First Snow, and the Family Hearth – 2
"I never thought you'd betray me like this."
The next morning.
The village head made no effort to hide his hurt feelings, complaining that I'd gone behind his back and whispered sweet nothings into Mrs. Han Su-ja's ear without so much as a word of consultation.
"If we end up going on this trip, it'll be me doing all the work—chartering the bus, the whole nine yards—while you walk away with all the praise. That about the size of it?"
"Well, when you put it that way..."
"Oh! So that's it, is it? You'll plant the seed and then leave me holding the bag? I'm going to have to keep an eye on you, young Yunho."
I burst out laughing and set him straight.
"Come on, would I really do that? Chartering the tour bus, putting together the lunch boxes—I'll handle all of it."
"Now how'd you know there'd be lunch boxes to arrange?"
"I used to be an office worker at K Bank, remember?"
A bank teller doing paperwork behind the counter was only the tip of the iceberg. We regularly hosted branch regulars and VIP customers, chartering tour buses for outings twice a year, once in spring and once in fall. The loan officers were always out in the field, so they had to meet with travel agency staff too—cut costs, pack the itinerary full, arrange lunch boxes, book dinner reservations at famous restaurants. On the ride home, we'd lead a round of sing-alongs and hand out catalogs of our newest financial products.
Wait a moment.
A while back, I'd visited the county office to meet with an official about setting up my corporation. That was when I'd heard, in passing, that subsidies were being handed out at the village-ri level.
"Didn't the county office get a grant to hand out rice cakes to the elders over the holidays?"
"Those grants only come if you hold an event. We were supposed to put on some kind of singing contest, but as you know, we were busy picking pine mushrooms and throwing the village feast instead."
"So the village never received any subsidy money from the county?"
"That's right."
I asked him to wait a moment, then called the county office myself. And well, what do you know!
When the call ended, I grabbed the village head by the arm.
"Village Head, I just spoke with the officer in charge. He says if a ri gains five or more new residents, they get a congratulatory grant of one million won."
The Han Mi-ja family made four. Plus, I'd registered my own residence here. Five new people in our village meant a million won to spend on village expenses.
The village head's eyes went wide. Our population had only ever shrunk, never grown, so it seemed he'd had no idea this grant existed—an election promise of Governor Na Jeong-hwan's.
"What? A million won? Then how much have Ugok 2-ri and 3-ri been raking in all this time?!"
Restaurants and pension lodges were popping up there by the day, so they must have pulled in tens of millions by now. No wonder, I thought—they'd planted flowers along the river and replaced all the streetlights with new ones.
In our village, there's exactly one streetlight, flickering all lonely at the entrance.
That was why I left the LED lights in my yard burning until midnight every night. If I switched those off too, the whole place would plunge into pitch darkness.
Anyway!
"Village Head, you apply for the grant and collect the million won. I'll charter the bus and handle the lunch boxes."
"You've got a deal! Haha, truth be told, it's not that I didn't want to go on this trip. It's just that our village fund is whatever pocket change we chipped in back when we picked pine mushrooms."
So that had been the problem—where to scrape a budget from. The moment he heard the million won would be paid into the village's communal fund, he broke into a wide grin.
I should tell Mrs. Han Mi-ja that with two minors in her household, she's entitled to a settlement stipend of 500,000 won a month for a year.
Did she even know about it? Just in case, I decided I'd have to set aside a day and comb through every benefit she might be missing out on.
"Well, well! Looks like our village is finally getting a group outing after all this time. Haha."
For all his grumbling, the village head seemed quietly thrilled at the prospect of chartering a tour bus for a day trip.
I booked the bus through the travel agent I'd used so often during my banking days. I'll prepare the lunch boxes myself. We can always use restaurants at the tourist sites anyway.
The most important thing was the destination. I needed a route that followed the road where Bang Seong-eun's accident had happened, somewhere the village elders could sightsee and enjoy some new experiences along the way.
I spread out a map and scoured the area around the crash site.
This is perfect.
The Daegwallyeong sheep ranch, a museum, the wind turbines, and a hiking trail. That would be the itinerary. On the way there, we'd stop the bus at a rest area to let everyone stretch their legs—and that was when I'd rid Bang Seong-eun of the gisaeng-yeong clinging to her.
