The Truth Finally Emerged
“Oh, that’s wonderful.”
Mr. Bang lit up as well. He was new to the island branch school, so he didn’t know the situation very well, but since it was good news for Jua, Kang-to had thought it was only right to let him in on it. With both Kang-to and the head of the Seoul Metropolitan Police’s Major Crimes Task Force backing the story, he believed it at once.
“Well, I’ll be damned. So that’s how it was.”
Village Chief Choi clapped his hands, practically cackling with delight.
“I knew it. Ah, no matter how I thought about it, there was no way that Sun-ho fella would do something like that.”
Grandpa Yeongsil, the octopus-catching master, was grinning too.
“Still, heaven hasn’t turned its back on him. It’s good that this is coming out now.”
Song Captain was just as pleased, as if the matter were his own.
“All of it’s thanks to our Kang-to the beopsa, isn’t it?”
Grandma Hong-seo, as always, gave Kang-to the credit.
“Absolutely.”
All the regulars gave Kang-to a thumbs-up.
“It’s nothing. I’m just asking everyone to keep helping out the elders when you can.”
Kang-to flushed red. He hadn’t announced it to show off. He’d done it for Jua’s father’s honor. The official acquittal still hadn’t come through yet, but at the very least, the islanders needed to know the truth.
“Thank you.”
Jua’s grandmother, who had come running over from clam digging, clutched Kang-to’s hand with her muddy fingers and refused to let go. Kang-to simply pulled the old woman into a hug. What did a little mud matter?
The investigation had boarded an express train.
Just in case, Team Leader Jin had even reported it to Commissioner Woo Chung-gyun. Since it wasn’t a Seoul police matter, they needed support from the side. Once the Gyeonggi police stepped in, and then the local precinct joined the effort, the case surged forward like a tidal wave.
Suspect: Go Cheol-dong
He had been a construction subcontractor in the local community. He’d done subcontract work for Jang Tae-san, only to be stiffed out of nearly 200 million won. Back then, Jang Tae-san had leaned on the influence of his father, who was a provincial assemblyman, and even backed that up with violence.
Go Cheol-dong had been a decent contractor too. But once the payments started lagging, he snapped. Collecting the money had been like squeezing water from a deer’s bladder, and every time he refused to take on the next job, the company would withhold the overdue construction fees all over again.
Enraged, he bought a knife. It was the same model Jang Tae-san had used. Since he’d already been threatened twice before, he knew that knife well.
The problem was the local police. Go Cheol-dong had never even entered their line of suspicion. He lived on for years with that weight on him until guilt finally began to gnaw at him. In truth, he was a good man at heart. And then dementia struck him like a blow from heaven.
So this was punishment?
At the stage of mild dementia, he confessed to his son. Knowing death was near, he made a conscience-driven confession. Go Gil-dong handed over the notebook in which his father had recorded everything he’d been feeling all this time. He also revealed where the knife had been tossed—into the rocky shoreline.
When the police station was informed, all they got in response was a dismissive snort.
“You say the old man has dementia? Then take care of him properly.”
The police couldn’t be bothered. They fixated on the dementia and didn’t consider anything else.
Go Cheol-dong died last winter.
It didn’t matter.
Along with Go Cheol-dong’s notes, his son’s testimony and the murder weapon were recovered. Though rust had eaten into the blade over the years, it had become decisive evidence.
There was another piece on Jua’s father’s side.
Once that was explained to him, the truth came pouring out with a storm of tears. He had lost the wife he loved. Worse, the man responsible was the kind of brute who acted like a gangster and treated everyone like dirt. How was a man supposed to settle with someone like that? It felt as if his heart would burst and kill him on the spot.
No matter how many times he said he was innocent, the police wouldn’t believe him. They wouldn’t listen when he explained that the fingerprint on the knife came from cleaning the blood off the blade, and they didn’t believe him when he admitted he had bought the hammer but denied ever using it.
Good-hearted Lee Sun-ho broke under the repeated shocks. He couldn’t bear to face his elderly mother, and he couldn’t bear to look at his young daughter either.
He gave up.
He let that single word swallow him whole.
And then he signed the confession admitting to murder.
That was the outline of the case.
“Beopsa Kang-to.”
Three days later, in the morning, Jua came to visit.
“Sis.”
Sol-bi rushed out first to greet her.
“What brings you here?” Kang-to asked from the stove, where he was making breakfast for Sol-bi.
“This. Grandma told me to bring it.”
What Jua held out was a fresh bowl of seasoned wild greens, still warm from being blanched.
“When did you even dig these up?”
“Yesterday. Grandma said you had to eat something tasty, so she boiled them just a little while ago and seasoned them.”
