I Bought an Abandoned House - 9
"Who is it?"
The Go-Stop grandmother didn't recognize me at all.
Only yesterday her mind had been sharp enough to clean out every last coin from the village elders, and now her eyes wandered without any focus behind them. So Madam Han Su-ja had been telling the truth — her mind really did drift in and out like a tide.
What am I supposed to do?
Last night, in the dark, the house had merely felt eerie. But seeing it in broad daylight was another matter entirely. The grandmother's house was as good as abandoned. The fence had collapsed in pieces, and around the outdoor tap, water that couldn't drain away was rotting the earth beneath it. That, I realized, was where the stench was coming from. The mud walls crumbled at the mere touch of a fingertip, and even the pillars leaned as if ready to give way.
At this rate, the whole place was going to come down on her head.
What in the world is wrong with her children, leaving their mother alone like this?
Unable to hold it in, I spoke up. "Grandmother, try to focus. I gave you wild ginseng yesterday, and I walked you home. You napped for a little while, then woke up and gave me the chamber pot, remember?"
I pointed at the jangdokdae, the shelf of fermentation jars — hoping the memory of the white porcelain vessel she'd kept there might surface.
"What nonsense are you talking about? I never did any such thing. Go on home now — my son will be back from school any minute."
The grandmother plucked cosmos flowers growing wild and unkempt by the fence and made a little bouquet. A low table was set out on the flat platform in the middle of the yard, and she tucked the cosmos bouquet into an empty water bottle and placed it at the center of the table.
"My son loves flowers. And he's brilliant at his studies, too."
And where was that brilliant son right now, while his grandmother carried on like this?
I decided I needed to have a word with the man myself, and headed for the village head's house.
"The Go-Stop grandmother? Ahh, you must mean Park Mak-soon. The one with the blue gate falling to pieces on your way to her place."
"Yes, that's her."
Though the blue paint had all flaked away, leaving nothing but a ghost of it behind.
"I hear she has a son. Could you give me his phone number?"
"Why on earth would you want to talk to that wretch?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Don't tell me you're going to tell him to come take his mother?"
The village head's eyes flashed as he worked himself up. I fumbled for words.
"Her mind comes and goes. What if she's cooking and the house catches fire?"
"It already burned once! Seven, eight years ago now!"
At his words, Madam Han Su-ja, who had been spreading chili peppers out to dry in the yard, clicked her tongue.
"That son is her only child. He was born late in her life — she carried him breach, and it nearly killed her to deliver him. She couldn't have another after that. So with the child she'd traded her life for, she spoiled him rotten — and that's where it all went wrong."
The couple had farmed until their hands and feet wore down to nothing to send the boy to university, but once he landed a job, he rarely came home. He'd married into a well-off family, and with the groom's side so clearly beneath them, the grandmother hadn't dared even ask them to visit for the holidays. Sometimes she'd haul perilla oil or beans all the way up to Seoul on her back, only to be turned away at the door. She never spent a single night at her son's place — she came straight back down.
"She asked me how to send things by courier. So I shipped them for her."
"He's out of his mind, calling himself a son after all that. He never once showed his face at the holidays!"
"The only time he came back was after his father collapsed from a stroke and died — playing the chief mourner."
Listening to the village head and his wife, I frowned.
"There must have been some misunderstanding, surely. Maybe the parents meddled too much, or demanded money — that's usually how it goes. But she didn't do any of that, and the son still treated her this badly?"
"Hard to believe, isn't it, young Yunho? I thought the same — how can a person be that rotten? But he exists."
Madam Han Su-ja clucked her tongue and went on.
"I went to the funeral and told that boy straight: your mother keeps forgetting things — don't leave her alone, take her with you now. Her dementia had already started by then, you see."
"And?"
"He said fine, then sold off her land and house lock, stock, and barrel and took her up to Seoul. I thought, well, maybe he'll actually be filial after all — ha!"
Madam Han Su-ja rose to her feet and dusted off her trousers with sharp slaps. Even secondhand, the story made her blood boil.
"You tell it. If I try, I'm liable to lose my temper."
"Whew..."
The village head's face had gone sour too.
"So — a call comes in the middle of the night. From the Gyeongju police station. They've got some elderly woman who got lost, and she'd given them my number, they said."