There we go. Absolutely perfect.
"Um... Mrs. Han? Seong-eun's mother?"
It was the evening, two days before Ugok 1-ri's group outing and team-building trip. I went to find Mrs. Han Mi-ja at Grandma Mak-sun's house, where she was preparing dinner. If I'd gone to her own home, Bang Seong-eun might overhear, so it seemed better to speak with her here, away from the girl.
"Mr. Yunho, what brings you here? Grandma's watching her drama right now."
"There's something I need to tell you."
"Oh, of course."
Wiping her damp hands on her apron, Mrs. Han pulled out a chair for me at the table.
"Please, sit. Would you like some quince tea? The quince trees around the village were heavy with fruit, but nobody ever picks them, so I gathered a few and made some syrup."
Quinces hanging from trees that had sprung up all over the village on their own, along with bellflower roots and ginger grown in her kitchen garden. She'd washed, sliced, and simmered them into syrups, and the jars stood in neat rows on the shelf above the sink. There wasn't a speck of dust on the window frames or shelves, and the linoleum floor gleamed so brightly you could almost see your reflection in it. All thanks to how tirelessly Mrs. Han worked.
She really is such a good, kind woman...
With the gisaeng-yeong attached to her daughter, Bang Seong-eun must have behaved strangely. How much must it have pained her mother to watch it happen?
"Quince tea sounds wonderful. I'd be honored to have some."
"If you taste it and like it, do say so. I bottled three whole jars of quince syrup."
Mrs. Han flipped on the electric kettle and scooped a generous dollop of syrup into a pretty teacup.
She must have wondered, picking out that cup, whether the day would ever come when she'd actually use it.
Grandma Mak-sun always mixed her grain powder or instant coffee mix in a regular rice bowl. So even when Mrs. Han had bought those teacups, she'd probably worried they'd end up buried in the cupboard collecting dust.
The kettle rumbled as the water came to a boil, and Mrs. Han quietly poured the hot water into the cup.
"Wow, it smells amazing!"
The fragrant scent of quince filled the kitchen. It tasted wonderful, too—one sip of the sweet tea and my throat, rough all day, felt instantly soothed.
"This is really delicious. It feels like it's melting away all the day's fatigue."
"Does it? I'll send a jar home with you when you go."
I should have said it wasn't necessary, but it was so good that I couldn't bring myself to.
"Thank you."
"So... what was it you wanted to tell me?"
"Do you happen to remember a girl named Choi Song-ji?"
"S-Song-ji!"
The color drained from Mrs. Han's face.
"How do you know that child?"
"So you do remember her."
"How could I forget? She's the girl who gave up her front seat for our Seong-eun on the ski camp bus."
Tears quickly welled up in Mrs. Han's eyes.
"Seong-eun was suffering from motion sickness, so Song-ji traded seats with her—and because of that, she couldn't get off the bus in time. Then her mother came to find me and..."
She cut herself off there and bit her lip.
So Song-ji's mother blamed her, saying the accident happened because of Seong-eun.
I could also guess why she didn't mention it: Seong-eun had survived, and Choi Song-ji had died. Perhaps that was why Mrs. Han could never shake her guilt.
Just like Seong-eun does.
Mrs. Han had said her daughter couldn't remember the accident itself, but that was half right and half wrong. Rather than erase her memory of the crash, Bang Seong-eun had erased her memory of Song-ji's death—unable to forget the girl herself.
"But Mr. Yunho, how do you know about Song-ji?"
Spirit No. 1 had observed Bang Seong-eun for several days and uncovered the existence of someone called Choi Song-ji. When I looked up the old news articles, her name had indeed appeared on the victim list.
"I found the news articles about the accident."
"Why on earth would you go looking for those...?"
"Because Seong-eun said she's been playing tag with a girl named Song-ji."
"Wh-what? She still does that? Right after the accident, she said she was playing with Song-ji. She said they played hide-and-seek together, too."
After she'd been taken to the hospital for evaluation, the symptoms had supposedly stopped.
"They haven't. She still does it now."
