Moon Village (2)
"You're doing this to squeeze money out of people who already live like this?"
"So what if I am?"
Come to think of it, she did look about as heartless as they come. Kim Sanghyeon had always been able to melt anyone by calling them 'noona,' but this woman seemed utterly immune to his charm.
"Still, shaking people down this relentlessly is a bit much, don't you think?"
Well, at least the kid has some sympathy in him. Kang Subin raised her assessment of Kim Sanghyeon. By about 0.3 points.
"That's exactly why we're here."
"Sorry?"
"Keep up."
"Whoa, hold on—"
Kim Sanghyeon huffed and puffed his way up the steep slope, struggling to match Kang Subin's brisk pace. Why on earth did they build the roads like this? Do people actually live up here?
"Hello? Anyone home?"
"Who is it?"
"Are you Ms. Im Seonja?"
From inside a jjokbang that looked like it would crumble if you so much as nudged it, an old woman emerged. Her hair was streaked with gray, and her clothes hung threadbare on her small frame.
"We're from the Uiseon City Hall. You've been delinquent on sixty thousand won in taxes for the past three years."
"I—I see..."
"We're not here to force collection. We just wanted to check whether there might be some circumstances we should know about."
"Please, come in."
The visibly flustered Im Seonja ushered the two visitors inside. The room was cramped. The kitchen was so small it felt almost apologetic to call it one, and the bathroom held an old-fashioned squat toilet straight out of another era. Kim Sanghyeon rubbed his own eyes, unable to believe what he was seeing with them.
Meanwhile, Im Seonja poured water into a chipped, aged cup and offered it to her guests. It was, apparently, the sturdiest cup she owned.
"I'm sorry, I have nothing to offer guests."
"Please don't say that. We didn't come to be entertained."
Kang Subin added the reassurance gently, sensing the woman's anxiety.
"We've recently started a new program. We seek out people struggling enough to fall behind on small payments like this, connect them with the welfare department, and provide direct support."
"Oh... like how that man with the injured leg got help?"
"That was me who helped him, actually."
Im Seonja's expression brightened at once. She had been worrying herself sick over how she'd possibly pay without any money.
"Do you have any other family?"
"No."
As she surveyed the room, Kang Subin spotted a cosmetic product that seemed far too young for Im Seonja, and probed carefully.
"Your child—do they live far away?"
"My child... is gone."
It was an absence that hadn't been there from the beginning—it felt like something that had been taken away partway through. Even Kim Sanghyeon, who had been only half-listening, caught his breath as he looked at her face, her eyes brimming with tears.
"She was coming home from work when a car accident... took her from me."
"...I'm so sorry."
"It's alright."
And then Im Seonja's memory unfolded. The man who had promised to marry her died in an accident before their wedding day, and Im Seonja, left alone, discovered only later that she was pregnant.
After much agonizing, she decided to have the child—and so she became an unwed mother. With nothing to her name, Im Seonja still gave her daughter everything she could.
There was no work she hadn't tried, and she made sure her daughter had an environment where she could focus on her studies, even if it meant her own life fell a little short.
Perhaps because she understood her mother's sacrifices, the daughter got into a respectable university, and the moment she came of age, she began earning money tutoring students.
"C-Could you stop working? Mom can just work more, so..."
"Mom. I want to buy things too. Things I actually want."
"B-But still?"
"Here, wear this instead. I bought it because I thought it'd suit you, Mom."
And then—she was hit by a car on her way home from a late tutoring session.
The cardigan her daughter had given her still hung from Im Seonja's shoulders, frayed and worn as it was. Even after her daughter's death, she couldn't bring herself to erase the last traces of her, so she had simply left it as it was.
"How old is that handsome young man next to you?"
"Oh, I'm... twenty-nine."
"My girl would be the same age, if she were still alive."
But Im Seonja's daughter remained forever twenty-three. Kim Sanghyeon, who had set out on a lighthearted whim following Kang Subin, grew noticeably somber.
"Regarding the tax, we can arrange a payment deferral for you..."
