Preparing for Winter – 10
Team Leader Kim Seong-hoon of the Architecture Division was poring over Kim Yunho's renovation plan for the abandoned house in Ugok 1-ri when he burst out laughing.
The idiot. He actually thinks he's going to fix up a rundown shack in the middle of nowhere and live in it.
As if land out there would ever appreciate. As if there were any future in it.
Once the old folks living in Ugok-ri were all dead, nothing would be left but empty houses.
He's got a bad head and no sense of the situation, no doubt about it.
Kim Seong-hoon chuckled to himself, silently offering condolences for Kim Yunho's future.
What a pitiful fool—if he didn't know that crossing his father Kim Yong-gu would make his life miserable in this region, there was nothing to be done for him.
He'd get flagged by the police. A civil servant like me would nitpick every little thing he did.
How long could he hold out? He'd end up leaving before he'd lived even a few months in the house he'd worked so hard to fix.
Money down the drain, time down the drain. He'd be a mental wreck, too.
So why did he crawl out to a backwater like this in the first place?
Not that it's any of my business.
Grabbing a cigarette, Kim Seong-hoon stepped out of the gray county office building and dialed his father.
"Yes, Father. How are you feeling?"
Last night the old man had thrown a fit, demanding to be taken to the emergency room, only to bounce back within the hour and declare himself fine.
Was it moodiness? A bid for attention? Or was something actually wrong with his mind?
Kim Seong-hoon exhaled a puff of smoke and asked, "If you're in pain, don't just tough it out. What's the point of having sons otherwise?"
"The symptoms keep coming and going, so I don't know which beat to dance to. It's driving me out of my mind, damn it!"
"Really, I don't know what's gotten into you lately. You're not faking it, are you?"
"Hey, you little punk. The moment I say I'm sick, your older brother not only has herbal medicine brewed for me, he's booked a full checkup at a big hospital in Seoul. And what have you done? You call it faking?"
"There you go again. Comparing us. Damn it!"
Kim Seong-hoon dragged hard on his cigarette, irritation boiling over.
Kim Yong-gu pitted his children against each other in a loyalty contest, and it never failed—he'd bring up how he intended to hand his entire fortune to whoever filial duty paid off best.
Then he'd hold his older brother up against him over the pettiest things, and every time, Kim Seong-hoon had to shoulder an enormous weight.
I've been on the hook with my neck on the line as the one who'll have to clean up after Father.
Not that it came without compensation.
His father had bought him a new car, and when he got married, gifted him a freshly built country house.
Thanks to that, he'd ended up living in the same neighborhood as Na Jeong-hwan, now the elected county governor, and the two had grown close.
I've even been quietly weighing whether to quit the civil service and run for county council myself.
Given how things stood, when his father called he came running even at midnight, and he worked hard at whatever the old man ordered.
My wife teases me for being a daddy's boy, but what can I do?
If he didn't keep the old man happy, forget politics—every last coin of that fortune would go straight to his brother.
I can absolutely not let that happen.
This time, too, he had investigated Kim Yunho at his father's command.
If a civil servant accessed personal records for private reasons and leaked that information, he could be dismissed or removed from office for violating the National Civil Servants Act.
And that wasn't the end of it—under criminal law, it meant up to five years in prison or a fine of up to fifty million won, plus up to two years of imprisonment or detention for violating privacy protection laws.
And I've been pulling this insane stunt while shouldering all of that risk!
Anger surging up in his throat, Kim Seong-hoon snapped into the phone.
"So one wrong word and my brother's the devoted son and I'm the trash? I've been busting my ass through lunch on the job you gave me, and this is what I get? Seriously."
"The job I gave you? So did you dig up anything on that bastard's kid?"
There it goes—the old man's voice turning honey-sweet the instant it concerns him.
Kim Seong-hoon heaved a deep sigh and spoke.
"He was born in Seoul and lives in Gangdong District with his parents. Military service with the Baekma Unit. Both parents were Seoul city employees—they fed at the public trough same as me—until they retired recently."
That was the limit of what a county office employee could dig up.
But the man had no criminal record and a history of rarely moving residence, so it was safe to assume he'd lived an unremarkable life.
Until now, anyway. Things were about to get considerably harder for him.
