Trait Enhancement - 2
When I bowed my head and stepped inside, a midday darkness swallowed me whole.
Sealed up tight on every side like this, no wonder the cold can't squeeze its way in.
The house was like a deep cave in the dead of winter—somehow warm despite itself. However much the weather had eased lately, the days still hovered below freezing, and yet not a single thing inside had frozen over. At the entrance, moisture had gathered and water droplets were dripping with a soft patter, patter.
I sharpened my senses and waited until my eyes adjusted to the dark. My keen hearing began to pick out the sounds one by one. Breathing. A swallow. The faint tremble of a body huddled up small, shivering.
I turned toward the sound, and my dark-adjusted vision finally mapped out the layout of the house. Inside the closet of the room across from the one with its door torn off, someone was hiding.
"You in there—come out. I know you're hiding."
At my words, the person inside clamped a hand over a hiccupping sob—only to have dust flood up their nose in the process.
"Achoo!"
A sneeze burst out of them, clean and loud. Startled by their own noise, they froze mid-breath and trembled like a leaf.
"Come out already! If you don't, I'm calling the police. So, shall I?"
Lee Ho-young had told me that the grave robber had gone mysteriously quiet after being spotted in Ugok 2-ri. That village was constantly erupting in fights between its residents over their disputes, which meant the police were being dispatched there nonstop—not exactly a place where a grave robber could linger. Over just one mountain ridge lay Ugok 1-ri, my village. Police hadn't set foot here all year, and after sundown the only people out and about were me and Bang Seonghyun. I made midnight runs to the convenience store in Eupnae for beer; Seonghyun came home at nine after evening training. Which meant anyone determined enough to hide out here would never, ever be caught.
So whoever's in there is the grave robber, no doubt about it. He'd managed to steal the burial goods, sure—but then he'd been betrayed, or failed to find a fence to move the loot. Or maybe he'd simply gone to ground, waiting for a buyer to appear.
"I said come out. Shall we test my patience? Last warning. If you're not out by the time I finish counting to three, I'm dialing 112. One. Two—"
CRASH! The closet door flew open as if it had been torn from its hinges, and a man came scrambling out.
"Well, well."
A man with a bird's-nest of hair, dressed like a vagrant, dropped to his knees with a resounding thud and blurted out:
"Mister Boss, please don't call the police! Chai is not a bad person. Really!"
* * *
The man was Chai, a foreign worker from Thailand. He'd been living in Korea for three years, working on watermelon and tomato farms over in Ugok 2-ri. As it turned out, the initial period a foreign worker was allowed to stay in the country was exactly three years—and after that, you had to apply for an extension.
"I couldn't renew my contract last month. Now they say I have to leave. Go home! That's what my farm boss said."
"Why couldn't you renew it?"
"My girlfriend ran off with my money. She reported that I hit her, so they wouldn't renew me."
"So let me get this straight—she emptied out everything you earned over three years, and now you're about to be deported to Thailand with nothing but the clothes on your back?"
"Wow. You understand right away. Boss, you are amazing."
Chai flashed a bright, guileless smile.
Honestly though—hiding out in an abandoned house like this? Inside the closet there'd been a blanket and a padded jacket, along with discarded heat packs. He seemed to have been scraping by on raw sweet potatoes and uncooked ramen noodles, washing it down with well water when his stomach got the better of him. A plastic bowl still held the dregs of his last drink.
"How long did you think you could last hiding in here? You'd freeze to death."
"True. Chai will freeze. So cold Chai could die."
Chai shivered violently, his face crumpling on the verge of tears.
"Unbelievable."
I'd thought I was catching a grave robber with a hundred-million-won bounty on his head, and instead I'd caught a petty thief. So this is where he's been. The sweet potato thief Grandpa Hosik kept complaining about.
Still, I couldn't exactly turn Chai in to the police. I comforted the lonely soul of Lady Wolyeong, a vengeful ghost dead for centuries—I can't just pretend not to see a living, breathing human being. And if Chai's story checked out, finding a way to help him wouldn't be hard. Every foreign national in the country was registered; I could track down the runaway girlfriend and verify whether the assault case was even real. Besides, Chai hadn't hit a Korean—this was a matter of figuring out who was actually in the wrong.
For now, I brought him back to my house and showed him to the bathroom.
"Take everything off and wash up with warm water. I'll bring you a change of clothes."
"Boss, may good fortune come to you. Chai will pray to Buddha. Every single day."
Buddha, hmm. Most Thais were Buddhist, as I recalled—and Chai's faith seemed to be as well.
"I think I'm already drowning in good fortune, so go on and wash."
"Yes, Boss."
The moment Chai disappeared into the bathroom, No. 1 came crawling out from under the kitchen table.
[Petch, the house is cramped enough as it is. Why are you dragging more humans in?]
And whose fault is it that it got cramped? You're the one who brought home three wives.
[I told you! I sired twelve extensions of myself to protect you!]
Worry about protecting your own hide. Push me too far and I'll tear up that contract of ours.
[Eep! My mistake! Bringing the human here is actually a wonderful idea. You'll be farming come spring anyway, and you'll need a worker. That's the one thing I can't do for you, after all.]