"Your number, sir?"
"That's right. The elders in our village all know my phone number by heart. They can't work smartphones or save contacts, so they memorize it plain. Call me, and everything gets sorted — that's how it goes."
Gyeongju?
I had a suspicion already, but I asked to be sure. "You just said the son lives in Seoul, though. What was she doing in Gyeongju?"
"He dumped her there. In Gyeongju."
"Did you verify that yourself?"
"I did!"
Madam Han Su-ja struck her chest.
"I had a relative's wedding in Seoul, so I went and hunted down that bastard's apartment myself. If only I hadn't insisted she be taken along — she'd never have been abandoned. I still regret it."
"Oh, come on. How was that your fault..."
"But it broke my heart so badly. Whenever the grandmother came back to herself, she'd sob and sob. And her mind slipped further every time."
Just hearing that the grandmother had been robbed of her house and land and then thrown away made my chest tighten. What must it have done to the one who lived it? Park Mak-soon must have torn at her own chest and wept until there was nothing left.
"Anyway, that's how I ended up meeting the boy face to face. Ha! He lived in a lovely neighborhood, let me tell you."
The place the son had summoned them to was a coffee shop in an apartment complex in Gangseo-gu.
"He claimed he didn't earn much, that he had two sons who hadn't yet moved out, so he had nowhere to take her in."
"Then why did he sell off her land and house in the country?"
"Said it was to set her up in a studio apartment — so he could 'check in on her regularly,' apparently. But she kept wandering outside and causing problems, he said."
"He's insane."
Planning to park a grandmother with dementia alone in a studio apartment. Unbelievable.
"He was full of regrets, too, he said. Gyeongju has excellent welfare facilities for dementia patients, so that's why he'd taken her there — and what a waste, apparently, since the police filed a criminal complaint against him for abandoning her."
"And he had the gall to talk as if it were our fault."
At the village head's words, I was struck speechless.
"He's not even human."
"That's what I said. So I just told her to live in the village. Someone else was already farming the land, but the house was falling down around her — nobody wanted to move in anyway, so I let her stay on."
"Still, her mind isn't sound..."
Madam Han Su-ja sighed. "Which is how half the house burned to the rafters when the kitchen caught fire."
"So that fire was seven, eight years ago."
"That's right. They slapped a vinyl sheet over the burned roof, and she lives in a single room to this day."
"He won't let her touch gas or oil of any kind. Only electricity is connected."
So that's why.
The breakfast the grandmother had set on the platform — meant for her son — was heartbreakingly spare. Rice, kimchi, and a few scraps of meat left over from the village feast yesterday. That was all.
"Her table was so bare."
"She set a table? Well, that's a first. She eats most days at the community hall. Mix coffee, rice cakes, instant ramen — there's never a day those don't come in."
"If she can't use gas or oil, how does she heat the place?"
At my question, the village head brought out the ledger and handed it to me.
"Heating is an electric blanket, nothing more. And even that electricity is paid out of the village public fund."
There it was in the fund's expense record — Park Mak-soon's electricity bill.
"Ha... this is too much."
I had run out of words.
Not long ago, I'd seen a news story about someone taking a dementia-stricken elder to the Philippines and abandoning her there. I never imagined the same cruelty would unfold right before my own eyes.
I can't wrap my head around it.
Knowing his mother was living in a house falling to pieces, scrounging her meals from handout ramen and rice cakes at the community hall — how did he stretch out his legs and sleep at night? Could warm rice and meat even go down his throat? Did he even know what taste was?
Coming into a fortune like this, I had started taking better care of my own parents — giving them spending money, calling often. Seeing them so delighted had filled me with quiet pride, but only for a moment. For aging parents, today is the youngest day they will ever have. The thought that someday both of them would leave me made my heart ache, and I'd resolved to do even more for them.
What if my parents hadn't retired comfortably as civil servants enjoying their golden years — what if they'd been poor farmers?
I thought I would have cherished them all the more. Watching the village head and Madam Han Su-ja sweat and strain over their crops just to provide for their children had often left my own chest hollow and aching.
So that's what a parent's heart is.
I steadied my breathing and looked at the village head.
"Would you give me that bastard's phone number? And his name."