"He got a permit to buy and renovate the old village chief's house in Ugok 1-ri. Since it was built back in 1970, if we run a survey, the storage shed might just barely sit on state-owned land. I think we can slap him with a fine over it."
If the man had taken out a loan to buy the place, they could have squeezed him harder through the repayment terms.
But he'd paid cash, and the amount was pocket change to him—house and surrounding land together—so there was nothing else to torment him with.
Not that they were completely out of options.
"While we're doing the survey, we can check for building code violations, and if there's any damage to forest land, we can even issue a demolition order."
"That won't cut it. I want that bastard ruined completely, begging in the streets—AAAGH! Agh, aaagh!"
His father had apparently begun shrieking and rolling around in agony. The call couldn't continue.
Beep-beep-beep. The line went dead, one-sided.
"What the hell? Is he actually sick?"
Honestly, watching his father suffer left Kim Seong-hoon unable to hide his bewilderment.
In half a lifetime of living close to the man, he had never once seen an illness that could flare up in agony and then vanish without a trace.
Something might be wrong with his head.
The man drank heavily and had a volcanic temper—no way his mind was fully intact at that age.
His first marriage produced his older brother; then came an affair and a divorce. His second marriage produced Kim Seong-hoon, making the two of them half-brothers.
I need to secure my share before Father's mind really starts slipping.
His greedy older brother would use "taking care of Father" as an excuse to grab whatever he could, so it had to be done while the old man was still lucid.
I suppose I'll have to meet Kim Yunho myself, scare him off, and drive him out of there.
In a rural town, when a county office employee decided to hound you over every little infraction, how many people could actually stand their ground?
And it has to end with me—my brother absolutely cannot get involved.
Kim Seong-hoon took a long drag on his cigarette and flicked the butt into a trash can. He was just about to head back inside when—
"Team Leader, I've been looking everywhere for you."
A new hire who had only just passed this year's Grade 9 civil service exam came sprinting up, gasping for breath.
"What is it? Something urgent?"
Unless the mountain was on fire, nothing in Pyeongcheong County could be that urgent. Kim Seong-hoon turned around at his leisure.
"The county governor wants to see you."
"Me?"
Was this about a weekend round of golf?
Kim Seong-hoon shrugged and made his way to the governor's office.
Then—
"Team Leader Kim Seong-hoon. Why did you process every single complaint from Ugok 1-ri as 'unfounded'?"
Na Jeong-hwan's face was set in stone as he pressed the question.
"Sir, that's..."
SLAM! Na Jeong-hwan's fist came down on the desk. Only then did Kim Seong-hoon notice the unfamiliar man sitting on the sofa.
A reporter? Or some environmental group?
An outsider was watching, so the governor must be putting on a show of discipline. Head lowered, Kim Seong-hoon spoke.
"The reason I marked the complaints as 'unfounded' was..."
What excuse should I go with?
Governor Na Jeong-hwan despised local cliques more than anything.
Protecting Pyeongcheong County's rapidly shrinking population required new residents to move in, yet some village chiefs had been running newcomers off out of petty territorial spite.
Every time such a report crossed his desk, Na Jeong-hwan could barely contain his fury.
Right—frame this whole thing as the village chief's turf war.
Hadn't the old man practically leapt out of his chair that very morning when told the chief of Ugok 1-ri had been bullying an outsider?
Having finished his lightning-fast scheming, Kim Seong-hoon opened his mouth.
"It was because the whole thing was staged by the village chief of Ugok 1-ri to stop an outsider from buying land and farming it. A field investigation confirmed that the chief himself scattered chicken manure on the property and blamed it on the newcomer."
It was a smooth answer—so why did the back of his neck prickle so?
Kim Seong-hoon raised his head slightly, and his stomach plummeted.
In Na Jeong-hwan's eyes—frozen past cold and radiating sheer chill—was the same loathing one might feel looking at a revolting insect.
"Are you willing to stake your position on what you just said?"
Na Jeong-hwan's tone made it clear this was his one last chance to come clean. Kim Seong-hoon swallowed dryly.
"Th-that's..."
The words wouldn't come. Something told him he'd been caught good and proper.
"Um, you see—"
"What's the matter? Can't stake your position on it? Perhaps because Kim Yong-gu—the 'outsider' you mentioned just now—happens to be your father, Team Leader Kim?"
