A Full-Blown Windfall - 9
"Come on now, everyone—it's Jinwoo's birthday today."
Jeong Hyeoncheol broke into a bright grin, deliberately working to lift the mood.
"Now that I think of it, we didn't even take a picture when the candles were blown out. On a day like today, we should capture the memory properly."
"Then let's do a live broadcast. The fans would love it, and you still need to hit 300,000 subscribers on your channel, Yunho."
"I'll film it for you. I'm a police officer, so if my face gets out there, it makes stakeouts and undercover work very difficult."
Once his face went public, Hyeoncheol explained—surveillance operations and the like—it would be nothing but trouble. And with that, he trained the camera on me and Seo Jinwoo.
Seo Jinwoo greeted the fans who had wished him a happy birthday while showing off just how close he was with me.
He really is an actor.
The live broadcast flowed along as smoothly as water.
"Well, I have to head out to the Segok-ri Reservoir promotional event now. I might go live again later tonight, but don't wait up for me."
Seo Jinwoo waved cheerfully at the camera.
"We're definitely meeting at Ugok's Garden, Yunho, so I'll send you the schedule. See you then."
Jeong Hyeoncheol caught me in the frame of the camera app. My lips, which had been holding a calm smile until now, gave a little tremble.
"See you... at Ugok's Garden."
It was going to be awkward, but I smiled as brightly as I could manage and gave a wave.
"And cut!"
Hyeoncheol shut off the camera app.
I let the tension drain from my shoulders and looked over at Seo Jinwoo.
"You're planning to come to the café opening?"
"Of course I am. What kind of question is that?"
Why would that be obvious? While I was blinking at him, Hyeoncheol chimed in.
"He's right. Naturally he should come."
"You're coming too, Hyeoncheol?"
"What, so I'm not allowed?"
"That's not what I mean. It's just that the trial is in a delicate state, and it sounds like you have a lot weighing on you already."
I stole a glance at the ghost standing behind Hyeoncheol and went on.
"When your heart is troubled, sleep doesn't refresh you, and your whole body feels heavy and sluggish."
That would be true—unless, of course, you had spiritual abilities and could actually handle the ghost yourself.
For an ordinary person to go around carrying a spirit like that, there was no way their body wouldn't suffer for it.
At my words, Hyeoncheol gave a wry chuckle.
"My work is exhausting, sure—I carry my fatigue around like everyone else. But lying down and resting doesn't actually fix that. Spending time with people I care about like this? That's my healing."
"I see..."
"Besides, I'm not going through this trial because I'm greedy for money I never inherited. I was angry at the injustices my mother and I suffered, and I wanted to hold them accountable for exactly how vile the things they did were..."
With a lonely expression, Hyeoncheol gave a small shrug.
"If the law won't allow it, there's nothing to be done. And using my police status to harass them personally—that's a line I shouldn't cross."
"What if someone other than you did it?"
"I'm sorry—what do you mean?"
"A police officer can't wield public authority for private ends, that's true. But knowingly turning a blind eye to criminal activity—that's not acceptable either, is it?"
The White Porcelain Grandmother had been pleading to visit the neighborhood where Hyeoncheol's stepbrothers lived.
She intended to drag their misdeeds into the light and put them through the wringer for it.
She'd even gone so far as to declare the task her personal specialty, practically radiating confidence.
Having turned it over in my mind for a moment, I had a fair idea of what the Grandmother would actually do once there.
Grandma's ears are remarkably sharp, and her judgment is lightning quick.
She knew every last thing that happened in Ugok 1-ri, and the same went for Moon Sung-il's house.
She inferred the conversations Moon Sung-il and I had in private, read the whole board we were setting up, and saw through exactly how we intended to act next.
The moment I carry her into that house, she'll scan the place top to bottom, strip it bare, and go straight for their weak points.
And if those weak points happened to involve criminal conduct, she could blow the whole thing wide open through proper channels of public authority.
I turned to Hyeoncheol.
"Jinwoo must not have said anything—he's tight-lipped like that. Hyeoncheol, I have an ability people call being a spirit medium."
First move made. Whether he believed me or not, that part was up to Hyeoncheol.
"And I think I can do what the law can't."
"Ask Yunho for his help."
Seo Jinwoo, who had been listening quietly all this while, rested a hand on Hyeoncheol's shoulder.
"If Yunho decides to help you, this will be resolved. That's how it was for me. I was hurting so badly I thought I might die, and that's exactly why I went to him."
Seo Jinwoo laid out what he had endured with remarkable calm.
The fear, the regret, the sorrow, the rage he had never confided to anyone—layer upon layer stacked in his chest—he now spoke of it all evenly, as though recounting a stranger's story.
"And now I live with this lightness in my heart. That's thanks to Yunho. It's the reason I call him my benefactor."
Hyeoncheol bit his lip hard, then lifted his eyes to me.
"Honestly, from the very first moment I saw you, a cop's instincts were firing warnings. This man is no ordinary civilian. But he's no criminal either. And yet there was something about your eyes."
What was wrong with my eyes?
When I blinked, Hyeoncheol went on.
"People with eyes like yours are rare. My profiling professor at the police academy used to say it: if your own face is reflected in the other person's eyes, be careful—because they're taking in every last piece of information about you."
A police officer, whose whole job is to extract information, was instead having his own information drained dry—that was the idea.
Looking into my eyes, Hyeoncheol said, was like seeing himself reflected in a mirror.
The detective Hyeoncheol, who had lived his life deliberately turning away from the injustices done to his birth mother and the grievances he himself had swallowed.
