I Bought an Abandoned House (1)
"Excuse me, but did you happen to receive a call from the prosecutors' office or the Financial Supervisory Service?"
The moment I walked into the rural Nonghyup branch and asked to withdraw ten million won, the teller eyed me like I was the victim of a voice-phishing scam.
"It's nothing like that. I used to work at a bank, actually."
At my words, the teller blinked in surprise and asked, "You worked at a bank? You said it in past tense."
"That's right. I did. They were offering three times your severance pay for voluntary retirement, so I turned in my resignation and left."
The banking industry was pushing wave after wave of employees out onto the street through remote digital services. It was no different from the carriage drivers who lost their livelihoods when automobiles spread during the Industrial Revolution.
Do you have any idea how hard I worked to land that job?
To get hired in banking, straight A's across your entire university transcript was the bare minimum. Exchange student programs, perfect TOEIC and TOEFL scores, volunteer hours on top — you needed a flawless résumé or you didn't even get a look.
I studied so hard that I carried a vocabulary book with me even through my military service, and I landed a job the moment I graduated.
And did it make me happy? No! That place was hell.
Once my probationary period ended, I was assigned to loan work. Small business owners, doctors, lawyers, corporate executives — I dealt with every profession imaginable, and not a single day passed without someone's desperation landing on my desk.
"Business is so bad I can't make the interest payments. Please, just give me one month's grace."
"The exchange rate wiped me out when I bought a few pieces of equipment. I'm a doctor! You think I can't pay this piddling interest?"
"Please, sir, have mercy. If my factory goes under, my kids will starve."
Not one of them left my office without breaking my heart. If I'd had the money, I would have paid their interest myself.
But I was just a salaried man. My job was to seize the homes and shops of customers who couldn't pay their loan interest.
The longer I kept at it, the worse the ringing in my ears grew, and the headaches never stopped. Then the memo came down announcing voluntary retirement packages, and I applied on the spot. It was the only way to survive.
The problem is, even after I resigned, the symptoms didn't go away.
So I decided to move to the countryside. My parents were dumbfounded. A Seoul boy, born and bred, heading out to some village where he wouldn't last a day?
Both of my parents were civil servants who'd lived in Seoul their whole lives, so they understood me less than anyone. They wanted me to get psychiatric treatment right there in the city, with all its infrastructure.
But I wanted out. Leaving the city felt like the only path to saving myself.
"In fifty-thousand-won notes, please. I'm buying the village head's house."
"Oh my — the village head of which village?"
"Ugok 1-ri. The village just before you cross Kaltak Pass."
"Ah! Ahh..."
At my words, the teller's face clouded over with something that looked remarkably like distress.
"U-Ugok 1-ri? That would be the place where..."
"Chief Seo!"
Behind her, a middle-aged man who'd been working at his desk scowled sharply and gave her a short shake of his head, as if to say don't say another word.
"Yes?"
"What are you dawdling for? Hand the customer his money. He's a busy man."
"I'm in no rush at all."
I waved my hands, not wanting the teller to get chewed out on my account.
"Aigoo, out in these mountain valleys the sun sets early. It's barely three o'clock, but come five and it's pitch dark already, I tell you."
The man — Manager Gong, apparently — rose from his desk and strolled over to the counter.
"You're from Seoul, aren't you?"
"That's right."
"Ugok-ri. Now that's a fine place to live. The mountains are so rugged that even the North Korean army never made it up that way during the war. Maybe that's why wild ginseng grows so plentifully up there. And around this time of year, pine mushrooms cover the ground. I know the village head personally — a wonderful man."
As far as I knew, the Battle of Ugok-ri had been fierce enough to make the history textbooks. But then, the less someone actually knew, the more they sounded like Manager Gong. Well, he was a local — of course he'd say everything was wonderful.
"It does seem lovely. I like the house too."
I'd spent the past six months combing through Gangwon Province in search of an abandoned house. Whenever I found a promising listing online, I went to see it in person without fail — and every single one left me cold.
