A Genuine Windfall (11)
"AAAAAGH! Let go! Do you have any idea what these hairs cost me? Ten million won just to plant five thousand of them!"
"Who cares about your precious hair? What's about to get plucked is your entire fortune, you slimy bastard!"
"Get stripped of MY assets? Divorce? Don't make me laugh. Hey, Section Chief Kim! What are you standing around for? Film this, now!"
Jeong Hyeonsu howled as his wife seized him by the hair and swung him back and forth like a rag doll. Apparently he'd assumed his mistress, Kim Jia, would come to his rescue.
Instead, she rounded on him with icy fury.
"So you never intended to divorce her, then? You just didn't want to split the assets with your wife?"
"Is now really the time for a melodrama? AAAAGH!"
"M-melodrama? What we had was LOVE!"
The moment Kim Jia started spouting that love nonsense, flames practically shot from Jeong Hyeonsu's wife's eyes.
"Love? Ha... love?"
She ground her teeth, then dialed a number on her phone.
"Uncle, you'd better come down here. Apparently Section Chief Kim here is in love with my husband."
"Wh-who are you calling right now?"
Kim Jia went white as a sheet.
"Who do you think? My brother-in-law. Did you really think I didn't know about the little something going on between you and our youngest?"
"What the hell are you talking about? Who's got something going on with Section Chief Kim!"
This time it was Jeong Hyeonsu who exploded. Kim Jia was his mistress — the woman who'd sworn she'd die for him if he asked.
And that same woman had been carrying on with his own youngest brother?
So this was the eternal creed of cheating couples everywhere: mine is a romance, yours is an affair.
"You animal bitch. I bought you an officetel. Bought you a brand-new car. And this is how you repay me? With betrayal?"
"Wait — you gave her an officetel?"
Just as Jeong Hyeonsu's wife's eyes rolled back white—
Ding! The elevator doors slid open, and out stepped a man in his forties with a face unmistakably resembling Jeong Hyeonsu's, though he looked considerably younger.
"Sister-in-law! Brother! And Manager Kim Jia — what on earth is the meaning of this? Have you no shame, doing this where everyone can see?"
"Well spoken, Uncle. Yes, DO be ashamed. How could you carry on with a woman like this?"
"Sister-in-law, I never—"
Cutting his explanation short, she pulled up a video stored on her phone and thrust it out.
There it was, filmed inside the real estate office: Jeong Hyeongyu and Manager Kim Jia locked in a kiss, hands all over each other.
"You son of a bitch! Eyes on MY woman now, is it?"
Once it came out that Jeong Hyeonsu and Kim Jia were lovers, Jeong Hyeongyu lost what little composure he had left and grabbed his brother by the collar.
"Your woman? Since when does Section Chief Kim belong to you? You've got a wife at home!"
"Says the bastard with no wife of his own? No kids either?"
The brothers squared off, snarling, fists bunching in each other's collars.
[Shall I show you what I witnessed just now, Master?]
Abe whispered at my ear.
'There's more?'
[It is quite shocking content, Master. I believe seeing it for yourself would be better than any explanation.]
The circus unfolding right in front of my eyes was already a dumpster fire — and there was something even worse?
I told him, half in disbelief, to just show me. Abe chanted a short incantation and flicked a transparent talisman toward my face.
My vision shifted, and Abe's memories came flooding into my head.
"Holy sh—"
So that old saying was true: where there's a galloping horse, there's a soaring hawk. And these two were lower than worms.
I pulled out of Abe's memories and shook my head slowly.
"Absolutely disgusting. Genuinely vile."
[Hm. My instinct was right again, wasn't it?]
The White Porcelain Grandmother hadn't seen Abe's memories, yet she spoke as if she already knew.
[Guarding wealth beyond one's station is hard enough as it is — and they couldn't even bear to divide it, so they cooked all this up. Am I wrong?]
I nodded, startled by her insight.
'You're exactly right. If an investigation doesn't start soon, someone's going to end up dead.'
Right on cue, Jeong Hyeoncheol walked into the building.
Jeong Hyeonsu and Jeong Hyeongyu — mid-shove, mid-shriek, mid-hair-pulling, mid-profanity — froze solid for a moment.
For an instant, it was as if they were seeing their own dead father, young again, standing before them.
"N-no way. You're—"
"Hyeoncheol?"
Jeong Hyeonsu and Jeong Hyeongyu stammered.
"When citizens are reporting mutual assault and intimidation to 112, I can't simply walk on by."
Jeong Hyeoncheol held up his police ID with his chin raised high.
"I am Jeong Hyeoncheol, Team Leader of Violent Crimes Team 1 at Mapo Police Station. Before we move this down to the station and sort out who threw the punches, who the assailant is, and who the victim is—"
He narrowed his eyes and continued.
"—I'll need to verify your identities. You there, sir. Your name, please?"
"Fucking..."
Jeong Hyeonsu screwed up his face and spat a curse, visibly humiliated.
"Sir? Are you refusing to identify yourself?"
"Damn it! You know damn well who I am, you're just asking! You're a cop using your badge to settle a personal grudge—"
He tried to bluster and bully his way through — then realized the onlookers were filming him with their phones and clamped his mouth shut.
It hit him a beat too late, in a flush of heat: everything he'd just done was already spreading across the internet.
"Dude's cooked."
"Sir?"
"What's with the 'sir' now, huh? Screw you!"
"Guess he's about to swing at the police next."
"Absolute garbage human being, for real."
"Wait, isn't that the building owner? When I signed the lease for the sashimi place, that ahjussi said the building was his."
