Winter Preparations - 6
"Yes, ma'am."
"I've peeled all the deodeok. What should we do with all this?"
Her hands really were impossibly fast. She'd stripped that mountain of deodeok bare in no time, and I could hear her bustling about in the background as she got dinner ready.
"Could you, um, set some aside for me, and please take the rest, ma'am. Feel free to share it around the village too."
"Goodness, you're so sweet it's a problem." Han Su-ja clicked her tongue and went on. "Deodeok this plump and meaty is a treasure, you know. Even if you were eating it alone, you'd want to savor every bit. And every elder in the village has their own deodeok patch anyway."
"That's exactly why I'm worried they'd scold me if I gave them some."
"Kahaha. Scold you? Why on earth? I just told you—deodeok this sturdy is precious stuff."
"Which is why we should share it, right?"
Anyone might struggle to tell deodeok apart—anyone except me, that is. With my five senses sharpened to a razor's edge, the moment I set foot on a mountain I could pinpoint where the deodeok grew just by scent.
And as for the digging itself—well, with a modest application of my freakish strength, I could pry up an entire root, fine rootlets and all, in a single scoop.
It's easier than a squirrel gathering acorns, that's all.
I laughed. "They say delicious things are meant to be shared, don't they?"
"Then hurry up and get over here for dinner. I'm planning to brush them with gochujang and sesame oil and grill them."
Gulp.
Just the thought of gochujang-glilled deodeok made by Han Su-ja, with her gifted hands in the kitchen, was enough to set my mouth watering.
"Wow, that sounds incredible. Oh, but—ma'am, did you find anything out about the gold rings? The village chief keeps hovering nearby, so I haven't been able to ask."
I'd quietly asked Han Su-ja to look into whether anyone in her husband's family knew anything about the rings.
The chief just told me to keep them since the nieces might take it the wrong way—he wouldn't even let me ask around.
It made sense that he'd feel uneasy about it. The gold rings had come out of the house his eldest brother had lived in, after all.
Since they'd been hidden in a kitchen jar, there was no way to explain it except that someone had stashed them there.
I hope Han Su-ja dug something up.
But then—
"Well, it's, you know, that thing. You know the one?"
"Sorry?"
"I mean, it's that thing. Hey! Why do you keep wandering into the kitchen? Who are you even talking to? It's Yunho, isn't it!"
The village chief had apparently followed her all the way into the kitchen to butt in. His voice came booming through the phone.
"Get over here! A day like today calls for a drink, doesn't it?"
It looked like asking over the phone was going to be impossible.
"Ah. Yes. I'll head over now."
"Good, hurry up."
"Will do."
I hung up and pulled the pork out of the cooler. I'd bought some meat on my way back from the county seat, figuring it would go nicely stir-fried with grilled deodeok and gochujang sauce.
Hopefully the chief drinks his share and turns in early tonight.
Only then could I grill Han Su-ja about the gold rings.
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"Hooah, this is delicious. Absolutely incredible."
freshly steamed new-crop rice, gochujang-grilled deodeok, yeolmu kimchi and gochujang pork belly, and a clear soup studded with taro.
That was the dinner table Han Su-ja had laid out tonight.
"Eat up, Yunho! And take a drink with me."
With me having sorted out both the road paving and the village water system project, the chief was so pleased he hardly knew what to do with himself.
He'd even been the one to peel all the deodeok and pound it with a wooden mallet to make it easier to season. Grilled with gochujang and drizzled with freshly pressed sesame oil, the torn fibers gave it a texture and flavor that combined into something truly first-rate.
When I set the gochujang-glilled deodeok atop the fluffy rice and took a bite, the sweet sauce and the faintly bitter root melded together, and a groan of appreciation escaped me before I could stop it.
"So this is what they mean by paradise in your mouth. I never knew eating something delicious could make you this happy."
"And you're only figuring that out now? What on earth have you been living on all these years?"
The chief's chopsticks made far more trips to the gochujang pork belly than to the deodeok. Born and raised in these mountains, he'd eaten his fill of deodeok and fatsia shoots until he was sick of them, he claimed—meat was the only thing that tasted like heaven to him.
Mak-sun Halmeoni was similarly deft at wrapping up gochujang pork belly, and she popped it into her mouth with evident delight.
"Delicious. My daughter-in-law cooks so well. Exquisite."
Today, her mind had gone a little soft again, and she was mistaking Han Su-ja for her daughter-in-law.