The abandoned house in Ugok 1-ri was different.
Something about it felt warm, and it cleared my head.
Just a short walk from the property, a stream with a respectable flow of crystal-clear water ran through a valley. The house sat far enough from the rest of the village that my privacy would be protected, too.
Best of all, the moment I stepped into the yard, my headache stopped — as though some good energy were flowing down from the mountain behind the village. Even the tinnitus that no hospital treatment had cured seemed noticeably quieter there.
The house had originally belonged to the village head's eldest brother. When all the children moved to the city and the elder brother and his wife passed away, a nephew living in Seoul transferred the property to the village head — do whatever you like with it — and the village head, advanced in years with no time to maintain it, had let it stand empty for years now.
The price was seven million won for two hundred pyeong of land — a neat square plot with a twenty-pyeong house sitting quietly at its edge.
What's ten million won to fix the whole place up? It'll cost over twenty, but that's fine.
I'd already burned through hundreds of millions on hospital bills without getting cured, after all.
The abandoned house was a twenty-five-minute drive from the township center, which had a Nonghyup branch, a supermarket, a public health clinic, and a family medicine clinic.
And there's a rotating market every five days.
My plan was to buy the house and repair it with my own hands. After that? Who knew. I didn't want to think that far ahead.
I'd spent my whole life planning and scrambling — ever since high school graduation, desperate not to fall behind everyone else. And in the end, all I had left was a broken body and my severance pay.
Not anymore. I'm done living that way.
Live cheap and hold on — until the day I wanted something again. For the foreseeable future, I didn't think that resolve would change.
"Thank you!"
After collecting the ten million won from the Nonghyup teller, I stopped by the supermarket and bought groceries. Camping gear was already loaded in my trunk. The plan was to sign the purchase contract, pitch a tent in the yard of the abandoned house, and start plotting out the repairs.
"Ah — hold on!"
I seemed to have left my car keys at the Nonghyup. The car was parked right in front of the branch anyway, so I turned back the way I'd come, groceries in hand.
And then—
"He's out of his mind, buying that house? The village head should be ashamed of himself. How can anyone sell a haunted house to a person?"
"But why did you tell him the house was so nice, then?"
"Where else would the money from the sale go? Right back into our vault, that's where. And besides, the village economy needs outside money flowing in to keep turning, doesn't it?"
What was this? Wasn't that me they were talking about?
Oblivious to the fact that I could hear every word, Manager Gong kept right on running his mouth.
"Half the village is empty houses — he could've just handed one over for free and been plenty generous. And now he's finally gone and sold his own brother's house for money."
"Manager, um—"
"Hm?"
At the teller's frantic gesturing, Manager Gong turned his head, spotted me, and visibly lost his composure.
"Does the house I'm planning to buy have a ghost?"
"Er, that... that is... there's a rumor. But these days? Who believes in ghosts. Nonsense, all of it."
"So the rumors of a ghost were true, then?"
"W-well, yes."
Okay then.
I pocketed my car keys and walked out with a faint smile.
"So it is a haunted house, then?"
The village head had been waiting for my money with his neck practically craned out the door, and at my words his eyes went wide as saucers.
"Which son of a— who's been spouting that nonsense? Just give me a name. I'll go over there and roast their backside with a fire poker."
"So there is a ghost."
"No, a few folks saw something they shouldn't have and started the whole rumor. Now hold on a moment."
The village head disappeared inside and came back out with a photo album, which he spread open in front of me.
"That's my brother, the original owner. And that's his wife, and all these children here are the nieces and nephews."
It was a family photo taken when the village head was young. The brother and his wife had kind, gentle faces.
"They lived in that house their whole lives, and when they got on in years, the eldest son took them in. They passed peacefully in a big hospital in Seoul, surrounded by their children's devotion. What in blazes would a ghost be doing there!"
"Still, the rumor got around, didn't it?"
"So what, I'm supposed to pretend it never happened?"