"Why, again? Don't you dare tell him to come take his mother. What if he dumps her even farther away this time?"
"I'm not calling to bring her to him. I'm calling to sue him."
"Sue him? The abandonment in Gyeongju already went to trial, didn't it? I heard he got a suspended sentence."
"That's exactly why I'm filing a civil suit. I'm going to claw back every won he cost to raise and educate, and make him sign a renunciation of inheritance while I'm at it."
I'd read about cases where children who refused to care for their parents were sued — and lost. With a criminal conviction already on record, the civil case against Kim Chang-soo should be even easier to win.
And that inheritance renunciation is absolutely non-negotiable.
Park Mak-soon is the owner of the white porcelain jar. She was about to come into property worth at least several hundred million won. Of course, I couldn't simply drop that into the lap of a woman whose mind drifted in and out like fog.
First, she needs a proper examination from a dementia specialist.
So she could live long, and live well. Then I'd renovate the entire house, and buy back every patch of land her son had sold off. She'd farmed her whole life — having land beneath her would put the strength back in her bones.
While she's alive, let her plant soybeans, plant red beans, whatever her heart desires.
I'd also need to find someone to look after her meals and her housework. That could wait — or maybe I'd leave it to Madam Han Su-ja?
But Madam Han Su-ja looked worried.
"I know your heart's in the right place, Yunho, but talking to that son will only sour your stomach. I'll check in on her more often myself."
"Don't worry, Madam Han. The one whose stomach turns will be him."
"That's the spirit! Sue him, do whatever it takes — what he did isn't fit for a human being. Count me in, Yunho!"
The village head fetched paper, wrote down Park Mak-soon's son's name and number, and handed it over.
"If young Yunho here gives him a proper tongue-lashing before the lawsuit, I'm helping too. Someone's got to show him what for. All this time, nobody stepped up, and I've been chewing on it alone."
He seized my hand in both of his.
"Thanks to you, young Yunho, justice finally gets its day. Marvelous! You're the best!"
Leaving the village head's house, I walked toward Park Mak-soon's place and dialed the son's number.
"Hello?"
A voice like sunken stone, drenched in arrogance.
"Kim Chang-soo?"
"Who's this?"
Just then, a woman's voice overlapped in the background. "Principal, the education office..."
"H-haha. So you were a principal, were you? How laughable."
"Who is this?!"
"Me? A grim reaper."
My voice went cold.
"The moment you meet me, you're a dead man — buried socially, that is. I'll give you time. Apologize for what you did to your birth mother, and right now—"
Click. He hung up. Mention his mother once, and apparently I wasn't worth another second of his time?
Fine. I was meaning to head up to Seoul anyway.
There was camping gear to buy, winter clothes to bring down, and I'd been suddenly missing my parents' faces besides. But first, it seemed, I needed to find someone to look after Park Mak-soon day to day.
"Chang-soo, you're home?"
The grandmother, mistaking me for her son, came hurrying toward me.
"Chang-soo, why are you so late? The other children all finished school and got home ages ago, they said. Mommy was worried. I'm sorry. You don't like being touched, do you?"
"..."
"You're hungry, aren't you? Mommy set the table for you. I even picked the flowers you love... Don't talk so much, okay? I'm sorry."
The grandmother shrank back a step, watching my face anxiously.
"Ha... what could you possibly be sorry for?"
The sigh escaped me before I could stop it. At the sound, the grandmother kicked at the dirt with her worn-out shoes.
"Your mommy's ugly and ignorant — no wonder you're ashamed of me. I'm sorry... But... son, don't hate Mommy too much."
"I don't hate you. Mom."
Weren't these the very words she'd been starving to hear? My throat seized up on its own.
"Really... you don't hate me?"
"No."
"Truly?"
"Truly... thank you. For raising me through all your hardships."
"Ohh! Mommy's sorry she couldn't do more for you. Chang-soo, I'm so sorry."
The grandmother threw her arms around me and wept, shoulders shaking.
Hey! What are you playing at, ghost? Drag a bastard like Kim Chang-soo straight down to hell!
No. I don't need to borrow a ghost's hand.
I would drag that man's life into hell myself. I'd make him regret it — down to his bones.
Just then, from a far-off sky, I thought I heard the low rumble of thunder.