"
"Do you really think I need a network of cheap hucksters who can’t even pay their own attorney? You wouldn’t even be able to think of something that foolish."
I gave him a blatant once-over from head to toe.
"You little punk!"
Angry, the old man surged forward, but the old woman pressed down on his shoulder.
She set the first-aid kit on the table, planted a hand on her hip, and glared at him.
"You raised your hand again?! Are you even human? How is it that your hand always goes up first!"
"I’m telling you, this time I’m the one who’s wronged."
"You threw an ashtray and now you’re talking about being wronged? At least aim properly next time and make sure only I get hit. Do you even know what kind of person this young man is?"
...Me?
"He’s the hero from Goto Station who made the news. On top of that, he’s someone who worked at Continent Law Firm!"
"Ah, no—"
"I can’t live like this anymore. Forget the pledge, forget the land. You deal with it yourself."
She hadn’t said the word divorce, but the force behind it was unmistakable.
So Madam Lee is taking a hard line?
Then I should add a little weight to the scale.
"You woman, there are things you should and shouldn’t say!"
"And you, there are things a person should and shouldn’t do! Where did you learn that habit of yours, raising your hand first? Should I sue you too?"
"Exactly. I should sue him too while I’m at it."
"......?"
"......?!"
Anyone watching would have thought the old man was genuinely thrown off.
"Even after I put ointment on it, it still hurts badly. I wonder if something’s wrong with the bone."
I frowned as I deliberately looked at my bruised hand.
"Are you faking it?"
"Yeji’s father!"
"......."
"Young man, this won’t do. Let’s go to the emergency room."
I stopped the old woman as she gathered up her phone and rose to her feet.
"I can go alone. It’s late already."
I looked at the mission-complete window floating in the air. To the old woman, it would only have looked like the wall clock.
"Oh! It’s past ten?"
"You did get here late."
"Sigh. You came all this way for a meal and ended up getting hurt. I don’t know how to apologize."
"It’s fine. In fact, if you ever need help with a divorce suit or an assault case, just let me know. I’ll need one too."
With a quick glance at Mr. Oh Yoon-sik, I headed for the front door.
"......!"
The moment I put on my shoes and lifted my head, I had to wonder if my eyes were deceiving me.
A faded photograph sat on top of the shoe cabinet.
Beside the old woman stood my mother, smiling with a warmth I had never seen elsewhere in the world.
My mother, as she had been in her younger days, long before I knew her.
"Madam. Were you close with this woman?"
"We were close. Didn’t I tell you I had plenty of regulars among the wealthy? Back then, she was the maid who came to buy flowers from my shop. We even went out together sometimes, but maybe that was the problem, because one day she just stopped coming."
A maid? She definitely worked at a restaurant before she had me.
"Young man, why do you ask?"
"...She looks like someone I know."
* * *
Back home, I ran my fingers over the photo the old woman had given me. Life was supposed to be full of things that couldn’t be explained easily, and this was exactly that kind of moment.
"How does something like this happen?"
When I had searched desperately for traces of my mother, I thought the world was deliberately working against me.
Other than my maternal grandmother, everyone who remembered my mother had suddenly vanished.
At one point I had even gone to the neighborhood clinic where my mother had worked as a nurse’s aide.
But the door was shut. In its place was a notice saying the clinic had closed down, thanking everyone for their support over the years.
If they had been too busy shutting the place down to come to the funeral home, they could at least have called and told me to take my mother’s belongings.
They had worked together for years, opening the shutter every morning, and then they had simply disappeared.
"And my mother hadn’t even left much behind to begin with."
A dull ache spread under my sternum, and I drew a slow breath.
"This isn’t the time. Let’s use the psychometry ability first."
Meet my mother.
Hiss.
Springtime at Seoul Grand Park, where deep pink azaleas were in bloom.
I heard whistling, and I saw people holding hands with shy smiles.
Among them were the old woman and my mother, who wore a neat light-purple jacket.
"Young-ah, sit here. I’ll take a solo shot of you."
"It’s awkward to be photographed alone, unni. Take one with me."
"Should we?"
The old woman asked someone nearby to take the picture, then moved close to my mother’s side.
"I’m taking it. One, two."
Click.
"Mom."
The woman who hated being alone.
The warm-hearted woman who, despite our thin circumstances, still made bulgogi for Choi Jae-woo’s birthday.
My mother, Lee Soo-young.
* * *
I should have said mother. If I had, she would have told me to take the photo.
It would have been nice to see my mother in her younger days the way I had this morning, but unfortunately the owner of this photograph was the old woman.
I couldn’t see her again, but I did have a petty thought toward the kind old woman, grateful enough to frame the picture in the first place.
Heh.
"I scanned it, but I’m still not over it."
Today I’ll buy her a meal. Maybe have something delivered that she likes. I can bring up my mother and talk about her.
Feeling oddly pleased, I stepped out of the subway gate and headed for the office.
But then...
The notorious fare dodger in this district was in the middle of a fight.
Right in front of Ye-ji’s flower shop, of all places.
"You do know that once a pledge is stamped, it has legal force, right? And now you’re saying you want to cancel it? You’re spouting crap like a dog."
"Stop talking nonsense and leave."
"Why? Because this is the place where the wife who couldn’t even bear a son works? Not a chance!"
"Haa."
"This is a passage where anyone who’s a person can walk through."
Then he spread both arms wide and mocked her.
A vein popped on the old woman’s forehead.
She’s furious.
I called the police at once.
"I said leave."
"If you’re too ignorant to know better, then just do what the educated people tell you. Why is some lowlife who only knows how to sell things making a fuss?! You think my brother Yoon-sik will listen to your worthless blabber?! "
Bang!
The flower baskets lined up on the stall crashed to the ground and scattered everywhere.
"What do you think you’re doing!"
"What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m asking whether it’s okay for you to run a stall on the way to the subway. Do you think this is your land?"
The shop owners nearby clicked their tongues, as if they had seen this kind of thing more than once.
...Brother Yoon-sik? The fare dodger was Mr. Oh Yoon-sik’s brother? He doesn’t look anything like him.
Mr. Oh Yoon-sik was tall and rather thin, but this man was short and fat, so it was hard to think of them as brothers.
Their hair situation was different too.
The office can open a little late. I should protect Madam Lee first.
I started walking toward the old woman, who had gone rigid with anger.
Then.
A woman wearing sunglasses and a mask moved past me and charged forward.
"Why the hell are you still here? Do you have any idea where you are?"
"A beggar?"
Whether Oh Yoon-bok had flipped his lid or not, he struck the woman on the head.
Thwack!
"......Ha!"
"Oh Ye-ji?"
The sunglasses were knocked off, and the woman I vaguely recognized from somewhere glared at him.
"Smell that. You say you serve the Lord, but is the Lord you serve alcohol? Looks like that family teaches their brats to swing their hands first."
"Ye-ji!"
"Mom, I got hit, so call 112 right now."
Oh Ye-ji.
Madam Lee Kkot-soon’s second daughter, the formidable woman, had arrived.
"What are you here to tear apart today?"