Grandfather
The elegant white-haired grandmother who wheeled him in bowed deeply at the sight of me. Without thinking, I bowed back. She was what people call aging gracefully. Refinement poured from her face, and her expression suggested a vast capacity for understanding. The Buddhist word bodhisattva seemed stamped on her like a name tag.
She wheeled him up to the table, set a chair beside it, and sat down. Myeongsook and I had been standing across from them; we took our seats. Seeing the tea in front of us, the grandmother turned to the grandfather.
"Shall I bring some tea?"
He shook his head and spoke.
"Just… some water…"
She nodded, pressed a button on the wall, and asked for water. A nurse soon arrived with water and cups on a tray, and the grandmother poured a glass and set it before him. He lifted it and drank, his hand trembling. His strength had clearly faded a great deal. Setting the glass down, he spoke in a hoarse voice.
"I'm sorry for making you come all this way. As you can see, my body won't allow me to travel far."
I was about to answer when Myeongsook gripped my leg and spoke instead.
"Not at all. On behalf of our Leader, I'd like to thank you for allowing Cheonsiman-gyo a place to settle."
Leader? Had I become the Leader? Did these people call me that outside? The grandfather grimaced again as he spoke. Only later, as the conversation went on, would I learn that that grimace was his smile.
"When I heard you were using that ruin as a place of worship, I thought, yes—they're different."
He spoke in a husky voice. Whether from lack of energy or not, he couldn't carry a sentence far and rested often between them. I listened with patience anyway.
"The reason I asked to see you today is because of that building."
Sensing the real matter beginning, I pricked up my ears and focused.
"As you can see, I don't have many days left. That building is a stain on my past—one of the most painful chapters of my history. I have no children, so a building like that is neither here nor there. But with death approaching, it still aches in a corner of my heart, and it's been weighing on me."
He coughed lightly and reached for his water. The grandmother watched him with worried eyes. Myeongsook and I held our breath and concentrated on him. We also had the sense that we shouldn't move much, so we kept our movements to a minimum.
"I originally ran a guesthouse there. Before that building went up, of course. It was a wonderful place—the evening sunsets were especially beautiful. When I first found it, it wasn't well known, and not many people passed through. I used my savings and a loan to buy the land, built a small house, and ran a guesthouse there with my wife. The land was very cheap back then."
He grimaced again in a smile.
"My wish was for people to find peace of mind watching the sunset over the river—the way I had when I first found the place. And it actually began to become that: a place where people came to our guesthouse, watched the evening glow on the water, and rested their weary bodies and minds. Of course not many came, so it didn't help us much financially, but we managed well enough. My wife worked so hard in those days."
He looked at the grandmother. She smiled.
"The physical hardship was nothing. Watching people's happy smiles, I felt healed myself."
She gazed at him as if looking back on that time. He nodded lightly and went on.
"Yes. We weren't well-off, but it was the happiest time of my life."
His face darkened sharply.
"I suppose people can't help themselves—realizing how happy those days were only after so much time has passed. Over the years the place began to change. People started coming to that quiet riverside. The scenery was fine, so more of them came for drives, and restaurants, bars, even coffee shops sprang up rapidly for them."
The grandmother, perhaps thinking of that time too, lowered her head with a dark expression.
"Around when word of mouth was drawing more people, someone came looking for me. They wanted to put up a building on the land where my guesthouse stood. At first I refused—I was attached to the place. They were persistent. Then they made a tempting offer. I didn't have to sell the land; they asked for a long-term lease, on the condition they could put up a building. The sum they offered for those terms was staggering for the owner of a small guesthouse. I was young and hot-blooded then, and after some thought I accepted."
I let out a soft breath.
"Anyone could have done the same."
He sighed once and continued.
"With that lump sum I opened a small restaurant in Seoul, and because my wife had a gift for cooking it thrived right away. Within a few years we expanded and opened a second and third location. Once that happened, neither of us needed to get our hands wet anymore. I managed the profits and invested here and there. Bought a lot of real estate too. Whether I was lucky in my youth or not, every investment succeeded, and every property I bought rose sharply in value."
I smiled without meaning to. It felt almost as if I myself were raking in money. The story of a couple who'd run a shabby guesthouse on the outskirts of Seoul and made good. I loved stories like this. Not the typical Korean chaebol tale of backstabbing and collusion with the powerful to expand a business—stories of people who'd earned their money step by step from the bottom always warmed my heart.
"At some point my wealth began to swell on its own. There was no longer any reason for me to grind away on the front lines. So I left all my corporations and real estate to professionals, and my wife and I tried to make a little more room for leisure."
He glanced at the grandmother and went on.
"But as you've heard, many of my businesses depended heavily on luck—except the restaurants. My wife had always liked fortune-telling and was somewhat superstitious; whenever I had a decision to make she went to fortune-tellers, and she visited churches, temples, and cathedrals regularly to pray and make wishes. At first I believed none of it, but when I listened to her the success rate was very high. Eventually I came to rely on it a little myself. Of course I never went in person, but I found myself quietly paying attention to what she brought back."
So that was why they'd come to Yunchae's House as well, I thought.
"A great deal of time passed, and I grew older. I no longer had the will or the need to expand the business further, and even the overseas trips with my wife had grown stale. As I got on in years, I suddenly thought of the guesthouse I'd buried in a corner of my heart all that time. The lease had been so long I'd lived as if that land no longer existed. So I went to see it."
He stopped. I was sure the rest of the story would reverse everything. The grandmother held out the water glass. After wetting his throat he sighed again. Clearly he hadn't spoken this long in a while.
"That place held my nostalgia. But the place I found that day was completely different. Where my guesthouse had been, a motel stood, and all the small pretty restaurants around it had turned into entertainment bars. Almost no one came seeking rest for the spirit; it had become a pleasure den for adulterous couples."
Another long, long sigh.
"It broke my heart. Everything of mine had begun there, and the hometown of my heart—where I'd always meant to return one day and rest—had become a stage for decadent pleasure culture. The lease terms included a clause that they could do whatever they liked, so there was nothing I could do."