She explained that grief over losing her daughter had made her ill, that a long battle with sickness had left her in debt, and that paying the taxes had become impossible. Kang Subin first laid out in detail what support was available, then connected her with a job creation program.
"The welfare department will send necessities, and this young man here will deliver them to you."
"M-me?"
"Thank you so much."
Kim Sanghyeon made an utterly dumbfounded face at being suddenly drafted as a delivery boy—but he didn't follow Kang Subin out the door.
"Mr. Kim Sanghyeon? Aren't you coming?"
"J-just a moment. Ma'am, may I use your restroom?"
Kang Subin stepped outside first. And ran into someone.
"Oh? Officer Kang."
"Detective Park."
"Out collecting money from people who don't have any, again?"
The tone was less a jab than a friendly greeting. Detective Park Yoonseong, the male lead of Moon Village, was Kang Subin's classmate from elementary school through high school, and he already knew all about the work she was doing.
Kang Subin focused on the more pressing question: why a violent crimes detective who should be knee-deep in cases was standing in this narrow little alley.
"Something happen again?"
"You see that house with the blue roof over there? They found a body inside."
"Don't tell me... it looks like the murder from a week ago? How many is this?"
"Second one."
"Is this turning into a serial killing?"
Park Yoonseong let out a long sigh. He hoped not, but the methods were simply too similar. And of all places, this district was slated for redevelopment—so the CCTV installation got put off and put off, and now there were no cameras at all.
"How is it that some rich kid drunk-driving into a car accident gets blown up in every headline, but a murder happening right here doesn't get a single line of coverage?"
"Catch the guy and lock him up, and you'll get your articles."
"Yeah."
And just then, the rich kid in question slipped out of Im Seonja's house.
Designer clothes that screamed money, and there he was preening in front of his reflection in a window. Detective Park Yoonseong gave a hollow laugh.
"Who's that?"
"New public service worker."
"Ah, figures. Keep at it."
"Haah... right."
Park Yoonseong clapped Kang Subin on the shoulder to encourage her, then headed off toward the crime scene.
"Taking care of some important business in there, were you? That bathroom's barely functional, you know."
"I was just doing a little good deed."
"Don't tell me you gave her money."
"Only a little. Just enough to stay within the law..."
Honestly, how much rice or how many necessities could the welfare department provide? Kim Sanghyeon figured real help came from money. So he'd simply pulled a few bills from his thick wallet and told her to buy herself something good to eat.
"Why would you give her that?"
"What do you mean? Her situation's just pitiable, that's all."
"How long are you planning to keep it up? Every other day? For about a week?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Can you take responsibility for her to the very end?"
"Uh..."
Kim Sanghyeon, who'd been grinning like a puppy proud of his own good deed, felt his expression harden with every word out of Kang Subin's mouth.
"This work exists to provide help only to the extent that society can sustain it. It is not charity. If you're that desperate to throw money around, go hand it out at the City Hall station."
"That's..."
"Don't do it again."
His first field assignment with Kang Subin, ending on a frosty note. Back home, Kim Sanghyeon lay in bed tossing and turning, then kicked his foot at the empty air.
"Ugh, damn it! Didn't I do a good thing?"
Thought rationally, Kang Subin was right. Offer kindness with no strings attached, and people just learn to expect more—isn't that human nature?
Unable to stop thinking about it, Kim Sanghyeon found himself back near Im Seonja's house—and witnessed something unexpected.
Im Seonja wasn't spending the money on herself. She was giving it away.
"Seonja, where'd the money come from to buy meat?"
"Honestly, if you came into money you should've bought your medicine first."
"Well... you've all helped me so much."
To Kim Sanghyeon, it had been a trifling sum. But to these people, it was the maximum amount of joy that could be shared.
Something about this feels strange.
Then the scene shifted, and Kang Subin's campaign of working Kim Sanghyeon to the bone began.
"Mr. Sanghyeon? Take this bag of rice to this address."
"Mr. Sanghyeon? Where are you going? Deliver this to the third floor above the corner store over there."
"Once you've finished all those deliveries, memorize these public housing requirements. I'll be quizzing you later."