"Four hundred."
"Four hundred what?"
I pulled four million won out of my bag and set it down in front of him.
"I'm asking you to take four million. I was originally going to offer half of seven — three and a half million — but I'm throwing in an extra five hundred thousand."
I liked that house, and I wanted to fix it up and live there. But knowing a ghost story was circulating meant I'd been handed an opening to haggle the price down.
"Five hundred, minimum. My nephews put the house in my name, but I can't pocket it all myself, can I? It has to be shared around."
"Four hundred. Otherwise I'm walking."
This village alone was littered with empty houses. If I didn't buy it, no one ever would. And I'd heard that in countryside communities, once people marked you as an easy mark, life got exhausting fast.
"Ha, you really... fine. Have it your way."
Apparently he'd believed I'd actually up and leave, because the village head finally caved.
And so I bought the abandoned house!
For the princely sum of four million won.
"Stay and eat! What are you planning to do out there in the pitch-black of night?"
After we signed the purchase contract, the village head clung to me, insisting I stay for dinner.
"I bought everything I need in town. I'll pitch a tent and sleep there."
Grumbling about what kind of young whelp ignored his elders like this, he stuffed some sweet potatoes into my arms.
"Toss them in the fire and they'll cook. So you're fixing the house right away?"
"Yes. I figure I'll stay a few days and think through how to go about it."
"Sleeping in a tent or whatever?"
"That's right."
"The pump's broken, so no water's coming out. If you need water, come to my place and draw some."
"I will."
"What about electricity? Call KEPCO — you'll need to raise a utility pole first. It came down in the typhoon ten years ago."
The old man nagged a lot, but he was a good man through and through. Worried about me living in the abandoned house for the time being, he trailed all the way to where I'd parked my car.
"I'll figure out the car as I go. I might come by tomorrow to charge my phone."
"Right, off you go then. Roads'll be pitch dark — be careful."
"I will."
Driving up along the valley, I passed the homes of elderly residents scattered here and there along the way. The abandoned house I was about to live in sat at the dead end of the road — practically pressed up against the mountain itself.
The house had three rooms in an L-shape, connected by a wooden maru floor. The kitchen where meals had once been cooked over a wood fire sat beside the main room, and the outhouse stood outside. Past the gate was a cow shed where livestock had been raised.
Grass grew knee-high in the yard, but the old sauce-pot terrace still held its jangdok earthenware jars, unbroken and standing strong.
I'll be sleeping outside tonight, I suppose.
I left the engine running, switched on the headlights, and started pitching my tent.
Should I put on some music?
I turned up the car stereo. Luciano Pavarotti's "Nessun Dorma" — my favorite tenor aria — rang out across the valley. This was the middle of nowhere, where nobody would say a word, so there was no need to mind anyone's gaze.
"That's the stuff! Feels like my chest is wide open."
With a mattress laid inside the tent and a sleeping bag tossed in, I was all set. I shut off the engine and lit several lanterns to brighten the surroundings. Wilderness camping — I'd done it at every house I'd gone to see, so I was practically a professional by now.
"Dinner will be simple — ramyeon and grilled pork belly."
I loaded charcoal into my camping grill and lit it with a torch. Once the coals caught, I spread the grill net and set a pot of water boiling for the ramyeon. The plan was to eat the noodles first, then grill the pork once the charcoal burned white.
The water came to a rolling bubble in no time, so I wrapped the village head's sweet potatoes in foil and tossed them onto the coals, then laid the pork belly straight onto the net above.
Sizzle. Listening to the meat cook, I demolished the ramyeon in a storm of slurping.
"Ahh! Ramyeon never tasted so good!"
Maybe it was because it was my first dinner at a house I actually owned, but it was out of this world.
"Now for the pork belly! Ugh— you scared me!"
I was just wrapping a piece of pork in kimchi to pop into my mouth when a voice came out of the darkness.
"Young man."
Some old man was hobbling toward me out of the night.