Money Spent Is Money Rained Down - 8
"Why are you staring at me? I have no way of knowing who's going to become the next village chief of Ugok 2-ri."
At my words, the village chief took his seat and said,
"The man you vouched for is going to win it, isn't he?"
"Excuse me? What, what kind of influence do I have...?"
"What kind of influence, you ask? The Cheonligyo cult leader turned out to be a fraudster who'd even had plastic surgery, and it was thanks to you that he got caught. That's what I mean."
The moment the village chief finished, Mrs. Han Su-ja chimed in.
"Do you have any idea how much noise Ugok 2-ri made over that cult? And now the whole problem's been swept clean — those folks must be thanking the heavens for you, Yunho."
"And don't forget, Yunho here is the PR ambassador for all of Pyeongcheong County."
The village chief refilled my glass with deodeok liquor and smiled warmly.
"Once the election season kicks off, they'll be dragging you all over the place begging for a single word of endorsement. It'll be pure chaos."
He was saying people would call me out to give campaign speeches for the village chief election?
A chill ran down my spine.
I must never, ever get roped into something like that, I vowed.
And yet, starting the very next day, people from Ugok 2-ri began showing up at my house.
"Hello, nice to meet you. I run a café and a restaurant near the Pyeongcheong River..."
First came the café owner with the loudest voice in the riverfront development district.
"I'm so sorry to drop by unannounced like this. I just really wanted to express my gratitude."
Then a middle-aged man whose family had farmed in Ugok 2-ri for generations — apparently he'd even formed an opposition group to stop village chief Ma Chang-guk and his antics.
"Only if I win this election can the residents who have lived on this land for generations be protected."
He wanted my help once the election got underway. When he learned I was a farmer, he even offered to lend me a tractor for free.
I had absolutely zero interest in the Ugok 2-ri election, so I packed my bags and fled to Seoul.
It worked out anyway — I had a meeting scheduled with the lawyer Moon Sung-il had arranged for Chai. And I'd be spending the New Year with my parents.
Except my parents had gone off to Da Nang for the holidays.
Apparently it was such a popular destination for Korean tourists that people called it Nowon-gu, Da Nang.
My parents welcomed the New Year at a resort packed almost entirely with fellow Koreans.
As for me, I had a year-end dinner with Ko Min-seok, and on New Year's morning I hiked up Bukhansan to watch the first sunrise of the year.
Who knew I'd find true loneliness in Seoul of all places.
In Ugok-ri, far too many people came looking for me. In Seoul, I was alone.
A few days later, once the New Year holiday was over, I met the lawyer.
"I've heard a great deal about you from Mr. Moon Sung-il. My name is Lee Myung-chul, and I practice law."
Lee Myung-chul was exceptionally capable when it came to foreign worker cases.
After reading the fraud incident report I'd drafted based on Chai's statement, he had already pinpointed the girlfriend's whereabouts.
"There's a community for foreign workers, you see. To find jobs or make friends, you have to join it."
Apparently Chai's girlfriend had lived with several Thai men one after another.
I couldn't tell whether she'd drained their money the way she'd drained Chai's, but the lawyer found out that two of her live-in boyfriends had reported her for assault and been deported as a result.
She was living with a new man even now, though no assault reports had come in yet.
The lawyer already knew her workplace, her address, and even the identity of the man she was living with.
With crimes involving foreign workers, if you didn't move fast, the other party got deported or vanished without a trace.
So a decision had to be made, and quickly.
"Please confirm whether Chai wants the money he was defrauded of returned, or whether he wants his girlfriend deported. That will determine what I do next."
That wasn't a decision for me to make.
"I'll ask Chai and get back to you right away."
Right after meeting the lawyer, I headed straight back to Ugok-ri.
"Welcome back, hyung! I know how to take care of the chickens now. They've laid lots of eggs. They taste good."
Chai beamed as he showed me the eggs he'd collected over the past few days.
Chai was an undocumented resident, so he couldn't come to Seoul with me.
If the police so much as asked for his ID, he'd be arrested and deported on the spot.
While I'd been in Seoul, he'd stayed inside the house during the day, only venturing out for walks around the village after dark.
"Chai, I went to Seoul this time and met with the lawyer."
When I calmly told him about the girlfriend who'd run off with his money, Chai began to cry.
"So that's how it was. I was being used. I thought it might be something like that. She was so pretty, though. 'Why are you dating someone like me?' — I asked her that every day."
"The scammer is the one at fault. It's not your fault."
"Chai is at fault too. If you love someone, you should want them to live well. Chai couldn't do that."
When he heard that two other men had been deported because of her, Chai resolved to get revenge.
Those two had surely been fleeced for their money as well.
"Chai wants his money back. And please have her deported so she can't do bad things anymore."
"All right. We'll handle it that way."
"Thank you. I'll pay the lawyer's fees by working. I'll raise the chickens well and farm hard too."
I had no intention of taking his lawyer's fees.
But Chai's promise to help with my farming I accepted gladly.
"Chai, the ground will thaw soon and spring will be here. I'm counting on you. You're my farming senior, after all. Three whole years of it."
"Farming senior. Haha. Good."
I took Chai down into the village.
"Here's the thing — I'm buying up twelve vacant houses and fixing them all up. I've already sent letters to the owners asking them to sell."
Leave a rural house sitting vacant, and it racks up a fine of ten million won.
The owners either had to give up their rights to the property or repair it and put it up for rent.
That was the law, so I'd heard notices had been sent out to all the owners in a single mailing.
If an owner had passed away or the ownership was tangled up, who'd end up paying the fine was anyone's guess.
