Winter Preparations - 4
The county governor's promise to actively support my move to the countryside so it would succeed was, for all intents and purposes, a sturdy lifeline being thrown my way. A county governor is an elected local official with enormous sway over rural villages like ours.
"And what else did he say? Did he specify exactly how far he'd go to help you?"
"He didn't get into specifics."
"Well, I suppose the governor has no way of knowing whether my back itches or my side itches, does he?"
What should I ask for? It felt like it would be a terrible waste to let an opportunity like this slip by.
Then, for a moment, I remembered something from a few days back. I'd gone to the courthouse to register the establishment of my agricultural corporation, and then to the county office to file the paperwork for acquiring farmland. The official in charge had looked over my documents and put on a worried expression, saying there were far too many failed cases like mine.
I can't recommend this. Think it over again. — that was the message radiating off him. When I told him I'd made the decision after careful deliberation, he tried to talk me out of it a second time. No amount of local government support, he insisted, would make a difference. Cheap imported produce dominated the market, so switching crops would just leave us lagging behind the competition anyway. And in Ugok 1-ri, it was no exaggeration to say there was virtually no working-age population at all.
When the youngest of the village elders is the village chief himself at seventy-two, that about says it all.
If I bought up not just Grandma Mak-soon's land but the fields beside it and farmed them all, I'd have no choice but to hire foreign laborers. Would that even turn a profit? The official was actually worried for me.
So Ugok 1-ri is a lost cause no matter what we do?
Ugok 2-ri drew tourists with its winter ice-fishing festival, and word had spread about how beautiful the scenery was — enough that the villagers could actually make a living. Pensions and campsites had sprung up, and on weekends the markets and shops were bustling. In Ugok 3-ri, the river flowing down from 2-ri widened out, and the silver grass that bloomed there in autumn was so pretty it had become a sensation on social media. With a famous temple nearby, it drew plenty of middle-aged and older visitors too.
And Ugok 1-ri has nothing but ghosts and old folks.
Not that I could ask the ghosts to farm the fields or lure in the tourists. Which was exactly why I had to do something. If I didn't want to end up living in this village utterly alone ten years from now.
A shiver ran down my spine. I'd gone and imagined it. Every elder past ninety gone to their graves, the village chief and his wife taken to Seoul by their son — and me, the last soul left in Ugok 1-ri.
You didn't need a lot of people to get by, true. But I had no desire to live alone in a village of ghosts with Evil Spirit No. 1 for company.
Is that living? That's just getting a preview of the afterlife.
Shuddering, I shook off the nightmare of a thought and turned to the village chief with a firm request.
"First, I'd like you to have the village road paved."
"The village road? That's been my pet project for years, but... is spending the governor's favor on that really the best use of it?"
Mrs. Han Su-ja chimed in, agreeing with the chief.
"The governor said he'd help Yunho settle in the countryside. Using that chance on road paving? You should be asking for something that benefits Yunho alone!"
I shook my head.
"It is for me."
"How is paving the village road for you, exactly?"
"The road's only paved halfway up, so getting to my house means taking the unpaved stretch. The upper part of the village only has three residents — me, Grandma Mak-soon, and Grandpa Hok-sik. Just the three of us."
And of those three, I was the only one who drove a car. So asking for the unpaved road to be paved was, in effect, a request made purely for my sake.
The village chief saw it differently.
"There's a fella drives his tiller up and down that road all day. Yong-gu — the one who snapped up the land old Mak-soon used to farm for a song. He's the one you'd be paving it for."
Yong-gu didn't even live in our village, yet he'd bought up Grandma Mak-soon's land. Word was he dried radish greens there and sold them at Garak Market in Noryangjin — using chicken manure for fertilizer, which had set the chief off into shouting matches with him more than once.
The manure hadn't finished composting, so flies swarmed and the stench was unbearable. Villagers couldn't even leave their doors open. The chief had even filed complaints with the township office, telling them to either stop using manure altogether or mix it properly with rice bran and compost it fully — and they'd brushed him off entirely. Worse still, Yong-gu's youngest son was a county office employee. When the chief went in to file a complaint, the young man had smirked at him.
"He says, 'Elder, if you keep filing complaints, you'll end up on a blacklist and might not even be able to run in the next village chief election.' The little punk! If I step down as chief, who's supposed to do the job — Grandpa Hok-sik, who turns eighty this year?"
The chief huffed and carried on.
"That Yong-gu thinks our village is a pushover. When he dumped chicken manure on land in Ugok 2-ri, the young men of that village swarmed him, and he groveled and swore he'd never do it again."
The chief thumped his chest, declaring that as far as "young men of the village" went, ours numbered exactly two — himself and me. An era when seventy-two still counted as village youth.
"Just thinking about that bastard Yong-gu rolling chicken manure up and down a freshly paved road already has my blood boiling."
I held up a hand, urging him to calm down.
"Don't worry. He'll be selling that land soon enough."
"Yong-gu's selling? Really?"
I'd simply make sure he had no other choice. As it turned out, Kim Chang-soo — that bastard — had offloaded Grandma Mak-soon's land to Yong-gu for next to nothing, desperate to get cash in hand fast. I intended to buy the land back for her, but word couldn't leak out beforehand, so I asked them to keep it quiet.
