A Hundred and One Reasons to Stay
Jeong Yeon-doo called out to whoever was on the other side of the door, her voice edged with dread. No answer came. Having only just managed to sit down, Yeon-doo staggered to her feet and shuffled toward the door.
Creeeak—.
What the hinges, long un-oiled, revealed as they groaned open was—
"There she is, there she is, finally!"
"To think our village would get someone so young...!"
"Woof!"
The village grandmothers. The very music that had drifted through the train to Hyangdo County earlier played once more, the chiming xylophone bouncing along merrily.
"Welcome!!!"
The kind-hearted grandmas were beaming, each of them clutching a woven basket filled with something. Housewarming gifts. In the space of a heartbeat, Jeong Yeon-doo's name, age, and every basic personal detail had been picked clean, and she slid down against the wall, deflated. Her spirit had been wrung out of her entirely.
Grrrrumble—.
Yeon-doo picked up an ear of corn from one of the baskets pressed into her hands. It was Jeong Yeon-doo's first meal that anyone had ever cared enough to give her.
"It's good...."
She murmured it so quietly, and yet her expression softened, as if she were thinking that maybe moving here hadn't been such a mistake after all. After a shower under water that came gushing out without warning, Yeon-doo pulled on a soft pair of pajamas and lay down, and a far more settled narration washed over the scene.
At last, it felt like she had arrived. Away from Line 1, where she was always shoved and squeezed breathless; away from the alleys that never slept even at night; away from the company that never stopped calling her name.
It seemed like paradise at the end of her escape. By tomorrow, no one would come by with greetings. And so she would simply breathe, quietly, existing somewhere in Hyangdo County—
BANG BANG BANG!
But the moment the sun rose the next morning, crashing through her door once again were yesterday's grandmothers.
"They say I'm supposed to go pick someone up from the airport. Do I have to?"
That was straight-up a voice phishing scam to anyone with ears.
"The fella at the phone shop in town says you gotta buy one of them Apple Phones Pro or whatever, or the voice phishers get ya... I mean, my transfer limit is—"
That was plain old swindling.
"Be a dear and pass a message along to my grandbaby."
And some of them brought errands that didn't need doing now, all of them landing on Jeong Yeon-doo's shoulders.
"Young folks really are the best."
"Aigoo, thank you, dear~."
"Here, eat this. Eh? If it ain't enough, just say so."
Before she knew it, Yeon-doo's house had turned into a communal sarangbang, because the grandmothers who'd come earlier had refused to leave and simply claimed their spots. One of them had even brought a knife and was peeling a peach to hand to her.
Jeong Yeon-doo chewed the peach mechanically, her eyes glazed over. Then, wearing that same vacant look, she lay down on her bed still in her pajamas.
"God, Yeo-reum is so good at this."
DeodeokB — Wi Jae-hwi — was watching Not Interested At All intently alongside Ae-ta-mi. Half of the broadcast's sixty minutes had already passed.
Tap-tap—. Tap-tap—.
Reporter Wi was fanning with true professional spirit. Soon, a plot-summary article on MBS's single-episode drama would go up in the [Broadcast] section of Daily Media under her byline.
'The click count won't be anything special. But it's Yeo-reum, so.'
Even here in Hyangdo County, Jeong Yeon-doo was still saddled with every odd job in sight. She'd gone all the way to the village hall to check the grandmothers' phone bills for them, and it was there that her eyes flew wide open.
"I'm sorry, WHAT???"
Because the requests had escalated into sheer absurdity.
"Why on earth would I be village chief???"
Worse, she'd actually been nominated for the position — and every ounce of irritation she'd been stockpiling erupted all at once.
"No— seriously, look. Ha.... I have zero, and I mean ZERO, reason to become village chief!"
Every emotion she'd been suppressing in the name of filial piety came pouring out. Yeon-doo let out a hollow, disbelieving laugh.
"Don't nominate me — just run yourselves. I'll vote for you. The old chief can keep doing it, can't she? It's the age of centenarians — since when does old age mean everyone has to step down, huh? HUH? Go get the old chief RIGHT NOW!!! She should keep at it! Responsibly! For a long, long time!"
At that, the door of the village hall creaked slowly open, and someone appeared.
"Oh, look, the old chief's here."
"Aigoo, madam~. We were just about to come fetch you."
Leaning on her cane and smiling, the grandmother introduced herself carefully.
"I am...."
She was the elder who would whip Jeong Yeon-doo's long-lost sense of filial respect back into line. Because one look at her was enough to know—
"...I'm a hundred and one. Should I really keep at it a while longer...?"
She was over a hundred years old. Only then did the framed picture hanging on one wall of the village hall catch Yeon-doo's eye.
🎂 Congratulations on Kim Gyeong-ja's 100th Birthday! 🎂
Utterly defeated, Yeon-doo could manage no further rebellion and trudged out of the hall.
"Woof!"