He said that seemed like both avoidance and defeat, and that after meeting me, he had resolved to see the trial through.
"If you're offering help, then I'll take it. There's something I always tell victims of criminal cases. Don't ever believe that becoming a victim was your own fault."
"Yes—those were the very words I wanted to say."
I nodded and stepped closer to him.
"So, about that... Hyeoncheol. Your mother is here."
"I'm sorry—what?"
In an instant, the color drained from Hyeoncheol's face. He clearly hadn't imagined hearing those words in a hundred years.
Then again, no matter how dearly a man missed his birth mother, being told she was here beside him—as a ghost...
Far more people would be stunned than overjoyed.
"Rest easy. Your mother seems to stay by your side because she wants to protect you."
At my words, moisture began to gather in Hyeoncheol's eyes.
As if the hard, frozen emotions of shock and dread had melted clean away and turned to tears, thick drops came streaming down his face.
"I'm a grown man now... and I'm the one who failed to protect you, Mother... Hhhk."
As Hyeoncheol bowed his head and wept, Seo Jinwoo gently patted his shoulder.
For a while, I served as interpreter, letting Hyeoncheol and his birth mother, Shin Okja, speak to one another at last.
Once I had relayed their mutual apologies and their aching regrets, they both seemed to set down the burdens they'd been carrying, and a visible lightness settled over them.
"Well then, I should go take a look at the neighborhood where your stepbrothers live, Hyeoncheol."
"What exactly will you do there? Surely my mother isn't planning to go torment my eldest brother?"
"Your mother doesn't have that kind of energy, Hyeoncheol. She's not that sort of spirit."
Looking back and forth between Hyeoncheol and Seo Jinwoo, I continued.
"Just as some people are born to be police officers and others born to be celebrities, you should think of ghosts the same way."
Shin Okja was the kind of ghost so timid that even her resentment came out faint and diluted before she quickly wore herself out.
She'd simply lived such a good, gentle life, I supposed. The kind of person who, no matter what grievances she carried, could never truly work herself into a rage.
"So I intend to make use of some seriously formidable ghosts instead."
"G-ghosts, as in more than one?"
Hyeoncheol went rigid and glanced warily around me. Seo Jinwoo, too, got goosebumps at this part and rubbed at his forearm.
"There are. Two of them. Three, counting your mother, Hyeoncheol."
Hyeoncheol and Seo Jinwoo both shuddered.
At this rate, were they going to end up scared of me next?
I rose quickly to my feet.
"I'll take these ladies to meet your eldest brother and be back before you know it. My thinking is, before long he'll either be on his knees apologizing to you—or ruined so thoroughly his own family won't recognize him."
So just sit tight and wait for me, I said, flashing Hyeoncheol my brightest smile.
Well then, ma'am. Shall we go have a look at Gyeongseong?
The White Porcelain Grandmother, who had been sitting quietly all this time, rose smoothly to her feet.
The Grandmother told me this was the first time she had ever traveled so far from her home—the white porcelain jar itself.
Um, ma'am? A spirit could dissolve, straying this far from her vessel. So if you feel anything strange at all, you must return to Hannam-dong immediately. Understood?
At my words, the Grandmother didn't so much as snort, entirely absorbed in the scenery rushing past the window.
Didn't you see it when you came to Seoul, though? And you stood in the courtyard every single day gazing out at the night view, didn't you?
Look at that. The old woman already knew the name of the neighborhood she was living in, and everything besides.
Then it suddenly struck me—what if Seoul had changed so utterly that she could no longer find the places where Jinryeonggun had hidden her treasures?
Grandma, the place where you lived with Jinryeonggun wasn't the palace, was it? It was Yi Yu-in's household, right?
Yi Yu-in had several houses, you see. Do you remember exactly where they were?
At my urgent question, the Grandmother slowly turned her head and fixed her gaze on me.
Y-yes, that's exactly it.
Trying to hoodwink the Grandmother would do nothing but rub her the wrong way, so I confessed plainly.
Gyeongseong has changed so completely that heaven and earth might as well have been remade—I thought you might not know what was where anymore.
The Grandmother laughed as if utterly astounded, then raised one finger and pointed out the window.
She gestured toward Namsan, then let her finger drift across to point toward Bukhansan.
The historical records did say that Jinryeonggun had secluded herself in the vicinity of Samgaksan, the mountain north of the old capital. So it didn't seem the Grandmother was spinning tales.
I'll trust you completely, ma'am.
Only then did the Grandmother's mood brighten again, and she turned her gaze back to the window.
So the Grandmother was a city woman at heart, after all.
What a relief that was—that she had no intention of coming back to Ugok 1-ri with me.
Before long, Hyeoncheol brought the car to a stop at the Sindang-dong public parking lot.
"That building you see over there is my eldest brother's, and every last piece of land and building in the area belongs to my brothers."
"Real estate tycoons, no question."
Wasn't the average price of a Seoul apartment something like 900 million won? And that figure only came out so high because it averaged in every apartment in the city.
With 900 million won in hand, you couldn't even buy a decent apartment in a good neighborhood.
Yet apparently all the land and buildings around the station belonged to Hyeoncheol's stepbrothers—their scale and swagger had to be something else entirely.
"My eldest brother set up a real estate office to push through the redevelopment of those multi-unit housing blocks behind there—and that's it, right there."
"Huh?"
The real estate office supposedly opened by a land-owning magnate was no more impressive than the run-of-the-mill property agency you'd find on any corner.