A Windfall Even When You Spend It (12)
Why would he suddenly show up now?
This was his birth father's house — a place he'd never once visited before.
Was he planning to stop by at least once before it was sold?
Or maybe, since the three brothers already signed away their shares, he's here to demand more money for himself.
The deal couldn't close until the last remaining owner relinquished his claim, after all.
Unable to shake off the uneasy feeling, I headed toward the empty house with the Village Head.
"Looks like he's already here? There's a car parked out front."
A Sonata of indeterminate wash date sat in front of the house, and stuffed inside it were overflowing garbage bags issued by Mapo District Office — several of them, in fact.
"Do you know what kind of man he is?"
"No idea. From what I can tell, he doesn't keep in touch with his brothers at all."
According to the Village Head, the three older brothers seemed to visit fairly often — it was only the youngest who appeared to be completely estranged from the family.
The moment we stepped through the front gate, the man standing on the wooden porch sensed our presence and hastily wiped away his tears.
Was he crying? He definitely was!
He lifted his head and drew a shaky breath, as if trying to steady himself.
Mid-thirties, maybe, with a solid build and a short buzz cut. Jacket, jeans, sneakers. The sight of his shoelaces pulled tight reminded me of Bang Seonghyun's taekwondo master, who used to say that martial artists always cinched their laces so they could bolt at the first sign of trouble.
Come to think of it, this guy looks like a martial artist too.
The man came down from the porch, his face wiped clean of any trace of tears.
"Are you the one looking to buy this house? And you're the elderly gentleman — the Village Head, correct?"
He read the situation remarkably fast. He also had the kind of piercing stare that could cow a man into submission.
A gangster? Or a detective?
Guessing at the man's occupation, I offered a greeting first. "I'm Kim Yunho. The Village Head and I are running a project to restore the abandoned houses of Ugok 1-ri. I'm a farmer by trade."
"You don't look much like a farmer."
He seemed to have been running his own quick calculations, trying to size me up the same way I was sizing him up.
"You look like someone who worked with his head. No calluses on your hands, fair skin. Let's just say you don't exactly seem cut out for living somewhere this rural."
A detective.
I had him pegged in an instant.
As he drew closer, the smell of stale cigarettes hit me — not the ordinary whiff of someone who simply smoked, but the deep, ingrained stench that seeps into an ashtray over years.
Suddenly I remembered those bulging garbage bags in the Sonata. Probably filled with the triangle gimbap and milk cartons he'd gone through during stakeouts.
"I'm Jeong Hyeoncheol — Jeong Haksu's youngest."
The man who introduced himself as Hyeoncheol offered a handshake. His palm was rough against mine. A martial artist indeed — it felt like judo training. The moment I squeezed his hand firmly, he gave a slight tug on my arm, and I could tell he could plant me into the ground in a single throw if he wanted.
"Hello, sir. It's an honor to meet you."
"You look just like Haksu."
"You... remember my father?"
Hyeoncheol's voice trembled.
"Remember him? He was my closest friend. We went to elementary school together. After his mother passed, Haksu had to start providing for himself early — he must have been in his third year of middle school."
"Is that right? I was so young when Father died that I don't even remember his face."
Hyeoncheol let out a faint sigh, then bowed his head. "My mother was different from my brothers' mother, you see."
"I heard Haksu lost his first wife. But you know, you resemble him the most of anyone. The moment I walked into that yard, I thought Haksu had come back. Your eyes, your nose... Looking at you now, you could be twins."
"Is... is that so? My mother always used to say the same thing... I never believed her."
Hyeoncheol stood with his head bowed as thick tears rolled down, one after another.
From what I gathered, Jeong Haksu had made good money delivering heating oil door to door by motorcycle. Back in those days, every house in Geumho-dong and Sindang-dong ran on oil boilers.
Every time that oil business — as it was called — piled up a tidy sum, Haksu bought another house in the area. Then property prices skyrocketed, and he became a man of considerable means.
He bought a gas station, then a building, and his wealth kept growing. A few years after his first wife died, he remarried.
When the youngest, Hyeoncheol, was born, the older brothers demanded that their father sign a document promising nothing would go to the new wife.
If Haksu died, half the estate would pass to his widow — and through her, to little Hyeoncheol. Which meant they would each inherit less than their youngest brother. That was their reasoning.
When his grown sons lodged their collective complaint, Haksu gave in to the demand.
Not long after, he died.
"My brothers threatened my mother. They said they'd report her for killing Father. In the end, she and I were thrown out with nothing."
Living in poverty with his widowed mother, Hyeoncheol sometimes found himself wondering — had his father's death really been just an accident?
"I studied hard. I wanted to find out why Father died so suddenly. And every time Mother said we had to live like dead people, hiding because we were afraid of my brothers, I wanted power. Strength of my own."
"So you became a police officer?"
At my words, Hyeoncheol's eyes went wide. "How — how did you know I'm a detective? Most people take one look at me and say I look like a gangster. It scares them."
"You struck me as a detective who works hard. I saw the trash you'd thrown out while staking out in your car."
"Ah! Sharp eyes. So then, Mr. Kim Yunho — what did you used to do?"
I answered with a smile. "I was a bank employee. A pretty boring job."
"I would've guessed military — a soldier or maybe a JAG officer. You don't give off a civilian vibe at all. A warrior, I'd say."
A jolt ran through me. The word warrior stung somewhere deep.
The familiar weight of a longsword flashed through my mind again, and I felt as though some secret even I didn't fully understand had been seen through.
Quickly changing the subject, I turned my gaze toward the house. "So your brothers made off with your father's estate early on, and all you were left holding was ownership of this house?"