"Good heavens! So she was never cured—she just stopped doing it in front of me?"
"That appears to be the case."
"But... that was years ago..."
Some wounds heal with time. Others, no matter how many years pass, never recover at all. For Bang Seong-eun, it seemed to be the death of Song-ji—a girl who died because she'd traded seats with her.
After all, she's been sharing her own life force with a gisaeng-yeong, believing with all her heart that it was Song-ji.
The gisaeng-yeong I had seen with my own eyes was not Choi Song-ji. It was a strange, formless thing—like a droplet of water, like dampness—woven from countless entangled, shattered spirits.
"I think you need to give Seong-eun the time to accept Song-ji's death and mourn her."
"Time to... mourn her?"
"Yes. Seong-eun believes Song-ji is still alive. She's never accepted her death, and she's never been able to grieve it."
I took out my phone and turned the screen toward her so she could see the article I'd found—and the photo attached to it.
"Please, look at this."
The moment she saw the group photo of the children at the ski camp, Mrs. Han couldn't contain the surge of emotion and covered her mouth with both hands. In that photo, Bang Seong-eun and Choi Song-ji were smiling, their hands clasped tightly together.
I took out my sketchbook and showed her the picture Bang Seong-eun had drawn—a copy of that very photograph.
"Oh—what do I do... *sob*!"
"Seong-eun's mother. Seong-eun has been stuck at this moment ever since."
"*Sob*... Yes. You're right. I think you are."
I pulled a tissue from the box on the table and handed it to her, choosing my words carefully.
"On this village trip, our bus will pass by the accident site. I was thinking it might be good to let Seong-eun step off the bus for a little while, so she can pay her respects. Would that be all right?"
For now, all I needed was to persuade Mrs. Han so that Seong-eun could reach that place. The rest, Spirit No. 1 and I would take care of.
"If it's for Seong-eun... then I'll do it."
"It's for you as well, Seong-eun's mother."
"F-for me, you say?"
Clear tears beading on her lashes, Mrs. Han blinked rapidly. At that look of utter incomprehension, I spoke up.
"Ever since that accident, you've carried the guilt with you, haven't you? Every time you felt relieved that your own child had survived, it tore you up inside."
"*Sob*... But..."
"I know. I'm not blaming you."
If only she'd been able to visit the crash site and lay down even a single chrysanthemum, her heart might have grown a little lighter.
"This time, why don't you go with Seong-eun to the site? Pour out a drink, lay some flowers, say a prayer for Song-ji's soul. I think it would do you both good."
"Yes. I will."
At last, the day of the big Ugok 1-ri group outing had arrived.
"Hey, No. 1. Get in the carrier."
I packed the pig's trotters, slow-simmered all morning in the iron cauldron, into an insulated cooler as I spoke to him.
[Can't I just ride on the bus like everyone else?]
"Nope. Grandfather Sang-jong is allergic to cats."
[Well, I'm allergic to that old coot too! Every time I see him, he goes on about the thieving tomcat running around!]
Grandfather Sang-jong was the man who'd given me those pine mushrooms, and after me, he was the richest person in our village. There used to be a saying that you couldn't set foot anywhere in Ugok-ri without stepping on Grandfather Sang-jong's land. His sons had sold off most of it, and now he kept only the house he lived in and the paddies and fields nearby.
Still, that makes him a multimillionaire.
Anyway, he had his picky, particular streaks, so if I didn't put No. 1 in a carrier, there was a good chance the old man would refuse to go on the trip at all.
"We're out of time! Get in the carrier. Now."
"Meow..."
No. 1 slunk into the carrier with the most reluctant steps imaginable and curled himself up.
I began checking off the carefully wrapped bundle of supplies, terrified I might have forgotten something.
"Chrysanthemums, liquor, lunch boxes, chopsticks, wrapping paper, lettuce wraps, fermented shrimp, water, cups—all packed... All that's left is to keep my head on straight."
Just then, my phone rang out with a buzz.
Why would Mrs. Han Mi-ja be calling?
"Hello?"
"I'm so sorry, but Seong-eun is throwing a fit, insisting she won't go anywhere. What am I supposed to do?"