Spend Money, Get a Money Shower - 7
"It appears you have received the gift of an altruistic heart from Monk Bo-eun?"
Hearing that I'd been handed such a thing, my head throbbed. No, if you were going to give me a gift, you could have told me where to find a Silla-era treasure map instead. Handing me something like 'altruism' without even asking me first — what am I supposed to do with that?
That aside, the man's face looked strangely familiar. I'd definitely seen it somewhere before.
Ah!
He was the man from the vision that had flashed through my mind when I touched the stone pagoda. Back then he'd been an old man whose hair had turned bone-white. Now, he looked to be about my age.
Most spirits wander about in the form they bore right up to the moment of their death, yet this one had grown younger. He must have been on the very verge of becoming a vengeful spirit.
Lady Wol-yeong, too, had died in her old age only to return as a vengeful spirit wearing her youthful face. If he had been unable to meet her even in death, the resentment could well have festered.
An earthbound spirit is bound to an object or a place and cannot move elsewhere — and it seemed this man had been no different. Were you the artisan they called Mudol? I asked him carefully.
"You seem to know me, so I imagine Monk Bo-eun told you my story. Yes. I am Mudol."
Mudol looked at the earring held in my hand as he spoke.
"I clasped that earring in my hand, took my own life, and remained thereafter inside the Buddha statue."
So my guess had been right.
"I see. You never got to meet your wife."
"My wife must have breathed her last clutching the earring I sent ahead of me. Her spirit will still be with that earring."
Mudol bowed his head deeply toward me.
"Please keep the two earrings together, so they are never parted again."
Mudol's wife and son had already been sent on to the afterlife by my hand — but there seemed no need to say so. All I had to do was make sure they were reunited soon.
"Yes, I'll do exactly that. Don't worry about a thing. It's time for you to rest now."
I walked forward to send Mudol's spirit on to the afterlife. A moment later, when Mudol passed behind me, a light more brilliant than any I had ever seen came pouring down, and Mudol departed for the world beyond.
In death, Mudol remained trapped inside the Buddha statue at Cheonjinam while his wife stayed near the stone pagoda, the two of them never meeting. I hope you find happiness together in the afterlife, even now.
I cradled the earring in my hand and cupped it tenderly in both palms.
"Head Monk, I've recovered the buried relic. Please hand over what came out of the stone pagoda to the Cultural Heritage Administration staff along with it. And please, be sure to tell them never to store the two pieces apart."
The head monk drew out a handkerchief and carefully wrapped the earring inside it.
"Of course. It is the only treasure and cultural heritage Wolsang Temple possesses that was never plundered."
Moon Sung-il looked at me and said,
"A Silla-era earring preserved in this condition? Collectors would name any price they were asked. But this time, I suppose we yield to the Cultural Heritage Administration."
"We should."
Every relic from the northern storehouse would revert to the Cultural Heritage Administration, but I would be receiving the hundred-million-won reward, so I answered with a smile on my face.
"Simply exposing the cult leader as the relic thief is joy enough for me."
"You've worked hard."
"Namu Amitabha Buddha."
It was time to bring things to a close.
I glanced at the beheaded angel statue, then looked around for No. 1. There he was — whoosh, whoosh — leaping from person to person, possessing them like a madman.
No. 1! Get over here!
"I was having so much fun. Can't I play a little longer?"
No. Come. Now.
No. 1 slipped out of the cultist's body in a wisp of black smoke and settled onto my shoulder.
Let's go home. I want to know if the chickens are all right, and I'm worried about your wives — and about Chai too.
When I first settled in Ugok 1-ri, I had been entirely alone. Now, the mouths depending on me were far too many to count.
Mrs. Han Su-ja, who had been watching the news, turned pale and cranked the volume up.
"Oh my, oh my! Good heavens, what in the world is this?"
"That's as loud as it goes? Turn it up more."
"That IS as loud as it goes! I told you the television's an antique and the sound barely comes out."
The village chief, clearly frustrated, gave the TV one good thump. The sound that had been barely audible a moment before came bursting out as if a plug had been pulled.