"Either they didn't know this house belonged to Father, or they knew and figured it wasn't worth much, so they never bothered with it. That's how I ended up a co-owner."
"And your mother?"
"She passed away."
Now I understood completely why Hyeoncheol had come all this way.
A father whose face he couldn't remember, and the threats from his father's other children. A mother who had lived her whole life cowering in fear of them.
Because of all that, Hyeoncheol was left with nothing but questions about his roots — about the man who was his father. What kind of person had he been? What kind of father? Why did he die? He must have longed to answer even one of those questions.
That was why he'd come here — to search for whatever traces of his father might still remain in this house.
Perhaps it was thanks to the altruism Monk Bo-eun had gifted me before departing.
I wanted to help Hyeoncheol — to ease, even a little, the longing for his father he carried in his chest, and the questions that came with it.
"Village Head? Could you tell us about Jeong Haksu? Not just that you were close — I mean the real stories."
"Now that I think on it, Haksu had a born merchant's streak. He made his first sale at the market when he was seven. Can you believe that?"
Digging through his fading memories, the Village Head began to spin tales of the old days, and Hyeoncheol listened with his ears pricked, determined not to let a single word slip past.
I quietly backed away and slipped inside the house.
This village is a place where spirits gather...
It wasn't impossible that Jeong Haksu's soul had wandered the afterlife for years before finding its way here. If he were present, I wanted to ask him — why had he died? Did he have any last words for his youngest son?
Of course, spooked by me, most spirits went to great lengths to hide their very existence.
I muted my own presence, and in contrast, sharpened my spiritual sense, scanning for any drifting soul nearby.
Nothing.
I combed every corner of the house and its surroundings, but there wasn't so much as a water spirit lurking about.
Had Haksu passed straight on to the afterlife when his time came? Or was he still wandering, unable to find his way back to his hometown? There was no way for me to know.
Nothing to be done about it, I supposed.
I was about to walk back toward Hyeoncheol when a wooden crate in what looked like a storage room caught my eye.
Looking closer, it was an apple crate. In the old days, they used to board crates together by hand, fill them with apples, and haul them off to market. This was exactly that kind of crate. A cloth lay draped over the top, and when I pulled it away, I found an album beneath, coated in a fine pale dust.
"Mr. Jeong Hyeoncheol, could you come over here? There are a lot of photos of your father in here."
"Where? Where! Ahh!"
When I opened the album, its pages neatly filled with printed photographs, black-and-white images looked back at us. A baby's first-birthday portrait, pictures from early childhood, and on and on — a record of Jeong Haksu growing up, year by year.
"You said this spot was a popular fishing hole, and your family sold ramyeon here? I imagine you sold camera film too."
At my words, the Village Head smacked his knee as if the memory had only just surfaced. "That's right! Back in the day, if you wanted film for your camera, you had to go to Haksu's family."
"One of the fishermen with a camera must have taken this photo of him. Then he came back on a later trip and gave it to the family."
"Looks that way. Haha. Who would've thought pictures of Haksu would survive like this, untouched all these years?"
The Village Head's eyes reddened at the image of his old friend, long since departed.
Hyeoncheol's shoulders shook as the tears fell thick and fast. "He really does look like me. It wasn't just something people said."
"I told you, didn't I? You're the spitting image of Haksu. Even your voice."
"Yes."
Hyeoncheol brushed the dust from the album and rose to his feet. "I'm going to take this with me. You don't mind, do you?"
"Of course not. And if you go through the house carefully, I'm sure you'll find more."
"As it happens, I took some time off. Would it be all right if I stayed here a couple of days and gathered up the things worth keeping?"
"Absolutely. You're part owner of the house, after all."
It astonished me that he hadn't even known that until now.
His brothers could well have arranged for all mail and official correspondence to route to the corporation they'd established. These were men who'd forged paperwork to make sure not a single won of the inheritance reached Hyeoncheol — there was nothing they couldn't do.
Hyeoncheol clutched the album to his chest as if it meant far more to him than any inheritance ever could.
"Thank you for deciding to buy this house and restore it. Letting the house where my father was born rot away like this — that's no way for a son to behave."
"Don't worry. We'll restore it beautifully and preserve it well."
If left as it was, the house would collapse within a few years. But with proper reinforcement and a thorough renovation, it would transform into a fine hanok that could stand for another decade or more. There were century-old hanok still standing across the country — this one could last just as long, if not longer.
"Once the renovation is done, come visit. I'll let you stay free of charge. You could do some fishing, get some rest — sounds nice, doesn't it?"
"Just imagining it makes me happy. Thank you, truly."
Just then, the Village Head's phone rang in his pocket.
"Hm? What's Grandfather Sang-jong calling about at this hour?"
He pressed the answer button, and a moment later —
"What? Those bastards are back? You sons of — how dare they steal fatsia shoots from another man's mountain every single year! I'll go take a look myself. No, sir, don't you dare fight those men! Someone could get seriously hurt!"
So the shoot poachers finally showed up.
The Village Head had mentioned it a while back — every year around this time, a middle-aged man and woman came to strip the mountainside of its shoots. Even though it was common knowledge that the mountain had been sold and planted with a fatsia crop, they figured that in a village of nothing but old folks, no one could stop them.
"Sir, is Grandfather Sang-jong's mountain that way? I'll run ahead."
The moment I declared I'd dash over and catch the thieves myself, Hyeoncheol spoke up, his eyes gleaming.
"Wait! You go with the police. I'm a violent crimes detective with a commendation to my name. We'll catch them red-handed and arrest every last one of them."