Hold on. I hadn't thought that far ahead—but now that he mentioned it, No. 1 had a point. Kim Yong-gu had recently been indicted and, in the process, relinquished his claim to Mak-sun Halmeoni's land. He'd never actually bought it with a proper contract in the first place; he'd forged papers to make it look like he'd lent her money and seized the property, which was flatly illegal. Whether he gave it up willingly or had it taken from him in court, he had no leg to stand on. Her son Kim Chang-soo had already renounced the land once to dodge inheritance taxes. And so the land that had found its way back to Mak-sun Halmeoni was now under my management, as her appointed guardian. Which meant that come next spring, the fields I'd be farming—Grandpa Hosik's plot included—would span the entire upper end of the village.
Grandpa Hosik offered to help, but the two of us alone won't be able to work all that. I was a farming novice, and I had the Binjip Project to handle on top of it. Chai, on the other hand, had three full years of farm work experience in Ugok 2-ri.
So basically, a crew foreman just fell out of the sky and landed in my lap? Good things kept cascading one after another—it seemed my luck with people was finally opening up too.
* * *
"So you're telling me you're taking that boy in, at least for now?"
That evening, Grandpa Hosik came by, saying he'd teach me how to brew makgeolli. Then he caught sight of me feeding the Thai boy Chai, his face hardened, and his voice rose.
"Have you lost your mind, being this good to a sweet potato thief?"
It was the first time I'd ever seen Grandpa Hosik lose his temper.
"He's hiding because if the police catch him, he'll be deported with nothing. He needs to catch the girlfriend who ran off with his money—that's the only way he gets any of it back."
"And that makes thieving all right? Steal a needle today, steal an ox tomorrow."
"Grandpa, I'll reimburse you for the sweet potatoes myself. He said he only did it because he had nothing to eat."
"I've gone hungry to the edge of starvation, and I never once coveted what belonged to another."
Grandpa Hosik seemed determined to scold Chai sternly—to drive home that no matter how desperate things got, stealing was never the answer. Well, he's always been a man with an unshakable sense of right and wrong.
Under the old man's thunder, Chai pressed himself flat against the floor, trembling head to toe.
"Grandpa, Chai is sorry. Chai will never do it again."
"You'll face hard times again—that's how life works. And if every time you run away and steal to wriggle out of them, you'll end up living as a runaway and a thief for the rest of your days."
"No! Chai is not a bad person."
Tears streaming, Chai held out his hands. They were a mess of thick knuckles, calluses, and open wounds—the hands of a man who'd broken his back in the fields.
"Chai worked hard. Really, worked until body hurt. Chai obeyed the real boss always. Mom is waiting... Chai sent money home too."
He'd been sending part of every month's wages back to his family and putting the rest into a joint savings account with his girlfriend. Three years of savings, all of it gone the day she vanished with it.
"Mom... she said just come home... but Chai has to get the money back. Only then can our whole family live."
Grandpa Hosik had watched the weeping boy with an unreadable face. At last, he let out a long sigh.
"I worked in a foreign land myself once. Construction worker in Saudi Arabia."
"You did that too?"
At my question, the old man nodded slowly.
"Haven't I told you? There's no work I haven't done. Sandstorms stinging your eyes, working from the moment they opened, dropping into bed too exhausted to think. What got me through it was my mother back home."
Grandpa Hosik stepped closer to Chai.
"Even if you never get that money back, you start over. That's the only way to think. You do NOT become a thief. Promise me. Swear you'll never steal so much as one more sweet potato."
"Yes. Chai promises. Never again."
When Chai burst into sobs, Grandpa Hosik pulled him into an embrace.
"How old are you, carrying on like a child?"
"Twenty-three."
So young. I'd assumed he was about my age. But Grandpa Hosik clapped Chai on the shoulder, declaring that twenty-three was old enough to be married with children.
"I had two kids by that age. Stop your crying. Don't you know what they say—a man who cries, his pepper falls off?"
"Miiya?"
No. 1, curled up asleep at the doorway of the study, suddenly lifted his head, stared at Grandpa Hosik, swished his tail against the floor twice—tak, tak—and then padded back into the study.
"Dry your eyes and have a drink with me. I brought a jug so you can taste it—part of today's makgeolli lesson, you see."
Grandpa Hosik pulled a bottle of makgeolli from the battered bag he carried everywhere like a peddler's pack. This was a man who distilled his own soju—how gloriously smooth must his makgeolli be?
"I'll fetch the cups. Should I steam some eggs?"
"For makgeolli, it's kimchi pancakes or nothing."
"Ha! Then I'd better fry up a few."
At that, Chai shot to his feet.
"Can Chai make pad thai? Chai saw peanuts and rice noodles earlier."
Oh, now that's something I never thought of. I loved rice noodles, pad thai, and tom yum, and I kept the ingredients stocked to cook them myself. But with Chai here, I could finally have the real thing—authentic Thai cooking from an actual local.
"Chai? Why even ask? I've got fish sauce and everything else—make as much as you want."
"Yes, Boss! Ah—wait, wait. You mustn't call me Boss. Harboring an undocumented worker is serious trouble. So call me Yoonho-hyung. Got it? Yoonho-hyung."
"Yes, Boss. Ah no—Yoonho-hyung."
Chai's face broke into a radiant smile.
In the meantime, I really needed to sort out his illegal status, and soon. Right on cue—
ji-ing, ji-ing.
Moon Sung-il was calling.