Kim Sanghyeon climbed the steep uphill roads, and climbed them again. By the time he dragged his exhausted body back to City Hall, a new task was already waiting. Officer Park, who had been eyeing him warily for being a spoiled rich kid, watched from behind with an expression of pure delight.
"I'd love to offer you something for coming all this way, but I've got nothing... have a glass of water before you go, at least."
"N-no, that's quite all right."
His body ached, and on top of that, this earnest, uncomplicated generosity—someone trying to press even a glass of water into his hands—made him feel strangely off balance. Granted, there had been people who whined and demanded more. But on his way back after finishing a delivery, Kim Sanghyeon spotted someone.
What the—?
A designer bag completely out of place in this alley. A fur coat? She took a child by the hand and stepped into a shabby little house.
Don't tell me she's a loan shark? What kind of loan shark dresses like that? He crept up to the front of the house.
"This is it?"
"Yes. It still has everything you need, though."
"It's even shabbier than I imagined."
The woman draped head to toe in luxury frowned.
"Will you be staying the night?"
"Ah—ahem. No, I'll just stay about... six hours."
"Then that's sixty-six thousand won."
"Here, seventy thousand. Keep the change."
"Thank you."
The room's owner bowed deeply. At the sight, the luxury-draped woman smiled in satisfaction.
"Mom! This room's smaller than our bathroom!"
"Hajun, if you don't study hard, this is the kind of house you'll live in. Understood?"
"I hate it here! It stinks! I want to go home!"
"Ssh. No. We'll stay for two hours, then go. Mommy will let you play on the game console."
The woman closed the room's door and turned away, not a flicker of expression crossing her face despite having heard every word. A gloomy face, worn down by the world. But Kim Sanghyeon's impression was this:
"She's pretty."
Moon Village was a thriller laced with human warmth.
The first half showcased the stories of people in hardship, harvesting emotion and tears; the second half followed the hunt for a serial killer. But apparently the higher-ups had decreed that this alone wouldn't pull ratings, and ordered a romance be added.
A romance, in a genre drama? Writer Woo Taeyoon, who couldn't bring himself to graft a love line onto his lead actors, substituted the budding connection between his second leads, Kim Sanghyeon and Choi Ahra.
"Are you renting this room out?"
"Wh-who are you?"
"Oh. I'm a public service worker from Uiseon City Hall. I came to deliver rice to the alley behind that store over there..."
"Oh... right."
Up close, her face was even prettier. Uncharacteristically for his usual sly self, Kim Sanghyeon scratched the back of his head and shuffled his feet awkwardly.
"Please keep this a secret."
"Keep what a secret?"
"Never mind, forget it."
The woman bolted into the next room, and Kim Sanghyeon picked up the promotional flyer the child had dropped.
(Slum / Jjokbang Village Experience — Want to teach your child the true value of life? Needing an unusual date course for couples?)
He saved the number and opened his messaging app. A new friend appeared under a name.
"Choi Ahra."
Okay. Number acquired.
"Hah, honestly."
Writer Woo Taeyoon, staring at the articles, sighed. Yoon Jay covered his phone screen with his hand.
"Writer, don't read this stuff."
"I can't help looking. Are you sure you have no regrets, Mr. Jay? Our ratings weren't even good..."
"What's there to regret?"
Dramas built on sensational material, guaranteed ratings, came and went by the dozen. He'd chosen Moon Village simply because... his heart had been drawn to it.
"Wouldn't it be nice if works like this had a place in the world too?"
"That would be a comfort, then."
Yoon Jay caught sight of an unfamiliar car in the lot—one that hadn't been on set before—and instinctively turned his gaze away. The person stepping out of it was Lim Si-woo, the man who had picked a fight with him.
Well, what a coincidence.
The moment Lim Si-woo's eyes met his, he shrank and ducked his head low—but Yoon Jay already seemed to have no interest in the likes of him, listening instead to the director's instructions.
Lim Si-woo was playing the younger version of the dementia patient in her flashback scenes. A bit part, on screen for only a moment.
Fucking hell...
Lim Si-woo's face burned red. Yoon Jay surrounded by people, himself looking pitiful and small. The gulf between them hit him in the skin, raw and undeniable.