"Aigoo, good heavens! No wonder. The Ugok 2-ri villagers went to consult with him so many times, and whether he was some deputy leader or what-have-you — and to think a man like that was coming out as their representative."
Because I had landed a decisive blow on the Cheonligyo cult that had been the bane of Ugok 2-ri's existence, the village chief had called me and Chai over and made braised beef short ribs for us. Han Mija's family had been invited as well — the doors to the raised wooden floor were flung open, and the table stretched clear across the maru.
And yet.
I could not enjoy this feast.
"Chai!"
I scowled at Chai. Because in this dish — which you could call braised short ribs, or equally well a beef-and-radish stew — Chai had gone and picked up one of the short ribs with his chopsticks.
Those are for display, buddy.
Bang Seonghyun and Bang Seongeun were carefully eating only the potatoes and radish from the stew. And here was Chai, completely oblivious, plucking out the short ribs one after another. What was I to do with him?
"Seonghyun, get Chai to look at me for a second."
Seonghyun waved his hand in front of Chai's eyes across the table. Only then did Chai, his face glistening with oil, turn his head toward me.
Hey, I'll make you braised short ribs until you burst, so knock it off. This isn't our house.
I explained as earnestly as I could with mouth movements alone. Chai just broke into a sheepish grin, picked up a half-gnawed rib, and held it out toward me.
"Hyungnim, would you like some? You're telling me to share, right?"
"That's not it."
"Then what? Should Chai not eat?"
At those words, Mrs. Han Su-ja shot up out of her seat.
"Why shouldn't he eat? Eat up, Chai, eat plenty! I bought a whole mountain of meat."
And this, from a woman who was herself fishing out nothing but radish.
Winter in the countryside, then as now, meant a household budget stretched paper-thin. There was hardly anywhere for money to come from. But as a guest, I could hardly point out that the "braised short ribs" were mostly potato and radish. All I could manage was the customary flattery of goodness, you've prepared far too much.
And Chai, bless him, had no idea any of this was going on.
"Chai? Why don't we step out and have a little talk?"
"Yes? Why?"
"I just need a word."
Just as I was about to lead Chai outside —
"Chief! Village Chief?"
Someone's voice came calling for the village chief.
"Oh my, isn't that the Ugok 2-ri chief's voice?"
"Looks like it."
The village chief sprang to his feet and slid open the door to the maru. There in the yard stood two figures, rooted in place — Ma Chang-guk, chief of Ugok 2-ri, and his wife, Gil Sang-hui.
At the smelt festival awards ceremony, they'd worked themselves into a frenzy at a few words from the youth association president. Now they drooped like lettuce doused in salt, utterly deflated.
Mrs. Han Su-ja stole a glance at them, then whispered into my ear.
"Don't tell me that man has come all the way here to ask our chief for help?"
"Looks exactly like that to me."
"Ha! Not even funny. When we were the ones handing out advice, they wouldn't listen to so much as a whisper of it."
Mrs. Han Su-ja was rising to her feet, determined to give them a piece of her mind, when I quickly caught her arm and held her back.
"Please wait just a moment. It seems the chief has something he wants to say."
"You know how our chief is, Yunho. He's soft."
"He's not soft — he's gentle. And he has an uncanny gift for knowing exactly which words should be said and which shouldn't."
Han Mija and Maksoon Halmeoni rose to my defense one after the other, as if to say I'd hit the nail on the head.
"That's right, unni. Sit tight and let your husband handle it."
"Our chief is the best. He's not the sort of man anyone could badmouth, anywhere."
Mrs. Han Su-ja let out a long sigh.
"Nobody badmouths him anywhere, sure. Because he just gives and gives and gives. That's exactly why I have to play the villain in this family."
Just then —
"What do you mean, what? You want us to write a petition on your behalf? Look here, Chang-guk!"
The village chief, gentle as ever until this very moment, raised his voice and rounded on Ma Chang-guk.
"Do you have any idea how much the residents have suffered because they elected a man like you as their chief? In the dead of night, those cult fanatics came down into the village and cut the power lines, and the tomato crops all froze to death!"