At the rising murmur of the crowd, Jeong Hyeonsu tried to slink away.
"Sir, you're coming with me to the station. Flagrant offender, caught in the act."
"Flagrant offender? I just raised my voice a little at my wife, my brother, and my employee! Can't a family argue in private, you little punk? This was a setup from the start—"
Slap! He didn't even get to finish. His wife, still seething, seized the opening and delivered a full-armed blow across his cheek.
"Agh, you insane woman!"
"YOU'RE one to talk, brother! I told you last time I had feelings for Section Chief Kim!"
"Ugh... You said you were divorcing him, but you kept dragging it out day after day, so I wanted revenge..."
"Hey, you whore! My husband AND my brother-in-law, both at once—"
Chaos didn't even begin to describe it.
In the middle of the pandemonium, the patrol officers from the local police box, having received the 112 call, herded everyone off to take their statements.
Jeong Hyeoncheol, as an eyewitness, had no choice but to head to the station as well.
"Hyeoncheol."
I approached him and told him what Abe had shown me — what had happened in the penthouse at the top of this very building.
"Jeong Hyeonsu didn't want to split the redevelopment profits evenly with his brothers, so he conspired with Jeong Hyeongyu to commit the crime. They made the brother directly under him, Jeong Hyeon-woo, into a drug addict and had him committed to a hospital."
"...How could you possibly know that?"
Jeong Hyeoncheol stared at me in open disbelief.
"I've been tailing them for months, running a discreet investigation, and I never uncovered any of that."
"You couldn't investigate him — he's hospitalized. And he had zero involvement in the redevelopment project anyway."
"Exactly. How did you get all the way to that detail? It's astonishing. It hasn't even been an hour... You're better at this than a veteran detective."
Jeong Hyeoncheol's casework was so strong he'd even received a commendation from the police commissioner — yet here he was, clicking his tongue in admiration, insisting that I possessed greater investigative talent than he did.
"The reason you could piece everything together so quickly isn't just your ability as a medium. It's that you assessed the situation with a perfectly level head."
Jeong Hyeoncheol bowed deeply toward me.
"When I visited Ugok 1-ri and met the Village Head, who still remembered my father, it felt like I'd finally recovered my lost roots. And just now, you gave me the standing to speak boldly in front of those men. Thank you — truly."
None of this would have been possible if I hadn't gone through with renovating that abandoned house. Because I'd discovered the existence of a derelict home near the reservoir in Ugok 1-ri — an inheritance he hadn't even known he'd received.
"Please tell my mother not to worry about me anymore. Every injustice she suffered, every pain from those days — I'm going to pay it all back."
[Ohhh, I'm sorry, my son. I'm so sorry.]
Shin Okja wept, wracked with guilt over failing to safeguard the inheritance that was her son's birthright.
"And tell her this too: thank you for trying so hard to protect me, even in those terrible times."
[No, my son. It's Mommy who's sorry.]
Shin Okja wrapped her arms around Jeong Hyeoncheol as the tears poured down. I could see his weary eyes trembling at the edges.
'He's struggling because a ghost is standing so close to him — he has no spiritual sense to shield him from it.'
I spoke to Shin Okja.
'If you stay by your son's side, Hyeoncheol's lifespan will shorten and his body will weaken. You're absorbing his life force, Mother.'
[I would never do such a thing!]
'You're doing it right now. You're not protecting him — you're harming him.'
[Then I'll leave. I'll go far away and never return.]
Shocked to her core, she drifted backward, fading from his side.
She would sooner wander the nine heavens until she dissolved than bring harm to her son.
'Give me your final words. I'll send you to the afterlife myself.'
Shin Okja hesitated for a long moment, then said through her tears:
[Tell him I'm sorry. Tell him I love him... and that he should forget it all and live happily. Please, tell him that.]
'I will. Every word. Shall we go?'
I closed my eyes briefly, opened them, and focused. A cold, damp wind swirled at my back as a blinding radiance burst forth.
The Netherworld Gate opened, and Shin Okja walked toward it of her own accord. Passing by me, heading behind my back, she offered me a farewell of her own.
[Thank you. I will pray for you even from the afterlife — that fortune fills your days. Even if I die and am reborn, I will pray and pray again that you hold every luck this world has to offer.]
Wait.
Something about those words — I'd heard them somewhere before.
[I will pray that you hold every luck this world has to offer.]
I spun around, startled.
But Shin Okja was already gone. The brilliant cascade of light winked out, and the Netherworld Gate vanished as if it had never been.
After delivering Shin Okja's final words to Jeong Hyeoncheol, I flagged down a taxi and headed for Namsan. He had to go to the station himself for the investigation into his half-brothers.
Even if Jeong Hyeoncheol hated wielding public authority for personal revenge, the case had already been filed. The assigned police would now dig into every last act of corruption committed through the regional housing cooperative's reconstruction scheme.
If Manager Kim Jia opened her mouth, the double books could surface too. Above all, Jeong Hyeonsu and Jeong Hyeongyu had conspired to turn Jeong Hyeon-woo into an addict and steal his fortune — on that charge alone, prison was unavoidable.
'Grandmother, Namsan was called Mokmyeok Mountain in the Joseon era, wasn't it? I'm fairly sure it was.'
[No need to climb all the way up to Mokmyeok, dear. The treasure's hidden in the house down below.]
I had the taxi stop near the famous Namsan tonkatsu restaurant, and the White Porcelain Grandmother began gliding down a narrow alleyway.