"Mother, have as much as you like. I'll make you something tasty again tomorrow too."
Han Su-ja played along, hoping that Mak-sun Halmeoni might receive a child's devotion, even if only in her confusion.
"Oh my, I'm such a lucky old woman. Hoh hoh hoh."
Grinning so wide her gums showed, Mak-sun Halmeoni tucked into the rest of her rice with gusto.
Then came the drinking session. Mak-sun Halmeoni excused herself to bed, and the chief, his wife, and I settled in for a proper round of deodeok liquor and conversation.
The chief had steeped deodeok he'd dug up last autumn in soju, and it gave off a deep, mellow fragrance of the root—something the grilled version never revealed.
I told them the renovations on my house and Mak-sun Halmeoni's were nearly finished. The chief said he'd been peeking in whenever he passed by, and that with two spick-and-span houses standing proudly at the top of the village, the whole neighborhood seemed brighter for it.
"They look absolutely stunning. I never imagined those ruined old places could transform like that. If my big brother saw his house fully renovated like that, he'd swear it wasn't even his."
His eldest brother was nowhere to be seen anywhere near the house—it seemed he'd passed on to the other side.
Which was exactly why I was so frustrated. I still had no idea what had happened between the gold rings, the guardian spirit, and Grandpa Yonggu.
But why was the chief fighting sleep so hard tonight? Normally a few cups of anju and he'd be snoring away in no time.
Could it be the road and the water system?
Maybe the excitement simply hadn't worn off enough for sleep to come. The chief knocked back a shot of soju and kept talking.
"Once the renovations wrap up, I should tell my sister-in-law and her husband to come right away. No sense in them wearing themselves out in the city for nothing."
Han Su-ja's youngest sister's restaurant had gone under, leaving her and her family with nowhere to turn. They'd arranged to live in one of the village's vacant houses while looking after Mak-sun Halmeoni's meals and cleaning.
"What are they doing these days?"
At my question, Han Su-ja and the chief answered in turn.
"She's doing building cleaning work, and they've apparently even taken over a restaurant—renting it short-term, something like that."
"They say more money goes out than comes in. Apparently that's just how it is in Seoul."
They'd been trying to scrape by in the capital if only for the children's education, but no matter how they turned it over, there was no answer to be found.
When the chief finished explaining, I spoke up. "If they move here, where will they live? There are plenty of empty houses, but only a handful people could actually live in."
"That's true enough. They're in no position to pour money into a full-scale renovation like you did, Yunho. So we've decided on the house next to Grandpa Hosik's."
It had belonged to someone who'd passed away recently, he said—fresh wallpaper would be all it needed before moving in.
Han Su-ja added, "It's close to Mak-sun Halmeoni's place too, so she can pop over and check on her even at night."
"Right, that's true."
"Haahm, sleepy. Don't you think it's about time you headed home?"
The chief yawned and gave me a pointed look—it was time to go.
"Yes, I should. Let me help you with the dishes, ma'am."
"You can't even wash dishes properly. Leave it—I'll do them tomorrow morning. Haahm."
Losing the battle with his heavy eyelids, the chief slid down and lay himself out beside the drinking table.
I shot Han Su-ja a signal that I had something to discuss, and rose from my seat.
"Then I'll assume the chief here has volunteered for all the dishes, and I'll be on my way."
"Goodness, Yunho never refuses anything, does he? Hehe. The dishes, the deodeok peeling... Honestly, you're this village's lucky charm. I mean, the village water system, of all things."
Before long the chief was snoring away, deep asleep.
I carried the table out to the kitchen for them, then finally asked Han Su-ja the question. "Did you find anything out about the gold rings?"
"Turns out they were lost."
"I'm sorry—lost by who?"
"Who do you think? My eldest sister-in-law."
The mistress of the abandoned house was the owner of the gold rings?
And yet the rings showed no trace of ever having been worn—and there had been a baby's first-birthday ring with them besides.
When I frowned in puzzlement, Han Su-ja relayed what she'd carefully gleaned from her in-laws.
"The eldest niece is my age. Her mother—my mother-in-law—had nine children, so there's a full twenty years between the sister-in-law and the chief."
Park Su-hyeong, the former village chief. Hwang Sun-ja, his wife. The couple had raised five children, but the eldest daughter had married young, been widowed, and come back home.
"To her mother, that daughter was child, sister, and best friend all rolled into one. When I married into this family and saw it with my own eyes—my goodness. She did the housework, the field work, everything for her younger siblings besides?"