“She didn’t have to go to that trouble...”
“Grandma says it didn’t take any effort at all. She said she could go up the mountain ten times if she had to.”
Jua was bright and lively too. A parent’s strength could shape a child that completely. That warmth showed in the greens themselves. When Kang-to boiled them, they sometimes turned pale and yellowed, but these still looked as if they’d just sprouted, fresh and green.
“Delicious.”
One bite and the scent of spring flooded his mouth. The perilla oil, used instead of sesame oil, was extraordinary. It dressed the taste of spring in something elegant.
“Me too.”
Sol-bi opened her mouth like a sparrow begging for food.
“Tasty.”
She wiped her lips with her tongue, then asked, “Sis, you’re pretty. Going inland?”
“Yeah. I’m going to see my dad.”
Jua pinched Sol-bi’s cheek and shook it gently. Today, she and Team Leader Jin were going to the prison for a visitation.
The lawyer had been introduced by Team Leader Jin. He specialized in retrials and had an impressive win rate. On the second day of the investigation, when the rusty knife turned up, they’d gone to the prison, and Lee Sun-ho, encouraged by the breakthrough, had finally spilled his innocence. Today was the day Jua and her grandmother were going to cheer him on.
“Beopsa Kang-to.”
A little later, Jua’s grandmother came upstairs.
“Ma’am.”
“Thank you.”
“Think nothing of it. Please give your son plenty of courage.”
“I will. Once he’s home, I’m going to tell him that the first fish he catches when he goes back out on the boat has to be offered to you, beopsa.”
“That fish should go to you and Jua. Now go on and get down there. You should be getting ready.”
Kang-to wrapped things up. Jua and her grandmother thanked him once more, then headed lightly toward the harbor.
“Come back safely.”
The mood at the pier brightened. There were a lot of grandmothers there today, a full turnout to support Jua’s grandmother. Grandma Hong-seo, Grandma from the Jjang-gu house, and the others set down the hands they’d been using to brew samhaeju and came out, while still more old women abandoned their mudflat work and lined up along the pier.
The son had been too good for his own good.
And in the end, that same son had been dealt a terrible blow.
By now, the islanders all knew that the murder accusation had been lifted. Chief Choi had announced it over the loudspeaker himself.
“Jua.”
His little great-aunt didn’t miss out either. She handed over ten fresh fish-shaped pastries.
“Eat them on the way. The red bean paste’s hot, so watch the roof of your mouth.”
She patted Jua on the back. It was the same little great-aunt who had taken in Sol-bi without a word of complaint. She understood children raised under a single mother or a single father all too well, and because of that, there was no way she couldn’t know how hard Jua had been suffering.
“A boat’s coming in.”
Grandma Hong-seo pointed toward the horizon. Maybe it was all for Jua’s sake, but there seemed to be more seagulls than usual gathered today.
Kang-to stood a little farther back. He was seeing off the passengers leaving on the morning ferry—people who had come all the way to the island just to have their fortunes read. Whenever he had time, he always came out to send them off.
“Well, I’ll be. I buried Sun-ho’s placenta in the wrong place back then, didn’t I?”
Grandma Hong-seo muttered to herself.
Placenta?
It sounded so out of left field that Kang-to let it pass without giving it much thought.
Cars began spilling out first. Then the passengers started filing out beside them.
“It’s Kang-to the beopsa.”
“Really?”
The cheers from a cluster of middle-aged women signaled the arrival of the new visitors.
“Hello?”
The visitors, who had memorized Kang-to’s face through the internet, newspapers, YouTube, and fan cafés, swarmed over to him.
“Hello.”
He took each hand offered for a shake one by one. Then a familiar voice reached his ears.
“Beopsa Kang-to.”
“Oh?”
It was Chairman Cho, standing there with a chauffeur in tow. He must have arrived in the sedan that had just pulled up.
“What brings you here?”
“What do you mean, what brings me here? I came to see you for the first time in ages and get a little healing in, that’s all.”
“You should’ve called first...”
“You’re busier than I am now, so I figured it would be an imposition.”
“You’re too kind. Come this way.”
Kang-to pointed toward the lighthouse.
“Chairman.”
The regulars, recognizing Chairman Cho, gathered around him.
“Thanks to you, the path from the pier to the lighthouse has become a proper landmark.”
Kang-to gestured at the area around them. Trees and flowers, along with a few charming little benches and a rest area, blended so beautifully with the landscape that every visitor stopped to take photos.
It was thanks to the touch of spring. The island’s famous Chilui windflower and the pale pink Korean pasque flower were working such a spectacular chemical magic together that the whole place looked like a paradise.