At any rate, with the village chief's help, I'd already gotten the ball rolling on contacting the owners about selling their vacant houses.
"See the house over there with the green tape on the gate? That's one we'll be remodeling soon. Pick out the one you want to live in, Chai."
"What? A house for... for me?"
"Yep."
"Won't I keep living with you, hyung?"
I put an arm around Chai's shoulder.
"We'll be neighbors instead. That guest room you've been staying in — my parents will need it whenever they come to visit."
Ko Min-seok had also said he'd bring his wife and kids out to visit before long.
My house was far too small to hold all of them.
More than anything, no matter how well I treated Chai, living under my roof would never feel entirely comfortable for him.
Shouldn't a home be your own space — a place to rest easy and sleep in peace?
I figured Chai would be happy to have a space like that of his own.
After laying out my reasoning at length, I looked at Chai.
"You'll be getting every won of that scam money back, and I'll be paying you a generous salary, so I'd say you're ready to live on your own, wouldn't you?"
"Hyung... are you not an angel?"
"Mm, no, I'm not."
I shrugged and went on.
"If I treat you like a junior or a little brother I care about, you'll treat me like a senior or big brother you like. That's why I'm doing this. So I get treated well."
"Chai will serve his boss very well!"
"See? That's exactly why living with me would be awkward."
I snorted a laugh and picked the house that looked the most structurally sound, then stepped inside.
Through the back gate that opened onto the rear yard, you could see Mak-sun Halmeoni's house.
Stream water flowed right in front of it — come summer, you could fall asleep to the cool sound of it.
"Being near the stream means it'll be damp, but we can fix that with good ventilation and a dehumidifier. This is your place, Chai. I'll fix it up for you, top to bottom."
"Thank you, hyung! Chai will farm hard! Really! Chai is really good at farming!"
"I know you are."
The moment the owners gave up their ownership rights, the repairs would begin.
It would be ideal if all the renovation work wrapped up before the busy farming season arrived.
That was one of my wishes at the moment.
Time flew, and before I knew it, February was drawing to a close.
The wind that had cut like a blade of ice began to carry a hint of warmth in it.
On a day that made me think spring might finally be near, a gift arrived from the Moritake family.
Moon Sung-il had warned me it would knock his socks off, so I assumed it would be something along the lines of an extremely expensive tea set.
"We are gardeners temporarily retained by the Moritake family."
What Moritake had sent was none other than cherry trees, white pines, and nishikigoi.
Nishikigoi are the ornamental koi said to bring wealth and good fortune, and they can live quite happily in Korean ponds.
Bred for their beauty in a rainbow of colors, they were known to grow longer than a grown man's forearm at full size.
"Mr. Moritake learned the dimensions of your yard through Mr. Moon Sung-il and prepared the gift accordingly. As for the nishikigoi, he chose them upon hearing that your village has a reservoir. Please accept them."
The gardeners bowed deeply to me in unison.
So that's why the gift took so long to arrive.
The cherry trees, the white pines, and the nishikigoi all had to clear quarantine first.
Nearly every tree in our yard was a fruit tree — jujube, cherry, plum, loquat, plum blossom, omija berry, cornelian cherry, and on and on.
I hadn't planted them myself; they'd been raised by the previous village chief, so they were old and had grown quite large.
I'd left them all as they were and only added a few pines and maples.
Which meant, frankly, my yard's landscaping wasn't much to look at.
But that was about to change.
With cherry trees bursting into full bloom in spring and those stately white pines beside them, the whole yard would gain a certain dignity.
The nishikigoi, too, seemed perfect for releasing into our village reservoir.
Weren't we planning to renovate the vacant houses and rent them out for chon-cance getaways?
Guests enjoying their countryside retreat would surely delight in watching the koi glide leisurely through the water.
"I suppose I should send the head of the Moritake family a letter saying the gift moved me?"
"So you will accept them, then? The gentleman who retained us has been beside himself with worry, terrified that his offer might be refused. He's surely fretting at this very moment."
"Please contact him right away. Tell him I'm absolutely delighted."
After the head gardener made his call, he bowed to me once more, deeply.
"The message has been delivered. We will now begin the work."
They dug into the earth with a backhoe, then started lining the holes with gravel to ensure proper drainage.
At some point, two cherry trees and two white pines had taken their places on either side of my yard.
To keep the trees rooting straight, the gardeners set up supports and laid attractive crushed stone around the base of each.
"The blossoms will open in April. Unlike Korea's native king cherry, this tree's blossoms are said to be the symbol of the Moritake family."
I was thinking the flowers must look somewhat different, when the gardener added,
"I understand these are the first Moritake cherry blossoms the family has ever gifted to someone outside their own bloodline. That should tell you how deep their gratitude runs."
The gardener seemed to be the kind of man who tended the garden trees of nothing but the finest estates.
He stepped back, then bowed to me once more.
"Then we'll see you again in April. We'll check on how the trees are growing, and apply fertilizer if needed."
"How long will you be maintaining them?"
"The Moritake family's answer was: for as long as they live."
They'd tend these trees as long as I was alive? Fertilizing them, pruning them, all of it?
But that wasn't what the gardener's "for as long as they live" meant.
"As long as these trees themselves are alive, the Moritake family will continue to care for them — that was their instruction."
In other words, even after I was gone, as long as the trees stood, they would tend them.
It meant they wished to forge a bond that deep.
If I ever found myself traveling to Japan, I supposed I'd have to pay the Moritake family a visit and pay my respects properly.
"Hey there, Yunho! You home?"
The village chief came looking for me in a hurry.
For a moment I thought all the vacant-house owners had given up their rights at once and come flocking to my door.
"You've got a decision to make, and quick."