The eldest niece, Han Su-ja's age. Her name was Park Jeong-ja. She was absolutely not the kind of person who'd lie, Han Su-ja insisted, and went on with the story.
"When her own children got married, the sister-in-law couldn't provide a single proper thing for them, and it haunted her. So when her grandson married and had a baby, she gathered money by foraging and selling mountain greens, saying she wanted to at least buy first-birthday rings. And that's when she got hit in the hit-and-run."
"A hit-and-run?"
"That's right. Knocked down by a motorcycle, and they never caught the driver."
An elderly body trying to earn money, only to end up facing a mountain of medical bills—she'd apparently said she'd rather just die.
Heartbroken at the sight, the eldest niece had given her the baby's first-birthday ring and a ring for her daughter-in-law.
"A widowed woman her age—where would she find money to buy two rings? She sold her own wedding ring to buy them."
"That must have weighed on her sister-in-law's heart terribly. Her daughter married only to become a widow with no children of her own."
"Exactly. And then she lost the gold rings. Vanished without a trace."
The poverty of these mountains seemed to have gone beyond mere hardship at times—it could strip even adults of their dignity. Unable to bear watching it, her daughter had sold her own wedding ring to replace her mother's stolen pride.
"After losing the rings, my sister-in-law couldn't sleep or eat. She couldn't tell a soul, and she suffered in silence until her lips went black with grief—then the stroke took her. We all just thought she'd fallen ill. None of us knew any of this had happened..."
Thinking of how tormented she must have been over those lost rings, my chest tightened.
I'd expected as much.
I'd known some tragic story would be tangled up in those rings. That was exactly why the guardian spirit couldn't leave the land even after its owner appeared, why it kept showing itself to me.
Especially since these looked like the rings of the person the great snake had trusted and loved.
The ones who left offerings for the guardian snake, and who sometimes set out a bowl of clear water to pray for their family's health—it had been the mistress of the abandoned house, Hwang Sun-ja, and her daughter Park Jeong-ja all along.
"While I was on the phone with her, the eldest niece broke down crying. She said if she hadn't stepped up to buy the rings, her mother never would have had the stroke and suffered herself to death."
"That's not true at all."
"That's exactly what I told her. But she just sobbed and sobbed, saying she lost her mother because of those rings. It was heartbreaking."
"Poverty is the real enemy," Han Su-ja murmured, her own eyes brimming with tears.
Park Jeong-ja, who sold her wedding ring for her mother. And Hwang Sun-ja, who only wanted to give even those rings to her grandson's bride—they were both so terribly unlucky.
If only the rings, with their tragic story, could have found their way to the right hands. Or rather—why on earth had they vanished without a trace, only to end up sitting inside that jar?
"...It happened ten years ago, didn't it. I heard the house has stood empty for ten years."
"That's right. Her son took the sister-in-law in, and the eldest niece went along saying she'd nurse her, but eventually they lived separately."
Han Su-ja went on to say that Park Jeong-ja still lived alone to this day.
"And she still remembers the ring sizes from when she bought them. Since it was her own wedding ring she'd sold, she says she could never forget."
"What were the sizes?"
"The first-birthday ring was just a store-bought one from the jeweler's, and the women's ring was a 7.5."
A perfect match. The owner of the gold rings was found—no doubt about it.
"But you said she lost the rings. Couldn't she have just not found them after putting them in the jar?"
"It was the jar on the kitchen shelf, she says. You'd keep salt or sugar in something like that—even if she'd hidden gold rings in there, there's no way she couldn't find them."
She cooked every single day. Who could manage without salt or sugar?
Right—it wasn't hidden anywhere beyond her reach.
In that instant, the image of the guardian snake spitting dried radish greens out in front of me flashed through my mind.
Suppose the guardian snake knew who had stolen the gold rings. Suppose it knew that because of the theft, the mistress who had always cared for it had fallen ill.
Wouldn't the snake have slithered over the thief's wall, swallowed the rings whole, come back, and spat them into the jar? Snakes cross walls as easily as breathing, after all.
It retrieved the rings and placed them in the jar the mistress's hands touched every day—but she left that house forever and never returned?
She'd suffered the stroke, been taken to Seoul, and after a long illness, passed away.
It could have happened that way. No—it was close to certain.
Then Han Su-ja spoke. "Maybe whoever stole them got scared they'd waste away and brought them back. I'm sure that's exactly what happened. Because around that time, a lot of things started disappearing from the village."
"You mean a thief was running wild?"