Then came the tiny yip of a puppy. It was the spitting image of the dog that had shown up at her house the day she moved in — its pup, born just last month. Yeon-doo and the puppy locked eyes.
"Go away."
Leaving behind the little thing showing off its pink belly, Yeon-doo walked away fast. She had a sinking premonition that this puppy, too, would end up dumped in her lap.
"Whiiiine...."
Oblivious to all of this, the puppy trotted after her with pure, innocent determination. Leaving Boksun huffing along on her stubby little legs, Yeon-doo broke into a run.
"I said GO!"
It was a summer day, green leaves fluttering in the breeze. A white ball of cotton — Boksun — came bounding after her, and from far away, the moment framed itself like a picture-perfect landscape.
Even the clouds drifting up in the blue sky looked like spun sugar. It was as if summer itself had been lifted and set down, exactly as it was.
"...What a nuisance. Honestly."
Having given up on outrunning Boksun, Yeon-doo furrowed her brow and began stroking the pup's fur in long, smooth sweeps. Boksun, apparently smitten, wrapped her front paws tight around Yeon-doo's wrist, then started licking her hand — so very, very glad to see her.
"Why are you licking my hand like that."
Yeon-doo spoke brusquely to the puppy, but her gaze dropped to meet Boksun's eyes once more. The pup's tail wagged without pause.
"Hungry?"
The moment Jeong Yeon-doo opened her heart to another being for the very first time, the sunlight blazed brilliantly. That fleeting emotion, that season, the Hyangdo County Yeon-doo was coming to feel — it all stepped suddenly, vividly closer to Reporter Wi.
Reporter Wi flipped open her laptop on the spot and began to type. She wanted to upload it the moment the broadcast ended.
It looked like her earlier prediction was about to miss the mark entirely. A gut feeling told her that far more people than she'd expected would be clicking on the article.
At this very hour, the office worker was still strapped to the inside of a Gyeonggi Province bus. Home by ten thirty. Washed up and in bed by eleven.
She knew she ought to sleep early, but telling herself she couldn't end her day like this, she'd stay up scrolling her phone until one in the morning — and she always wore an irritated expression while doing it. Today, though, was different.
'God, that's hilarious.'
Trying to catch the bus into town, Jeong Yeon-doo had waited an hour and twenty minutes before finally resorting to hitching a ride on the village grandmothers' tractor.
"The bus? There's only two a day, hon. One going, one coming."
"That's not what the schedule says, though?"
"That there's over ten years old."
This was the countryside — the bus timetable was a full thirteen years out of date.
The town she rode into atop the rattling, clattering tractor was exactly the farming village everyone imagines. The enormous agricultural co-op logo looked oddly, warmly familiar.
"Aigoo, is this the young lady, the new chief of Dangbok-ri in Hyangdo? Here, take this home and eat it! I make a gated-out kimchi salad that'll knock your socks off~?"
"I'm NOT the chief...."
Having rushed into town because she desperately needed a laptop charger, Yeon-doo found herself waylaid by the grandmothers yet again, hauling heavy bags in both hands.
Frumpy pajamas printed with cartoon characters ("wear these at home!"), old-timey sarangbang candy ("for when your mouth's bored"), deluxe-grade slippers, sugar-dusted twists of fried dough — the lot.
"Look at her! That's a baby if ever I saw one, a baby!"
On the way home, a grandmother grinned brightly as she plopped a ribboned straw hat onto Yeon-doo's head, saying she shouldn't suffer in the sun. Then she wiped a smudge of sugar from the corner of Yeon-doo's mouth with her hand.
"I'm not a baby.... I'm a grown woman."
"You're just a baby to our eyes."
"Whose daughter ever grew up so fair and pretty as this, eh?"
The corner of the office worker's mouth crept upward without her permission. It was because her own grandmother had come to mind.
"Goodness me—"
That was when it happened. At a sudden swell of ominous music, one of the grandmothers flinched hard. In the distance, a middle-aged man with menacing eyes swayed past them, a bottle of makgeolli clutched in his hand.
"...Who's that?"
"The dog trader, the dog trader!"
"On account of that man, the dogs up and died out — this village, the next one over, the one behind it, all of 'em."
The man glanced around with bloodshot, drunken eyes, then whipped his head backward — and met Yeon-doo's gaze.
"Look at that. Trying to trade liquor for a dog again...."
The softness drained from Yeon-doo's face, hardening all over again. Her hand tightened around the dog chew she'd bought for Boksun. The middle-aged man grinned at the sight of her, spat on the ground, and shuffled on.
"Must've seen nothing but pretty things in Seoul. Tch. Forget it."
"Didn't mean for you to see something so ugly, dear."
Even in the middle of all that, the grandmothers looked after Yeon-doo first. As they shared cups of sikhye and rattled back along the dirt road on the tractor, the unpaved country lane gleamed with an unusual brightness. It almost felt as if that pleasant summer breeze were reaching out to me, too.
Ziiing—. Ziiing—.
What shattered that peace was a phone call the very next day.