Damn it. He knew the whole time.
Kim Seong-hoon clasped his hands together and bowed his head even deeper.
"G-Governor, sir. The only reason I never disclosed my father's identity was... I was afraid you'd think my arm bends inward for family..."
"Afraid I'd misunderstand?"
Na Jeong-hwan let out a hollow laugh of pure disbelief and knitted his brow.
"Look here, Team Leader Kim. Do I look like a fool to you? More than once—many times over—you've tried to deceive me, and now here you are spouting excuses that aren't even worth the breath."
Na Jeong-hwan leafed through the documents spread across his desk one by one, then spoke through gritted teeth.
"You pulled Kim Yunho's family relations certificate and other personal records and even printed them out. Why, exactly, did you do that?"
Thud. It felt like a truck had plowed straight over him.
He'd left the printouts sitting on his desk when he went out for a smoke, and the new hire must have scooped them up and delivered them straight to the governor.
I'm dead.
Running errands for his father, he'd managed to lose both his job and, quite possibly, the next several years of his life to a prison cell.
A senior colleague who had actually leaked personal information had, in fact, served real prison time.
Trembling, trembling. While Kim Seong-hoon shivered on the verge of losing his mind, Na Jeong-hwan kept talking.
"According to Kim Yunho, the evidence of Hwang Sun-ja's hit-and-run accident was also erased. Kim Yong-gu's doing, of course. Go ahead—explain yourself."
"I beg your pardon?"
They uncovered that too?
His throat bobbed involuntarily, the swallowed lump of spit aching all the way down his esophagus.
How does anyone know about something from over ten years ago?
Only now did Kim Seong-hoon study the man seated cross-legged on the sofa.
No way. Is that bastard the owner of the house I investigated?
What Na Jeong-hwan had just said—according to Kim Yunho...—echoed back, and his skull rang like a bell.
Kim Yunho, the owner of the house he'd been digging into, and that bastard on the sofa were one and the same.
I never imagined he'd be that young. That normal-looking.
The idiot who'd bought a crumbling wreck. How pathetic must a man be to crawl out to the middle of nowhere to live? He'd laughed himself silly while plotting to nitpick the man into giving up his country life and leaving—
He'd miscalculated. Badly.
This is no ordinary man.
Beneath thick, dark brows, Kim Yunho's eyes glinted as if they could pierce straight through a person's soul and lay bare every shred of malice hidden inside.
Kim Seong-hoon bit his lip hard, then forced the air out of his lungs and spoke.
"Th-the reason I voided the complaints from the chief of Ugok 1-ri was... to be a good son... Of course, I admit I was in the wrong."
Brushing complaints aside doesn't get a civil servant fired, after all.
He'd write a letter of apology at worst. Or maybe take a pay cut.
As for pulling Kim Yunho's records, he could always claim he'd been verifying the renovation was legal and the property wasn't being misused.
There was no hard evidence yet that he'd leaked Kim Yunho's personal information to anyone. Not yet.
But the hit-and-run was different.
He had to swear up and down that he had absolutely nothing to do with that case.
First, I have to redirect all this attention away from me.
Kim Seong-hoon didn't need long deliberation. He decided to sell out his brother and opened his mouth.
"I had no part in the hit-and-run. Th-that was almost certainly my older brother."
It was true that his brother had erased the security camera footage.
"But my family can never find out that I was the informant. If they do, I become the wretch who sold out his own brother and father to save his own skin."
Having said his piece, Kim Seong-hoon lifted his eyes and looked at Kim Yunho.
There. Satisfied? I gave you the man who committed a crime over ten years ago—that should be enough!
Into those pleading, desperate eyes, Kim Yunho let out a short laugh.
"An informant is someone who helps catch the perpetrator when a crime has been committed, isn't it? Confessing the truth only after you've been cornered has another name. It's called a confession."
At that exquisitely precise correction, cold sweat ran down Kim Seong-hoon's back.
"A-a confession?"
"Which makes you an accomplice, Mr. Kim Seong-hoon. The hit-and-run against Mrs. Hwang Sun-ja. Knowing about—and concealing—the crimes of Kim Yong-gu, the burglar who looted the empty houses of Ugok 1-ri. And on top of all that, accessing and leaking my personal records. Isn't that right, Governor?"