The landscape specialist had been on a different level. Rather than planting random trees and weeds, he’d created a wildflower habitat using plants native to the islands in this region. He’d revived the rocks that had once been lying around without purpose and planted wildflowers beneath the Chinese silverberry trees, and now that spring had arrived, the result was finally showing its full power.
“Once the old peach blossoms and apricot blossoms are in full bloom too, people are saying it’ll be every bit as beautiful as the Isles of the Immortals.”
“It shines because you’re here, beopsa.”
Chairman Cho smiled.
“First, I’ve got some personal news. Thanks to you, I succeeded in getting my wife pregnant.”
“Really?”
“My younger brother too. Your oracle was a hundred percent accurate.”
“Congratulations.”
“My wife was so happy she told me to ask you something... She wants to know if the baby will be born safely.”
“Of course it will. The restless spirit has already been sent on to the next world.”
“Thank you. And now for this.”
Chairman Cho held out a newspaper article.
“Taebaek Construction makes a generous donation of 100 million won each to 31 descendants of independence fighters to mark March 1st.”
“Wow.”
Kang-to’s face instantly brightened.
“They say the right hand shouldn’t let the left know what it’s doing, but I wanted to brag to you, beopsa.”
“Then you should brag. It’s something worth bragging about.”
“I’m looking into other things too. Giving and doing good deeds seems to have become addictive. I keep finding myself poking around, wondering what else good I can do.”
“That’s the beauty of merit. A good influence spreads without limit.”
“Meeting you has honestly given me a second life, beopsa. If I’d never met you, I’d have gone on living as nothing but a man consumed by money.”
“Your change gives me a great deal of satisfaction too, Chairman.”
“This is...”
Chairman Cho produced an envelope.
“What’s this?”
“You didn’t really get anything out of the great success with the British and then the triumph in China, and I haven’t been able to help you at all. So I’ve put together a little something as a thank-you for the pregnancy, and as a token of gratitude for the long road ahead.”
“You don’t need to do things like this.”
“Please take it. That way our baby can be born healthy, and I can keep putting my back into building merit.”
“......”
“And there’s one more thing I’d like to ask you about.”
“A request?”
“We’re trying to move into a huge leisure complex development project in Japan right now, but finding a suitable partner over there is difficult. The American Disney company and Chinese capital are pouring in massive funding. So I tried to avoid a straight business approach and look at the human side of it, and there’s one method that might work... I thought if it were you, it might actually be possible.”
“Something you need me to help with?”
“The Miura chairman of that Satsuma Group—his son is named Kaito, and it seems he has ADHD. He grew up being bullied at school, but a girl named Rie looked after him so devotedly that his scientific talent was able to blossom. In the end, Kaito finished his studies in the United States, came back, proposed, got married, and set up a home for their newlywed life, but...”
Chairman Cho drew a breath before continuing.
“During last year’s great Miyazaki earthquake, a tsunami swept through that seaside town and washed everything away. They haven’t even been able to find the body.”
“Oh, no.”
“The bride was eight months pregnant at the time... So it must have been even harder to evacuate.”
“......”
“That son even learned scuba diving himself and has been searching the surrounding waters, but it’s already been half a year and...” He paused, his worry showing plainly. “The problem is he’s on the verge of complete exhaustion, and Chairman Miura is beside himself with concern. That son is also one of the company’s core research talents.”
“That’s heartbreaking.”
“Miyazaki isn’t all that far from the flooded mine region, is it? So I went down there to scout the coast in advance, and sure enough, he was searching the entire sea out front. Barely resting at all... From where I was standing, it looked like he was going to work himself to death.”
“......”
“I asked around, and apparently the son is prepared to pay anything if only he can find his wife’s body. In fact, they even deployed three top-tier diving clubs in Japan at the same time.”
“I see...”
“The moment I heard that, I thought of you, beopsa. First, I wanted to help in a human way even if there were no joint venture involved, and second, practically speaking, I thought maybe you’d be able to do it.”
“......”
“So I came running here, partly to pay my respects.”
“Then this is official business, is it?”
“Pardon?”
“Am I not your consultant? And you’re already transferring a more than generous fee into my account.”
“Well...”
“If the other side wants it, I’ll go.”
“You will?”
“I’m the one listening, and even I’m touched. Like you said, it seems better to help from a humanitarian angle.”
“Then I’ll get the ball rolling right away?”
“Go ahead.”
“Amazing.”
Chairman Cho gave a triumphant cry. He must have been terrified Kang-to would refuse, and had been struggling to work up the courage to ask.
“Executive Director Kim? It’s Cho Chul-woong. About the Japanese joint venture—go ahead and sound it out right now. Our Kang-to the beopsa has given the green light.”
The chairman’s voice rang with energy as he took the call.