I had heard about that incident. When the villagers opposed the solar farm project, the Cheonligyo had cut their power lines. Not only the greenhouse farmers but the restaurant owners as well suffered devastating losses. The crops raised inside the greenhouses withered and died from the cold snap, while the restaurants' water pipes froze and burst, leaving them unable to open for business at all. Pension guests had leapt shrieking from rooms turned into iceboxes in the middle of the night, demanded refunds, and protested that they would never set foot in Ugok 2-ri again.
I heard the Cheonligyo even gathered up the villagers' deliveries and burned them.
When the enraged natives and newcomers banded together to block the access road, the cult had assaulted the villagers and then sued them. And through it all, the Ugok 2-ri chief had been eating money out of the Cheonligyo's hand while telling the county office that the villagers were the ones in the wrong.
He was never on the residents' side at all.
And only now, with the cult on the brink of ruin, had he come crawling to our village chief. But our chief was a man whose sense of right and wrong was as clear as day.
"Why did you even become chief? To pocket the activity funds? That village is your home! It's the neighborhood where your father's old friends live, where your brothers and sisters live, where your sons' and daughters' friends live!"
"I was only trying to do right by everyone!"
"By colluding with the Cheonligyo and tormenting your own villagers? You have no right to call yourself chief of Ugok 2-ri."
The moment the chief turned firm, Ma Chang-guk's wife, Gil Sang-hui, stepped forward.
"Unni, please, we're begging you. Helping your neighbors when times are hard — that's what neighbors are for, isn't it?"
"The word 'neighbor' is reserved for people like these."
Mrs. Han Su-ja pointed at me, at Chai, and at Maksoon Halmeoni.
"People who are like my own flesh and blood. If a single soybean splits in half, we split it and share it. But you? You do nothing but flaunt what you have, and you'd snatch the soybean right out of my hand besides. Can you honestly call someone like that a neighbor?"
"Your wife is a hundred times right. I've nothing more to say to the two of you, so be on your way."
The chief threw his full weight behind Mrs. Han Su-ja's words. At that, her eyes turned toward him and shone with warmth.
So that's how the distance that grew between them from all those marital spats gets stitched back together.
Faced with the chief and his wife's unyielding stance, Ma Chang-guk scratched his head furiously.
"Come on now, did I ask for a petition for free? And it's just mutual support between fellow chiefs, is all!"
At those words, Mrs. Han Su-ja exploded.
"And how much exactly are you offering? You're so flush with cash you'll drop a million won on a handbag for your wife without blinking — so what, a billion won or so?"
It's a knockoff, mind you.
Mrs. Han Su-ja seized the village chief's arm tight and raised her voice.
"And a billion won wouldn't even scratch the surface! If you want a petition from our chief, ten billion — no, a hundred billion won wouldn't be enough. Our chief is a man who has never once in his life done a thing that pricked his conscience. Isn't that right, chief?"
"That's right. And Gil Sang-hui! Stop calling our Women's Association President night and day just to brag about your money. It's tacky, I say."
Gil Sang-hui's eyes flinched at the word tacky, but she could manage no reply and simply hung her head. In the end, Ma Chang-guk and Gil Sang-hui were chased out beyond the gate, petitionless.
"Yunho, you're the best. Absolutely magnificent."
Mrs. Han Su-ja thrust both thumbs up at me. Out of nowhere?
"Me? ...Why?"
As I blinked in bewilderment, Mrs. Han Su-ja said,
"Our Yunho is the one who put that Cheonligyo leader behind bars! Thanks to him, I got to give those people the dressing-down of their lives. Haha! Even got to yell at Gil Sang-hui properly. Thank you, truly."
At her words, the village chief nodded as if in full agreement.
"The cult's collapsing, and now they come groveling to me, heads bowed, begging to be saved? Fat chance. And if none of this had happened, they'd never have darkened our doorstep in the first place."
The chief went on.
"Do you know how those two have looked down on this whole village — on me — all this time? My chest has never felt lighter! Yunho, fighting!"
"By the way, the Ugok 2-ri chief will be removed from office, right? He was taking money from the Cheonligyo, so he might even be looking at prison."
"That's right. I wonder who'll become the next chief of Ugok 2-ri?"
And why, pray tell, is everyone suddenly looking at me?