"Shh! It's a secret. You absolutely cannot tell anyone."
"O-okay."
The chief gave me a sidelong glance, then ventured a cautious question.
"Anything else you want besides the road paving? Running water out here, maybe, something like that?"
"Wasn't that your campaign promise, Chief?"
"W-well, yes. It was my promise."
When he'd run for village chief, road paving and a connection to the municipal water supply had been his two big pledges — and for good reason. Yong-gu's chicken manure had fouled things so badly that the groundwater had started to carry a foul odor. Houses on the upper end of the village, like mine, were unlikely to see contaminated groundwater, but the homes on the lower end had almost certainly had manure leach into theirs.
But piping municipal water — drawn from the river running through Ugok 2-ri and 3-ri — all the way to a remote mountain village like Ugok 1-ri cost far more than pocket change. With so few residents, the water connection had become a dream that would never come true.
Except there was, in fact, another way.
"Municipal water would be nice, but with the village population this small, we might just be wasting tax money on it. What I mean is, a municipal connection isn't the only answer."
"B-but clean drinking water is a matter of survival for the residents, isn't it?"
"Water cleaner than anything drawn from that river flows through our valley twenty-four hours a day."
That water had gathered into a natural reservoir, and the land all around it was state-owned.
"I think we should build a village water system using the reservoir as our source."
"A village water system?"
"Yes."
If we wanted new residents moving into our village, comfortable infrastructure had to come first. Paved roads and a water supply. Jobs after that.
I've already got a plan for the jobs, so that's covered. Educating the village children would take years, so we'd start with making a living first.
"Instead of running a pipe all the way from the Ugok 3-ri intake station to our village, we build our own village water system. The land along the route belongs entirely to village elders — minus Yong-gu's parcel — so we just need their consent to bury the pipes."
"Well, that would work! Haha. That's the answer right there!"
The chief called the county governor on the spot and, presenting them as my requests, made two proposals: paving the village road, and building a village water system.
"Governor, young Yunho didn't come out here for some brief taste of country life. He's repairing that abandoned house down to the roof rafters because he intends to live in Ugok 1-ri for the rest of his days. That's why he's asking for the most basic things — a paved road and clean water."
The governor, it seemed, responded favorably to the chief's impassioned speech. When the long call ended, the chief turned to me.
"Looks like the governor's giving us the whole package."
"That's great news."
Mrs. Han Su-ja was overjoyed, thumping me on the back.
"Look at you! That's our Yunho! You're absolutely hopeless at peeling deodeok roots, but my goodness, you're something else entirely. Haha. This isn't so easy, is it?"
"Haha. It really isn't."
"You just sit back and rest, Yunho. I'll handle all this grunt work — me, the one who never even thought of laying a village water line."
"Well then, it's all yours."
The moment I dusted off my hands and stood up, the chief's eyebrows twitched.
"You're leaving already?"
"I'm going to go do the thing I'm actually good at, instead of the things I'm not."
"Good at? You're good at everything except peeling deodeok! You spot wild ginseng like nobody's business, you just wrangled road paving and a water system out of the governor. So what's the rush?"
Escape. Or rather, a break, I suppose.
I gave a small smile.
"I'm heading over to check on my house repairs. It's about time for Carpenter Jang to come looking for me, anyway."
"Wow, at this point it feels almost embarrassing to call it an abandoned house."
With walls raised and the window frames installed, it was now a genuinely handsome hanok. The roof tiles were black, the walls layered with European-style white paint — a striking contrast. I'd ordered the windows direct from the factory, custom-made top-grade frames with excellent insulation, fitted with privacy glass that kept the interior hidden from outside view.
"Hey there, Yunho! Perfect timing. We finished the electrical work and plastered the floors, so for the week or so it takes to cure, we ought to do the yard and the fence. What's the plan there?"
I'd originally intended to hire a landscaping company for the yard, but I'd changed my mind — I'd do it myself. With my freakish strength, digging, laying sod, and setting stepping stones wouldn't exactly be a strain.
"I'll handle the yard. I'm planning to leave the fence to you, Carpenter Jang."
"Fine by me. Since you're here, let's go take a look at old Mak-soon's place too."
Carpenter Jang led me to Grandma Mak-soon's house. For over ten days, I'd been running up and down the mountain delivering coffee and tea to the excavation team, with no attention to spare for the repairs — he apparently wanted to show me what he'd accomplished.
"Since your grandma has dementia, I used fire-resistant materials for the walls, the flooring, and the roof. Can't have a fire breaking out, now can we?"
Carpenter Jang said he used fire-resistant materials even when restoring or building temples, and pushed open the gate.
"Oh!"
When I'd first visited Grandma Mak-soon's house, the place hadn't drained at all and a musty reek had hung thick in the air. But now — with the yard dug deep for drainage, then leveled with gravel and soil and covered in fresh grass — a sense of cleanliness washed over the whole place.
"There used to be a jangdok terrace right there. You removed it entirely?"
"She'd have no use for the sauce jars, so I cleared them away — but the pots were in such fine shape I moved them behind your house. You did say you'd be starting a jang fermentation business, didn't you?"
"Shh!"
Carpenter Jang was the only person I'd told about my business idea. I had, after all, asked him to build me an underground fermentation cellar while repairing my house.